Beyond the Dark by Lora Leigh Read Free Book Online

be dark smoke had been drawn, a single feather, tipped with blood, caught within it.
    "Why this one?" She touched the bloodstained feather wrapped in wire.
    "The price of submission," he growled.
    "And this one?" A line of carefully disguised bones, wrapped in the same barbed wire, the wire twisting from the base of his spine to the middle of it.
    "Friends who died for their freedom," he answered.
    "And this?" She touched the blood red teardrops encased by smoke.
    "The tattoo was made by a tribal medicine man. It's a protection symbol, to hold the evil within it from marking my soul." His voice was heavy, filled with pain.
    "The teardrops are the evil?" She asked. "Why?"
    "They mark each Council member I've killed."
    Grace froze, her fingers trembling over the four markers.
    "The larger one denotes a directorate member. The two medium-sized ones are scientists, the smallest are trainers. I don't bother to list the coyote soldiers, they aren't worth the need for protection." Disgust for those Breeds colored his voice.
    "And Albrecht will add to it," she whispered. "What happens when you run out of room?"
    "Then I return for another protected circle and begin again." His back tightened, as rage thrummed in his voice.
    "And does it help the nightmares?" she asked, "or make them worse?"
    Matthias stared over the room, his soul bleak at the sound of her voice. He could hear the pain and compassion in her voice, the need to understand. And despite the blood that stained his hands, all he could think about was touching her.
    "Sometimes, it stills the nightmares," he answered, as he turned to her. "And sometimes, they only grow worse."
    His hands gripped her shoulders, the softness of the cotton hiding the warmth of her flesh from him.
    "Would you stop?" she asked.
    Matthias could see the hope in her eyes, the innocence. That innocence alternately lightened his soul and weighed it down. He had never meant for her to know what he was, he had thought he could keep that part of what he did hidden after he claimed her.
    Because he couldn't stop.
    "We have other things to discuss," he said, rather than answering her. "We need to discuss us ."
    "There's no us , Matthias." The regret in her voice tore at him. "I won't report what I saw, but whatever we had is over."
    She tried to move away from his touch. Despite the arousal he knew she felt, the tender feelings he knew hadn't died, still, she moved away from him.
    Once she had come to him with a smile, her pretty eyes lighting up in pleasure. Now, her dove-gray eyes were dark and shadowed, knowing the truth of what he was.
    "It doesn't work that way." He had to tell her the truth. He couldn't force her into the mating, as much as he wanted to. He couldn't pull her into it without her knowledge.
    "Of course it works that way." Her lips turned down in a sad smile. "I decide who I sleep with."
    "The mating changes that." He kept his voice low, gentle. "You can never just walk away now."
    "Watch me." She tried to pull away again.
    "How many nights can you handle, without me in your bed?" He asked as his grip tightened on her shoulders. "Without my touch? It's been building since the night we met, the need to touch, to kiss, to lie beneath me. Admit it."
    "Once you're gone, I'll get over it." The confidence in her eyes was overshadowed by her arousal.
    Matthias continued to touch her, his hands moving over her arms, sliding the robe past her shoulders, touching her bare skin, his fingertips lingering to relish the feel of warm silk.
    "It won't go away, it will be there. It will become worse some nights, easier others, because we've never kissed. Because my lips haven't touched your flesh. But you'll never be free of it."
    He watched the suspicion grow in her eyes.
    "You're trying to frighten me," she chided, her lips trembling now.
    "No, I'm trying to be honest," he said. "You laughed about the tabloid stories, the Breed community sneers at them, but there's truth to some of them, Grace. There's