Her Secret (4 page)

“Shh, Darling,” Danial said softly in my ear.
“Things are not as they seem. I wore protection.”

I gave him a look of amazement. “How did you
manage that?”

He smiled sexily. “Supernatural speed and
forethought. I had one in my pocket ready.”

I went limp with relief. “But I felt your
fangs.”

“I didn’t drink; I only bit and contracted my
jaws lightly. You have only four shallow scratches. They’ll likely
heal within the hour.” He grimaced. “But I wasn’t prepared for you
to impale yourself on my fangs. I’ll have to watch that next time.”
He withdrew and pulled off the condom. “Come in here and finish
undressing.”

I grabbed my discarded clothes and my bag and
followed him into his bedroom, where he disposed of the condom.
“Thank you for handling me so well,” I said, slipping out of my
clothes. “And thank you for getting me a robe.”

“You’re welcome on both counts,” Danial
replied as he sat down on his bed. “The question is did it
work?”

“We won’t know for at least a few hours,” I
said, sitting down beside him. “And that’s good, because I need to
ask you something serious.”

Danial’s expression changed to one of mild
alarm. “What is it?”

“I need to store something in your safe,” I
said quietly. “Will you let me?”

“What is it?” he said curiously. “I know you
have a safe of your own.”

I removed the manila envelope I’d brought
with me from my bag, and handed it to him. “This.”

“It’s marked Brennan,” he said. “What’s
inside?”

“Something I don’t want to lose, something I
need to keep safe.”

“In other words, you don’t want to tell me.”
He turned to the far wall, and held his hand over it. Magically,
the faint outline of a door appeared.

“I could never figure out how you did that,
no matter how many times I watched.”

“Magic, of course,” Danial said, entering the
combination. He opened the door and tucked the envelope inside. “A
spell of concealment on an already well-camouflaged compartment.”
He shut the door and took his hand away. The outline of the safe
faded into smooth and unbroken wall.

Danial led me over to his bedroom’s small
anteroom. The fire within his wood stove was burning cheerily, the
warmth relaxing.

“Sit down with me.”

I sat down in front of him obediently. When
he sat down behind me, I tucked myself into the hollow created by
his shoulder and neck, leaning back into his arms.

“I’ve missed you,” he said softly. “We sat
here many nights like this, you and I.”

Danial had built this room for me. We’d
enjoyed it often in the year and a half I’d lived with him. It
closely resembled the central room at my house, his wood stove the
same model that I had at my home. I’d missed this too, but
admitting that would lead to more confessions. “It’s good to be
here with you, too.”

“Now that we’re relaxed, what is inside the
envelope?” Danial said pointedly. His arms tightened over me. “It’s
clearly something you didn’t want Theo to find. Marking it with the
name of your first husband wasn’t safe enough. You had to bring it
here.”

My relaxed mood vanished in an instant.
“Poetry from Devlin,” I admitted. “It was in the box with the
boots. Theo’s going to be alone in the house tonight, and he knows
the safe’s combination. I couldn’t risk him finding it by some
freak accident.”

I didn’t mention the gold choker with
Devlin’s emblem of the grizzly bear that was also in the envelope.
If Danial discovered that, he would not just be furious, he’d
surely destroy it.

“Who was the poet?” Danial asked.

“There was a book of poetry and some he’d
written himself. I burned the book, but I couldn’t bear to destroy
his words to me. No one ever wrote me poetry before.”

Danial was as tense as a board behind me.
“Did he ask you to come to him?”

“Yes,” I said softly.

“Then he gave you a way to get in touch with
him,” Danial replied. “Have you contacted him yet?”

“No,” I said honestly. “And I’m not going
to.”

“Sar, I know how much you liked being with
him,” Danial said jealously. “Don’t tell me you’re not going to go
back for seconds now you’ve tasted all that he is.”

I pulled away angrily and stood. “Don’t
presume that you know what I feel for him. Even if it was more than
physical with us, which it isn’t, I can’t trust him. Dev wouldn’t
restrain himself like you just did, no matter how important it was
to my welfare.”

“Darling,” Danial said sarcastically. “I know
exactly what you feel. It’s in your voice like syrup when you speak
of him.”

“If I was going to go with him, I’d have gone
when he asked me that night,” I said angrily. “I’m old enough to
know that men don’t always mean the words ‘I love you’ even when
they say them repeatedly.”

Danial’s mouth dropped open. “He said that to
you? When? During sex?”

I blushed, casting him a reprimanding look.
“He said it many times.”

“What did you
do
to him?” Danial said
in wonder, looking at me as if he’d never seen me before.

I blushed deep red, thinking about Devlin’s
ardent cries of love as we’d sated ourselves in the front seat of
his Hummer. “Nothing, um...abnormal.”

Danial gently drew me down again and hugged
me. “You should have told me this. It explains everything.”

“Devlin said a lot of things that day, and
I’d be surprised if half of them were true,” I said bitterly. “But
that’s my fault. I asked him to lie to me, to tell him he cared for
me as part of my fantasy. Don’t put too much stock in spoken
words.”

“He may have lied as part of your fantasy,
though I’d be surprised even at that,” Danial said slowly. “Dev is
always very careful and deliberate about the words he says, even
when he seems flippant. In any case, he would never have lied after
the sex was done. What would be the point? He’d have just told you
goodbye and left.”

“There was weirdness,” I said
conspiratorially. “He gave me lines about wanting to change, and
others about how he didn’t regret anything and could only be who he
was. He said he was sorry for what happened, and then said he
wasn’t. He was utterly satisfied to leave me covered in his scent
after our goodbye sex, and then called me later from the road to
tell me how to cover it up.”

“Sounds like he was an emotional wreck,”
Danial said with a faint smile. “Or a man in love.”

I looked over my shoulder in exasperation.
“Please.”

“You sound confused, too, to have been forced
into intimacy and then to be grabbing a quickie in his front seat
before he left,” Danial added, his smile widening. “Perhaps you
suffer from the same malaise.”

“Perhaps you do,” I said sarcastically.
“You’re jealous one moment and then amused the next.”

“I’m jealous slightly,” Danial amended. “I’m
much more intrigued that you aren’t swooning over my brother.
Understand, all the women he took from me over the years were
nothing to him, though I loved them all. You not only remain immune
to his charms, you found a way into his heart past all his
defenses. This is bittersweet moment for me, one I’d never
expected. I’d enjoy it more thoroughly, except that he and I have
made up. There’s an element of pity I’ve got to allow him now.”

“How nice for you,” I said coolly.

“Stop your sarcasm,” Danial whispered,
kissing my earlobe. “I mean no disrespect to you, Sweetheart. You
know you’re the only woman I love.”

“That’s not hard to believe, seeing as I
killed your last lover.”

Danial took a sharp intake of breath and drew
back slightly.

“I’m sorry I said that,” I whispered,
cringing inside.

“Let’s not speak of it,” he said sadly.

My hackles rose instantly. “Yes, we will
speak of it,” I hissed angrily. “Don’t you dare be sad about—”

Don’t say her name
.

“—
her. She caused all of that shit with
Devlin and everything that happened before that with Al. I still
have nightmares about being whipped—”

“Shh,” Danial said, hugging me tightly.
“Please, Sar. I know you’re hurting. But I’m hurting, too, can you
understand that?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning in his arms to
hug him tightly. “I’m not sorry for anything else I did, except for
hurting you.”

“You didn’t,” Danial replied consolingly.
“Please, let’s not waste these hours speaking of suffering. I’ve
missed you too much for that.” He moved my robe off my shoulder,
then kissed my naked skin gently, his fangs again pricking me.

I took my next breath by inches, my lips
parting, my body trembling.

“Devlin’s in love with you,” he whispered in
my ear. “Tell me that doesn’t make a difference to you.” He slid
his fangs down my neck, gently pressing.

As I leaned hard into him, he sensed it and
moved slightly back, his fangs pricking but not penetrating.
“Answer me,” he said seductively. “Don’t you want him anymore? Was
the one day enough to sate your desire?”

“I wanted him before,” I groaned, arching
into him. “I want him more now. But I don’t love him.”

Danial was running his fangs over my skin
ardently now, his breaths coming fast. What I was saying was
arousing him.

“What do you wish he would do to you?” Danial
asked. “Tell me.” His hand slipped beneath my robe and rubbed my
clit gently. I shuddered and let out a moan.

Danial slid his finger into me, then gripped
possessively. I let out a whimper of longing. His fangs pressed
again against my shoulder, then suddenly broke the skin.

Images flooded my brain in a burst. I moved
quickly, trying to turn my body towards him, my only thought to
have him. My searching lips met his and I kissed him, bearing down
hard. At once, I tasted blood. Danial pushed me back to the floor,
his hands on my wrists as his mouth sought mine, his tongue eagerly
licking me.

I tore my wrists from his grasp and reached
down, slipping my hands beneath his robe to stroke his stiffening
penis. Danial let out a grunt, then rolled onto his back, his hands
already busy opening another packet. I moved eagerly to straddle
him before he could put it on, but he was quicker. I pushed down
onto his shaft just as he finished, his movements forceful as he
drove upwards, baring his fangs in a wide snarl of pleasure. The
moment I saw them, I bared my throat and leaned forward.

Danial grabbed a fistful of my hair, and
pulled my head back. “No, you don’t,” he said cruelly, thrusting
deeply and slowly into me. “Do you want me or my fangs?”

“I want it all,” I said wantonly, lust
dripping from every deliberate word. “All of you.”

“Then please me,” Danial said lustfully,
going still.

The commanding tone made me shiver. I began
to rock rhythmically on him, bringing groans from us both. Then I
bit my bottom lip hard, and kissed him.

Danial went crazy, his mouth locked to mine,
his tongue delving into me, licking eagerly as he bucked under me.
His mouth fastened on my cut lip, and he began to suck hard in time
with our rapidly speeding thrusts. With a scream, I orgasmed,
writhing against Danial. He began jerking, his moans soft and
muffled as he continued to suck. Then he went limp under me, and
his mouth released me. We lay gasping in each other’s arms.

Danial gently moved out from under me, took
off the condom, and threw it away. Then he hugged me close, as our
breathing slowly calmed.

I was exhausted as if I’d run a few miles, my
body covered in sweat. Within moments, I was asleep.

When I came to, I was in Danial’s bed, facing
him. One hand was woven in his hair, my other on the back of his
neck. His were at my waist, holding me gently. I stirred, shifting
my body, and he opened his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Danial asked. “Was I too
rough with you?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “All I felt was
pleasure.”

“As much as I’d love to cuddle here with you,
it’s close to eight by now,” he said. “Let’s shower, and then get
you something to eat.”

I was supremely happy and the last thing I
wanted to do was move. With a reluctant sigh, I pushed back the
covers. “Lead on.”

When we’d finished showering, I wound my damp
hair up and we both got dressed. I followed his lead, unsure of
what he had planned for dinner. Yet when we emerged from the
bathroom, he promptly plopped down again on the edge of the bed,
giving me a satisfied smile.

“What are you doing?” I said softly.

“Watching you,” he said contentedly.

“What are we doing?” I amended, flashing him
a smile back.

“You mean now that we’ve had sex twice
already?” he said with a dazzling smile. “We’re going to find you
some food next, unless you pull me back into service. I’m not about
to protest. I love that right now my body is somehow immune to the
normal laws of physics. ”

I cracked a smile, and sat down next to him.
“Be serious. I’m worried about you.”

He was surprised, his brow knitting up.
“About me? Why?”

“I don’t want my condition to keep you from
finding a lover of your own.”

“Don’t worry,” he sighed, running his fingers
through his damp hair. “I’m not about to take another lover even if
we stop getting together Saturdays.”

“Why not? And don’t tell me it’s because you
love me.”

“A lot of reasons,” Danial said, meeting my
eyes. “Your certain jealousy would complicate our relationship.
Also, I really don’t care that much about sex without love. But
mostly because I can’t risk Theoron’s life on another bad judgment.
When he is eight or nine and old enough to protect himself—”

“Danial, that is almost a decade away. Be
reasonable.”

“Sar, I wasn’t with anyone when you met me,
and I hadn’t been for a long time. I can stand to be alone for a
while. My sex drive is not as strong as my brother’s, as you’ve
seen.”