by Rachel Lee
He tightened his hold as she started to straighten, and, grateful that he wasn’t in any hurry to let go, she allowed her arms to find their way around his waist.
“A mouse, maybe,” he said. “Or a lizard. Or maybe just a bug. Want me to look?”
Drawing a deep breath, she tilted her head to say something about bugs and lizards and found herself staring right into his cat-green eyes. At this distance they were unusually mesmerizing, almost glowing, and they held her gaze as if by a witch’s spell.
And something deep inside her stirred. She had noticed how attractive he was, had admired his flanks and his chest and his powerful build. But not until now had she felt that long-forgotten unfurling inside herself, that strange, edgy, hopeful, hungry feeling. Every thought in her head was arrested as her attention suddenly focused completely on the man who held her, on the womanly feelings deep inside her.
His eyes darkened, as if he felt it, too. His head bowed just a fraction, hesitated. And then, as if compelled, he bent and kissed her.
Honor hadn’t kissed a man since her wedding day, eight years before. Jerry hadn’t liked kissing, or so he’d claimed, and had kissed her just that once, passionlessly, because it was necessary. That was before she had learned there were a lot of things Jerry didn’t like when it came to sex, every one of them having to do with the fact that she was a woman. He had hoped to hide his homosexuality by marrying, and instead had managed only to confirm it for himself—and nearly destroy his eighteen-year-old wife in the process.
Telling herself that Jerry’s sexual orientation had nothing to do with her hadn’t helped very much. She hadn’t let a man kiss her or touch her since, because she couldn’t quite escape the feeling that there was something intrinsically revolting about her. Something so repulsive that it had prevented Jerry from ever consummating their union. If she ever felt that revulsion from another man, she feared, she would dive off a bridge. She couldn’t handle it again.
But now here she was, clinging to this man she hardly knew, this man who frightened her in some primitive way, but who made her feel paradoxically safe. Confusion swamped her as conflicting feelings warred inside her and drove away all thought of her earlier terror.
He wasn’t gentle. He took the kiss with the same unswerving determination he had so far shown in everything. He didn’t coax or tease or ask. He simply opened his mouth over hers and drove his tongue into her warm depths as if he had every right to do so.
Had he done anything else, she would have tried to back off. As it was, she never had a chance. An instant deluge of feelings washed her away, sweeping her toward passion in a breathless rush. All unaware, she dug her fingers into his muscled back, clutching him closer, frustrated by the layer of black cotton between her hands and his skin.
She wanted. Oh, God, she wanted as she had never wanted before. As she had never dreamed it was possible to want. She had once craved Jerry, craved him enough to marry him despite her father’s objections, but what she felt right now surpassed craving by light-years. It reached into some primitive part of her, turning her into some cavewoman who was willing to lie down on the hard ground and spread her legs just so that she could feel this man’s possession, just so that she could, for a few minutes, feel his strength and hunger answer her own.
God, was she losing her mind?
Suddenly Ian lifted his head, tearing his mouth from hers almost savagely. Before she could make a sound, he pressed her face into his shoulder, hard.
“Shh!” he hissed sharply.
On the edge of screaming from frustrated need, she froze. Then, with a suddenness that deprived her of breath, she understood that he had heard something.
His hand gentled a little on the back of her head when he realized she wasn’t going to make noise. After an interminable span of nerve-stretching time, he whispered, “Did you hear anything?”
She shook her head, not certain she could find air to whisper back. She was scared again. Terrified. And the back of her neck was crawling with the feeling that somebody was watching her. Watching them.
He muttered an obscenity right into her ear. She was shockproof, having heard them all over the years, so she ignored it. It was harder to ignore her feelings when he set her aside. Reality had intruded, and she had only a deep-rooted ache to tell her that she hadn’t fantasized that kiss or her reaction to it.
“Let’s get your things,” he said. “You’ll use my guest room again tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to find out what the hell is going on around here.”
“But you said there’s no one here.”
“There isn’t. I went through this place right up to the attic rafters. Lights going on and off might just be the wiring…which is dangerous enough, and I’ll check it out as soon as I have light to see. Scuttling sounds are most likely mice or bugs…probably a damn roach or a cicada that came in with us. No big deal. But—”
By the way he broke off, she knew he had caught himself before he said something he didn’t want her to know. And that angered her. “But what? What did you hear? What aren’t you telling me?”
His eyes locked on hers, and a long moment passed before he answered. “It’s a feeling,” he said finally, with evident reluctance. “A feeling I don’t like.”
Hardly realizing she did so, she stepped closer to him. “I know,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “I keep getting the feeling someone is watching.”
For long, long moments, they stared at one another. Then Ian nodded, in acknowledgment of what she was saying. “Let’s get your things.”
Abomination. The word whispered into her sleepy mind, and Honor sat up abruptly, clutching the sheet to her breast as she peered into the dark. She was sleeping on the cot in Ian’s guest room again, she remembered. Trying to sleep despite a nervous fluttering in her stomach, despite an edginess that warned her something terrible was about to happen.
Demon. Another whisper on the edge of her mind, almost as if someone were whispering in her ear. In her mind. The words felt alien; they were not words she would ever use.
Shivering against an internal chill, she lay down again and pulled the sheet to her chin. This was crazy, she told herself. A creep had broken into her house, and now she was becoming unhinged, looking for sinister purpose in an electrical problem and the vagaries of an overtired mind. Silly. Ian had planted these thoughts with his talk of demons, that was all.
Demons. Imagine it. A grown man who looked as if he didn’t fear a thing—as if he didn’t need to fear a thing—had spoken of demons. Remembering the look in his strange green eyes, she found it too easy to believe he knew what he was talking about. That he was himself personally acquainted with a few demons.
Her fingers tightened on the sheet and drew it closer. She was overreacting, she told herself. He was overreacting. Last night there had been some excuse for inviting her over here, but tonight?
After the horrible way she had treated him earlier— God, she still couldn’t believe she had called him weird to his face—he had been waiting for her to come home. Waiting to be sure she got in safely. And they had both overreacted to a stupid electrical problem. A loose wire, no doubt, but they had still crept through the house looking for intruders, and afterward, hearing something, he had brought her home with him again.
They were both weird. He should just have said goodnight and walked away. And when he didn’t, she should have insisted on sleeping in her own bed and said goodnight.
That was what they should have done. The fact that they hadn’t was a mark of the depth of the threat she was feeling. Shivering again, she huddled beneath the sheet. It was more than a threat she felt, she admitted now.
It was something evil.
Sunshine bathed the world again in the morning. Honor, coming from Seattle, where people often joked that the sun was a UFO, still couldn’t get over the sunniness of the days here.
When she came downstairs, she found coffee ready and poured herself a cup. Stepping onto the back
porch, she looked across to her house and saw Ian busy with her back porch light. He hadn’t been kidding, she realized. He meant to get to the bottom of this.
With a second mug of coffee for Ian, she rounded the holly hedge and approached him. He was standing on a cinder block, examining the light fixture. Snug, worn denim left little to her imagination, and she found herself recalling all the sensations of being in his arms last night. How hard he had felt against her. How solid and strong.
“Good morning,” she said. Witch. The word whispered along the edges of her mind, a cold touch in the hot morning air. She ignored it.
“Morning.” He glanced down at her. “Look at this.” He touched the bulb and the light went on. Touched it again and it went off.
Relief was almost heady. “The wind,” she said. Not a demon after all.
“Maybe.” He didn’t look nearly as certain as she would have liked. “The bulb’s screwed in tight, though, so it must be something in the fixture or the wiring. Why don’t you go throw the breaker so I can check it out?”
“Okay. Here’s some coffee.”
“Thanks.” Bending, he took the cup from her.
The breaker box, installed at Honor’s insistence as part of the deal on the house, had replaced the old fuse box in the corner beside the refrigerator. Maybe, she thought now, she should have insisted on having the wiring checked. All the breakers were labeled on little white tags in the electrician’s handwriting. Kitchen 1. Kitchen 2. Upstairs. Dryer. Front.
Not certain which of a dozen breakers controlled the porch light, she threw the main and cut off all the incoming power. “Okay,” she called out to Ian.
She was able to see him through the open door, and she stayed where she was, watching, waiting for him to tell her when to turn the power back on.
Hard to believe, she thought, how scared she had been in this very room only a few hours before. Hard to believe how real even the vaguest threats could seem in the dark, and how silly you could feel in the sunlight, remembering them. Remembering how scared you had been and how you had hurled yourself at a man who was practically a stranger because you were terrified of a rustling sound. Terrified of the feeling that someone was watching you.
He hadn’t treated her as if she were crazy or skittish, though. And that kiss…
In spite of her intention to put all that firmly out of her mind, she found herself remembering the heat and the strength of Ian McLaren, the passion and hunger he had displayed in those all-too-brief moments. He had made her feel desired, and as one who knew too well what it was like not to be desired, she cherished the memory.
Yesterday she had been annoyed at the way he had barged into her life. Today she was grateful for his interference, grateful that he had been there last night when she arrived home, and grateful that he had insisted she stay with him. Because, broad daylight notwithstanding, she vividly remembered how terrified she had been last night.
But she didn’t want to be sexually attracted to him. Down that road lay disaster, as she knew all too well. So while she might stand here and admire the way he looked in an olive-drab T-shirt and snug, worn jeans, she was not going to let herself fall into his arms again. Ever. Not even for another taste of his addicting passion. Because, in the end, she would be hurt. She didn’t need anyone to warn her of that. A man his age who was unattached was unattached for a reason, and a woman who had been through all she had knew just how deeply and easily a man could wound her.
But, boy, she thought wryly, common sense couldn’t keep her from dreaming.
And dream she had, last night. Endless dreams of lurking shadows and aching desire. Again and again Ian had come to her in her dreams, and again and again a shadow had slipped between them, driving them apart. More than once she had awakened in fright with an aching sense of desperation.
But nightmares didn’t surprise her, given the events of the past two nights. It would be more surprising if she didn’t have bad dreams.
“Okay,” he called through the door. “Throw the power back on.”
She turned and grabbed the breaker, throwing it back. There was a funny humming sound from behind her, and then she heard a sharp crack, followed by a hoarse shout. Swinging around, she was just in time to see Ian tumble backward to the ground.
Before she even barreled through the screen door, her mind was running through all the steps for dealing with severe electrical shock. Ian was lying flat on his back in the dust, and her heart nearly stopped at the sight. As she fell to her knees beside him, though, his eyes opened. He muttered a four-letter word.
“Are you all right? What happened? No, wait, don’t move until you’re sure you didn’t hurt something.”
He stared up at her, unable to see her face because her head was silhouetted against a brilliant patch of blue sky, probably the only patch visible in this part of her tree-filled yard.
Then, suddenly, the day turned dark. The sunlight faded from the sky, and the shadows moved in, surrounding her. Threatening her.
“God!” He sat up abruptly, and the vision vanished as if it had never been. The day was suddenly normal once more…except that he felt cold inside. Deep inside. In a place he had thought he had buried more than twenty years before.
“Ian?”
He knew better, he thought savagely. He ought to just get up and walk away right now. He knew better than to get involved, because when he got too close to someone, he eventually slipped. And when he slipped, they took off, acting as if he were some kind of monster. He’d already spent too much time with her, and already he was caring too much about what happened to her. Last night, for her sake, while moving through her house in the dark, he had pried the lid off the sarcophagus in which he had buried all those…abilities. All those feelings.
And now it seemed he could not put the lid back on. Using his abominable talent, he had reached out, seeking the source of the threat to her, and he had felt malevolence. Evil. Hatred. Now it was too late to abandon her. Even yesterday, he could have walked away, but now, having felt what he had felt, he could not leave her. Not that he could do a whole hell of a lot to help, he thought angrily. A vision that said she was threatened was about as illuminating as nothing, given what had already occurred.
“Ian? Ian, what happened? Are you all right?”
He turned and looked her straight in the eyes, seeing in those blue depths a genuine caring and compassion. Well, of course. She was a nurse. Naturally she would care. The other kind of caring…well, nobody felt that way about him. They never had, and they never would. Demon spawn.
“I’m fine,” he said finally, hoping his face hadn’t betrayed any of his unusually tangled feelings. He prided himself on being unreadable. “The damn fixture and wires seemed fine. There wasn’t anything wrong that I could see. Then you threw the breaker, and the damn thing arced right across my hand.” He looked up at the fixture. “It shouldn’t have happened,” he muttered to himself. “I’m no electrician, but that shouldn’t have happened.”
“Did you get burned?”
He turned his left hand over, studying it curiously. A vicious red mark seared two of his fingers. “Nothing to worry about.”
“I’ve got some anesthetic cream,” she told him. “And I’ll get the electrician out here to look at that thing. Maybe I need all my wiring checked.”
“Skip the cream.” He looked up at the fixture. Even at this distance he could see that the arc had melted part of it. That was an awful lot of current. “Yeah, you’d better call an electrician. And then let’s go to the beach.”
“The beach?” Her mind was so preoccupied with what had almost happened that the suggestion didn’t immediately register. “Why?”
“We could use some sun and relaxation,” he told her. What they really needed to do was talk. Away from here. And he had to figure out how much he was going to tell her.
Much to Honor’s amazement, the electrician came right out, so the trip to the beach had to be postponed. She was at once reli
eved and disappointed. Being with Ian was incredibly intense—perhaps that wasn’t entirely his fault, given the circumstances—but it was almost a relief to deal with someone else. Someone who whistled cheerfully and looked perfectly ordinary. Someone who didn’t seem to move in an atmosphere of darkness and mystery and…and loneliness, she added. Ian McLaren was a terribly lonely man.
Standing on her back step while the electrician examined the destroyed light fixture, she stared into the shadows under the trees and felt the loneliness in her own soul. Part of the reason she had made the big move from Seattle was to escape all the things that had reminded her of that loneliness. For the past month or so she’d been so busy packing, moving and settling into her new job that she hadn’t had time to feel lonely. Now she had the time again, and the move hadn’t changed one damn thing.
“This fixture is all messed up, Miss Honor,” Cal Ober told her. He, too, perched on the cinder block to examine the light. “No hope of saving it.”
“I didn’t really think there was, Mr. Ober. I’m worried about what caused the problem, though.”
“Can’t tell now if it was in the fixture. All the wires are fused.”
“Is there some way you can test the rest of the wiring? To make sure there isn’t another problem somewhere?”
He nodded. “Sure can. First let me put up a new fixture here, then we’ll check out the rest.”
She followed him through the house while he checked every outlet, removing the plates to verify that the wires were secure, and testing for voltage drops with a small meter that he plugged right into the sockets. He hummed and whistled while he worked, and occasionally fell into conversation.
“You know the Sidells up the road here?” he asked her.
“I met two of the brothers, Jeb and Orville,” she replied. “At the hospital.”
“When Orville got bit by that coral snake. Can’t figure that boy. He’s lived in these woods all his life and shoulda been looking out.”