Page 5 of Darkest Before Dawn (His Perfect Darkness #2)

“I enjoyed it.” Her voice is low and throaty. “You know I did. But it can’t go on forever. There’s too much at stake.” She withdraws her hand, looking resigned. “It can’t continue.”

She’s pulling away. Earlier in the bedroom, she wasn’t feeling shy and nervous; she was putting up her walls. Does she need evidence of how good we are together? Because I have plenty of that. “Last night?—”

“Last night, I needed comfort. A place to land. I’ll always be grateful, Rex, but?—”

“You belong to me.” It comes out too harsh, and I know it’s a blunder. I’m being a clumsy negotiator, but dammit, she surrendered herself to me, and I’m never letting her go.

She shakes her head, and the light catches her collar, negating her refusal. “I belong to myself.”

“You gave yourself to me.”

“You want the truth?” Her chest rises and falls as if she’s bringing out the big guns but is reluctant to use them. Sometimes in our arguments, I sense that she’s being careful, almost reluctant to hurt me, as if she intuits that she’s one of the few people who could.

I get control of myself. There’s a panicked part of me screaming that I need to beg her to stay, but I refuse to act so needy. So pathetic. “Tell me.”

“I came here to trap you. To see if I could gather evidence of your crimes.”

It’s adorable, her thinking she can entrap me. “I know. You see yourself first as a detective. You’d like to only be a detective instead of what you are.”

“And what am I?”

“Mine.”

She shakes her head as if dizzy.

I enjoy seeing her overcome by me, but I know it’s not a fair fight because her desires side with me. “Has it occurred to you that I used your single-minded focus on justice to trap you ?”

“Yes.” She closes her eyes briefly. “I thought I could resist you. I told myself I would get close to you, give you what you wanted, and see if you’d make a mistake. Give me something I could use to nail you to the wall.”

“So that’s why you were snooping around.” She’d found my childhood bedroom, my journals, and evidence of my search for her. And then she found my underground headquarters. “You found more than you bargained for.”

She gives me her hard-edge detective glare, but the effect is diminished because she’s still wearing my collar.

“Whatever you told yourself, it’s time to admit it was an excuse. You manufactured all sorts of reasons to put yourself in my clutches. But whatever reason you gave yourself was quickly eclipsed by your desire.” I pause to give her a chance to protest, but she doesn’t. “You were fooling yourself.”

“You’re right. I was fooling myself. And now I’m not.”

She’s trying so hard to pull away. “I get it.” I let my voice soften. “You’re afraid of this, of us. It’s new?—”

“It’s not that. I need to focus. You’re not the priority anymore.”

She’s talking about me like I am only a target, not her dom. “Why are you denying what we have together?”

“Because it’s not right. It’s twisted.” She swirls her finger against the outside of her water glass, collecting condensation. I want to put her in a posture collar and force her to look at me. “Maybe it’s just who we are.”

“And what is that?”

“We’re broken. Both of us. I don’t know if what we can have together would be right.”

I get a flash of the inadequate feeling I felt earlier when I faced my parent’s portrait. “We are right,” I insist. “We make sense together. Inara”—I push back my chair to face her fully, with nothing between us—“you’re the only thing that makes sense.”

“Rex.” She’s looking at me with sorrow and pity. “Two broken people don’t make a whole. There are things you’ve done, that I’ve done–”

“What have you done?”

She presses her lips together, and my anger flares. She’s holding back. Again.

I knew I should’ve shattered her when I had the chance. Broken her into so many pieces that only I could put her back together.

There’s still time.

If she thinks I’m a monster, I can prove her right.

I want all of her. I need her mind and body under my possession, and if I don’t get it, I’ll go mad. And then the monster will truly be unleashed.

I grapple with my intense feelings and force myself to speak softly.

“You’re saying this because you’re terrified.

You’ve always been afraid—and with good reason.

” I think of the terror she went through as a child.

“But you know me. You’ve trusted me with your body.

” If I stripped her naked, she’d be covered in my marks, proof of our compatibility written on her skin. “You can trust me to keep you safe.”

I’m appealing to what drew her to me in the first place. It’s ruthless, but I’ll use any weapon I have to keep her at my side.

And she looks tempted, her face filled with yearning when I murmur, “Let me be your safe place to land.”

She shakes her head slightly. “Safety is an illusion. And I don’t think you want me. You just want to own me.”

I shrug. “It’s the same thing.”

“No, it’s not. You’ve fixated on me. You enjoy dangerous games, but everything in your life has come easy. I was something you couldn’t have for far too long. Now I’m just a challenge to overcome, a prize to be won.”

I smirk. “Such a lovely prize.” It’s the wrong thing to say.

She pushes to her feet. “I’m leaving, Rex. I have a job to do, and it needs me more than ever.”

I rise also, kicking myself. I forgot myself and fell into the fun of fighting with her and went too far. “No,” I blurt, rage and panic pumping through my heart until I’m made of emotion. I need to stop her, but I can’t lose control. “Inara, think about this. It’s not safe for you?—”

She whirls to argue, but we’re interrupted when Hamish glides through the door.

“Sir, there’s something you should see.”

“Not now, Hamish.” He wouldn’t interrupt unless it was important. I don’t care if every stock I own is tanking or every business I own burns to the ground. Nothing is as important as keeping Inara here.

“You’ll want to see this news briefing. There’s been another murder.”

Inara blanches, and I reach to comfort her. She’s just been through her worst nightmare, and I want to give her what she needs.

But she pushes past me and barks a demand at Hamish. “Show me.”

In the short walk from the breakfast room to the study, Inara fully transforms into the hardened version of herself she becomes as a detective. She’s wan and withdrawn, the flickering light of the television emphasizing the bruised hollows under her eyes.

“I’m on location at the scene of a second murder,” the TV reporter says, standing on a sidewalk corner with the wind tugging at her blonde hair. “An inside source says this new murder might be related to the horrific Green Street killings we reported on yesterday. NRPD has yet to comment.”

Green Street is the crime scene where I met Inara yesterday. Where she almost collapsed after seeing a scene that matched her family’s murder.

“In both cases, the killer entered the home at midnight while the victims slept. This time, his target was twenty-five-year-old Emily Rodriguez?—”

A picture of the victim flashes on the screen. It shows the young woman at a happier time, when she was alive and well, instead of as a now mangled corpse. Horror hits me. The shape of the victim’s face, her long dark hair—she looks like Inara.

The reporting continues, showing B-roll of the neighborhood, charming brownstones and old oak trees now marred by yellow crime scene tape. I don’t hear a word over the high-pitched whine in my ear.

The killer wanted Inara. He targeted her first with the letters and then with a series of murders. First, a family was killed in the exact way her family died years ago. Now, a woman who looks like Inara. It can’t be a coincidence.

I need to focus, to think. But all I can see is Inara lying dead on the ground. It could’ve been her.

Maybe it’s because I just studied their portraits, but for a moment, I’m transported to that horrible night in the alleyway outside the theater, the smoke of gunfire hanging over my mother and father’s prone bodies.

One minute we were laughing and talking, the next, they were dead.

Leaving me with nothing but the echo of gunshots and the loss I would carry for the rest of my life.

Inara is in danger. She could die, just like my parents. She would’ve died last night if the killer had found her.

Only I can keep her safe. And I will do anything. There’s no law I won’t break, no boundary I won’t obliterate.

Nothing matters but protecting her.

Inara

The Bondage Killer has struck again. This time, instead of a family, it’s a single woman. She was alone in her apartment when he broke in. I feel a flash of terror and anguish, and I don’t know if it’s mine or a psychic response to the victim.

They show a picture of her when she was alive, smiling, with her arms around her dog. The mention of a dog tugs at my memory. The detail matches my dream last night, where I was a grown woman lying in bed, hoping the sounds outside my room were made by the dog and not an intruder.

Dear gods. It wasn’t a dream.

“Pardon, ma’am?” Hamish mutes the TV and cranes his head as if to hear me better.

“Nothing.” I didn’t mean to say that aloud. No one knows the truth about the visions I see of victims before they die, and no one ever will. It’s a secret I’ll take to the grave.

I shake off the sick feeling of psychic horror and try to focus on the facts of the case. There’s no time for me to collapse, not now.

“Are there any more details?” I ask. On the muted TV, the news broadcast has switched to images of Chief Jordan waving away microphones. The chyron announces an upcoming police press conference.

“I did make a few inquiries and learned a detail left out of the press reports,” Hamish says. “There was a note left on the latest scene. Much like the ones sent to you, Detective Ramos.”