Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(71)

Home.

He went still, all breathing suspended, and she knew that he focused everything on the movement of her mouth. Then he crushed her to him, kissing her so hard, she knew he had understood, although she had said no word out loud, nor had she made any sound.

Chapter Twenty-two

THE LITTLE DARK spirit outside the cabin was wretchedly disappointed and growing desperately hungry.

At first the pair inside had shown such rich, bountiful promise, but as time progressed they were actually healing and comforting each other. Raw, deep spiritual wounds closed, and they grew stronger and brighter.

In the meantime, the spirit had trapped itself with its own greed by following them to such a secluded place. It couldn’t sense any other prey around for miles. So it lingered in the deepest shadows of the clearing, hoping against hope to catch one or the other of the pair alone, vulnerable and in pain again. Whenever they came outside together, or the man stepped out by himself, it hid in the recesses of the car’s engine.

Then something else snagged its attention.

A call reverberated through the psychic realm. The voice was a familiar one, dark and seductive as a siren. The spirit wavered in indecision but, while the people in the cabin had been luscious and tempting in the midst of their struggle, they had grown into too robust a force for it to feed on unless they became injured to the point of dying.

Whereas the voice that called came from someone that led a life rich in all the dark paths. He birthed a fertile feeding ground of pain and suffering wherever he went, and he rewarded those that pleased him.

Detaching from the cabin window, the spirit drifted upward like a feather on the wind. It began to travel in lazy swirls in the direction of the voice.

Chapter Twenty-three

“WHEN DO WE have to leave?” Mary asked.

The sound of her soft voice vibrated in his ear as he rested his head on her flat stomach. He turned to press his lips against her skin.

She was unutterably gorgeous to him, her slender body perfect in every way. Small, high br**sts, a narrow waist, the lightly rounded hips and calves and those long, delicately muscled thighs that could grip him with such surprising strength. Her wild, corkscrew curls spilled across the pillow, the tawny color glinting with threads of gold.

The physical details were delightful, but absolutely the most important thing was that she was here with him now after so very long, and her body was healthy and strong, a temple that housed her unique spirit.

He did not want to answer her question, but in spite of himself, his mind, ever pragmatic, turned to the subject. He calculated the hours they had taken against the risk of remaining in place.

The cabin was secluded, and he had walked the perimeter of the clearing several times. They had rested, stabilized and eaten good, nutritious food. Their survival needs had been met. And, as he had mentioned to Astra, he had also set sentinels to keep watch along the gravel roads that led to his property.

But information could be gleaned from the slightest of things. The fact was, the longer they stayed the greater the risk grew.

What if Mary’s picture had been circulated in the press? What if the attendant from the gas station saw it and recognized her? Or the server at the drive-thru where he had bought breakfast and coffee? Mary had been asleep but clearly visible. And when they had stopped at the Wolf Lake store, even though she had remained in the car, he could not guarantee that she hadn’t been seen.

They had so much they still needed to do. Her aptitude with a gun was almost nonexistent. She needed more target practice. He needed to show her basic defensive moves, and to see if he could coax her into learning knife work. Coupled with the element of surprise, just one or two moves could save her life.

He needed to pin her down and cover her so that nothing so cruel could ever happen to her again.

Finally he gave her the only reply that he could. “We need to go soon.”

They lay tumbled across the tangled bedcovers where they had last fallen. In the fireplace, the fire had begun to die down again. Darkness was rising, and the dancing golden illumination that had crowned them at the peak of their joining had now begun to fade into a pulsing red.

But the darkness had not yet taken them. The time that they had stolen for themselves was not yet done.

His mind drifted. As part of his wider education, Astra had set him to study many of the most ancient texts. A verse from Psalms came to him:

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

In the shadowed light, her skin looked like honey, and she tasted like manna from heaven. He had wandered through a godforsaken desert, starving for uncounted years. Now, even though they had flung all the passion they had at each other, and even though their bodies were replete, he could not stop kissing or tasting her.

Slender fingers stroked through his hair. Her torso moved as she heaved a resigned sigh, but she didn’t try to argue with him. She must feel it too, this gut instinct that said they could not stop moving for too long.

“So we leave in the morning?”

“Yes, first thing.”

He wanted so desperately to say no. To say that they could have more than a single day together. That they could have years of leisure and safety together.

But that old bastard time was winging away from them again. With every ounce of passion inside of him, he willed that everything would be different this time. But as much as he wished it to be otherwise, he could not lunge after the fleeting moment and capture it in both hands.