The Mark of Cain

by A D Seeley

  Inac shook his head, but not as an answer as much as to tell her that he didn’t have the time for her questions.

  “I have to leave, Hara. The Mokolios need me to stop this. Europe needs me to stop this.”

  He expected her to try to talk him into staying here in the States where it was safe—his wives all would have—but she only looked into his eyes for a while before giving a small nod.

  With defeat and worry saturating her eyes, she said, “Okay. Be safe. And call me all the time.”

  Proud of her, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, trying to stop the quivering of her lower lip that she’d failed to hide from him.

  “I will,” he breathed onto her lips. “I promise.”

  Her bravery lasted as he turned away from her and started walking down the steps, but as soon as he knew she couldn’t see him anymore, he heard her sobs. Sobs that followed him all the way down the three stories and into the car that would take him away.

  ***

  “When are you coming home?” Hara pouted over the phone two weeks into his trip—it seemed that she would get a lot more time to think about what Inac had said than she’d planned on. He always said that he’d tried to call as often as he could, but she usually went a few days at a time before he would catch her. It made for constant sleepless nights filled with nightmares about his death. “I miss you.”

  “Baby, I can’t just leave when things are as volatile as they are.”

  “Why not? You’re just a bureaucrat. You can do that here. With me.”

  “No, I can’t. Because I’m not just a bureaucrat. I’m the best gun we have.”

  “You mean you’re fighting?!”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. This will be finished soon. Just give me another week. We’re really close to starting negotiations.”

  It wasn’t until two weeks after his “one more week” was over that she heard on the news that the short-lived war was over. Iran, who had always been against the Western World, had suddenly changed their mind and joined with their enemies of yesterday to crush the forces of their old allies in the Middle East. Nobody understood the occurrence, but Hara had a pretty good idea that it had something to do with Inac. She was expecting a call any day now telling her that he was on his way home.

  She was in the middle of what she hoped was another nightmare because Inac was dying in her arms. She was bawling when she felt something solid holding her.

  “Shh, Hara. It’s okay, love. You’re okay.”

  It was Inac’s voice, comforting her until the nightmare faded away and a wonderful dream took its place. In it, Inac was in her bed, holding her tight, protecting her from any and all of the monsters that came out at night.

  “Don’t ever leave me again,” she said into his chest.

  “I won’t. I promise you that I won’t.”

  It was when he kissed her gently on the top of her head that she realized this wasn’t a dream. He was really here in the flesh! She clung to him, not wanting him to ever stop raining kisses down upon her. He’d been gone far too long. She didn’t know how the families of soldiers did this.

  For some reason, the relief washing over her made her physically need Inac, and she was prepared to go as far as they could.

  At first Inac seemed to be as into it as her but, when she started pulling his shirt off, he grabbed her hands.

  “Wait…Hara,” he said through breaths as jagged as his abs.

  She smiled and bit his lip. “I don’t want to wait. I want you. Right here. Right now.”

  He moaned for an instant and she was sure she’d won until her hands were under his shirt, slowly moving up his rippling abdomen toward his chest. Again, he grabbed her hands, lacing his fingers with hers.

  “Hara….”

  She pulled away, feeling rejected and upset. “What?” she snapped, doing her best to find his eyes in the dark.

  “Baby, I….”

  “You what? Why don’t you want me anymore?” she said, her throat tensing and her nostrils burning as tears roiled to the surface.

  “I do. You know I do.”

  “Then why won’t you let us be together? I’m offering myself to you.”

  “I know. And you don’t know how difficult it is for me not to take it.”

  “Then why won’t you?” she asked, the tears forming in her eyes.”

  Caressing her cheek, he said, “Oh, baby. Please don’t cry.”

  “I just don’t understand,” she said through a sob.

  “I don’t want to take advantage of you. I want it perfect for you when we go there. I want you to mean it. Right now you’re upset so you aren’t thinking rationally….”

  So now the tables were turned. Since when was she the one trying to talk him into sex? And since when was he refusing it?

  Part of her was thankful for this turn of events. Tomorrow, when the world had righted itself, she would be grateful to him for this.

  “Let’s talk instead,” he suggested. “Let me just hold you and we can catch up. What have you been up to while I’ve been gone?”

  “Just missing you,” she said, accepting defeat. Now that her mind was thinking a little more rationally, she burrowed into his forest, ocean, spices scent, letting it relax her. “But let’s not talk right now. We can talk tomorrow. Right now, I just want you to hold me.”

  He pulled her farther into his arms until they were both comfortable. Then, taking a deep whiff of his musk, she closed her eyes.

  “Promise you won’t let me go?” she asked.

  She felt his warm lips on the top of her head.

  “I swear.”

  That was the last thing she heard before she fell into a blissfully silent sleep.

  ***

  Hara felt safe even before she really began to wake up. A part of her wondered if Inac had really been a dream but, as she woke, she still felt his strong arms around her. He’d kept his promise. He hadn’t let her go. She took a deep breath through her nostrils, breathing in the scent that had danced through her dreams last night. It was just so intoxicating as well as relaxing. She’d slept with a shirt of his while he was gone so she’d have that scent with her to get her through his absence, but now the delicious smell was strong and undiluted. She’d really missed that the past couple of months or so.

  She felt his lips softly graze her forehead just before he whispered, “Morning, beautiful.”

  She opened her eyes to find him staring into them, such love emanating from his warm gray eyes. None of the hardness of his walls were present as he looked at her in complete adoration.

  “Morning yourself,” she said as she nuzzled back into him. “I wasn’t sure if last night was a dream or not.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  Moving again so she could look him in the eyes, she said, “Did Crystal let you in?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then how did you get in?”

  A wicked glint took over his sparkling gaze and one corner of his mouth turned up with mischief. “I picked the lock.”

  “You what?!” she asked. Surely he must be kidding. “Are you serious?”

  “Yup. Crystal wasn’t home, and you were out cold. After knocking and ringing the doorbell a few times, I finally just picked the lock.”

  “But why?”

  “I know you have classes all day today and then work tonight and the rest of the weekend, and I couldn’t wait until Monday to hold you.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you did.”

  “Yeah?”

  She kissed him. “Of course. But, instead of breaking in, I’ll get a key made for you. That way, you can surprise me whenever you’d like.”

  “Okay. And, once I have a key, I’m going to make it more difficult to break in.”

  Grimacing, she asked, “Was it really that easy?”

  “Took me all of two seconds.”

  She was really glad that she had Inac. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about someone breaking in…though she ha
dn’t really worried about it in the first place—they hadn’t ever locked the orphanage at night so it had taken some getting used to once she’d moved out here to Los Angeles. Crystal was always harping on her for it, asking if she wanted to be raped and murdered.

  “Why don’t I skip my classes today?” she suggested. “We haven’t seen each other for so long…. Besides, you can help me catch up easy. You’re so smart….”

  She didn’t think she could get any closer to him, but she was wrong. He pulled her even farther into him as he agreed to them spending the day together.

  They spent the morning in bed, mostly just cuddling. They kissed some, and talked a little, but they were mostly silent; comfortable.

  It wasn’t until around noon that they finally rolled out of bed for “brunch,” as Inac called it. She showered as he made quiches. Then, because he’d come straight here from the airport and had his own clothes in his gunny sack—he was so weird that, even with how rich he was, he didn’t use nice luggage, instead using what he would get in the military—he showered while breakfast cooked in the oven.

  He’d been in the bathroom for a while after the water had turned off, making her worry for some reason, so she walked down the short hall, finding the bathroom door slightly ajar. Not wanting to embarrass him if he wasn’t fully clothed, she peeked in, taking a sharp breath in from the horror she felt upon doing so. She must be imagining what she thought she was seeing….

  Apparently Inac heard her because he turned and wrenched open the door, looking at her, his hardened gaze giving away nothing of his feelings.

  “I’m sorry, Hara. I didn’t want you to see this,” he told her without emotion. This was a vertical wound about two inches long stitched together right where his heart would be.

  “But…what happened? Are you okay?”

  He smiled at her and turned back to what he was doing. Out of the corner of her eye—she couldn’t stop looking at the wound—she realized that he was preparing some kind of bandage with gauze and tape.

  “I’m fine. This happened about a week ago. I would take the stitches out today if the wound wasn’t still seeping every once in a while. I usually heal better than this, but I keep opening it back up. Give it another day or so now that I’m not fighting and you won’t even notice it.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she said, finally looking into his eyes. What she saw now surprised her. He didn’t want to tell her the truth.

  “You didn’t think I could just waltz into the Iranian president’s office without getting hurt, did you?” he said. “It took some convincing to get him to listen and become my ally.”

  “They could’ve killed you. That’s right over your heart. If they’d stabbed you deep enough to pierce it….”

  With a snippy tone she knew meant that she should drop it, he said, “Hara, the point is that they didn’t and I’m fine. This is why I didn’t want you to know. I knew you’d overreact.”

  “Overreact?!” Now she was getting angry. “Is me being upset because my fiancé almost got stabbed in the heart overreacting?”

  Frowning, he said, “No. But now you are.”

  She was about to yell at him, to tell him that he was being a jerk, but something told her not to. He seemed to be on an edge that, if pushed, could take him into violent territory. It was like a storm was brewing just underneath the surface, and the only thing he needed for it to rage out of control was her pushing his buttons. She wasn’t afraid of him, but afraid for him. She didn’t know what he would do if that rage was unleashed.

  She took deep breaths to calm herself as he taped the gauze onto his skin, suddenly realizing why he was so defensive. The poor guy was scared. He had almost been killed a week ago and here she was getting angry, blaming him for it, when his intentions had been noble.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, lightly touching his bare shoulder. “I shouldn’t be getting all angry when you were doing the right thing. I just…” she said, sniffling. “I just don’t want to lose you.”

  He threw on his shirt, turned, and opened his arms until she threw herself into them. “I promise you, you aren’t going to lose me,” he whispered comfortingly into her ear. “This is why I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to upset you.”

  She nodded, wiping her face on his shirt as she did so. “I know. But I would rather know and be worried than be kept in the dark. It makes me feel like I’m being lied to.”

  “Okay. I’ll make sure to tell you the next time I’m almost stabbed in the heart,” he said with a small smile in his voice.

  She chuckled, saying, “Okay. I forgive you for keeping it from me then.”

  It wasn’t until they were almost done with “brunch” that she realized something.

  “Inac?”

  “Hmm?” he asked, looking up from the English paper she had written that he was proofreading for her. It was such a normal scene that she could almost forget that he’d been stabbed. Almost….

  “Is that why you didn’t want to…well, to…?” she asked, her fingers touching her chest in the same place he’d been stabbed on his. Even though she didn’t finish her sentence, she knew that Inac would know from her embarrassment what she wanted to ask.

  “Why I said no to sex last night?” he asked so bluntly that she felt her flush deepen further.

  “Yeah.”

  He took a sip of his coffee while contemplating. Finally, he said, “No. At least not for the most part. Like I said, I want it to be perfect for you; for us. I don’t want you regretting it the next day. But mostly, I don’t want you hating me the next day.”

  “I wouldn’t—” she started, but he interrupted her.

  “You say that. But last night you didn’t even know whether or not you were awake. It’s easy to go along with something like sex when you think you’re just having an unbelievably awesome dream,” he said with a boyish grin. No longer joking, he added, “I don’t want you to be upset with me, thinking that I took advantage when you weren’t sure whether or not there were real consequences. That’s almost the same as rape in some people’s minds because your heart wouldn’t really be saying yes.”

  “I wouldn’t ever—”

  Again, he interrupted. “No Hara. Don’t say it. You don’t ever know what you’ll think or do until the moment presents itself. You’d be surprised with the things you think you wouldn’t do but find yourself doing. You might find that you would feel like I had raped you.”

  The bitter edge to his tone told her that he was speaking from experience. But was it something he did or something that had been done to him? It was true, though. She never thought she’d have S-E-X before marriage, but wasn’t she the one trying to instigate exactly that last night? On the other hand, she knew he would never rape her. H-E-double hockey sticks, he wouldn’t even take advantage for fear that she might have an inkling of that thought in her mind. He was such a good man….

  She really wanted to know why he sounded bitter but didn’t press him, knowing that he would talk about it when he was ready. So, when he did start talking, she was elated that she hadn’t asked because then he would have shut down completely instead of opening up.

  “I was wandering around, not sure where I was going,” he said into his coffee. “I ended up in Oklahoma where there was this cattle ranch hiring hands. With my experience and size, they hired me on the spot. It didn’t take long for the owner’s daughter, Olivia, to notice me, though I didn’t notice her. I had barely escaped a loveless marriage and didn’t want to get into another one.”

  “So what happened?” she asked when he paused.

  He chuckled. “She made sure that I noticed her by always bringing me lunch and freshly squeezed lemonade. She was pretty enough, and I guess I was a little lonely, so we soon began dating. It wasn’t long after we did that I got her pregnant. To make an honest woman out of her, we married before anybody could find out.”

  A smile softened his usually hard features, though his eyes were far away.
“Our baby was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen. She had glossy black spiral curls Shirley Temple would have envied, as well as large green eyes.”

  He looked Hara straight in the eye, chuckling as though his daughter was right there with them. “She was such a daddy’s girl, Hara. You should have seen it. Every time I was near, she was there in my arms.”

  “What was her name?” she whispered. She was trying her hardest not to cry because she knew that he no longer had a daughter. She knew that his daughter had died.

  “Delilah. My little Delilah,” he said with such love in his eyes she thought her heart would shatter. Suddenly, they darkened to a stormy gray. “Everything was great until she caught the fever. She was so little. I remember holding her, trying to comfort her as she moaned in pain. She just put a hand in my hair and twirled her fat little fingers in it. My hair was long then, about shoulder-length.”

  When his voice choked up, though his eyes locked on hers stayed dry, that’s when she couldn’t keep from crying any longer. Maybe…maybe she could cry for the both of them.

  “Olivia wasn’t the same after Lilah died. I remember coming home one day and Olivia was in the corner, looking down at her arms cradling something I couldn’t see as she rocked back and forth in the rocking chair I’d made for her while she was pregnant. I asked her what she was doing. She just shushed me, telling me that I’d wake Lilah.

  “After a few months like that she got really bad. She tried to stab herself in the stomach, saying that she was pregnant with my child, but that it was a curse because I was Satan. That I was the reason God had taken Lilah away. Because I’d raped Olivia to get her pregnant. That that was why God had taken her from us.”

  Hara took in a deep breath. Now his words made sense. She could see why he worried. His own wife had accused him of rape…something she could never see him doing. He was too gentle and respectful.

  “It was just her sickness,” she tried to tell him.

  He searched her eyes for a moment before a weariness flashed through his and he said, “I know. But she was right in some ways. She wrote it all in her suicide note. I came home from building a new fence all day to find how much she truly loathed me written in her own blood all over the walls of the house I had built for her with my own bare hands. She died to tell me in her own blood that I was the devil….”