Dark Cravings (13 page)

The scent was pungent and rich. My fangs lengthened and I
took a step back, then another and then another, until my spine touched the
wall on the opposite side of the room. This was too small a space for me to be
in. My stomach cramped and I put my arms around myself to help with the pain.
The need to taste, to feed, had never been this bad before.

That’s it.
Julian’s voice was a malevolent presence
inside my head.
Drink. Tear his throat out. You’re vampire now. You’re mine.
Together we will rule.

No. No. No.
I shook my head, slid to the ground and
put my forehead against my knees. I couldn’t concentrate. Julian’s anger, his
hatred, his need for me, was a rancid spike piercing my tongue.

I’m going to kill your hunter. He’s touched you, tried to
mark what wasn’t his.

I tried to block my sire out but I couldn’t. Blood was
everywhere. I looked up to the smell and watched the scene before me in a
detached, anesthetized sort of way. The blood was nearly black as it poured out
of Richard’s skewed nose. Micah hit him again and a new arch of blood sprayed.
I watched it in slow motion and before I could stop it, I licked my lips in
anticipation. This wasn’t me.

After I kill the hunter, I’ll fuck you in his blood, make
you lick it off my cock. You always did like it rough.

Ivy. I thought about the thick green and blue tendrils
snaking over the walls in my mind, pushing Julian away. Micah’s scent wrapped
around me and I grabbed onto the lifeline. Julian vanished with a snarl.

The room started to spin, slowly at first, then faster.
Quicker. I blinked away the nausea and found myself in front of Micah. The
impact of my body against his forced Micah to step away from his father.

“Micah,” I whispered, voice cracking and raw.

Micah’s glowing eyes moved from his father to me. I saw
hunger, death and lust in him. It was not lust for sex, but for blood and for
revenge. Demon. My pulse jumped. Micah’s muscles bunched and I knew, from
months of fighting beside him, against him, he was ready to attack. I gripped
his face between my hands, turned his gaze forcefully away from his father.

“You have to stop.”

There was so much pain in his eyes, such awful,
heart-wrenching pain. Micah gripped my wrists, tried to push me away, but I
wasn’t about to budge.

“That’s right, listen to your vampire whore. You’re no
better than her, no better than your mother. You’ll pay for this, boy.” Richard
spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground and got to his feet. He swayed, but
managed to stay upright.

Micah stepped closer, tried to take another, but I held him
back. I shook my head. “No.”

“You’re finished. As of this moment, you’re both fired.”
Richard’s words were slurred and there was an odd, whistling sound every time
he inhaled. I didn’t trust myself to look at him. “Oh and Ms. Grey, that
includes your sorry, pathetic excuse for an uncle. I won’t stop until your
entire family is ruined.”

When the front door slammed shut, I let go of Micah. I didn’t
look at him again, I couldn’t. Stepping around the puddle of blood that had
now, thankfully, lost some of its appeal, I went to the bathroom. Smelly be
damned, I was putting on my pants and getting the fuck out of here.

I was so exhausted, so emotionally drained.

Had Micah really told his father those things about me? My
confusion quadrupled.

For right now, I was done with the McGregors.

Two steps. I got no farther before Micah captured my wrist
and released a low, rumbling sound. The instant heat of his touch sent
white-hot electric bolts from where he held me to my clenching sex. I sucked in
a ragged breath. My heart quickened with arousal and, I’ll admit, a touch of
fear. I forced my gaze from his white-knuckled grip to his face.

Mistake.

The naked pain in his eyes broke my heart.

“Where in the hell are you going?” he hissed.

I tried to pull free, but instead started a game of tug-of-war.
Ten seconds later, Micah changed tactics. Instead of pulling, he pushed. I
stumbled until my back was against the wall with Micah pressed against me. He
didn’t waste one moment.

He smashed his mouth against mine in a brutal, punishing
kiss. I bit his lip. He bit mine back. I gripped a fist full of his hair and
tried to push him off me. He grabbed both of my wrists and pinned them to the
wall at my sides.

“Let me go,” I demanded.

My eyes stung and I was terrified I’d start crying. The
strength of my feelings for him was too much, too soon. I couldn’t get my heart
broken, not again. The stupid bond between us wasn’t giving me much of a
choice.

Micah bent his head so he was right in my face, his eyes
searching mine. When he spoke, his words caressed my lips, “Why, so you can run
away?”

His question hit too close to home. I gave him my best
sneer. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“You’re right. I don’t. It’s because you’re so fucking
tight-lipped it’s a miracle I managed to shove my dick inside you.”

“That’s crude, even for you,” I spat.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Ella. You want the truth, here
it is. I wrote those things my father told you about before I knew you. I went
off pure observation, didn’t weigh in any of the emotional crap. You can’t tell
me your opinion of me was any higher.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t.

“What my father didn’t quote was how, the more time I spent
with you, the more the reports began to change. You’re reckless and savage.
Hell, I’ve seen you dismember demons while they were still spitting at you and
you didn’t even bat an eyelash. I’ve never seen anyone fight with as much
passion as you do. I never told Richard about the phazing, or the bloodlust or
any of the other crap you might be thinking.”

I forced a hard shell around my softening, blubbering heart.
“You sure didn’t have any problem throwing those things in my face.”

“You’re right, I didn’t.” Micah nodded. “But you sure as
hell didn’t pull any punches either.”

“I don’t trust you. Not then and certainly not now,” I said
flatly.

Dark fury coalesced in Micah’s eyes. “Why the fuck not?” His
words, shouted in my face, rang in my ears.

I bucked against him, fighting the unshakeable hold of his
hands on my wrists. Something broke inside me and I screamed at him. “Because I’m
terrified, you asshole! You will do nothing but betray me and break my heart. I
was once a stupid, hapless teenager. I’m not that dumb girl anymore and I
refuse to become one now!”

Micah used the lean, hard planes of his body to force mine
into submission. We grappled, breath coming in harsh, quick pants. After a few
minutes, he subdued my struggles. He bracketed my thighs between his and pushed
his chest tight against my breasts until I could no longer move. Something
primal inside me approved. Mate. Mine. His fingers flexed on my wrists and,
despite my anger, lust raged through me.

He said in a low, dangerous voice, “I’m not Julian.”

I looked him right in the eyes. “No, you’re not.”

“Think what you want, but I won’t betray you and I’ll never
lie to you. I’m not going to leave you, Ella, but I won’t keep chasing you. I’ll
be thirty in a few years, I’m too old for this shit. You’re driving me crazy.
We start to move forward and then you pull back.”

He took a deep breath. A wariness I understood all too well
filled his eyes, mixed with a struggle he held deep inside. I knew the instant
he made the decision to open his mouth.

“Julian was a perverted fuck who took advantage of a young
girl. You were barely sixteen and still reeling over your father’s death when
he infiltrated your life.”

My vision went black for a second. When I spoke, my words
were breathy, barely audible. “How do you know that?”

Micah’s eyes hardened and I was glad for the warning. “Whatever
the succubus did to us was a double-edged sword. I got just as good a look into
that fucked-up head of yours as you did into mine.”

Horror. It was all I could feel at having had him so
intimately in my mind, my closely guarded secrets revealed. I’d had no problem
poking around in his thoughts. What a hypocrite I was.

“Julian was a sick bastard who used you. He never loved you,
not the way I see it.”

I needed space. What else had he seen? “Let me go,” I
whispered.

Micah jerked back, yanking his hands from mine as though
burned. With his sudden release, the unease wormed inside. How had I gotten so
used to his touch so soon? I’d never needed to feel skin against skin as much
as I needed Micah at this moment. But the idea stripped me of my independence.
Of my space. I slipped out from between him and the wall so I could pace the
length of the bed.

“How much more did you see?” We were only going to do this
once.

“After Julian left, he fed you images, sensations, of him
fucking another woman. I know how he tormented you, how he still does. I know…”
He hesitated, and I watched the words form on his lips. “I know how you tried
to kill yourself when Julian left you.”

I sucked in a sharp breath.

There was not a soul on this planet who knew just how low
and cold and desolate my rock bottom had been. For a moment, I was thrown back
in time and I relived how sweet the sting of my blade was against my wrist. Ruby
blood welled, dripped to the floor and with it, my pain. When I’d drawn the
other knife up my forearm, I’d thought of nothing but myself. God, how selfish.
I had wanted—no, needed—to escape Julian and the never-ending guilt plaguing me
because I’d trusted him.

Micah stepped in front of me, much as he’d done yesterday in
the bathroom, and I snapped back from the memories I’d been drowning in. He
tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear and cupped my jaw in his large hand. I
looked into his eyes. The warmth I saw undid me.

I clenched my jaw, fought the tears threatening to weaken
me. From the moment I’d met Micah, something about him cut to the quick. His
words, harsh and abrasive, had stung far too much for a stranger. He had a
power over me I didn’t understand and I found my ignorance where he was
concerned frightening. I had trusted Julian, given myself to him, and my foolishness
had ruined me. If I let Micah in, what would it do to me if, when, he left? I
couldn’t stand this helpless feeling whenever I was around him.

“I also know you feel responsible for your father’s death.
Ella, you have to let it go. You were only fifteen, you weren’t even a licensed
hunter yet. Your father had no business taking you into a nest of demons
without backup.”

I laughed. “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?
Would you like to talk about your sister, Lily? I know she was murdered thirteen
years ago—that you walked into her bedroom while that
thing
was still on
top of her half-consumed body. You blamed yourself for not hearing, for not
coming sooner, and when your mother killed herself a year later the guilt only
worsened.”

He dropped his hand, stepped back. “Stop.”

The fight leeched out of me and I was tired. So fucking
tired. “One day, we’re going to kill each other.”

One side of Micah’s mouth inched up. “I pretty much figured
that out the second I laid eyes on you.”

He sat on the bed and ran a hand through his mussed hair.
The movement drew my attention to his red, swollen knuckles, still caked with
drying bits of his father’s blood.

“I can’t believe you hit him,” I said after a few silent
minutes.

“That wasn’t the first time I’ve broken his nose,” he said.

I ran my gaze over the blood splatter covering his chest.
Micah glanced down, picked at the flecks. We both looked at the carpet in
unison.

Micah sighed. “What a cluster fuck. Things probably would
have gone differently if I hadn’t let him get to me. I just couldn’t stand the
way he was looking at you. I knew he was obsessed. He’s always been fixated on
you, but I don’t even have words for what I just did. I would have killed him.
Some switch flipped inside and I couldn’t stop.”

I knelt in front of him, needing to give him some sort of
comfort, but not really knowing how. I put my hands on his thighs, slid them up
and down a few times.

“If it makes you feel any better at all, you were right. If
I’d had a knife, I would have thrown it at his balls. He’d probably rather be
dead than castrated.”

Micah laughed as I’d hoped. He tugged on one of my arms,
pulled me beside him on the bed and tucked me to his side. There was that
strange sensation of comfort again. This time I ignored the blast of fear and
went with it. We fell back, the soft mattress cushioning our fall. I stared up
at the collection of yellow water spots on the ceiling.

“You know, I was seventeen the first time I saw you,” Micah
admitted.

“What? The first time we met was eight months ago.” When I
tried to turn and look at him, he held me tighter to his side. I felt him shake
his head.

“I broke into my father’s office, looking for the key to his
liquor cabinet. There was a file on his desk and it had your name on it. Your
father had just died and I was curious, so I opened it. Clipped to the front
cover was the photo for your application into the Agency. Lust at first sight.
You were the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. The devilish glint in your eyes
and the don’t-fuck-with-me smirk on your face really did it for me.

“I read the reports from your father, from the other
seasoned hunters who were brought in to evaluate you. They all talked about
how, even at fifteen, you were one of the strongest hunters they’d ever seen. I
decided in that moment I was going to marry you.”

“Micah,” I started to say, but he cut me off.

“If I don’t say this now, I might never. You’ve seen inside
my head, surely you know how bad things got after my mom killed herself. How
Richard treated Eli and me. I sat in my father’s chair, stared at your picture
and constructed this fantasy of what it would be like between us. For the first
time since losing my mom and my sister, I felt hope. In my head, I saw the sons
we’d have and how differently I’d raise them. Talk about pathetic.”

I knew where this story was going, and the thought brought
tears to my eyes. “You were just a teenager too, Micah.”

“In the end, it didn’t matter,” he continued as if I hadn’t
spoken. “I read on, looked through the marriage petition. I swear my heart
stopped in my chest. At first I thought it was a contract between you and me.
Any hope I’d gathered vanished. The papers named my father as your soon-to-be
husband.”

He paused, shook his head.

“I was so disgusted. At myself for hoping, dreaming, at my
father for wanting to replace my mother and at you for doing whatever you’d
done to draw his attention in the first place. Over the years, the disgust
morphed into hatred. Richard talked about you all the time. When we finally did
meet and it turned out you were even more gorgeous than you’d been as a
teenager, it pissed me off all the more. You made me remember the things I
wanted and couldn’t have. I’m sorry I held my father’s sick fascination against
you. I realize now it was never your fault.”

“I don’t know what to say.” I sighed. “I never knew about
the proposal. Roy only told me a week ago, explained how badly Richard wanted
me ruined. Now I know why.”

“Speaking of Roy, you should probably call him,” Micah said
as he idly tugged a strand of my hair. After a moment, he added, “And I should
probably call Eli.”

“Probably.”

Neither of us moved or spoke.

I wished this moment, lying in bed with his hand in my hair,
wasn’t one of the best I’d had in my life. I knew things were fucked up, but
with Micah this close and my skin buzzing, I just didn’t care.

“Does this mean you’ll move into a decent place now?” I
wondered out loud.

I didn’t need to see Micah’s smile. The satisfaction was in
his voice. “Nah,” he said. “I kind of like it here.” Micah pointed to the
bloodstain in the middle of the floor. “I could kill someone in my living room,
or maybe it’s considered my bedroom, and no one would care. Besides, do you
know how hard it is to find neighbors who will turn a blind eye when you come home
at four in the morning, covered in blood and guts? It’s tough.”

“How much longer do you think we have before they call us?”

“Ten minutes,” Micah guessed.

“Five,” I countered.

“Loser cleans the bathroom?”

I laughed. “Deal.”

Four minutes later, Micah’s phone chirped.

“Damn it.” Micah rolled back and did a neat little flip out
of bed.

“Show-off,” I called over my shoulder.

He opened his phone. “Hey, dickwad, you couldn’t have waited
five minutes? You just made me lose a bet.”

Micah was still grumbling into the phone as he went into the
bathroom. When the pipes began to groan and creak, the conversation was too
muffled for me to hear. Now what was I supposed to do? Going back to sleep was
out of the question. Going home wasn’t an option. Sitting on Micah’s bed in
nothing except his tee shirt was just strange. Was this what couples did?

Couples? Were we a couple now?

I shook my head and went over to the coffeepot. After a few
minutes of fumbling through the cabinets, I managed to find everything I
needed. Coffee beans. Coffee grinder. Coffee filter. The brew was gurgling and
hissing when Micah came back into the room ten minutes later. He was freshly
showered and, disappointingly, dressed in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved dark-blue
shirt.