Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6) (18 page)

“No, this is not how you will die,” he said and looked directly into her eyes and meant every word he had spoken.  Her lashes fluttered, blinking back tears, and
a pang of guilt lanced his heart.  He had failed another woman with eyes like hers and her life had been cut short, hers and his unborn child’s.  For reasons he could not quite understand, he vowed to ensure Anna’s survival.  He wanted her to live a long life, for herself, and for a woman she’d never met.

“I’m sorry,” she surprised him by saying.

“What?” he said and had been thrown completely off kilter.  “What’re you sorry for?”

“For what I said earlier,” she said and her voice was as warm and silken as summer rain.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The soldier comment,” she said and jogged his memory.  “You are still a soldier, a very honorable one.”

“Anna,” he started, but she interrupted him.

“And thank you,” she said.  “Thank you for what you did.  My mother and I would have been like the mannequins rig
ht now, in pieces on the living-room floor.”  Tears streamed down her cheeks and she brushed them with the back of her hand.  Jack knew there was something he should say but hadn’t the slightest clue what it was. 

A low rumble of thunder rolled and a
faint breeze stirred the treetops then blew Anna’s dark curls from her face.  The wind carried the earthy, coppery scent of impending rain, and blood.  Rain would fall and blood would be shed.  But Jack would do his damnedest to be sure Anna stayed clear of it.

“Come on,” he said finally.  “We have to go.  They’re coming for us.”

Anna nodded and moved to the border of the roof before climbing down the trellis quickly and with impressive dexterity. 

“Who should I go with?
” she asked when he stood beside her on the grass in front of her house. 

“Come with me.  You and your mother need to come with me,” he said.

He slid behind the steering wheel of the Bronco and a flash of lightning ripped across the leaden sky, lighting the entire horizon for a split-second.  When the sky grew dim again, the first raindrop fell.

James
turned to him from the passenger seat and said, “This is going to be one hell of a storm.”

Anna, her mother and Alexandra were silent in the back
seat, as if they held their breath.

“Yes, yes it will be,” Jack agreed and prayed they would weather the storm, and the rest of the night.

Chapter 14

A rumble
of thunder shook the walls of Lord Terzini’s compound, rattling shelves behind him as well as a plate with silverware he’d left on his desk.  But he did not react in the least.  He did not even flinch.  Instead, he stared out the window of his bedroom for several moments, too consumed by fury and frustration, as questions turned in his mind over and over.  In the distance, lightning struck and lit the skyline and thunder rolled again.  The stunning vision it produced grabbed his attention for a split-second and the sound that accompanied it brought to mind the growl of an angry beast, snarling and roaring a ferocious warning.  But he knew that no beast lurked among the trees.  He was the only predator about to bare his teeth.

“
Predator,” he said to no one.  He liked the sound of the word as he spoke it aloud.  It sent a small shock of joy slinking down his spine.  He was a predator, a mighty predator poised to conquer the world.  Few had set their sights on such a lofty goal in the past.  None had succeeded.  But he would.  That is, if Gabriel would be brought in sooner rather than later. 

Gabriel
, a lone creation that lingered like mildew, had been put into existence by his predecessor and remained a constant annoyance, one he longed to remove permanently.  He’d dispatched a team to find and capture him hours ago, but had yet to hear from them.  The fact that there hadn’t been any communication did not bode well for his forces in the field, or his current cause.  And that absence of communication between him and the team made him believe that Gabriel had aligned himself with more people than he’d originally thought.  Who would help him?  How many were there?  Had he and his possible militia thwarted the attack and killed the members?  More question swirled in his head than even a mind as sharp as his could process.  He needed answers, and only one person in his company could possess them. 

Terzini clenched his fist so tightly his fingernails bit into his palms.  Melissa knew more than she’d let on earlier.  He was sure of it.  She could even be in on a possible ambush plot as nothing up to this point made much sense in his brain.  She’d been caught all too easily by Zogg, an idiotic beast that had been controlled by his hunger, and now, she was nestled in the confines of his command center.  Why?  The question burned in his mind.  Why had she been left vulnerable?  Why had Melissa been left in an
open field without protection?  Clearly, she had not been protected.  If she had been, Zogg would have been killed and she would not be in a chamber down the hall from his.  The very real possibility existed that she was a strategic player.  And he would find out exactly what she knew.

He fled from his room, from his view of the late-night storm approaching, intent upon
acquiring information by any means necessary.  He swept past the armed soldiers he’d created and down a corridor he’d expanded in a house he’d transformed into a veritable fortress.  He, and no one else, had designed it.  Everything in sight was his – either formed by his hand or by another’s at his imagining.  Now that Melissa was being held there, she was his as well.  She would not be permitted to withhold anything from him.  She would serve him if he had to force her to her knees himself.  She would bow to him.

His hammering heart became the only sound he heard.
  His footsteps were muffled by thick carpeting, and he was grateful for it.  He liked the excited pounding he heard in his ears as he raced down the long hallway to the locked door of her room.  It had been a long time since a woman drew such a reaction from him, and never a human woman.

He fumbled with the keys on
his key ring until he came to the small silver one that opened the padlock on her door.  His belly bubbled as if filled with a carbonated drink as he turned the doorknob.  But every bubble burst at once when he saw that half of Melissa’s body was wedged through a narrow window high on the wall.  He’d never imagined one could reach the window to open it, much less be thin enough to fit through it.  She was cunning, far more cunning than he’d given her credit for.  Fortunately, he enjoyed crafty prey.

Without delay and without uttering a word, he descended upon her.  All the while, a new feeling began to arise within him.  He grasped her bare legs and felt their silky smoothness beneath his fingers as he yanked her, hard, from the window. 

Melissa cried out.  He did not know whether it was a cry of fear or pain or both, and he did not care.  Truthfully, he hoped it had been a combination of the two, for both made his insides stir electrically.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked her through clenched teeth and allowed his hand to slide up her thigh as he lowered her to the floor below.  “Stupid girl!” he spat and saw that her cheeks blazed.  Was she embarrassed?  He certainly hoped she was.  Shame was a new layer of enticement he had never fully expl
ored.  But from what he could tell, it was an alluring endeavor worth examining.

Melissa tipped her chin up arrogantly and met his gaze.  Defiance sparkled in her emerald eyes and made his pulse quicken. 

He smiled his most sinister smile and said, “Yes, such a stupid girl.  Forty armed men wait at the bottom of a twenty-foot drop.  If you survived the fall, they would blow you to pieces.”

One eyebrow ticked and arched fleetingly before she answered.  “I’ll take my chances with them rather than stay here with you,” she hissed.

Her insolence, her audacity, was doing something to him that had never been done.  Feelings arose within him so charged and fraught with erotic energy, he did not know how to channel them.  He did not know what to say or how to react.  Every cell inside him seemed to be firing at once, frantic and frenzied.  He wanted her, in so many ways he wanted her, wanted to caress her skin and smell her hair before he took her against her will. He wanted to hurt and violate her.  So he balled his fist tightly and launched it forward.  It met with the firm flesh of her abdomen and she clutched her midsection.  She doubled over before falling to her knees. 

A
shudder of elation shook inner parts of him he never knew existed.  He stepped close to her, looming over her like the god he was and said, “Now you are going to tell me what you know.  No more of this cat-and-mouse game you play.”  He stroked her hair and was pleased to learn that it felt as smooth and satiny as it looked.  “How many men were at the farmhouse and who is with Gabriel?” he questioned her.  He knew Gabriel must be traveling with a band of highly skilled men if they had, in fact, taken out the team he’d sent.

“You didn’t get him, did you?” she wheezed as she struggled to catch her breath. 

She had the nerve to demand answers of him!  Her impudence knew no bounds!  And while it made need twist tightly below his navel, he needed to show her it was he who would ask the questions.

“He’s too smart for you, just like I said,” she
gasped, still reduced to stooping beneath him. 

Her words, though hollow and fruitless,
caused an unexpected rush of rage to him to flood his core.  He lashed out instantly and slapped her cheek.

“Enough of your disrespect, Melissa,” he sneered.  “You will tell me what I want to know.”

Her hands moved from her belly to her face. He knew both were sore and tender, both injuries he’d inflicted.  She was on her knees and had placed one hand on the carpet while the other cupped her cheek.  Her long hair hung in curtains around her face and her overall appearance was inviting. 

“A small army is at the farmhouse,” her voice distracted
the debauched images of her swirling in his mind.  “They are probably on their way here as we speak.”

“See now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” he said and knelt beside her. 

His proximity to her allowed him to catch a faint whiff of whatever lotion they’d used on her skin.  It smelled of berries and roused intimate parts of him.  Bowed as she was on all fours he had a clear view down the neckline of the satin dress she wore.  He glimpsed the creamy flesh of her firm, fair mounds.  He wanted to see more, wanted to see the rosy buds at their center but would need to remove her dress to do so.  He reached his hand out to touch her shoulder, to slip the thick strap from it and sneak a peek of her delectable body, but she snapped her head up, whipping his face with tendrils of her hair.

The smell of her hair and the feel of it grazing his cheek nearly caused him to shatter into a million euphoric pieces then and there. 

“You only have forty men.  Gabriel has more than that,” she said and licked her plump lips.  “You’re screwed and you don’t even know it.”

“I have a thousand men close by that I have already ordered to come plus the forty inside the confines of my fences.  I think I’m pretty safe,” he said assuredly. 

He knew he probably should have responded to her with a sterner tone, that she’d insulted him, but for the life of him, he could not tear his eyes from her heaving bosom long enough to get angry.  The rise and fall of her chest was far too distracting.  It brought to mind his body rising and falling above hers.  Need twisted in his groin so powerfully, it was almost painful.  Unable to withstand it a second longer, he lunged at her and tackled her to the ground.  He tore the flimsy fabric of her dress and delighted at the sight of her breasts, the perfect pink peaks at their center.  He wanted to bite them and make her wince in pain.  He ran his finger over one and watched as it stiffened at his touch, at his command, and Melissa froze, eyes wide, brows knitted and mouth partially agape.  He wished she would moan and writhe in pleasure.  After all, it was a rare treat to be with a man as powerful as he.  But she did not seem to grasp that concept as she promptly began screaming and swearing at him. 

“No!  Stop! Get the fuck off me!” she shouted as she thrashed. 

Her cursing only incensed him further.  He sat on her legs, effectively subduing them, and gripped the hem of her dress then lifted it.  She kicked and scratched and pulled at his hair, but he remained undaunted.  She wanted him.  She just did not know it yet.  In the moments to come, he would show her what she’d been missing, what she truly wanted.  His breath caught in his chest and he felt his arousal peak, his climax drawing near, too near.  He held her throat with one hand and still, she slapped and clawed.  But he was oblivious of her attack.  His attention was fixed at the juncture where her thighs met. He unfastened his pants and felt his center of balance shift.  Melissa turned and managed to bring her knee up quickly.  Her knee landed squarely against his crotch and it was he who howled out.

“Damn it!” he said before the air was sucked from his lungs. 

“You disgusting troll!” Melissa spat as she scrambled to her feet.

Suddenly, the fact that her bare breasts were exposed no longer mattered.
She’d injured him, injured him physically, and injured his pride.  She’d insulted his appearance.  No one had ever insulted his appearance. 
No one
.