The Ravenous Dark, page 27
But there was another scent too. He couldn't place it, but it inspired an almost fiendish delight inside him. The feeling gave him pause, but not Bailey.
She reached out, fingers ghosting over the stubble lining his jaw and cheek. His lashes lowered while his nostrils flared. The urgency of the soulmark was more marked. It pulled them closer still, coaxing them with its heady promise of peace, warmth, and companionship if they completed what was started five nights previous.
Ronan's rational side reared in alarm, causing him to stiffen. Giving in meant dragging Bailey farther into the mess he was caught up in. As it was, she might survive should the worst befall him if they kept their soulmarks only sealed, but the ripple effect of his demise would reach well beyond Bailey. What of the Vrana’s fate? Their households were allied, and his connection with Jax was well known. Would the court go as far as placing the blame on Jax, too, for the nefarious rabidus curse? Would the Vranas lose their title? Their lives?
He hadn’t thought of that possibility before, but now that he had….
He squeezed his eyes shut tighter as she cupped his cheek. Her thumb stroked up and down as she murmured soft nothings to him.
There's too much at stake.
Ronan bolstered the savage reminder by biting down on the inside of his cheek. Bailey's touch retreated. He cracked open his eyes, meeting her widened gaze unflinchingly.
She stepped back, folding her arms behind herself. She looked as lost and confused as he felt.
"Sorry."
A flush decorated her skin from the tops of her breasts to the tips of her cheeks. The color a complement to the cinnamon strands of hair clinging to her skin. Ronan had the insane urge to see whether he could get her blush to travel farther south.
"You just…." Bailey's mouth twisted into a sympathetic grimace. "No offense, but you look like shit."
The charged air between them broke at the astute observation, though it did nothing to hamper the soulmark’s call to mark her. It irritated him that their proximity both alleviated his restlessness while simultaneously ratcheting it to new heights the longer they stayed in each other's company.
He wondered if it was always meant to be this intense.
The need to touch her, hold her, take her, and brand her as his for all to see.
He assumed such feelings would come with the marking completed and wondered whether the intensity was some fluke or the product of something deeper.
Ronan ran a hand over his face, stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose.
"I'm aware," he answered at last, hand dropping.
"What's wrong?"
Everything, he longed to confide. The soulmark. The dark magic. The fact that Jax might have recognized him while they fought. The helplessness of it all.
"Things have been… rough."
A knot of distress wedged itself between Bailey's brows. "I get that," she murmured. "I've been restless and kind of a bitch lately. Because, well, you know," she trailed off awkwardly.
Do I ever. Ronan's stomach clenched, and pain spiked up his side. His eyes shuttered closed as he took in a long, deep breath. The sight that greeted him upon opening his eyes was almost his undoing.
Her bottom lip was held captive by her teeth. Her hands planted themselves on her waist, fingers flexing against the taut skin in restless abandon. He swallowed as fresh desire kindled in him.
Catching her eye, she wet her bottom lip.
His stomach clenched again, but this time the pain was accompanied by a delicious shiver that spiraled straight from his soulmark and into his marrow.
"We can't," he blurted out.
Bailey took an uncertain step back. Her face was a mixture of hurt and anger.
"I'm sorry," he continued, softer this time as he held back the need to pull her close and reassure her. "We can't. I can't."
Her jaw clenched. "We'll have to, eventually. Sooner than you think."
That's what I'm afraid of.
He stayed silent, his gaze fixating on the downward tilt of her lips. After the seconds turned to minutes, Bailey spoke again.
"You're going to ignore it then?" Her affronted tone snapped his gaze back to hers. Flecks of gold teased the curve of her irises. They slipped in and out of sight as she tried to reign in her anger.
"For as long as possible," he told her somberly. Especially, if there’s any chance a lesser soulmark connection will allow you to live on, should I not.
Pink tinged her cheeks as an indignant scoff burst forth from her mouth. "Do you understand the amount of danger you're putting us in by running away?" Ronan stiffened. "You know as well as I do that the longer we distance ourselves from each other—" She glared meaningfully at Ronan. "—let alone stall the inevitable, the more susceptible we'll be to losing our minds. You think now is the time to leave ourselves open to such a risk?
"If you hadn't noticed, there's some maniac sorcerer out there playing dress-up in shadows making vampyrés lose their shit and eat everyone! How are we going to stay off the menu if—"
"I know."
His grave response stopped her. Bailey's shoulders sagged as she regarded him. Her disappointment was palpable.
"Do you, though? How are we supposed to move forward, Ronan? How are we going to survive if you…?" An invisible hand snared Ronan's heart and squeezed painfully, but he kept his expression blank. "Why don't you want me?" she whispered. "Do you really feel so little for me after all these years?"
Ronan struggled to find the appropriate response. One that would deter but not hurt her further. He couldn't think of one and responded as stoically as he could.
"I'm too old for you." Her jaw dropped, and she frowned in defiant confusion before a flame lit in her gaze. Ronan held up a placating hand and Bailey's lips pressed together in a firm line, acceding to his silent demand. "I'm older than I look."
She huffed in exasperation. "Oh? How old are you?" He forced himself to shrug. "You can't even give me a number?"
Everything in him tightened.
"I can't. In the Otherworld, time was… unpredictable and unreliable. Sometimes it felt as if mere hours passed, while earthside, we were gone for months. Other times years would pass in the Otherworld, and we returned with only a week passed." Ronan adopted a bitter smile. "I've lost track of my years spent alone there."
Quick panic stole through him as he sent a fervent prayer that Bailey wouldn't pick up on—
"Alone?" Bailey's brow furrowed. "But you were there with Jax."
Silence.
"We were separated. Often," he informed her begrudgingly.
Bailey's face paled. Her gaze darted over him, cataloging his every emotion. He held incredibly still under her regard.
"And you were alone for years?"
Tension rode the chords of his throat as he worked back his sorrow.
Loneliness shrouded Ronan. Its cold embrace was poignant and numbing.
He felt foolish for denying the remedy to it but couldn't summon the courage to reach out and take it. The cost is too high, you fool.
Bailey shifted forward unwittingly. The promise of comfort in her eyes and arms. She reached out again, placing her hand over his heart and soulmark. Ronan tensed. Then shuddered. With aching slowness, her hand drifted up to hook around his neck. Her thumb poised over his pulse.
"You don't have to go through this alone, Ronan. You have me… even if you don't want me. I'll never leave you so long as I live."
The whispered confession broke down the wall he tried so hard to put between them. He closed his eyes.
"Bailey." Her name felt too good on his tongue. Her hand felt too—
"Ronan."
The breathless reply tore what remained of his resistance away, even as he damned himself for leading her on once more. He couldn’t stop himself. In incremental movements, he shifted until they were pressed fully together. Then he tipped his head down and kissed her.
Every part of him prickled in awareness at Bailey's sudden stillness, and then her hand was clamping firmer on his neck, pulling him in closer. Energy built steadily around them, different from that of the night of the full moon. It wasn't needy or suffocating, pushing them together as if the world would end should they not.
It was effortless.
A shared shudder rippled through their bodies as they clung to one another. The strange, all-encompassing heat building between them burned brighter.
Ronan's hand ghosted up her back, fingers dancing up her spine until it cradled her nape. His lips teased and tasted, devouring her in languid strokes of his tongue and enticing bites. Bailey squirmed in his arms. Her restrained passion ignited something primal in Ronan.
The need to give her everything—all of him—crashed into him unexpectedly. He growled. Furious with himself, at her, and their damnable soulmark. For it was the latter which drove his thoughts and actions now, poisoned him.
Gods, give me the strength to pull away.
Her scent surrounded him. The unnatural warmth of her body eased the ache in his. Ronan clutched her tighter, body trembling as he waged war with himself as Bailey let go.
Need matched need in a sudden frenzy that left both panting and gasping. Bailey pushed herself against him desperately, her hands roaming over the expanse of his chest and lower. Ronan hissed and seized her groping hands, twisting them behind her back. She writhed against him.
In tandem, their lips retreated from one another to stare each other down. Vibrant gold smoldered back at stormy gray.
"Enough, Bailey," he commanded roughly.
The soulmark heightened their mounting passion, but not enough for him to forget the stabbing pain in his abdomen and knee. He swallowed, and the worrisome taste of copper lined the back of his throat.
"Ronan." Bailey tilted her neck to him in offering. "Do it. Please."
Blood rushed to his head.
He could imagine marking her now. How his teeth would scrape down her neck until he found the perfect spot to sink his canines in and draw blood. He'd bind her wrists near the base of her spine where her soulmark was. Ronan's pulse pounded in his ears.
It would be easy….
And it would get us both killed.
He released her abruptly and stumbled away with a muffled cry as his knee threatened to buckle. His body shook from head to toe as he grappled with pain and unfulfilled pleasure.
"Ronan? What's wrong? Did I do something?" Bailey reached for him. "Are you—"
"Don't."
The lash of his voice hit her like a whip. She flinched. Bailey turned her palms out in supplication.
"It's okay."
"It's not okay," he barked. Bailey eyed him with growing concern. The flush on her cheeks from their amorous kiss left her skin pink. She eyed his knee.
"You're hurt," she stated it as fact rather than an observation.
"If I'm hurt, it's only because of you."
Silence. It screamed at them from all sides.
"Excuse me?"
Though her words were scarcely above a whisper, they echoed in the wildflower room. Ronan's soulmark quivered as he watched the effect of his words on her. Bailey's arms wrapped around her waist, and her shoulders hiked up. He limped back another step like the coward he'd become.
"The silent treatment? Again?"
His guilt burned him from the inside out, and he flayed himself with a flurry of mental curses.
"What are we doing, Ronan?" she asked. Her voice was tight with emotion, and color was rising to her cheeks. "This isn't a solution,” she stated firmly. Ronan could have sworn he saw a fire spark in her eyes. “There's only one way to satiate the soulmark, and that's to complete it with the marking and binding. I know it's not what you want. I know I'm not what you want." Her voice cracked and she gave pause. The fire in her luminous gaze dashed to weak embers. "But we have no choice."
Bailey’s final credence was achingly soft, and a sharp cry from the swift inferno she’d summoned to deliver her reasoning. She searched his face for any hint of acceptance to her words, but Ronan avoided her seeking gaze like a coward.
"I can't."
The heat that had surrounded them not minutes ago vanished from the room.
"Let me get this straight. You would rather go insane than be with me? You’d rather I go insane than be with me?"
Her perfunctory response was delivered without inflection, yet somehow still managed to carry an icy undercurrent of rage.
Ronan steeled himself. His jaw worked to keep inside the maelstrom of words that wished to spill forth. But he couldn't allow himself to give her the reassurances she deserved. Her persistence would only grow more emboldened. We'll complete the marking later when it’s safe, he told himself. But I need more time to find out who’s behind this and—
Her hand slapped against the side of his face in a stinging rebuke. Ronan grunted and squeezed his eyes shut until the pain receded.
When he opened them, Bailey was several feet away. Her watering eyes gleamed in the light as her jaw trembled. Her mouth opened once, twice, but then resolutely shut. Ronan caught sight of the single tear escaping down her cheek before she turned tail and all but ran from the room.
XVII
Ten nights had passed since Bailey and Ronan had last spoken or seen one another. Ten nights and counting.
Bailey found it to be sufficient time to analyze their every interaction under a microscope. She could recite all the words passed between them and replay every short-lived caress. But as the nights dragged on, spilling into one another without pause, his loneliness was what she kept returning to because it called to her own.
She grew up a rather lonely girl, with both parents taken from her too soon and replaced with a stepmother's love that never quite compared to the abundance she'd known. Bailey swallowed down the thick clog of emotion that clung to the back of her throat. Sometimes it seemed like her entire life was spent trying to fill the hole of that loneliness.
First with the pack.
Then with River.
And now, with a man who refused her at every turn.
The Otherworld changed him. Bailey understood that now more than ever.
He was harder than she remembered from her youth. The spark of mischief and arrogance was cut down to fierce glass edges that offered no refuge if one came too close.
She wanted to be the one to soften him.
Then hot irritation flared in her. I can't soften him if he won't ever let me fucking near him.
Bailey breathed harshly through her nose as she smothered the rapid swing of her emotions. They were giving her whiplash.
Twenty-four measly hours was all it took for the peace their abbreviated union wrought to slip away. Bailey thought she’d been testy before, but she was wrong.
Everything and anything grated on her nerves or caused her some amount of undue anger. Absolutely no one was spared her surly attitude. After a stern lecture from Jakob about appearances, she opted to stay stubbornly quiet and kept her fists tucked away to avoid lashing out with hands, instead of tongue.
A tremor worked its way over her body as she bit back the urge to howl her angst.
It isn't fair, she thought, but forcing Ronan to go through with the marking, even for the sake of their sanity, wasn't an option. The chances of him forgiving her again were slim to none, which meant letting him lead the marking and binding.
Her focus was abysmal.
She found herself trembling at random without him near.
And a dull ache had recently taken up residence in her bones not an hour ago.
A fresh dark cloud settled over Bailey. If he waits much longer, I'm not sure what type of person he'll be getting. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. Maybe if I confront him naked, he'll stop resisting.
Imagining the frown of disapproval he would wear at the sight, not to mention the hunger that would rage in his eyes, was enough to draw a smirk from her.
"That's the first time I've seen anything close to a smile on your face in nights." Ruby's elbow hit her in the waist as they shuffled along with the other courtiers toward the pits.
The Vranas were going as a family, minus River whose latest lead was too important to pass up.
Bailey ground her teeth and counted to ten. Little slights and annoyances hit harder, as was letting them go. Bailey reminded herself that she'd made peace with their diverging paths, but it was of little help. Ruby's elbow nudged into her again.
"Just daydreaming about my next paycheck," Bailey muttered, shoving her hands as far into her pockets as possible.
Ruby cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes on Bailey playfully. "I think you can call it nightdreaming. It's not actually the day, you know. It's eleven o'clock."
"Noted."
They fell into companionable silence, and Bailey took the momentary reprieve to observe the sea of supernaturals around them. Two more shadowmancer attacks had left everyone on edge. The first of the two had happened three nights after Bailey and Jax's encounter.
She was present once more but had not taken part in the fighting. She hadn't needed to; the incident was over before it began. Bailey was with a handful of other Wildings when one of their own was taken by the rabidus curse.
It had been horrific and swift.
The dark magic ate them up from the inside out—burned them up, Bailey corrected herself somberly. Emmanuel's frantic clawing at his blistered skin was imprinted in her memory, as was Nia's sob of despair.
To make matters worse, a fight had nearly broken out after Emmanuel died. An offer of kindness was twisted and made out to be some far-fetched political power move. Bailey could barely follow the reasoning herself, too busy consoling Nia as the other Wildings confronted the raven shifters offering assistance with the body.
The second attack was deadlier by far and still ran rampant on the lips of every courtier. Though many anticipated the shadowmancer would attack on Halloween, none thought one would occur at the Delacroix's annual Nuit de Culte.
It was a bloodbath, or so the rumor mill proclaimed.
Jakob and Irina, who had been in attendance, reluctantly agreed. Two Delacroix and two Pulzins lost their heads fighting the possessed—another Pulzin.
