Souls of Fire (6 page)

Having finally calmed down enough to find my voice again, I spit out the first thing on my mind.

“Are you insane?”

That, however, seemed to have been the wrong response to his question, as he grabbed me again and pressed me hard up against the trunk of the old oak, the ragged edges of the bark slightly scraping the skin on my back even through my clothing.

“Ouch, what is
wrong
with you?” I screamed, my voice getting higher and higher as my terror rose. Not wanting any attention drawn to us, he pinned me against the oak with the weight of his body and clamped his hand over my mouth.

“If you bite my hand you’ll be sorry,” he said in a low voice, looking at me intently, obviously waiting for a nod of the head indicating that I understood.

I nodded slowly and pressed my lips together tightly underneath his palm, so as not to be tempted into biting him after all.  The temptation was, indeed, incredibly strong.

“So, let’s try this again. Who are you, and why are you here?” he asked, lifting his hand away from my mouth a few inches, giving me the opportunity to answer his questions.

I swallowed hard. My mouth had gone dry, and I had difficulty finding my voice. After clearing my throat, I gave the only answer I could give ― the truth.

“My name is Persephone Jones … and I’m a student in my first year of college. I came here to study, that’s all.”

Professor Chambers’ eyes hardened as his body moved closer to mine, giving me a look that clearly stated that he didn’t believe a word I was saying.

“Now cut the crap, and tell me the truth!” he spat, apparently infuriated that I had dared to feed him such an obvious lie.

I was very aware of his body pressing up against mine. Even though this man frightened me, the part of me that had felt attracted to him the moment I had laid eyes on him, and the part of me that remembered the images and sensations from my dream, felt aroused by the pressure of his body against mine.

Once again I pictured his lips on mine, pictured his strong hands slowly and confidently moving over my body. I could feel my cheeks turn hot. My body started to tremble with the desire I felt.

Yes, I yearned for this man, this stranger who had violently pinned me against a tree and was threatening and hurting me. It was insanity, but I couldn’t help the way I felt.

There was no cure for it. I wanted him. This revelation and the violence of my emotions caught me by surprise, and I gasped.

T
he surprised intake of breath that escaped the redheaded girl caught Aaron’s attention. His gaze swept over her carefully, trying to decipher her reaction by reading the expression on her face. In the darkness in which they were standing, it was difficult to make out much.

Even though he was unable to see her eyes, he had learned enough about body language in thirty years of living to know what was going on with her. He had plenty of experience with the opposite sex.

He could feel her body trembling, could feel the way it leaned slightly into him instead of cringing away in fear; her head was tilted upward toward his, her lips somewhat parted.

She was not trembling out of fear.

She was trembling with desire.

He felt it, too. A longing so intense, it made every inch of his body ache. A longing that had sprung up out of nowhere. There was no foundation for it. There was no explanation for it.

But it somehow felt so familiar. As if he had felt something similar before. Suddenly it hit him: he
had
sensed it before.

Just the other day, he had been sitting underneath the same tree they were standing under now. He had felt … something. He had looked around, trying to discern if there was someone he knew who was looking his way. It would have explained the feeling of being watched. But he hadn’t been able to detect anyone.

And then he had suddenly experienced a powerful force compelling him forward that had completely overwhelmed him. He had been on his hands and knees, clawing at the ground in order to stop his body from darting off in pursuit of something his mind couldn’t make sense of.

And today, before he had reached the door of the auditorium in time for his lesson, he had once again sensed the same presence and some sort of … connection … and had spent one and a half hours pretending to be oblivious to it while searching the room and trying desperately to concentrate on the lesson and the other students.

And then he had seen her … standing in the auditorium all alone, staring at him with wide terrified eyes, like a deer caught in the headlights.

Both times he had fought hard to restrain himself. His body had felt wildly out of control, yearning for … something … or someone … her.

The desire he felt now had the same kind of feel to it. It felt raw and violent … and tasted of despair.

He didn’t like the way this felt. It felt wrong. It felt as if there would be no coming back from the depth of this plunge once he leaped.

The mere awareness that she was making him think in such melodramatic terms, made him feel sick to his stomach. He wasn’t accustomed to thinking like this. He was never overly dramatic. He always played it cool.

He didn’t know what this excessive reaction to her meant or how it had come about. And he didn’t give a damn!

What he knew for sure was that
she
had done this to him! One more thing he knew for sure: he was going to fight it with everything he had!

He would not be enslaved!

Gathering every last ounce of willpower, Aaron tried to let go of her and walk away. But despite his enormous efforts, pulling away from her proved to require more strength than he possessed.

He tried with all his might to suppress the urge he felt, but the sensation was too strong, too easy to give into.

It seeped into every molecule and completely took him over. What was more, a part of him wanted to give into it. A part of him wanted to forget who he was and lose himself in the heat of the moment.

Well, if he had no free will, no choice but to succumb to her, he thought, than at least he would make her beg.

I
held my breath, as Aaron Chambers’ hand suddenly cupped my chin, his thumb gently stroking over my temple, sending shivers down my body. His other hand moved around to the small of my back, leisurely pulling me into his embrace.

I closed my eyes and waited for his lips to find mine. I could feel his breath on my face, could sense him closing in. His lips brushed against mine, teasingly, pulling back again after the lightest of touches, making me ache for more while denying me the pleasure of it.

He was playing with me.

I didn’t have any experience with men, as I had never been interested in anybody before now. But I had always been able to read people fairly well.

I knew he was goading me, knew he meant to taunt me, though I couldn’t imagine why. However, I was beyond caring. I was also beyond waiting for him to make the next move.

Desperate for the feel of him, and lit with an inner fire that threatened to consume me, I reached out and pulled him closer, my fingers curling in his incredibly soft hair and pulling his face toward mine.

I covered his lips with my own and felt his surprise at my seizing control. I turned his own device around on him, brushing over his lips in slow tantalizing motions, goading him as he had goaded me. Finally, it seemed, he couldn’t take anymore.

I was overwhelmed by the sheer force of his reaction, as he pushed me up against the trunk of the oak with his body, both my wrists pinned over my head by his strong hand, his mouth moving on mine with a ferocity that nearly made my knees buckle.

His tongue entered my mouth, finding mine and moving against it in a way that made my blood boil. His other hand was moving up and down my body, finally reaching under my sweater, clawing at the bare skin of my back.

This was not how I had envisioned my first experiences with the opposite sex, I thought, desperately trying to get a grip on the situation.

My first kiss should have been nice and sensitive, and safe. I should have been kissed by a gentleman, at the end of our third or fourth date, after having gone to the movies or for dinner. This was not a gentleman, and there was nothing safe about this kiss.

Within minutes of running into him, I was being pinned to a tree by this strong and violent man many years my senior, his hands groping at my flesh with utter abandon, the situation spinning wildly and dangerously out of control.

Desire the likes of which I had never known and never thought possible was consuming my body and mind, spreading like a wildfire, destroying everything in its path.

I could feel electric charges running up and down my body. The air around us felt charged and heavy, a humming sound flowed about us, followed by the ominous rumbling of an oncoming storm.

How can there be a storm?
a remote part of my mind, the only part not void of reason, wondered. The sky had been clear only minutes ago. It seemed impossible that the weather could change that fast. Especially since I could recall no mention of a storm at all.

Aaron Chambers seemed not to have noticed anything, his kisses growing more urgent and heated by the second.

I was slowly falling apart. I was so week in the knees I could not hold myself up any longer. My head was spinning in a whirlwind of emotions, and I was slowly blacking out.

At the same time I began to slip into unconsciousness, a gleaming white light struck me down, sending my brightly illuminated body crashing to the ground at Aaron Chambers’ feet.

Chapter 3
*
Rejection

A
aron’s shocked gaze rested on the figure which lay sprawled on the wet grass in front of him. The radiance, which had enveloped the girl’s seemingly lifeless body seconds before, was beginning to fade.

Aaron didn’t know what to do. He was in complete shock, his mind trying to come up with a rational explanation for what had just happened.

The fact that he taught a class about paranormal phenomena didn’t mean that he had any hands-on experience with the paranormal. What he knew derived from books, from other people’s experiences, but he had never thought he would ever experience anything remotely like it.

Now he was in the thick of it with no idea what all of this would lead to or how to get out of whatever he had gotten himself into.

Women,
he thought bitterly,
nothing but trouble!

Aaron got down on his knees beside the girl’s body, hesitating to touch her, not knowing what would happen. He sat there for a long moment, unsure of what to do.

He needed to find out if she was dead or just unconscious. Though she was a pretty thing, the thought of her being dead didn’t disturb him any more than the death of any other stranger would have. He would feel sorry about a life having ended, nothing more.

She was nothing to him but an aggravation, a little girl, twelve years his junior, who couldn’t have any more to offer him than a body he happened to desire ― to a degree that was neither healthy nor sane and most certainly not normal.

Other than the strange desire he felt for her, she held nothing to interest him in the least. He was now even convinced that she was nothing more than the average freshman. Dull and wet behind the ears.

At first, he had thought that she had merely pretended to be a student, that in reality she had been sent. It may have sounded unlikely, but the fact of the matter was, there was a remote possibility that he was being watched.

Was there a better way to get to the enemy than by sending a beautiful, irresistible woman to get under his skin and weaken his defenses?

And he had to admit, his ability to think seemed to have evaporated the moment he had met her. So, for all he knew, she could have been on a mission.

There was an organization whose members fancied themselves witches, who didn’t want knowledge about their ‘craft’ to reach the outside world.

These members took it upon themselves to track down and hurt, even kill people who spread the word about their secret society.