by Clare London
His Gift
By Clare London
Published by JMS Books LLC
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2012 Clare London
ISBN 9781611523331
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs
All Rights Reserved
WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.
This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
NOTE: This story was originally published by Aspen Mountain Press.
* * * *
His Gift
By Clare London
I woke up lying on scrubland, flat on my belly, my face pressed down into the short, harsh grass. I was totally exposed to the dark, storm-filled skies above me and an increasingly high wind. It was also raining heavily, a steady beat on my back. The water clawed its way through my shirt, running in rivulets down my sides to the ground. Out of the corner of my half-closed eyes I could see tall trees in the distance, but the only things in the immediate vicinity were turf and soil: sparse, grimy, and slick with rain. I shifted slightly and my knees scraped against gravel. When I moved my leg in another direction, something tugged in resistance. I heard the deep, sucking sound of wet mud at my ankles.
I seemed to be half in a ditch and I hurt. A hell of a lot.
With difficulty, I struggled to my feet. I couldn’t believe how long it took me. My limbs were both exhausted and wayward, and the pool of mud was equally reluctant to let me go. It clung to my clothes, seeping through the fabric in cold, clammy trickles. My shirt was torn in several places and my jeans were sodden from hip to hem. Every time I moved, there was a fierce pain at my hip that made me shudder. When I put a cautious hand to my side, there didn’t seem to be any blood, but something that excruciating had to be really serious, I was sure. If I’d had the energy, I would have cursed long and hard.
When I was finally upright and looked around, I saw a deep ridge in the soft mud, the width of a man’s body and running back down from the solid ground into the depths of the ditch. I’d obviously dragged my body up from there. The rain beat fiercely at the mud now, and the traces would soon be obliterated.
I had no idea where I was, or what had happened. In fact, for a very frightening moment, I struggled to remember my own name. I patted down my back pocket for my wallet, dragged it out and flipped it open. It was soaking, like the rest of my clothes, but I could read the name on a bank card. Steve Macklin. Of course, that was my name. I was stupidly relieved. So things weren’t that bad, right? I could remember who I was. I tried to recall other things, like what day it was or what I was doing here, but I couldn’t concentrate properly. In fact, the effort made my head hurt.
I heard noises and twisted around. Was there company in this Godforsaken place? But I quickly realised it was only the rain splattering on the stones in the ditch, combined with the remnants of my own laboured breathing. The whole area was deserted. I couldn’t see any sign of life, whichever direction I searched. I knew I had to get under cover somewhere, though, and examine where I was hurt—how badly I was hurt. Then I could worry about how the hell I got here in the first place.
I peered over at the copse in the distance. The rain dripped off my hair and ran down my nose, but beyond the trees I reckoned I could see the evidence of a proper, man-made road. I felt a wash of relief. There was civilisation! I couldn’t see any farther, but it was likely there’d be a town, or at least a small community there. Houses, transport, telephones. Someone who would help me.
I put a foot forward and winced as pain shot through me. No other choice but to keep going, I told myself through gritted teeth. I shuffled the other foot to meet the first, and gradually I built up a rolling gait that got me going.
* * * *
It was a road, all right, though built with shallow cobbles set into the bare ground rather than decent tarmac. I guessed it led to some kind of a farming community, set out here so far from anything else. I walked it anyway, staggering along as best I could with the ragged, slicing pain in my side. But the setting grew more pleasant as I travelled. The grass on either side grew high and lush, a stark contrast to the barren scrub I’d woken up on. The trees were thick with leaves, dappled with all the shades of nature’s green. Even the rain eased off, though the sky was still a brooding grey and the wind whipped at my limbs. But the air smelled fresher, as if the water had washed any pollution away.
I stumbled over the edge of another path that wound away from the road, and that’s when I saw the first sign of habitation, the remains of a barn half hidden by the trees. For a second, my hopes were raised, but then I saw that the roof had fallen in and most of the walls were broken. There was no shelter for me there. I took a few steps onto the new path, regardless—where else was there to go? My body ached and my mind was thick with misery.
The vegetation thinned out as I faltered on, the smell of pine and damp soil getting stronger in my nostrils, the uneven surface gradually easing beneath my feet. Then the road twisted around to the left and stopped being a country path, transforming instead into a driveway leading to a large country house.
It was totally unexpected. Was I hallucinating? I was light-headed from my efforts and still confused about what had happened to me. But even after blinking several times, the structure was still there. I was a few hundred yards away, and obviously, until my path had changed direction, it had been hidden by the trees. A rough stone wall ran around its perimeter, and a large iron-barred gate was set into the brick, right ahead of me. It was wide open.
I wandered through onto a surprisingly smooth and well-tended walkway, the small stones of its gravel crunching under my feet. The house was built of dark stone, with narrow pillars at either side of the door, framing its two storeys. The windows were many but small, the entrance door high and thick.
It was imposing rather than attractive, and I approached cautiously. Parts of the building were shrouded in shadow from the nearby trees, and its bricks seemed uneven and ragged in many places, as if they’d hurled defiant protest at the weather a few too many times. I assumed it was deserted, like the barn had been, but it was an astonishingly stately and incongruous building to find way out here.
I looked around for any sign of industry but there was nothing else in sight: no other buildings, no vehicles, no people. Had it been someone’s house? A school? An institution? Something made me hesitate to go further, though I didn’t see how I could trespass when there was no one to trespass against. This was my only chance for rest and some kind of recovery while I worked out what to do. I was struggling too much with pain and fatigue to carry on much longer.
I encouraged my exhausted feet a few more steps, and reached the door. I leaned on it, almost half-heartedly. It’s bound to be locked up. I didn’t know if I was up to breaking in, however much of an emergency this was.
And then the door—heavy, wooden, strapped with metal studs�
��swung ajar.
* * * *
I stood there for at least a minute, frozen in place. I needed to lie down. I needed a lot of help. But I also knew from somewhere deeper than my misery and discomfort—much deeper—I was scared to go in.
For God’s sake, Steve, what’s up with you? This was an abandoned house, not some bloody horror story! I needed heat and blankets, and access to a phone, and there was a serious lack of that kind of stuff outside. Anyway, I’d never believed in spooks or vampires or whatever. All those stupid teenagers, in those even more stupid movies, screaming at a scrape on a windowpane.
But I felt cold and suddenly fearful, and I couldn’t blame it all on my soaking, chilled body. All it takes is for a guy with a hunch to appear, and some wacky types in Transylvanian transvestite gear to dance past.
And then I saw movement behind the door in the darkened lobby. Heard a soft whispering and noticed a disturbance of the thin film of dust on the front step. My heartbeat sped up, and I tried to keep calm. Hell, I was in no state to run away.
“I—is anyone there? Can I come in?”
Was it just a wild animal? Then I realised I’d seen none of them during my long, miserable walk. No rabbits, no birds. Maybe the rain had scared everything into taking cover.
The movement became a shadow, and the shadow took a familiar form. It was a person, though still too far back in the dark to identify. Every nerve I had was telling me to turn, run, get away. But whoever it was, a person meant food and warmth and clean clothes and communications—
“Enter.”
Did it speak? The sound was soft, though low and strong enough. It sounded like a man, a young man. I peered into the hallway. “Have you got a phone? I…think I need help.”
I took the first step through the door, and in that instant everything got the better of me. The cold and the wet, the dreadful exhaustion throughout my body. Everything combined to create a hideous, bewildering mixture of numbness and hurt. I retched, and my body shuddered as if the ground under me were slipping away. There was a sound in my head like metal tearing—a terrible shrieking—and an escalation of the agony in my side as if someone had slipped in a thin sword and sliced upward with all their strength. My eyes couldn’t focus in the dim light, in fact they hurt like hell, and so did everything else. My head rocketed with shards of vicious pain and explosions of red light.
“You’re here now,” came soft syllables, echoing around my shattered mind. “Enter.”
I passed out on the threshold.
* * * *
I had no idea how long it was before I woke again.
I was lying on a couch of some sort in a large room. I had to assume it was inside the country house and I’d been carried or dragged there by the mystery man. At least I was indoors at last. I still wore my torn clothes, but they’d almost dried out, and, surprisingly, I didn’t feel cold any more. Peering around, I couldn’t see any source of heat anywhere. No radiators, no electric fan heaters. My head still hurt, though the hammering had eased to a dull background ache. I sat up, gingerly. My legs felt stronger, and although my side throbbed, the pain was bearable.
I couldn’t remember the last time I ate, and wondered why I didn’t feel hungry. There didn’t seem to be any urgency about it. However, I had a raging thirst.
Looking around more carefully now, I saw I was in a living room. Despite the bleak aspect of the outside of the building, I was startled to find the inside reasonably comfortable. The room had a high, vaulted ceiling with sculpted roses around the perimeter, and the walls were papered with a covering that was dark, thick and, presumably, expensive. Heavy rugs covered the floor, and full-length drapes were drawn across the windows so I couldn’t see anything outside. There was little furniture—just a dining table against the wall behind me, covered with a heavy cloth and with a single upholstered chair at each end.
An open fireplace dominated the far side of the room, but there was no sign of a fire having been lit in the hearth. Yet the room was very warm. And where was the light source? I couldn’t see any light fitting, recessed or otherwise, yet the room was bathed in a pale, dim light. I shook my head to try to clear my thoughts, but all it brought was a sudden, jagged spike of headache pain.
Suddenly, he was there, standing right beside me. The man who’d been at the front door. I must still have been groggy, because I’d been sure I was alone. I certainly never heard him come in.
I know people say their heart sank—I always thought it a melodramatic exaggeration. But that’s how it felt. A huge, lurching drop in my gut, and sweat springing up on my skin like dew. I felt him there, seconds before I actually saw his form. My inner fear felt it too, sending trails out along my nerves, quietly whimpering a warning.
It’s shock. I tried to calm myself. You’re in shock. And guys creeping up on you don’t help. I glared up at him, mustering my attack. “What the hell’s going on? You scared me!”
He was young. Young and, quite possibly, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. What a ridiculous thing to think, though. I’d seen plenty of beauty in the movies and on TV, plenty of models on magazine covers, plenty of attractive men all around me, all through my life. Many had natural beauty; others worked out and artificially tanned and used whatever surgical or cosmetic enhancements they could afford. But this guy was beautiful in a very different way, so beautiful that it took my angry, blustering breath away.
He wasn’t self-conscious, and he wasn’t so perfectly groomed you knew he’d hate you touching him. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who knew all he had to keep your attention was his looks.
What he was, was real. And gorgeous. And gazing at me.
He looked a similar height to me, though he was slimmer and his shoulders weren’t as broad. He held himself well and very confidently. From the way his hands rested with more care than relaxation at his sides, I got an impression of underlying strength and physical control. And his face—well, I stared, there’s no other word for it. I could only blame my rudeness on the extraordinary circumstances.
His skin was darker than mine, with a slight Mediterranean cast to it. It looked as fine as he did. My fingertips itched to touch, to run a finger along his jaw to see if it really was as smooth as it seemed. He had a very striking profile, with a nose I guess they’d call “patrician”, and his mouth was wide, formed by full, dark red lips. He had dark hair that gleamed with that shade of black that was almost purple in a certain light, and it curled in to his neck at the sides. Locks of it fell casually onto his forehead. Fascinating. They provoked every tactile sense I possessed, and then some more. My hand stirred instinctively, as if to reach up and check if the hair was as soft as it looked. And his eyes…they were bright, dark blue, and deep. Very deep. I stared into them, seeing sparks in the irises that reflected back to me. I shivered, and it was nothing to do with having been soaked through only a short time ago.
The man was, in popular speech, sex on legs. I’d always laughed at that phrase when I heard it aloud. It was trite and embarrassing. And never true! But facing its personification now I understood its power. This man wouldn’t be humiliated in any way by such a description—he’d surely revel in it.
“There’s no need for fear,” he said.
I flushed. I’d almost forgotten my sharp, angry questions as I examined him.
“I’m Eliot and you’re here now.” His voice was calm and low. Amusement rippled beneath it. I thought him a similar age to myself, and despite my underlying nervousness and shock, his arrogance annoyed me.
But he’d helped me, right? I drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just a bit confused. Um…Eliot. Look, thanks for your help, I just need to get in touch with someone to come collect me, take me back.”
Back where? My mind was still reaching for memories that mischievously eluded me. Where had I come from, where was I headed?
He shrugged, an elegant, graceful gesture. “But I told you. You’re here now, and you can rest. There’s no need fo
r confusion.”
“Where am I? Where is this place?”
“It’s here. You’re with me,” he said, and for the first time, he smiled.
It was slow, and it was sensual, and, my God, it really lit up his handsome face. My gaze locked on him, and this time my hands actually did lift, the muscles straining to touch the lips that curved upward in front of me. I was astounded by the strength of my own reaction. I clenched my fists and huddled back into the couch, shaking off a sudden tremor. What the hell was happening to me?
“I need a drink.” I saw a jug and glass on the side table. “Any reason I shouldn’t have some of that water?” There was no way I should have been afraid of food and drink, but I looked at the jug and my stomach clenched.
Eliot glanced at the table and frowned. “Water…” he said slowly. He gazed at me, making no attempt to hide his continuing amusement. “Whatever you see, that’s what it is. You seem to need it, so drink. Do it.”
I did, though not without keeping an eye on him while I reached for the glass. There was something about the tone of his voice that subdued me. He was young, yet he was blatantly in charge of this situation. I couldn’t understand the subtle weakness I felt in my body every time he spoke. I took a full draught of water, the cool liquid running down my parched throat. And then I took another.
The glass was slippery and my hands still shook. When I went to put the glass back on the table, I nearly dropped it. I yelped and Eliot was startled. We both reached out—but just millimetres away from touching it, he hesitated and pulled back his hand. I caught the glass myself and righted it. When I looked back, he was staring at me.
“Where am I?” I whispered, my throat refreshed.
He shrugged and repeated, “You’re with me.” His whole attitude implied there was no need for any further explanations. “You have been delayed, but now you’ve come. You are my gift. I asked for you.”
I laughed at his weird talk, but something in his eyes made me bite the sound off quickly. “Your gift?” What did he mean? “Asked for me?”