Find Me in Darkness (3 page)

That I’ve missed it
.

Whatever apprehension I’d felt before is gone, wiped away by the intensity of my reaction to this man. And oh, dear god, is it intense. My skin prickles with need, sensitive even to the gentle brush of air. My breasts are heavy, my nipples hard. My sex is swollen, throbbing in anticipation of his touch.

But it is my lips that crave him the most. And in a motion that makes me believe that he has the power to read my mind, he swoops down and claims my mouth in a kiss that is wild and hard desperate. I yield willingly, my lips parting in welcome. In his arms, my body goes limp as I surrender, trusting him to keep me upright as our teeth clash and our tongues mate in a primal frenzy that has my pulse pounding so hard in my ears I can hear nothing else.

This can’t be reality because there is no way that I can feel this light, this free, this
found
. And yet I do, and it’s real, and I know by the taste of his kisses and the brush of his hand upon my skin that it’s right. It’s familiar.

It’s home.

I don’t understand it. All I know is that I have missed him. I need him. And I have to have him—hard and fast and now.

Almost violently, he breaks the kiss, pulling back and breathing hard, and I fear that whatever madness has claimed us both is over.

“Please.” The words escapes me before I have have time to think. “Please, don’t stop.”

His mouth curves up into a smile so sensual it is almost a caress. “Stop? Lover, we haven’t even begun.”

The endearment sends shivers through me, and I draw in a breath, overwhelmed by the sensation that there is a whole world just beyond my peripheral vision, and if only I could turn my head, then I could see it. Return to it.

I can’t think about that, though. Not now while his fingertips are brushing lightly over my forehead, my lips, my cheeks, as if he is memorizing every curve and angle of my face. It’s a gentle touch, but it is driving me wild, and it takes all my willpower to stay still when all I want is the sensation of his body pressed hard against mine. Touching me. Taking me. Filling me.

“Dear god, how I’ve missed you.”

I hear the sadness in his voice and want to weep. “Me, too,” I whisper, meaning the words even though I do not understand them.

“You remember, then?”

“I—” A tremor of fear runs through me, and in that moment I don’t want to remember. Even if remembering means that I would understand. Even if it means that Mal will fill my thoughts and my dreams and my memories.

But there are wisps. Tiny threads of memory that seem to float by, almost close enough to grasp. And they are filled with fire and heat. With caresses and passion.

With Mal.

I meet his eyes. “All I remember is you.” Warm tears snake down my cheeks as the memories form a tapestry of images and sensations. His lips. His hands. Our flesh, our souls, our very beings entwined in passion. “I don’t—” My breath hitches. I don’t understand what’s going on, not any of it. In that moment, I know only the man. His heat. His touch. His fire.

I’m lost in a dark mist, but Mal is at the end of a brightly lit path, and if I can just run to him, then I’ll be out of the mist. I’ll be safe.

And I’m trying. I’m trying so hard. But the mist is gathering closer, filling in the spaces between us and threatening to take him away from me.

The thought is unbearable, and I reach for him, fisting my hands in his shirt, then levering myself toward him. “Touch me,” I demand. “Touch me, please, before you lose me again.”

It is as if I have opened a door. Had I thought his kisses were wild before? They were tame compared to this.

This kiss is frenzied. Savage.

It is a promise. A confession.

It’s a reunion—I know it. I feel it. And though I don’t understand it, I go with it. Because right now, this man is all I want. And I am afraid, so desperately afraid, that he is about to be ripped away from me.

He slams me back against the wall, and I cry out, both in need and in surprise. His hand snakes under my skirt, stroking my skin as he pushes it higher and higher. My breath hitches in my throat, and I bite down on my lower lip to keep myself from begging him for more. For everything.

“My love.” The tender words are a growl of passion. “I don’t want it to be like this, outside in an alley. But I can’t wait. After so long, dammit, Christina, I have to have you.”

“Yes. Oh, god, Mal. Please. Now, please.” I am wild. I am frantic. I am lust and need.

I am his.

“Please,” I beg again. “I need more. Mal, I need
you
.”

He roughly shoves my panties aside, then thrusts his fingers inside me. I am wet—so very wet—and he enters me easily.

I tilt my head back and gasp in ecstasy as my vagina clenches tight around his fingers, wanting him deeper. Hell, just wanting more.

I bring my hands up between us, and force his shirt open, not caring that I’m ripping to shreds a garment that probably cost more than I will ever make in a month. I have to touch him. Right now, I am certain that if I cannot touch flesh against flesh, I will shrivel up and die. And as soon as I have exposed his chest, bare except for the vibrant tattoo of a phoenix rising from flames, I press my palm flat against him, and close my eyes as his heart beat thrums through me, keeping time with my own.

He closes his hands over mine, and I moan a bit in protest, because his fingers are no longer inside me. But when he takes my hands and draws them up over my head, I cease protesting. “Stay like that,” he says, even as he turns his attention to my shirt. He tugs up the hem, then makes short work of the clasp at the front of my bra. Then he cups his hands around my rib cage and closes his mouth over my left breast.

I sigh with pleasure, craving more, knowing without understanding how long it has been since I have had his touch. Since I have felt this connection.

“My love…”

His words are as soft as the lips that trail down my body, making my muscles twitch and shudder in both anticipation and pleasure. Slowly, he eases lower and lower until he reaches the waistband of my skirt. It is a full cotton skirt, with an elastic waist and deep pockets in which I’ve shoved my phone and credit card. It had fallen back down when he’d drawn his hands up me, and now he hikes it up again, using his hands to lift it so that there is a pool of material gathered at my waist.

“I’ve missed this. Your taste. The sensation of your skin against my lips, my fingers. I don’t ever want to stop touching you. I want to make up for all the lost years—god, so many lost years.” His voice is hard. Urgent. “We didn’t have long enough before they took you—not nearly long enough.”

“No,” I whisper, knowing that he is right, though I do not understand why.

He hesitates only long enough to tilt his head back up to look at me, and I draw in a sharp breath, awed by the heat of the vibrant passion I see in his slate gray eyes. And then he lowers his head and kisses me right above the band of the tiny panties I am wearing.

I tremble with pleasure, reflexively arching up even as I widen my stance.

“Hold your skirt,” he demands, and I do without hesitation, then almost weep from the overwhelming eroticism of the cool night air brushing my sensitive sex as he eases my underwear to one side. And when he kisses me so intimately, his tongue teasing my clit even as his hands stroke my inner thighs and climb higher and higher, I am absolutely certain that I am going to melt with a pleasure more intense than anything I have experienced before.

Except it’s not enough. Dear god, it’s not nearly enough.

“Please.” I drop the skirt, twining my hands in his hair and easing him up. “I need more. Oh, god Mal, I need you.”

Yes.

I do not hear the word. I only see the movement of his mouth. How can I hear when my heart is pounding so wildly?

He picks me up as if I am weightless and clutches me to him as my legs tighten around his hips. He turns around so that his back is to the wall and holds me so that I am sitting on one hand and his other is cupping my back.

I do not know when he managed it, but his jeans are undone, and his erection is hot and hard between my legs. I close my eyes and bite my lower lip. I want this, dammit. I want it
now.

“Your panties,” he says. “Pull them aside.”

I start to do that, but he is impatient, and he removes his hand from my back long enough to reach around and tear them free. I cry out, almost coming right then simply from the wild violence of the moment. But that is nothing compared to the way I feel when he tells me to hold on to his shoulders and lock my legs. When he guides his cock to my core. When he takes hold of my hips and thrusts down, impaling me on him even as he tilts his pelvis up, so that he is deeper in me than I could possibly have imagined.

I arch back, my fingers laced behind his neck, and my legs locked around his hips. I want to feel him deeper. I want to feel him completely. I want to be filled by this man, body, heart and mind, and as we piston together—as I move in sync and our sounds of pleasure rise like a symphony—I know that finally,
finally
, we are one, he and I.

Just as we are supposed to be.

Even as the thought crashes through me, the world seems to explode, vibrant and alive with light and color.

I am soaring. I am free. I am alive.

And I remember
.

Not in bits and pieces or incongruent flashes. But full-on. A flood. Hell, a tsunami of thoughts and memories and emotions.

Mal and Liam and Jessica and Raine and so many others. My mate. My friends.

The shock of disassembling. Of leaving our own world, our own dimension. Of traveling so far, so fast.

The fear that we would be too late—that the fuerie would escape, and we would not only fail in our mission, but would bear witness to the destruction of the very core of existence.

And I remember the pain and horror when everything shifted. When the rift opened and we were thrust across the void into the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong world.

I remember the sensual electric sensation when we merged with the humans and were made flesh, and then the sweet surrender when I fell into Mal’s open arms. Of Mal’s eyes looking deep into mine. Of thinking
yes, yes, of course he would take that form, lean and powerful and strong.
And I remember the way my new body responded to his, melting against him and merging with him in a wild and wonderful dance of passion and claiming. And—most of all—of love.

I remember the battle, cold and hard and tenacious.

I remember loss and capture, torture and pain.

And I remember Mal’s face, wretched with agony. The strain in his voice as he held me, battered and broken. As he told me that he would fix it—that he wouldn’t let them use me. That I would never become the instrument of death that the fuerie intended. That he would do what must be done, and that I needed to know that he loved me always.

That he would protect me.

That he would keep the world safe, both from me and for me.

That somehow he would find a way to save me.

And then I remember the tears that welled in his eyes as he held me in his arms, engaged his fire sword, and with a cry of pain that even now sends a shiver through me, thrust his weapon through my heart.

‡

A
scream rips
the air, and it takes a moment for me to realize that not only is it mine, but that it is being forced from me not just by the pressure of my lungs, but also by a boiling, writhing energy that seems to be welling up inside of me. Not fear, but fomented by it. Not pain, but unlocked by it.

And even as I realize that, a new terror washes over me. And not simply the loss and horror of the realization that Mal betrayed me—this man whose touch fills me with such delight and whose memory I hold so dear. But another terror. Colder. Darker. And bitter with blood.

This is it. This is the evil they put inside me.

And relief sweeps over me as I realize that this is why Mal destroyed me. Not to betray, but to protect. To save not only me, but the world.

And I am about to destroy all of that because I do not have the strength to control what is now boiling within me.

Back it off.

Breathe—just breathe. And back it the fuck off
.

Even as I think that, I know that it is impossible. I can’t stop this power—this pounding, pulsing, violent energy. I can’t control it, and soon it will explode out of me, destroying not only me and Mal and Brayden, but everyone near this alley, this street, this whole fucking continent.

It’s rising—rising—

And I’m scared. So damn terrified. And I curl my hands into fists, grabbing tight to Mal’s shirt, but it doesn’t help, because how could that help when all this power just wants to shoot out of me, and I can feel the heat building in me, like a volcano about to erupt? Hotter and hotter, and wilder and deeper until it’s going to just—just—

Stop.

It’s gone.

Just
whoosh
, like someone let the air out of a balloon, and I realize that I am a shell. That every ounce of energy has been drained from me. Even the part of me that was feeding the volcano.