Scorched by Darkness: Eternal Mates Series Book 18 Read online

  He shrugged in response and raked his fingers through his blue-black hair. Several times, he had spoken to his friend about how being in this place was driving him insane. There were too many males here, most of them unmated. He was trying to hold back his instincts, but sometimes it was difficult.

  The door of the library opened and a blond male strode in, heading towards Grave. His second in command, a vampire named Asher. Hartt had met him in the corridor when he had been discussing something with Grave after one of their meetings.

  Mackenzie lifted her gaze from the information the vampires had gathered, a mass of notes scrawled on parchment.

  She settled it on Asher.

  Every instinct Hartt possessed fired, and every dark and terrible urge that he had been suppressing for the past few days, locked away in a cage, exploded to the surface. On a vicious growl, he teleported and grabbed the blond male, and came around behind him as the black scales of his armour rippled over his hands, transforming his fingers into talons.

  Poised to slit the male’s throat.

  Only Fuery’s hand on his wrist stopped him from going through with it, held him firm when he growled and fought to free himself.

  “Hartt,” Fuery murmured and Hartt felt the connection between them open, sensed his friend’s concern and his need to calm him.

  Hartt’s eyes widened as he realised what he had been about to do. He shoved the vampire away from him and sank into the bond he shared with Fuery, using it to regain control over his darker desires. He breathed in time with Fuery, stared into his amethyst eyes and shut the world out as he focused on taming his emotions and clawing back control. It was slower to come this time, the need to fight a persistent itch that made him restless, tempted him to surrender to it to satisfy it.

  Fuery released his wrist and palmed his cheeks, keeping his eyes locked on him. The connection grew stronger, and he could almost feel Fuery willing the darkness to leave him, attempting to steal a sliver of it from him to spare him and allow him to regain control over it.

  Hartt stepped back and severed the connection, shutting it down so his friend couldn’t steal this darkness from him. It was too dangerous for Fuery to do such a thing. It could easily push him over the edge. He would never forgive himself if Fuery lost himself to the darkness because he hadn’t been able to control his instincts and Fuery had tried to help.

  “Perhaps you should get some air?” Grave finished checking on Asher and levelled a black look on Hartt, one that made it clear that he wasn’t making a suggestion.

  He was issuing an order.

  “I can come—”

  Hartt shook his head, cutting Fuery off. “Remain here. Continue the meeting.”

  He held his friend’s gaze, hoping Fuery would see what he couldn’t say in front of all these people—keep watch over Mackenzie. He trusted Fuery to keep her safe and keep other males away from her.

  With one last look at Mackenzie, Hartt forced himself to leave the room, each step that took him further away from her a struggle. He fought the need to return to her, trudged down the corridor to the grand staircase and followed it downwards. As the distance between them grew, the need to pivot on his heel and hurry back to her, to teleport to her side again, became almost crushing, a weight inside him that felt as if it would kill him.

  The vampire was right though. He needed space and air, time to cool off and wrangle his unruly feelings back under control.

  He strode through an arched corridor that connected the interior courtyard of the main building of the bastion to an open space that was half training arena and half garden. He headed to his right, towards the wall that enclosed the garden, separating it from the more functional part of the large space.

  Beyond an archway cut into the creamy yellow wall, he spied bushes in a series of curved raised beds that had been created using low sandstone walls only a foot high. A gravel path snaked through the garden, drawing his gaze deeper into it. There was even a dark green tree or two. When he spotted flowers, tiny colourful blooms that looked so out of place in the bleak black lands of this part of Hell, his pace quickened.

  The need to feel a connection to nature, even one he knew would be weak given his location, had him wanting to sprint to reach those flowers.

  Nature hadn’t rejected him in Rosalind’s garden when the darkness had been too much for him, and gods, he hoped she didn’t reject him now when he needed her more than ever. He pushed the squeaky black wrought-iron gate open and didn’t bother to close it behind him, made a beeline for the sparse patch of flowers someone was trying to grow beneath a gnarled dark tree.

  The moment he reached them, he sank to his knees before them and pressed his palms to the rich brown dirt between the bright green stems and delicate leaves.

  His eyes slipped shut as the connection opened, weak but there, a comfort he badly needed. He sagged forwards and breathed, focusing on each one, on the bond he shared with nature and how it felt as if she was reaching for him, trying to deepen the connection. Or maybe that was just him reaching for her.

  The need to fight that had been raging inside him slowly abated as he sank into the connection, as he sat in perfect stillness, feeling only that bond between him and nature. Warmth spread through him, slowly at first, but it gradually built to ease the chill of fear from his blood and erase his worries.

  He shifted his hands, hovered them around the bloom of the flower, and breathed in the subtle fragrance of it that struggled to reach him through the thicker scents of the town.

  The flower smelled strangely of vanilla.

  And sandalwood.

  He opened his eyes and looked to his left, back in the direction of the gate.

  Mackenzie stood there, and her beauty hit him hard, roused a thousand needs and desires that he was immediately a slave to as he stared at her.

  “I’m disturbing you… I think.” She frowned at his hands and then at his face, a puzzled look in her eyes. “Stopping to smell the roses?”

  He frowned too, shook his head when he realised something—she didn’t know as much about elves as he had believed. He looked down at the delicate flower, at the broad petals that were white for the most part but a deep violet near the heart of it. He supposed it could be mistaken for a rose at a distance.

  “It’s a papaver.” When the confused edge to her bright golden eyes only grew, he added, “A poppy.”

  Her dark crimson eyebrows rose. “Oh. It doesn’t look like a poppy. Why were you doing whatever it is you’re doing with it?”

  He looked at the flower and let the tension drain from him, denying the instinct to protect his species by withholding information, something that ran deep in all elves.

  “I have a connection to nature. It is not as strong as it once was. When I became corrupted… Nature does not like the darkness. She is the light.” He risked a glance at Mackenzie, feeling deep in his tainted soul that she was his light.

  She smiled softly at him, utterly undoing him, making him ache with a need to be closer to her, to hold her in his arms for a spell and soak up how good it felt to simply be pressed against her in the hope it would give him the strength to make it through another day without surrendering to his instincts.

  “Is your connection with her gone?” She looked genuinely concerned that it might be, her brow furrowing as she gazed at the flower and then looked into his eyes.

  He gave a gentle shake of his head. “No. I thought it would be, but recently… after our fight… when the darkness took me… Fuery brought me to a witch to be healed. Rosalind. She lives in England, in a cottage surrounded by nature. I felt connected to nature there.”

  And it had overwhelmed him.

  “Does it calm you?” She angled her head to her right, causing her fall of scarlet hair to brush her burgundy corset on that side, something he refused to look at because he was having a hard enough time resisting the need to touch her without taking in her curves.

  He nodded.

  “I feel…
not at peace.” His eyebrows knitted hard as he searched for the right word that would explain how he felt when he connected with nature. “Balanced, perhaps? Like the light and dark inside me finds an equilibrium, two ends of a scale that sit at the same level with me in the middle at the pivot point. Neither pull upon me, and I am calm.”

  Her smile returned, gentle with understanding. “It sounds peaceful.”

  “I suppose it is.” He managed a smile of his own.

  When she went to take a step towards him, he shot to his feet and held his hands out in front of him, halting her. She frowned at him again, hurt accompanying the flicker of confusion in her eyes this time.

  She was reading his intentions the wrong way again, mistaking them for something else. He wanted her close to him, wanted to narrow the distance between them and gather her into his arms and hold her.

  Kiss her.

  Only he knew it wouldn’t end there.

  If he held her as he wanted in the hope it would calm his instincts, assuaging them with an innocent form of contact with her, it would lead to a desire to kiss her that he wouldn’t be able to resist, and that would lead to him wanting her, aching to be inside her and satisfy her, to feel the deepest of connections to her.

  And in turn, that would lead to him wanting to claim her to keep that connection with her.

  He wouldn’t force sex upon her just to relieve himself of the instincts that were pushing him to claim her. She was right. She needed to be sure of her feelings, and his.

  As for him, he was sure of them.

  So sure that he couldn’t stop himself from doing exactly what she clearly expected of him.

  “Leave,” he croaked as need rose within him, battering the walls of the cage he had constructed around his instincts, attempting to break free and seize control of him. “I don’t want to hurt you, Mackenzie. I don’t want to wreck this thing between us by making a wrong move.”

  She stared at him.

  Wrecked him by shaking her head and refusing to go.

  Utterly destroyed him as she came to him and lifted her hands to frame his face.

  And softly kissed him.

  Chapter 23

  Mackenzie had realised something over the last few days, something Syn had made her aware of by constantly getting between her and Hartt, stopping Mackenzie from being able to reach him.

  To touch him.

  To kiss him.

  Hartt wasn’t the only one with a mating instinct.

  More than once, she had found herself filled with rage, with a need to strike her friend down for daring to stop her from reaching Hartt. More than once, she had wanted to claw the eyes out of the female serving staff of the bastion, blinding them for daring to look upon Hartt.

  More than once, she had come close to going supernova.

  Even when she knew that Hartt wouldn’t be able to survive the cleansing fire she wanted to use to eradicate everyone within several hundred feet, stopping them from being able to gaze upon him, halting their plans to steal him from her.

  He was right—mating instincts sucked.

  They didn’t only trigger when others stood between them or looked at him either.

  They triggered every damned time he looked at her. Just the feel of his gaze on her was enough to have her blood heating to dangerous levels, flooded her with a desperate need to seize hold of him and kiss him.

  And not stop there.

  She wanted him again.

  Wanted him so badly that she couldn’t sleep at night, that she writhed in her lonely bed, tangling the sheets around her limbs as her mind filled with thoughts of him, with wicked visions of making love.

  She had also realised something else during the painful last few days.

  Hartt was putting himself through this same torment, all to prove to her that his feelings for her were true, not because they were fated for each other.

  And those feelings were true.

  As true as hers were for him.

  She was falling for him too, had been from the second she had set eyes on him, from the very first time they had fought. He had mesmerised her then, had fascinated her and drawn her to him, and that pull she felt towards him had only grown in the time she had known him, had taken shape and revealed itself as something more than lust.

  It was love.

  That was the reason she had been hurt when she had thought he wanted another, when the hope she’d had for them had become nothing more than a dream, one she had felt sure had slipped through her fingers.

  Now, as she stood in some sort of dead garden, staring into his eyes, she could see in them that she had been wrong about so many things.

  His amethyst eyes were warm as he spoke with her, filled with not only the heat of desire but that softness she had wanted to see in them—a look that made her feel as if she was the most important thing in his entire world.

  Made her feel as if she was the centre of his universe, and that she always would be if she only gave up the fight and accepted his love for her—and her love for him.

  He had looked at Iolanthe with warmth in his eyes, but not like this. He hadn’t looked at the elf in the way he had looked at Mackenzie over the last few days, sneaking glances at her when he thought she wasn’t looking, lingering with his gaze on her face and a look of yearning in his eyes.

  One that made her certain his feelings for her were constant. Deep. A forever kind of love.

  And sure, in part it was probably because they were fated, because destiny had made them for each other, gifting them with the potential for a powerful bond that would only deepen their love for each other.

  But only deepen it.

  This feeling she had for him was real.

  So when he told her to leave, looked desperate for her to do as he asked, as if she would be torturing him by remaining, she stopped fighting her feelings.

  Rather than running from him as he wanted, she did what she wanted—she closed the distance between them. Cupped his face. Kissed him with all the love that beat in her racing heart, aware of where it would lead them.

  A little afraid of it.

  His hands shook as he claimed her waist, as he gently pulled her towards him and angled his head, deepening the kiss. She wasn’t the only one afraid, wasn’t the only one aware of how their life was about to change.

  They both knew where this kiss would lead them.

  She looped her arms around his neck and gasped into his mouth as cold darkness washed over her and then her back hit a wall. The smell of oil lamps swirled around her, mingling with Hartt’s earthy masculine scent, together with a smoky woody note she hoped wasn’t her hunger getting out of control.

  Hartt helped her make sense of her new location by releasing her and stepping back. She glanced at the room, a quick sweep of it that revealed black walls and a fireplace, and a solitary window. This wasn’t the vampire stronghold.

  Her thoughts fled as Hartt turned her to face the wall, as he growled and tugged at the lacing on the back of her corset. His hips pressed forwards as he worked to untie it, flooding her with heat that made her head a little hazy and had her pressing her backside against his groin. He groaned and forgot the laces, gripped her hips and rubbed against her instead, and she moaned as she felt how hard he was for her.

  He dropped his head and kissed her bare shoulder as he ground against her, as he fell into an easy rhythm that maddened her, had moisture pooling between her thighs and an ache to feel him filling her running through her.

  Mackenzie’s hands flew to the buttons of her leathers, made fast work of them as her breaths quickened, as anticipation and need combined to drive her to the brink of insanity. Hartt groaned as she skimmed her hands around the waist of her trousers, as her fingers brushed his. He took over, eased the leather over her hips and kissed down her spine as he sank lower behind her.

  A little moan escaped her, a shiver tripping through her as he cleared the bottom of her corset and his lips brushed her overheating skin. His answ
ering moan joined it as he eased back and his gaze seared her backside.

  “Gods, this is sexy.” He fingered the sheer lace of her shorts, sending another shiver cascading through her. His deep rumbling purr of approval heated her as he traced the shape of her underwear, skimming fingers along the hem of it where it ended just above the curve of her buttocks. “I have never seen anything like this.”

  “Clearly, you don’t get out of Hell much… or laid much.” She looked over her shoulder at him, a pulse of arousal running through her as she found him staring at her backside, looking like a man starved and on the brink himself. “I like the idea of the latter.”

  Because the thought of him with another woman made her want to be violent.

  She went to turn towards him but he seized her hips, holding her in place. He brushed his palms over her backside and ghosted them down her thighs. He might have stopped her from moving, but he wouldn’t stop her from asking the question that balanced on the tip of her tongue.

  “When was the last time you got laid?”

  His bright violet gaze lifted to her face. “A few days ago.”

  She scowled at him, blood heating, and then realised he was talking about doing the dirty with her.

  “Before that,” she said, and when he looked as if he didn’t want to answer, she tacked on, “Indulge me.”

  “That is exactly what I want to do.” His smile was mischievous as he leaned in and pressed a kiss to the left cheek of her bottom, slowly easing her leathers lower. “But you seem intent on stopping me with all these questions.”

  She gave him a look that demanded he tell her, or he wouldn’t get to indulge her in the way he wanted.

  He sighed as he dropped to his knees behind her and worked on her boots, his gaze straying to her backside from time to time. “Too long. Work keeps me busy.”

  She shrugged and pulled a face as she kicked her first boot aside while he worked on her other one. “Same here.”