Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) (22 page)

“She was what?”

Taris struggled with himself to find the right words. The phrase hadn’t left his lips since the fight between The Nines two hundred years ago, and were he not desperate to tell her, he would keep the bastard words in his mouth and never let them out until his body was nothing but ash.

“Morrigan was my wife.”

Sarah’s jaw hit the floor.

Taris could see the shock play across her face like a lit-up sign. It was equally as jarring to hear himself say it. Remembering his former relationship with Morrigan was something he’d tried desperately over the years not to do. It had been much easier when he still thought she was dead and long gone. Even Bane’s admission that she was alive didn’t have quite the same impact that actually seeing her had.

“I know that is quite unexpected to hear, trust me,” he said as he rose from the bed. He began pacing again. He ran his fingers through his hair. He was attempting to smooth out the half-dried mane, but nerves caused him to pull at it.

“So you’re married?” Sarah’s voice was still a shocked whisper.

“Hell no!” Taris spat the words out so fast and forcefully that she jumped a little. “Our marriage dissolved rather quickly after the shit hit the fan.” A heavy silence surrounded them in the space of the room, and for several moments, she just watched him pace back and forth across the floor. Watching him pace was becoming second nature almost. When he was stressed, that’s what he did.

“Taris.”

His name on her lips went unnoticed. She said it again with no response. He was working himself into a frenzy, locking himself in his memories, whatever they were. After saying his name a third time a little louder and receiving no response, she threw back the comforter and slipped off the enormous bed. He didn’t seem to notice she was standing directly in front of him, and it wasn’t until she planted her body right in his path that he finally stopped.

“Taris, it’s okay. Just finish the story.” She lifted her hands and placed them on the warm skin of his bare chest. She felt him suck his breath in and hold it there, just beneath her palms. He dropped his arms, and they grazed her hips ever so slightly as he let them come to rest at his side.

“I haven’t talked about this since it happened,” he whispered down to her.

“You’ll feel better when you let it all out. Trust me. Just let it go.”

He nodded and turned toward the bed, removing one of her hands from his chest and keeping it tucked firmly into his own. Sarah started to hop back up onto the mattress, but he quickly swung her into his arms and placed her back in her already-warmed-up spot. Instead of covering her up he left the blanket pulled back, walked around to the other side of the bed, and crawled in next to her. “Lean forward a bit,” he said, and as she did, he slid his arm behind her and pulled her in tight to him.

“I know this sounds silly, but I need some support when I tell you this next part. Is this okay?”

It was more than okay. Sarah couldn’t imagine a more relaxing and blissful place to be. Sure, it was a little strange at first, this extremely intimate contact between the two of them, but when she broke it down to brass tacks, it seemed perfectly normal, almost natural. She nodded her head as he pulled her in closer to him. Once she was tucked in and enveloped in his arms, he brought the cover back over them with his free hand.

“You must think I’m a big pussy for needing to do this,” Taris chuckled. “Either that or you may think I am trying to put the moves on you. Really, I just needed to be close to you. So take that how you will.” Before she could respond, he cleared his throat a few times and took in a deep breath.

“So, um, Morrigan. Where to begin with that one? We were an arranged marriage, the two of us. Her family was old, mine was old, and that’s pretty much how they did things back then. We weren’t married long before I was inducted into The Nines, and after that, everything changed. Her whole demeanor toward me and what I did was just, I don’t know, different. She—” He stopped and sighed. “When she wanted to be inducted into The Nines, it was almost too much. Bane and that other asshole were the ones who talked us into letting her in, and like idiots, we went along with it.”

“Tell me about Zillah,” Sarah whispered. Her breath was hot on his skin, and she felt the muscles tense beneath her cheek.

“What about her?”

“She said something about not remembering three hundred years of her life because of Bane and that woman,” Sarah said the last two words with a disgusted hiss. “What are those scars? Why weren’t they healed?”

Taris shifted, bringing her body over so much that she was now almost resting on top of him. With a quick move, he lowered them both down farther underneath the comforter so that they were only a slight degree away from being completely horizontal.

“After I was forced to step down from The Nines and fill the void that my father had left as a leader, Morrigan grew more and more irritated. She wanted to be with the leader of The Nines. It made her feel powerful. So she preyed on the one person who was gullible enough to fall for her pretty words and nice body.”

“Bane.” Sarah let the word fall from her lips. It sounded more like a statement than a question.

“Bane wasn’t always heartless. You couldn’t have asked for a kinder little brother. But she managed to get into his head, fill it up with all of these notions of rejection and self-deprecation.” He stopped and sighed again, only this time Sarah could swear she heard despair mixed in with the ragged breath he let out. “I missed him for the longest time. Even after all the things he did to us, I missed him.” He shifted underneath her again, and this time, he pulled her completely over him. Her head rested on his chest and an involuntary move of her leg left it resting on his thigh.

“When we finally realized what was going on, it was too late. They had already begun their slash and burn. It killed all of us, but Judah and Rhiannon and Zillah caught the brunt of it. By the time Achan and I realized what was going on, Fraser had already been murdered. They had Judah locked up in a holding cell. Zillah, they had already started to torture.”

“Her scars.” Sarah’s lips brushed against his chest as she whispered the realization.

“Bane hid her for a week. He’d…he’d whip her and then heal the cuts. Then he’d do it again. By the time we found her, she was broken. Completely broken.”

“Taris, I’m so sorry.” Her voice was ragged. “I’m sorry that you lost so much.”

“We all lost that day, Sarah. Zillah was a shell after that. She’d lived so much life before, and when she finally woke up from a month-long coma, she remembered none of it. Nothing. To this day, she doesn’t even remember the beating. All she knows is that something bad happened to her. I don’t need to tell you that Rhiannon still carries the open wound of Fraser’s loss with her. Achan is eternally on guard and hopelessly cynical, despite whatever front he may put up. And then there’s Judah.”

Sarah lifted her head and stared at his face, meeting his eyes. “What about Judah?”

Taris was biting at his lower lip, trying hard not to break under the intense questioning. Judah’s was a story he hated to think about, let alone tell.

“Judah was married.” He ignored the wide-eyed shock on Sarah’s face and continued. “Quite happily, in fact. She was such a great woman, too, warm and funny. She was always telling bad jokes, and she couldn’t cook to save her life, but she was genuine and strong. But the pressure of what was done was entirely too much for her to take, and so she left him. She was here one minute and completely gone the next. But he still bears his bond and wears his ring around his neck. Judah just won’t give up on the hope that someday she will come back.”

Sarah’s heart broke with every word Taris spoke. Every moment he recounted, every agonizing detail he gave her, wore her down until she felt like a pile of rubble on the inside. She could hear it in his voice—the struggle with his loyalty for his race and the love of his family—and it killed her. She lifted her head again and wiped a tear on her shoulder.

“See why I needed something to cling to when I told you?” He gave her a faint smile.

She nodded. “It all makes sense. Why Judah is wound so tight, why Zillah and Rhiannon are so fierce, why Achan is so protective, it all makes perfect sense.”

Taris nudged her head up farther so he could look into her face. “Until that night in the stairwell, we thought they were all dead. We tracked them down and lit their safe house up like the Fourth of July. But I sensed him when he was coming for you. We knew that we could never let anything like what happened to us happen to anyone, which is why you and Nick are so important. Not only could you keep us from extinction, but you could help us protect mankind from living under the same torture that Zillah endured. There are others out there who want to see you under their feet. With you, they would have the power to do it.

“You are everything, Sarah.” He lifted his hands from around her shoulders and cradled her head, his fingers threading into her long brown curls. “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, but please believe me when I tell you that I would die before letting anything happen to you. You mean too much.”

Sarah’s stomach tightened. She could feel her heart threatening to pound clear out of her chest.

“I won’t let you down,” she whispered. “I promise.”

Taris stared down into her face again, studying every inch of her skin, taking in every moment of that glorious flower and vanilla smell. He felt the heat beginning to well up in his abdomen, that same heat that flooded his system when he had fed from her. That excruciatingly blissful burn that coursed through him for so long that he had a perpetual erection just by tasting her. It was dangerous. The fact that she was sprawled out on top of him, soft and warm, left him teetering on the edge of madness. He vowed to himself that he wasn’t going to fight her anymore, that he wasn’t going to deny that he wanted her, but this was like playing with fire. It wasn’t just a physical need that he carried anymore. There was something deeper, flaming, within him.

It was as if they were meant to find each other. He realized how absolutely ridiculous it was, the notion of falling completely for someone whom he’d known for only a few days. But then again, vampires weren’t supposed to be real, either, and there he was.

With that brief moment of clarity, he gently pushed her off him and slid out from under the covers.

“Where are you going?” she asked quietly.

Still sitting on the edge of the bed, he tried to get his heart rate under control. Even more than that, he tried to shut off the fact that the smell of her skin and shampoo were still stuck in his nose, and every time he took a breath, his pants got that much tighter.

“I have to get out of here.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to touch you, Sarah, and by that I don’t mean just lying in this bed and holding you.” He spat the words out like fire. He quit fighting himself and took in another deep breath. “I want to kiss every inch of you. I want to know what it feels like to have your legs wrapped around me and your fingers clawing at my back. I want to know what my name sounds like echoing in my own ears when you scream it. I want to rip everything off you and bury myself so far inside of you that I can feel your soul squeeze me. I—” he ran agitated fingers through his still-wet hair and let out a long, slow breath.

As if the mattress was on fire, he hurled his body off the bed and walked to the door. His hand was on the doorknob, and he started to turn it but stopped himself.

“It’s not fair of me to spew all of that out, I know, but you asked, so I’m telling you.” He spoke while facing the door, afraid to look back at her. Regardless of how she felt about it or what she thought, the temptation to kiss her was becoming too palpable to ignore. “You and I have work to do. We can help each other and still keep a safe distance. It’s better this way. Lying there with you was probably not the best idea, so—”

“Taris,” her voice floated across the space between them, interrupting him. “Turn around and look at me when you babble.”

He let out a sigh, turned to face her, and was shocked to find she was no longer sitting on the bed where he’d left her but instead standing right in front of him. Her body was so close he could feel the heat radiating off her.

Slowly, she lifted her hands, her fingers running along the flat planes of his abdomen. Her nails traced along the length of him, and he felt goose bumps rise on his skin with every inch that she mapped. His breath became ragged, and he struggled to control it as she leaned in and pressed a soft kiss between his pecs. A moan from deep within his chest escaped of its own volition, and she did it again, only this time, she gave him a slow, languishing lick with her tongue.

“Sarah, you have to stop.”

* * *

She glanced up at him and her stomach knotted. A solitary fang was resting on the edge of his lip. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he had one of his hands clenching the back of his neck. It only made her want to press on. She’d wanted him from moment one, even when she thought he was kidnapping her. Something about him made her body hot and her panties a little more than uncomfortable. Never in her life had she wanted—no—needed a man the way she needed Taris. And, though she was terrified to admit it to herself, she knew she’d fallen so madly in love with him that it bordered on insanity. No, it was completely and utterly mad. Still, she couldn’t stop herself. It was as if some strange inner drive had taken over.

She pulled her lips away from his chest but pressed her breasts against him and trailed her fingers across his hard back. She applied more gentle pressure, digging her short nails into his skin. His reaction was immediate, and she felt his rock-hard erection pressing into her stomach.

“Sarah,” Taris’ deep, gravelly voice commanded her attention, and when she looked up, she caught her breath. His eyes were narrowed and dark, the amber hues turning an almost ruby red. His jaw clenched, his hands now buried deep in her hair. “Sex with me,” he paused and sighed, “with one of us, isn’t like regular sex. I mean, we don’t hurt each other or anything. It’s just that this is our first time together, and damn it, I’m fucking this up so bad. There’s…”