Micah paced like a caged tiger in front of the windows overlooking the city. Good thing building maintenance had fixed the pane Ronan broke last week, or he might have walked right through the gaping hole and fallen eighteen stories to the sidewalk before he could dematerialize himself out of danger. Then again, maybe the fall and ensuing splat would have awakened him from the nightmare that continued to haunt him on a repeating loop.
My father is alive? I have a brother?
He wasn’t sure whether he should curse Ronan or thank him. On one hand, if Ronan had never broken into his apartment and set off the chain reaction that had culminated in tonight’s shocking revelations about his family, Micah might never have learned his father was still alive. On the other hand, ignorance is bliss.
Knowing his father was alive opened a huge can of worms. Hell, it opened a baker’s dozen of them. In hindsight, he might have been better off not knowing the truth.
He didn’t need a half brother who created problems like the ones Ronan had puked all over him since revealing himself a week ago. The guy was already a one-male wrecking ball with a side of natural disaster. Who the hell knew what else Ronan was capable of if he could alter the course of reality in only one week?
Then there was his dad. Drake Black. The male Micah had looked up to as a child like he’d been a god. When he’d been but a boy, Micah wanted nothing but to grow up to be like his father. Strong and powerful, respected by all and feared by the enemy.
Drake and his brother Rory had been vampires no one wanted to cross. Not because they were violent or cruel, but because they were the epitome of what a leader should be. Compassionate and kind to those they were responsible for and ruthless to anyone who tried to harm them.
Micah’s father was older than Uncle Rory, and, as such, acted as a sort of governor of their village. He made decisions that affected them all. He oversaw the planting, the harvesting, and the law of the land, as it were. If there was a dispute, Drake Black resolved it. If punishment needed to be meted out, Drake Black served it. If a mating occurred in their small village, Drake Black blessed it.
But if anyone came to the village with the intent to harm, Drake Black destroyed them so thoroughly, nothing remained but the dust of their bones.
Ruthless, dominant, and authoritative. That was his father.
At least, it used to be. Now . . .? Micah didn’t know what to think of him.
For the first time since blasting out of Ronan’s home like he was launching from Cape Canaveral, Micah recalled how his father looked when he revealed himself in Ronan’s home less than an hour ago.
There had been no hint of ruthless abandon. No sign of the ferocious warrior his father had once been, nor of the pragmatic dignitary. Not one glimpse of authority.
No power.
The male who showed up tonight had looked like his father, but the essence of his father hadn’t been present. At least, not of the father Micah had known.
Drake Black 2.0 was but a shadow of the male Micah remembered. His body seemed smaller, even though his height was unchanged. But he had appeared thinner, shorter, diminutive in stature. Was that because his shoulders had been drooping, his head hanging like a heavy sack of rocks from his neck? Was it because something devastatingly traumatic had occurred? Or was it because his father had simply lost weight?
All of the above?
At his core, Micah was ecstatic to learn his father was still alive, but on the surface, he was furious. All this time, his dad had been out in the world, living and breathing, but he hadn’t thought to get in touch to say, “Hey, son, guess what? I didn’t die, after all.” What the hell kind of sick fuck did something like that to his own son?
A voice inside his head tried to pipe up with a reply that made sense, but Micah stomped it down. Right now, he would much rather be angry at his father than entertain logical answers for why he hadn’t revealed himself. Once he spent his initial internal uproar and made room for common sense, he would let the voices of reason give their two cents, but right now he was too fucked in the head to think rationally.
Ronan was his half brother. His father was alive. That was the extent of his ability to comprehend. The details were overflow that got washed away in the slushy current flash flooding his rationale.
He rubbed his palms together as he checked the time. Sam should be there any minute. She might already be inside the building, but he was too torqued to reach out his senses to find her.
He needed her to help him forget. To help him shut off his mind to everything but the most basic of needs. And what could be more basic than lust? Than primal desire? Than the need to feel his mate under him as he claimed her?
Sometimes a male simply needed to fuck, and fuck hard. Because fucking consumed everything else. It brought out the feral animal in every male, shutting down all the peripheral bullshit until the animal was satisfied. The harder the fucking, the greater the escape from reality. And right now, Micah needed to escape. He needed to feel Sam’s softness yield to his hardness in every way, inside and out. He needed to expend the pent-up energy twisting his insides into painful knots.
His breath came in tight bursts, his cock already hard at the thought of sinking inside her. His fists clenched and released as he marched back and forth in the darkness, shirtless, barefoot, the fly on his cargo pants undone so it didn’t crowd his erection.
He was ravenous with need, panting, overwhelmed with all he’d learned tonight and restrained only by his solitude.
He knew there was more to his father’s sudden emergence—as well as his brother’s—than he’d been told. A lot more. But he’d shot out of Ronan’s home before his father could explain. There’s only so much space inside a person’s head to deal with the kind of personal shock and mental baggage his father had dumped on him, and Micah had tapped out before his dad got to the good part. All he wanted right now was for someone to toss him a tender T-bone and leave him be while he gnawed the damn thing down to the bone marrow.
His head jerked toward the door, his awareness lighting up with Sam’s presence like a flame catching on dry kindling. She was there. Just outside, in the hall.
He started for the foyer as the door slowly opened. She stepped inside, squinting into the dark apartment.
“Micah?”
In a flash, he was on her, slamming the door with the palm of one hand as he spun her and shoved her against the wall with the other.
She gasped, but the scent of her arousal spiked, letting him know she was more than ready for what he required.
He gripped handfuls of fabric on either side of her scoop-neck collar and yanked in opposite directions. Her T-shirt tore down the middle with the satisfying growl of ripping fabric.
He pushed the tattered shirt off her, along with her jacket. Leather and ruined polycotton blend puddled at her feet.
“I’m sorry,” he said, growling the words as he tugged harshly at her jeans. The metal button at her waist shot across the room and thumped softly on the carpet.
She kicked off her sneakers. “For what?”
“For not being gentle.” He clutched her bra between her breasts and tore it off her as if it were made of nothing more than tissue paper.
“I don’t care. Whatever you need.” She pushed the waist of her jeans past her hips and wiggled her legs so that the denim fell to her ankles as she pulled him closer. “I can buy new clothes, but you can’t be replaced.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He hoisted her off the floor.
Her legs locked around his waist as her palm wrapped around the back of his neck. “With you, pain is pleasure.”
He thrust his hand between them and released his cock. “Then get ready for a lot of pleasure, baby.”
Sam’s back slammed against the wall as he plunged into her, making her cry out as her eyes flew open wide. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, hanging on as best as she could as he fucked her like his very existence depended on taking her as hard and fast as possible.
Their flesh slapped together. He grunted like a desperate wild animal with every urgent thrust, releasing a stream of what she imagined were obscenities in a language she couldn’t understand. He wrapped one arm around her back and pressed his other hand against the wall beside her head, at once holding her against him while giving his body leverage to take her even harder.
She struggled to hold on, to keep her legs wrapped around his hammering hips. Somehow she stayed with him. A moment later, he let out a vicious growl that made her think of a lion attacking its prey. He pulled her from the wall and threw her face-first over the back of the couch. Without missing a beat, he was back inside her, shoving her face into the seat cushion with one hand as he clutched her hip with the other.
She latched onto the micro suede and pushed upward even as he wrestled to hold her down, pressing his hand between her shoulder blades, gripping the back of her neck like he was a police officer and she was the perp he’d chased down, tackled, and was now frisking on the ground.
But this was no normal frisking. No, sirree! And thank God for that!
The new position caused Micah’s cock to hit her at just the right angle as he thrust into her, and with the physical onslaught that was Micah Black, her G-spot didn’t stand a chance. Within seconds, a powerful orgasm clenched her muscles, and she fell into violent spasms, crying out as wave after wave of pleasure ripped through her.
“Fuck!” Micah’s grip on her strengthened as his thrusts stuttered then renewed with a surge of urgency.
His pace quickened as he drove more deeply into her, and a few seconds later, he slammed forward and shuddered, coming hard, his cock kicking inside her as he shouted his release in one long, primal growl.
Before he finished coming, he yanked her off the couch by the hair, driving himself into her one final, gruff time as he sank his fangs into her shoulder with unceremonious abandon. Micah was never so violent when it came to feeding from her, so whatever had happened tonight was bad. Bad enough to push him to his absolute limit.
She let the venom euphoria take her as his cock continued to empty inside her, and then she became vaguely aware that she was being carried down the hall. As the euphoria began to wear off, she realized she was on their bed, and he was tying her wrists to the headboard’s corner posts.
“What are you doing?” she watched bleary-eyed as he adeptly secured her wrists then moved to the foot of the bed and began tying a pair of ropes around her ankles. Then he stood on the bed, his feet on either side of her torso, removed the light shade from the overhead lamp to reveal a hook in the ceiling, and threaded the ropes through the hook.
“Micah?”
He pulled on the ropes, and her legs lifted as if controlled by a puppet master. He pulled again, and her legs opened wide as she forced her body to stay grounded on the mattress. It was either that, or her whole body would lift off the bed, so at least she had that much control. That’s when she realized he was still hard. As in raging hard. And his eyes were black as midnight.
“Micah?” She shivered at his heady, lust-filled gaze as it swept over her body the way a serial killer might eye his next victim.
“I’m sorry, baby.” The apology didn’t reach his gaze as he knelt between her legs, but she heard the sincerity in his tone.
She was so excited, she was panting. “Sorry for what?”
He licked his lips, and his gaze practically swallowed her whole as he looked her up and down, admiring his work. Then he stared between her legs as he pushed his hips forward and breeched her with the head of his cock. “I won’t be finished with you for a while.”
“Oh.” She sucked in her breath as he plunged all the way inside her, and the ride started all over again.