MARKED (Hunter Awakened) (17 page)

“Please, come inside.” He made a sweeping
gesture towards the cabin. When I didn't move, he started
forward.

This would be the point in the horror movie
where the audience would start to scream at the heroine not to
follow the mysterious stranger into the isolated house. It was
dumb, I knew it, but I couldn't help but feel that I could trust
him. I'd felt it from the moment I'd met him, and I hadn't been
able to explain it.

Sure, I'd had my little panic attack in the
car, but he'd given a perfectly reasonable explanation. The
question was, did I really believe him or was it just wishful
thinking? It was times like this that I wished I'd had a decent
mother who could've helped me know what was an honest-to-goodness
connection versus attraction to a pretty face.

Elias opened the cabin door and looked back
at me, the expression on his face one of patient waiting. I looked
from the car to the cabin. I had a means of escape. Why would he
have given it to me if he wasn't telling the truth? I took a deep
breath. I had a choice to make, and it may not have been the wisest
one, but it was mine. I'd been making my own decisions since I was
sixteen years-old. This was just another one, right?

I was still telling myself that when I took a
step forward.

Chapter Eighteen

It was cold inside, cold and dark.

“Wait here for a moment,” Elias said from
somewhere in front of me.

I heard him move and then there was a
scratching sound, a whiff of sulfur and a blaze of yellow light. A
moment later, the light grew and I saw that he was holding an
old-fashioned lantern. He walked around the room as I watched,
lighting candles and other lanterns until the room was bathed with
a soft, warm glow.

I closed the door behind me and walked
further into the cabin, completely awestruck. Elias busied himself
at the fireplace while I looked around. The place was stunning. The
fireplace wasn't some tiny little thing, but rather a massive stone
thing that took up a third of the wall. Speaking of the walls, they
were authentic-looking logs, completely with flaws and knots. The
ceiling was at least eight feet high, bare planks that fit with the
rest of the rustic look. The floors were also wood, though they
felt smooth beneath my shoes. The walls were mostly bare, decorated
only by a few sprays of dried wildflowers here and there.

I turned my attention to furnishings. In
front of the fireplace was a couch that looked older than the cabin
itself. It was a rich, dark wood that didn't look like it had been
stained or painted. The fabric covering the seat and back was a
deep, lush green, the kind of color that reminded me of the moss
that grew in the dark parts of a forest. It looked like it would be
soft to the touch. In front of the couch was a rag rug, like
something from colonial times.

Against the far wall were three bookshelves,
stocked with hundreds of volumes of varying sizes and ages. Behind
the couch was a wooden table with four wooden chairs, all appearing
to have been hand-carved. I wasn't an interior decorator or an
antiquer or anything like that, but even I could tell that just the
furniture I could see in this room was worth probably a quarter to
half a million dollars if the pieces were as old as I thought they
were.

To my right was a half-wall that separated
this room from what looked like a kitchen. I couldn't see much
since the candlelight only went so far. It was only then that I
realized I didn't see a single lamp or electric light.

“The bedrooms are through there,” Elias spoke
as he straightened. The fire was roaring, sending flickering
shadows across Elias's face. He pointed towards the door on the
other side of the room. “The bathroom is the first room on the
right. There are two rooms on the left, one on the right past the
bathroom. You may take your pick.”

“Bathroom?” I suddenly realized that I could
use one, but the lack of electric lights was worrying me.

Almost as if he could read my mind, Elias
smiled. “There is a generator in the basement. It is not enough to
power the entire place, so I reserved it for the more, shall we
say, necessary work? There is a sink in the bathroom, a sink in the
kitchen, the toilet, the shower, a hot water heater and a very
small refrigerator. They are the only things powered by
electricity.” He picked up a lantern from where he'd set it on the
fireplace mantle and held it towards me. “You will need the
light.”

I took the lantern and started for the door.
I paused next to the table and set the car keys down on it. I was
going to trust that he wasn't going to hurt me. The hallway was
much darker than the other room, probably because there weren't any
windows. I'd see how thick the tree cover outside was and I felt it
was a pretty safe bet that even the windows in the main room didn't
get much sun except on the brightest of days. This time of year, I
doubted we'd get more than a couple of hours without candles or
lanterns.

I pushed open the bathroom door first. I
needed a break before picking a bedroom. A few minutes later, I
crossed the hall to the first room. It was plain, with a double bed
in a wooden frame and dresser, both of the same carved wood as the
rest of the furniture. The bedspread was a dark red that matched
the curtains. The next room was virtually identical except the
bedspread and curtains were a sunny, cheery yellow. The room across
the hall was more of the same, that one in dark green.

I went back to the yellow room and set my bag
on the bed. Part of me wanted to just leave everything in the bag,
proving to myself that we were only going to be gone for a day, two
at the most. If I unpacked the week's worth of clothes, it would be
like admitting that we were going to be here a while. I sighed and
emptied the bag onto the bed. Maybe I could pretend that this was
just a vacation, a trip to clear my head like I'd said to
Bryson.

I was still trying to convince myself of that
when I went back out to find Elias in the kitchen. I'd been sure
that after these last couple of weeks, nothing could surprise me. I
was wrong. The sight of Elias standing at an old kitchen wood
stove, stirring a pot of something that smelled absolutely
delicious, that definitely won for one of the biggest surprises.
And, at least this one was a good surprise.

My stomach growled and I suddenly realized
that I was hungry. I hadn't been hungry in a while. In fact, I
hadn't really eaten much at all since the whole attacked in the
parking lot incident.

Elias looked up at me and smiled. It was a
different sort of smile than he'd given me before. It was almost...
shy. I got another look at that little boy inside him.

“I always keep some frozen stew in the ice
box as I never know for certain when I will be visiting.”

“This is your cabin?” I wasn't sure why I
hadn't gotten that right away. How else had I figured he'd found
this place so fast? And it didn't look anything like a…a police
safe house, at least not what I imagined that one looked like.

“I built it years ago.” His smile faltered,
then returned with full force. “When I was young. With my
father.”

The last two statements rang a little false,
but I didn't feel the need to push it. Maybe he'd gotten the cabin
for some girl, and now he was embarrassed. I doubted he'd actually
built it. The papers he'd given me had said he was twenty-four.
This cabin had to be older than that. Now that I thought about it,
it almost looked like the more modern equipment, like the bathroom,
had been put in after the rest of the cabin had been built. Maybe
that's what he'd meant. That part could've been done when Elias had
been a kid.

Elias held out a bowl of stew, then filled
one for himself. “Shall we eat in front of the fire?”

He followed me to the couch and handed me a
bottle of sparkling water. It was the kind in the green bottle, my
favorite. He really had been paying attention. I took a bite of the
stew. Wow.

“This is delicious.”

“Thank you.” Elias sounded pleased. “It's an
old family recipe, passed down since the fifteen hundreds. My
mother made it for special occasions, though it was usually
venison, not beef.”

I decided to bypass the natural inquiry about
deer meat and take a different tact. “You know, even after all the
time we've spent together these past few weeks, I don't know much
about you. I'd like to change that.”

Elias looked down at his stew and, for a
moment, I didn't think he was going to answer. “She was an amazing
woman, my mother. Stronger than any man. It was she who ensured
that my sisters and I had all we needed. We were not a wealthy
family, but we were happy.”

“Sisters?” I asked.

He nodded. “Three. One older and two younger.
Elsa, Erin and Elyssa.”

I would've recognized that tone anywhere.
That was the sound of someone whose family wasn't what he wanted it
to be. For him, I believed it was the loss of something wonderful
that he had once had. For me, it was a little different. Mine was a
family I'd never known. For reasons I preferred not to analyze, I
decided to fill the lengthening silence with my own story.

“My parents, both sets of them were...
disappointing, to say it politely.” I started slowly because I'd
never told this story, not to anyone, and I wasn't sure how I was
supposed to do it. “My birth parents abandoned me when I was just a
couple of months old. Although, I guess it could've just been my
mother. For I know, she never told my father about me. She could've
been a hooker who got knocked up by one of her johns, or she
could've been some teenager whose boyfriend didn't have a condom.”
I paused for another bite and another drink. “However it happened,
nine months later, there I was, and then something else happened a
bit after that and I ended up being left outside a church as a
baby.”

Outside the cabin, the sun continued to rise
as I went on with my story. Commuters went to work. People
continued preparing for Christmas. Inside, however, it was like
Elias and I were the only two people in the world. I told him about
my adoptive parents, how when I was six and I'd told them I wanted
a break from acting to go to camp for a week, they'd told me that
if I wanted a break that badly, they'd send me back to foster
care.

Or how they'd essentially made me the
breadwinner in the family since before I could remember. The
stories just poured out of me, as if once I'd started, I couldn't
stop. Maybe I was just overly tired, or it might have been because
Elias was a great listener. Either way, I talked until I reached my
emancipation, and then I fell silent. I didn't know how much time
had passed, but my bowl was empty, my water nearly so, and the fire
had died down a bit.

When I finished and neither one of us were
speaking, a thick silence was between us. I hadn't realized until
that moment how close Elias and I were sitting. We'd angled
ourselves towards each other at some point during the conversation
and our knees were touching. Heat radiated from his body to mine,
all focused on that very small point where our jeans met. I could
only imagine the conflagration that would happen when our skin
touched. I blushed at the thought of his bare skin against mine,
and hoped that he couldn't see it in the dim light.

I looked down, my gaze coming to rest on his
hands. His fingers were long and slender, almost delicate-looking,
which was at odds with the rest of his body's build. What would it
feel like, I wondered, to have him link his fingers through mine?
To have those fingertips caress my skin, my most intimate parts?
The idea made me shiver.

Elias's voice was soft. “You should probably
try to rest. You have had a long and tiring day.”

I looked up and found him staring at me. The
moment my eyes met his, I was lost. They called to me, drew me in.
I was helpless to escape, and I didn't want to.

Everything I'd been feeling over the past few
weeks was building inside me. The stress of the whole thing with
Todd and then being attacked and the intruder slash stalker.
Emotional scenes at work. Trying to get caught up and the guilt of
being the reason we had to push. The physical injuries and, of
course, the immediate attraction to Elias. Now, I was exhausted,
alone with Elias in this beautiful, middle-of-nowhere cabin,
sharing with him and our knees were touching...

It may have been stupid, but I had to do it.
It felt like I'd been waiting forever.

I leaned forward, my hand covering his. I had
a moment to see his eyes widen in surprise and then I was kissing
him. His lips were soft as they moved under mine. Electricity
coursed through me, a sharp, sweet pain that was like nothing I'd
ever experienced. This wasn't the gentle warmth of something
innocent. This was something like lightning, fierce and wild.

And it was over all too soon.

Elias was pulled back when I opened my eyes.
His expression was unreadable. He gently put my hand back on my lap
and moved back on the couch, putting some distance between us.

“You're tired, Teal—Miss Rhines,” he said
quietly. “I think it would be best if you went to your room and got
some sleep.”

I stood, my eyes burning with sudden tears. I
needed to get out of there. “You're right.” I hurried away before
he could say anything else and kill me with embarrassment.

What had I been thinking? I'd really screwed
things up. I never crossed that line before, from professional to
personal, and I'd always looked down on the people who did.

I dropped onto the bed, completely mortified
by what I'd done. I could only hope that Elias would chalk it up to
the craziness that had been going on. If he didn't, it was going to
be a very long couple of days and it would be all my fault.