Braving the Elements (Darkness #2)(33)

My body zinged with remembrance. My knees went wobbly and I stumbled into Charles’ door. I hadn’t been scared for one minute. I felt him coming, his rage as a means to hide a deep fear. I didn’t know what he had been afraid of, but when he stood, silhouetted in my door, my heart stopped.

In his battle rage, as Charles called it, he’d been magnificent. Like a raging Viking of old, his powerful body flexed from head to toe, his thick slabs of muscle on display in the best of ways. His eyes had been on fire, hair wild, his purpose honed and sharpened.

Seeing him like that triggered the thrill I’d always had; the side of me that needed fast cars and rose to meet danger with a knife and a snarl. I couldn’t help but hold my arms wide, waiting for him to rush in and take me, dragging me in and under, losing the world as we raged toward each other until cl**ax.

And we’d done just that. I’d willingly taken blood, somehow not grossed out in the least. I’d also given it, engaging in feelings that I couldn’t even understand, let alone explain. The sensations had been so deep, reaching the center of me, and then tickling.

And the magic…

I sighed as Charles quickly hopped in the shower. Usually, I half-raged trying to stop the flow of magic into my body, then had to organize and spread it out so I didn’t feel weirdly lopsided. It always felt great, joyous, and exhilarating, but it took work. Stefan’s added power presence had smoothed all that out. Balanced it. Made drawing easy and storing effortless.

“Quit daydreaming, we gotta go,” Charles said as he passed by with a towel wrapped around his middle.

“What’s up with the coverage?” I asked as I followed him to his room. “I’m not used to seeing you glistening without a na**d show of some sort—“

The door closed in my face.

Taken aback, I tried the handle, only to find it locked.

“Are you mad at me?” I called through the wood.

The door swung open a moment later, Charles grim and clothed, his eyes downcast. “No, but I never want to see you na**d again, I never want to think that you saw me naked, and I do not want any sort of arousal passing through my brain where it concerns you.”

Still without meeting my eyes, he squeezed past as if I had a contagious virus.

“What the hell did I do to you?” I asked in outrage, following him. “Because I left with Jessiah? Did you get in trouble or something? And what does that have to do with your love of nudity?”

Charles spun on me, making me shrink back. “That crazy f**king male you’re sleeping with nearly tore my head off thinking I’d touched you. I do not intend…”

Charles trailed away, his expression changing to one of disbelief. “He marked you.”

My hand flew to my neck. “Yeah, we exchanged blood. Is that weird?”

“No—” Charles leaned forward to enunciate his words very carefully. “He…marked…you.”

I glanced down at my body, checked over my arms, and then turned my puzzled expression back to Charles. “How? Where?”

“Did he not explain what that meant?”

I shook my head, still lost to confusion. “He said he had to talk to me about what he did. I figured it had to do with him breaking down my door, and making my roommate piss himself and then sleep in a bush.”

“I didn’t sleep. I was afraid he’d come out.” Charles shook his head. “Not important. A male hasn’t marked anyone in…decades. He was probably embarrassed or he would’ve told you.”

“Why? What does it mean? Is it bad?”

Charles held the door and yanked his head for me to go through. “Back in the day, when you staked your whole life on one female, you'd mark her. You'd declare yourself as the defender to her and her offspring, to the death. You basically said you were her department store; whatever she could possibly need or want, it was your job to provide. Darla wants that from him like nobody’s business.”

My heart fluttered. Stefan had given me something he wouldn’t give his intended. That another man hadn’t given a woman in a great many years. I didn’t understand fully what it meant, but that alone made me feel special. It made me feel…important to him. Treasured.

Charles went on. “It’s a great risk to him, though. If anyone goes after you, it’s a challenge to him directly. As a leader, he will be forced to answer the challenge—all challenges—or he loses his title. Not to mention his girl and his pride, obviously.”

“So, basically, the mark is to ward everyone away from me with the implied warning ‘or else.’”

Charles nodded.

“And…he’s promised to another.”

Charles nodded again, but this time, with a grimace. “We stopped marking because times changed. We’re extremely promiscuous as a culture—it wouldn’t be fair to limit that.”

“So, after you mate, you still screw whomever?”

“’Course. Though less as you age, obviously. But yeah, mating is really meant to provide stability for offspring and protect the family. You might have noticed—we are a fairly violent race.”

“But I haven’t seen any families around here…”

“We wouldn’t be so stupid as to have pregnant females and children hanging around the city where Trek and his idiots are roaming free. Families with children are in our lands in the woods or more suburban settlements.”