“Where did you come from? Did anyone come with you?”
I shook my head. He raised the light so it was on my face. I winced.
“Sorry,” he said, not sounding very sorry at all. “I…well, nevermind.”
“Nevermind?” I couldn’t help but sneer. “You just broke into my uncle’s lighthouse. Don’t you tell me to nevermind.”
I realized it wasn’t probably the best idea to start provoking a complete stranger, especially when you actually hadn’t seen his face yet and you were in a dark, possibly abandoned lighthouse together, but...
He straightened up, his figure blocking the moonlight and reached down with his hand to help me up. He wasn’t very tall at all, maybe 5’9”.
I took it hesitantly and he brought me up to my feet. I wavered a bit at the change in height and gravity and within seconds he had his arms around both sides of me. He smelled like Old Spice aftershave. I felt like I was in some bad drama on the Lifetime network.
“You OK?” he asked. His face wasn’t too far away from mine. I turned around on the spot so that my back was to the window and the moonlight was coming in on his face, illuminating it.
He was a surprisingly handsome guy. Maybe I was expecting a bald man with a beard, but he wasn’t like that at all.
His jaw was wide and round, totally acceptable. A dusting of an Errol Flynn moustache traced his upper lip and his chin was shaded by scruffy beard. He had fathomless, dark eyes framed by brows that were devilishly arched and set low on his forehead. A simple eyebrow ring graced his right eyebrow. It was a very ‘90s look. A man after my own heart, apparently. He reminded me of Robert Downey Jr. in his strung-out drug days.
He watched me, his eyes glittering darkly in the moonlight, full of intensity. I felt relieved that he looked like a normal person and almost tickled that he was quite a looker as well.
“Just a bit dizzy,” I managed to say. He kept his gaze with mine. It was a bit unnerving after awhile. It must have shown on my face because he smiled very slowly, showing perfect white teeth.
“Good,” he said. “Promise not to sue?”
I eyed him warily. “I won’t. Can’t speak for my uncle, though.”
He pursed his lips and seemed to think about it, though his eyes remained motionless.
“Why are you here?” he finally asked.
“We’re having a bonfire on the beach. I got sick of hanging around teenagers and wanted to come here. My uncle never let me come here when I was younger. I didn’t tell anyone, I just left. I was hoping to film some stuff.”
At my own mention of filming I panicked. My camera! I reached down and pulled it up in front of my face. I turned it on and the lights flared and then steadied. I couldn’t see the lens but Dex grabbed it and held it in front of the light. He peered at it, brows furrowing, and gently put it back around my neck.
“It’s fine. I thought you wrecked the shit out of mine when you ran into me.”
He lifted his camera up and patted it. I immediately felt guilty, even though it was his own damn fault for trespassing.
“You’re right,” he continued, reading my face. “Who cares? I probably deserve to have this camera smashed.”
I was about to say something else; what, exactly, I don’t know, but I have a feeling I would have tried to make him feel better, when there was another loud thump from up above.
I froze. I could feel him freeze too. I slowly looked over at him. He was watching me intently.
“You sure you came alone?” he whispered. The fact that he had to ask again chilled me.
“Are you?” I answered. He nodded gravely.
I swallowed hard. We both listened hard, still as death.
Another thump followed. My mind started to reel wildly. Was this Dex guy really alone? Maybe this was still the rape palace and he was trapping me down here while the bigger guys did all the work. There was an air of uncertain danger about him, though that could have just been the situation or his floppy, messy dark hair and Byronic mannerisms.
I eyed the window. Dex caught my stare and shook his head as if to warn me. I gave him an incredulous look.
He leaned into my ear, his lips brushing my lobe. At contact it felt like mini lightning bolts were traveling along my skin in a heated fury and burrowing into my head. That feeling alone was distracting. I closed my eyes and enjoyed it.
“Are you one hundred per cent sure that no one else came with you here?” he whispered, his low voice joining the static and traveling in waves down my spine.
I shook my head and tried to focus. Even if someone did follow me, there was no way they could get inside the lighthouse before me. Hell, I didn’t even know how Dex got in the place if he didn’t come through the window. I put that question aside for now. The thumps continued.
I eyed the window again and started to automatically move towards it. With him right beside me, he didn’t yield.
“We have to go upstairs,” he whispered.
I almost laughed loudly but caught myself. Was he fucking crazy? I wasn’t going upstairs, I was going out the window and back to Uncle Al’s where I could call the cops. If that got Dex in trouble, so be it.
He put his hand under my chin and tilted it up so that I was looking at him. It was OK. I liked looking at him.
“You’d be best to stay with me,” he said.
I couldn’t believe it. Part of me wanted to stay with him for some reason but the rational part knew that “some reason” wasn’t good enough. I shook my head violently.
“You? I don’t even know who the fuck you are. You give me a business card? I’m not going to be part of your rapist tower.” I said that last part a little too loudly.
He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. I guess he was a bit taken aback.
“Go then,” he said slowly. “But once you are out that window, run all the way back to your uncle’s place. Don’t stop to look at anything. Even if you run into something, just keep running. It would be better if you just kept your eyes closed the whole way.”
My body was covered in chills as he said that. I was suddenly afraid to leave his side. He seemed to know a lot of things that I didn’t.
“What’s upstairs?” I asked. “Do you know?”
He shrugged, rather nonchalantly considering the circumstances.
“I have an idea. That’s why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’ll show you,” he said. He reached down and grabbed my hand. With his other he hoisted his camera on his shoulder. He eyed my own camera around my neck.
“You may want to turn that on. It’s better if we get as many ways of recording this as possible.”
Well, shit, son. If there was a moment that determined the course of my future, I’m pretty sure this was it. I had two somewhat simple choices. I could make a run for it and go back to Uncle Al’s. Back to the bonfire where my cousins and dear sister would still be drinking and revel in the normalcy of a Saturday night and forget I ever went to this horrid place and ran into this weirdo.
Or I could go with said weirdo up the stairs in this decrepit old lighthouse, which was most likely condemned and unsafe, towards some unknown person (or thing) that was walking around, potentially waiting to murder us in horrific ways.
It didn’t seem like a very hard decision to make. In fact, I think 99.7% of people in the right frame of mind would have picked from column A and gone on with their merry lives. But for some freaking crazy reason, I thought that maybe, just maybe I should go with this stranger up those kelp-ridden stairs and toward the lair of unimaginable horror. You know, because it was the more interesting alternative.
I turned on my camera with my other hand and let Dex lead me away from the fresh air and freedom, toward the monstrous uncertainty that was waiting for us further inside.
Acknowledgments
This book was a labor of pure love. I wish I could go back in time and do it all again. I was racing out of bed first thing in the morning to
write, and I was burning the midnight oil, utterly captivated by Lenore and Solon and their world. In a way, books are like vampires: they compel and bewitch the reader, and they’re immortal, words living forever, and I love the idea of Solon and Lenore actually going on for eternity, at least in this form.
This book made me realize that I am SO lucky to be able to do this for a living, that feeling when you’re so plugged into your art that you know you are MEANT to do this…after sixty books, it’s not often that a novel comes to me in such a solid, real, soulful form, as if the whole story already existed and was channeling through me.
But I never do everything alone. I have to thank Laura Helseth for her edits and for placating me when I forced her to text me after every chapter. Also thanks to Pavlina who got to beta read this baby.
Nina Grinstead, Kelley Beckham and the team at Valentine PR, Sandra Cortez, Kara Malinczak, K.A. Tucker, Hang Le (FAVORITE COVER EVER), Dr. Kiersten Neumann for all your help with Berkeley and Lenore’s studies, and my wonderful readers: thank you! Couldn’t have done it without you.
And of course, the man who makes my own heart whole, Scott (and Bruce, who would love Odin). For the ages!
About the Author
Karina Halle, a former screenwriter, travel writer and music journalist, is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of The Pact, A Nordic King, and Sins & Needles, as well as over fifty other wild and romantic reads. She, her husband, and their adopted pit bull live in a rain forest on an island off British Columbia, where they operate a B&B that’s perfect for writers’ retreats. In the winter, you can often find them in California or on their beloved island of Kauai, soaking up as much sun (and getting as much inspiration) as possible. For more information, visit
www.authorkarinahalle.com
Also by Karina Halle
Contemporary Romances
Love, in English
Love, in Spanish
Where Sea Meets Sky (from Atria Books)
Racing the Sun (from Atria Books)
The Pact
The Offer
The Play
Winter Wishes
The Lie
The Debt
Smut
Heat Wave
Before I Ever Met You
After All
Rocked Up
Wild Card (North Ridge #1)
Maverick (North Ridge #2)
Hot Shot (North Ridge #3)
Bad at Love
The Swedish Prince
The Wild Heir
A Nordic King
Nothing Personal
My Life in Shambles
Discretion
Disarm
Disavow
The Royal Rogue
The Forbidden Man
Lovewrecked
One Hot Italian Summer
The One That Got Away
All the Love in the World (Anthology)
Romantic Suspense Novels by Karina Halle
Sins and Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1)
On Every Street (An Artists Trilogy Novella #0.5)
Shooting Scars (The Artists Trilogy #2)
Bold Tricks (The Artists Trilogy #3)
Dirty Angels (Dirty Angels #1)
Dirty Deeds (Dirty Angels #2)
Dirty Promises (Dirty Angels #3)
Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)
Dirty Souls (Sins Duet #2)
Horror & Paranormal Romance
Darkhouse (EIT #1)
Red Fox (EIT #2)
The Benson (EIT #2.5)
Dead Sky Morning (EIT #3)
Lying Season (EIT #4)
On Demon Wings (EIT #5)
Old Blood (EIT #5.5)
The Dex-Files (EIT #5.7)
Into the Hollow (EIT #6)
And With Madness Comes the Light (EIT #6.5)
Come Alive (EIT #7)
Ashes to Ashes (EIT #8)
Dust to Dust (EIT #9)
Ghosted (EIT #9.5)
Came Back Haunted (EIT #10)
In the Fade (EIT #11)
The Devil’s Duology
Donners of the Dead
Veiled (Ada Palomino #1)
Song For the Dead (Ada Palomino #2)
Black Sunshine
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