Born, Darkly (Darkly, Madly 1)

He lays his hands on my thighs, stirring a visceral reaction. The contrast of the cool satin and his body heat ignites my skin. I want to flee and be closer to him all at once.

“Do you know who the girl was?” he asks. The feel of his touch steals the air from my lungs as his hands inch up, the silky dress whispering over my flesh. “The girl in the cage with you. Who was she?”

I breathe through the mounting pressure. “I can’t be sure,” I say. Her dirty face flashes before my eyes, unbidden. “But I think…I think I loved her.”

Honesty is all we have left. Whatever Grayson has planned for me, my only recourse is the truth. He sees through my guise, the façade I display for the world, and he doesn’t judge me the way it does. If anything, admitting the darkest, most disturbing facets of my psyche may buy me time.

And if I’m being completely honest with myself, I want to tell him. He was stolen—he has this whole experience and life as an abducted child, raised by the people who took him…and that’s fascinating. But it’s also sacred to who he is and the answers he harbors with that knowledge.

He glides his palms over my legs. I can feel the abrasive threat of his coarse touch beneath the flimsy material. I want it—and I loathe myself for wanting it. “Love,” he repeats, like he’s sounding it out, tasting it, the same way I am in my head.

“She felt familiar,” I say. “Like family. Like a…”

“Sister.” He looks up at me.

As soon as I hear the word, recognition jars a memory. “Mia.” Little details, quick glimpses of our life, trickle into my mind. Her dirty blond hair tickling my face. Her smile. Her tears. Her laugh.

Then—

He took her from me. The current builds, a stream of memories flooding me. She was ripped through the bars, out of the basement, and away from me. I don’t need to recover all my memories to know the truth.

She’s buried with the others.

“London, breathe.” Grayson’s voice coaxes me away from the dark corner, and I gulp down a fiery breath.

“I don’t want to remember,” I confess. And I don’t. If he tortured her in front of me, if he killed her…my mind has protected me, sheltering me from an evil no child could process. Even now, the pain constricting my chest is so foreign, I’m unable to bear the crush. I don’t want to feel. “She can’t be my sister,” I whisper.

“There’s only one way to be sure.”

At that, my gaze lands on Grayson, trapped in his declaration. “Dig them up,” I say. Only this time when it leaves my mouth, the meaning is different, clear. DNA testing would prove if I had a sister. It would prove so much…

“You’ll never get answers from him,” Grayson says. “But if you pass your ultimate test, you will no longer need them.”

He buries his head in my lap, and the reflex to touch him strikes like a match. The yearning flares flinty and black between us. I steel my willpower, straining to hold on to some semblance of myself.

Think. The only question I would demand that my father answer is why.

But then, I know that, too, don’t I? I’ve studied and analyzed his disorder over the years. The girl, my sister, Mia—she was much older than me. She was as old as the girls buried in our backyard. She was his target age, and me? I simply got in the way.

So the question then becomes: why did he keep me?

“He didn’t love me,” I reason aloud. “Not in the way a parent loves their child. He was grooming me. I was a project. And when I failed him, I was just another disobedient teen girl who needed punishment.”

Grayson grips my legs, grounding me. And I let him. “He was going to kill me,” I say, knowing it to be absolutely true now. My father—the only father I’ve known—was waiting for me to come of age.

“If you hadn’t killed him first.” He finds my gaze as he eases the dress above my knees. “The feeling, the emotion we call love is only a chemical in the brain. A chemical we never had access to, but does that mean we’re fiends?” He nuzzles my thighs, his lips dragging my dress higher. Heat singes my flesh. “Do we love each other, or are we merely crazy for each other? I know I’m crazy—maddeningly crazy for you. Obsession is a far more evocative emotion than love.”

The fervor of his touch rises, engulfing me in flames. The sensual feel of his palms on my thighs, skin to skin, stirs a carnal want within me that may just be akin to love. I want Grayson, in spite of—or maybe because of—the things he does to me that nobody else would dare.

“I wasn’t born this way.” I turn my head away, my fingers seeking desperately for the string.

“We weren’t born the day we took our first breath. We were born the moment we stole it.”

I close my eyes, feeling the raw and painful truth of his words. “We’re monsters.” I look at him then, breathless and torn. “And our love is this monstrous thing that will devour us.”

“It might, or it can take all the uncertainty and pain away,” he says. “This is right, London. We were born without remorse or guilt, because we’re designed to take life. The shame you feel, the guilt…it’s not real. You’ve trained yourself to feel emotions that don’t exist. Your mind has detached from certain areas of reality to shelter you from what you truly are.”

“A killer,” I whisper. An ache throbs at the base of my skull and I shut my eyes. “No. You’re sick. I’m sick. We need help.”