by A. K. Koonce
My gaze lifts and meets those intense, determined crimson eyes.
“Okay, let’s do this.” Chaos claps like this is the only thing important to him in his life.
All the death, the destruction, all of the mess I’ve made of his life.
And he still loves me completely.
Three
Dark Seduction
For Chaos being so damn excited to see the house I grew up in, Rime was right; he really did just want to get in my bed. His snores are soft as his big body consumes every inch of the small mattress. They’ve all lost a lot of sleep. Since the moment they met me really. Sinister and I pass each other a small smirk before we peer up at the man sleeping on his stomach in the bed above us. Kain plots going back to the village to clear my name in long and overly adamant details while Rime nods along here and there, but mostly the ice dragon just stares out my window that overlooks the sloshing sea.
The room is soft colors of lavender and lime. My mother and I decorated it when I was a teenager. The shades of purples lining the bed and the window are accented with the light-green rug that I remember my mother picked out for me. It’s centered perfectly beneath my bedframe. It’s sweet. This entire room feels youthful. Innocent. And naïve.
It was a short walk here. The house is about a half mile from my mother’s bakery. It was her bakery attic that I’d woken up in after I’d used my magic to steal us away from the shifter’s village. It makes me smile to myself that my instinct wasn’t to go home. There are all these gentle memories I have of growing up in that store. As a little girl, I’d go in early with my mother before school. She’d prepare the daily loaves of bread that always sold the most, dozens and dozens of delicious, soft, buttery bread that I’d help her kneed and pan up. But then, just before I’d have to leave, she’d pull a hot cookie from a tray. Double chocolate chip. Just one. She’d make a single cookie for me every morning.
That’s what stays in the back of my mind. Among all the negative memories I carry around with me, that one’s still there. It’s strange the things we don’t realize we loved until it’s the only thing we have left to look back on in life.
And that’s exactly what drew me home, I guess.
“Do you feel that?” Sinister’s gaze catches mine, pulling me away from all my thoughts as he holds my hand in both of his. His fingers drift so slowly up the length of my scar and so slowly back down.
I shake my head at him. The two of us have been at this for hours with no luck. We sit on the floor, leaning against the bed. His body is turned toward mine, putting all of his serious attention into the pink flesh marring my right hand. Circles glide across my skin; he massages my hand with such slowness I wish I really could feel it. It looks deliciously wonderful.
Maybe he can do my left hand next.
His palm poises above my hand, just at the cruel end of the jagged line, and his magic claws and then sinks gradually into my body. It’s a tingling thing that makes me sit up straighter, makes me inch closer, makes me want to climb right into his lap until my lips are against his.
But the numbness is still there. He peers up at me with sweet, hope-filled eyes, like he’s asking if that amazing feeling fixed me. I shake my head at him, and he sighs with disappointment.
A quiet beat slips by before he speaks.
“I could extract it,” he says it so quietly it sounds suspicious.
“Extract it?”
“Have you ever heard of Dark Seduction?”
Once more, I shake my head at that and try my best to pretend like it doesn’t sound like complete sensual bliss in my mind. Tell me more about this Dark Seduction, Sinister.
“Kreedence always wanted me to learn to steal power. Weaken others. Devour and kill them slowly.”
Well. That’s not entirely what I was visualizing. Maybe next time he should lead with that ‘kill them slowly’ bit.
“That sounds kind of…extreme.”
“Demons strengthen by feeding like this. It strengthens the dark parts of our magic.” His hands lift a little wildly as he explains, and my eyes only widen the more he talks. “It wouldn’t kill you unless I fed off of you daily. This would just tire you out while I took the strongest power that fills your body. The worst that could happen to you is you’d have to wake Chaos up and ask him to scoot over for a nap.”
The dimples of his smile make me trust him. If only I knew that smile wasn’t hiding something else. He’s glazing the worry in his eyes over with the sexy, distracting smile.
It isn’t working.
He’s hiding something.
“What does it do to you, Sin?”
He’s still holding my hand, still rubbing his thumbs in small circles across my knuckles. He never once looks away from me.
“I don’t know.” His head shakes, his inky hair skimming against his now serious eyes. “I never possessed dark magic. That’s what’s in you. I can feel it.” He swallows hard at that, like he hates thinking about it. “I’d rather it be in me than in you, Arrie.”
“I wouldn’t.” Wider my eyes strain, glaring at his suggestion.
“I’m a fucking demon. You’re a gorgeous mage. I think I can handle a little darkness, love. I was made for darkness.” His teasing smile doesn’t change the outrageous way I’m staring at him.
“Oh, here we go.” I sigh.
“You know you’d love if I got all edgy and brooding on you. Your shifters wouldn’t know where they stood if my cockiness matched theirs.”
“I’d absolutely hate that.” I blink at him, my head shaking as his nods more and more.
“I could stomp around a little in my free time and work on my icy smolder in my downtime. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Shut up. I can’t talk to you like this.”
His hand slips up my arm, over the crook of my elbow, and along my shoulder before he kneels in front of me, coming closer to skim his fingers along the curve of my neck. His hard body leans over me, brushing mine here and there in small, teasing touches. Hooded crimson eyes stare into mine, his lips nearly pressing to my parted mouth. The way he towers over me, kneeling for me, it’s romantically captivating. Suddenly every snarky thought in my head slips away until all I’m thinking about is how his sexy mouth would feel sealed against mine.
“Trust me, Arrie,” he whispers the plea.
And that’s all he has to say.
Because I do.
I nod slowly, his mouth still so, so close to mine.
Instead of kissing me, he leans in, his breath parting my lips with want. I want him so bad I ache.
Then I feel it. My eyes fling open wide as pain scrapes up my lungs, scratching my throat and slicing across my lips. His fiery eyes clench closed, his jaw spasming while he keeps his mouth skimming over mine. Faint flecks of shining ash whisk between our lips. Glittering ash twirls from our mouths, floating from some place deep inside me, and he breathes it right in. My vision blurs as tears stream down my face. I lift up to my knees, trying to meet him, trying to end the pain in any way I can. The arch of my back is painful, but his hands press there in an intimate and caressing way.
“It hurts, Sin.” I gasp on a shaking cry.
“I know, baby. I know.” More dark glitter slips from my lips and into his. He takes that poisonous magic and consumes it just for me.
I hear movement all around me, thundering boots and pressing hands, but I can’t look away from him. I feel like if I look away from the darkness that’s overtaking the crimson color of his eyes, I might die. The blackness in his gaze bleeds out until the red iris is just a sliver of a ring, and it’s both terrifying and captivating all at once.
All I can focus on his how anguished his handsome face is right now. The flinch of his eyes, the strangling way he’s holding my body to his. Every single muscle in his body is rigid against me.
My hands come up, both hands fist into his shirt, the fingers of my right hand clutching hard over the solid panes of his muscles. The thrashing feel of his heartbe
at is the very first thing that my scarred hand feels. That strong and dangerous heartbeat pounds wildly against my fingers, calming me even as the pain shakes through my body.
He breathes me in. Every part of that glittering substance pulls from me and right into him, ripping into him as painfully as it’s ripped out of me. For a moment, when my vision spots and my lungs burn with a fiery intensity, I’m sure he and I will both die like this. I think we’ll die from the violent magic that’s slicing up our insides. We’ll die clinging to each other. I’ll die in this beautiful man’s arms.
And still I trust him entirely.
The carving sensation is cut away. Sinister’s closeness is torn away with it. The warmth of his body falls as he’s thrown to the floor. His back jars against the pretty green rug, his jaw tight, holding back the groan in his throat. His tattooed hand trembles from the energy that was just consuming me. He took my pain away. He took it all just so I wouldn’t have an ounce of discomfort.
But my father doesn’t understand any of that. Seething anger is slashed in tight lines across his face.
“You think I don’t see you, you little fucking soul sucker.”
“No.” I stand on wobbling legs, my lungs still gasping for a breath. My knees give out before I can even take a step.
Kain is faster.
His big body steps in between my father and the demon lying in a heap at his feet. Kain’s simple stance alone is a weapon. The solidness of his body, the broad span of his chest, and the fearless look of his eyes, is enough to make any man back down.
Except for a father.
“Sinister was helping her,” Kain says as calmly as possible.
My father’s big hands clench closed at his sides, preparing to act on whatever hostile things are flashing through his mind. He matches Kain’s height, his body broad but not the same. Not built for strength like Kain’s is.
“Does he look like someone who just devoured a soul as delicious as your daughter’s?” Chaos lifts his hands in explanation, but it only makes my father’s disgusted gaze turn toward the shifter lounging a little too comfortably on my bed.
“You’re not helping right now,” Rime whispers to his friend.
Sinister curls up on his side, uncontrollable shivers storming through his body. One hand lifts him a few small inches off the floor, his back hunches, and then he vomits. He spews an inky substance all over that pretty lime rug my mother loved so much.
Seconds pass as my father stares down on the demon crumbled and in pain on the floor. He looks from me to Sinister and then back again. His shoulders straighten, and he meets Kain’s gaze. Eye to eye, they study one another with so much protectiveness it’s hard to even breathe with all the aggression in the room.
“Bellamix gets off work in one hour. Clean this shit up before she gets home, and if you fuck up one time with my daughter—one time—while you’re under this roof, I’ll bury your bodies at sea.”
Kain nods an understanding.
My father’s features soften as he lowers himself down. His gaze trails across my tear-streaked cheeks and the way I’m clutching my hands together, my fingers moving in a way that I haven’t felt in nearly twenty-four hours.
There’s so much in his gaze. There’s so much he wants to say, but it seems he’s afraid to ask.
“I just don’t want to lose you again, Arrie.” He whispers my name with so much protectiveness, he doesn’t realize how similar he and Sinister really are.
Slowly, he brings me close, and I hug him hard, my fingers digging into his shirt, inhaling the scent of timber clinging to his clothes. He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes. “You’re all right, though?”
There’s a moment where I feel small again. I feel like that little girl who just needed her father’s attention to make the world good again.
But I haven’t been that little girl for a long, long time.
“I’m better than I have been in years, Dad,” I whisper on a shaking breath.
Dark Seduction is definitely not as sexy as Sinister’s accent made it sound. But I’m healed inside and out because of it.
Because of Sinister.
Four
Wickedly Sinful
I watch him closely while he pushes cold water across his face from the basin. He drinks handfuls of it down repeatedly. His hands no longer shake, but the tension in his body is like nothing I’ve ever seen from him. He was right, though; I’m exhausted.
That didn’t stop me from following after him down the hall and into my parents’ small bathroom. Clear water streaks down the sharp angle of his jaw, saturating the black shirt collar. His eyes stay closed for several seconds before he finally looks up at me in the doorway.
“It hurt you, didn’t it?”
“I’m fine, Arrie.” He wipes his face on a bright-teal towel, seemingly brushing off my question and my concern that’s still etching my face.
My arms fold, my fingers still opening and closing every few seconds just to make sure they still can. It’s a weak grip of my fingers, my arm stinging with pain, but at least I can actually feel things now.
“Please tell me. Don’t keep secrets from me, Sin. Tell me if it’s hurting you, please.”
“It hurts me just to look at you, Arlow. Is that what you want to hear? It hurts. Everything hurts inside me when you’re near, but I’m not touching you. That shit in your room, that didn’t hurt. Not even close in comparison to the last five years.” His jaw snaps closed as his Adam’s apple works to swallow down the rise of his voice. “I’m sorry.”
The whisper is a rasping sound that sinks right through me.
All that easy composure he holds together so well is cracking away right before my eyes. The pressure he puts into pressing his hands against his hips makes his knuckles turn white, his gaze pinned to a place on the floor between us.
On slow steps, I cross that space. His attention follows each step I take, his hands gripping harder onto his narrow hips like he’s forcing himself not to reach out to me. When I’m near enough, my hands push up the etching lines of his chest. He feels so good. He feels like everything I’ve wanted for so long. I was afraid he and I were too different now. Life had changed us too much. But it hasn’t. It has and it hasn’t. We’re different, sure. But what we have together isn’t. The way he and I fit together is exactly the same.
I take my time, drifting and exploring along his chest before threading my fingers through his soft black hair. The smallest movement has my chin tipped up to him, letting his height tower over me as he stares down on me.
I can’t believe he did that for me. He took away my pain without even thinking of himself.
“I’m sorry, Sin,” I whisper over his lips.
The steady inhale of his breath becomes a heavier feeling, his chest rising and falling against mine.
“I don’t ever want to hurt you.” His smooth skin is nice against my palm as I skim down his neck before pushing my fingers back through his hair.
His eyes close, like the small touch of my hands on his body is too much.
So I do it again. I trail each finger ever so slowly down his neck, sweeping my nails back up and then raking them right back down. Strong muscles tense with control, repressing the shudder shaking through his hard body.
“Arlow,” he warns on a dangerous tone while one tattooed hand crashes hard and firmly on my hip.
His touch and his kisses in the past were always a little rough. Uncontrolled and so fucking enthrallingly addicting he has no idea. Right now is no different. I’m addicted to the way he wants me and I don’t think he realizes that I want him just as much as he wants me.
“I want you to touch me just as much as you want to touch me,” I whisper.
His eyes open in a flash at the sound of my words. A startled gasp slips from my lips. Once again, the fiery color of his gaze is just a thin ring around big, ebony pupils, like something more dangerous is pressing to get out.
And then the demon kisses me.
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His hooded gaze watches me as he kisses me hard until it’s too much for us both. My lashes close just as his tongue slides over mine, flicking and caressing me like I never could have imagined. It isn’t anything like the way he kissed me before. It isn’t lustful and wanting. It’s pained and demanding.
In just two short steps, he pins me to the doorframe, my back arching against the edge of the framing as his hard chest covers mine just right.
Those long fingers of his push along my ribs, taking his time skimming slow over every exposed inch before slipping beneath my shirt. The tips of his fingers roll along my nipples lightly at first, so lightly I gasp against his kiss, and he consumes that sound without stopping. He rolls the sensitive pebbles, squeezing hard, the painful pleasure pulsing right down between my thighs.
My moan echoes into the small room as his lips press lower and lower down the curve of my neck. His fingers arch, constricted beneath my shirt until it seems to piss him off. His wrist turns, and with a flash of magic, the shirt’s gone. He groans as he looks down at my bare breasts cupped in his big hands.
I never noticed how much his fingers look like they’d be perfect for playing stringed instruments. His palms look like they’re made to caress. It’s the oddest thought, but his hands look perfect against my body.
“Fuck. You’re so damn beautiful.”
The rasp of his accent tingles all through me at the same time as his hands push firmly over the curve of my breasts. I heave a breath, my chest rising against his palms.
He takes a single step back, pulls at the collar of his shirt, and tosses it down, wasting no time in pressing his smooth chest against my breasts. When his body melds into mine, his fingers dig into the underside of my thighs, pushing my skirt up until my core grinds just right into the hard outline of his cock beneath his dark jeans.
