I nodded sadly. It was harder sometimes to watch an animal die than a human because they died in silence and often in agony. There was a suffering about them when they passed away that was not expressed through complaints but through rough whimpers and pain-filled eyes.
Marcus opened a stall and carefully motioned me inside. A chestnut-colored horse with white legs and soft, compelling eyes lifted its head and instantly seemed to recognize Marcus. He sauntered to the horse and put both his hands on its head and a kiss right on the white star between its eyes.
He was a peculiar sight—all dressed in black, with the precise attitude of a rebellious, rugged man and yet with a softness in his stare and so many hidden aspects to his character that I was left astounded.
“She’s Ilona,” Marcus said, stroking the horse’s head “I found her a few months ago, not far from here. She was malnourished and had cuts all over her body. Her hind legs were especially injured, but she is all better now.”
“You took care of her.” It was more of a statement than a question. The devotion pouring from his eyes and the trust that Ilona gifted him with could only originate from a help that had been given when most needed.
“I did,” he admitted then held his hand back to me. “Give me your hand.”
“Mm, I’m not sure—”
I did love horses. I loved animals in general, but that didn’t mean I was brave enough to go near most of them.
Marcus turned around with a wicked grin that only widened when I retired a step. He stalked me without hesitation, his hands settling on my shoulders. Swallowing heavily, I followed the trail of his hands as they stroked down my arms and finally locked around my wrists.
“I am trying to familiarize you with her because we’ll go for a little ride along the seashore. Besides, she’ll love you.”
“There’s no point in protesting, I suppose?”
“You suppose right,” he grinned, without the smallest trace of regret.
Then suddenly he was behind me. His knowing hands settled firmly and unapologetically on my waist, guiding me forward to Ilona. Marcus took my hands in his and ever so slowly placed them on Ilona’s head. She felt warm and slightly apprehensive but a little curious. As was I.
I found myself smiling, looking between Ilona and Marcus, who appeared delighted. When he laughed, there was no trace of the intimidating man I had met on that Friday night. When he laughed, his whole face glowed, and my heart pounded a tiny bit faster.
The fleeting impression I’d had about Marcus being a jovial innocent-looking boy vanished altogether. His arms tightened around me, nearly knocking the breath out of my lungs. Before I realized what was happening, he had already set me on top of Ilona’s back. The terrorized look I gave him only earned his undiluted amusement.
“Marcus, I’m scared. She’ll feel it,” I said. My voice sounded high-pitched and trembling at the same time. “I told you I never rode a bike. Do you really think I have ever been on horseback? I don’t know what to do.”
“She has been scared too, but she is strong now. She’ll teach you.”
He gripped my knee and held my gaze. He challenged and encouraged me to overcome my fear. And in the end, he gave me that strange, nagging sensation that I could not, did not want to disappoint him. When I complained no more, he placed the reins in my hands and headed toward the stall numbered 7.
“If you want to get revenge because I offended you,” I called, my throat feeling dry already. “I think you might succeed.”
My jaw was clenched so tightly that the words hardly came out discernibly.
“The last thing I want to do to you, Charlotte, is get revenge. Besides, the score is even.”
His eyes hardened with the memory of a night I imagined he had already forgotten. But I had guessed wrong. Marcus was far from being a perfect man, but it seemed he lived by a personal code that made him more respectable than most.
“I never blamed you for what your friends did. I wanted to, but I never could.”
My admission seemed to have eased the sudden tension that had gripped him, and his eyes turned soft once again. He planted his foot in the stirrup and mounted a pure black stallion. The man and the beast were a perfect match, one a natural continuation of the other.
“Starling, lead the ladies outside,” Marcus ordered and took the reins while sending me a playful yet encouraging wink.
By dint of great effort and sheer stubbornness, I managed to guide Ilona out of the stalls although I suspected she merely followed a well-known path. Between Marcus’s instructions and the snickering of the horses, we followed a secluded trail that led to the seashore.
My edginess, however, never diminished. It was Ilona’s steady trot and the sound of the crashing waves that eventually helped my nerves settle.
“You like riding things,” I commented, trying to discard the last remnants of anxiety.
The most mischievous smile appeared on Marcus’s face, and I nearly caught fire. I looked away frustrated with myself and with my choice of words, but fortunately, he made no improper remarks.
“Each experience is unique in its own way.”
We were riding side by side now, and water occasionally bathed Ilona and Starling’s legs. Marcus leaned close, so close that I felt his voice reverberating in my flesh. We both knew that he wasn’t thinking about motorcycles or horses anymore. When he fixed his gaze on my face, I realized for the first time that the man facing me was only a censored, restrained version of his true self.
“I’d like to know the true Marcus King too,” I said, remembering his own words from days ago.
I wondered how those flames blazing in the depths of his eyes would stir him if he embraced them. Then I stiffened at my own thoughts, at my own admission. I was more reserved than this—that was how I had always kept myself whole. It was foolish to suddenly let my guard down.
“Nobody has wanted that in such a long time that I am afraid I don’t know how to show it anymore.”
Chapter 10
Charlotte
There was no discomfort in the silence that followed. I focused on the tempestuous sound of the waves crashing against the shore and the footprints the horses left in the wet sand until eventually, my thoughts drifted back to Marcus and to the absurdity that we hadn’t met before although our fathers were longtime friends.
His tongue poked out to lick a mouth made for sin, and my skin sizzled despite the cool breeze. The inexplicable pull between us was insane. It was paradoxical. I was all for following the rules, so how could I be attracted to a man who surrounded himself with an entourage that was capable of such horrible things?
A chill passed over me while flashes of gruesomeness returned to my mind. My inability to get rid of my nightmares was frustrating, and I wondered if what triggered them was keeping Marcus around since he was the only link I had to that Friday night.
I could tell he was not a criminal, but I couldn’t be so sure about his friends. They were systematically haunting my subconscious.
In the end, I speculated what Isaac King might have told his son about me. ‘He told me many things about you,’ Marcus had said, but although he had tried to make it sound pleasant, I doubted there was anything of the sort behind those words. He had sounded bitter like he always did when he mentioned his father. Like I did when I mentioned my own.
“You look beautiful when you ruminate. Certainly, you will look even more so when you don’t.”
Marcus’s whole face shone with an inscrutable smile under the soft twilight sun. The intensity that never left him ensnared me in its sweet, tempting trap, and so, my cheeks warmed, and my heart vibrated like a wild flapping of wings, yet my mind never stopped working.
It was not the first time he was telling me to think less, but it was simply not in my power to achieve that goal. Thinking was what I did best. Without it, I felt lost, vulnerable, and on foreign ground.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Your father,” I sai
d and almost regretted my honesty. His eyes hardened, but he quickly schooled his expression in a neutral one.
“Problems at work?”
“I was thinking about you and him. You said he told you things about me. You didn’t sound pleased.”
“My displeasure doesn’t involve you, Charlotte.”
Marcus looked away, a frown marring his handsome face. It was frightening how attuned I was to his changing disposition. A brutal violence lay beneath the thin layer of his skin and spread into his very bloodstream.
In an attempt to regain his composure, he bent over and stroked Starling’s skin. Clenching his teeth, he tightened his hand around the reins. A muscle in his jaw ticked, and his entire body tensed until he finally looked back at me. The practiced look of composure might have fooled me if I hadn’t shared his inner violence and frustrations so many times before.
“My father truly praises you. He never said anything about you that he shouldn’t have. But Isaac and I—we never got along, so disliking what he liked has always been second nature to me. You seem to be the exception, though. I cannot not like you. I’ve tried. And I’ve failed.”
“Isaac has always seemed so—good-natured. I’ll admit he might be ruthless in a courtroom, but—”
“But that is not the man I know. I know an ambitious man, prepared to do whatever it takes to accomplish his goals. I have never shared his ambitions. Hence I am no more than a failure to him.”
“Marcus, you are not a failure.”
The stern and chiding tone of my voice startled us both. Failure was not something I could attribute to Marcus King.
“I think you might be stubborn and very persistent, and perhaps you are used to going against your father, but he certainly doesn’t see you as a failure—”
“Do not defend him to me,” he snapped. A violent storm altered the blue of his eyes, almost turning them to black.
“I wasn’t,” I appeased him. I reached for his hand and was pleased when he didn’t pull away. His skin was cold now. “But to me, you are not a failure. I do not know you well, Marcus, but failures don’t grow into men like you.”
“Are you flattering me, Charlotte?”
“I guess I am,” I laughed, and this time I was the one to look away.
Starling and Ilona moved slowly through the crashing waves as if they knew a faster pace would disturb the moment. Marcus’s fingers found my chin, and he gently turned my head back to face him. He assessed me in that quiet manner of his that made you squirm, that made it difficult to breathe, and that turned my thoughts into a confused mess.
“Let’s not talk about my father. He brings out the worst in me, and I don’t want to show you that.”
“You should talk,” I pressed, against my better judgment. “You should let everything out until it doesn’t affect you anymore.”
“It doesn’t,” he said between clenched teeth. But it did. “The man is my father only because I inherited his genes and his name. Otherwise, he is a stranger.”
“Your quarrel with your father has to have a deeper foundation than just irreconcilable differences.”
I recognized my bold lawyerly tone, but sometimes I didn’t know how to disguise it. And Marcus recognized it too. He just smiled.
“The foundation of our quarrel runs deep, and the differences between us are innumerable, but this is not the proper time to spring it all on you.”
“There’s never a proper time. Tell me.” Instead, I wanted to say, ‘Trust me.’
I refused to believe that his father was the only reason I had decided to take a chance and trust Marcus. The decision to trust him had been made perhaps unconsciously, but the only one who had garnered it had been Marcus himself. So in return, I wanted to earn his trust too. I wished to calm the storm in his eyes and watch the sun come out.
“There were times I tried to find excuses, explanations for his behavior toward me. But there are not. He simply wanted a son that I am not. He wanted a replica of himself, and he tried so hard to imprint all his beliefs in my brain that I started despising them. I always wanted things of my own, and each time I did, he corrected me, forced me to follow the path he had designed for me. So I rebelled. I defied him. That maddened him. I live with the consequences every day.”
“What consequences?”
A lump had risen in my throat and was preventing me from breathing properly. The only consequences coming from the Isaac I knew could have been a cold shoulder to his son. The Isaac painted by Marcus, however, seemed to be capable of things much worse than that.
“Nothing special, actually. He will disown me, have my job, and eventually manage a way to put me behind bars so he can teach me a lesson.”
“He will never do something like that.”
“My father doesn’t make threats in vain. He will get his way, and I suspect that will happen fairly soon.”
I couldn’t tell for sure what outraged me more between his joking tone or his father’s threats. How deep could Isaac’s wrath run? How far was he willing to go before he went too far and ruined Marcus’s life?
I resented my own father for many things, but I didn’t imagine resenting him the way Marcus did. And I couldn’t blame him. At the moment, I disliked Isaac too.
I convinced myself the only reason for the growing anger throbbing in my blood was the unfairness Marcus had lived with for so long. As a lawyer, unfairness enraged me. That had to be the reason my spine was ramrod stiff and my hands fisted against Ilona’s neck.
“I guess I should have also warned you that I am the errant son.”
There was doubt in his eyes and fear of being rejected for what he truly was, for how he truly felt. Words sometimes were bare of power and unable to collect the intensity and depth of one’s feelings, so I didn’t bother to explain to him that I could never judge him for having made his own choices. That was the thing I most appreciated about him.
Instead, I reached for his hand and stroked it gently, hoping he would understand that his doubts and fears were misplaced. Marcus held himself tautly as he observed me with suspicion, expecting anything but what he received.
The day had quickly run into night, and the air had turned chilly enough to create goosebumps on my unclothed arms. Yet, when Marcus’s fingers interlaced with mine and his expression lightened up into a guarded smile, warmth exploded in every cell of my body.
“Why would he do that, though?” I started fiercely. It was easier to focus on his problem than on the unexpected, alarming sensations that he was awakening in me. “What reason does he have? Unless you did give him reasons and—”
His eyes had never left my face. If anything, they only developed a quiet concentration that gave me the disquieting sensation that I was laid bare before his scrutiny. I had metamorphosed so easily into my lawyer self that I was afraid I had gone too far, that I had crossed a line he wasn’t ready to cross yet. I knew I wasn’t prepared to cross many lines just yet.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes I get inquisitive, but I meant well.”
“I know.”
He accepted my apology with a wink, his hand tightening around mine in reassurance. The low quality of his voice made it sound illegally sensual—forbidden. My attention strayed to his barely parted lips before returning to his eyes.
How could my heart do that crazy somersault just because I was the object of his unaltered concentration? It was a small relief to discover that confusion haunted him too.
“How do you know?” He didn’t strike me as the most gullible of men, so his quick concession surprised me.
“Because I can feel you,” he replied quietly like it was the most obvious answer. The idea of Marcus feeling anything regarding me made me shudder, and it wasn’t exactly a bad kind of shudder.
On the horizon, streaks of fire unfurled on the rusty sky and drowned into the ocean. The sunset made me think of Marcus. There was fire in his eyes, a force hidden in their depths that calmed you like the liquid touch of the ocean and yet burned
you with the fierceness of leaping flames.
By the time we brought Ilona and Starling back to the stables, the two horses seemed bored and hungry. And they were not the only ones who were hungry. Marcus’s stomach rumbled so loudly that I couldn’t help but laugh at the top of my lungs.
“Poor boy, are you hungry?” I teased.
His eyes glinted dangerously, their usual lightness turning darker as if they had caught the shade of the night. Marcus stalked toward me, his expression intent, his stance threatening yet infuriatingly appealing. Those compelling eyes of his never left mine as he grabbed my chin between thumb and forefinger.
“I am no boy, Charlotte.”
Marcus towered over me, his maleness on sweltering display. My throat felt dry, and suddenly, swallowing was impossible. My palms dampened, and my pulse accelerated under his merciless survey. I had never felt so tiny in my life.
“But I am hungry. And so are you.”
When his thumb lingered for the shortest moment on my bottom lip, I was sure his words had nothing to do with our empty stomachs.
Only when I was once more on the motorcycle behind him, my arms wrapped around his torso, did I realize that I was not only hungry but also cold. I shuddered.
“Let’s get you warmed up,” he said minutes later, parking before a grandiose, expensive-looking mansion that swarmed with people, light, and clamor.
The instant we climbed off the motorcycle, he wrapped his leather jacket around my shoulders, and his hands were kneading the tension out of my muscles. The mansion or the uproar of music and voices coming from inside ceased to hold my attention. Only Marcus’s breath fanning across my cheeks and his hands resting on my shoulders existed.
“Where are we?”
“I have no idea. But we’re starving, and there seems to be a party inside, so let’s go have dinner.”
“Marcus, stop,” I dragged on his left arm, but he just intertwined his fingers with mine, stirring me forward despite my shocked expression and feeble attempt to hinder his progress. “We cannot go to a party where we haven’t been invited. We don’t know anybody.”
Darkside Love Affair Page 10
