Darkness Becomes Her (16 page)

He said, “God, you don’t know how hard it is—”

“Very hard, I imagine.”

“No, how . . . difficult it is not to reach around and do what I’m imagining you doing.”

She leaned her head back against him. “Yes, I do.”

“I did not need to know that.”

“Sorry.”

“Tell me what you feel like, Jess.”

Because he’d never touched a woman. Couldn’t learn that from a movie or magazine. “Slickery. Hot and swollen.”
Touch me, Lachlan. Feel for yourself.
She held the words in.
If you do that, he’ll give in and touch you, oh my, touch you and slide into you and—
she blinked—
and hate himself afterward.
“I’m about to go over the edge,” she said on a gasp.

“Me, too.”

“Can we go together?”

Their backs moved against each other, hot and moist.

“On the count of three,” he said, breathless. “One . . . two . . .”

Lightning struck, making her body go rigid as spark after spark of pleasure rolled over her. She let out a series of quick gasps, trying to hear him over her own noise. His body had stiffened, too, and he leaned harder against her.

They both shifted and fell backward, next to each other, chests rising and falling, the musky scent of sex faint in the air. Her head was next to his knee, but she could lift her head slightly and see him.

He flopped one arm over his head. “Haven’t gone off in almost a year, and now I’ve come twice in a day’s time.”

She lifted her head more. “You haven’t even . . .”

“No. Nothing. Not even thoughts of it, until you came along. Damn ye.”

He’d twisted the end with the Scots accent, and a smile. She could hear it in his voice, see it from her side view.

“So, are we still considered virgins?” she asked.

“We can swear in a court of law.”

She dropped her head back onto the bed. “It sure doesn’t feel that way.” If this was what having sex with a man was like, she was going to like it. A lot. The only problem was, she couldn’t imagine it with anyone but Lachlan.

Chapter 16

“J
essie was
here
? But . . . how? How could she have possibly come here? You’re sure?” Russell looked at the wall inside the pulsing mass the Void had become, at the soul embedded there. There was only half a face left in the wall.

“I could feel her. She came for Henry. I heard them talking, though not what they were saying. There’s too much noise, the breathing, the muffling of everything.”

He sensed the frustration, heard the underlying fear. He had created this prison for Henry, and it had taken on a life of its own, filling in the once empty space with itself like a tumor . . . drawing its life source from the Darkness he’d created it out of. He didn’t know all the secrets of Darkness. There had been no one to ask, no manual, only a desperate need for vengeance and two brothers who didn’t bother to wonder about the consequences.

He was still that same man.

Every time he visited the Void, it consumed more and more rapidly. Desperation consumed him the same way.

It stunned him that Jessie had somehow managed to come here. How had she even known about it?

“You haven’t talked with her yet, I take it?” the face said.

“She won’t believe anything I say. Now she has the man with magic protecting her. He’s put some kind of block around wherever they are. It throws the dogs off, like sending a compass spinning. They think they’ve got the scent and then they run off in another direction.”

“Julian wouldn’t help?”

He shook his head, heaviness at the thought of him. “He still hates me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I wasn’t counting on his help. If only I’d known Jessie was here. Everything would have been solved.” But they couldn’t communicate unless he was here.

“It’s not like I could tell you. But she’ll come back.”

His heart lifted. “How can you be sure?”

“I felt her agony over leaving Henry behind. She’s stubborn and loyal, and, as we’ve seen, strong. When she returns, I’ll get her attention. She won’t leave him here to be swallowed up. I’ll use that loyalty and tell her the truth. She’ll give us what we want then.”

Hope bloomed in his chest. “I have to go.” The breathing, the ever-encroaching wall of flesh . . . how could one stay here without going insane?

He left that chamber, and as eager as he was to get out of there, slid through the layers and stepped into Henry’s presence. He took pleasure in seeing him there.

“You come here often, and yet you rarely visit me,” Henry said. “Is it guilt that keeps you away?”

Russell stepped closer. “Guilt? You think I should feel guilt for putting you here? Did you ever suffer guilt for how you treated me? For hating me only because I was born? For outright blaming me for our mother’s death? When you stole my lover, did you feel a twinge then? No, I doubt you ever did. You took her only because somehow it made us even, didn’t it?”

“I did, yes. In life, I would never have admitted it. Blaming God for taking our mother seemed too dangerous. Blaming you, a defenseless boy, was much easier and safer. You took away so much, what little we had after her death, what little of our overworked father’s time. Then we met Calista, and she filled me as I hadn’t been filled in years. But there you were, as always, horning in on our time, being the pesky younger brother. She pitied you, Russell. That was her biggest feeling toward you. I saw how you were trying to manipulate her emotions, and that’s when I pushed ahead on my plans to marry her and leave you behind.”

Russell felt exactly how he’d felt then, despair, anger. “She loved me.”

“Like a brother. But then you snuck back into her life and manipulated her again.”

Russell smiled, feeling smug about those last months when he and Calista were meeting furtively, when she told him that he brought her to life again. That was before he’d begun to heal her. Then he became her savior. “I gave her the one thing you couldn’t: healing.”

“By using Darkness, without knowing what it would do to her. Hadn’t you learned yet what playing with this . . . this dark substance can do?”

He would not address his recklessness. If Henry knew what he was planning, what he’d done, the lecture would really kick in. “Your daughter was here.”

That stilled Henry’s words, putting shock into what little Russell could see of his expression. “Leave her out of this.”

“She is to play a very important role in my life, Henry.”

“No! You’ve destroyed enough. She’s innocent.”

Russell smiled, backing toward the door. “I have no intention of hurting her. Indeed, she and I will be close. Very close indeed.”

A
fter an early lunch, or a late breakfast, depending on how you saw it, Lachlan dragged Jessie back to the studio to work on her Darkness. The air in the courtyard felt only moderately warmer than it had in the dark of morning.

“Lachlan, I’m going back to the Void.”

“What?” He didn’t stop, his hand on her wrist—yes, literally dragging her.

“If I can get my dad out of that wall, maybe I can bring him back to his body. His soul is still here. Well,
there
, technically. It’s still around, and so is his body. I can bring them together like you were talking about earlier. I have to go back and get him out.”

“You’re not going back.”

“Uh, somehow you missed the part where I wasn’t asking permission.”

He paused and faced her. “When you left, and you collapsed in my arms, do you know how it felt to watch you and wonder if you were coming back?”

“No, how did it feel?” She wanted to know, to hear what she saw in his eyes now as he thought about it.

“It scared the hell out of me.”

Okay, maybe she didn’t want to know. “I’m sorry about that, but I’m going.”

He tunneled his hands through his hair, obviously still used to having his longer locks as his fingers kept going past the ends. “If you never come back, and your body dies, I’ll bury you in the plot near my mum.”

Trying to intimidate her, was he? “The plot will be fine. You’d have no believable explanation of my condition if you took me to a hospital, and you could get into trouble. I don’t want that. I’m sorry you’ll have to dig a big hole, though. But no one will report me missing. No one will be looking for me. And no one will miss me.”

His mouth tightened into a line. “
I’ll
miss you.”

Her heart caved on those words. Was he just manipulating her? “No, you’ll be glad to get rid of a troublemaker.”

“Troublemaker?”

“Yeah, you know, the one who almost got you killed twice, screwed up Magnus’s life.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You gave me something to live for, for the first time in almost a year. Maybe ever.” His fingers tightened on her wrist. “Your father said Darkness could be controlled. You’re going to learn to control it, especially if you’re going back there.”

She’d given him something to live for. Those words twined inside her. “And what if
I
kill
you
? Maybe you’d better show me where the plot is, and the shovel.”

“You are the most exasperating person I’ve ever known.”

“Ditto.”

“You make me all knotted up inside.”

“Ditto.”

“And you’re bent on driving me absolutely crazy.”

“Ditto. We’re not talking about just going to the Void anymore, are we?”

He grunted, pulling her along again.

Just as she suspected. “What’s that?” She pointed to a portion of the house next to the studio, which had only one small window and a solid door.

“My dad’s lab. He kept specimens in there, and Blue Moon, the Callorian’s DNA. It’s where he worked on the antidote.”

She looked down, now near the place where Lachlan meditated. “So these weird things all over, they’re fungus?”

“Aye, his beloved fungus and slime molds. He was obsessed with them, always had been, he said. The only way to get his attention, really, was to talk fungus with him, or go on meteor chases.”

“Sounds like you had to compete with fungus, you and Magnus.”

“We did, but he loved us, we had no doubt of that. In his way. He protected us, made a nice life for us.”

She knelt down and studied what looked like a cluster of purple balloons. The sign next to it read:
METATRICHIA VESPARIUM.
“Wild stuff.”

“You’re stalling.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” She stood and allowed him to lead her to the studio door. He was right, of course. She’d been hiding from her Darkness just like she’d been hiding from Russell.

She walked beside him, and he loosened his grip. She liked the feel of his hand on her, though. After their . . . well, she wasn’t sure what to call it. Afterward, they got dressed in the dark and went on as though it hadn’t happened. But something had changed between them, at least on her end. She was ultra aware of him now, of his physicality, masculinity. He had done all of that for her, guided her, and touched himself. Even though they hadn’t touched each other, it had been an erotic encounter. She felt an odd mix of embarrassment, though not shame, and hunger. She wanted more.

He’d changed into the jersey pants that molded his ass so nicely, and the white T-shirt that was tight on his chest but hung loose over his stomach. They faced each other, standing in the center of the room like two gunslingers with their hands at their sides.

She closed her eyes and willed it. Fear dried her mouth, parched her throat.

Nothing happened. She opened her eyes, staring right into Lachlan’s. “I can’t seem to do it without a trigger.”

He rushed her, pushing her until her back pressed against the wall. His hands pinned hers up by her head. “When I broke into your apartment and we fought, you Became. Go back to that time. Fight me.”

She played the video in her mind, him waiting for her, grabbing her and pinning her like this. She remembered that part well enough. That’s when she’d felt his erection and was scared to death he was there to rape her.

Her mouth twisted into a smile. “It’s not going to work. I’m not scared of you anymore.”

He huffed a breath and stepped back. “Put yourself back in the moment. Feel what you felt then. When your mind experiences an event in the past, or even something imagined, your body responds as though it’s happening now.”

“Yeah, but the problem is, what I’m feeling as you’re pinning me there is not fear because I know you now.”
And I want you now.
No need to complicate things by saying it aloud. The truth was, she’d been intrigued by him even before she knew him. She remembered watching the video, eyes focused on his body, on the way they interacted.

“How about imagining Russell, then?” he said.

She closed her eyes again and remembered that night at the carnival, watching him slash at Magnus. Forcing her to make that terrible choice to heal him.

She felt the energy moving, shifting. She felt fear of it, too, but pushed past it. And she focused on becoming a tiger, like the cat she’d felt at the salon. More vicious than a wolf. Bigger fangs, sharper claws. Russell had done this to her, made her infect Magnus, made her Become on purpose.
Bastard.
He had killed her mother and taken her father’s body.
Son of a bitch
. She could kill him.

The roar rose in her throat, like a bubble of air. She flexed her fingers, imagining claws extending out. She would kill him.

What if she killed Lachlan instead? The energy vanished. He stood there with wide eyes.

“Did I change at all?”

“Before you became a blur. This time you had more shape. Paws. I definitely saw claws extending from your hands.”

“Did it look anything like a tiger?”

He rubbed his chin. “Aye, a bit. Do it again.”

“I’m afraid to hurt you.”

“You weren’t afraid of me when I was wielding my sword.”

She raised her eyebrow and gave him a naughty look. “Well, I couldn’t actually see you wielding your sword. We were back-to-back, after all.”

For a moment he looked puzzled, and then he got it and barked a laugh. “Cheeky girl. I’m talking about the time you had your hands on my sword.”

Oh, just the thought of that swiped the smile from her face. “Mm, that time. Well, we both have something that could kill the other. We need to be afraid or at least wary.”

“Wary, aye. I can handle myself, as can you.”

She warmed under his confidence. Then something occurred to her. “If we kill Russell, we’ll kill my dad’s body, the only chance he has of coming back. We can’t hurt him physically.” She glanced at the swords hanging on the wall. Yes, hope
was
a double-edged sword.

“Well, that’s going to make defeating him a bit difficult, don’t you think?”

She paced, biting the end of her fingernail. “What will happen if I can free my dad’s soul? Will he go back to his body or be like Olaf? Either way, it’s better than where he is now. I have to free him. How do I do that?”

“I wish I had an answer. Other than to use Darkness, if you can while you’re in the Void.”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t feel it there, that heaviness that’s always inside me.” She paused in front of him. “You’re right, I do need to control Darkness.”

He cupped his hand behind his ear. “Wait a minute. I was right? Did I hear that correctly?”

She smirked. “Yes.”

“Could I be right about not going back to that wretched place as well?”

“Not at all.” She brought up the anger at Russell again, walking, wringing her hands. She could feel Darkness growing in her. Like before, when she’d thrown Lachlan across the room, everything blurred.
Tiger.
Through the blur, she saw Lachlan standing in front of her.
Mine.

The possessive thought threw her right out again.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It’s hard to focus.”
Not mine.
Not when she had this inside her, not now that she knew what had driven Russell to kill. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Russell. Bastard.”

She used the memory of her father in the wall to dredge up everything she felt for the man who put him there. The dark blur enveloped her body, as slippery as oil to hold onto.