Black as Midnight

by Mary Martel

  Black as Midnight

  An Ariel Kimber Novel

  Mary Martel

  Black as Midnight

  An Ariel Kimber Novel

  By: Mary Martel

  Copyright © Mary Martel 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Mary Martel, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  1st Edition Published: May 2019

  All Rights Reserved: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction in whole or in part, without express written permission by Mary Martel.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  10. Rain Kimber

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  31. Quinton Alexander

  Thank you & What’s next

  Dedication

  Dedication-

  To my girls who are the absolute best thing that ever happened to me.

  Always the bright spots in my life.

  Love you. You have no idea how much.

  <3

  Chapter One

  The bell over the door jingled and I looked up from the book I had been reading to see who'd entered Fortune's for the Unfortunate. Tyson Alexander, one of my boyfriends, owned the store, and I had a sneaking suspicion that he'd mostly bought it for me. I refused to ask him flat out because I was afraid of the answer I would get in response. Denial and avoidance were my specialties.

  From his perch beside me on the counter, Binx hissed at the new arrival.

  I knew it wasn't exactly normal to bring your cat to work with you every day, but Binx had insisted and my boss could give a crap less what I did, seeing as he was one of my boyfriends and all, so the little guy came along with me every day. The customers who came in never seemed to mind and thought he was cute... until he hissed at them after they tried to pet him, that is. Then they thought he was a little demon and I always ended up having to apologize for him. That never stopped me from bringing him back with me though.

  Binx wouldn't take no for an answer and I knew that sounded insane since we were talking about a cat here, but it was the honest truth. Every time I left to go to work, the damn cat ran out of the cottage door before I could get it closed, and he'd be waiting at my Rover for me to get inside. He'd get in the Rover and ride to work with me without making a peep.

  It was weird behavior for a cat, but then Binx was just a weird cat and I'd long since stopped questioning the things he did. Dash always acted like the things his cat did were normal, so I rolled with that and pretended for his sake that this was true.

  I was good at pretending most things were normal when they absolutely were not.

  "Hi! How can I help you?" I asked, before looking up to see who'd walked through the front door and made the bell jingle.

  The smile on my face froze in place and I blinked several times to see if I was really seeing the person who was walking toward the front counter.

  "Ariel," Marcus Cole said in a kind, gentle voice. "It's good to see you, sweetheart."

  I swallowed painfully past the lump of emotions suddenly lodged in my throat.

  Binx hissed angrily and I shooed the damn cat off the counter before he could swipe at Marcus with his claws. I didn't need him drawing blood, not in this shop when bleeding meant more than it normally would, and there were so many things that your blood could be used for.

  The cat hopped off the counter and sashayed his way toward the shelves. His tail swished from side to side as he sauntered off, acting like he hadn't just looked feral and like he was almost ready to attack someone.

  I sighed as I shook my head.

  "Sorry about Binx, Marcus," I apologized quietly for the stupid cat, without looking Marcus in the eyes.

  Marcus Cole and I used to have the type of relationship where I looked to him as a father figure, and not just because he'd been sleeping with my fake mother while we'd lived with him. It had more to do with the kind heart he had and the fact he'd been the first adult male in my life to show that he cared about me. Hell, not even the first adult male, but just the first adult. Somewhere along the line things had gotten strained between the two of us though, and I wasn't entirely sure why.

  I knew he was once again living in the house next door to the Alexander home, the house my mother and I had lived in with him when I'd first moved here. Quinton told me that he'd talked to Marcus about me on several occasions, updating him on what was going on in my life, and he knew pretty much everything about me and all the little things he'd missed when I thought he'd moved away. At first, it had felt nice that Marcus had been checking in on me and Quinton was the perfect person to talk to if you wanted to know anything about me, because Quinton was my ultimate stalker and he worked really hard to be good at it.

  Then, after awhile, I had started to feel uncomfortable with it because although he was asking Quinton about me, Marcus never once approached me to see how I was doing or to even talk to me at all. I wanted him to check in with me about me. Not go through Quinton. I wanted to have a relationship with Marcus Cole, almost desperately so, and my feelings were getting hurt the more this went on.

  And now he was here in front of me, talking to me in his gentle voice that melted my heart immediately and calling me sweetheart. The important question was why? To all of it.

  He smiled at me and my chest burned. It had been so long.

  "Don't worry about the cat," he said. "I bet he's like that to most men who come around you."

  I frowned at him. Umm... say what?

  I thought about what he said but shook my head, because I couldn't remember Binx being around another female before so I just assumed that he halfway hated everyone.

  "What?" I asked in confusion.

  His smile grew bigger. "Never you mind," he rushed to tell me. He hurriedly looked around the empty store before back to me and inquired, "Are you busy?"

  I, too, looked around the empty store before smirking at him. "Nope." I shrugged. "Noon time is really slow around here. There's a whole crowd of old ladies who stop in during the mornings for herbs, candles, and a bunch of other weird stuff. Then there's an afternoon crowd of school kids that don't really come here for any reason other than to either make fun of stuff or pretend like witchcraft is the newest trend, and they spend their allowances on things they don't know anything about. The night crowd is where it really gets interesting though, but I don't get to work that shift very much. Julian and Dash or the twins usually work the night shift. Sometimes Ty does."

  I slammed my mouth shut as soon as I rea
lized I was rambling away because I was nervous. Another fault I had was diarrhea of the mouth and it got worse whenever I felt nervous or scared... or pretty much anything. Who was I kidding? I always blurted out things I shouldn't.

  Ever heard that some things were better left unsaid? Well, I failed at it almost every time.

  Marcus cleared his throat and cautiously, quietly, asked, "Can you join me for lunch then, since there are no customers and won't be for a few hours?"

  His voice was hopeful but hesitant, almost as if he were scared of what my answer would be. Like he was afraid I would reject him.

  "If you have to call someone to come and sit here while you're gone," he continued, "I don't mind waiting for them to get here."

  Please. Like they'd leave me here alone and all by myself. That would never happen. I was never alone anymore, even when I woke up in the morning and thought I had the whole house to myself, I was wrong. If Dash needed to go somewhere, then someone else came over and waited for me to get up. I had no idea how I even got to drive myself to the shop alone, but then I guess the stupid cat came with me and I wasn't actually alone.

  "Rain's here," I told him cheerfully. "He won't have a problem coming up front and watching over the store for me."

  The smile slid right off my face when I watched his mouth tighten in anger and his eyes drop to the floor.

  "Marcus," I started hesitantly, "what's wrong?"

  "Your father and I don't get along very well," he told me quietly. "I get along with him when I need to and will be nice to him when I'm in his presence, but that doesn't mean I like him. I'm not going to lie to you and pretend otherwise. I have been doing as he asked me to do and giving you space, but I can't wait any longer. I miss you and I am not going to hide from you anymore because of him. I understand why he wanted to keep you to himself for a while, he's your father and you were taken away from him. I get it, if you were my blood and that had been done to us, then I would want to keep you locked up and to myself too. But, as much as I wish it were different, you aren't my blood and you aren't my real daughter. You’re his. He has that on me, but that doesn't mean you aren't important to me and I'm not going to treat you like you're my real daughter because I am. I realize that in doing what he's asked me to do, I might have hurt your feelings and made you feel like you don't matter to me when that's not the truth at all. Rain can hate it all he wants but I'm done doing as he says. Done. I'm going to fight for you and if Rain Kimber has a problem with that, then he can just suck it up because there's nothing he can do about it anymore."

  I gaped at him.

  Was he serious?

  When had Rain said something to him, warned him away from me? And, more importantly, why had no one told me about it? I knew for a fact that Quinton and Tyson both knew about this because, oddly enough, Rain seemed to like them both a great deal and the three of them were always talking and acting like they were BFF's. Did this make me uncomfortable, my dad being BFF's with two of my boyfriends? Nope, not in the slightest. If anything, it made me happy to see that they had an older, male role model in their life. They needed to have good people in their lives and, even though Rain was all kinds of scary, he was still good people to me.

  The fact that he told Marcus to stay away from me shouldn't really have surprised me, but it had more so caught me off guard than anything else. Marcus would never hurt me and I didn't understand or see the point in warning him off from me.

  "I don't understand," I told Marcus seriously, and it was no lie. I couldn't understand why you wouldn't want your child to be surrounded with as many people who loved her and cared about her as possible.

  What was Rain trying to do here by alienating Marcus?

  "You don't need to worry about that, sweetheart," Marcus growled fiercely. "I’m going to take care of it and I'll make sure it's not your problem to deal with. I can handle Rain Kimber and, I promise you, he'll understand me."

  That didn't sound good at all. Was he threatening my father? I hoped not, because Marcus was a really nice man and normally I wouldn't worry about him, but since he no longer practiced his craft and Rain very much did, I felt like I had to worry about him or maybe warn him away from Rain because, like I said earlier, Rain could be very scary.

  "Marcus," I hedged, "I don't think—"

  He casually waved off my words, as if swatting them right out of the air. Something warm leaked out of him with the wave of his hand and tingles shot down my spine. I looked down at my bare arms to see the tiny hairs on them standing up straight and at attention.

  Slowly, I raised my eyes to look at the kind, gentle man standing across the counter from me and my eyes widened as I took him in, really looked him over, for the first time since he walked in here.

  Even though it felt kind of gross for me to think it, I wasn't blind, so I couldn't help but notice that Marcus Cole was an incredibly attractive older man. He was in his mid to late fifties, I hadn't ever asked his age before because I felt it rude to do so, but I remember Vivian having said something about him being in his fifties. He didn't look his age though, and if I had to guess I would pinpoint him in his early forties at the oldest. He had light brown hair that when I'd first met him had only had a sprinkling of salt at the temples, but had since spread out through his hair. I hoped I wasn't at fault for his hair turning white, but I felt guilty because I was sure I had a hand in a good deal of it. On a high note for him though, he was going to look like what women called a silver fox, and it was just going to add to his attractiveness. His eyes were a soft brown that were usually filled to the brim with kindness when aimed in my direction but, unfortunately, were lacking their usual depth of kindness at the moment. I assumed this was due to Rain and had absolutely nothing to do with me.

  "Go and get Rain, sweetheart," he ordered me.

  I snapped my mouth shut as my eyes grew round. Going and getting Rain was the absolute last thing I think I should be doing at this moment in time.

  "Uhh," I mumbled under my breath, "maybe that's not such a good idea."

  If Rain had warned him against me, then there was no way he'd appreciate him showing up here unannounced, especially since this wasn't just where I worked, but where Rain actually lived too. And, with Marcus clearly being aggressive about the matter and deciding he's done with Rain's shit, this was just a recipe for disaster all around and I didn't want to get hit in the crosshairs.

  The look on Marcus's face let me know that arguing with him would be utterly pointless on this subject, so I picked up my cell phone and quickly sent a text off to Rain, letting him know who was here and that I needed him to cover the store for me so I could go out to lunch with my guest.

  I set the phone down on the countertop without waiting for a response. Rain rarely texted me back when I was here, instead he always chose to just come to where I was so he could respond face-to-face.

  Marcus asked me questions about the store while we waited for Rain to show up. I didn't know if he was genuinely interested or simply asking to be polite, but I answered every question to the best of my ability.

  He was smiling down at me with a soft look on his face when Rain walked in from the back entrance.

  "What are you doing with my daughter, Marcus?" Rain growled menacingly.

  I sighed heavily as I looked at my biological dad. He was really going overboard with this whole dad routine. The corner of my mouth tipped up because I couldn't help but love how over-the-top protective he was when it came to me. I'd take all the love I could get, even if it did come from a crazy man.

  Rain looked at me and smirked, almost like he knew that no matter what he said or did, it wouldn't mean shit to me because I would love him anyways.

  My breath caught in my throat as I stared at him. Rain never smiled unless he was with me. Usually he had a dead, empty look in his eyes that were the same color as my own, and he looked like he could strangle you to death and walk away whistling, without a care in the world.

  My dad looked a lot like me
, except he was taller and male. I wasn't a short girl though, by any means, and he was still taller than me. We were both on the thin side, but where I was simply thin, Rain was hard and made up entirely of compact muscles. We had the same eyes and ash blond hair. My hair went down past my shoulders and I couldn't remember the last time I'd had it cut. Rain's hair was shaggy and he too looked like he probably couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten it cut. For once, he was missing his trademark black trench coat that he always wore. He had on a black, long-sleeved thermal shirt, dark blue jeans, and black combat boots.

  I looked down at my feet and grinned. We had similar taste in footwear.

  I wished he would have pushed his sleeves up his arms because I knew he had a plethora of tattoos on his forearms and other places, and I had yet to see a single one of them. I knew he put magic into them somehow and some of them were for protection. We'd been training for months now, just the two of us, and no matter how many times I asked or how often, he refused to push his sleeves up or tell me anymore about his tattoos. Instead, he always told me that when the time was right he'd share with me.

  The smile left my face because I remembered that I was losing patience with Rain, and now he was being an asshole to Marcus who'd done nothing wrong.

  "I came to take her to lunch," Marcus answered evenly without missing a beat or returning Rain's hostility.

  "Maybe she'd rather have lunch with me," Rain shot back, and I shook my head as I crossed my arms over my chest.