Darken (Siege #1) (21 page)

“Gavin!” Josh said from behind him. “You need to calm down.”

Pulling his shoulders forward, Gavin strained his head to the side, fighting the urge to turn on Josh. Another set of hands joined Josh’s, dragging him away from Sinclair’s man.

“Let me go,” he growled.

Blood covered the man’s rapidly-swelling face, and the sight spurned his monster on, feeding his hunger to end the man in front of him.

“You need to get control. Now,” Caleb ordered him. “This is not the time or place for this.”

He gripped Gavin’s jaw, forcing him to make eye contact. Then with a sharp push, Caleb turned Gavin’s face so he could look at Cora.

She stood a few feet away, and the look on her face was all it took to harness his animal. He stood and stepped toward her, but she retreated, fear and horror masking her pale face. His heightened senses picked up the slight tremble in her hands, the quivering of her lower lip, and the sound of her thumping heart.

It was at that moment he realized that while he had long ago accepted what his body could do, the monster was more a part of him than he’d ever wanted to accept.

Chapter Twenty-Two

AS SOON AS GAVIN took off running in the direction of the pub, she’d pulled out her cell and dialed Caleb. The man had already been bloody by the time she got there, but Gavin hadn’t stopped. He kept up the assault until Josh and Caleb pulled him away.

When he moved toward her, she hadn’t seen the Gavin she’d loved for so long. In his place was a monster that looked ready to destroy anything and anyone capturing his wrath. And his eyes were on her.

Fear is such an ugly word, almost as ugly as it felt. Yet there was no other way for Cora to describe what her emotions as she watched Gavin beating that man in the middle of the street.

Instinctively, she took a step back, and he froze, the creature he’d become began to retreat. The heavily muscled frame faded back to Gavin’s familiar form, and the pronounced angles of his face softened.

He was Gavin again, and she could almost believe she imagined the whole thing. Except the blood smeared along his hands and splattered across his face and raggedly torn shirt refused to let her forget he’d been moments away from killing someone.

“Cora, are you okay?” Caleb asked.

She swallowed around the lump in her throat and nodded, not trusting her ability to form a coherent response.

“Holy shit,” Josh said, ramming his fingers into his shaggy hair. “What the hell were you thinking, Gavin?”

Gavin didn’t respond, simply continuing to stare Cora. She flinched under the constant weight of his eyes, and he turned to his brother.

“This is the fucker who ran Cora off the road.” His hands clenched into fists and took a few steps away, distancing himself from the unconscious man.

“How sure are you?” Josh asked.

“It’s him,” Cora said, hating the tremble in her voice. “I’m positive.”

“Soon as he realized we’d seen him, he took off running,” Gavin said. “Piece of shit wouldn’t tell me where Sinclair is.”

“What the fuck are we gonna do with him?” Josh nudged the guy’s leg with his foot.

The four of them stood there, gazing down at the man. There was a part of Cora that looked at him objectively and wanted to offer aid. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t dismiss the fact he easily could’ve killed her.
Who knows, whatever he injected her with may be doing just that.

“All right,” Caleb said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Josh, you need to go back inside before Keeley and Janet start panicking about not having a bartender. Gavin, you need to go home, get yourself cleaned up.”

“What are you going to do?” Josh glanced at him.

“Call for an ambulance. I’ll tell them I found him on the way to my car.”

Cora released a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. Somewhere in the back of her mind, there’d been the thought that they intended to kill him. She had no sympathy for the guy, but killing him seemed far from reasonable.

“The cops are going to question him,” Gavin pointed out.

“True, but do you really think he’ll want them digging into why you beat the shit out of him?” Caleb shook his head. “There’s no way for him to report you without giving himself and Sinclair up.”

“Good point.” Gavin nodded. “Cora can come with—”

“I’m going home,” she interrupted. The thought of going anywhere with Gavin alone right then was terrifying. All she wanted to do was forget last thirty minutes had ever happened.

She tried to read his expression, but her own emotions kept getting in the way. They had her believing what she saw there was more than regret.

He reached a hand toward her, and she took another step back, unwilling to fall under the spell his touch would inevitably cast over her.

“Cora—”

“No,” she said, cutting him off again. “It’s not up for debate.”

The brothers started to protest, but she didn’t stick around to listen. She turned on her heel and walked down the street to her apartment. With every step she took, images of Gavin enraged and covered with blood flashed through her mind.

At the SIEGE lab, she caught a glimpse of what he could physically become, yet nothing had prepared her for what that truly meant. The absolute fury marring his face, the way he so viciously attacked that man—none of it resembled the Gavin she knew, and when he looked at her afterward … she hadn’t seen him anymore. Those few seconds when he moved toward her, all she’d seen was the monster.

She was almost at her building door when she realized Gavin followed her in his Jeep. Not wanting him to stop and try talking to her, she picked up her pace, almost jogging the last few feet to her door. She entered the foyer and turned to close the door behind her, spotting Gavin as he drove by.

Up in her apartment, she collapsed on her bed and curled into the fetal position with a pillow clutched to her chest. She tried to reconcile what she knew of Gavin with this new side of him that was beyond his control. It terrified her how quickly it all happened. She wanted to believe he wouldn’t have hurt her, but she couldn’t be sure.

How much of Gavin was left when the monster came out?

What scared her even more was if Sinclair did this to Gavin as a child, what might he have done to
her
?

The ringing of her cell phone dragged her from her thoughts, and she rolled over to grab her phone from the nightstand. Eve’s name flashed across the screen.

She’d completely forgotten about their plans to go see a movie. She hesitated a moment, trying to think of an excuse to get out of going, before accepting the call.

“Hey, how’s it going?” she asked.

“Good as can be expected when you have a six-year-old projectile vomiting all over your bathroom,” Eve answered.

“Oh, God, that sounds disgusting.” Cora nearly gagged at even the thought of the mess Eve was dealing with.

“Yeah. Needless to say, movies are out. I’m so sorry. There’s no way I can leave him with his dad.”

“I totally understand,” Cora said, a little relieved she didn’t need to lie. “We can go another night.”

“I’m just hoping this round of the flu bug is the last for the year,” Eve said with a heavy sigh.

“Has he been getting sick a lot?”

“No, that’s what’s so weird,” Eve said. “Up until maybe May, I don’t think he’d ever been sick before. Now, every other day he’s either vomiting, got a fever, coughing, or something else. Every time I take him to the doctor, though, they say the blood work comes back perfectly fine.”

“That sucks. I hope he feels better tomorrow.”

“Thanks. If he’s not, I’m going to try taking him to a different clinic. Are you okay? You sound a little strange.”

“I’m good.” As good as could be expected after seeing the man you love change into some hulked up monster and nearly kill someone.

“Are you—Crap! I gotta go.” Eve hung up as Cora heard the sound of retching in the background.

Cora placed her phone back on the nightstand and lay back down, throwing an arm up to cover her eyes. She didn’t want to think about Gavin. She wanted to go back to when the most complicated part of her life was accepting he didn’t love her.

She rose and went to the bathroom in search of her sleeping pills. When the visions first started, she bought the pills, hoping they’d keep her asleep through them. They hadn’t helped with the visions, and in the end, she gave up on them when she found getting to sleep without them was harder.

Dreams, though, provided no escape for Cora as her subconscious only delved further into the horrors of what Sinclair did to Gavin and what might happen to her. Gavin became the beast, stalking her as she ran through the cemetery. She fell across Lela’s grave, and her body began its own transformation, shifting her bones and muscles until she took a form so grotesque and terrifying even Gavin’s beast ran from her.

Cora’s eyes flew open at the sound of knocking on her front door. In the dark, she scrambled to get out of bed and turn on the light. She stumbled down the hall to the door and lifted up on her tiptoes to peek out the peephole. Gavin stood there, leaning against the opposite wall. She sank back onto her heels and took a deep breath.

Gavin noticed the peephole darken as Cora pressed her eye to the other side and then lightened again when she pulled away. Coming to her place might not have been the greatest idea, but the fear he’d seen in her eyes and the way she retreated as if expecting him to attack her haunted him. He couldn’t let her go on thinking that.

He jiggled his keys in his pocket. The door didn’t open, and he thought she planned to ignore him. He couldn’t blame her if she didn’t. They’d already been on shaky ground before, and now she’d witnessed what he was capable of, the violence that the monster he was thrived on and hungered for, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she wanted nothing to do with him again.

The door opened and revealed a slightly mussed Cora. “What are you doing here, Gavin?”

“I wanted to talk.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I would’ve come earlier, but I knew you were going out with Eve.” He gestured toward the apartment. “Can I come in?”

She pressed her lips together before nodding with a sigh and stepping back to let him in. His shoulders sagged as the tension they’d been holding faded. He sat on the couch and rubbed his hands along his thighs. Cora went to the window and peeked out the curtains before turning around to face him. Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the window sill.

“Why did you come here?” she asked.

“I …”

Why the fuck had he come here?
His knees bounced with nerves, and he pushed off from the couch to pace the small room. It shouldn’t matter if she was scared of him. She was just another lay, a body to pass the time with and relieve the natural urges of his body. It shouldn’t matter.

But it did. Because as much as he wanted to put what they had neatly into a little box labeled “Sex", that’s not where she was. Somehow, she’d snuck through his defenses and the further in she got, the harder it was to justify keeping her out.

“I never would have hurt you,” he said, coming to a stop in front of her. “You know that, right?”

She didn’t say anything, and his chest tightened.

“Even when I’m … like that, I would never hurt you. Please tell me you know that.”

“How can I? I’m nothing to you,” she said, turning her face to the side.

“That’s not true. And I’m a complete asshole for ever saying it.”

He gazed down at the top of her head. Short frizzy strands poked out in all directions. He cupped her chin, tipping her head back to look at him. When her eyes met his, he melted into the blue depths.

Earlier, he’d wondered if he wanted to fix things between them, and to be honest, he’d still been wondering it five minutes before, but staring into those sorrow-filled baby blues, he realized fixing things with her was all he wanted.

“You were right about me holding onto Lela. There were days after her death that keeping her memory alive was the only thing that kept
me
alive,” he admitted. “The pain I felt knowing she’s gone was a reminder that I was still alive. I didn’t want to lose that.”

“Pain isn’t the only way to feel alive,” she said.

He let go of her chin and threaded his fingers into her wild curls. “I don’t know if I can give you what you want. I can’t predict what will happen in the future, but I know right now, I want to be with you. Only you.”

“I can’t stay here waiting for you to decide on a future, Gavin. I have to do what’s best for me, and that means moving on with my life. In Denver.”

Frustration twisted in Gavin’s gut. He wanted to rail at her for not giving him time. Except that’s exactly what she’d given him—space and time to heal—but instead of using it to let go of Lela, he’d used it to drive a deeper wedge between Cora and himself.

“You don’t leave until after Christmas, so give me until then,” he pleaded. “Two months.”

She wavered, and that second’s pause was enough for him to press his advantage.

His lips captured hers in a fierce kiss, and the gentle surrender of her lips was all the answer he needed. His teeth nipped at her lower lip, and she opened her mouth to his tongue. He slipped his hands under her cropped top. She shivered at the soft brush of his fingers along her ribs. With his hands under her bra, he enveloped the lush curves of her breast, flicking his thumbs over her nipples.

He pressed his thigh between hers. Her knees bent, pressing her to his leg. She let out a soft moan as she rocked against him. He gripped her hips, stilling her motions and holding her tight to him.

Gathering her in his arms, he carried her to the bedroom, kicking the door shut. He laid her in the center of the bed. Her shirt and pants came off, and he stood to admire the sight of her withering on the sheets in only her pink lace panties and bra. She raised her arms above her head and gave him a come-hither look that went straight to his cock.

Instinct urged Gavin to tear the last remaining pieces of clothing from her and pounce, fucking her until they were consumed by physical sensations and neither of them could think. But he wanted it to be more.