Far From Heaven

He kept whispering soothing nonsense and, somehow, incredibly, she began to believe it. She was okay. He was okay. That guy back there, he was probably okay too, but even if he wasn’t, he’d tried to freaking kill them. They might not have walked away from that encounter with their lives even if they’d done what he wanted.

  Though Ash had seemed to deliberately provoke him, almost as if he’d gotten off on it.

  And was she absolutely insane that, despite her fear in the middle of the situation, she’d…liked it? Not necessarily to see someone get hurt, but… Oh, hell, she might as well face it. David would have grabbed her purse out of her hand and thrown it at the guy without even the thought of pulling such a badass—if terribly unwise—intimidation tactic.

  Who the hell was he?

  “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. He exhaled as if hearing the words was a relief he’d been waiting for, and his lips grazed her neck. She sighed, threading his soft hair through her fingers. Her panic folded up and disappeared, but the remaining adrenaline from their ordeal was stirring excitement in other far more pleasurable areas. It was shameful to admit, but suddenly all she could think about was ripping his jeans open and—

  She didn’t know what was wrong with her, what he was doing to her. His hand grazed her breast and a quiet explosion went off inside her. Her hips surged toward him, and she could scarcely refrain from climbing over onto his lap. “I want you,” she told him, quiet enough that their driver couldn’t hear. But Ash’s answering growl…he probably did hear that. She didn’t care. Ash wouldn’t have to push very hard and she would probably sprawl back and give it to him right here in the backseat of the taxi.

  “I’m going to have you in so many ways tonight,” he promised, kissing a path upward to her lips.

  “You are so bad for me.”

  “You are so good for me.”

  She didn’t understand how that was true, but then his mouth covered hers, and it didn’t matter. She moaned. Hot, wet, tasting of the drinks he’d had at the club and something deeper, something nameless but profoundly erotic. With every thrust of his tongue into her mouth, the need growing between her thighs doubled.

  As bad as he might be, her body didn’t care. She needed him in as many ways as he’d promised to have her.

  He was still stunned, off balance. She couldn’t see it, he made sure of that. The front door to her apartment slammed behind them and he staggered into her bedroom with her clinging to him haphazardly, their mouths fused. The only way to keep her away, to keep her separate, was to get inside her. Keep her as disoriented as he felt, unable to see inside him at what she’d done.

  What she’d done…

  He’d just saved her life. Again. That wasn’t what he was here for. He was here to kill her, inflict physical and spiritual death, and an opportune moment had just presented itself. What she didn’t realize was their unwelcome visitor had every intention of ending them right there on the sidewalk, and he’d had to draw his fire or Madeleine could have very well died right there.

  He couldn’t predict what might happen to her anymore. Everyone had a set time to die, but they also had free will that could cast them into a gray area. Usually that involved entering a contract with one of his kind, like Gatlin. Or pissing one of them off, which was the reason the mugger was a soulless heap on the concrete right now. Madeleine was a question mark as well, now that Ash was an influence in her life.

  If she’d died tonight, he wouldn’t have been able to take her because of the stay, but the hard part would’ve been over. Her spirit would roam free, lost and mystified, just like that bastard who’d dared threaten her was doing now. Ash would go back and deal with that one later.

  He was as shaken from that encounter as she, but for an entirely different reason. Never once had it even occurred to him to let her die. He’d have torn the man limb from limb if she’d had so much as a scratch on her.

  Get inside her. Fuck her hard, over and over, get her out of his system. It was the only way. He tore her jeans down. She was trying to help, but he knocked her hands away, too impatient for her interference. Her fingers went straight to her panties, tugging them down too. “Don’t rip these!” she insisted, and he acquiesced and allowed her to strip them off her legs.

  Then she was open, and ready, so pink and wet. He couldn’t spare her the time to prepare her for his entrance; he freed his cock from his jeans, reached over to search through the drawer for one of the hated sheaths that were completely unnecessary but that she would insist upon. Once it was rolled in place, he guided himself to her pussy and shoved.

  Her hips wrenched off the bed to take him, but her hands pushed at his shoulders, fingers clenching around his shirt. “Oh God!” she gasped.

  She might be tender from all their vigorous activity last night, so he gave her a moment, murmuring nonsense meant to soothe her. He would say anything, tell her anything she needed to hear, if she’d only let him stay right here, wrapped up tight in her wet oblivion. If she’d let him take her the way he needed to, hard, fast, now. “Madeleine,” he rasped out.

  “Do it, fuck me.” She undulated her hips, inflicted sensual devastation on him.

  Unholy Hell, that was it. “Yes,” he growled. She was throwing so many emotions at him right now, he couldn’t distinguish one from the other. Sparing her nothing, he unleashed all his frustrations on her, slamming into her as if he could fuck it all away. Her head tipped back, exposing the pale, graceful column of her throat, her writhing emotions dissolving into bliss. All of them. The fear, the pain, the numb shock of her earlier trauma. Wiped away.

  This was the only truth between them.

  His gaze wandered over her pink, swollen lips, her closed, fluttering eyelids. He shoved a hand under the shirt she still wore and worked until her bare breast was in his palm. Soft, heavy, the nipple hard as a little pebble for him. He remembered sucking them until she came and almost lost himself.

  It wasn’t enough. It never would be. Angry at his impending loss of control, he wrenched her legs up and over his shoulders, turning his head to bite the inside of her calf hard. The position seemed to give him access to new depths in her pliant body, and he groaned as he sank inside her to the hilt. He needed every inch of her.

  “Oh,” she gasped. “God, you’re…”

  “Tell me,” he said when her words trailed off into a moan. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

  “No, just like that, please, don’t stop, don’t…”

  His grin couldn’t have been anything short of feral. Obviously she had him mistaken for someone else if she thought anything could tear him away from her at that moment. He looked down at where they joined, lost his breath at the sight of her stretched around him. Her internal muscles gripped him, quivered, tightened until he could hardly breathe. She had to come or she was going to kill him.

  He stroked his thumb across her slick clit, feeling her jerk in reaction. “Yes!” she cried. “Please, please!”

  As much as he needed to see her release, feel it milk him of the rest of his control, he wanted to draw it out. It wasn’t to be. A couple more caresses and she was lost, her fingernails digging crescents into his biceps, her hips grinding on him. He nearly folded her in half with his need to push as deep as he could into her, absorb every ripple of her pussy along the entire length of his cock. Her sweet, lilting cries circled in his head, dying away as the last of her contractions faded and she went limp under him.

  He gave her no time to recover. Rolling to his back, he pulled her on top of him, still hard and throbbing inside her. She squeaked but didn’t protest, instead dropping her forehead to his shoulder. Ash grabbed her ass with both hands, held her steady and open, and continued driving into her.

  Madeleine’s face turned toward him, nuzzling his neck. She gave it a little bite and pushed her fingers into his hair, her panting breath hot against his skin. He groaned and pulled her up for a kiss, her taste flooding his mouth as their tongues teased and dueled. He would never forget h
ow she tasted as long as he prowled the caverns of Hell.

  It was that realization and the ensuing agony as much as the feel of her slick pussy clamped tight around him that drove him over the edge. It was his turn to dig his fingers in, denting the soft globes as he ground her down on him, spilling his seed into the hated barrier between them. He wanted to thrust it so deeply into her that he would be a part of her being forever. That she would belong to him from now to eternity.

  He didn’t expect her to come again so quickly, but she did, his pleasure a trigger for her own. She cried out into his mouth and rocked against him as he growled his wordless reply.

  Fuck, she was exquisite. He hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t thought it would make a difference one way or the other if he had a taste of her before he struck. But it had made all the difference.

  She sighed as she came down from whatever heights he’d taken her to. Her body relaxed, gently draping over him. He slid his hands up her sweat-slick back and hugged her close. “After last night I never thought I’d feel this way again. Never thought I’d see you again.”

  “I couldn’t stay away,” he whispered.

  Another truth between them.

  Chapter Ten

  It was hard to brush one’s teeth with someone else’s teeth nibbling at one’s neck. Maddie giggled and slapped at Ash, managing to dislodge a bit of toothpaste foam from her mouth. Despite her squealing efforts to catch it, it dribbled down her black nightshirt.

  She dabbed at it with her free hand, pulling her toothbrush from her mouth. “Ah! Look what you did.”

  “How tragic,” Ash said, strolling from the room now that the damage was done.

  “I’m going to get you for that. Now I’m stained for the night.”

  “As if you’re going to be wearing it for very long,” he commented from the bedroom.

  She shuddered in anticipation. Nearly a week had passed since the incident on the street, and every night, Ash had come over. Every night, he’d given her the best orgasm of her life. Which meant, frighteningly enough, that it was only getting better.

  She didn’t know what was happening, but she wasn’t complaining. How could she? The sex was absolutely astronomical—she found herself floating up there around Jupiter every time he so much as touched her.

  It couldn’t be that she’d found the one. Not like this. Not when he still hadn’t said one word about what might happen after he went home. This probably wasn’t good for her; she constantly swung between moments of elation and uncertainty, but hell, when had that ever been any different?

  Those moments of uncertainty really only seemed to plague her when he wasn’t here with her, though, and he was now. She wasn’t going to ruin what time they had.

  Grinning goofily at her reflection, she stuck her hands under the warm water running from the faucet and leaned over to rinse out her mouth—and came up with a scream caught in her throat.

  Blood poured from her faucet, red and obscene in the white sink. She yanked her hands back, nearly choking when she saw that it covered them both and dripped from between her fingers to splatter on the countertop. She reeled backward, catching a glimpse in the mirror as she did so of a silently screaming gray face—and her own shriek finally tore free. She threw herself forward again, whirling around and slamming her butt against the counter.

  Of course, nothing was behind her. And nothing came from her faucet now except clear water that swirled harmlessly down the drain.

  Ash appeared in the door with a frown in place as she stood there trying not to fall down, her eyes wide, her chest heaving.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his gaze raking her from her bare feet to her pale face. She knew it was pale because she always looked like death itself after one of her episodes.

  Normally, her answer to that question was “yes” followed by fake composure, or “no” and an absolute breakdown. What came out this time was, “Will I ever get used to it?”

  “Get used to what?”

  “After all these years…you’d think I’d get used to it. But I don’t. Every time I see something, it’s as bad as the first time.”

  He stepped inside the room, taking her trembling hands in his. “What did you see?”

  She glanced down into the pristine white sink. “It was running with blood. And…the faces. In the mirror. I saw them again. I saw them the other night at the restaurant too. It’s never happened outside wherever I lived before, Ash. It’s following me now. But what the hell am I talking about—it’s always followed me, no matter where I go—”

  Her voice grew higher, tinged with hysteria, and Ash closed what little distance was left between them to pull her into his arms, murmuring that it would be all right.

  “Am I losing my mind?” she whispered into the hot flesh of his naked shoulder.

  “No,” he said. He sounded so certain.

  “How can you say that? What is this, then? Seeing things that aren’t there…that’s crazy, right? There’s no other explanation. That’s—”

  “Haunted,” he said softly.

  She pulled away from him at that, looking up into his dark eyes. They stared back, assured, steady…dispassionate, really. As if he dealt with this sort of thing all the time. “Haunted? You mean like a poltergeist?”

  “Or worse.”

  Maddie scoffed. “I’ve wished it could be something like that, something there was even the slightest chance I could get rid of. But honestly…I don’t believe in those things.”

  “After everything you’ve seen? How can you not? Because you aren’t crazy, Madeleine. You’re absolutely coherent.”

  “That doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t feel that way.”

  With both hands, he smoothed the hair back from her face. “It looks that way. I think…you’re very strong.”

  Strong? No, no one would ever say she was strong. What was the matter with him? “That’s the last word I’d use to describe me.”

  “No, that’s the last word you think others would use to describe you…others like your ex. But I want you to forget about all of that. Even if you don’t believe what I say about you being haunted, believe that you are not weak, and you are not crazy.”

  “So…just say that you’re right, and this…thing, this entity…is following me, how do I get rid of it? It’s happened ever since I was a little girl, no matter where I live. It’s me it’s after, for whatever reason.”

  “But you’re still here,” he said, looking down at her with an assessing gaze she didn’t understand. He said it almost as if he were puzzled, but it was the exact same thing she told herself over and over when she was trying to calm down. Then he blinked and glanced around. “Are you finished in here? Come on to bed.”

  She turned off the faucet and allowed him to pull her out of the bathroom, but she couldn’t help casting one last apprehensive glance toward the mirror. All she saw was her own face this time, pale, shadowed…haunted.

  “The first time I remember it…really remember it…I was fourteen,” she said. They were lying face-to-face, fingers interlaced. “Things had happened before that, but they were minor. Infrequent. But on my fourteenth birthday, I saw the gray faces for the first time. My grandparents had a party for me—one of the few times they did anything like that. I spent the whole thing curled up in the corner of my bedroom, crying. They couldn’t get me to come out. I guess that’s why I never got another party. I think they had the same problem with me that most people do—they were scared shitless of me.”

  He could almost understand. Sometimes he was scared shitless of her too.

  “It was really bad for me in the beginning. I tried to hide what was happening from my family and the few friends I had, and I got pretty good at it, even though I don’t think I used a mirror my entire freshman and sophomore years if I could help it. I wore my hair in a ponytail and didn’t bother with makeup. Wasn’t ever a fashion plate—I just didn’t care.”

  “You seem to now.”

  Her faraway ga
ze was directed at him, but he knew she didn’t see him. “I finally decided to suck it up. When I was sixteen, this guy I liked started showing some interest, and I was so eager to go out and be normal I tried to pretend none of it was happening, for him and for myself. That didn’t last, of course. Guys came and went and I tried to hide it from most of them. David was the first one I really let in, thinking we were close enough and he cared enough that he could handle it. He couldn’t. But can I really blame him? It’s not his fault.”

  “Can you blame him for being a coward who deserted you? Yeah, pretty easily.”

  “I guess so.” She sighed. “But it’s best to let it go. I got so frustrated being afraid all the time, and I still do. I get almost defiant about it. Thing is, I’ll feel that way one day, and the next I’ll be a mess.”

  Defiant. Oh, she could be. He’d known her long enough to know how strong she was, even if she didn’t agree. She’d always been beyond his reach, and he’d tried so many times to get to her. It had never worked, until now—and even then he’d had to exploit the weakness of someone else.

  He’d come close once long ago—or at least, closer than any of his other attempts in centuries past. She’d been burned at the stake as a witch in some long-forgotten village in England, when all she’d been guilty of was helping ease women through the rigors of childbirth. One wretchedly cold winter’s day, she’d been reluctantly called to the bedside of a nobleman’s wife who was nearing the end of her strength during a particularly grueling labor, only to lose both the mother and the child despite all her efforts.

  Naturally, the idiots blamed her—they’d called her a witch, the devil’s handmaid. Surely she consorted with demons to receive her healing powers. Funny how the people had been happy to make use of them until she failed the wrong person.

  If only the fools had known a real demon had revealed himself and propositioned her the night before her execution, and she’d reviled him.

  He would never forget that night. Even in the cold, dank stench of the cell they’d pitched her into, even knowing what she faced on the morrow, she’d remained steadfast. She’d been down on her knees when he’d come to her, her hands folded and her head tilted back toward the ceiling. Full lips murmuring prayers. Despite the dire circumstances of the moment, he’d thought of having her on her knees for an entirely different reason, putting those lips to a far more productive use.