He entered the cave with his hopes high.
As it was every night, the cave was dark enough to allow for sleep, yet the glow from the stones acted like a night-light. On the other side of the folding screen, he could hear splashing in the stream, and he caught the scent of soap, and Amber, and Charisma.
His heart lifted. He came around the corner toward the bathing pool—and there Charisma stood, in the waterfall, her eyes closed, head back, back arched, arms outstretched, wearing nothing but a smile.
His mind went blank. He froze. For a really long time, he stared, numb, mesmerized, stammering in his mind. He stared so hard and so long without blinking that his eyeballs ached.
Other parts ached, too.
Silly. This was silly. He was being ridiculous. During Charisma’s illness, he’d cared for her, sponged her down when she was burning with fever, dealt with every body function. He had seen her naked and at her worst. Of course he had. And this was exactly like that.
Except it wasn’t.
She was glorious. Breasts and hips thrust forward. Water foaming around her calves. Still too thin, but taut with muscle.
The woman he’d cared for had been on the verge of death.
This woman was embracing her return to life.
Could she return him to a real life, too?
Turning, she groped for the soap on the stone shelf.
Her buttocks. Her spine. Magnificent.
She created a lather. She washed her face, her neck. Turning again, she washed her arms, her breasts, her belly.
She had been dirty. She was washing. Nothing extraordinary about that.
But he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her hands as she . . . caressed herself. She traced the shape of her body, the length of her thighs, exploring the changes that had occurred. She turned and, in profile, put her foot on a rock and bent to wash first one foot, then the other. Her fingers, her palms never stopped moving. The white lather slid across her soft skin, over old scars and new, taking with it the sweat and anguish of her recovery and leaving her, if the expression on her face was anything to go by, delighted.
And a delighted Charisma was like a child, uninhibited and joyful. She splashed. She sang and danced. She laughed aloud for no reason.
At last she put the soap back, picked up the shampoo, and washed her hair. Then once again she leaned back into the waterfall, arched her back, and opened herself to the experience.
He had never seen anything so beautiful.
He thought he was going to expire from lust.
He should go away. Leave her to her privacy.
He should.
But it was too late.
She was climbing out, moving slowly, eyes closed and hands outstretched. She found the towel folded neatly on a rock. She dried her hair, her face, her body. . . .
Her voice made him jump. “Have you seen enough, Guardian?”
She hadn’t looked. He had not once seen the flash of her eyes.
Yet she stood smiling, eyes closed, head cocked, waiting for his reply.
How had she known?
He cleared his throat. “You’re happy.”
“I feel better. Lots better. Dr. King had me take off the blindfold. He thinks my vision will continue to improve. And I just got to take the best shower I’ve ever had in my whole life, because I’ve never been that dirty before in my whole life. Of course I’m happy. Aren’t you?”
Happy was not exactly the word for what he felt. “I’m happy for you.” He cleared his throat. “How did you know I was watching?”
“I sensed someone watching me. I sensed you. And I’ve learned to listen to my instincts. They’ve kept me alive.” She waved a hand back at the waterfall. “This reminds me of a place in Tahiti. My mother decided we should move there, and I spent a glorious year swimming, fishing, running naked.”
He would have liked to have been there.
“I used so much sunscreen. . . .”
Guardian believed that, because every inch of her was pale, covered with light freckles.
She said, “You’ve been demon hunting.”
That pulled him back from the brink of some awful revelation: a confession of desire, or maybe just a request to kiss every one of those freckles, followed by an unmanly whimper. “Yes.” He clipped the word.
“Then I imagine you’re ready for your shower. I’m out. So, your turn!” She stretched out a hand.
Amber arrived—where had she been hiding?—to take it and guide Charisma toward the cupboard and the clothes stacked there.
“Whether you like it or not, I’ve got to get dressed!” Charisma called.
He wanted to say no. Command her to remain naked. He wanted to look at her, to torment himself with what he could not have.
He looked down at himself.
He was filthy. Covered with blood. Hairy.
He was a monster.
A very tired monster. Getting down on all fours, he dashed into the bathing pool and allowed the cool water to wash away his desires, and bring some sense into the aching hollow left behind.
Chapter 16
Guardian climbed out of the pool and shook like a dog. Straightening, he reached for the towel Amber had left for him—and met Charisma’s inquisitive gaze.
“Are you supposed to have your eyes open?” He was proud; he sounded so calm, so reasonable. Not at all disconcerted to be seen naked by the woman who made his libido—and other things—stir.
“Probably not,” she said, “but Dr. King said to close them if I saw fireworks. Not from seeing you. But at the back of my eyes. So far, no problems.”
“Good news.” Guardian maintained eye contact. Better than checking her out and . . . stirring.
Strange. It had been fine when he’d been peeking at her. But to know that she’d been watching him, seeing the whole him for the first time . . . he didn’t like that.
Truthfully, he would never want this woman to look at him. Not if she viewed him as an oddity. As a curiosity. Something inhuman, without rights, that belonged in a zoo.
She stood, hands on hips, blindfold tied around her neck, dressed in black pajama pants with vivid pink and green and yellow stripes, and a perfectly normal cap-sleeved, lime green T-shirt . . . except for the nipples that poked at the material, calling for his attention. Not that her nipples weren’t normal, but he wasn’t used to seeing them outlined so clearly when . . .
Focus on her eyes.
Focus. On. Her. Eyes.
“Except for the hair and the shape of your body, you’re very human,” she said. “Are you sure you’re not a werewolf?”
“I don’t change with the moon. I don’t change at all.” He gestured at himself, realized he’d just directed her gaze downward, and hastily wrapped the towel around his waist. “This is me, all the time.”
“So you don’t like looking like this?”
“Who would?”
“Did you think I would run away screaming?”
“No. You’re kind.”
Throwing back her head, she laughed—and she most certainly was laughing at him. “Kind is not usually the word applied to me, not even by my friends. No, you’re kind. You do the right thing. I’ve met enough men who were cowards, or cheats, or liars, to be able to look beyond your appearance.” She was still smiling, and smiling invitingly, when she said, “I find you attractive.”
His face grew hot. How could he flush underneath this growth of hair? “You’re grateful to me.”
“Most definitely. But you’re not the first person to save my life. My friends do it all the time, but I’ve never wanted to see any of them naked.”
“You . . . you . . .” She actually wanted to see him naked?
But why? Why would any woman want to see him naked?
Yet if Charisma said she wanted to see him, did he dare accuse her of vulgar curiosity? Or of mocking him? “You did see me naked, or at least stripped down to my fur.”
“I suppose you could get lasered.”
“What?”
“You know, go into the city, go to one of those laser hair-removal places, get the full treatment.” She was laughing again, teasing him.
But less than forty-eight hours ago he had tried to go into the city, as she so casually put it, and he had been forced to run for his life. The lights, the horrified voice saying, Holy shit, what is that? And that other voice, the one that spoke in his nightmares, saying, Aim carefully. I want him alive!
If he ever was in doubt that he was a thing, a disgusting, mutilated creature of the night, those voices had thoroughly reminded him of the truth. He was a monster to be taunted and caged.
“Guardian?”
Charisma’s voice woke him from his bitter reflections.
She took a step toward him, extended her hand. “I wasn’t serious about the laser hair removal. I was trying to defuse the tension. If I offended you, I’m sorry. Really.”
“No. It’s fine.” Amber had left a clean black tunic for him with a wide embroidered band at the neck and long, full sleeves. He pulled it over his head—at least it covered up some of his fur—and came out to see Charisma observing him.
“That is so romantic,” she said. “You dress like a sheik.”
He stumbled into an explanation. “Pants don’t work for me. I don’t have a tail, thank God, but I have narrow wolf-hips, too. Dr. King lets us use his credit card, and Amber orders these djellabas for me online.”
“You may see me as tough and mean and completely unfeminine, but trust me on this: Looking like a sheik is romantic.” Her smile faded, and she looked wistful. “I’m a woman, and I know romantic when I see it.”
“I do not think of you as unfeminine.” He couldn’t believe she even suggested such a thing. “Quite the opposite.”
“I don’t think of you as a freak, either, but you don’t believe me.”
That’s different. But he wasn’t dumb enough to say that. She’d tie him in knots trying to explain how it was different.
“I used to be a girly-girl. I wore tight skirts”—with her hand, she measured a hem halfway up her thighs—“tight sweaters, and this diamond-studded leather collar. I wore all this great makeup, really dramatic stuff. And my shoes. I had the best shoes.”
In his mind’s eye, he could clearly see her as she had been, wicked, smart, and sarcastic.
“Actually, I still have the shoes, but I can’t chase demons in four-inch heels.” She sighed deeply. “I miss those early days, when I was young and innocent and didn’t realize how bad it was going to get.”
He didn’t tell her how much worse it had become in the two weeks she’d been out of action. Although she looked as if she were just about to ask. . . . Hastily, he asked, “Why did your mother take you to Tahiti?”
“Oh.” Charisma’s shoe glow faded. “My mother.”
He had diverted her, but not happily.
She looked around, saw the motley assortment of chairs and stools Amber had grouped together around a glass-topped coffee table, and wandered over to sit down. Picking up a few of the magazines, she flipped through them and tossed them aside. “These are so old, you could set yourself up as a doctor’s office.”
He followed. And stood. And waited.
Charisma fidgeted, and finally said, “All right! If you’re going to interrogate me . . . my mother calls herself a free spirit.”
He folded his arms. “What does that mean?”
“It means her whims drive her. She does whatever she wants without regard to how it affects anyone else.”
“Specifically you?”
“Oh, yeah.” She stretched out her legs, propped her feet up on the table. “You’d think I’d be over that by now, wouldn’t you?”
“She’s your mother.” He wanted to sit in the chair next to her, to take her hand and pat it, and tell her everything would be all right.
“That’s the problem. I’m still attached to her. You know?”
But patting Charisma’s hand wasn’t all he wanted to do. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her lips, her neck, to lift her shirt and lower her pants. He wanted to do the friendly stuff, and the more-than-friendly stuff, and a whole lot of things he had no business imagining.
“When Mom was seventeen, she got married to a very nice man. A rancher. In Idaho.” Charisma tweaked the hem on her pajama pants. “She got bored. She ran away and joined a commune somewhere.”
He pulled up a stool, not too close, and straddled it. “Communes were still around?”
“Might have been a cult.” Charisma’s grimace grew more pronounced. “Mom was never very clear about what or where, and she can’t tell the same story the same way twice.”
In lieu of tasting Charisma’s nipples, he should express some comforting sentiment. So he said, “You certainly always tell the truth!”
Somehow, that didn’t come out as the compliment he had intended.
But Charisma didn’t seem offended. “Truthful to a fault, I’ve been told. Which possibly isn’t always the most diplomatic way to be. My friends usually forgive me. In time.” She looked wistful, as if she missed her friends. “Anyway, when I was an infant, my parents abandoned me in this commune, so Mom picked me up like a stray dog and brought me home to her husband. I thought he was my daddy until the day she decided she was bored—”
“Again?”
”Nothing held Mom’s attention for long. Anyway, she decided we should move on. I cried about leaving him. She told me he wasn’t my real daddy and she wasn’t my real mommy, but she’d saved me, so I had to go with her.”
“How old were you?”
“Six.”
“Six?” Guardian was appalled. “She blurted out that you were adopted when you were six?”
“With my mom, it was best to get used to the occasional surprise or two. But I admit, that was the first, and the most”—Charisma groped for the word—“shocking.”
“I can imagine.”
“Hey.” Charisma leaned forward and touched his hand. “No need to feel sorry for me. The fire that melts the candle also tempers the steel. I am tempered steel.”
“Yes. You really are.” He freely offered his admiration. “You’re the first person Dr. King and I know of who survived the demon venom. How are your eyes?”
Charisma looked startled. Lightly she touched her lids. “I guess they’re fine. I haven’t even thought about them.”
“Good. But a little while longer and we should cover them.”
“Yes, I suppose.” She untied her blindfold from around her neck and looked at it with disfavor.
“And you should rest.”
“Yes.”
“After you tell me the rest of the story about your mom.”
Chapter 17
As Charisma twisted the blindfold, she intently watched the motion of her hands. “Listening to my story is sort of like watching a train wreck, isn’t it? You can’t tear yourself away.”
“It’s more like standing on the tracks, waiting for the train to hit. I know it’s going to get worse, but I can’t imagine how.”
Charisma acknowledged his quip with a brief smile. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. Mom wasn’t the wicked stepmother. She wasn’t really a mother at all—I remember feeling responsible for her from the time she left Daddy.”
Charisma had never had a real childhood, and somehow Guardian found that to be a tragedy equal to any fairy tale.
“Mom and I lived all up and down the West Coast. She made beads or flutes or clothes and sold them at the weekend markets. One awful year she decided I had a talent for singing and dancing, so we followed the kiddie pageants. She really got into that for a while, but she got bored. Like always. Thank God”—Charisma rolled her eyes—“that pageant thing was excruciating.”
He pictured the ultimate stage mother shoving a young Charisma into the limelight. “Were you afraid to get up onstage?”
“No, I’m not shy.” She airily waved away his concern. “But talk about cutthroat! Those m
oms and those kids would kill for the Miss Congeniality title, much less to be Little Miss No-name City.”
He couldn’t help it. Although he wasn’t amused, he laughed. “What next?”
“We lived in ghettos, in condemned housing, in caves when necessary. Not nice caves like this, either.” Charisma kicked at the hard-packed dirt floor. “We’re talking bear droppings on the floor.”
Fascinated, he scooted his stool closer. “That could have ended badly.”
“Yeah. Even in those days, it occurred to me I could be bear droppings.” Charisma spoke matter-of-factly, without self-pity. Her childhood had been difficult. She accepted that. “When I was ten, I lucked out. Mom took a job on a cruise ship, and smuggled me on board. When we got to Tahiti, we abandoned the cruise and stayed.”
He didn’t remember a single thing about his childhood, and Charisma had all this angst. . . . He was in awe.
“Tahiti was the best thing that ever happened to me. Mom worked at a resort. In between swimming and climbing trees and exploring the island, I went to school and found out it wasn’t stultifying and didn’t stunt my imagination, like she told me it would. It was wonderful. I loved school—loved reading, math, history.” She tied the blindfold around her neck like a bandanna. “Then I went through puberty and I discovered I could hear the earth sing.”
Um . . . huh? “The earth sing? Like . . . singing rocks?” Was she pulling his leg?
“Yep.” A glance proved she was quite serious.
He tried to figure out what exactly he should say to this woman who seemed so normal, yet claimed to hear voices from the earth. He finally settled on, “Singing stones. That’s interesting.”
“What? Why that tone of voice?”
“I’ve just never heard of anyone who has heard the earth sing.” He thought he did a wonderful job making his voice neutral.
Not good enough, apparently, because her voice rose. “So you don’t believe me?”
“You have to admit, it’s different.”
“So is being a hairy half man, half beast, but I haven’t accused you of being a Hollywood makeup artist.” She grabbed a tuft of hair on his chin and yanked hard enough to bring tears to his eyes.
Wilder The Chosen Ones Page 10
