DarkInnocence (2 page)

Some moron had probably written my number in the men’s
bathroom, an action I probably deserved after the last few weeks of
self-destructive behavior. I scrolled through my contacts, stopping at the E’s
even though I didn’t want to. Directly above my sister, Ella, was Eli, short
for Elijah.

Something in my chest tightened. Regret. Guilt. Anger. You
name it, and the emotion was there, in my heart, festering. For a short time,
I’d thought maybe I could fall in love with Elijah McGregor. He saw me as no
one else did. He’d kissed me as no one else had. When our lips met, the world
faded under the soft glide of his tongue.

Then everything had gone to hell. Literally.

It was my fault we’d been attacked that day at school. My
fault he’d been mauled by scary wolves. My fault he was now one of the scary
wolves. My fault I wasn’t good enough for him anymore, not since the drugs and
the nameless men whose faces were starting to haunt me right alongside Lizbeth.
After his assault, Eli didn’t look at me, he didn’t talk to me, and he sure as
hell didn’t acknowledge me. Hard to do considering we lived in the same house.

Before I accidently drunk dialed him, I exited out of the
contacts and went for the recent calls list and hit a button.

“Talk to me darlin’.” Dante’s deep, rumbling voice vibrated
through me.

For another brief moment I was back in the abandoned psyche
hospital, bleeding and broken, Dante’s large hands struggling with the straps
cutting into my skin.
You’re safe now, darlin’, I got ya.
The safety of
being curled in his big, strong arms was unparalleled to anything else I’d ever
felt, even Eli’s mind-melting kiss.

I sniffled and wiped my suddenly dripping nose with the back
of my hand. I said into the phone, “I’m too effed-up to drive.”

He sighed and a long beat of silence followed. “This is the
fourth time this month.”

His words, dripping with disappointment, cut through me.
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head as if he could see me. “I shouldn’t have called.
It’s late. Early. Whatever. You’re probably busy. I’ll take a taxi—”

“You should always call me,” he interrupted.

The underlying growl in his voice set the butterflies in my
belly a flutter.

“Same place?” he asked.

Tears burned the back of my eyes as the drugs pushed out of
my system and humiliation took its place. I was coming down from my high and
hitting the ground harder than normal. “Yes.”

“I’ll be there in ten, wait in your car with your doors
locked. This shit stops tonight. You feel me, babe?”

His authority penetrated my fog.

“I feel you,” I whispered.

For the second time that night, I was hung up on. True to
his word, Dante’s brand-new silver truck rolled to a stop next to my tiny sedan
and I hit the button to unlock the doors. I wondered briefly if he’d had to
ditch a date to come pick me up. God, I was probably ruining his life. Since
rescuing me all those weeks ago I’d become somewhat of a parasite. No one, not
even my tough as nails, demon- and vampire-hunting sister, made me feel safer
than my gentle lion. Too bad he wasn’t my anything.

Speaking of lions… Dante was out of his truck and ripping
open my car door before I could convince my body to move. I looked up at him
and the halo of golden curls surrounding his handsome, square face. Stubble
outlined his mouth and cheeks, made me want to rub my chin across the prickles.

Dante took one look at me and had me out of the car and in
his arms within seconds. I didn’t have to say anything—he just knew I needed
him. His actions made the fact I’d just let some no-name guy screw me even
worse. I didn’t deserve Dante’s comfort no matter how desperately I craved it.

He closed his strong, burly arms around my waist and forced
my chest against the rock-solid wall of his muscular front. Heat radiated off
him and I burrowed in closer. I barely felt the cold wind twining around my
bare feet and creeping up the back of my skirt.

I drew in his scent, male and musky, and clutched his thin
black t-shirt as the tears I’d been fighting won. He cupped the back of my
head, turned with me in his arms and set me on the rumbling hood of his truck.
Smooth, warm metal lined my backside and the vibrations speared right through
me.

Pathetic that an inanimate object could turn me on more than
the nameless guy I’d let into my body had.

I spread my legs in an automatic gesture and Dante filled
the gap just as instinctually. The warm denim of his jeans rubbed my inner
thighs and I fought not to squirm. Things weren’t sexual between Dante and I.
The age gap between us kept my girl hormones in check—most of the time anyway.
Things with us were comfortable. Familiar. Over the last several weeks, he’d
become my best friend.

Dante pulled my head from his chest and looked down at me.
He was tall, massive and virile. Energy pumped off him in waves that engulfed
me from head to toe. I might not be a hunter like my sister, but we were
created from the same gene pool. A pool we now knew stemmed from vampires. I
could sense the otherness about him and the other creatures of the night most
normal humans didn’t know existed.

Dante cupped my face and brushed away my tears with his
thumb. His gaze searched mine. “We should get you home, you’re a mess.”

“I can’t go home, not like this. Not when he…”

Something hard filled his golden eyes and the hand he had
wrapped around my waist tightened. “Is that why you got so fucked-up tonight,
because of something Eli did?”

I shrugged and couldn’t seem to make myself admit anything
aloud. It wasn’t Eli, not exactly, that had driven me from the house we’d so
recently moved into. The large Victorian structure had once belonged to my
torturer, Lizbeth. Some cruel twist of fate decreed that since my sister killed
the queen, she became queen and inherited all her crap. This included a
basement full of archaic torture equipment.

No matter how pretty the sprawling structure was on the
outside, with its steep roofs, tall windows and fading orange-red brick walls,
I hated it. Hated the sensations crawling under my skin when I stepped inside.
Hated the imprint of Lizbeth’s tinkling, little-girl laughter imbedded into the
walls.

But the house was safe. Bullet-proof. Demon-proof. Vampire-proof.
A perfect place for Ella while she sorted out who wanted to see her dead and
who would stand behind her. The people-standing-behind-her list was awfully
damn short. So I stayed out of the way as much as possible.

When Eli had come into the fully decked-out kitchen with not
one, but two gorgeous brunettes on his arm, it had solidified my decision to
flee. I did not want to listen to their all-night orgy. I’d been lost, lonely
and desperate to quiet the pain lurking in my veins.

“You still with me?” Dante gentled his grip until I no
longer felt the imprint of his fingers in my side. When I nodded, he said, “You
can crash at my place tonight. We’ll curl on the couch and watch a movie, just
like last time.”

Guilt gnawed. “I’m sorry, Dante. You were probably out doing
something, huh?” Or someone…not that I had room to judge.

My thighs and ass squeaked against the metal hood when he
slid me off his truck and onto my feet. He opened the door and, one hand on my
ass, the other on my hip, hoisted me inside the vehicle.

I turned to find him looking down at me with narrowed eyes.
Had I spoken my last thought aloud?

“You aren’t wearing panties, are you?” he asked.

Wonderful. I pulled my lower lip between my teeth and tried
to extend the hem of my skirt by smoothing it over my thighs. “Ah, that would
be a no.”

He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. I could almost
see his lips moving, as if he were counting. The hand he held at his side
curled into a boulder. When his lids finally opened, some unreadable expression
tightened his jaw. “You’re killing me, do you know that?”

“I’m sorry?” Was he disgusted with me? Angry? Annoyed? I’d
disappointed the one man, aside from Eli, who seemed to think I could be more
than just a pretty face.

“Quit apologizing and get your fucking seat belt on.”
Chastised and on the verge of new tears, I fumbled with the shoulder harness
and couldn’t get the damn thing to click into place.

Dante batted my hands away and secured me. He never looked
away from my face. His voice, if possible, grew edgier. “The guy you reek of,
he hurt you in any way?”

Heat crawled up my neck and settled somewhere in my face. Mortified
didn’t even cut it. The animal lurking inside him gave him strength, speed, an
ability to heal almost anything and a heightened sense of smell. He could smell
the fact I’d just had sex.

“No, he didn’t hurt me.”

His hand disappeared into my hair and he tugged my head
back. The hint of pain both sped my heart and made my belly flip-flop.
Something about Dante made me feel safe and that little bit of hurt, more than
the drugs or alcohol, made me, the girl who forgot nothing, forget.

He brought his face to mine, close enough for our noses to
touch and I swallowed a mouth that felt full of cotton.

“I know what that bitch did to you, Hannah. I saw it. Heard
it. Felt it in my gut and have to live with the fact that I didn’t get to you
sooner. But Lizbeth is dead. Gone. The way you keep hurting yourself is just
giving her more power over you. Either you sit down and talk to your sister
about this shit that’s eating you alive or I will. Your uncle come back to town
yet?”

“Next week, he’s still trying to gather supporters on Ella’s
behalf. Other hunters who might be willing speak out against the Shadow Agency.
It’s not going well.”

After that statement, the ten-minute ride to his house was
utterly silent. My head throbbed with my pounding heart, a direct reaction to
the pulsating energy roiling off Dante. In the short time I’d know him, he’d
never been rough with me. Never raised his voice. Tonight I’d pushed him and
myself too far.

God, maybe that’s what I needed. Someone to yell at me.
Someone to treat me like a person, not a fragile piece of glass that was going
to shatter at any moment. I loved my sister, more than life itself, but she
didn’t know how to deal with me. I’d pushed her and everyone else out of my
life because
I
didn’t know how to deal with me.

Everyone except Dante because he was safe and unattainable.

I didn’t hear the engine or the tires over pavement. The
only noise was my spinning thoughts. Gradually we left the trendy college area
and moved from one upscale neighborhood to another. Tall evergreens lined the
road and swayed in the breeze. The houses eventually got smaller, more spaced
out and the yards larger.

Dante’s home wasn’t huge, but it was clean, cozy and
private. It even had a white-picket fence, so not what I would have expected of
him. We pulled into the driveway and my stomach rumbled. The back of my throat
prickled. Saliva pooled in my mouth and I swallowed back the urge to vomit. The
inside of the truck spun and sweat beaded between my breasts.

“You’re going to throw up, aren’t you?” he asked.

I put my hand over my mouth and mumbled, “Maybe.”

My head swam and instead of seeing double, I saw triple.
Darkness closed in around me and a full-body shiver chattered my teeth. Dante
unclicked my belt and slid me out of the truck through the driver’s side. Keys
out, front door unlocked, he had me kneeling in front of the toilet seconds
before my body convulsed. I heaved into the toilet, once, twice, three times a
charm. At some point during my body’s binge-fest, Dante left and returned with
a blanket to put around my shoulders.

He held my hair. Rubbed my back. I think he might have even
sung to me.

The last thing I remembered, after the degrading experience
of emptying my stomach in front of a very hot man and having that same very hot
man hand me a new toothbrush, was him carrying me to his large four-poster bed.
He crawled in behind me, spooned our bodies together and covered us with
something soft and black. Safe. Warm. Cocooned within the arms of a man who
occasionally shape shifted into a six-hundred-pound lion, I passed out.

The sun slowly disappeared behind the snow-capped mountains.
Orange- and magenta-streaked clouds eventually gave way to night. I sighed. The
sight mirrored my mood. Something bright and shiny snuffed out by the darkness.

Wind blew into my room from the open floor-to-ceiling,
side-by-side windows and sent the peach gossamer drapes dancing. They reminded
me of the dirty, wrinkled curtains at the asylum. I shivered and pulled my knee-length
knit sweater tighter around me. My full-body quakes probably had less to do
with being cold and more to do with me being drug free for nearly seventy-two
hours.

Dante’s pep talk in the truck about Lizbeth and how I was
still letting her punish me from the grave hit home. I was done being weak.
Done being walked over. Done being a fragile glass ornament whose sole purpose
was to add decoration. I mattered and it was time I started acting like it.

Buzzing filled the room and I looked over my shoulder at the
nightstand where my phone bounced across the hard surface. Right on time. I
didn’t bother to check who it was. I referred to my new stalker as Mr.
Restricted, something I should probably talk to Ella about. The calls now came
routinely at sundown and lasted until sunrise. I was starting to think maybe it
wasn’t just a prank.

Tires crunching over gravel drew my attention to the window.
I moved the flapping drapes to the side as a black Lincoln town car with
windows tinted as dark as the night wound through the sheltering trees and up
the driveway. Julian. He was the vampire I both hated for turning my sister
into a not-so-evil bloodsucker and loved for saving her life. Twice.

I padded barefoot across the smooth, highly polished wood
floor and out of my room.

“His majesty is here,” I yelled loud enough for the entire
house, as big as it was, to hear.

By the time I navigated through the halls, stairs and
randomly placed sitting rooms with rose and ivory flowered wallpaper, the
doorbell rang. I opened the door and looked up at the blond-haired, electric-blue-eyed
man who put even a male as hot as Dante to shame.

Julian’s pale lips curved into an inviting smile that showed
only a hint of fang. My skin prickled at his otherness, as if I’d just stuck my
finger in a light socket. Perhaps it was all Julian, or maybe it was a
combination effect from the other two vamps standing behind him.

Julian picked up my hand and drew it to his lips. The cool
touch of his fingers turned my blood to ice. His breath, as cold as Lizbeth’s
had been, feathered across my skin when he spoke to me in Swedish, “
Min
gyllene blomma, växa dig vackrare för varje dag
.”
My golden flower, you
grow more beautiful every day.

I yanked my hand free. No longer an ornament. “I’m not your
‘golden flower’, Julian. And if you hadn’t noticed the bags under my eyes, I
don’t look beautiful. I look like crap.” I didn’t even try to smile. “Save the
charm for my sister, you’ll need it.”

I stepped aside to let Julian into the house. The moment he
crossed the threshold, I closed the door. Well, I tried to at least. A shiny
black boot stopped it from closing. The door was shoved open and a vampire I’d
never seen breezed past me as if I’d invited him in.

He stopped in front of me and my gaze met the vibrant shade
of his blue eyes straight on. I didn’t have to look up or down, which meant he
was around my height of five-seven. His head was bald and a jagged scar
bisected his right cheek, the line curving down distorted the shape of his full
mouth. The only redeeming features about him were the strong line of his jaw
and the dark slashes of his eyebrows. In a previous life, he might have been
handsome. In this life, he just looked scary.

The vampire smiled at me and I took an automatic,
self-preserving step back. He advanced. Before I could stop him, he trailed a
chilled finger down my cheek. He leaned close and whispered, “You smell
divine.”

At my side, I curled my hand into a fist. This was my chance
to stand up for myself. A low, prickling growl raised the hairs on the back of
my neck. Before I could say or do anything, Eli, who must have just walked into
the room, beat me to it.

“Touch her again and I’ll break your finger.” His voice was
dark, gravelly and sounded nothing like the man who’d once told me smart was
sexy.

“I’d like to see you try, wolf,” the vampire snapped back.

I didn’t need to see Eli to know he crossed the room. The
closer he got, the stronger his swirling energy affected me. He slid a warm
hand around my waist and my pounding heart nearly exploded at the touch. Eli
curled my stiffening body against his side. Heat. Muscle. Man.

The jerk hadn’t looked at, spoken to or touched me in weeks
and now he decided to get all macho? I turned my head to glare up at the person
who’d broken my heart and didn’t seem to know it.

I lost the ability to speak the second I looked at him. His
once dark-brown eyes were amber. After the hospital, he’d kept his unruly hair
buzzed short, and while I missed his curls, his short hair made him seem
more…reckless. Attraction, want and desire slammed into me. The aura of danger
surrounding Eli reminded me of Dante. At the mere thought of my lion’s name, my
pulse sped in a way it didn’t with Eli.

Maybe I’d been confusing my crush on Eli with real
affection.

I traced my gaze over his clenched jaw dusted with stubble
to his thick neck. I looked lower to his bulging pecs covered with a sprinkling
of dark hair. I swallowed. Apparently he hadn’t put on a shirt. His jeans, I
realized when I followed the trail of hair down his washboard abs, were undone.
Sweat glistened on his skin as if he’d been in the middle of working out…or
not.

“You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend!” A disheveled
brunette with freshly fucked hair screeched.

The woman stumbled into the foyer while simultaneously
trying not to slip in her red fuck-me pumps and button her skin-tight jeans.
Her tight sweater, mostly unbuttoned, showed off a lacy bra and the jiggling
mounds of her heaving breasts.

Disgust washed over me. What I was doing to myself wasn’t
any different from the behavior Eli had engaged in. The realization smacked
some sense into me.

“Get your hands off me.” I shoved Eli away as hard as I
could. To his latest conquest, I put in the extra effort and flashed her a
dazzling smile, “He’s all yours, sweetie. I don’t want him.”

And it was true. I was finished pining over Elijah McGregor.
A plan formed in my too-crowded head and I started calculating if I had enough
guts to move completely out of my comfort zone. Dante was the man I wanted.

“I see you’re faring well, Elijah,” Julian drawled.

“Cut the crap.” Eli crossed his arms over his impressive
chest. The combination of his angry eyes and tight jaw were formidable. Since
the transition from human to werewolf, he’d filled out his six-foot-four frame
with pure muscle and looked like a giant. “You know the rules, you come in
here, you do it alone.”

“He’s right, Julian,” my sister said from the top of the
stairs.

Like the rest of the vampires in the room, Ella’s eyes were
bright and unnatural. Unlike the other undead, her heart beat strong and fast.
Hand in hand with her demon mate, Micah—Eli’s older brother—she walked down the
stairs wearing boots, cargo pants and a tight tank top that showed off her
slender curves. The delicate crimson lines of a tattoo curled over her
shoulder. The glinting silver knives affixed to her forearms in black leather
sheaths screamed badass.

Where I was sunshine and flowers, my sister was darkness and
death. It was a scary, yet oddly alluring, combination. The vampires flanking
Julian sank to their knees and bowed their heads to their new queen.

Ella’s eyes narrowed on her sire. “Quit speaking in my
head.”

One half of Julian’s mouth quirked up and he placed a hand
over his heart. “As you wish, my queen.”

“Seriously,” Ella hissed. “Knock that queen crap off. And,
get those two morons off the floor and out of the house or I’m liable to stake
them.”

“We don’t have a meeting scheduled tonight, Julian, why are
you here?” Micah, badass in his own scary-hunter kind of a way, stepped in
front of Ella when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

His hair was rugged, sexy. Long enough to reach his ears,
too short to pull back with a rubber band. His eyes, a strange fusion of green
and blue, glowed with the presence of the demon lurking inside him.

Julian opened his mouth, promptly closed it. One by one,
everyone turned to look at me. Even Eli’s brunette glared at me as if I were
the interloper in this impromptu meeting.

Anger simmered, boiled, bubbled over. Maybe it was because I
was still detoxing from the pills. Maybe I simply snapped from years of
repressing and acting as if I was perfect. My father’s words echoed in my head.

Honey, you aren’t fit for the lifestyle of a hunter, not
like your sister, Ella. But I know you’ll make someone a great wife one day.
You go be quiet now and play with your dolls.

I crossed the distance between Julian and me and lifted onto
my toes. I grabbed the back of his head with both hands—yes, his blond hair was
as soft and silky as it looked—and planted a hard, quick kiss against his
mouth.

His mouth was soft and yielding—his tongue smooth and
wicked. I pulled back and grinned at his pleased, slow-spreading smile. Cocky
asshole. “That’s for saving my sister’s life.” I curled my hand into a fist.
“This is for all the years you hurt her.” His smile dimmed and the blond
slashes of his eyebrows dipped in confusion. I hauled back my arm, slung
forward and punched him in the face.

“
Knulla!
” he cursed.
Fuck.

For the first time since I’d been tortured, the sound and
sight of blood hitting the ground didn’t make me want to vomit or pass out. I
turned, shoved passed both Micah and Ella, who stood with stunned expressions
on their slack-jawed faces, and walked up the staircase with my head held high.
The rush of adrenaline hit me hard and I cherished my newfound empowerment. I’d
wanted to do that for a really, really long time.

As I rounded the hallway and out of sight, Julian’s silky
voice drifted through the house. “I don’t remember her being so feisty.”

I didn’t hear any more comments after that. In my room, I
went straight to the large walk-in closet. I grabbed a backpack from the top
shelf and blindly shoved clothes into it. Once I was packed, I stepped out into
the main room. Eli sat on my bed with his hands clasped between his spread
legs. I barely spared him a passing glance.

“Why are you packing?” he asked.

“Don’t pretend like you care.”

At my dresser, I grabbed a handful of panties, bras and
silky camisole tops. My fingers brushed against a medicine bottle I hadn’t
remembered stashing there. I paused, stroked the plastic and thought about
popping a couple of pills.

I missed the high. The numbness.

Eli’s voice broke me out of my trance. “What crawled up your
ass?”

Seriously? I spun to face him and pointed to the door. “Get
out.”

He raised his bowed head and looked up at me. His amber eyes
glittered with frustration. “No.”

“Suit yourself. I’ve got somewhere to be.” I shrugged out of
my knit wrap and threw it to the hardwood floor. Never looking away from him, I
grabbed the hem of my long-sleeved shirt and pulled it over my head. Reaching
behind me, I found the hook and eyelet fastening my bra. Any second I hoped
he’d get the hint and leave.

He got no such hint. Eli’s gaze consumed the swell of my
breasts spilling from my lacy bra. He licked his lips, swallowed. He looked
lower and took in the thin, gnarled branches of a cherry tree branch etched
into my skin along my right side. Sprouting from the wood were blossoming
abstract flowers in deep shades of pinks and reds. I removed the bra.

He readjusted his pants, swallowed.

“Hannah, what are you doing?” His words were low, sexy.

I bet what’s-her-name had enjoyed myriad assorted words
whispered in her ear. I unzipped my faded Levi’s, shimmied them down my hips
and stepped out of the denim to leave me in nothing but a pink thong. Heat
filled the room from the energy of Eli’s beast.

I strolled passed him and into the closet, my goal a long
black coat. It was the jacket I’d worn to my father’s funeral. I stroked the
scratchy wool and fought the memories, the fragrance the thousands of flowers
filling the room had given off. Mostly, I fought the pain. Before the past
sucked me into a deep, dark hole, I pulled the garment from its wooden hanger
and shook off the dust that had accumulated. I was shrugging into it when I
walked back into the room.

Eli’s molten-hot gaze tracked my every move as I buttoned up
the coat and slipped my feet into a pair of black stiletto heels that gave me
an extra three inches of height.

He stood and growled, “Where in the fuck do you think you’re
going?”

I met his eyes and picked up my overnight bag where I’d
dropped it to the floor. “I’ve got a date.”

Hot, skin-ruffling otherness filled the room and his amber
eyes flashed. He took two steps in my direction, forcing me to either scuttle
back or stand there and endure the overwhelming energy pumping off him in
waves. I backed up until my ass hit the dresser.

“You’re practically naked.”

He wasn’t wrong. In case I lost the nerve to do what I was
about to do, I turned and reached into my dresser drawer. I withdrew the pill
bottle and discreetly shoved it in my pocket.

“When did you turn into such a slut?”

His words cut through me. He was right, damn it. Now that I
was sober, the truth hurt. Pain started in my belly and moved up my torso to
squeeze my heart. Then the anger hit me. I spun on my heel and found Eli
directly in front of me. He was close enough that I had to crane my head back
in order to give him my full death glare. “What did you just say to me?”