Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (4 page)

Live
, he snorted without amusement. Was that was he was doing? If you called working the days away at a
dead-end job,
drinking yourself into a drunken stupor just to catch a couple of hours of blessedly uneventful,
drea
m
less,
sleep, then yeah
,
he supposed he was
living.

“Er
ias,” a sweet female voice crooned.

Oh yeah, you could add bedding a different female every night to sate his body’s cravings to the list while you were at it. Shit, he couldn’t even fuck without seeing her face every damned time and feeling like a cheating bastard.

How long would the guilt last, he didn’t know. It had been nine hundred years,
fifty-
seven days, ten hours and
some-odd 
minutes. He’d stopped counting those, fina
l
ly. It was pointless. He no longer lived minute to minute. He had graduated second to second last year. Talk about
improvement.

He raised the beer in celebration of his achiev
e
ments and took a long draw.

Ice-cold water
splattered his legs soaking through his jeans and cooling his heated flesh a few more degrees. The copper behind his closed lids turned to shadows dotted with red/gold circles.  He grumbled, annoyed at the
intr
u
sion.

Eyes remaining shut tight, he brought his beer to his lips once again, draining its contents. He set the bottle down on the ground next to him, the clanking of glass against glass filling his ears as it joined its brothers. Hand reaching out, it unerringly found the cooler that seemed to have taken up permanent residence at his side over the last fifty years, and flipped open the lid.

“E
r
ias,” the female whined from above him. “Why don’t you come swim with me?”

“No, thanks,” his gruff voice rumbled.
Damn! Where was that beer?
He
shouted in his head as his fingers consistently found nothing but tiny squares of ice that burned against his heated
flesh. 
 

“I thought you brought me here because you wanted to spend some time together,” she whined some more. The cold dripping of
f
her soaked body became more of satur
a
tion as she positioned herself over him and straddled his waist.

Great, now his boxers were soaked too. Fucking nice.

Instead of snapping at her, he plunged his hand into the ice in full search and rescue mode. He had one more
left; he
was sure of it, he told himself as he counted back, reliving each bottle, each delicious swig that took him clo
s
er to his desired state of mind:
numb.

“The only thing you’re going to find in there is ice,” she said harshly. Then her voice morphed into a deep, throaty timber. “It would be a real shame to let it all go to waste.
Lucky
for you, I know a few ways to put it to good use.” She rose, tugging at his hands, urging him out of the plastic chair. “Come on, let’s go inside
,
big boy. I want to have some of that fun you promised me.”

Fun? Promised? First of all, E
r
ias never made promises. He knew better. He couldn’t keep them. Second, he never would have offered her
“fun."
Fun
was not a part of his vocabulary anymore. “I never promised you
—”

Erias glanced around too. It wasn’t the nicest of places he had stayed at over the last few years, decades. Made up mostly of concrete and asphalt
,
a few patches of grass and a couple of potted trees, the hotel boasted over
one hundred rooms with a view—
a distant view so small he wasn’t sure it wasn’t a mirage
—
o
f the ocean.
Twenty-four-hour 
room serv
ice and two Olympic sized pools—
one i
n
side and one outside
—
where they currently were. He was a man of simple n
eeds—
money in his pockets
,
which meant he needed a job, beer in his hand, and a bed to crash in. Use of a female body was just a distraction he liked to enjoy
on a
regular
basis, though
it brought him m
o
mentary, if not very little
,
pleasure. There wasn’t a single woman
who
could measure up to his beloved
Helena.

Looking up at the leggy blond, her drab brown eyes hard and
demanding,
peering down at him, her thinly mu
s
cled arms crossed over her too ample breasts. Surgically enhanced, they called them. Erias laughed to himself. His woman would have never needed such a thing. Her breast
s were perfect, created by the g
ods
,
surely. They fit into the palm of his hand, were soft and s
ilky. She had the sweetest rose-
colored nipples that beaded in anticipation whenever he touched her. The women he shacked up with thought the bags they had stuffed into their chests were an
improv
e
ment. 
 

Like the woman before him, they were more than a
handful,
and he knew, to hold them, to kneed them
,
would prove a waste of time and effort because in most cases, they wouldn’t feel his ministrations as they had lost all sensation the moment the knife made its
incision.

Eyes roving over her body, Erias soaked up the flat planes of her smooth stomach, the lack of curves a woman who had never bore a man’s child
would have,
and the lean, toned legs that went on for
miles.

Shooting her a challenging grin
, he patted his lap.
“Sure, outside sounds great.” A part of him was only ki
d
ding, thinking that surely she would pale a run screaming for the hills
,
releasing him from a bargain he was beginning to regret having made. The other part of him craved the danger, the idea that at any second they could be caught. Being around as long as he had, he found that sometimes a man needed to create his own challenges. Damned
g
ods. They had tricked him, twisting his words to suit their fancy. Proving to him once again why he had renounced his faith in the first place.

Searing cold shot through his chest, his breath caught in his throat. Erias looked down, sure he had been shot, or stabbed… with an icicle. What he found was a set of long fingers wrapped around a quickly melting ice cube, tracking a trail down his chest that both burned and cooled at once.

“You are so hot
,
baby,” she purred, leaning down and using her tongue to chase the trail of water as it raced toward the top of his pants. Her blond hair curtained his waist, tickling his skin as she made her way lower. He was only mildly attracted to her, but as she traced her the tip of her pink tongue around his navel, his stomach cringed and tightened and
suddenly; she
was the sexiest creature he had laid eyes on all day. In the next
breath,
she had his pants open and was fisting him, using her mouth in the wickedest of
ways.

Erias arched his hips. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, loving it when he felt himself hit the back of her throat. He fisted her
hair,
shoving her down harder, impa
l
ing her. Like a champ, she took it all, even groaning her own pleasure a few times. Her teeth gently scraped down his
shaft; her
tongue circled frantically on the
upturn,
and before he knew it, he felt the familiar build, felt himself thicken. Peeling his eyes open, he looked down, watching her take in every inch of him, her head bobbing up and down, his shaft
glistening, and
that was his
undoing.

Gnashing his teeth together so hard he thought he might chip a tooth, he exploded, spilling hot seed into her mouth. She swallowed everything he gave her, even licking him clean.

Stuffing himself back into his pants, Erias let his arms flop to his sides, and sighed, his body deliciously loose and rubbery. Damn, she was good.

Crawling up his body, she tried to lay down w
ith him. “What are you doing?” h
e
asked
sternly, placing his hands on her shoulders and pushing her back up.

“I thought…I
–
”
she stammered
,
her brows pulling down in
confusion.

“I know what you thought,
but honey,
you were wrong.” Ignoring
her
shocked expression, the hurt that poured from those round brown eyes, he pushed her to a stand and followed, guiding her toward the parking lot just beyond the
gates.

“But
–
”

He shook his head. “No buts, you knew the score when we got together. Just pleasure, nothing more.” He would ignore the fact that she had gained nothing from their arrangement. He’d gotten his and right now his only concern was getting th
is
woman out of his life. 

At the gate, she spun on him, her pale skin speckled and flushed with their recent actions, her eyes pleading. “But Erias, I thought we could,” she scratched a nail down his damp chest, “I don’t know, get to know each other be
t
ter.”

And this was where a few sweet words and too many drinks could get a guy into trouble. The only thing he was looking for was to get lost in a hot body for a couple of hours, not strings. Was that too much to ask? Apparently, because twice already this week he had to practically use a crow bar to pry the leeches off of him once he had his fill. He wanted to believe it was just his insanely gorgeous
mug; his
ripped abs and bulging biceps that drew the ladies in. And perhaps it was, but that wasn’t what made them fall under the false impression that he would offer them more than the original
bargain.

These days women were desperate for a man it seemed. They weren’t picky either. Any man would
do,
so long as they gave them a smile and the promise of a future. Getting them to spread their legs for him was almost too easy. Hardly a challenge at all. In the early years of his
e
x
istence,
the women wanted men
,
sure, but they had respect for themselves. They married out of necessity, but they loved too. His own marriage had been arranged. Erias hadn’t wanted to enter the marriage initially, had fought it tooth and nail because he thought he was in love with the
little red-
haired female two doors
down.
They shared stolen kisses
in alley
ways, touched with passion. She was his ev
e
rything. He would die without
her.

Until he met Helena.

Like a shy, delicate
flower, once
Eria
s laid eyes on
her; he
was smitten. Hair the color of chocolate fell below her tiny waist in thick waves. Sun kissed skin glowed like heaven, giving her a visible aura. Lips the color of rose pe
t
als, soft and pink, pouted sexily. Nimble fingers laced at her stomach and her
tucked into her chest
like a terrified child instantly endearing her to him. He hadn’t even known the color of her eyes until their wedding night because she wouldn’t look directly at
him. 
 

He remembered standing in their bed chambers, candles aglow all around them, making her skin shimmer
enticingly, the
scent of thunderstorms and sunshine filling his nose.  He approached her, cupping her chin and drawing her gaze up to him. Their first real meeting. Her breath hitched audibly, pleasing him more than words could say. He traced her cheek with his thumb, reveling in the satiny texture. Eyes the color of amber peered up at him, both afraid and
intrigued.

“Beautiful,” he whispered before leaning down and placing a
feather-light 
kiss on her lips.
Heaven
. He had died and gone to
heaven.

It was clear that she was inexperienced, her mouth out of sync with his. He guided her, teaching her how to move, what to do. He traced her lips with his tongue, gently darting it into her mouth before tentatively, she opened
,
allowing him greater access. And she was sweet, oh was she sweet. The heady taste of her set his blood to
boiling,
and he had to remind himself to move slowly lest he
frigh
t
ened
her
away.