Page 29 of A Wicked Dance of Obsidian and Light (Echoes of Darkness #1)

Music is blasting in my wireless earbuds, and sweat rolls down my spine as I pour all of my frustration while kicking the shit out of the punching bag at the compound. It’s the only place Kaiden can’t follow me. Two weeks have passed since he announced he was moving in with me, and I think I’m going crazy. I can’t escape him. Even here. Because he’s in every single one of my thoughts.

True to his word, he’s been shadowing me everywhere. At the store. To pick up Ms. Robbin’s meds. When I go for a run and on my shifts. I don’t understand how the heck he gets anything else done because he’s spending every second with me. He also cooks for us every day. I’m an okay cook; I love to eat more than I love to cook and treat it more as a chore, but everything Kaiden makes is borderline orgasm-inducing, and if he weren’t a demon, I would beg him to marry me and make me food for the rest of my life.

I’m also paranoid and jumpy whenever we step foot out of my apartment because I’m afraid someone from the Order is finally going to see us together. I avoid going outside unless I absolutely have to.

The worst part is that I’m in a constant state of arousal around him. The temperature in the room rises to dangerous levels as my mind replays one night he got into my bedroom last week.

I’m still screaming as the force of my nightmare propels my body forward like a jackknife. My throat is raw, and my tee is plastered to my body with sweat while tears stream down my face like pouring rain.

Kaiden suddenly appears in front of me. “What happened?” he asks. His head swivels around in the dark room, trying to find the source of my distress, his voice laced with panic.

I clutch my chest. “F-fuck. Y-you scared me,” I stammer through the sobs wracking my body. “I h-had a n-nightmare.” As per usual, I don’t know what it was about, but my body seems to remember, and I’m filled with a sorrow so deep it spreads like black ink into every crevice of my soul. I haven’t had one this bad in years.

Kaiden bends, and his fingers find the hem of my tee. “I’m just going to take this off and bring you a dry one, okay?”

My teeth sink into my lower lip, and I nod, not being able to do anything more at this moment. My body is shaking so badly that I can barely concentrate on anything. Kaiden peels off the wet tee, discards it on the floor, and brings a clean one from my closet. He pulls it over my head like I’m a child.

He then lies next to me on the bed, and with a swift move, he drapes me over his chest, one hand wrapped around the small of my back and the other thumbing the tears away gently.

“Shh, angel,” Kaiden breathes. “I got you.” His incredible scent blankets me like a cocoon, and the warmth of his body sinks deep into my bones. He continues caressing the back of my head and whispering sweet nothings in my ear until the shaking finally stops, and I’m no longer crying.

“What was the nightmare about?” he asks, his deep voice and the way his knuckles graze the side of my face sending shivers down my spine and my pulse rate in overdrive.

It doesn’t escape me how well our bodies fit together, like two pieces of puzzle. And despite everything, desire coils deep in my belly. It spreads to the area between my thighs, soaking my panties.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” he offers, and I realize I didn’t answer him. I was too focused on my dirty thoughts and the way his body feels against mine.

I swallow hard through the knot in my throat. “I don’t know. I can’t remember,” I answer, my voice coming out all coarse and scratchy. “I used to get them every day since I woke up from the accident but I never remembered what the nightmares were about. Until a few weeks ago.” And then there’s that weird dream I had before waking up in the crypt after the vampires jumped me in the alley. That one wasn’t a nightmare, but it still felt like a memory from when I was a kid. I don’t mention it though.

Kaiden’s body stiffens as he inhales a sharp breath. His heart kicks up a notch against the side of my face. “You remembered the accident?”

“Just a part of the accident…I saw Mom. She was hurt and unconscious. I tried to wake her up, but then the trees snapped under the weight of the car. We fell into the abyss, and I woke up,” I say, my voice trembling. I don’t realize I’m crying again until Kaiden gently wipes the tears running down my cheeks with his thumb.

“Did you remember anything else from your past?” His fingers shake slightly as he runs them through my hair.

“No…I mean, maybe. Once. After the vampires jumped me in the alley. I’m not sure it was a memory, though. I wish I remembered everything,” I murmur brokenly. “Tell me something real,” I blurt out after a few beats of silence.

“What?” he asks, confusion evident in his tone.

“Something about you that you’ve never shared with anyone before,” I say—no…demand. Kaiden witnessing one of my most vulnerable moments left me raw, like being dragged through gravel at breakneck speed. I feel naked…exposed, while I know almost nothing about him. I desperately need him to balance the scale, even if only for a moment.

He takes a minute to absorb my words, and he seems to understand as he starts talking, his voice thick, steeped in pain. “I never met my mother. When I was just a kid, I used to imagine that one day, she would come to rescue me from my father’s claws.” He laughs bitterly. “What a fool I was.” He pauses as he swallows. “As I grew up, I understood that she never will, and it broke me more than I would like to admit.”

Inhaling deeply, he continues. “He kept me locked…somewhere dark, no windows. The only person to ever show me tenderness and a semblance of what a mother’s love could be in that place was a woman working for my father. She would sneak me out for a few minutes whenever she could on her cigarette breaks. The first time I stepped through the door, I was almost blinded by the abundance of light. It felt as though my eyes would melt off, but it was worth it to experience the first ray of sunshine on my skin. That moment will forever be seared in my brain because I got a taste of freedom, even if fleeting. I will never forget how it tasted, how it smelled…like sunshine and cigarette smoke.” He clears his throat. “Smoking brings me back to that moment.”

Words fail me, and my heart breaks for him, for the child desperately wanting to be loved and getting only crumbs in return. I would have never thought so looking at Kaiden, but I realize now that maybe we’re not so different…him and I.

We just wear the scars left by our past differently. Some people wear them like open wounds for the whole world to see, while others hide them beneath walls so thick, nothing can break through. It seems as though he barricaded his beneath a titanium facade while I’ve let mine bleed like an overflowing river before honing all that pain to steel, transforming it into rage. Still, I sometimes feel as though I’m teetering on the edge of that blade, afraid that one day I will fall and impale myself in its sharp tip.

“Thank you. For sharing that with me,” I say softly, breaking the silence that blankets the air. A million questions sit on the tip of my tongue. I want to know more about Kaiden, about his past. Hell…I want to know everything, but I don’t want to push him too far. “What was her name?” I settle on asking.

“Theresa,” Kaiden responds.

“What happened with her? Did you get to se—”

“She’s dead. My father found out about the cigarette breaks and killed her,” he cuts me off with a gruff voice, muscles pulled taut with tension.

Fuck. My heartstrings turn into painful knots. “I’m so sorry, Kaiden. For everything you went through, for what happened to Theresa.”

He softens at that. “It’s okay, angel. It’s all in the past.” He punctuates the words with a gentle caress on the curve of my cheek. A few moments pass before Kaiden speaks again. “It’s late. You should go back to sleep.”

“’Kay,” I say tiredly and yawn. Exhaustion pulls at my eyelids, so I close my eyes as the steady rhythm of Kaiden’s breath lulls me to sleep. I’m in the space between dream and reality when I feel soft lips against my forehead.

“I wish you would remember too…” Kaiden whispers after a few beats of silence. I think I also hear him say, “remember me,” but my grasp on reality slips, and it all seems like I imagined it, like my brain is playing with me, and it’s all wishful thinking.

Since that day, Kaiden finds his way to my bed every night, but only after I already fall asleep. He holds me to his chest, and I pretend to still be asleep. With bated breath, I wait for him to touch me, to do something about the sizzling electricity that sparks between us every time we touch because I’m too chicken shit to initiate anything.

I’m afraid that once I do, I’ll lose myself forever in his touch. I know that the second we cross that line, I will be ruined for anybody else. And it terrifies me—more than anything. I usually fall asleep again at some point, and he sneaks out before I wake up. It almost seems like I’ve dreamt him there with me, but I feel him in every cell of my being, in every beat of my heart. Of course, we don’t acknowledge it, and we don’t talk about it. It’s driving me insane.

A hand wrapped around my elbow stops me mid-punch and brings me back to reality. As I turn around, my gaze slams into Noah’s sparkling blue-gray eyes.

Fuck.

My heart jumps in my chest, not prepared to be face to face with him. If I’m completely honest with myself, ever since those vampires jumped me in the alley and Kaiden has become my shadow, I haven’t thought about Noah once. Even when he was gone he was always there in the back of my mind, my thoughts always drifting to him unconsciously.

“Hey,” he says after I pull out my earbuds. He looks good, actually more than good. He’s as gorgeous as ever, decked in jeans and an aquamarine V-neck tee that makes the blue in his eyes pop, though, for some reason, I don’t feel those butterflies swarming my stomach or that racing in my pulse like every other time he was near me before. There’s still something there, though more subdued.

“Hey,” I echo and amble to the rack of towels, pulling one out and patting my sweaty face with it. “What’s up?”

Noah runs a hand through his sun-streaked hair as he smiles softly at me. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.”

“Can we talk in private?”

I nod and follow him out of the training room, trying my best to ignore Erik, Grayson’s grandson, who’s sparring with another hellseeker on one of the mats. His gaze has been burning holes in the back of my head the whole time I’ve been here, staring at me with those serial killer eyes. It makes my skin crawl. I shake the unpleasant feeling off and match Noah’s steps until we reach the empty corridor and stop near the stairs.

“Listen,” Noah says, and his eyebrows drop in a frown, “before we talk about official business regarding the Order, I wanted to say that I know you’re still pissed at me, and that’s why I haven’t reached out to you. I wanted to give you some time to cool off, but I’m not giving up on us, Iris. I’ll never give up on us.” He takes my hand in his, and with a finger under my chin, he tilts my head up until our gazes meet. “Can I take you out on a date?”

My skin breaks out in goosebumps, and my heart does a little flip-flop in my chest. As much as I hate it, his touch still affects me. “I don’t know…I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I scoff, stepping back and pulling my tingling hand away.

The hurt flashing in his eyes transforms them to a stormy grey. “Just think about it, okay? There’s no rush. As I said, I’ll wait for you, however long it’s necessary.”

Sighing deeply, I say, “Did you want something else? I need to take a shower and head out.”

“I received word from the Kabal. They analyzed the video and the pictures I took for my report. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Fuck.

“I told you everything I could remember from that night,” I say, my tone dripping with annoyance. The lie tastes foul on my tongue.

His jaw ticks. “Are you sure?”

“We’ve been through this already,” I clip out, resisting the urge to rub my sweat-slicked palms on my leggings.

“Fine,” he bites back. Did you, by any chance, see an archangel appear the night you were attacked by those demons?”

A surprised laugh bubbles out of me; then I realize he’s serious, and my smile drops. “Of course not. I would have told you if I did. Why?”

“The fire that obliterated the forest was caused by illum .”

“What? Are you sure?” I ask as my eyes almost bulge out of my head. Illum is the power wielded by the strongest of angels; only archangels and seraphim are able to use it. It’s the divine light. It burns hotter than any flame, even hellfire.

He tilts his head, folding his arms in front of his chest. “The scientists working for the Kabal were able to confirm it after I sent them a portion of the scorched earth.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “There was no angel whatsoever. Just me and the demons. That’s it.” And Kaiden Black. Of course, I don’t mention him. An image of Kaiden’s eyes getting all bright and weird when he lost his shit that night in the abandoned cathedral the moment he saw the vampire marks on my skin flashes through my mind. But he’s an Elite demon, so it doesn’t explain the illum at all.

However, I did see with my own two eyes the way the portion of the forest looked as if a wildfire like no other obliterated everything in its path. If illum was involved, then it would also explain the fact that we have barely encountered any demons on the streets since the night the umbra attacked me. They would be scared shitless of the possibility of coming face to face with an archangel.

Noah sucks on his teeth. “I hope you’re telling me the truth because if not, you’re digging both of our graves here. Yours if you’re lying and mine for trusting you.” With stiff shoulders and a granite jaw, he turns on his heel and leaves.

Great. Just what I needed.

An hour later, after taking a shower and spending some time with my aunt in the library, I make my way to the alley, where I know Kaiden is waiting for me. He always drops me off there when I go to the compound and then picks me up again when I’m done.

Fiery red clouds cover the apricot sky as the sun dips into the horizon. The air is still fresh and crisp even if summer is finally here. Because of the mountains surrounding Ashville, the heat never gets to be suffocating, and I love that. A shiver rolls down my spine with the sensation of being watched. I turn around to scan the street for anything suspicious. There’s the usual evening traffic, the honking of horns in the distance, and some kids playing basketball across the street, but no one else. Man, this paranoia is getting the best of me. I’m constantly on high alert, and it shows. I shake my head, annoyed that I’m being so jumpy.

The ping of an incoming email forcefully pulls me out of my thoughts and into the present. I take my phone out of my crossbody bag, tapping on the screen to see who is it from.

Dammit .

My jaw ticks as my eyes register the words, my fingers clenching the phone in a white-knuckled grip. I’ve hired a tech guy, who cost me an arm and a leg, to look into Grayson’s text with the hope that maybe someone hacked into his phone and sent the message. But he couldn’t find any evidence of that. He also couldn’t trace Grayson’s location after he left the compound, as I asked. Apparently, there’s a strong encryption blocking anyone who tries, so my best guess is that Tim must have worked his magic on that front. I mean, Grayson is the leader of the Order in Ashville, so I don’t know why that surprises me.

What can I do next? I’ve tried everything that I could think of to help me get an answer regarding the text, and asking Grayson point-blank if he sent me into a trap is something I can’t do for obvious reasons. The text message was really the catalyst for the whole incident, but after hitting two dead ends, I have no idea where to turn. I suppose focusing on learning more about the umbra and the bounty from Hell is my best bet, and hopefully, then I can unravel everything from the top down.

Heaving a deep sigh, I shove my phone back into the bag and continue my trek. As I round the corner and enter the narrow alley, my heart starts doing the rumba inside my chest when I spot Kaiden waiting for me next to his bike, a lit cigarette between his full lips. A Zippo is dangling from his fingers as he plays with it. He pockets it when our gazes collide.

The sharp angles of his jaw and cheeks stand out even more today since his hair is tied back. He looks like the prince of darkness dressed in his usual black attire, leather jacket, and worn boots. Letting out a plume of smoke, he stubs the lit cherry to the wall next to him, flicks it to the trash container, and takes out my helmet. One of my conditions for letting him give me a ride everywhere I went was that we both wore helmets so no one could recognize us.

“Training good?” Kaiden asks, handing me the helmet as I stop in front of him.

“Yeah,” I respond, and a current passes through me as our fingers touch. All the hair on my body stands on end.

He mounts the bike, but before starting the engine, he says, “We have plans for tonight. We’ll go home to change and then head out.”

God, the way he said home like we’re a couple that lives together does things to my insides I’m not ready to admit to yet. “What plans? You know I can’t go anywhere. I work tonight,” I scoff. I want to ask Kaiden about the illum , but it all sounds too crazy to be true, so I bite my tongue and decide to keep it for myself for a while longer.

“Well, I have to go, so you’re going with me. I’m not letting you out of my sight. Besides, you want answers, don’t you? That’s what we’re doing, getting some answers,” he says vaguely.

“Fine,” I fire back, put on my helmet, snap it closed, and then hop on behind Kaiden. I inhale deeply to trap his intoxicating scent in my lungs and glue my front to his back, interlacing my fingers in front of his taut abs.

He slides his helmet on before revving the engine. The pavement vibrates beneath us as Kaiden glides the motorcycle out of the alley and into the evening traffic.

Kaiden’s been cryptic about where we’re going tonight, only saying it’s a party, so I lock myself in the bathroom, do my go-to makeup look, and straighten my hair since it got wavy from being in a braid. It doesn’t look as good as when Sam dolls me up, but I did my best. Entering my bedroom, I make my way to my bed. There are two ivory boxes on top of it. One is bigger than the other, with the same brand name stamped on top that I don’t recognize, but it sounds foreign, and the items inside probably cost more than a lung on the black market.

Opening the bigger one, I take out the piece of silk chiffon material and unfold what must be the most stunning dress I have ever seen and touched. It’s black, with a strappy form-fitting corset on top adorned with delicate flowers on its side made out of golden filigree. At a closer look, I can tell the flowers are irises. The floor-length skirt has two slits running down the sides. I get out of my robe and put the dress on, looking in the oval-shaped mirror next to my closet.

Holy shit!

I have never worn something sexier in my entire life. I almost don’t recognize myself. The dress fits me like a glove, as if Kaiden has my exact curves memorized to perfection. The slits are so high they come up almost to my navel, and it’s the type of dress that can’t be worn with underwear because it shows every little line. I hook my thumbs into my panties and slide them off, then open the other box and take out the pair of high-heeled strappy sandals inside. I slip them on and rotate in front of the mirror. I start chewing on a hangnail on my thumb. I’m so far out of my comfort zone wearing this dress.

“Iris, are you ready? We’re going to be late if we don’t leave now,” Kaiden’s voice travels through the door as he knocks.

“Yeah,” I say, turning around. Before I can take a step, he barges in and stops in his tracks, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he swallows.

Kaiden shakes his head while running a hand over his clean-shaven jaw. “Fuck, angel, you look…” His voice is a deep, gravely rasp as his heated gaze travels every inch of my body like a physical caress, from the tips of my toes to the crown of my head, leaving a fiery path behind.

Time stands still as we take each other in, and I struggle to breathe as if he sucked all the air in the room with his presence. Heat crawls its way from my chest all the way to my face.

He licks his lips, and his eyebrows slant together. “I keep trying to find a word that can do you justice, but there isn’t one. Beautiful, gorgeous, arresting…they all fail to describe you.”

“You look pretty good yourself,” I breathe, not recognizing my voice because it comes out all throaty, and I offer him a soft smile.

Kaiden in his usual clothes is hot as sin, but Kaiden in a black suit is downright lethal.

He’s not wearing a tie, and the two buttons at the top of his white dress shirt are left undone, the tattoos on his throat and chest peeking through the gap. He closes the space between us, and his hand shakes slightly as he brings it up, letting his knuckles run down the column of my throat. My skin blooms in goosebumps before he unclasps my onyx choker.

“You’re not going to need this,” he says and strides to the bedside table, placing it on top. “You also can’t take any hellseeker weapons with you.”

My forehead crinkles in confusion. “Why?” I ask. I never ever take my onyx choker off.

“Because we’re going to a succubus party.”

“You can’t be serious. Why on earth would we go to a succubus party?” I snap.

“To kidnap Adramelech,” he responds casually as he shoves his hands in his pockets.

I rack my brain, trying to remember where I’ve heard that name before, and then it hits me. A clear image of Mrs. Hawthorn explaining Hell’s hierarchy to us in demonology class a few years back when I was still in training flashes through my mind. Adramelech is the name of Lucifer’s chancellor, his right-hand man or, better said, right-hand demon. He wants us to kidnap Hell’s chancellor?

What. The. Fuck.