Beyond the Darkness (Dark Court 1)

Dark Court: Book 1
Nothing in Zack Banning’s life makes sense. Not the head injury that ended his career, and certainly not the sexy dreams he’s been having about a mysterious blueeyed stranger who seems to know exactly how to send Zack straight into the flames of ecstasy with every touch. Zack can’t decide what disturbs him more—how much he longs for the dreams to be real or the fact that they feature another man.
Eljin has spent the last several months frightened and alone. The single bright spot was the tentative connection he forged with Zack, a fellow captive with no memory of their encounter. Desperate to return across the veil but unwilling to leave Zack in danger, Eljin sets out to convince Zack of the miracle that holds them together before the forces conspiring against Eljin’s entire race pull them apart forever.
A Romantica®
gay erotic romance
from Ellora’s Cave

The passion flaming over every inch of his body was scorching his skin, burning him alive. He needed more—more touching, more kissing, more everything. Each seductive caress made him crave the next one. Zack had never desired another person like this in his life.

When the mysterious lover above him licked at his nipple, flames rippled along his body. Zack squirmed, trying to get those luscious lips on his other nipple, groaning gratefully when the man complied.

He pressed his hard cock between silken ass cheeks as the man straddling him leaned forward. It was a place he wanted to be more than he wanted his next breath. He wanted to feel the sweet heat he knew waited for him wrapped around his aching shaft, pumping against him until he passed into oblivion.

“Please,” Zack begged when the man’s mouth continued to tease him. He’d beg, plead, whimper… do whatever he needed to do to get what he needed.
The man pulled back, grinning down at him before he settled more closely over Zack’s groin. A tight hand grasped Zack’s cock, making him suck in his breath. He just might come from that alone.
When the man slowly lowered his body, impaling himself on Zack’s cock, Zack didn’t know if he would last more than a few minutes, maybe seconds. He was so close to orgasm he could almost taste it. His entire body tingled on the edge of ecstasy.
“Oh fuck!” Zack cried out when the man finally settled down all the way. His cock was so far inside the man, Zack wasn’t sure where he ended and his beautiful, mysterious lover began. The man moved, slowly at first, then with more speed. Zack rolled his eyes back in his head, overcome with elation unlike anything he’d ever experienced with any of his previous sexual partners.
Each thrust was like being squeezed in molten lava. Strong muscles gripped Zack’s cock and he doubted he’d have to move at all. The man could just massage him to orgasm. It was exquisite.
The man leaned over him until they were nose to nose. Vivid azure-blue eyes stared down at him, brimming with tenderness and passion. Zack couldn’t look away, not even when the man lowered his mouth and kissed him.
Lost in the sweetest flavor he’d ever tasted, Zack barely felt the small nip of teeth until he tasted a light, coppery flavor in his mouth. His eyes widened in shock as he heard the man’s voice in his head while their mouths were still connected.
“
My
leannan,” the man whispered into his mind, “
come for me, my beautiful leannan. Give me your life, your love, your forever, as I give you mine
.”
Instantly, Zack stiffened as every nerve ending in his body exploded at the same time. Pleasure shot through him and erupted inside of him. Zack roared as he came, filling the man above him with every last drop he had to give.
He distantly heard the man cry out as hot wetness splattered across his abdomen but he was too far gone to acknowledge it. He floated in a euphoric haze of lust and desire. Zack opened his eyes and looked up at the flushed face of the man who’d just rocked his world.
Sad, azure-blue eyes stared back at him as two little words filtered into his mind right before Zack faded off.

I’m sorry.
Those two words echoed in Zack’s mind for what must have been the millionth time. He heard them in his sleep. He heard them during the day. He heard them all the

time, over and over again, for weeks now. Just when he thought he’d gotten past the words, he’d hear them again, echoing in his mind. And he didn’t have the foggiest idea why. He just couldn’t seem to stop hearing those two little words.

Zack took another long sip of his cold beer, then cradled the brown bottle between his hands, a memory lingering at the edge of his mind. Only one thing disturbed him more than hearing those two words over and over again in his head—the image of deep, azure eyes looking at him with such sadness when the words were spoken.

To whom did those haunting blue eyes belong?
Every time Zack searched his mind for some sort of connection, some small memory that could help him figure out what the hell was going on, his head started to ache. If he persisted in his pursuit of answers, horrific, agonizing pain ripped through his body, rendering him useless for several hours.
Having suffered an injury during a combat mission not long ago, Zack was used to pain. The wound he had gotten on his mission wasn’t life threatening but he had suffered a head trauma from a bomb exploding only a few feet from where he’d stood.
The doctors said the injury had caused short-term memory loss and he might experience delusions and hallucinations for the rest of his life. Zack figured that’s what caused such weird dreams—they were a side effect of his brain trauma.
Shaking his head, Zack ran his hand over his short hair. Although out of the service for a few months, years of training were hard to dismiss. He kept his ink-black hair cut short and close to the scalp out of habit.
Maybe he would never find out who’d said, “I’m sorry”, or why, or even if anyone had said anything to him at all. Maybe it wasn’t a memory, but simply a hallucination, brought on by his injury. Zack had no way of knowing. And as curious as he was to find the identity of his mystery dream man, maybe not knowing was better. As intrigued as he was by the guy, he wasn’t ready to deal with how good it felt to be touched by a man.
Zack swallowed down the last of his now warm beer and got to his feet. Hanging out in some backwater bar and getting drunk might sound good but it wouldn’t solve any of his problems. More than likely it would just give him another headache and Zack had suffered enough of those in the last three months to last him a lifetime.
He grabbed his black leather jacket and pulled it on over his wide shoulders. He tossed a couple of dollars down on the table then walked toward the door. Stopping on the steps outside, he’d started to zip up his coat when he heard a small whimper and the sounds of a scuffle coming from the side of the building.
Don’t get involved
, he told himself as he tried to ignore what he was hearing.
Whatever it is, just walk away.
He’d only been out of the hospital for a few weeks. Due to his head injury, he wasn’t much use to anyone. He had no business getting into a fight with some fool who’d had one too many.
Another frightened whimper shattered the silence and Zack sighed. As a Marine, he’d spent fifteen years protecting people. He couldn’t just walk away, even if staying meant getting himself into deep shit. Resigned to the coming battle, Zack walked around the corner of the building.
He wasn’t surprised to find three rather large men harassing a much smaller one. That was usually how these things happened. Assholes tended to run in packs and attack people they could easily intimidate.
What did amaze him was how well the smaller man was fighting them off. Zack wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the man had some sort of formal training. However, all of his movements seemed defensive rather than offensive. Obviously the man didn’t want to fight. He just wanted to get away with his body intact.
The military uniforms the three attackers wore didn’t register with Zack until he grabbed the first guy and took a swing at him. They were all dressed in full nighttime combat gear, the type only issued to military combat units. They even wore night goggles.
Zack knew immediately that there was more going on here than a simple mugging. These men were military and they were after the smaller guy for some unknown reason. That still didn’t mean Zack was going to let the guy get his ass kicked. His gut and years of training told him the small, blond-haired man was an innocent victim and in deep need of his help.
The first soldier Zack hit went down without a struggle, too surprised to fight back. The second one wasn’t so easy. He lowered his body into a defensive stance, his hands raised to defend himself. Zack saw the man swallow when he grinned. His adversary was nervous. Good. It had been a long time since he’d had the chance to get into a good fight.
He swung his fist at the same time he swiped out with his foot, aiming for the guy’s face and legs. Both connected but didn’t take the man down. Zack quickly spun around, aiming his next kick toward the man’s head. That did the trick, much to Zack’s satisfaction.
He hadn’t lost his edge.
The man fell to the ground, landing on his hands and knees. Before he could get up, Zack kicked out again, delivering another blow to the head. This time, when the man went down, he didn’t get up again.
Before Zack could celebrate his triumph, a solid hit landed on his back, right between his shoulder blades. He ignored the pain radiating through his body and turned to see the last man standing behind him. Zack grinned again, watching the man’s eyes widen at his easy smile before Zack hit him in the face.
Blood splattered from the man’s nose and dribbled down his chin, and his eyes looked dazed. Zack didn’t wait for the man to recover. He delivered a right hook and then a left, pummeling his face and his upper body until the man fell back away from him. Zack pressed his advantage, hitting and kicking out until his opponent went down and didn’t move again.
Zack took just a moment to check for a pulse before turning toward the form huddled against the worn brick wall. Zack inhaled sharply as eyes as blue as the deep sea met his. Shock rolled through Zack. For a moment, he thought the man might be the one from his dreams, but then those blue eyes blinked and the illusion was gone. When Zack looked again, the man’s eyes were pale-blue and not nearly as lively as his dream man’s.
Zack approached slowly and held out a hand. He tried to keep his stance as nonthreatening as possible. “My name is Zack,” he said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
The man looked hesitant. His hands trembled as he rubbed them up and down his arms. His pale skin looked almost translucent in the moonlight. The fear in his wide eyes concerned Zack the most. It would be hard to check the man over if he was afraid.
What he did see didn’t tell him much. The man wore an overly large gray hoody, baggy jeans and a dark-blue knit cap pulled down low over his brow. A braid of long, white-blond hair hung over his shoulder. Other than that, Zack couldn’t even tell how big the man was. The clothes he wore made him pretty much shapeless.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You already said that,” the man whispered.
Zack frowned. The man’s voice sounded lyrical in nature, soft and light, almost birdlike in tone and quality. It also sounded like the voice in his head, the one he had been dreaming about. If Zack didn’t feel the aches and pains in his body from his fight he might think he was hallucinating, experiencing one of those delusions the doctors said he might have.
Zack reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of prescription medication he was supposed to take when he started feeling as if he might be having a hallucination. Any time he wasn’t sure, he was supposed to take one of his pills. He popped the top and shook one out into his palm. Zack started to toss the pill into his mouth when it was smacked out of his hand.
His brows pulled together in an angry frown. “What the—”
“Don’t take that!” the little man snapped, his eyes glowing with a savage inner light. “It will poison your mind.”
“It was prescribed to me by my doctor.” Zack shook out another pill, only to have it smacked out of his hand as well. Zack took a deep breath and shot the man a glare. “Look, I don’t know who you are but you need to stop doing that. I need to take this pill.”
“No, you don’t. It only messes with your mind, makes you dopy and keeps you from thinking on your own.”
Before Zack could react, the man reached over and grabbed the bottle of pills out of his hand and tossed them into the nearby dumpster.
“Hey! I need those. They keep me from having delusions.” He started toward the garbage bin, ready to dive in and dig his pills out, but a light touch on his arm stopped him. Zack stopped, glancing down to see the man standing beside him, his delicately boned hand wrapped around Zack’s wrist.
“Please, don’t.” The man paled, gulping audibly when Zack’s eyes narrowed. “I swear you don’t need them.”
Zack frowned, his brows drawing together in confusion. “How can you know that? You just met me. You don’t even know what I take them for.”
Blue eyes bored into Zack. “You take them because a bomb exploded next to you and you received a head injury. The doctors said you had short-term memory loss and that you might suffer delusions. They also said you had permanent damage to your eyes, which drummed you out of the service.”
Zack’s mouth dropped open, his heart pounding faster with each word the man spoke. “Who in the hell are you?”
The man yanked on Zack’s arm, pulling him away from the garbage bin and toward the opening of the alleyway. “I’ll explain on the way, but we can’t be here when those guys wake up,” he said as he pointed to the three unconscious men on the ground. “More will come when they don’t report in.”
“Wait, wait, slow down,” Zack said. He planted his feet firmly on the ground and refused to move another step. He wanted answers. “I want to know who the hell you are and why those men were attacking you before I take another step.”
The man grabbed Zack’s arm with both hands and pulled him toward the parking lot. He looked desperate, terrified, his eyes darting to each side of them as if he was searching the shadows. “Please, we need to go. They’re going to wake up soon or others might arrive. We have to leave before that happens. I swear I’ll explain everything on the way.”
Zack was doubtful about the circumstances but the man’s fear was real, as were the three unconscious men lying behind him in the alley. Something serious was going on here and Zack was determined to get to the bottom of it, one way of another.
“Okay, fine, we’ll go,” he said, but he paused to point at the man with his free hand. “But the minute we’re out of here I want to know everything that’s going on and if you lie to me, I’m done. Understand?”
The man nodded quickly. Zack shook his head, wondering what in the hell he was getting himself into. He had to be out of his mind. Granted, he’d done the right thing when he’d saved the guy, but he had no business getting involved in whatever mess the man was in. He had a hard enough time keeping himself together. He didn’t need to be taking on someone else’s problems. He should just take him somewhere and drop him off.
Zack grimaced as his stomach rolled. Everything in him rebelled at the mere idea of being separated from the man, which confused Zack to no end. He’d never even met the guy before. What did he care what happened to him?
Zack climbed into his beat-up old pickup truck and hit the button to unlock the passenger-side door. The little man quickly jumped in and shut the door, hitting the lock before leaning back and resting his head on the top of the bench seat.
He seemed relieved, the fear Zack felt coming from him lessening with each passing moment. That was until Zack opened his mouth again and then the man’s fear came rushing back in great waves.
“Where should I drop you off?”
The man’s eyes popped open and he turned his head to stare at Zack. “Drop me off? What do you mean, ‘drop me off’?”
“Look, man, I don’t know what kind of shit you’re mixed up in but… ” Zack’s voice trailed off as he caught sight of tears gathering in the corner of the man’s eyes. He suddenly felt like the world’s biggest jerk.
“Okay, you—do you have a name? I can’t just keep calling you ‘man’.”
“Eljin.”
“Eljin.” Zack chuckled restlessly. “Okay, Eljin, you can stay the night at my place but tomorrow you’re on your own,” Zack said after a moment. “I’m not trying to be rude or anything but I have enough shit in my life without adding yours.”
Eljin glanced away from Zack to stare out the passenger-side window. Zack could see his chest rise and fall several times as he took deep breaths. He wondered if Eljin felt nervous as he watched him continuously rub his stomach. Maybe he was hungry?
Zack put the key in the ignition and started to turn it on. “We’ll head back to my place and we can get some food and a good night’s rest. Everything will look better in the morning.”
To Zack’s surprise, Eljin shook his head and reached to unlock the door. “No, you’re right. You don’t need to be mixed up in my mess. I thank you for your timely rescue but I need to go.”
“Wait,” Zack shouted as Eljin opened the door and climbed out. “Where are you going?”
Eljin shrugged as he pulled the edges of his gray hoody up around his neck. “I’ll find somewhere.”
Zack’s stomach clenched as Eljin walked away, his shoulders hunched against the cold night air. He looked desolate, alone. Zack knew what that was like. He’d been alone most of his life, his only family the men he served with. Since his injury, he hadn’t even had that. Figuring he might regret it later, he made a quick decision and jumped out of his truck.
“Wait, Eljin, come back to my place tonight and get a good night’s rest,” Zack said as he hurried after him. “You need some food and a warm, safe place to sleep. And you still owe me an explanation, remember?”
Eljin’s steps slowed, paused for a moment, and then sped back up. “No, it’s just better if we go our separate ways. Less chance of them finding—”
The rest of Eljin’s words were lost in the sudden gust of wind that blew through the parking lot. For some odd reason it gave Zack a chill right down his spine. He flipped the collar of his leather jacket up as a deep shudder ripped through him.
“Please, Eljin? I’d never get any rest if I knew you were out here on your own.” Zack looked up at the dark clouds gathering, overshadowing the moonlight. “There’s something in the air tonight.”
Eljin stopped walking and looked up at the night sky. “Hunter’s moon.”
“Hunter’s what?”
Eljin pointed up into the air at the full, dark orange and red moon overhead. “It’s the hunter’s moon, also known as the blood moon. This is the time when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest.”
“Yeah, okay.” Zack wondered if Eljin had both his oars in the water. The man sounded nuts. Still, he couldn’t just leave him out here in the cold. “Look, come back to my place. You can go wherever in the morning.”
Eljin glanced over at Zack then out at the darkness surrounding them. He seemed to give a little shiver, much as Zack had, before turning and walking back to the truck. “I’ll leave in the morning.”