The End of Darkness (7 page)

Heat. The way she said the word 
sounded
 hot. Sensual. Erica took in the expanse of his stomach, too, the emerging bruise, his ribs, wide and deep, and the way his waist tapered to slim hips. She hadn't let herself touch him beyond the necessary contact. But she'd wanted to.
 

Lanna squeezed out some dark purple gel from the tube and rubbed it across his skin. She was mesmerized by him, moving her hand in slow circles, as though she’d never touched a man before. She probably hadn’t touched a purely human male, and Magnus was a beautiful specimen, after all. 

“Just like in the books I read. Strong, sexy, and you smell so good.” Lanna breathed him in, her eyes closed. “We don’t sweat like you do. It’s a provocative scent.”

The violation shuddered through Erica. But something sensual stirred beneath that, and she was disgusted by it. 

“What kind of books do you read, Lanna?” he asked, his voice level and normal, as though one participant of the conversation wasn't shackled to a wall.

“Erotic ones. 
Fifty Shades
. BDSM. Spanking. And lots of sex. Whenever we go into town, I visit the romance section of the bookstore. Humans like having sex. They like touching, breathing in, tasting.” 
 

Not all humans, Erica thought.

Lanna perched on her tiptoes and ran her tongue down his neck. 

His body tensed. “I don’t think your husband would be very pleased to find you like this.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” The thought of that obviously doused her heat for a moment. “Callorians don’t have sex for fun. We procreate, we release, but we don’t play.” 

Oh, God, Erica 
was
 part…whatever the hell they were. Sex for release, nothing more. 
No, you've just been damaged. 
 

Lanna pressed her body against his and nuzzled his neck. “I want to play. With you.”

Magnus’s gaze found Erica, sending a flush over her cheeks. “It’s not right, Lanna. Your husband nearby, Erica right here, having to watch.”

Lanna flicked her a provocative look. “Maybe she likes to watch.”

Erica’s cheeks flamed hotter. “It’s disgusting and wrong to force yourself on someone else.”

Magnus met her gaze on her vehement words.

Lanna laughed, deep and hearty, and gracefully waved her hand Vanna White style toward the ridge in Magnus’s shorts. “It’s not forcing when he likes it.” She turned back to Magnus, a smile on her face. “You do like it, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “A man’s body reacts.”

Lanna obviously didn’t take it as the noncommittal answer that it was. She ran her mouth down the center of his chest, kissing across his stomach. One of her hands snaked behind him and squeezed his ass. “You taste like fresh air and desert. And 
man
.”
 

Erica squeezed her eyes closed, wanting to shut it out. The smacking of moist lips against skin lured them open again. Magnus’s jean shorts were loose enough to gap at the waistband but tight over his hips and derriere. A tendril of desire spiraled through her, even though the hands sliding over the denim weren’t hers. 

What the hell was wrong with her? 
She
 didn't read bondage stories.
 

“See, she likes watching,” Lanna said, flicking a glance at Erica again. “I can feel her excitement, among other things. Some people get turned on by watching another couple have sex.” She pushed to her full height and up on her tiptoes, even with Magnus’s face again. “Let’s turn her on.”

Magnus’s eyes met hers, and Erica realized he’d been looking at her a lot more than he’d looked at the woman who was actually touching him.

“I don’t like an audience when I’m making love to a woman,” he said. “And while bondage, in theory, sounds like a great idea, having no feeling in your hands is a bit of a turn off. Half the fun of sex is feeling someone touching you; the other half is doing the touching. So you see, Lanna, we would both be cheated.”

Ah, he was trying to get her to release his arms. 

Lanna stepped back. “As intriguing and delicious as you look there, you’re right. And I do want to feel your hands on me. I’ve never been touched like the men in those stories touch the women.” She pinned Erica with her frosty eyes. “Is that how men touch women here?”

Erica couldn’t help the widening of her eyes as Lanna approached to her. “I wouldn't know; I don’t read those books.”

“But you’ve been with a man, haven’t you?” Lanna was standing too close. “You’ve had a man touch your breasts, slide his hands all over your body, plunge his finger inside your vagina and move it just so, grinding his thumb into your clit until your whole body shudders in complete ecstasy. Had a man need you so badly that he pushes you against the wall and thrusts his pulsing rod of manhood into you right then and there?”

Erica shook her head. “Those are fantasies. Want to know what's real? Most men only care about getting off. They might squeeze your breasts and tell you how beautiful you are. The next thing you know, they’re knocking on your door. In and out, and it’s all over. He rolls over and turns on the television. Or makes an excuse and leaves.”

Magnus’s eyebrow lifted at that. Yeah, she knew he'd tried to pleasure her. She'd been the one to ask him to leave. 
I'm not talking about my sex life. If that's what you want to call it.
 She was relaying what she'd heard women talking about over their lattes or glasses of wine. The guy in the easy chair with the beer belly, Bud in one hand, remote in the other.
 

Lanna crossed her arms in front of her chest. “That’s how the men in my dimension are. 
Utilitarian
. But there must be men like those in the books.” She shifted her attention back to Magnus. “You’re not like that, like how she described, are you?”
 

Again, Magnus was looking at Erica. “When a woman leaves my bed, she has been thoroughly loved up one side of her body and down the other.”

Erica shivered and turned away. He would have done that to her. If she'd let him. But what he'd done…oh, yeah, he wasn't lying.

Lanna’s voice dropped lower. “Will you spank me? I like how a man throws a woman over his knees and spanks her bare ass. Then you can—”

“Lanna.” She whirled around to find Copeland coming into view. 

He had come down very quietly. “Just as I suspected. What did I tell you about cozying up to him?”

She quickly exited the cell and locked it behind her, a woman cowed. But her lascivious spirit wasn't. “He's a living, breathing manifestation of the men in those books. I can't resist.” She slid the tube of gel into her pocket. “I think it’s cruel to leave his hands above his head where the blood drains away.”

“Why make them comfortable? I'd like to find out more about how they came to have our Essence, but only for my own curiosity. As soon as Nester comes around, he’s going to want revenge on the person who zapped him.” Copeland's hard gaze slid to Erica. “For once I won't mind him digging into their chests, since it won't be splashed all over the paper.” He shook his head, a sneer twisting his mouth. “The Heart Ripper.” 

Erica could already feel a hole in her chest at the words and memory of what he’d done to Graham.

Lanna walked up to Copeland and put her hands on his shoulders. “Darling, I have a better idea for them. Well, for him, anyway.”

“You can’t have him for your love slave.” He picked her hands from his shoulders but gripped them hard. His eyes blinked several times. “You’ve been touching him.” Not a question. 

“I put some gel on the bruise you left.”

“You did more than that, you wanton bitch.” He slapped her so hard she stumbled as she cupped her cheek. 

Erica saw Magnus wince and tense. Was he reacting on some ingrained instinct to protect a woman, any woman? He’d tried to protect her, too. 

“Lanna, you know how much is at stake here,” Copeland hissed. “Our plan isn't going to work if I can't depend on the two people at my side. I wasn't gone for three minutes, and you're down here acting out your filthy books. When everything happens, you will leave them here in the house to be destroyed. They're corrupting you.”

That thought sent a ripple of fear over Lanna's expression, but she wiped it away and replaced it with a contrite one. “I'm sorry.”

“Yes, you are. Go up and tend to Nester. You know how he can be after he's had a hit of Darkness.” Copeland gestured for her to precede him up the stairs. He closed the door with a hard clang. 

Magnus banged his head back against the wall. “They’re bloody mad. We have to get out of here.”

She laughed softly, shaking her head. “You're good. I'll give you that. I was too easy.”

“Aye, you were. You should have made me work for it. Why didn't you?” 

“Maybe I was just horny. Like her.” She nodded toward the door.

He regarded her in a way that made her uncomfortable. “If that's all it was, you would have let me make you come twenty ways from Sunday instead of insisting on getting right to the act. You needed something, but it wasn't just sex.” 

“Stop analyzing me. What are you, a drummer psychologist? Or is it that you're a sex fiend who even sinks so low he'll seduce one of our captors.” 

Instead of reacting, he laughed. “You’re just mad because, for some reason, watching her grope me was a turn on.”

“It was not! It was disturbing on so many levels.”

“You were disturbed, aye, but you were more than that. It got you hot and bothered, and that’s what you found most disturbing.”

“Which makes me wonder, why were you looking at me the whole time? Your body was reacting, so it obviously liked what she was doing.”

God, she sounded like a jealous shrew.

“Because I was imagining it was your hands on me.”

Those words slammed her right in the chest. Was he kidding? Poking fun at her? “That’s even more disturbing. Why weren't you imagining this Jessie you're obviously hung up on?”

He merely grunted, pulling again at the chains. “What I can't figure out is why watching another woman touch me was a turn on when you couldn't bring yourself to touch me 
while we were having sex
. But you wanted to touch me.” He twisted to face the wall and climbed up a couple of steps. Bracing against the wall, he pushed away. “You're a bloody enigma,” he ground out.
 

He'd driven right through her armor down to her bone. She remembered him saying how it was better if she despised him because there was something wrong with him. Now she knew what that was. “No, Magnus, I'm just messed up. But it sounds like I won't be having that problem for much longer. You, however, have a chance.”

He looked over at the sharpness in her voice, something she hadn’t intended. “If that’s what it takes. Wouldn't you, to survive?”

“I don't have any options.”
 
 

“You make it sound like you think I'd leave you behind.”

“Of course you would. Why would you risk taking the extra time to rescue me? People don't work that way.”

“You don't know me very well. I wouldn't leave you.”

She leaned against the wall, tilting her head up. He might feel all noble now, but the moment he was free, he would bolt. And she would be here to face their wrath alone.

CHAPTER 7

Suza Morgan pulled into Strasford's downtown section without a moment to spare. Actually, she was one minute late, but her best friend from childhood knew she tended to run behind. Carlene had sounded odd on the phone the last two times they'd talked. Her usually bubbly friend said she felt “off” and depressed and didn't know why. 

Suza decided it was time to take a road trip out to see her. She didn't have many close friends, so those she did were important to her. After spotting The Purple Fox, the health bistro Carlene raved about, Suza lucked into a parking spot near the entrance. The sign sported a purple fox holding a tomato. 

“Please let this place offer something besides black bean burgers and sprouts. I really hate sprouts.”

She checked herself in the rearview mirror, fluffing her straight, dark bangs and finger-combing her long hair. A tall man, his shaved head reflecting the sunlight, snagged her attention. Her heart did a silly 
pitter-patter
 even as she saw that it wasn't Pope. Not tall enough, broad-shouldered enough, handsome or unusual enough.
 

“Enough! You got to stop thinking about that man. You met him in September, and he hasn't been out to visit in the six months since. Get the hint, girl.” 

She didn't take it personally. He had some kind of dangerous job that kept him busy. They'd met briefly—and embarrassingly—when she'd heard her sexy client, Cheveyo, returning home while she was cleaning his house. In her impulsive, half-assed thinking, she'd posed on the back of his couch in her leopard bra and panties, planning to seduce the guy with the good heart. Then he'd walked in with his girlfriend and another man. Pope. 

After she'd hastily gotten dressed, she'd been introduced to the woman who clearly had a psychic connection to Cheveyo and the tall, handsome man with the shaved head. She sensed a good heart in Pope, too, and something indefinable and different that sucked her in right along with his freaky light-violet eyes. 

They'd talked on the phone several times since he'd left Arizona. Well, she talked, and he listened. Really listened, as no other man ever had. He cheered in his understated way when she told him she was able to let most of her cleaning clients go to focus on her flourishing boutique. He seemed to enjoy her stories about her quirky customers, her life, and even the wreck of her past romances. 

She sighed and pushed open her door. “You've really got to stop thinking about him.”

As she stepped up on the curb, a man bumped into her and then glared at 
her
! “Excuse you,” she said and continued on.
 

“What's that supposed to mean, bitch?” 

The poison in his words had her spinning around. He looked nice and normal, but he felt wrong. Of course, he was snarling at her but it went way beyond that. He carried a dark, heavy energy that shot the hairs on her arms straight up.