DarkInnocence (3 page)

Eli was one of few people outside of my immediate family who
knew about my eidetic memory, so we were both aware I knew exactly what he’d
said.

He shook his head and the fire brightening his eyes dimmed.
“I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry.” He lifted his hand and cupped my cheek
in his large palm. His voice dropped to just above a whisper. “This isn’t you,
Hannah.”

I slapped his caress away. “And you aren’t you.”

He cupped my hip. Heat melted through the fabric of my coat
and it almost felt like he was touching me skin to skin. He pulled me into his
body. Before I could protest, his soft, full mouth was moving against mine. I
gasped. Eli took advantage and swept his tongue inside my mouth with the same
dominance he’d shown the last time he’d kissed me.

For one split second, I was tempted to give in to him. To
lose myself in his arms. To unbutton my coat and guide his hand between my
thighs. Maybe with Eli I’d actually like it. Maybe I’d even have an orgasm,
something no one had ever given me. Then I remembered the woman and what they’d
been doing less than ten minutes ago. I shoved him away and wiped my mouth,
hoping to hell his tongue hadn’t been in her vagina.

“Don’t do that again.” I scooted out from between my dresser
and his body. Faster than should be possible in three-inch heels I grabbed my
stuff and fled. Eli didn’t follow.

I took out my phone from my purse as I exited the house via
the kitchen door. I bypassed the ten missed calls I had, most from Mr.
Restricted, one from my uncle Roy, and hit a familiar number. He picked up on
the fifth ring, sounding out of breath.

“I was starting to think you were avoiding me,” he panted.

Surely Dante wouldn’t pick up if he was having sex. Right?
“Um.” I fumbled for a moment and struggled to juggle the phone and the steering
wheel.

His deep chuckle drifted through the phone and straight
between my thighs. “I haven’t heard your sweet voice in three days and all I
get is an ‘um’? You speak more than a dozen languages fluently. You can do
better than that.”

I drew in a deep breath. “I wasn’t avoiding you.” I was so
avoiding him. “Just getting my shit together. Are you at home?”

“Yup. You caught me in the middle of working out. I’ve got a
shift at the Vault in about three hours.”

Most men who were bouncers went to a bar or a nightclub. Not
my lion. The Vault, a labyrinth of subterranean tunnels and rooms, was a
dimension of hell. It was also a refuge for benign demons who wanted to live in
peace.

“I get crap cell reception in the house, did I lose you
sweetheart?” he asked.

It was now or never. Sweat made my palms slick. “I’m here.
Can I, ah, come over?”

“Sure. I’ll finish up and jump in the shower. The door will
be unlocked, just come in and make yourself at home. We can have dinner
together.”

We said our goodbyes and I pulled onto the highway that cut
through a forest of evergreen trees. The twenty-minute drive to Dante’s house
felt as if it took hours. My skin crawled with anxiety and anticipation the
closer I got. I parked behind his truck and shut off the engine. I withdrew the
medicine bottle from my pocket, stared at the little evil pills through the see-through
plastic and thought about popping two.

No. This, whatever was about to happen, was something I
wanted to feel.

I shoved the bottle into my backpack and got out of the car.
My heels clicked over the concrete driveway and for some reason I got this
image in my head of a hammer hitting nails along an old-fashioned wood coffin.
The sound was ten times louder than it should have been. I drew in a breath as
the knot in my stomach cinched tighter and tighter.

I knocked once and winced at the stinging pain in my
knuckles from where I’d clocked Julian. There was no movement from within the
house so I twisted the knob and silently opened the unlocked door. A muffled,
echoing cascade of water filled the house and I followed the sound into Dante’s
bedroom. Maybe this was better. I hadn’t really thought out my plan anyway. I’d
probably chicken out if I had to stare him in the eyes and strip in front of
him.

His room was tidy and sparse, very manly just like the rest
of his house. The walls were a dark gray and matched the carpet. There was a
large bed dominating the center of the room with a nightstand on either side. I
fingered one of the hardwood posts on the bed and curled my hand around it. I
gave it a little tug. Solid. I wondered if he’d ever tied anyone up here.
Probably.

With shaking hands, I unbuttoned my jacket and let it fall
to the floor in a heap. For once, my actions were completely selfish. I didn’t
want to be numb. I didn’t want to pretend. I wanted Dante. Seducing him seemed
the best way to achieve my goal. Tingles hit me from head to toe and even
though I still heard the rushing water, I glanced at the partially closed
bathroom door to make sure I was still alone.

Cool air drifted in from an open window and I shivered as my
skin puckered. The shower shut off and the background noise disappeared. Crap.
I hurried to slide my panties down my thighs and step out of them. The heels, I
decided, were staying on.

I crawled onto the mattress and positioned myself in the
middle of his bed with my hands above my head in a submissive posture.
Contrasted against the black cashmere blanket, my pale skin and blonde hair
painted what I hoped was an alluring picture if Dante was willing to overlook
the bags under my eyes. Damn. Maybe I should have tried to put on some makeup.

Before the torture, I’d found bondage/submission—by secondhand
research only—interesting, like something I might want to experiment with one
day. The concept of trusting someone enough to give him or her full reign over
your body sounded amazing. Too bad now the thought of restraints brought me
back to the dark, haunted asylum and the vivid memories I couldn’t get rid of.

Dante strolled out of the attached bathroom in a cloud of
steam. Water dripped from his hair and rolled down the thick muscles on his
chest and abs. Holy shit. A towel wrapped around his hips and showed a hint of
hairy thigh when he walked right by me without even a glance.

Five large, slightly puffy lines crossed his back and I knew
that was where the shape shifter who’d forever changed him had infected him.
Halfway to his dresser Dante stopped. In slow motion, he turned. His gaze met
mine before dipping to take in the way I tucked my lip between my teeth. Heat
flared in his golden eyes, darkening them. He lowered his head, and just as
slowly as he’d turned, he drank me in. Dark, puckered nipples. The indent of my
stomach. Tattoo. The light hair between my parted thighs.

My heart hammered in my chest and I held my breath. Dante
said nothing, only continued to stare at my pussy that grew wet and swollen
under his attention. He swiped his tongue over his lower lip and my sex
clenched. Moisture leaked from my core and I fought not to squirm. My clit
throbbed with the sudden rush of blood.

His nostrils flared as if he were taking in the scent of my
arousal. A wave of touchable energy filled the room and I swear I almost
spontaneously combusted. How would it be when he finally crossed the room and
touched me? Would he kiss me first? Play with my nipples? Or would he simply
remove his towel and shove his big, hard cock—

“Is this your jacket on the floor?” His rasping voice came
out in a tone I’d never heard before. There was a touch of anger mixed with
something unnamable.

I nodded with what felt like my heart in my throat. He
walked over, picked it up. Dante clutched the fabric, his knuckles whitening from
the strain of holding it so tight. Three seconds went by before black wool
sailed through the air and landed on my stomach.

“Get dressed,” he ordered.

Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I sat up and held the
scratchy material over my naked body. My hands shook and my vision blurred.
“What?”

“You heard me just fine.” His jaw tightened, relaxed and
then went hard again. “Put on the jacket, Hannah.”

He didn’t want me. The shredded pieces of my dignity I’d
tentatively pieced together over the last few days scattered at his bare feet.

Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and blurred my vision. I
shrugged into the jacket without meeting Dante’s burning-hot gaze. Humiliated,
I scooted off his bed and clutched the jacket closed. I didn’t even bother with
my underwear. I went straight for the door.

“Hannah,” Dante said in a soft voice, the one he used when I
was in the middle of a mental breakdown. At this very second, I hated him for
knowing me so well.

I wiped the moisture from my cheeks and tried to brush past
him when he moved to block the door. He grabbed my arm, stopping me in my
tracks.

I looked from his hand to his handsome, masculine face. His
touch, once comforting and safe, was now tarnished. His rejection made me feel
like the slut I’d become over the last few weeks. Disgust curled inside my
stomach. “Don’t touch me.”

He let go immediately. No questions, no protests. My heart
shattered. One more rejection. If he’d truly wanted me, he wouldn’t have let
go. More tears filled my eyes as my battered soul broke a little bit more.

“We need to talk about this, darlin’.”

“Why? So you can tell me how much you don’t want me? I get
it. I threw myself at you and you’re not into it. Really, it’s fine.”

I shook my head and hated the tears that refused to stop. I
hated the hard pit in my stomach. I hated myself for being so stupid. Dante was
fifteen years older than me—he probably viewed me as a child. His kid sister. I
wished the floor would open and swallow me whole.

He followed me out into the hall, into the living room. I
barely saw the details. Brown couch. Large TV. Dark coffee table.

“It’s not fine,” he growled. “Damn it. Will you stop a
minute and let me explain.”

At the front door I paused for only the time it took to
twist open the knob. My heels click, click, clicked down the sidewalk. Yup.
Nails in a coffin. Dante, still in only his towel, stalked behind me.

“Hannah, stop.” His deep voice boomed and drew the attention
of the kids playing in their front yard across the street.

I opened my driver’s-side door, thankful I hadn’t locked it,
and slid inside.

We had a brief wrestling match over the door. I pulled it
shut. He ripped it open. I glared and pushed at more tears. “What are you going
to do, force me to stay?”

My words, carelessly thrown out there, resonated. We both
knew I’d been kidnapped, tortured and forced to run naked through a labyrinth
of haunted halls not long ago. Dante’s face darkened with frustration and I
knew he would never force me to do anything.

He lifted his hands in the air, as if done with me, and
stepped back. “You want to go, then go.”

One more thing I’d ruined in my life. I threw the car into
reverse, backed out and sped down the street in a squeal of tires. Through the
moisture filling my eyes, the road blurred.

I didn’t try to slow down until I got onto the highway. I
pressed on the brake and the pedal squished all the way down without an ounce
of resistance. The car didn’t slow.

“Shit.” I pumped the pedal harder, tried to build up
pressure as the manual Roy had made me read when I got my driver’s license
instructed.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly enough for my knuckles
to show white. Beneath my palms, sweat gathered. My heart pounded. The road
ahead of me curved on a down-facing slope and while I frantically pumped the
faulty pedal, my car gained momentum and the trees whizzed by. The speedometer
crept from seventy to eighty.

Wonderful. Amazing. This was the single best day of my
entire life!

I released my right hand from its death grip on the wheel
and clutched the automatic gear shifter instead. Sweat beaded beneath my thick
wool coat. My heart beat hard enough that I thought I might be going into
cardiac arrest.

I pressed the button and downshifted from drive to third
gear. A horrible noise filled the car as gears ground against each other and I
winced. The sharp, chemical scent of burnt rubber filled the car. I down
shifted again, this time going from three to two—flying by two other
vehicles—as the car shook and slowed a little more. I kept down shifting until
I had the car in first gear and made my way to the shoulder of the road.

I blew out a breath, took hold of the emergency break and
lifted slowly. Through the rear-view mirror smoke, dirt and debris billowed
from the rear brakes. My car slowed to a rocky stop on the side of the highway.

Stunned, I placed both damp hands on the wheel and stared
blindly out the window. The only noises were my pounding heart and the other
cars blurring past me on the highway. Then I heard something else. A buzzing.
My cell.

The darkness and isolation closed around me. I lifted a
shaky hand to flick on the overhead lights. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Almost as if I
was in a trance, I reached into my purse, grabbed my phone and answered it.

I swallowed. “Hello.”

“Car trouble, Ms. Grey?” Mr. Restricted’s voice was as low
and as creepy as I remembered.

My blood chilled instantly and all the sweat clinging to my
skin froze. Was I being watched?

“What do you want?” I asked and searched the darkness for
another parked car or a lone person walking through the trees surrounding the
highway. The beams of my headlights showed nothing but particles of dust in the
lights. I hit the button to lock the doors. The click didn’t reassure me.

“Everything,” he purred.

“Stop calling me,” I growled.

A rolling chuckle sounded through the line and made me sick
to my stomach. “You see, I can’t do that. I see you, Hannah. I smell you—feel
you. Soon you’ll feel me too. The heels were a nice touch. Black is a beautiful
color on you.” He moaned. “The second you slid your pink little panties down
your legs my cock got hard. Watching you crawl across the bed, it was like you
knew I was watching, stroking, seconds away from com—”

I hit the end button in the middle of his sentence. Holy
fuck. I was going to throw up. This pervert had been, probably still was,
watching me. A screeching noise, like nails on metal, drew my attention to the
passenger side of the car. I stared through the dark and saw nothing. While my
head was turned, something or someone, tapped on my side window and I screamed,
leaping a good foot in the air.

Skin ice-cold, heart hammering, brain supplying images of
Lizbeth and her electric-blue eyes filled with sadistic pleasure, I turned to
look out the window without wanting to. Through the bloody, dripping heart now
painted on the glass, the silhouette of a man in a long trench coat sauntered
down the road. Then vanished.

I could hardly navigate my phone through my shaking hands.

“It’s about time you called me back!” My sister’s voice
washed over me and the fear and adrenaline clashed together. She let out an
amused snort. “I cannot believe you punched Julian in the face. So awesome.”

I clutched my phone tighter, afraid it would slip from my
clammy, trembling fingers. “I’m in trouble.”

Her tone sobered. “Where are you?”

“I-I-don’t know. On the side of the road. My brakes stopped
working, and—”

“Holy shit, Hannah, are you okay? Did you crash?”

“No. I got it stopped, but he’s here, Ella. He’s watching
me.”

“Who is ‘he’?” she asked.

I gripped the phone tighter and felt like crying. “Mr.
Restricted.”

“What? Hannah, you aren’t making sense. Did you hit your
head?”

“No!” Tears rolled down my cheeks. I brought my legs up on
the seat, bent them and curled an arm around my calves. “Someone’s been
stalking me, I thought it was a prank, but…it isn’t.” I rocked back and forth,
bouncing my gaze from the rear to the side-view mirrors. “I’m scared.”

“Is he there now?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I turned in a frantic circle and
checked out the back window, no longer trusting the mirrors. “He vanished…” But
if he were a vampire he could just as easily reappear whenever he felt like it.
Lizbeth had proven that.

Male voices sounded in the background, Micah and Eli, but I
couldn’t make out what they were saying. Ella came back on the line. “I’m going
to try to phaze to you, hang on, sweetie, okay?”

I nodded, switched the phone from one ear to the other, and
realized she couldn’t see me. “Yes, okay, hurry up.”

Seconds later, out of the darkness, my sister popped into
existence. She took a single step and stumbled into the side of my car. I was
out of the door and in her arms before I could blink.

Even though I was several inches taller than she was, Ella
held me close, pressed my face into her neck and stroked my hair. “Shush, it’s
okay, I’m here now. You’re going to be fine. I’m not going to let anyone hurt
you.”

“Everything is so messed up!” I wailed. And then I
emotionally vomited all over her. My words came out in a jumbled, confusing
mess. “Lizbeth is haunting me from her grave. I’ve been doing drugs, drinking,
popping pills and sleeping with random frat guys. I’m a slut. I hate our house.
I hate Eli who, if you haven’t noticed, is fucking his way through the
district! Then, to top it off, I totally threw myself at Dante tonight and he
rejected me.”

“Oh, honey.” Ella held me tighter and I cried even harder.
She sniffled and her shoulders trembled as if she were crying too. “I knew
something was wrong, but I didn’t know how bad it was. When you needed me the
most I wasn’t there for you. I’m a selfish bitch.”

The knot of guilt and stress loosened its tight, suffocating
grip around my throat. I should have known Ella wouldn’t judge me.

“It’s not your fault,” I blubbered. “I lied to you, kept
lying to you. I could have asked for help and I didn’t.”

We clung to each other. The more I cried, the better I felt.
Some people cut to release the pain lurking in their veins. If I hadn’t been so
squeamish about blood, I might have tried it. Turns out, what I needed was my
big sister and her bony shoulder to cry my eyes out on.

Our sisterly moment was officially ruined when some man
yelled out his car window at sixty-miles an hour, “Fuck ya, lesbos goin’ at on
the side of the road!”

I looked at Ella and she looked at me. We both started
laughing.

She wiped away the last of my tears. “You threw yourself at
Dante?”

I stepped back to let her see the jacket I hadn’t managed to
button while driving and having a nervous breakdown. Through the gap in
material, my pale skin practically glowed.

“Oh, my God!” She clutched the coat closed and buttoned it
quickly. “You’re totally naked under there.”

“I feel so pathetic.” I swiped at a new tear. “He was in the
shower, so I got undressed and waited for him in his bed. At the time, it
seemed foolproof, ya know? What man doesn’t want a naked woman in his bed? He
saw me and you know what he said?”

Ella shook her head and I sniffled.

“He told me to put my jacket back on!”

“He didn’t!” she said in outrage.

God, I loved her. The tension in my shoulders eased just a
little bit. “He did! I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life. I don’t
know how I’m ever going to look at him again.”

The second I said the words, a large silver truck pulled off
the freeway and onto the gravel shoulder. Oh, no. Dust from the pulverized pebbles
plumed into the air and I coughed to clear it from my lungs. With horror, I
turned as Dante got out of his truck, slammed the door and stalked to us.

He wore a pale-green shirt stretched across his muscular
chest and arms. The faded blue denim covering his legs hugged his thighs and
made my mouth water.

My sister—god bless her condemned soul—stepped in front of
me.

“Move outta my way, Ella,” Dante growled.

My fearless sister got right in his face, as much as she was
able to considering he was more than a foot taller than she was. “You’ve hurt
her enough. Get in your truck and go home, I’ve got this.”

“Oh, that’s rich.” He laughed. “You’ve got this? How fucking
convenient.” His eyes smoldered with anger and he stepped into the finger my
sister pointed at him. “Where in the hell have you been for the last two months
when your sister was puking her guts out because she’d drunk too much or took
too many pills? Where were you when she let those assholes use her? Where were
you when she woke up in the middle of the night screaming ’cause Lizbeth haunts
that fucking house you moved her into?”

“That’s enough, Dante!” I yelled and stepped in front of
Ella to glare up at him.

His rant made it seem like he cared about me. My stupid girl
hormones couldn’t keep up. Either he wanted me or he didn’t.

Unaffected by my anger, he pointed at me. “And you,” he
said, his nostrils flaring, “are the most infuriating woman I’ve ever met. You
drive me fucking crazy.”

He cupped the back of my head and yanked me against him.
Before I could ask what in the hell he was doing, he grabbed my hair, pulled so
my face tilted up and smashed his lips against mine.