Dark Legacy (27 page)

His voice wavered to nothing as the reality of the situation closed in.

“Jarred,” Maddie whispered. Her soft, healing touch slid up his arms, pulling him closer until his body covered hers and she was kissing him as if she’d never stop. Her mind stroked his, needing to be closer, to feel closer, to feel whole again the way she only felt, he only felt, when they were together.

“All I know,” he whispered back, “is that I’d kill anyone who tried to do to you what these people have done to Sarah. Thinking about you going back into Metting’s lab and willingly subjecting yourself to what these shared dreams do to you makes me want to kill the man with my bare hands. Screw his noble intentions.”

“You’re the one who told me to trust him.”

“Because—”

“Look at this place!” Maddie pushed herself up until she was sitting. “It’s like some supersecret fortress. If this is what it takes to stay under the Wolf’s radar, what kind of chance would I have to help Sarah and my mother on my own? I’ve accepted that. You accepted it before I did, when you called Metting and arranged for them to bring me here. And
now
you want me to stop? So I can what? Go it alone and hope for the best? Maybe…Maybe you should wait here when I go back to talk with Metting.”

She was right. They couldn’t stop now. There were still too many holes. Too much they didn’t know. Except for one thing Jarred was certain of.

“You won’t have to face anything on your own again,” he promised. “Whether I agree with what you want to do or not, I’ll be there. Always.”

He cupped her shoulders and found her trembling. It
was still so hard for her to believe that she could be who she was and have someone accept her, love her, unconditionally. Jarred pulled her head to his chest. He pulled her closer in his mind, too, until there was no her. No him. Only them.

“I’m here,” he said. “I won’t ever leave you alone, no matter how bad this gets.”

“I…” A silent sob shook Maddie. “I feel like this Wolf is stalking me, too, Jarred. Stalking us. He wants Sarah, and he wants me to bring her to him. He’s going to kill my mother if I don’t. I…I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you because of me. Just like what happened to my father…All over again…”

Jarred stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You’re not responsible for your father’s death. That’s Sarah’s nightmare talking. Her emotions are still inside you.” He could feel them. See them when he closed his own eyes. “Her mind’s splintered into who knows how many realities. And through the dreams you’ve shared, she’s altering you to a dangerous degree. You have to fight her feelings. You can’t help Sarah until you do.”

Maddie’s smile trembled. Her touch traced his bottom lip. “I have to find a way out of this that won’t get everyone I love killed. I can’t do that without you.”

“You won’t ever have to.” He’d have to watch her mind and her body shatter each time she reached for her twin. He didn’t know how to let that happen without wanting to stop her. But he’d find a way. They’d find a way.

“Sarah will keep fighting me,” Maddie said, “if I try to find her for Metting.”

“Sarah’s sick, and she’s getting sicker without your mind to balance hers. She doesn’t trust anyone.”

“Not even me.”

“I think she’s shutting you out to protect you.” Jarred
stroked Maddie’s cheek again. His mind stroked the abandoned feelings dragging her back to the nightmare. “That’s what she said in your last dream. Not to look for her, because it wasn’t safe.”

“She’s running from her Raven,” Maddie agreed. “She hates him because she loves him and he’s left her alone for the darkness and the Wolf to take. I…I left her alone. For ten years. How will I ever make that up to her?”

“Love can be an awful thing when it’s been betrayed. Sarah might never be able to trust Metting again. But she’s already listening to you in your dreams. She’s already letting you in. She protected you, even though it meant sending you back to me. She’ll trust you when the time’s right.”

Just as Maddie finally trusted Jarred. His mind reached for the belonging she’d given him. A sense of safety with someone like he hadn’t felt since he was a child. And it was there. Maddie’s warmth and uncomplicated acceptance. And the passion they’d reveled in before Sarah destroyed it.

“She wanted to kill you.” Maddie kissed him, following his memories back to that horrible moment when he’d realized it was no longer her in his arms.

“Sarah knew how much you love me.” Jarred kissed Maddie back, feeling her physical response deepen, her body warming with his, to his, curling around him. “She thinks I’m going to take you away from her.”

“And she keeps wanting to kill the Raven because…” Shadows from Sarah’s dreams flowed through them. Maddie turned them and controlled them, analyzing now instead of being consumed. Separating the guilt from the images Metting said were the clues to understanding what Sarah was really after, and where she was going next.

“Because if she loves the Raven and trusts him again…” Jarred reasoned. “If she trusts him, and he turns out to be evil, like the Wolf, then—”

“—then she’ll have no one left. Just like when my father was gone.” Regret flooded Maddie’s thoughts. “My mother would never be honest with us. She kept insisting that we hide what was happening. And then I did hide. I abandoned Sarah when my sister needed me most. She was totally alone, trapped in the dark, while I made a life without her. And then Metting came along and freed her and got her to trust him and promised her he’d be there to protect her. But he let the Wolf in, and more darkness, and—”

“Show me the Wolf, Maddie.”

She was hurting, and Jarred hated it. But Metting had said there were clues in the nightmares. Key details Maddie had to find.

“In the clearing in the woods,” Jarred pressed. “Not the accident with your father. You said you heard the Wolf in the clearing. The Wolf is who Sarah really hates. He’s the darkness she’s lost in. Show me what Sarah showed you. Show me what you need to know to save your family.”

“He’s…” Gray ringed Maddie’s eyes. Her consciousness pulled away. But she was still holding tightly to Jarred’s body. She was fighting to stay with him while she remembered.

“He’s what, sweetheart?”

“He’s…

…there, and he knows she’s watching. He terrifies her…She hates him…”

“Like she hates the Raven?”

“No, the Raven’s…watching from overhead. Always circling overhead. No, from the trees this time, and she hates…
needing him there…But she does. She’ll always need him there. The Raven is…He’s…”

Maddie jerked, and her eyes cooled to their own sparkling green. “He’s you.”

“What?” Jarred was shaking from the rush of seeing Sarah’s dream along with Maddie. From sensing the deadly purpose of the shadowy figures that represented the Wolf’s men.

“The Raven—Metting,” Maddie whispered. “Sarah won’t survive without him, just like I wouldn’t have survived any of this without you. That’s why he’s always there, circling my father’s accident in the nightmare. Sarah needs him to stop the Wolf. She’s wanted him there from the start, to give her the control you give me. But what if I can’t get Metting there in time? What if Sarah tries to face the Wolf on her own, and I—”

“We don’t know that’s what she’s really planning.” Jarred gently shook Maddie, keeping her with him. “You’re not seeing it clearly enough yet. And even if you were, you need Metting to help you figure out what the scene in the clearing really means. Don’t assume the worst. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“He…” Maddie nodded. “Sarah’s Raven will bring her back…”

“Yes.” Jarred agreed, praying he was right.

“He…He’d do anything for her…”

“Yes.”

“Like…Like you’d do anything for me…”

“Yes. Even letting that bastard pry into your mind again.”

“You…You were willing to die for me—lie there and let Sarah take you, rather than hurt me trying to stop her.” Maddie kissed him. “Don’t ever do that again, Jarred. Promise me.”

“It’s not going to happen again.” He kissed her back, the heat of it taking over. “You saved my life. You proved to yourself that you’re light. That you’re a healer, not the Death Sarah thinks she’s become.” Their minds filled with Maddie’s soothing whites and blues, and the sizzling sparks of her passion. “I’d do it a thousand times over, though, if that’s what you needed.”

“You’ll stay safe.” Maddie rolled until she was sprawling on top of his body. “Promise me you’ll protect yourself and stay safe.”

“I won’t challenge anything you have to do with Metting,” he promised. “And I’ll be as careful as I can. But I’m going to be there with you, Maddie, safe or not. This legacy of yours, whatever it turns out to mean, I’m a part of it. Metting said we were drawn together because of it. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect it and you. That, I promise.”

She hesitated. The glimmer in her eyes told him she was considering slapping some sense into him. Instead, she straddled his hips. Dragged his shirt up and over his shoulders. He lifted his upper body to help her, then settled back to their pillows. Her hands roamed the wicked scars the knife had left on his chest. Her fingers spread as her consciousness wrapped around him. Her love for him, her acceptance of what they’d become, it felt as if it had always been there.

“What if I’m not strong enough to stop Sarah this time?” she finally asked, panic beating at the warmth between him. “What if you—”

“Shhh…” He gripped the hem of her midnight black shirt and slid it away.

Her glossy brown hair fell to her bare shoulders. Delicate shoulders. Beautiful shoulders. Just like the rest of her.

“No more
what ifs
until we talk to Metting again and tell him you know for sure that the Wolf was in the clearing with Sarah. Until then, no more danger and fear and death.” Jarred sat with her still in his lap. His lips trailed up her neck, making her shiver and tip her head back to give him more. “For now, there’s only this. Just you. Just me.”

Maddie’s answering moan did amazing things to his already-hardening body.

“No dreams at all?” Her mind fluttered against his, showering him with swirls of sexy, dark purples that smelled like autumn and tasted like the deepest brandy he’d ever sipped.

“How…” He rolled her onto her back. They were skin to skin from the waist up, their hearts beating against each other. “How are you feeling? Are you sure you’re up for—”

“For loving you? Yes.” But there were shadows in her eyes still. In her soul. “I need this. I need to know it’s just us this time.”

“Us?”

“Just you and me.” She shivered again as his hands brushed up the backs of her thighs, finding the top of her Brotherhood-issue sweatpants so he could pull them down.

Which he did.

Damn! She had nothing on beneath, just like him. His cock jerked in response.

“I’m here.” He shimmied out of the last of his clothes and resettled against her body. They were melting into each other, from ankles to waist. But he needed more. His hands rubbed up her spine, arching it. He couldn’t stop himself from kissing her hip. Licking her belly. Then tracing each rib, until his lips had found a tight nipple.

Perfection.

She gasped, then groaned. And in her mind he found the vision of her perfect mouth drawing his dick into an aching vortex of wet satin. Swirling her tongue around him. Suckling him. He nearly came undone. Then all that passion, every shimmer of it, froze into a ball of fear. First in her mind, then in his.

He pushed up from her body, which brought their hips into tighter contact. His cock pounded for more. More pressure. More friction. More Maddie.

“What is it, sweetheart?” he made himself say.

“It…I…” She turned her head away. “Last time, it wasn’t…me.”

“Yes, it was,” he insisted. “From the moment I touched your body in that motel, from the moment our minds first touched in the dream, it was perfect. And it was
you.
It was everything I love about you. It was everything I wanted. Everything we both needed. Just because it started as a dream doesn’t make it not real.”

“Oh, it was real.” She glared up at him, while her hips rose to meet his, as if she couldn’t stop herself. “It was so real, I pulled a knife and tried to slice you into little pieces!”

“
That
wasn’t you.”

“I tried to kill you.”

“No, Sarah did. I can tell you exactly when she took over in the dream, and—”

“How do we know she won’t be there now? What if I hurt you again?”

Silence resonated after her outburst. She’d finally said it—the lurking fear Jarred had sensed in her ever since they’d made love. He settled onto his elbows.

“I was there, Maddie. I remember all of it, with great clarity. I remember touching you and feeling like I was
holding a miracle in my arms, just like I am now. You giving yourself to me, losing yourself in me until your release was washing over me and taking me with you.”

“But then—”

“We’re stronger now.” He laid a finger across her lips, when she would have kept arguing. “Our link, our minds, are stronger. I knew when Sarah broke into our dream. I know the signs now. We won’t let it happen again, even if she does come back. Which is a big
if,
given how weak she’s becoming. Besides, Temple. You’ll kick her ass if she gets another hankering for a three-way. And in a twin smackdown grudge match, my money’s on you every time.”

Maddie snorted, and even that was so damn enticing, Jarred had to kiss her again. And then again.

“She can’t separate us,” he promised. “No one can.”

Tears could be beautiful when a woman’s eyes filled with them and love and adoration all at the same time.

“Can you really accept me like this,” Maddie asked, “no matter what happens next?”

“You and me, Maddie, no matter what happens. All I need is you and me. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jarred held his breath as she blinked those misty green eyes, then slowly nodded. Then her lower body was doing that wiggling thing again—rotating her soft, warm entrance against him until he couldn’t breathe at all.

“
You and me
feels really good.” Her worry and fear eased as her smile bloomed.