Darkness Chosen 01: Scent of Darkness

by Christina Dodd

  "It'll take the Varinski two days to track us here, and by then we'll be pretty close to my choice of Armageddon." Jasha's deep voice, silken with men­ace, made her glad he wasn't hunting her.

  "You want to choose your battlefield."

  "More important, I don't want him to know I have chosen it. I want him to think he's forced the issue." Jasha was only a presence in the dark, but she heard him lift the backpacks off the handlebars.

  "What if he's a hawk instead of a wolf? Can't he find us faster?" The farther they traveled, the later the night, the colder it had grown, and when she stripped off one glove and touched her face, it felt stiff, frozen.

  "You're beginning to think like a Wilder." A com­pliment, no doubt. "But I think he's got fur. There's no smell of feathers about him." Jasha sounded in­tent, weighing the odds, maneuvering like a general with an army of one. "If he is a bird of prey, that's to our advantage. He'll have to cover a lot of ground before he stands a chance of spotting us, and there's still a good chance he'll miss us. Camouflage works well against bird eyes. Here." Jasha helped her into her backpack. "If you can walk one more mile, I can promise you a sleeping bag tonight and a good breakfast in the morning."

  One mile didn't sound like so much.

  On the other hand, one mile uphill in the black­est night ...

  She would have complained, but walking uphill in his boots kept her conversation to increasingly viru­lent cursing every time she tripped.

  The sharp point of the crescent moon rose over the horizon and pierced the night sky, and at four thou­sand feet, its tiny bit of illumination looked like a streetlight.

  That helped, but not enough.

  By the time he called a stop she was both breath­less and furious, and rage loosened the restraints she usually placed on her emotions. "Are you sure you don't want to walk a little further?" She tapped the clown-sized toe of his boot. "Maybe enjoy a little run through the forest?"

  "Here's water to brush your teeth." He poured her water out of a canteen.

  "Trip on some tree roots? Take a header into the brush?" She ignored the cup in his outstretched hand.

  He placed it on a rock. "I laid out our sleeping bags on that pile of boughs. Take off your boots and outerwear before you climb in.”

  "Maybe we could dig a foxhole!" She faked enthusiasm.

  "Hush." He slid his arm around her waist, bent her back like a great wind, and kissed her.

  She was tired. She was grumpy. She was so, so easy.

  She leaned into him and kissed him back, fright­ened by the return to passion, yet eager to sample him once more. He helped her stand on her own and whispered, 'Til be back soon."

  "What?" She forced her knees to take her weight. "You're really going for another walk?"

  "Don't wait up." Without a sound, without ruf­fling the brush, he was gone.

  "Spooky," she muttered—but then, up here, what wasn't?

  She stood shifting between one foot and the other, trying to decide whether removing her clothes consti­tuted good sense on her part, because the sleeping bag was insulated down to twenty below and she'd be too warm, or bad sense, because Jasha would think she'd obeyed him.

  For all that he was a New World American, the old-world autocracy was bred into his bones.

  She used to almost swoon at his high-handedness, but now . . . well, now it seemed yielding was an­other word for surrender.

  Then a giant yawn caught her by surprise, almost cracking her jaw, and she decided he could gloat all he wanted. She would be asleep, anyway. She peeled off her clothes, leaving on only the men's underwear and his black silk T-shirt. She roused when, a half hour later, he slipped into his bag and snuggled against her back.

  She woke enough to ask, "Where have you been?"

  "Catching a rat," he said.

  That woke her. "The Varinski?"

  He laughed. "No. A real rat. Go to sleep. I'll show you in the morning."

  Ann woke to the smell of coffee and cedar, the sounds of birds singing, a holy sense of stillness . . . and something tickling her cheek. Without opening her eyes, she swatted at it—and got Jasha's hand. "I hate you."

  "I have coffee." He sounded richly amused and very awake.

  "Unless you have bacon, eggs, and wheat toast served on a warm plate with a side of pancakes, I still hate you." She was gloriously warm in the cocoon of her sleeping bag, and she didn't need the nip of the mountain's cool morning air to alert her that coming fully awake would be painful and primitive.

  "How about a Baker's Breakfast Cookie?" He crin­kled the wrapping near her ear. "You can have a choice between ginger molasses or oatmeal raisin."

  "It's bacon and eggs or nothing."

  "Okay, I'm eating the oatmeal raisin."

  "Give that to me." Sitting up, she fought the bag's zipper down, snatched the cookie out of his hands, and glared. He knew she hated ginger of any kind.

  He was fully dressed and looked disgustingly alert. He offered her the cup of coffee, and she stared at his big hands. For a moment, she remembered that first night—the darkness, the sense that this man had stalked her, possessed her, and now demanded she yield everything to him.

  Then he backed away, his face long with dismay and alarm. "I never knew you were so cranky when you woke up."

  So he wasn't the dark wolf of her imagination. At least—not now.

  "I'm not if I've had more than jive hours' sleep.” And if her butt didn't hurt from the stupid bike.

  She hadn't even seen the wolf since that first night, and when she looked back, that seemed the real fan­tasy. She knew the truth; she'd seen the truth. But she still couldn't completely comprehend that Jasha became Another. This morning, as the sun filtered through the trees and scattered flecks of light across the forest floor, and birds sang their approval, she could easily pretend that this was a camping trip undertaken with the intention of fun in the forest.

  A misplaced intention, to be sure, but the inten­tion nevertheless.

  Taking a sip of the coffee, she muttered, "Come on, caffeine." She unwrapped the cookie and tasted it—healthy, but not too healthy, and it filled the empty space in her belly.

  As the food and the coffee worked their magic, she began to rouse enough to survey their surroundings.

  They had sheltered in a grove of magnificent old evergreens. Here and there mighty stones poked out of the soft earth. One stone was so close she could lean against it, and she did, and when she did, she looked up . . . and up.

  Last night, she'd thought the trees dusted the stars.

  In the broad light of day, she realized she was right These trees—Douglas fir, cedar, western hemlock—had trunks six and eight and ten feet wide, with branches the size of the live oaks in her condo complex. She got dizzy looking up at the tops. "Where are we?" she whispered.

  "In the wilderness in the Olympic Mountains.” Jasha smiled at her as he cleaned up the Sterno.

  Maybe yesterday's shock and last night's journey had combined to make her forget how gorgeous he was. Maybe it was the pure pleasure of watching a man wash something—anything!—that made her breath catch with amazement.

  "There's no one for miles," he said. "We'll make a hard walk this morning, then rest for a few hours, then take another hard walk this afternoon to the place where I want to camp. We can have a fire, and I've got a tent stashed there. It'll be like camping out. Fun!"

  "Camping out is fun?" Her experience included one trip with the Camp Fire Girls to a national park for a wretched weekend that included a slow, steady downpour followed by a freeze.

  "It is with me." With an efficiency of motion, he packed his backpack. "I'll fish, and we'll have trout and huckleberries, and wine—you gotta know I've hidden wine up there—and we'll tell ghost stories around the fire."

  Caffeine? Who needed caffeine? The sight of his compelling gold eyes gave her a bracing jolt. His voice was slow and deep and dangerous. His dark hair was ruffled with sleep; the start of a beard dark­ened his
chin and the hollows of his cheeks—and his body! Camouflage emphasized the width of his shoulders and the length of his legs, and she got caught up in the memories they evoked.

  More important, he seemed to think she looked good, too. He ran his gaze over her, and he smiled as if the sight of her pleasured him.

  She dropped the cookie back into the wrapper and ran her fingers through her hair, trying to restore it to some semblance of order.

  "You're beautiful, all mussed from sleep."

  "Sure." She didn't believe it, but she liked the way he said it.

  He walked over and knelt on the sleeping bag, and his fingers joined hers, smoothing her hair, stroking her scalp, her neck. ...

  She relaxed into his touch, allowing him the free­dom of her body if he would only massage away the kinks of tension, take the memories of terror and replace them with slow, sweet passion. He took her cup away, and she let him; then he eased her down on her back.

  "Do you know I can see right through your silk T-shirt?" His fingertips stroked her nipples through the thin silk.

  "Your silk T-shirt." She could barely move her lips.

  "The sleeves are so wide, I could see inside every time you rifted that coffee to your lips." His hands slid up her arms and into the shirt, finding her breasts, caressing them so lightly she could barely feel his touch ... and she could think of nothing else.

  "Good view?" She closed her eyes to feel more acutely each pass he made.

  "Very good." He lifted her shirt. "Getting better."

  Cool air washed her skin, and her already tight nipples grew rigid, almost painful. But the old famil­iar habits of modesty couldn't easily be broken. So she didn't dare give herself up to passion. Not in the daylight. Not while he watched.

  Her hands flew to push her shirt back down, but his hands were in the way, stroking her rib cage, her belly. . . . She pressed her legs together, not sure if she was intent on keeping him away or easing the discomfort passion brought in its wake.

  But he made no attempt to go farther. His caresses grew lighter and more infrequent.

  She opened her eyes. He knelt over her, a knee on each side of her waist, watching her as if he wanted to know everything that went on in her head. "What?"

  "You're a fascinating puzzle." He lowered her shirt.

  "No, I'm not.” she snapped back with telling speed. "I'm plain Ann Smith."

  "No hidden depths? No skeletons in your cup­board?"

  "No." She spread her arms wide. "What you see is what you get."

  But he didn't look at the body she offered as dis­traction. His gaze never left her face.

  She worked for the man, had for four years, and she'd learned to read his moods. She prided herself on knowing what he thought.

  But right now, she couldn't read his expression. His eyes were shadowed; his face was enigmatic. She knew his deepest secret.

  So how was it possible he had become a mystery to her?

  Chapter 18

  With elaborate casualness, Ann stretched a hand toward her coffee cup. ""Where did my cookie go?"

  Jasha pulled it from beneath his knee and handed it to her. "Hiding, Ann?"

  She looked at the slightly mashed breakfast cookie. "It was?"

  "No. You are." He was still kneeling over her, still too close, still knowing too much and revealing too little.

  "From what?" She looked into his face, but she couldn't sustain the full-frontal contact for long. "Be­sides the Varinski."

  "I don't know. But I can't wait to find out." Jasha rose and walked back to his packing.

  She sat up. Her coffee was cold. She was cold, and more scared than she'd been when she'd seen him become a wolf, more scared than she'd been when she'd removed the arrow. She'd never thought Jasha would want to talk to her, find out about her background . . . but then, she'd never thought he would want her to meet his family. In fact, she'd been a little vague about what would happen after she seduced him. She'd had this idea that they would have an affair, a lot of good sex, really, really good sex, a lot and often sex, and then . . . and then what? She'd go back to work for him, see him every day, buy his girlfriends flowers, purchase his next fian­cee's ring?

  Ann shot him a glare. Not in this lifetime.

  Or maybe he'd fall madly in love with her, he'd want to marry her, and they'd live this ideal, problem-free life together forever, just the two of them? Jasha? The man who called or e-mailed some­one in his family every day?

  Ann hadn't really thought this through. One of the things that had seduced her was his dedication to his father and mother, his brothers and sister. He seemed the kind of man who could have been Beaver Cleav­er's father: proud, thoughtful, a good disciplinarian.

  Of course a man like that would think her back­ground was important. She had to give him some­thing, and really, what was wrong with telling him the truth?

  Or at least . . . some of it.

  She rummaged in the bottom of the sleeping bag until she found her clothes. Then ever so casually and quickly, as she dressed, she said, "I'm an orphan."

  He didn't react. Didn't clutch his chest and edge away as if her bad luck were contagious.

  "I don't have any family." As she buttoned her shirt, she shivered from the cold.

  He didn't glance up from his work. "Really? No family at all?" She could tell he was listening, and listening intently.

  "No family at all. I grew up in an orphanage in Los Angeles."

  "How did you get there?"

  "The nuns took me in." Had he noticed she dodged that question? She'd had a lot of experience.

  "You were raised in a convent?"

  "Not in a convent!" Her laugh was carefully light-hearted. "It was a Catholic orphanage attached to a convent."

  "That explains a lot."

  What did he mean by that? Did he know how many hours she'd spent looking in on the nuns, shar­ing their life, learning their rhythms? Yet despite her desire to be part of a family, any family, she'd always known she wasn't welcome in the convent?

  And after Sister Catherine . . . after that, she was welcome nowhere.

  But she could pretend, so she babbled on. "Usually babies get adopted or at least put in foster care, but I was premature, in the hospital for four and a half months. The doctors didn't give me good odds, but I survived, and I finally got out of the incubator and into the orphanage. Sister Mary Magdalene said I was the ugliest baby she'd ever seen."

  His eyebrows rose steeply. "That's harsh."

  "Sister Mary Magdalene prided herself on not mincing words." An understatement. "But I've seen the pictures. I was this long, scrawny, hairless thing. The doctors already knew my eyesight was bad, and they were afraid there would be a lot of future prob­lems, so no one wanted to take me on." She touched the mark on her lower back, then lay back in the bag to pull on her pants. "An orphanage isn't the best place to grow up, I guess, but we were in a bad part of LA, and an orphanage isn't the worst place, either. I should have been grateful—"

  He straightened up and looked at her, amazed.

  "I was grateful," she said swiftly.

  "Really? Who told you that?"

  "Sister Mary Magdalene."

  "Do me a favor. Don't ever be grateful to me for anything."

  She liked the way he said it, wryly and as if things had returned to normal. Glancing around at the wil­derness, she said, "Right now, I can't think of any­thing I should be grateful to you for."

  "The coffee."

  "Self-preservation on your part." She sat on the bag and pulled on her socks and tied her shoes. "You knew I'd kill without caffeine."

  "Yeah, I'm not the only one who grows teeth and claws. We just do it for different reasons."

  He was teasing her . . . until he wanted more details.

  But now he knew the almost-biggest shocker, and she could filter the rest through a screen of droll laughter. His wolf senses couldn't smell a half-truth . . . could they?

  "Where did you go last night? You
said something about a rat?" Completely dressed, she rolled up the sleeping bag.

  He had draped a canvas over a hump in the ground, and he pulled it away in a flourish.

  He'd created a little cage of twigs, anchored it to the ground, and inside—

  She shrieked. "That's a rail" She kept the icon in her pants pocket, and she grabbed it as if protecting the Virgin—or asking the Virgin to protect her.

  The rat ran in circles, looking for a way out, dig­ging at the ground, clawing at the wooden bars.

  "You brought a rat here and it was right there the whole time we were sleeping? A nasty, horrible, bug-eyed, disgusting . . ." She couldn't speak for shuddering.

  "Don't like rats, huh?" he said with dry under­statement.

  "Rodent. Filthy, awful. . ." She remembered them at the orphanage, breaking into the pantry, scurrying around the babies, menacing in their size and their malice. "I hate them."

  "I brought it here for one reason." He reached into his pocket.

  "You're not going to kill it, are you?" She clutched the sleeping bag to her chest like a baby's blankie.

  "I thought you didn't like it."

  "I don't kill everything I don't like. If I did, you'd be in deep trouble right now." She glared as malevo­lently as the rat.

  ''Watch." He pulled out the plastic Baggie con­taining the tracking device. Taking it out, he wrapped it in a piece of cookie and offered it to the rat on the tip of his finger.

  "Be careful!" she squealed.

  The rat sniffed, then scraped the proffered meal off his finger and swallowed it whole.

  With a smile, Jasha pulled the twigs out of the ground and let the rat go. It ran in circles, then dashed into the underbrush.

  Ann found herself on top of a tall boulder, scream­ing. She didn't remember how she'd got there.

  Jasha stood below her, offering his hand to help her down. "I never imagined my calm, unflappable Miss Smith could be such a girl."