The Devil In Disguise (Bad Things #1)(39)

Uh, oh. Alarm bells went off in her head. He was not about to interrogate her while she was still naked in his bed. No way. No— “The wine won’t be in your system much longer. And I won’t be giving it to you again.”

“You’d better not,” she rumbled. Some of that nice, after-sex languor had left her body.

He kept stroking her arm. “How did you get those marks on your body? Tell me who gave them to you.”

“I don’t know.” Damn him, the wine was still making her talk. Her muscles tensed. “They were just there as long as I can remember.” It was…scary, being the one who didn’t have a choice, who had to speak when compelled. It made her hate her own power even more. She yanked the covers up to her chin, feeling far too vulnerable. Don’t look at my scars.

“What about your parents?” Luke asked her. “Do they know what happened to you?”

“My father was a Navy man.” And her heart twisted. “He was lost at sea before I was born.”

He bent toward her and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

So was she.

“Your mother?” Luke prompted. “Tell me what happened to her.”

Her heart wasn’t just twisting now. It was being squeezed by an ice-cold fist. “You know…I would have told you all this, without the weird wine. Maybe you should have tried asking me.” Her past wasn’t exactly pretty but…I would have told him. “My mother stayed with me until I was six years old and then, one day…she walked into the water.”

She felt him stiffen beside her.

“We lived along the California coast,” Mina continued. “She left me with a friend…” The friend who would later turn Mina over to children’s services. “And she just…she went straight into the water.” That memory was one that had haunted her forever. Seeing her mother just walk away. The waves had beat at her, getting higher and rougher. And Mina had just been sitting on the beach, screaming.

Come back, mommy, come back!

“She left me.” And the pain had never ended. “For years…I hated the water. I was terrified of it. Then one day, I decided I wasn’t going to be afraid any longer.” And, as if fate were playing with her, she’d realized that she had a natural gift for swimming. She could swim faster, harder, than anyone she’d ever met. She could hold her breath for almost five minutes. “I don’t like being afraid,” she said.

He pressed another kiss to her cheek. “No, I don’t imagine that you do.”

She sat up in bed, making sure to pull those covers with her. He backed up, but stayed close. Her gaze held his. “I can’t make you tell me about your family.”

Luke laughed. “Trust me, you don’t want to know about them.”

“Yes, I do. Isn’t it fair,” she stressed that word, “for you to tell me about them?”

He was silent a moment, and then… “The only family I have left is a brother. My twin.”

Right. She knew about him. “The Lord of the Light.”

His laugh was bitter. “Yeah, he calls his dumb ass that. We grew up…always knowing we were opposite, always being told that we were fated to destroy each other.” He rubbed his jaw across her arm, the stubble rasping lightly. “How’s that for a fun Christmas card greeting?”

“Do you…talk to him?”

“I try not to. Despite the shit that’s been prophesized, I don’t want to kill him.” He went silent again, as if he’d shocked himself.

“Is it…true?” Mina asked. “Is he supposed to be good and you’re evil?” Two twins—dark and light, good and evil, a balance in the world. So the stories went.

But stories could be wrong.

“You tell me,” Luke said, his voice low. “Am I evil?”

Her hand lifted and her fingers smoothed over his cheek. His stubble rasped beneath her touch. He’d protected her, given her sanctuary. He’d also drugged her with some kind of truth serum. And locked her in a cell.

“You don’t know, do you?” For an instant, she could have sworn that he sounded sad. “That’s the problem, Mina. I don’t know either.”

“Luke—”

But…a phone was ringing. The sound was so incredibly normal that she was jarred. Luke swore and slid from the bed. He paced toward the heavy, wooden dresser and lifted his phone. She hadn’t even seen it over there.

He frowned at the screen, then swiped his finger over it. Putting the phone to his ear, he said, “This is Thorne.”

***

Garrick pressed the knife deeper into Eli’s side.

The guy was bleeding all over the floor, twitching, but…at least the spiders weren’t sliding off the fellow any longer.

“L-Luke?” Eli gasped out.

“Eli?” Luke Thorne’s voice seemed to fill the cell. Garrick had turned the phone on speaker. He wanted to hear every single word of this conversation. “Where in the hell are you?”

Hell is right.

“M-Mina James…” Eli trembled. “She’s…dangerous.”

Garrick nodded. Those were exactly the words he’d told Eli to say.

“Don’t…don’t trust her,” Eli added. “She h-hurt me.”