Scent of Darkness (9 page)

"Stay here." He rose.

"What are you doing?"

"I'll be back," he said.

She noted that he didn't answer her question. Didn't even make a token attempt.

"Promise me you'll stay here," he insisted.

If he didn't have to respond to her, she didn't have to promise him. "What else am I going to do? Run away? You've already proved
that
doesn't work."

"Promise," he repeated. Without the words, he didn't trust her. Yes, he did know too much.

"What makes you think I will keep a promise?"

He chuckled and leaned down to look into her eyes. "You've worked for me as my assistant for how many years, Ann?"

"Three."

"Do you think I don't know you at all?"

All her defiance collapsed. "I promise."

"Don't sulk." He kissed her lightly, then vanished into the woods, and not even a branch wiggled to show where he'd gone.

No matter how much her legs trembled with the desire to rise and flee, she wouldn't do it. She didn't want to incite him again. Last time he'd just chased her down and screwed her. Next time, he might. . . kill her.

She couldn't believe that thought even crossed her mind, much less that she was giving it due consideration. But a girl had to be sensible, especially when she was sleeping with a wolf.

She had the marks to prove it. Her feet hurt; somewhere on the run through the woods, she'd stubbed every one of her toes. Her legs ached; vaguely she remembered scratching her thigh on an outstretched branch. Her hand ... she stared down at the pale, whorled skin. The painted tile had sliced her fingers and her palm.

She'd hit Jasha with the tile. It had flown out of her hand.

All too dearly Ann remembered the Madonna's dark, serene eyes, the golden halo, the cherry red robes.

Where had the painting gone?

She studied the little cove, and hidden between two boulders, deep within a crevice, she spotted a glint of white in a crispy-brown pile of last autumn's leaves. She cleared the debris away, freeing the lady from her hiding place. Carefully she lifted the tile, turned the picture toward the failing light, and studied it.

It was a historic rendering of the Virgin Mary. In the little vignette, the Madonna had surrounded herself with family, and that . . . that spoke to Ann's innermost desires. Turning it over, she saw faint burn marks along the edges of the unfinished clay.

Where had it come from? How old was it?

How had it come here, now, to her?

"Ann," Jasha called from the boulder across the way, a warning he'd returned.

Ann tucked the painting into the leaves beside her, and watched him leap into their little clearing.

He was respectably dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and running shoes.

Indignation boiled up in her.

After what had happened between them, she wouldn't have thought she could be embarrassed about anything.

But she was, and she winced when she thought how bizarre she looked—mud in her hair, on her face, bruises and scabs everywhere. And this for her first experience at lovemaking! If what had happened between them could be called lovemaking. The term seemed trite for something so cosmic. God knew it had shaken her world.

"Where did you get those clothes?" she demanded.

"In case of emergency, I have stashes hidden around in the woods." He shook out a man's long-sleeved button-up shirt.

"Emergency? Like when you chase women through the woods to ravish them?" What a dumb thing to say. She needed to remember—he was a wolf.

The trouble was, he looked so very
Jasha.
"I've only ever chased one woman through the woods to ravish her." He wrapped the shirt around her shoulders. "It was wrong of me, but I—"

"You what?" He couldn't stop now.

Jasha stuffed her arms into the shirt, then held the two lapels apart and gazed at her. At her breasts, her belly, the junction of her thighs. "Someday, I'll tell you."

His expression made her tweak the shirt out of his hands and, in brisk movements, button it herself. That was better than responding to his hunger with a renewed hunger of her own, and reaching for him— wasn't it?

Of course it was. He'd admitted it himself. He'd ravished her and any self-respecting modern maiden would get herself to a police station and file charges.

But she was glad to be rid of her virginity. Had come here for this exact purpose. She just wanted him to be what she had thought he was before—the perfect man. And a completely human man, too.

She stole a glance at him.

He squatted on his heels, his hands dangling on his knees, and watched her with amusement. "You should have let me button that for you."

"Why?"

"Because you buttoned it crooked."

In exasperation, she started again.

"You're feeling better."

"I'm a little less—" She hesitated.

"In pain?"

"Petrified."

But was that good? That she was accepting the impossible?

"It's all right. Next time we make love, I promise I won't hurt you." His golden eyes warmed to a sizzle. "In fact, I promise I will make you a very happy woman."

"That is
not
why I—" He knew that, she realized. He wanted to avoid that conversation.

She looked around at the dripping wet woods. The branches rustled as animals moved through the brush. She remembered the howling of the pack and realized—he might have a point.

He folded her collar down. "I'm always naked when I turn, and if the FedEx man shows up and needs a signature, he's less likely to think I'm crazy if I'm wearing something."

Jasha talked about it so casually.
Turning.
As if he were a leaf. Or a door handle. And he looked directly at her, challenging her to accept him without question.

She shook back the long sleeves that drooped over her hands, took one of the cuffs, and folded it back. Anything was better than meeting his eyes.

"Of course, this is Washington. There are nudists all over the place, so the FedEx man probably would simply lecture me on the dangers of sunburn." Jasha took the task away from her, unrolling the slapdash job she'd done and neatly refolding the cuff.

"I
can do it." Because she didn't know how to let him work while she did nothing.

But he brushed her hands aside. "I think you've never had anyone help you do anything."

"What do you mean?" She was feeling a little hostile.

"When you were a kid, was there ever a time when someone helped you dress yourself?"

"No. Why?" She didn't understand his point.

"You do everything with a frightening efficiency, and I always wonder—were you ever a child?"

She suffered an odd combination of hurt—for he seemed to be criticizing her—and surprise—for she never thought he noticed her.
"My
efficiency is the reason I'm
your
administrative assistant."

"One of the reasons. So"—he finished with the cuffs and adjusted her collar—
"were
you ever a child?"

"I
thought you were asking a rhetorical question."

"And I'm fascinated that you don't want to answer it. Who taught you to be so self-sufficient, Ann Smith?"

Was he sorry for what he'd done? Was he trying to make conversation, to make amends before telling
her the whole experience had been equal parts rage and foolishness? "The nuns-'

"You went to a Catholic school?"

"Yes." That was true—as far as it went.

"Hm." His eyes were skeptical.

She shivered. She remembered how often she'd seen him look at an employee or a business rival and
know
the person was withholding information. She'd always been pleased and impressed, thinking he showed an almost supernatural insight into human behavior.

Well . . . yeah.

"Let me see your feet." He lifted first one, then the other, and fsfced. "We need to get you back and put some antiseptic on these cuts. Are they painful?"

"They're too cold to be painful."

He chafed her toes. "They're ice cubes."

"They always are."

'Til have to carry you." He slipped his arms behind her back and under her knees. He pulled her against him and stood. "You can put them on my back in bed."

"Put what on your back?" She grabbed at his shoulders. He was warm. He was so warm.

"Your ice-cold toes." As if the prospect delighted him, he smiled down at her.

He intended to sleep with her.

"So you're not going to eat me?" she blurted.

He started to walk. "Now and again."

She wanted to hide her head. She wasn't used to this kind of flesh-to-flesh contact, or to sexual teasing ... or to the relief in knowing that Jasha always kept his word, and she had something more to look forward to.

Being eaten by a wolf who was really good with his tongue.

"You can't carry me all the way back to the house." She was no featherweight, but tail and muscled.

He didn't pause. "It's only about a half mile."

"That can't be right," she said indignantly. "I drove farther than that!"

"But the road winds around. By the way the crow flies, we're close to the house."

The trees broke away. They were back in the meadow, and when Ann saw the fallen tree with its blackened crown, her brain, so engaged with minor matters like fantasy versus reality, sanity versus madness, and pleasure versus embarrassment, suddenly reengaged.

She'd left something precious back there. "No. I've got to have the lady!"

He stopped. "What lady?"

"I found a painting of the Madonna."

He froze.

"I lost her when I hit you, but while you were gone, I found her again and—" His immobility captured her attention. "Jasha?"

"Where did you find a painting?" He looked down at her, his face still and smooth.

"When the lightning hit the tree and it fell, weM, there she was." And in a day of miracles, that might just be the biggest.

"Was she?" He sounded very odd, choked and almost afraid. "Where is she now?"

"She's back there. Where we were."

He carried Ann back. He let her legs slide to the ground.

Ann searched. She recovered the tile. She showed it to him.

"My God." Jasha knelt beside her, his gaze absorbed and amazed. "I can't believe—
"
He looked up at Ann, then back at the painting. "You found the icon."

"You know about it?"
Impossible!

Yet he'd called it an icon, and now that he had, she recognized the stylized method of painting, the use of vivid colors, the Madonna's stiff pose. This was Russian—and so, she knew, was Jasha's family. "Is it yours?"

He gave a short, incredulous laugh. "In a manner of speaking." Gently he took it from her, smoothed his palm across the Madonna's face . . . and to her horror, his flesh sizzled, a curl of smoke rising from the burning flesh.

Chapter 8

With a shout, Jasha dropped the icon.

Ann caught his wrists in hers.

A brutal red mark seared his palm and his fingers.

"What happened?" She couldn't believe her eyes. "You must be allergic to the finish."

"Allergic." He yanked his hands away and plunged them into the mud. "Is that what you hit me with? Before?"

"Yes." That mark on his cheek, the vivid flare of red—that was a burn, too. "Why did it do that to you?"

"She did it. The Blessed Virgin. I am not to touch her."

"I don't know what you mean." Ann picked the icon out of the dirt and wiped it with the tail of her shirt. The ragged edge caught on the material. "It's just a painting."

"In Russia/ icons are not just paintings. The revolution is but a weak obscenity compared to the weight of years when icons embodied the Russian soul, the Russian heart, and the Orthodox faith. It's tradition that an icon of the Blessed Virgin and the baby Jesus be given as a wedding gift, and all family icons are kept in the
krasny ugol,
the beautiful corner, decorated with candles and red cloth." He wiped his muddy hands on his jeans, but his gaze never left the face of the Virgin. "More important, icons of the Madonna aren't made—they appear."

"What?"

"Icon painters do not sign their work. So the icons are said to appear, to be miracles."

Ann looked at the picture, trying to see what had hurt Jasha.

The Virgin looked back, serene and unworried.

"The Madonna refuses to let me touch her," Jasha said. "But you can. She has entrusted herself to you."

"That's—" Ann drew a breath.

"That's what? Superstition? Impossible?" Jasha touched his cheek. "Yet I'm burned. No wonder it hurt like a son of a bitch."