Dark Cravings (16 page)

Once I started kissing Micah, I couldn’t stop. Maybe it was
because I was moderately drunk, or maybe it was because each time Micah pressed
his mouth to mine, I lost a little bit more of myself.

I didn’t dare speak. Micah pulled out his wallet, threw some
cash on the counter and pulled me out of the bar without looking back. We were
barely out into the main section of the tunnel when Micah pushed me up against
the cold stone wall. I pulled him close. He pressed his mouth to mine and I
gave in to complete surrender. I had no idea how long we mingled there, lost in
each other.

I was breathless and panting, still silent, when he pulled
me from the wall and drew me through the maze of rooms to the exit. The
electric buzz of the guitar bouncing off the walls faded. The constant
push-pull of conversation disappeared. The rapid click-click of my heels
against the ground became nonexistent.

Outside the rain fell like a heavy, pounding beat against
the broken gravel road. If it was possible, the District looked even worse
through the haze of rain. Darkened and bowed wood blocked the windows of nearby
buildings. Rats scampered under awnings, clambering over each other to find
shelter. At least half an inch of dirty mud and gravel-laden water spilled over
the gutters and flooded the sidewalks.

The wind blew and the slant of pelting rain shifted
sideways. None of it mattered. The second we stepped into the storm, we were
drenched. We sprinted to the car, and each heavy thud of Micah’s boots against
the ground sent up a spray of water to splatter my legs.

In the dark, the black silhouette of Micah’s car was little
more than a shadow. The second we reached his car, his arms were around me. He
lifted me off the ground, spun me in one fluid movement until my back was
against the passenger door. Rain splattered off the roof, a heavy drum that matched
our heartbeats.

His hands were wet and slippery against my cheeks. Pulling
roughly, he tugged until our lips met, promising things I ached for. I clutched
at his wet shirt, desperate to have him closer. I never wanted him to let me
go. He slid his hands from my cheeks to my neck and then threaded his fingers
through the tangle of my wet hair.

He used one hot, rough hand to palm my thigh. Heat from his
touch spread and stopped the shivers of cold I hadn’t even noticed. Micah
pulled, urged my leg around his hip. He slid his hand up, up and oh god yes,
up. He cupped my sex, rubbed me with sure, deliberate strokes. I was on fire.
Pleasure warred with the tightening of my inner muscles. I was on the verge of
climax when, instead of sending me over, Micah gripped the crotch of my panties
and ripped.

My world spun. That was the only way to describe what was
happening, what Micah was doing to me. He pulled the tab on his zipper. The
rasp of metal sent a wave of goose bumps across my arms.

Micah pulled his mouth from mine. I opened my eyes and
pulled in breath after breath. Our gazes met, held.

“Tell me you want me,” he ordered.

“I want you.”

His cock slid along my opening.

“Do you want me to fuck you? Right now, right here?” he
asked, never breaking eye contact.

“Yes.”

He thrust. The thud of my head against the car only added to
my scream of fulfillment. My pussy clenched around his cock and Micah flexed
his hips to force his way through the contractions of my orgasm. The tight grip
of fingers against my hip bit harder and harder as he worked each inch of his
cock inside.

The victory was short-lived. The moment Micah was inside me
to the hilt, he pulled out. He rammed back inside. My second climax hit harder
than the first. Micah’s chest vibrated and I felt the growl before I heard it. He
used the hand still buried in my hair to clutch me tighter. He pulled my head
back and made me look at him as he fucked me.

The blue-green of his eyes began to illuminate. I wondered
if it was the alcohol, the orgasms or my lack of oxygen. Demon. Vampire Queen.
I couldn’t look away. Rain pelted my exposed shoulders. Water dripped down the
crevice between my breasts and slid down my stomach.

Micah closed his eyes and let go. His muscles bunched under
my roaming hands. The speed and power of his thrusts rocked the car. When
raindrops slid down his cheeks, it gave the illusion of tears. My heart broke.
As Micah came inside me, I went inside him.

The images I saw were tragic. Micah’s shoulders weren’t as
broad, the angle of his jaw wasn’t as severe. His long, loose limbs were gangly
and awkward. Tears streamed down his face and I watched him rock, back and
forth, back and forth, with a sobbing boy in his lap. Eli.

Micah had just buried his sister and now, now his mother was
dead by her own hand. I went deeper into the memory. I was no longer an
observer, I was Micah.

The shadow of an impossibly tall man stood in front of me. I
was so terrified. Disgust twisted my father’s thin face into an ugly mask when
he stepped into view. With each horrible word he said, spittle flew from his
mouth. I felt the wet sprinkle of his spit against my arms. I held Eli even
tighter. My father reeked of liquor. The more he drank, the crueler he became.
Would he hit me again? Would he try to hurt Eli this time? I would die before I
let Eli get hurt. Everyone in the entire world I loved was gone, dead—except Eli.

My dad screamed, “Get up, boy! Stop your fucking whining.
Men don’t cry! Your mother was good for nothing but lying on her back with her
feet in the air. Don’t you dare cry for your mother, she never loved you. The
day you were born she screamed and screamed for me to take you away. That’s
right, pussy boy, keep crying. I’ll give you something to cry about. Stand up
and fight like a man, fight like the hunter you’ll never be!”

Eli was ripped from my arms and tossed to the side like a
piece of trash. His grunt of pain drowned the sick crack of his head hitting
the floor. I leapt up, my arms trembling. The rage built. Something dark
whispered inside me. I let it out, let it all out and let the awful shadow
lurking inside me fly free.

The warm, soothing touch of Micah’s forehead against mine
brought me back to the present. I trembled from adrenaline and fear and all of
the other repressed emotions Micah kept locked so tightly in his head. Tears
poured down my face and I began to hiccup through the sobs.

“Shush,” he whispered. “Don’t cry. I didn’t mean to hurt
you. God, I’m sorry.”

I shook my head, clutched at him. His cock pulsed inside me,
reminded me how intimately we were still joined.

“You didn’t hurt me, I promise.” I opened my eyes and tried
to tell him what I was feeling, experiencing. I didn’t have the guts to explain
what I had seen.

“Don’t tell me this is a side effect of the liquor?” He
tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

He made a move to pull out of my body and I panicked. I dug
my nails into the back of his shirt and held him in place. “Don’t. Not yet.
Just a little longer.”

Micah stroked my cheek, thumbed away the tears and the rain
and probably my mascara. In a series of soft touches, he pressed his lips against
mine. He lingered there, in no hurry to leave or to deepen the connection. This
kiss was one we had never shared before.

I wanted so badly to tell him I understood about the
darkness inside him. I wanted to tell him I knew his secrets and that, despite
them, because of them, I loved him.

“I won’t leave,” Micah whispered against my mouth.

I understood what he was telling me. More so, I believed
him. I nodded, my own acknowledgment of the moment we’d just shared in the
seedy, abandoned, dirty streets of the district, up against his car no less.
Somehow, our situation made me smile.

Before I was ready, Micah slipped out of me. He zipped up,
smoothed down my skirt. When he picked up my ripped panties and put them in his
pocket, I thought I’d feel cheap, but the boyish grin he gave me erased the
embarrassment.

With an arm wrapped around my waist, Micah opened the passenger
door. I didn’t protest when he helped me inside or when he leaned over to
buckle my seat belt. This was Micah’s rendition of postcoital cuddling. Who was
I to deny the man?

The car roared to life and, with a mischievous grin, Micah
turned on his radio and pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

Over the incoherent screaming and overly aggressive guitar
solos, Micah had taken it upon himself to drown us in heavy metal. I think the
reason had less to do with his musical preference and more to do with avoiding
how fucked up our situation was. Micah was a demon. I was a vampire. By no
fault of our own, we had formed a bond that neither of us understood. So
instead of the life-altering conversation that had to happen sooner or later,
we talked about music.

Apparently, not all loud music was heavy metal. He had gone
on and on about Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Who in the hell
was Deep Purple? When I’d told him the name sounded like a vibrator, he’d
looked at me in disgust.

When Micah tuned in something called Napalm Death, the trip
home got a whole lot longer. It was outright noise. The second the car stopped,
I was out of the door and standing in the rain. My eardrums were never going to
be the same.

I was still wiggling my finger in my ear when we stepped
over the second unconscious body in the stairwell of his apartment building.
The stench of vomit, whiskey and urine was enough to get my gut roiling. I was
never drinking again.

I asked the question I had been wondering since yesterday. “How
in the hell did you ever manage to get laid in this dump? Did you always go
back to her place or what?”

Micah stopped, looked at me with some expression I couldn’t
name. Had I hurt his feelings?

“What? It’s disgusting in here,” I said. “You cannot argue
with that.”

“Why do you keep insinuating I’m some kind of man whore?” He
sounded genuinely insulted.

It was my turn to look at him. “I’ve heard some of Eli’s
stories about your sordid history.”

“The drunken bar fights and nameless women were a long time
ago.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

He finger-combed his hair into spikes, flicked the excess
water to the ground.

“Believe it or not, but the moment I met you, my sex life
came to an abrupt halt.”

He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was. “You mean to
tell me that you haven’t had sex in eight months?” I paused. “Before me, that
is.”

“It really isn’t any of your business.” We made it up the
last flight of stairs.

“Since I’m the one you’re fucking, I think yeah, it kind of
is my business.”

We stopped in front of his apartment. After unlocking the
door, he looked up. “Are we about to have the relationship talk?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“Fine. Yes. Whatever.” Micah turned back to the door. “I
liked you better when you were drunk,” he mumbled while turning the knob.

The moment we stepped inside, an otherworldly presence
assaulted me. The scent of cloves choked the room. I reached for the knife I’d
strapped to my thigh and found it gone. Damn it. I didn’t remember Micah
disarming me.

“Castro,” Micah said, in a cool, calm voice.

I followed Micah’s gaze. With his legs crossed, a black
cigarette balanced between two fingers and an arm tucked beneath his head, the
demon Micah referred to as Castro was lounging in Micah’s bed. The man, at
least that was what he looked like, had a satisfied smile on his face. He was
positively gorgeous. The look he wore fit right in with the rumpled sheets. It
took me a moment of staring to realize that under the pinstripe silk suit
clinging to every muscled inch of his body, his skin was…smoking. The curling gray
haze wasn’t just coming from the tip of his cigarette. The smoke drifted out
from beneath the cuffs at his wrists and the open V of his crisp white shirt.
Castro was, literally, smoking hot.

“Micah,” I asked in my most reserved tone, “why is there a
demon lord in your bed?”

Castro’s grin widened to show the straight white set of his
teeth.

“Hell if I know.” Micah looked at the demon in question. “Why
are you in my bed?”

Castro sat upright and swung his long legs over the side of
the mattress. His every move was fluid and graceful and I found myself a bit
mesmerized. For years, Roy had gone on and on about demon lords and how
dangerous they were. Now I had one right in front of me. The power radiating from
him was unreal. The energy he created was almost intoxicating.

I looked closer and tried to figure out what was so familiar
about him. I didn’t encounter smoking demons all the time, so that wasn’t it.
His hair was dark and long and tied back with a black silk string, just a
little darker than his hair. When he stood and came just a foot shy of touching
the ceiling, I tilted my head back in amazement.

“Close your mouth,” Micah hissed into my ear.

Lustful thoughts began to pop in my mind and I had no reasonable
explanation for it. My mouth went dry and my palms were sweaty. My heart
palpitated. Next to me, I caught Micah rubbing the center of his chest and
giving Castro a murderous glare.

“Stop screwing with her.” Micah’s tone was dangerous and
predatory.

A rich caress of laughter left Castro’s mouth. Oh, what a
nice mouth it was.

“I apologize.” Castro’s voice was husky, tinged with a faint
British accent. “I find myself with a lack of control that hasn’t happened in
decades. Your hunter is quite delicious. I don’t suppose you would mind
sharing?”

“She isn’t your type.” Was Micah referring to the comment
about Castro and bloodsuckers? I was a little offended.

Castro glanced pointedly at me, allowing his gaze to move
over my breasts and hips. It took all of my willpower not to fidget.