Darkness Bound

Chapter 1

One

Asher

It was always the same damn nightmare.

Her, turning to me with the sun in her eyes, grinning like we were the only ones in on the secret.

Me, chasing her through that golden field, hungry for her touch. Her kiss.

I always let her take the lead. It made the reunions that much sweeter.

I chased her for hours, neither of us running out of breath, until she finally stopped and turned to look at me once more. The wind blew her hair into her eyes and she laughed, pinning her dark waves back with her hands, taunting me until I finally caught up.

“Touch me,” she whispered then, and I obeyed, reaching for her face with the barest brush of my fingers.

The moment we connected, she was gone.

Incinerated by my deadly touch.

I dropped to my knees, a thousand screams trapped in my throat. The sun faded. The sky turned black. The field around us burned to ash.

The wind blew the dust of her bones into my mouth, and I woke up coughing, limbs tangled in my sheets, my body on fire with the fever I’d never quite shaken.

I sat up against the headboard and sucked in air, counting backward from a hundred until my heart stopped trying to bust a hole through my chest.

Son of a b***h.

Every time was like losing her all over again. Killing her all over again.

I kicked free of the sheets and stumbled out of bed, desperate to feel the solid wood floor beneath my feet. From one end of the room to the other, I paced, trying like hell to loosen the nightmare’s grip.

The chill October breeze blew in through the open window, and the only thing I had on was a pair of gym shorts, but sweat trickled down my back anyway. My hair was damp with it, too.

The room felt like a damn sauna and every one of my nerves buzzed with pent-up energy. My fingers twitched, already reaching for the cup of charcoal pencils on my drafting table.

Dropping into my chair in the pitch dark, I flipped open my sketchpad and grabbed a pencil. I didn’t bother turning on the light; I’d drawn her so many times I could do it with my eyes closed. Sometimes, she appeared whole and unbroken, as beautiful as she’d been on the day we’d met. Other times, she was as black as night, with glowing red eyes that burned right through me.

I never knew which version I’d see until I revealed her face on the page.

Thankfully, she was turning out whole and beautiful tonight.

Her memory was a drug to me now—painfully tearing me apart inside, yet impossible to resist—and I sank deep into the process. The ritual. Drawing her face night after night was as much my punishment as my salvation, and no matter how much it hurt, I wouldn’t let myself forget it.

Manically I brought the dream to life, shading in the hollows of her cheekbones, highlighting the soft sheen along her upper lip, trying to capture just how the light had danced in her eyes, the first time and the last.

Eventually, my nerves calmed. My heart rate slowed. The sweat evaporated from my skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

I had no idea how much time had passed, but my hand was stiff and cramped, and I’d worn the pencil down to a nub.

Tonight’s penance paid, I tossed the sketchbook back on the table and yanked open the blinds. Moonlight leaked in through the slats and landed on her face, and I stared into her eyes, once again begging for the forgiveness I didn’t deserve.

It was my version of jamming in the needle, and for those brief seconds, the ache in my chest dulled.

There was just one problem.

The woman staring back at me tonight wasn’t the brunette beauty that had haunted my dreams and filled the pages of my sketchbooks for centuries, but a curly-haired blonde with a soft, seductive mouth and eyes like the twilight sky.

The woman who’d seen into the deepest, blackest parts of my soul and decided I was worth saving anyway.

It never should’ve happened.

“f**k!” A roar exploded from my chest, unannounced and unwelcome. I attacked my table, flipping the damn thing over. My art stuff crashed to the floor.

Didn’t help.

Never did.

And f**k my life and the horse I rode in on, because on top of all that s**t, now I had company.

“Ash?” The hall light clicked on, spilling in around the doorframe, and Gray knocked, her muffled voice edged with concern. “You okay?”

We were the only two holed up at the safe house—a massive timber-framed cabin about an hour outside of the Bay, fully stocked and big enough for all of us.

Tucked away in a thick patch of woods well off the beaten path, the whole place was spelled with some fancy fae mojo Ronan and I had spent a small fortune on, making us impervious to GPS and confusing anyone who accidentally wandered too close to the property line.

It was a sweet setup for sure—one I liked a lot better when I was crashing here alone.

But this week I was on babysitting duty while the rest of the crew sifted through the mess we’d left at Norah’s place, cleaning up the evidence of the vampire m******e and searching for any clue that might lead us to the hunter who’d taken Haley Barnes.

My gut churned just thinking of that bastard. What he’d done to those witches. What he’d done to Gray as a kid.

What he probably still had planned.

Pray you die before I find you, fuckface...

“Asher?” Gray tried one more time.

When I didn’t answer, she opened the door and waltzed right in, blasting me with light.

I’d been dodging her gaze pretty much since that kiss in the attic, and tonight was no different.

Turning away from the door, I said, “If you’re here for the show, you just missed it.”

I felt her eyes on my back, burning right down to my bones.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Earthquake. You didn’t feel it?”

“Asher—”

“You need something, Cupcake, or are you just here to practice your Spell of Endless Torment?” I finally grew a pair and turned to face her. Sheet marks creased her cheek, and her hair was a tangle of messy curls that I ached to bury my face in.

Clutched against her chest, she held the book of shadows we’d dug up from her yard.

Damn thing had barely left her sight since.

“Pretty sure I’ve perfected that one by now,” she said. Her smirk stayed firmly in place, but her eyes widened a fraction as she drank in the sight of my bare chest and arms. “Holy… wow.”

I cracked a smile. “Did you just holy wow me?”

“What? No. No! I just meant…” Her cheeks darkened. “You… um… have a lot of tattoos.”

“Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

Like when you climbed on top of me in that attic, kissing me like the world was about to end...

“It was… darker then,” she said. “And you were basically dying, so…”

“So I was.”

She swallowed hard, and the scent of her desire washed over me, flooding my senses and heating my blood all over again.

Sometimes I liked knowing when a woman wanted me. The nifty little incubus trick came in handy when I was running low on energy and needed to find a willing partner all too happy to feed my particular brand of hunger.

But other times—like, right-now times—it just f****d me up inside. Because no matter how badly Gray might’ve wanted me—no matter how badly I might’ve wanted to return the favor—there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

“Anyway, I…” Gray faltered, finally tearing her gaze away from my chest. Focusing on the pencils scattered across my floor, she said, “Sorry. I was about to raid the fridge when I heard the crash. I thought something was wrong.”

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

“Not really.” She bit her lip, still staring at the floor. In a whisper I could barely make out, she said, “Bad dreams.”

“Makes two of us.” I stooped down to pick up the table I’d upended. I took my sweet-ass time about it, too, because otherwise I might just go over there and scoop her into my arms, drag her back to my bed, and give us both something to chase away the nightmares…

“Well, if you’d rather be alone...” Gray cleared her throat, but she didn’t finish the thought, and I wasn’t in the mood to make it easy on her.

“Too late now, Cupcake.” I snapped.

I righted the table, shoving it back into place with another crash. She didn’t flinch—just kept staring at me like I was supposed to grab a knife and open up a vein.

“Actually, d**k, it isn’t.” Gray took a step forward, hip c****d, lips pursed and ready to battle. It was a look I’d gotten to know quite well these past couple days—one I liked to think she’d perfected just for me. “Did you forget where the front door is? Because I’d be more than happy to escort your ass right on through it.”

I flashed her what I’d been told was my panty-melting grin. “Is that so?”

“Bet your tattooed ass it is.” Panties seemingly unaffected, she said, “Maybe then we’d both find a little peace.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and lowered my head, trying like hell to stifle the laughter bubbling up.

No such luck.

All that pent-up emotion roiling inside me, good and bad and everything in between, and the dam finally burst. The woman had thrown me off kilter once again, and now I was damn near busting a gut.

A good belly laugh was nothing if not contagious, and soon a crack appeared in her hard shell, too.

“First of all, I don’t have a tattoo on my ass. And second of all, I can’t leave you, Cupcake,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes and finally regaining my composure—not an easy feat when you’ve got a beautiful woman standing less than two feet from your bed and you’re already half-naked, but somehow I managed. “You’d miss me too damn much.”

“Oh, totally.” She pressed a hand to her heart, fluttering her lashes. “My life just wouldn’t be the same without your constant dickishness dicking me around on a daily basis. I guess I should be thanking you.”

“Don’t mention it.” I gave her a little bow. “What are d***s for, right?”

Now she really lost it. “Asher O’Keefe, if you haven’t figured that out by now, you’d better get back to incubus school. You missed a very important lesson.”

Our laughter faded into a dead silence, as if we’d both just noticed how supercharged the moment had become. The air seemed to crackle with it—that strange, electric chemistry that bubbled up between us whenever we spent more than a minute in the same room together.

I’d always found her beautiful. Annoying as hell, yet strangely compelling. But ever since the other night in the attic—since the kiss that’d saved my soul—things between us had gone from an occasional flirty simmer to a full-on boil.

And I still couldn’t stop myself from cranking up the heat.

“No, Gray Desario,” I said, voice low. “I invented the lesson.” I stepped closer—close enough that my breath made the halo of frizz at the top of her pretty blonde head stir. She backed up against the doorframe and held up that book like a shield, but she was all out of escape options, and I wasn’t about to relent.

Hooking a finger under her chin, I tilted her face up and leaned in, my lips brushing her ear. “Let me know if you ever need private tutoring.”

A soft mewl stuck in her throat, and I pulled back and stared at her lips, seconds ticking between us like a bomb waiting to explode. I brushed the pad of my thumb across her mouth, her lips parting ever-so-slightly.

The intensity of her desire hit me head-on again, making me dizzy.

In the absence of s****l energy to feed on, her physical responses were generating just enough juice to sustain me. To help me heal from the beating I’d taken in the Bay.

I could live on it, sure.

But my c**k was in absolute agony.

If ever a woman wanted to be f****d, it was this woman right here, right now, standing just stumbling distance from the very bed in which I could make all of her hottest, filthiest dreams come true.

And mine, if we were being honest.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one haunting my dreams, and the rest of them served as a harsh reminder of just how dangerous this game could get.

I closed my eyes, focusing entirely on the feel of her hot, velvet mouth, trying to pin it down in my memory. Trying not to kiss her. Trying not to completely lose my s**t.

Whatever Gray had going on with Ronan and Darius? Whatever “family” she thought we could all be? I was all in. But unlike the crossroads demon and the vampire and even the shifter, incubuses came with a built-in hard limit—cross it, and she might just end up dead.

I dropped my hand and walked out of my own bedroom without so much as a backward glance, bound for a shower.

A f*****g cold one.