Out of the Dark Read online

  Celia turned all the way to face him, her hands full of suds. “In the closet? Under the bed?”

  Luke’s teeth clicked together. Celia’s eyes flashed at him as she wiped her hands with a dish towel, then tossed it on the counter and folded her arms over her stomach. She leaned against the counter, too casual. Luke knew if he took so much as a step toward her, she’d probably run, screaming. He’d made her afraid…of him.

  Good, he could handle that, if it meant she might also take what he said seriously, but something told him she was just as likely to blow him off as a lunatic. Heat, an upsurge of the low-grade fever that hadn’t left him since being bitten, flushed his face. His fists clenched at his sides, but when he saw her looking at his hands, he relaxed his fingers.

  “Promise me,” Luke said. “You’ll be careful.”

  “What makes you think I’m in any more danger now than I ever was? I mean, if these things have been around for as long as you seem to think, why now?”

  Luke closed his eyes for a second against the hum in the back of his brain. When he opened them, she was staring at him intently. “Because they’re out in the world in a way they weren’t before. Damned if I know why, Celia. I don’t know anything about it. I can only tell you what it feels like. What they feel.”

  “What’s that?” she said like a challenge.

  “Pissed off. And hungry.” Then he left her in the kitchen alone.

  She caught him, though. On the bike, just before he put on his helmet and started it up. She ran out across the snowy grass in her bare feet, over the gravel.

  “You call me,” she told him. “Do you hear me? Whatever you’re doing…out there. You call me, Luke. You check in with me. I want to know you’re okay.”

  From another woman, it might’ve sounded desperate or clingy. Under other circumstances, he probably would’ve lied with a smile he didn’t feel, just to keep her from thinking he was trying to escape her even if he really was. He’d never made a habit of loving and leaving—begin as you intend to carry on, his grandmother had been fond of saying, and Luke had taken that to heart. But there had been times when he’d made mistakes. He didn’t want Celia to be a mistake.

  “Celia, I don’t know….”

  “You call me,” she said. Fierce. As though he had no choice but to obey her.

  “I’ll call you.”

  She nodded once, then again. Stepped back out of the way as he started up the bike. He settled the helmet on his head. He couldn’t look at her as he drove away, but he knew she watched him until he disappeared from sight.

  Celia was sleeping when the phone rang, but instead of startling up out of her dreams, arms flailing and heart pounding, her eyes slid open and her hand reached at once for her cell. She thumbed the screen, the light too bright on her night-tender eyes. She didn’t say hello. She knew who it was.

  Luke said nothing, but the soft sound of his breathing made her smile. Maybe she ought to have been freaked out. At the very least, worried. She hadn’t heard from him for over a month and had imagined him locked up in jail or the mental ward.

  Or worse, dead.

  Hearing the whisper of his breath, all she could do was press the heel of her hand to her eye and curl onto her side against the pillows. When she woke in the morning the call had disconnected, but her phone was warm from where she’d clutched it all night long.

  It went like that for the next three months. Once he said her name, just that single word, and it had been enough to know he was okay. Another time she could hear the rush and roar of traffic in the background. She never called him, though she had his number stored in her contacts on the phone, and he never called during the day.

  Then, four months after that first call, almost a year from when they’d first met, the phone rang again. Her thumb slid on the glass screen and she pressed the phone to her ear. This time, Luke spoke.

  “Celia. I’m…”

  “Here,” she whispered, not surprised. Somehow, she’d already known.

  “Will you let me in?”

  She was already swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. She met him outside on the front porch, her thin T-shirt nowhere near enough protection against the late night chill. His motorcycle gleamed in the moonlight and the leather of his jacket creaked. She put her hands on the front of it and stood on her tiptoes to find his mouth.

  She kissed him.

  Nothing about this made sense. He was crazy, clearly, with that story about monsters. Or maybe she was the crazy one to trust him, to touch him, to pull him inside and close the door behind him, then press herself against his body.

  Upstairs, she undressed him as fast as her fumbling fingers would allow. The leather jacket, tossed onto a chair, then the familiar snap-button shirt and T-shirt beneath it. She realized when she pushed his worn jeans down to his ankles that the heavy boots he wore would prevent her from pulling the denim off over his feet. Celia knelt, the wood floor cool and hard on her knees; she worked at the knots on his laces until she could slip them free. One at a time, each boot heavy and thumping when she tossed them to the side. The jeans came off easily then, and so did the thick socks, until he stood over her naked.

  Luke put his hand on her hair. Celia, still dressed, still kneeling, looked up at him. The room was thick with shadows, so that the flash of his eyes and a brief hint of white teeth were all she could make out of his face. He could have been any stranger standing in front of her, except for the fact she wasn’t in the habit of going to her knees for strangers. She pressed her cheek to the inside of his knee and nuzzled. Then a little higher to his thigh, where the coarse hair tickled her skin. She kissed him there, and Luke’s fingers tightened in her hair.

  His cock was half-hard already when she found it with her mouth. Fully erect moments after with her tongue against it. The brief press of her teeth. He groaned when she sucked him deeply, her hand cupping his balls to stroke a thumb along the seam.

  It wasn’t what she’d planned, though truth be told she’d often lain awake in bed, wondering if he’d call and thinking of doing just this. Sucking his cock, taking him in as far as she could, finding the little divot in the head of his dick with her tongue. Hearing him gasp, just a little. It was somehow sweeter for being unexpected…and so appreciated.

  She gripped the base of his cock as she sucked, adding the friction of her twisting palm along his shaft. Then up and over around the head, slick from her tongue. She’d only meant to start this, but when Luke’s hips pumped forward and he muttered her name, Celia thought this was how she’d finish.

  Yes, her body craved its own release. Her nipples had gone hard against the front of her shirt, the friction of her cotton panties on her clit a tease of the worst sort. The weeks of mental foreplay had put her close to the edge already. But something in the way Luke said her name, the way he moved…hell, the way he’d asked her if she would let him in, like he really thought she would say no…

  He needed this right now more than she did. And really, as she used both her hands and her mouth, moving faster, his cock slick and hot against her lips, giving him this pleasure was so incredibly sexy it was okay that she focused solely on him. For now, anyway.

  Luke put both hands on her head, big palms pressed to her temples. He didn’t try to guide her movements or push her to move faster, but she did anyway. When she ran a hand up his thigh, the muscles jumped and twitched. Another low noise growled from his throat, the sound of it an arrow right between her legs. She drew him deeper, lips and teeth and tongue working his entire cock while her hands moved on him too. She put both of them on his ass, the muscles tight there as well, and moved him in and out of her willing mouth.

  Luke came with a cry, for just one moment pushing too hard, too deep. His taste flooded her and she thought she wouldn’t be able to take him all the way, but at the last second his fingers tightened in her hair again and he kept himself from overwhelming her. Celia swallowed, then again, her hand still moving on his shaft. His cock slipped