Beyond the Dark (6 page)

"Poor Grace," he crooned, a hint of a rumble in his voice sending a shiver racing down her spine as he moved behind her. "Yes love, it's been a very hard night for you. Seeing your mate for what he is, for who he is, hasn't been easy." She felt his breath on her hair, then his hand as he smoothed it over her shoulder. "I had hoped to ease you into it."

"Ease me into what?" She tried to jerk away, but the hand that suddenly gripped her hip wasn't allowing that to happen. "Into murder? Not going to happen."

"Into this."

Her knees nearly buckled as his lips brushed across the nape of her neck, a hint of the damp warmth of his tongue stroking along it.

"Stop it, Matthias. You can't seduce me into approving what you've done."

"I don't care if you approve of me, Grace. I only care that you accept me."

Oh my God. His teeth raked over her neck.

Grace blinked, fought to clear her vision and to remain on her feet. Because that little scrape of his extended canines did nothing to return her common sense. On the contrary, it only dampened her panties further.

"Get away from me." She tore from his clasp, turning to face him furiously, fighting her arousal and the drugging pleasure his touch brought. "I don't want you to touch me."

"You're body is begging for my touch." He grinned as he sat down on the couch and began removing his boots.

"What are you doing? Put those back on." Shock dumbfounded her. He had murdered a man in front of her, and now he was undressing? As though it were normal?

"Come on, Grace." He flashed her a seductive smile. "I'm tired, and you're snarling. Let's take tonight to rest, and tomorrow we'll revisit this little disagreement."

"Little disagreement? You
killed
a man."

"He wasn't a man." Matthias shrugged as he set his boots to the side. "He was a monster."

"That doesn't make it right."

"And it doesn't make it wrong, either," he sighed, his expression flickering with regret. "It doesn't make the need for it any less. I don't have to like what I do to realize the fact that it has to be done. Now, let's go find the bed and try to rest."

He gripped her wrist and began drawing her through the house.

"I'm not sleeping with you."

"Fine, I'll sleep with you."

He tugged her behind him like a recalcitrant child, tugging at her arm and drawing her into the bedroom before locking the door behind them.

"Matthias, stop this." Frustration, fear, and arousal converged inside her as he finally released her. "You can't believe there's any way to fix this. Surely you can't."

She couldn't let him believe it could be fixed. The past weeks were over. They were gone. She would never forget the look on his face as he killed, and she couldn't forget how easily he had done it.

He pulled her suitcase from the bed and laid it on the nearby chair. Her frilly, girly bedroom had never held a man as intensely sexual and powerful as this one. He filled it with testosterone and stubbornness to the point that she was nearly choking on it.

"I'll find a way to fix it." He opened the suitcase and drew out the plain white, long summer gown and robe she had packed.

"Matthias." She stared back at him in confusion. "You're more logical than this." How could any one man be so stubborn? "You know you can't fix this."

"I know I don't have a choice." The gown and robe were flung at her, causing her to catch them in surprise as he stared back at her with furious intent. "What I found with you is too important, Grace. I won't let this destroy it."

She shook her head slowly. "It was destroyed the minute you pulled that trigger."

"The minute I made certain another Breed never died. The minute I ended the agony for untold mates in the future that he would have captured. The minute I fucking destroyed a nightmare," he snarled. "I should do as you ask and fucking walk away from you now, because by God, you have to be the most judgmental, self-righteous creature I have ever known."

Grace's lips parted in shock. "That's not true."

"Isn't it?" He flicked her a hard, heated look, his lips curling in a little half sneer. "What did you do when you learned of the lives the Breeds led? When you read your little news report on your PDA and went about your life? Did you think,
Oh, poor creatures
? Did you even download the pictures of those labs they found? Did you even take the time to see what those sons of a bitches did?"

She hadn't. The reports alone had given her nightmares. She couldn't bear to see the pictures. And now, she felt ashamed of that.

"Live through it, then tell me how wrong I was," he snapped. "Watch your baby sister die beneath the rutting of soldiers. See your friends, those you call family, die screaming in agony, and then tell me you wouldn't have done the same."

She could see it in his face, in his eyes, and it broke her heart. She had to blink back her tears, force her lips not to tremble as she thought of the horror he had faced in ways she never had.

The scars he carried, the shadowed horror that sometimes reflected in his eyes, the bleak, hollow sound of his voice.

"I'm so sorry, Matthias," she whispered huskily, clutching the gown to her chest. "What you endured was hell. But you are not a judge and jury."

"No, I'm the executioner." He stood before her without remorse. "He had already been judged and his sentence was passed. I merely carried it out. Now get that fucking gown on and get your ass into bed before I lose what little control I have tonight."

With that, he stalked from the bedroom. Even in bare feet he seemed to stomp, his steps heavy, fury pulsing in every line of his body before the door slammed behind him.

Grace sat on the bed slowly, staring at the closed panel, knowing, somehow, she had managed to do more than merely hurt him.

She stared at the gown, pushed her fingers through her hair wearily, then rose to her feet and did as he had ordered. She was exhausted. So tired she could barely think straight. Maybe tomorrow she could find a way to make sense of it. Maybe she would realize it had all been a horrible nightmare that would just go away.

The thought of escaping Matthias flitted through her mind. She should at least try. After all, she had seen him kill, he could still kill her.

As she drew the blankets over her shoulders and stared at the bedroom window, she knew she had at least a chance of escape. And yet here she lay, and she didn't know why.

All she knew was that as she stared into the darkness, all she could think about was the horror his life must have been. Never having anyone. Never being able to care for anyone. How alone he must have felt.

She had seen that loneliness in his eyes the night she thought he had saved her, during that stupid staged mugging. She had dragged him into the hotel with her and made him drink coffee with her. He had watched her as others might watch a snake, expecting her to strike at any time.

He had touched her heart that night, with the scar slashing across his forehead, over his eyelid, and onto his cheek. With his sexy, sensual lips and whiskey brown eyes, his obvious discomfort with a smile.

But she had made him smile that night. Not a whole, unbridled smile. A tentative smile, as though he were trying it out first, waiting to see if it was going to hurt.

Three weeks. He had come into her life just three weeks before, and he had become such a part of it that now she wondered how she was going to do without him.

She looked at the window again. She really should run from him.

A tear slid down her cheek instead, because she couldn't run from him. But she could never have him, either.

CHAPTER SIX

It wasn't a nightmare. The next morning Grace awoke to the knowledge that she couldn't just escape the events from the night before any more than she could escape Matthias, and she couldn't run from them.

She brushed her hair and teeth, stared at her pale reflection, then grimaced and headed to the kitchen. She could smell coffee, and she was dying for it. The need for caffeine was crawling through her system, with the same craving that desire for Matthias was clenching between her thighs.

Dreams had tormented her through the night. Dreams, nothing, she had been tormented with visions of sexual delights that had her blushing at the thought of them. She should have had nightmares of blood and death, not dreams about what that bulge beneath those black leather pants could do to her.

"Good morning." He came to his feet from the kitchen table, another pair of leather pants covering his muscular legs. His feet and chest were bare.

Grace stared at the broad, hairless chest, as she came to a sudden stop. She'd been wanting to see that nipple ring she had glimpsed under his T-shirt. Now that she was seeing it, her mouth watered, her lips tingled with the need to capture it, to tug on it.

But as sexy as the sight of it was, nothing could detract from the thin white scars that crisscrossed his chest and abdomen.

He pulled a shirt from the back of the chair and shrugged it on, covering the horrific scars. They weren't thick and ridged, but they crisscrossed his flesh like a road map.

"Sorry about that." He turned away from her, walking across the cheerful, bright kitchen, buttoning the black shirt. "I made coffee."

She couldn't help it. Grace moved quickly across the room, facing him as he turned back to her.

"I have to see it," she whispered, her fingers going to the buttons of his shirt. "All of it, Matthias. You don't have the right to hide it from me now."

His hard, sharply defined features tightened, as her fingers undid the buttons of his shirt. She pushed the cotton shirt from his wide shoulders, and tossed it over a chair.

"Did
he
do this?" she whispered, her fingertips touching the evidence of the cruelty he had experienced.

Some of the scars were older, almost invisible. Tough, darkly tinted flesh rippled under her touch, as he glared down at her.

"He enjoyed using the whip. The scientists needed to know under what conditions we couldn't fight or complete our objectives. We were put through a variety of simulations. Torture being the favorite of them all. If we didn't succeed in the objective given us, we died."

Her breath hitched in her throat, as tears flooded her eyes. She followed the scars on his chest, his side, then moved around him to stare at his back.

"Oh, God, Matthias." The scarring was worse on his back.

She leaned her forehead against his back, clenching her eyes tight at the incredible pain he must have endured.

"It doesn't hurt any longer, Grace," he assured her.

Grace lifted her head, her gaze going to his shoulders. On his left shoulder was the Breed marker. A genetic shadow of a paw print. Within that print, four blood-red teardrops had been tattooed into his flesh. Around the paw, a precise tattoo of what appeared to be dark smoke had been drawn, a single feather, tipped with blood, caught within it.

"Why this one?" She touched the bloodstained feather wrapped in wire.

"The price of submission," he growled.

"And this one?" A line of carefully disguised bones, wrapped in the same barbed wire, the wire twisting from the base of his spine to the middle of it.