Page 10 of Possess Me at Midnight (Doomsday Brethren #4)

He has a sibling? Apparently, and his statement proves how little I know of him, and for once, I’m frustrated that I can’t read his mind.

“Tears aren’t helpful, I know. I should be focused on ways to help Bram and the cause, how I can get him to safety, where I go from here, what?—”

“ We ,” Ice murmurs in my ear as gently as his rough voice allows. “My shoulders are strong. Let me take some of the weight of that responsibility. We must rely on each other.”

He’s so solid against me. He doesn’t feel like my brother’s enemy. He doesn’t sound insane but capable and willing.

Who is Ice?

I pull back and stare as if I can reason him out like a puzzle. “You’re awfully kind to me.”

His face closes up. “Any reason I shouldn’t be?”

“You and my brother…” Hate each other? Try to kill one another at every possible turn?

“The enmity between Bram and me has nothing to do with you.”

His eyes glow so green in the low light filtering in from the next room and moonlight beaming through the fog-shrouded window. He looks intense in every way: determined thoughts, dominant stare, fierce desire.

The tension between us is more than mere physical attraction—it’s something ancient and primal, a pull that defies the sacred boundaries between our bloodlines. A Rion and a Rykard. The very notion is blasphemous in our world, yet my body doesn’t seem to care about centuries of magical tradition.

It’s been easy to write Ice off as a madman, especially given his mysterious and eternal hatred for Bram. But he’s given me the very jumper off his back—the one that carried his heat and filled my nose with his masculine scent—then soothed my grief about a man he loathes. Why?

I doubt he would answer if I asked. Besides, I have to focus on Bram.

“I don’t know what else to do for him.” My gaze flickers back to my brother. Fear rakes its cold claws through me, and I try to suppress the shiver.

“Right now? Nothing.”

That reality brings a new cascade of tears. God, my eyes are gritty. Fatigue beats at me, and crying doesn’t help. Why can’t I stop?

“Sod it,” Ice mutters.

I cringe. Of course he’s annoyed. Tears accomplish nothing. He doesn’t need to be dancing attendance to me but keeping us safe and getting the Doomsday Diary back into hiding. This foolishness needs to stop.

Before I can apologize again, Ice bends to me, lifting me in his arms against that inferno chest. I choke in surprise, and my stomach flutters. Actually flutters as if I’ve swallowed butterflies, as it never has in my nearly eighty-five years.

Then he marches out of Bram’s bedroom, into the main room.

He sets me on the sofa, near the cheery fire he started as soon as we secured the cottage.

He sits beside me and reaches for my hand.

The contact charges me with electric need.

Yet with him, I feel safe. Cared for, even, though I have no doubt that Bram would forbid this or any kind of comfort from Ice.

I stare at his hand over mine, his hair-roughened knuckles swallowing my fingers. “Ice, I’m so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. You’re worried about your brother. I understand.”

How could he possibly? “Do you have a brother?”

“No.” Something in his face warns me to stop asking questions. I take the silent advice. After his kindness, I shouldn’t pry.

“It’s just… Bram has practically raised me. I owe him everything.”

Ice clenches his jaw but nods. “Of course.”

Right then. Time for a change of subject. He isn’t one for chatter, clearly. Tonight, I ache to purge my fears and feelings. Exhaustion and dismay for my brother and the others overwhelm me. All my support…scattered to the winds.

A glance tells me that Ice still watches me, his stare unblinking. What the devil is he thinking?

He shifts closer, and the towel parts, leaving one powerful thigh—and the dark shadows in between—exposed.

I try not to stare. But the dusting of dark hair on his thighs looks denser at the top of his leg, and I find myself insanely curious about what he has under that towel, if all of him is that large.

Heat creeps up my face. Damn. I feel myself turning ten shades of red.

“Do you…um, need to finish your shower?” I look anywhere but at him.

The fire crackles. The air stills. The silence deafens. My mouth turns dry.

“No.” He grabs my chin and forces me to look at him. “Are you all right?”

I tear away from his grasp. Times are serious. Desperate. I have no business staring, no matter how much my eyes fancy the visual candy. “Fine.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

He’s brutally blunt. Then again, everything about him is.

Hair, manner, stare, words—all of it no-nonsense.

I need to adjust, remember he’s no diplomat, nothing like the Council members I’ve dealt with of late.

Clearly, Ice is used to rolling up his sleeves and accomplishing whatever he sets out to achieve.

“Don’t push,” I shoot back. “I’m not important now.”

“The devil you’re not. If you need something?—”

“I will deal with it.”

His green eyes flash. Then his expression turns flat, cold. He withdraws his hand from mine, that tattooed bicep flexing again, now in anger. “Naturally.”

I hear a wealth of meaning behind that one word. “What are you implying?”

He raises a dark brow. The firelight illuminates his face, and I notice for the first time a slashing diagonal scar through the middle of that brow.

In fact, he bears the proof of a nasty gash on the top of his shoulder, and a mark around each wrist. Magickind heals faster and more efficiently than humans.

It’s fairly rare to retain scarring for more than a few months. But these wounds look very old, indeed.

“Do my scars bother you, princess?”

Does he think that I would not be in his presence because he isn’t perfect? When it’s his edges I find so fascinating? “I wonder what you must have suffered. I can only imagine the pain?—”

“Don’t.” He shakes his head and leans against the back of the sofa, putting distance between us.

In other words, he refuses to discuss it. His business, of course. But I can’t deny that his snub upsets me. I’m not hurt, exactly. But I sense a deep well of pain, and I have no idea where it stems from. And I hate being shut out…though I’ve done the same to him.

“Do you need anything else?” His gravel voice rakes over me.

“Do you?” I can’t stop myself from reaching across the sofa and laying my fingers on his arm. After all he’s done for me and my brother today, the least I can do is ease his pain. But when I open my senses to send him joyful and peaceful thoughts, he rips his arm away and stands.

“Stop with the siren shit. I don’t need you to force happiness on me, princess. I’m just fine.”

“I-I’m sorry. I simply thought… I brought up something painful, and?—”

“I didn’t grow up with rainbows and sunshine. I don’t need them now.” He takes a deep breath, then another, staring down at me.

I feel instantly contrite. “I’m sorry.”

He sighs, and the anger seems to drain from him. “So am I.”

With that obscure apology, he pivots away and disappears into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Clearly, he doesn’t want to hear about Bram, and now that we aren’t fighting for survival, every other conversation with Ice is strained and confusing. A few words. Less than five minutes, and I’m mystified. And completely curious.

Where did his scars come from? What exactly was his life like before the Doomsday Brethren, as one of the Deprived? Why do he and Bram despise each other?

The wind outside howls, rattling the windows in their frames, a grim reminder that enemies stalk us just beyond these walls. None of my questions matter now. Nor do the answers, not until we are safe.

I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the fire’s warmth. My body still tingles where Ice touched me, where his heat seeped into my skin. Dangerous. Forbidden. Yet I can’t deny the pull between us grows stronger with each passing hour.

From the bathroom, I hear the water shut off. The door remains closed, but the silence that follows feels louder than any sound. I can almost sense him on the other side, perhaps with his forehead pressed against the tile, struggling with the same forbidden thoughts that plague me.

And suddenly I realize—we’re completely alone, in a remote cottage with one sofa and two bedrooms. One of which holds my unconscious brother.

Where exactly will Ice sleep tonight?