Dark Nights Boxed Set: The Complete Series

by Skye Warren

  Ian looked pissed at the interruption, but I felt his alertness as well, a subtle flexing in his body. He looked like a man frustrated he wasn’t getting sex, simple as that, but his concern bled through. This was how he managed to fool everyone. But I had gained intimate knowledge of his body, like truth-colored glasses that allowed me to see the real him.

  Straightening, I brushed off my hands. I schooled my expression to calm.

  At the door, Lance stood on the porch. The screen and its curlicue metal design obscured him, but I could see his fierce expression. He looked older somehow. And taller.

  “Lance,” I murmured, opening the screen door. “How are you?”

  He nodded in greeting. His gaze inspected me, searching for something. Signs of abuse, maybe. Old bruises.

  I drew his attention up, speaking gently. “Hey. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at the office?”

  “I had to see you. Brody told us you weren’t coming back.”

  Damn, that was fast. Not that I minded, exactly. It was a bit like ripping off a Band-Aid. Better to do it fast, even if it hurt. Like taking off a mask. Better to do it off-stage, so the audience never saw the real me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. I’d liked working with Lance. But I loved Ian.

  I felt his presence behind me. He rested his hand on the doorframe, sort of leaning over me, protective. Possessive. Men—in every culture, they were the same. Whether law-abiding or criminal, the same. Like Martinez had done for Mia. I had to admit, I kind of loved it.

  Lance didn’t, though. His eyes darkened at the sight of Hennessey in my house. Hair rumpled. Wearing a white undershirt. Clearly he had stayed the night.

  “Can I speak to you privately?” Lance asked me in a low voice.

  “Sure.”

  With a warning look at Hennessey I stepped onto the porch. I may have found Hennessey’s possessiveness endearing, but the last thing I wanted was a pissing contest. For one thing, there was always a chance it could lead to more questions about Ian. The farther we got away from the FBI, the better.

  But I also felt guilty. I hadn’t wronged Lance. If anything, he was the one who ratted me out to Brody. Still, I felt responsible for what had happened. For involving him. For existing.

  Transitive guilt.

  I sighed, accepting. “I’m sorry.”

  His gaze sharpened. “For what?”

  “For not telling you first. You’re my friend. You shouldn’t have had to hear it from Brody.”

  “I don’t give a shit about who I heard it from. I care that you’re not coming back. Why? Are the…are your injuries not getting better?”

  “That’s not it. I’m healed.” What a strange concept, healed. If I’d ever been broken, it had been years ago. Ancient history, like some sort of Egyptian myth. Bad spirits trapped in the tomb of my body, and Carlos, the grave robber, had set me free.

  Lance ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sure it’s tough…dealing with it. I can’t even imagine. We can get you help, though. I want to help—”

  “Lance,” I cut in gently. “It’s not that either. I don’t want to go back. I realized I’d become an agent for the wrong reasons.”

  His expression fell. “God, Samantha. Him? I didn’t like him even before…well. Before. And I know you said you had the phone, but I still think he’s dirty. I tried opening up an investigation with internal, but they were—”

  “You did what?” Panic beat in my chest. Hell, I’d thought everything was clear. I’d thought Ian was safe.

  “I tried, but it didn’t work. That’s what I’m saying. I hit a wall from every angle. Someone from higher up is putting a lid on this entire case. They’re shutting it down. It’s a cover up.”

  I felt mildly nauseous. Worry and relief were a volatile mix, combusting in my stomach. “A cover up?”

  “Yeah, I mean, at first I thought it might be about you. Covering up that one of their agents got captured.” A red stain colored his cheeks. “That was my fault. They should have fired me. Or brought me up on charges.”

  “Lance,” I protested in surprise.

  “I was the one who got knocked out, and when I woke up you were gone. I should have been more careful. I should have protected you.” He turned away, heaving a breath, and I saw how much this had torn him up.

  I put a hand on his arm. “Lance, I don’t blame you. This wasn’t your fault. You’ve been a good friend to me.”

  “I’m sure you thought that when we were in Brody’s office,” he said bitterly.

  “I was pissed,” I admitted. “But I know you were doing what you thought was right. Look, it was a shitty situation, but it’s over now.”

  He looked sad and a little lost. “Is it? You’re not coming back. Things won’t be the same.”

  No, things could never go back to the way they were. But this was how they needed to be. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, ending more than the conversation. Ending a friendship.

  He looked at me. He looked away. Quickly, he bent down and kissed my cheek. He murmured in my ear, “Just watch out for yourself, okay? The cover up could have come from Carlos’s people. There’s still a chance he tipped them off.”

  Regret swelled inside my chest. God, he was so smart. So caring. And so not for me. On impulse, I kissed his cheek too.

  “I’m fine,” I promised him. “Better than I’ve ever been. Now go be an agent. I know you’re a great one.”

  “I did get assigned a case,” he said shyly. Then he grumbled, “Would have been more fun with you as my partner. The one I have wants me to pick up his dry cleaning.”

  I grinned. “Pick up his dry cleaning and solve the case.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His smile fell. “Bye, Samantha.”

  My throat closed up, and I could only nod in acknowledgement as he got in his car and left.

  I sighed, leaning my forehead against the porch pillar. That was rough. He was a nice guy. A good friend. I would have preferred to keep in touch, but that would never do. Not as long as Ian was in my life.

  But how long would that be for? We’d joked about private islands, but no promises had been made. I didn’t even know him.

  No, that was a lie. I did know him. I could have dated a guy and seen the clean-cut buttoned-up side of him for five years and still not have known him as well as I knew Ian now. I knew the side of him that kidnapped people, that hurt them. I knew the side that saved lives. I even knew the kicked-back casual side of him, down-to-earth and curiously solicitous in my kitchen. And in every incarnation, I felt the warmth of his attention. That much was constant. That was his love.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I had proved, to myself and to Ian, what I really wanted when I turned Lance away on the porch. But in doing so, I had stripped myself down and bared my deepest desires. Not the innocent fairytale I’d always claimed to want, but the shadows beneath it.

  My dream wasn’t to be a princess in a castle. I wanted to be Persephone, claimed by the god of the underworld. Except that was the thing about getting captured; it wasn’t up to me.

  I couldn’t look at Hennessey as I passed him. I went straight to the shower and turned the knob to scalding.

  My head pounded with regret and longing, with betrayal and hope for a future I didn’t deserve. Ian didn’t deserve it either, so we couldn’t even bank on his karmic balance. This white picket house and his dreams of an island were fantasies we spun. Reality was being alone and afraid. Reality was standing underneath a pounding spray of hot water but knowing I’d never really be clean.

  The bathroom door opened silently, spilling cool air onto my overheated skin. The shower curtain was a fabric boho confection I’d ordered online, because I sought out everything older than me, everything sweeter and poignant. But even my attempts to be normal were twisted into a parody of romance. Tattered lace and patent leather shoes with red spray across them. I didn’t know how to be what society wanted from me. I couldn’t change myself, not even for him. />
  He was naked. I could tell from the warm hair-roughened feel of him—his chest against my back, his arms circling mine. Something firm and hot nudging my ass. His mouth bent to my ear.

  “What did Lance have to say?” Ian asked.

  I swallowed, feeling sick to my stomach. “He warned me to stay away from you.”

  “I see. And end up with him instead, I’m guessing. Would you ride off into the sunset together?”

  “Maybe,” I whispered even though it wasn’t true.

  “Samantha, love. What makes you think I’d let you leave?”

  My eyes fell shut, and the hot tracks down my cheeks didn’t come from the shower. I turned in his arms, blindly, gladly. God. All I’d ever wanted was someone to keep me. To want me, even knowing my faults. Like everything I’d ever sought out myself, with peeling paint and uneven edges and a tendency to fall apart. All I’d ever wanted was to be loved.

  I sought his mouth with mine and found it. He responded with aching tenderness, his sigh a caress. He gently bit down on my bottom lip, and I whimpered. His tongue laved the spot. That was how it would be between us, the pain and the comfort. The curse of the past and the hope for a future.

  He touched me everywhere; he surrounded me. I felt consumed by him, taken within him instead of a separate being. There was no part of me left sacred, no shame he didn’t chase away with a tender touch and a pinch of pain. He made every part of me his own—his own thing to have and to hold, to kiss and to hurt—and left no room for the doubt that had chased me my whole life.

  Large hands stroked my breasts and tugged my nipples while I squirmed. He held me up, serving himself as he bent his head to lick and kiss and bite the sensitized flesh. I danced on my tiptoes, groaning at the onslaught and holding onto his shoulders to stay afloat.

  He ran his fingertips down my belly to the bare skin of my sex.

  “God, sweetheart,” he said hoarsely. “You’re so soft here. So sweet.”

  And then proceeded to prove his point. He pushed me flush against the wall and knelt before me. I cried out at the cold tile on my back but subsided at the first touch of his lips to my cunt. He crowned the plump outer lips with chaste, tender kisses before nudging my legs apart, before slipping his tongue in the slick space between. His tongue flicked my clit in an age-old rhythm that my body knew by heart.

  My hips found the beat and rocked into him in time, seeking release without my consent. My fingers scrabbled at the slippery shower wall behind me, trying to hold me up and failing. I fell in a long, slow slide down the faintly ridged tile wall, held up only by the hot pressure of his mouth and the two fingers he slipped inside me.

  He draped one of my legs over his shoulder, and I opened to him. With easier access, he pushed deeper inside me, he assaulted my clit with the lash of his tongue. I couldn’t even try to hold myself up like this. I could only wait, wedged between the tile and his body, between a rock and a hard place, and plead wordlessly, with desperate sounds and hungry gasps until I broke. I shattered into pieces with the final clash of him at my core. I splintered and flew in every direction, lost in the mindless pleasure and abject devotion, open and defenseless against the care he was determined to give me, and found myself drenched and boneless on the ceramic floor.

  He’d laid me down gently, but now he stood above me. He looked down upon me, and I wanted to revel in his gaze like a night flower beneath the moon. He set his foot on my belly, his toes just beneath my breasts, the slight pressure only a fraction of the force he could inflict. This was payback for the kitchen and so much more as he moved his foot higher. As he curled his toes over my nipple and caught it like a bear trap, pinching me, while I jerked and shuddered on the bathtub floor.

  Placing his feet on either side of my head, he straddled my shoulders, looking down. He seemed impossibly fierce this way, dominating me with his cock, slick and heavy. Water sluiced down his shoulders and over his muscled chest. It formed a waterfall around his cock and splashed down onto me, miming the climax still to come. With water. Only clean, fresh water, and what I craved was only what he could give me.

  I bent my head to the side so that I could kiss his ankle. I moved to the arch of his foot, praising him with my kisses, worshipping him. I kissed his toes too, while he stared down at me with dark dominion, silently approving. I knew what to do because he’d shown me. Hadn’t he taught me? Hadn’t he trained me? I knew how he wanted my mouth on his foot because he’d done the same to me. When I had found every inch of skin with my mouth, I switched feet. I curled up on my side, my arms wrapped around his leg, debasing myself and exalting. Kissing his skin and reveling in the pleasure it gave him.

  When he’d had enough, he nudged me back to center. I lay on my back and waited for direction. He lowered himself to his knees, so that his cock could press against my lips. I was learning that this was one of his favorite positions. Not just having me suck him, but fucking my face. Kissing my feet and having me worship his. These kinks he blushed to say aloud.

  I remembered once thinking how much it said about a man whether he liked to fuck a woman in the pussy or in the ass. Whether he paid extra if she bled. I understood Ian better because of his deviations. I was hungry for them, and the knowledge they could impart. I peeled back each preference like a layer of skin, leaving him vulnerable. He knew how open it left him too. That was why he tied me up, blindfolded and gagged me, just so he could beat me. Artificial shields, but they were gone now.

  I wanted him, wholly and without reservation, but somehow I knew he wanted me to resist. Not a fight, just a little reluctance to sharpen the moment. He’d trained me to do all of this, with whips and benches and ball gags. And the reward for learning my lessons was this—his body. His mind. Every part of him with me.

  I pressed my lips together to refuse, and he slapped my face. “Take it. Come on, be good, or I’ll have to punish you.”

  Eyes wide with fear and excitement, I shook my head and left my lips together. He slapped me again, and again, until hot tears sprang to my eyes. Until I cried out on impact and cowered beneath him. I thought he would hold my nose to make me open, like he’d done once before. When I’d bitten him. But he did something else, instead. There was more to learn; there always would be. He reached down, full force, and stuck his fingers inside my mouth until I gagged on them. It was undignified and wholly encompassing, so that all I could taste or see or feel was him.

  “You’ll get better at that,” he promised. “For now, though, you’ll just have to struggle.”

  He pushed his cock inside, thick and wet and slippery. With all the water on his body, in my mouth, it felt like I was going to drown, and I gagged, spitting water up against his body. It didn’t slow him, didn’t matter. He kept his thumb inside my mouth, deep against the juncture of my jaw, holding it open. His cock invaded me in slow, easy thrusts while I struggled beneath him.

  When he came, the salty fluid filled my mouth. It was hard to swallow, struggling like this. For a moment, I panicked, my eyes bulging, body jerking. I was going to drown, not on water, not on his cock, but on his creamy come. In that moment, I had a choice. I could go down fighting or accept my fate. Which was the more dignified answer? I was too panicked to really think it through, but my path had been laid out for me a long time ago. Foretold by events that had led inexorably to this. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me, resigned to my downfall and wishing for it. The muscles in my throat relaxed and I felt them move convulsively, spasming, pulling his deposit down my throat. In a long, desperate rattle, I sucked in a breath, finally clear and unobstructed.

  Without being totally lucid, I heard the water turn off. I felt a thick towel enfold me, felt myself lifted and carried. I curled up on my side in the soft refuge of my bed. And when I stirred enough to reach for him, he was there. He comforted me and rocked me to sleep, safe in his arms.

  * * *

  Criminals always made mistakes.

  I’d learned that a long time ago. My job as an
agent had been to find those mistakes, to catch them. As Ian Hennessey said to me once, the nature of detective work was to always be one step behind. FBI agents were hunters—and our prey had a large headstart and very big guns.

  As I sat on the couch curled into Ian’s side, I couldn’t have said which one of us was the hunter and which one of us was prey. I’d been tasked with finding and stopping him at any price. And I had done so. All it had cost was my freedom. Freedom from the shame that had dogged me my whole life. I’d caught him, but he’d caught me right back. This was the trap he’d set, to bind us together so tightly we’d never break free. We’d never want to.

  We sat in the dark, bathed by a steady flame of a few candles on the mantel. Dusk had fallen with its usual quickness, arriving fast and late in the summertime. It lent us an air of privacy that I craved right now. What I’d told Ian about living on some secluded island forever and ever was true. I’d go stir crazy without human interaction for years. But right now, I needed time away. To think. To breathe.

  To feel safe for the first time since I was a little kid.

  Strange that I would feel safer bound and gagged. But I did, because I knew he was looking out for me. He was in charge of me, and all I had to do was rest in his strong embrace.

  Supper had been light with fresh tamales from a nearby street vendor, a triangle of Gruyere cheese, and a bunch of plump green grapes. I worried that it wouldn’t be hearty enough for Ian’s appetite, considering the burger and shake he’d wolfed down at the diner. But he hadn’t balked at the meal, and I remembered, too, the more subtle, wholesome dishes he’d served me in captivity. He’d filled his roles, the cultured criminal and jaded agent, so completely that even his dietary preferences were pre-selected—along with his clothes, his mannerisms, and his sexual predilections. It made me sad. It made me want to know the real him.

  He showed that to me when dinner was over. He washed the dishes while I dried them, and when the last plate was put away I turned to him, mouth open around a word, caught by the desire in his expression.