pillowtalk

The world outside was cut off the minute the door had closed. Any thought of anything but Destiny going with it when the bedroom door had been nudged closed. Walls retreating back, falling away as she’d risen over him. Sprawled in her sheets now, limbs heavy, heart still pounding bass drum loud in his chest and echoing in his ears. Grey curved his hands over her thighs, thumbs stroking the line of muscle up their inside, his lips damp, parting to curve into that faint smile as her thumb slowly trailed over his face. When everything else was out there it was easy to believe that fate was gonna be nothing but kind.

His hands glided up, sliding over her hips as Destiny eased off of him. A baby safe in that curve that pressed between the two of them. Growing fast enough that it felt like every time they did this, every time he drove over or Destiny would appear in the apartment, there was another subtle change. Little shifts beneath the ethereal pale skin for him to map out, little shifts that were echoed in him. A nudge here, a bump there, changing the course of everything, at least in his head.

Grey turned his head on the pillow, finally finding the strength to hum lightly as he dragged his arm up to wrap around her. Fingers trailed up her hip, dipped down that flaring line along the bottom curve of her belly. Destiny’s arm slid across his stomach, her head, with that tumble of chestnut hair on his shoulder. Almost like a shield to wrap her up in. Some protection against what waited out there, layered over with the power they’d been honing – he’d been holding back there, not wanting to push too hard and break something inside - no risks.

Things had been almost peaceful since the brother of the idiot who’d shacked up with Leah had come crawling to him with a warning. Too quiet maybe but he wasn’t gonna look that gift horse in the mouth. The madness seemed to bite harder when you were continually looking for it and so – for her, for the baby not yet big enough to kick at the solidity of his hip – he’d tried not to look. Senses were always extended outside of those normal lines but he’d held the paranoia back, hadn’t gone looking for the bitch while the little lights had sparkled like faerie bower in the apartment and Destiny had filled the place with a sort of joy that was intoxicating but still confusing in a way. Christmas had never been like the one that had rolled through, New Year always passing in a cloud of Malcolm’s alcohol fumes and mutters about the years grinding him down. This hadn’t felt like a grind. It was a lift.

Grey stared up at the ceiling, still caught in the afterglow, imagining the bauble she’d wrapped up for him twisting around overhead. Like one of those things you were meant to get for babies – a mobile? – designed to capture blue eyes and fill them with a sort of wonder he still wasn’t sure he was capable of finding in himself. So much of who he was had been clawed out by Leah that night, spilling out on ribbons of blood. Even if he did, would he keep it when he got what he wanted here and both the druid and the bitch who’d tried to claw it out of him was dead?

Slowly the afterglow began to ease, dark brows furrowing just enough to put a line between them before Destiny’s voice stopped that slow slide back into the what ifs. He looked at her, one corner of his mouth curling, his hand finding the thigh of the leg she threw over him. Fingers trailed it again. ”Hey,” he rasped softly. Her question put that line back. Tonight? It wasn’t like they hadn’t before but … no. Destiny had tossed his comment back at him. Sticking around, making something out of this instead of picking at it until the whole thing crumbled.

He turned into her slightly, his mouth touching the corner of hers before the rumble in his chest became actual words. ”I got it,” he promised. A warmth there in his voice that turned into a heat in his throat as he felt the press of that growing bump. Grey drew in a breath through his nose, trailing his hand down to the small of her back to lightly press his fingers into the dip there to hold her against him even as she rose up. It was gonna get heavy, that light taking on a weight. He could’ve pushed away from it like he had done before, scrambling out from under it while he tried to turn Destiny away from seeing what that light revealed.

Leah had already nudged that spotlight, redirecting it, gleefully showing Destiny that other side of him, the one that had to claw its way out of that light to put distance between him and the madness. ”You wanna hear about what might be coming?” he asked tightly. What might be waiting to swallow their baby up the way it had Malcolm, the way it would him if he didn’t find a way out of the maze. ”I should,” Grey managed on a sigh, his voice tight. ”This … unless I deal with it … it’s not going away and it already got too close to you once.”

His fingers trailed up her spine, nudging aside that tumble of hair to trace featherlight over the exact spots those bruises had been in. ”Your family’s got some history right? The darach stuff?” A turning point that had made that light so damning. ”You wanna hear about mine? Or what it ended up causing?” An offer to tear something free he wasn’t so sure he’d get out whole. Leah had torn it all into tiny pieces, bloody, painful chunks he could cough up but maybe he’d end up hollow in the process. Maybe that had been Leah’s aim all along.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1017

They talked about death bed confessions, people longing to get that crushing weight off of their chest before they ended up somewhere they thought all those sins were gonna have them frying for an eternity, but nobody really talked – at least in his world – about the sanctity of those relationship bed confessions. Admissions and truths spoken with the brush of fingers or lips to ease the sting of the telling. That weight shared until it was cast away, blessings given with the tangle of sheets still around them, intimacy rushing in to feel the parts you hollowed out.

Fear and anger had prevented the revelation of those barely scarred over wounds before. Grey had been sure he’d see disgust filling Destiny’s eyes then, the hands that traced his skin and burned through to his soul now beating at him, pushing him away more violently than she had done when he’d pushed her away with words spat out like bullets. Leah had known exactly what she was doing when she’d come for her not him, leaving the stain of her touch on someone already carrying her own scars. The two of them had patched up the ones they’d left on one another but it still cut him to the quick, not knowing if those wounds had been cut deep enough to reach from him through to the life pressed between the two of them.

The touch of her as she slid in was enough to take the edge off of the worries, fingers at his collarbone, lips on his as the subject was broached. A safe space for the two of them and the life they’d created. For now. Maybe they should’ve been right to worry about what was coming. Malcolm had, slowly sinking into those fears after his wife had died, drowning in them to the end. He’d spent years kicking for the surface, to avoid it, but now there was a chance that there’d be a new generation in that damned line before he could do anything to rid them of that curse.

Grey breathed out the tension, feeling it slip over Destiny’s skin in that wash of warmth. Relief maybe in having someone else tell him that they weren’t scared of this. That part of him that had shook like a leaf after he’d stumbled back to the farmhouse with Leah’s blood on his hands and his own drenching his jeans, stilling under her touch. He swallowed, trying to loosen that knot tied tight around his throat. ”Might not be that different,” he said hoarsely with that raw honesty. Dark brows furrowed for a moment, his tongue moistening lips that had gone dry with it. She wanted the scars, wanted to bare them all so they could finally fade. Grey eased in, his palm drawing her tight for a moment as he kissed her harder, something breaking inside of him at it. The dam finally giving way, cracks appearing deep enough that the brackish, choking water behind it started to flow free.

He could’ve admitted he wanted to be the him she saw. Not the thing that had killed time and time again and hovered on that knife blade of sanity every time he did. That would’ve been the spilling of a tidal wave though, something big enough tearing free in him that it would expose everything for Leah to see, to tear apart leaving Destiny and the baby unprotected. Grey’s eyes dropped to Destiny’s throat, the spots where those bruises had been, the place where her heart beat steady beneath the skin now. He stared at it, brushing his thumb lightly back and forth over it. It was beating strong, their baby’s too, hopefully.

Blue eyes rolled back up to take in that frown as Destiny sighed. He didn’t know much of her history, she knew next to nothing about hers and yet there seemed to be echoes between them. Families down dark paths, kids trying to get out from under it and do the right thing. No matter how much blood was on his hands he was trying to do that, he’d told Cat that when she had seen that side of him. Grey nodded slightly, his brows furrowing the same way hers were. ”He tried then,” he said hoarsely. ”I guess … I guess he told you enough for you to understand.” What Malcolm had spouted hadn’t brought any understanding until Leah had come for him. The tower of cards fell then, finally revealing all their faces.

The expectation of having to describe each of them now left something going tight in his chest. Grey shifted restlessly, his hand trailing back down Destiny’s spine, sliding round to palm that growing curve of her stomach, cradling the reason to get it all out. Grey let out a long breath that clicked open those locks that had shut tight around it all, his mouth twitching into a half smile at the end. ”I meant which,” he said hoarsely, knowing she hadn’t gotten the series of questions. Not do you honestly want to hear it. He’d known the answer to that from the moment she’d tossed his refusal to open his life a crack in his face. ”I guess in the end they’re pretty much the same story.”

Tilting his head slightly to settle down again he swept his thumb in a little arc over her side. ”The story I grew up hearing was that we were just druids once. We got ourselves involved in a deal with a family just like ours and when it all went to shit, they cursed us for it. Madness, death, I don’t think any of ‘em ever really figured it out. It just got passed from generation to generation, each of them going bad, losing their minds until they killed someone else or themselves.” His brows puckered again, little lines fanning out around the corners of his eyes as he looked back into that past. ”My dad didn’t say a word about it then but it got to him before my mum died. She could see the way he was goin’ and she couldn’t … I don’t really remember her, she was gone when I was still a baby. After that he got worse. Drinking, screwing around with the Alphas wife … fathering a little wolf girl … Leah …” That was the last straw. It might’ve taken almost two decades to break the camel’s back but it had in the end, tearing it apart, starting all that bloodletting.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1088

You couldn’t exactly go to the hospital with claw marks raked deep across your gut and admit that your sister had half turned into a werewolf and tried to disembowel you before you’d used your own power to throw her onto a broken branch. If anybody would’ve believed him at all it would’ve been a trip to a cell or the slightly more upmarket padded version of one. Grey had known it as soon as he’d seen the light go out of Leah’s eyes. The pack would be on him the minute they found her, trying to finish whatever Leah hadn’t managed to. He wasn’t about to sit around and wait for that, struck dumb by those revelations, wanting to metaphorically throw himself on the pyre with his murderous bitch of a half sister and his dad, who was crazier than he’d thought possible if he’d gone and slept with the Alpha’s wife. A quick dressing on the wounds that had half soaked his shirt by the time he got home, a bandage wrapped tight enough he could barely breathe and a bolt out of the country.

If he’d thought that it would be enough he’d been wrong. Grey huffed a breath out through his nose, feeling those stirrings of paranoia in his gut again. He skimmed the side of his thumbnail gently up the dip of Destiny’s spine. The story up until then was perhaps the easy part, the understandable part. It had been kill or be killed and had carried on that way for the first couple of years in New York. The Alpha would send their people and he would kill before they killed him. Always necessary.

Grey shook his head at Destiny’s quiet oh, brushing off the mistake. The stories were entwined like the nest of snakes his entire life had been anyway. They’d only started straightening out when he’d turned that constant threat into a tool, snakes growing fangs, the spitting poison giving as much as it had cost him.

Sacrifices.

Undoubtedly Leah had known about those too, wherever she’d been lurking she’d seen some of what had happened, leaning enough to turn it against him. He would’ve said it had all been necessary still but argument would’ve sounded less convincing. That broken, scared kid had turned, drawing a line in the sand. Healing those wounds, scrabbling together the power from the sacrifices so that when they came the next time they wouldn’t find that terrified kid. He’d get something for all that torment.

Destiny could see that kid in his description though. Grey made a low sound as her eyes welled up, all that sympathy, that empathy building in those summer sky eyes. He swallowed hard, pressing his lips to temple for a moment like he was soothing her while she tried to do the same for him. That was how a parent should’ve felt about a child growing up in a nightmare, not the way that Malcolm had. ”It’s OK,” he promised hoarsely, those words murmured against her skin before he eased back. It was a slow spill, what he’d worked out from Malcolm’s rantings and the scribbled madness left behind trickling out.

When she reached for him, wrapping her arms around his neck, Grey rolled into her. His lips brushed the warm spot where the pulse beat beneath her skin, his hand slipping back to the small of Destiny’s back to circle gently. The growing swell of her stomach was a solid nudge against his own, the child between them protected for now. Maybe his mum had tried to do the same but once Malcolm’s indiscretion had emerged, she hadn’t been able to hold on. The grip on her child had slipped, leaving him in the middle of all of that, for all intents and purposes alone and vulnerable.

Grey kept his chin, stubbled enough that he could feel the rasp of it against tender skin, on her shoulder, lips almost brushing against her, until Destiny drew back. The press of her lips against his head another soothing gesture before her eyes met his. Lips pursed, Grey nodded, drawing in a breath through them before he spoke. ”Right. I’ve tracked them halfway across the country … I think. I finish it with them and maybe all this goes away.” All except Leah. She’d proven it would take more than death to deal with her. Looking down between them for a moment, Grey trailed his hand around to curve over her stomach. No more generations of madness. This ended here and now, this kid was gonna grow up without that black cloud hanging over them.

His brows hitched faintly as he looked up, shoulders shrugging against the shroud of the sheets. The druids? Grey cleared his throat, his voice rusty as it emerged again. ”She was, but from what you said she’s not now. Wolves can’t do what she did.” He trapped his upper lip between his teeth and tongue, letting it slide free slowly. ”I killed her,” he admitted hoarsely. ”It wasn’t enough for her that she ended up killing our dad. She wanted my family gone. Got her claws in me before I managed to turn it back on her.” The burst of amusement felt almost bloody in his throat, like that was tearing something free – even if Destiny’s touch tried to erase it. ”She was never gonna be seen as the next Alpha with me or my dad standing there. They’d all have figured it out eventually.” A wolf fathered by their emissary. Even if Leah hadn’t been batshit crazy it was going to be a kick in the teeth.

Malcolm’s death hadn’t been the starting point of it all, nor Leah’s, that stretched back to centuries ago, but his sister’s second death would be the end of it. Grey waited for a beat, the lines growing deeper between his brows. He could’ve shrugged again, lied to Destiny to deal with it himself but this had been their attempt to bridge that gap between them, to share the truth before the baby was here and caught up in it all like a fly in a spider’s web. ”We take what we need from them.” A simple truth. Grey didn’t want blood on Destiny’s hands but the only way he could see to shield her and the baby again was to do what he had. Take that power from those who would threaten them. ”Did your dad ever mention sacrifices to you? Druids see themselves as pure, protectors of lives, but darachs know the truth. You can take what you need from people – strength, intelligence, healing. We can make sure there’s no way they can harm the baby.” His hand spread at that, the tip of his thumb dipping into Destiny’s belly button, his fingers shielding that life beneath. Anything to keep that bitch’s hands off of them both.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1148