Free DarkInnocence by Madeline Pryce Page A

pressed a hand in the middle
of Eli’s chest and shoved him back with a not so subtle curling of his lip.
    Eli batted Dante’s arms away and got up in his face with his
hands fisted at his sides. Dante stepped into him and the otherness in the room
gave me the spins.
    “Don’t touch me, pussy,” Eli growled.
    Through the coarse stubble covering Dante’s jaw, muscles ticced
as if he were clenching his teeth. His voice came out in a scary, low whisper.
“One more fucking word and I’ll lay your ass out on the floor, you drunk little
shit.”
    “Eli, as you can see I’m alive, talking and walking. Go
home,” I said and hoped to defuse the violence in the air.
    “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He glared at Dante.
“Alone?”
    Dante stalked across the room and slid a proprietary hand
around my waist to pull me to his side. I turned to him and placed both my
hands flat on his bare chest. “It’s okay, babe. Just give us a minute.”
    “Babe?” Eli mocked.
    We ignored him.
    “I’m not leaving you alone with him.” Dante moved his hand
to my ass, squeezed.
    “He won’t hurt me, I promise. I’ll be fine.”
    “I don’t like it,” he said, his tone soft and silky now that
he was talking to me.
    “This will only take a minute. Promise. And I thought you
had work tonight—what happened?”
    He stroked a hand down my hair and I cuddled into the caress.
    “Called in. You looked too peaceful to wake up and I sure as
hell wasn’t leaving without you.” He bent, pressed his lips to mine. Our
tongues met and I angled my head to the side to taste more of him.
    Behind us, Eli cleared his throat. Right. We had company. I
broke from Dante’s mouth and looked to the man I’d once stupidly fantasized
about having babies with. Eli had his hands shoved into the front pockets of
his black jeans and his gaze glued to the tile entryway where he stood.
    Dante kissed my cheek, his warm breath fanning over my skin
before striding in the direction of the bedroom. Like me, he was barefoot. The
sight of his toes was insanely sexy. At some point, he’d changed out of his
jeans and put on a pair of loose sweatpants that hung off his hips.
    After Dante disappeared, I turned back to Eli. I leaned
against the wall and yawned. “What is so important that it couldn’t wait until
the sun came up?”
    “He’s fifteen years older than you, Hannah. Whatever you two
have going on isn’t a good idea.”
    Anger heated my skin and sped my heart. I was so tired of
everyone knowing what was best for me. “What I ‘have going on’ is the best
thing that’s happened to me in a long time. He’s seen me at my absolute worst
and still wants me. He cares about me, which is more than I can say for you.” I
pointed to the door. “Get out.”
    His jaw clenched but he didn’t move. “We’re friends, right?”
    I shook my head, tried not to think about drinking coffee
together in the wee hours of the morning while Ella and Micah were out on hunts.
We’d spent hours discussing computer programming, demonology and the other
random ancient mythology facts I had locked in my brain. He’d never called me a
freak and he’d never mocked me. He knew my favorite foods and beverages, used
to go out of his way to make me feel included.
    “We used to be,” I said.
    He walked across the room and stopped an inch away from me.
His otherness swirled around me and had a different, more feral vibe than
Dante’s. He cupped my cheek and brought my head up until our gazes locked.
    “I’m an asshole and I fucked everything up between us. We
were friends. I want that back. I want you back. I haven’t been dealing well
with the change. When I came out of the hospital, I pushed you away because I
knew I’d never be the man you deserved. You wanted a normal life with a normal
husband, not some ravenous beast who looks at you with the single consuming
thought of tearing off your clothes and sinking his teeth into your neck.” He
scraped a hand over his