Darker Than Desire

 

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To my family, always. I thank God for you.

By special request …

Dedicated to Cassie & Derrick, Shane & Melissa, Tiffany & Dane … love you.

A huge thank you to my readers. You are all wonderful.

 

CHAPTER ONE

He was a man who understood pain.

That's all there was to it.

The boy he'd been, David Sutter, had been groomed to understand it, and although it hadn't gone as planned, he'd been groomed to
need
pain. To want it, then to inflict it.

Now, more than twenty years gone from the broken child he'd been, he thought he knew everything there was to know about pain. But he'd never felt anything quite like this. There was a hollow, empty ache in his chest where his heart should be, a knot in his throat that felt like it would strangle him, and he could barely breathe.

For too long, he'd thought he'd forgotten
how
to really feel. Anger, yeah. He could feel that. He
liked
feeling that. But he existed on the two
A
s. Anger and apathy.

Not pain.

The people around him didn't grieve quite the way he did. After all, death was part of life and Abraham was gone because God had willed it. They would miss him, David knew that, and he could see their grief in the damp eyes of the women across from him, the solemn set of the men's faces.

But while he sat there, furious in a way that he couldn't explain and hurting like a son of a bitch, they all had a peace about them. Yet another reminder of why he didn't belong here.

Abraham had lived a full life and he was gone because God had willed it—David had heard that more times than he could count today. If he heard it again, he thought he might do something violent. God—he'd stopped believing in any such being so long ago.

David couldn't even remember the last time he'd prayed. It might have been the second time, or the third, maybe the fifth time he'd been dragged down into a dark, bloody hell, gagged and tied, left to the vices of whatever monster wanted to break him next.

What sort of God let that evil happen?

David didn't know.

The voices around him rose in song again, but he just stared at the wooden box, the still, peaceful face of the man lying inside it.

Abraham Yoder, the man who'd been David's rock for years, was gone.

The air inside the church was hot and tight. He felt like he was choking, smothering inside his own skin. How long had it been since the service had started?

David—known to these people as Caine Yoder—was all but desperate to escape.

The service dragged on. It felt like hours. Experience told him it was probably roughly just one before they filed past Abraham's coffin one final time and then he helped load it into the buggy that would take the old man on his final journey.

David barely remembered doing it. Barely remembered helping Sarah over at the house over the past few days, barely remembered anything since he'd received the call.

He hadn't even been here.

The entirety of this day was just a blur, save for this moment, clear and brutally harsh, as he stood alone at Abraham's grave.

Everybody else was gone. Thomas had quietly come to guide Sarah away. People must have seen something in David's face, because not one approached him; not one of them said a single word.

Minutes ticked away into hours as he stood there and he couldn't drag himself away.

Once he did, once he turned his back, this final connection to Abraham would be gone.

He'd died in his bed, quietly in his sleep. A heart attack, most likely. David couldn't have picked a better way for him to pass from the world. But David was a selfish son of a bitch and he hadn't wanted the man to leave at all.

There would be no more gentle advice, no more calm talks when David thought he was really going to step over that edge into rage-fueled oblivion.

Abraham had pulled David back from the brink so many times. And the few times Abraham hadn't been there to stop David from slipping over, he'd been there after and helped pull him back up.

Abraham had never known, not really, just how much hell David carried inside him. Maybe it was good that he'd gone now, before it all came out.

That was what David told himself.

And he lied.

He was pretty damn good at that. He should be, though.

He'd lived a lie for twenty years.

A soft sound caught his attention and slowly he lifted his head.

As she came toward him, in a simple black dress, deceptively simple, deceptively sexy, David turned his head away. “You didn't have to come,” he said, his voice a monotone. It was easier, better, to cut things between them now.

But Sybil Chalmers didn't do easy and she didn't do simple.

Perhaps if he had truly let himself join this world, become part of the community here and left the outside world to itself, he could have cut her out of his mind, out of his soul.

It would have been easier to will himself to stop breathing.

She picked her way through the simple grave markers until she could stand at his side. “He was your family.” She reached down, caught David's hand.

Her skin was shockingly hot.

Or maybe he was just cold.

Clamping his fingers tight around hers, wished he could send her away.

“He wasn't my family,” he said, biting the words off. “He was an old man who took me in when I was a kid. I stayed because I felt like it. He kept me here because I was useful.”

“Hmmm.” She didn't look away from the grave. “If that's all it was, then why are you still here when everybody else is gone?”

Instead of answering, he just closed his eyes.

*   *   *

She didn't know where they were.

He'd pulled her up into the buggy, leaving her car behind on the narrow little strip of a road that led to the cemetery.

Now they were moving down a quiet little bit of road while the moon shone down on them and the night creatures sounded in the distance.

They were completely alone.

Very few ever drove a car out here. Thanks to David, she knew a little more about the community here than most.

There was a larger Amish community—the Old Order, with all the strict rules, rejecting modern technology and the way the English dressed—but then there was the smaller group that David had been with the past twenty years. Abraham had never gone into much detail about it, but apparently the two communities had been one at some point in the past, but something drove them apart.

Abraham, the man David refused to admit he'd loved, had been part of that smaller group. She'd once asked David why they hadn't left and David had just shrugged. “Abraham is kind, gentle … patient. They'd have to outwait him to get him out of here, and that's not going to happen.”

She guessed not. Abraham had been eighty-nine when he died.

Next to her, David sat rigid, so stiff she thought he might break if she touched him. She thought he might break if she didn't. After an internal war that seemed to last forever, she reached over, touched his hand. “I wish I could make this better for you.”

A second later, he pulled up on the reins and the horse obediently stopped.

Her breath caught in her lungs, but he didn't look at her, didn't say anything.

Instead, he climbed down from the buggy and was lost to her sight.

Closing her eyes, she blew out a soft breath and caught the long skirt of her dress in one fist as she started to figure out the process of climbing out of a buggy. In the dark. In heeled boots.

Before she'd managed to figure out where to so much as put the first boot, a pair of hard hands closed around her waist. She jerked her head up, but he wasn't looking at her as he set her down.

As soon as her feet touched the ground, he turned away and started to pace.

“Why are you here?” he finally asked.

“Where else would I be?” She stood with her hands loose at her sides, resisting the urge to fold them over her middle, tuck herself away, hide away. Protect herself from the hurt she suspected was coming. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not next week, or even this month, but David was pulling away from her. She could feel it.

A bitter curse escaped him and he reached up to shove a hand through his hair only to encounter the simple hat. He tore it off and threw it to the ground.

She tensed as he drove his booted foot down on it, all but grinding his heel through the stiffened fabric.

When he was done, she licked her lips and then looked back up. All she could see was his stiff shoulders as he faced away from her. “Feel better?”

He spun around, his mouth open.

She inclined her head.
You don't scare me, tough guy
.

His eyes narrowed.

She closed the distance between them, each step slow and precise—she was terrified she'd trip over something on the dark, uneven ground and fall on her ass.

She didn't stop until she was close enough that his heat seemed to reach out, taunt her skin. Then she leaned in, pressed her mouth to his. She didn't give him a sweet, soft kiss, though. David was well past the
I'll kiss it and make it better
point. That never would have worked for him anyway. Instead, she sank her teeth into his lower lip. Hard.

He stiffened against her.

Slowly, she drew back, dragging her tongue along her lip, staring at his mouth for a long second before looking up to meet his gaze. “You're hurting. You're feeling mean. I want to help, if I can. If you'll let me.”

She went to turn away, but a hard arm banded around her waist, hauled her back against him. “And how are you going to help? How can you make any of this better?” he demanded, his words a harsh rasp against her ear. His chest was an iron wall against her back, and tucked against her bottom she felt the hot, heavy length of his cock.

She suppressed the urge to shudder, barely.

But then a wide, warm palm came up to rest on her thigh, fingers catching the material of her skirt, dragging upward. “Maybe that's a stupid question.” His fingers dipped inside her panties and she gasped as he started to stroke. “This always makes me feel better.”