Calder stowed the box on one of the crowded workbenches, then pulled the garage door shut and looked toward Sophie’s house. Maybe they’d go out to dinner that night, he thought to himself. He didn't feel like cooking, and she seemed less freaked out by the idea of going out where other people were. He felt his guilt crash over him, the way it did every time he thought of the woman he loved bearing his curse. And while he understood her reasoning, while he understood that she was stronger and better able to handle it than he was, he still couldn’t deny that he was angry with her for taking it. Her reasoning had been based on love and logic, but all he could see when he saw that insanity in her eyes, the insanity that had been so familiar to him, was the fact that the woman he loved was hurting because of him.
And he’d had no say in the matter.
He loved her, more than he’d ever loved anyone. He would do anything for her. And she’d told him time and time again that she couldn’t stand by and watch him fall into insanity, the way his father and every first-born male in his family before him had. She couldn’t do it, because she loved him.
Yet he was supposed to be okay with watching her fall apart. The love of his life, who’d lived through hell already and now had a whole new kind of hell to deal with. He was supposed to be fine with watching her suffer under a curse that was his to bear.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. They’d been over and over it. They’d both said everything they could on the matter, more times than he could count. And it always came down to the fact that what was done couldn’t be undone, and that she was stronger and better able to deal with his curse. His bear didn’t work well with the insanity the curse brought. It was a deadly combination that would have resulted, eventually, in Calder having to be kept imprisoned the way his father had.
I can’t do that to you, Calder. I couldn’t lock you up, and you’d end up killing me or someone else. Is that what you want?
Words thrown at him when she’d reached the breaking point. Words he hadn’t been able to refute, no matter how much he’d wanted to.
Calder swallowed his anger and guilt and crossed the road to her house. As he walked up the gravel driveway, he could hear music coming from the house. The Supremes, he realized. And, the closer he got to the house, he realized he could hear Sophie singing along.
He raised his nose into the air, scenting it. Venison. She was cooking.
And it didn’t even smell burned, he realized with a smile.
He stepped up onto the small porch at the front of the cottage and walked in, the scent of venison and herbs surrounding him, overlaid with her scent, that clean, wild scent that was his woman. Her back was to him as she stirred something on the stove, and she sang, and he watched as her hips moved side to side with the music. Her long, thick curls cascaded down her back, nearly reaching her luscious ass. He practically salivated at the sight.
And this was why, no matter how pissed he was that she’d taken his curse without asking, it was all too easy for him to forget to be irritated with her. One look, and he was a goner.
She turned then and saw him, and she smiled, her dark eyes sparkling.
“Hey, sexy,” she said, coming over to him and wrapping her arms around his waist.
“I don’t think I’m the sexy one here,” he murmured as he lowered his lips to hers.
“Mm. You have no idea,” she whispered against his lips. Then she smiled up at him. “I didn’t burn anything,” she said, and he laughed.
“It smells fantastic,” he said. Together, they set the table, and she plated up a fragrant stew of venison, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and a rich sauce for him. For herself, a baked potato and a side of roasted carrots. They sat and Calder lifted his fork to his mouth. The rich, meaty flavor of the stew only made him feel hungrier, and he dug in, finishing off one plate and getting up to grab a second helping before he even realized it. Sophie laughed a little, and he threw her a grin.
He polished off his second plate, and contemplated a third. There was enough left in the pot for one more helping, he thought.
He looked across the table at Sophie, mesmerized by the sight of her lips around the tines of her fork. The stew was promptly forgotten, just as quickly as his thought of a third helping had come on. He watched as she took another bite, her lush lips closing over her fork, then sliding down the tines as she pulled the fork back out.
“What?” she asked with a bit of a laugh.
Busted.
“You have the most gorgeous mouth,” he said, aware of the low growl in his voice. She stilled at his tone, and he could smell another scent now, even stronger than the stew, than her wild scent.
The intoxicating scent of her desire.
“Calder,” she began softly. He watched her, the way her ample breasts heaved with her shallow breaths, the way her skin flushed a rosy pink under his gaze. He stood up, and without another word, he picked her up and carried her over to the daybed in the living room, dinner completely forgotten in the maddening haze of his need for her.
Hours later, once they’d exhausted one another, he lay in bed beside her and watched her sleep. Her hair was an unruly mass of curls, tumbling around her, slightly obscuring her face as she lay curled beside him. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, and he could see the red bite mark he’d left on her neck.
He flexed a bit, feeling the long scratches she’d left down his back. She’d been wild, needy, single-minded in her need for relief.
And he had been just as insane with it. It had taken him no effort this time to keep up with her, to give her everything she needed. In fact, for once, he’d outlasted her, to the point where she’d finally moaned that she couldn’t take anymore after coming down from her final orgasm.
He would have been swelling in male pride if he hadn’t had that moment, that insane, stupid moment after she’d said the words, in which he wanted to ignore them and keep going. It was only an instant, and not even enough of one that Sophie noticed. She had no idea that for just a moment, he’d been back where he was before she took his curse away from him. For an instant, he was drowning in his need and lust.
And that instant was enough to scare the hell out of him.
He’d stopped, of course, and she’d kissed him and fallen asleep beside him. And as he lay there watching her sleep, he knew he’d have to watch himself with her. Maybe he’d attributed too much of his maddening lust for her to his beast, to the curse, when it had just been him all along.
She trusted him, and she loved him. And he swore he’d never give her a reason to stop doing either of those things. He watched, wondering if she’d sleep through the night. He closed his eyes, and eventually drifted off to sleep.
He woke a while later to find her side of the bed empty, and he swore at himself. A glance toward the bathroom told him she hadn’t merely gotten up to relieve herself.
He cursed himself again as he pulled his jeans on. Every night, he told himself he’d somehow manage to keep tabs on her, and every night, he ended up sleeping the sleep of the dead, and she’d drift away.
He opened the back door and ran toward the woods. He knew, by now, that he’d find her in the same place. For the last two weeks or so, more often that not, he’d woken to find her missing. The first few times, he’d panicked, and run as his bear, picturing the worst — usually involving the warlock. So far nothing terrible had happened, but the fact that she was having these episodes where she wandered and had no idea she was doing it… the fact that she was having them at all was not a good sign. The fact that she couldn’t remember them afterward, the fact that she didn’t recognize him when she was in one of them was something he tried not to think about.
He came to the edge of the woods, just before the clearing along the edge of the river. She stood there, naked as she’d been when they’d fallen asleep. She was like a marble statue in the dark woods, still as stone. A shiver went up his spine at the blank, unfocused look in her eyes.
It was the same every tim
e. She stood there with that emptiness in her eyes.
“Sophie,” he said quietly, calmly.
She didn’t respond. It was as if he wasn’t even there, and he tried to ignore the sick feeling that rose within him, the reality that he knew this look from his father. He’d likely worn the same look himself a few times.
He stifled a growl of rage over the curse, over the fact that she was suffering from it. Instead, he took a deep breath and walked up to her. He wondered if at some point, she’d lash out either physically or with her magic, but so far, she hadn’t done that when he’d found her.
“Come on, kitten,” he said softly, hoping without hope for a flicker of recognition in her eyes.
Nothing.
He took a breath and picked her up, carrying her in his arms back toward the house. She rested there, staring at nothing with those dark, empty eyes, and he could barely breathe around his fear.
She’d wake in the morning, and not remember a thing. And he didn’t want to burden her any more than she already was. If she knew, she’d be completely freaked out.
He just had to get better at making sure she didn’t slip out of bed in the first place.
Everything would be fine.
Chapter Six
The post-tourist season meant work was generally quiet for Sophie, which made it both better and worse in terms of dealing with the curse. Better, because there were less people around to see her when she had one of her panic attacks or became overwhelmed. Fewer men around as well, which was always a good thing. Worse, because there was just less to do. During the tourist season, they’d often have no vacancies, every room full, every room needing to be cleaned on a daily basis. There would be mountains of linens to help fold, or customers to assist. Once tourist season was over, the resort was quiet as a tomb, at least until skiing season started.
Sophie only had a handful of rooms on her three floors to clean, though she did open and refresh the others as well. As she did, her mind wandered, either to the night before, and the way Calder had been with her, or, less happily, to that morning, to the strange distance in his eyes as he’d pulled away from her, preventing her from touching him, from loving him, before their day began. He’d tried to joke about how he was still tired from the night before, but she knew him. That look in his eyes was not one he usually had with her.
She pushed the thought away again. She couldn’t think about it now, and she couldn’t do anything about it now, anyway. Maybe he’d been telling the truth.
She was demanding too much of him, she thought as she walked through the lobby to check on the brochure display to see if anything needed to be replenished. She demanded too much time, too much energy, just as she feared she would, and it would eventually drive him away. And as she thought it, she felt a spark of irritation. As if he had anything to complain about, considering that he was no longer under the threat of losing his mind now that she lived with his curse.
She shook her head a little as she surveyed the brochure rack, pushing the thoughts aside again. They were running low on brochures about the lighthouse, she noted. She smiled briefly at Janice, the woman who had manned the check-in desk since Sophie had started. Just as she did every day, Janice wore her resort uniform under a gaudy orange sweater that she’d filled with all manner of novelty buttons. “I’m with stupid.” “Kiss me, I’m Irish.” “WTF?” Anyone else couldn’t have gotten away with that particular breach of protocol, but apparently it paid to be related to the owner of the resort.
“How are things, Janice?” Sophie asked politely, knowing what was coming.
“Ah, I can’t complain. My hip hurts like the dickens, and that ingrown toenail of mine is paining me something awful. It’s hell getting old, girl.”
Sophie nodded in commiseration, then turned and headed toward the supply room for the brochures. She busied herself with straightening the rack, then offered to water the plants for Janice, who accepted gratefully. The large front windows of the lobby overflowed with ferns, ivy, and pothos. Sophie tried not to spend too much time nearby as she watered them. The last thing she needed was to kill Janice’s prized gargantuan houseplants with Shadow magic.
There was only one other person in the lobby, a guest sitting in one of the chairs studying a guidebook. A cup of coffee sat on the table beside her, and Sophie wondered if she was meeting someone there. As she carried the watering can back through the lobby, the woman caught her eye.
“Excuse me — do you work here?” she asked. Sophie nodded. She looked young, maybe in her early twenties, and she had the look of someone who enjoyed the outdoors, tan, trim, and strong. She was dressed as if she was about to go on a hike or something, right down to the well-worn hiking boots.
“I do. Can I help you?”
“Yes, please! I’m looking through this,” she tilted the book she’d been reading so Sophie could see the cover. Paranormal Copper Falls, Sophie read, suppressing a smirk. Oh, it was more supernatural than that book could ever hope, she thought to herself. “And it’s talking about this ‘witch in the woods.’ Do you know anything about that?”
Sophie scrunched up her face. “That’s a child’s story, kind of a play off of Hansel and Gretel with a local twist. A witch who lives alone deep in the forest and those who go to see her never return,” Sophie said, widening her eyes for dramatic effect. She’d forgotten all about the story, though it had come up nearly every Halloween when she was in elementary school.
The woman laughed. “So you’re telling me not to get my hopes up,” she said.
Sophie grinned. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“Do you think there’s anything to any of this?” she asked, nodding toward the book in her hand. “I mean, like this witch. It says she lives deep in the forest, alone, and that those who go to her don’t return. It says that for acres around her home, the forest has died and even animals fear to tread. That can’t be real, right?”
Sophie stared at the woman as a chill went down her spine. She clamped her mouth shut for a moment, then remembered herself.
“No. That can’t be real,” she finally managed. “Though I would check out the Marsdale. I keep hearing they get reports about a ghost in their bar all the time.”
The woman's face lit up. “Thank you! I’ll definitely check it out.” Sophie plastered on a smile and gave her a nod, and then headed back to the storage closet with her watering can.
A woman, a witch, who lived in the woods, yet the woods had failed around the place she called home. Sophie went over and over it, and then pulled out her phone and Googled. She knew the general area where the house was supposed to be. There weren’t many roads leading into that part of the forest.
She only hesitated for a moment, glancing at the clock and realizing her shift was over in less than twenty minutes. She hit Calder’s number on her phone.
“Hey, kitten,” his deep voice said, and she smiled at the sound of it.
“Hey, you sexy thing. I just wanted to call to tell you I’m going to be home a little later tonight. I want to meet with Thea for a bit and see if she’s found anything else.”
“Oh, okay,” he said, and she wondered if that was relief in his voice. “Come over when you get back, okay?”
“I will. I love you.”
“Love you more,” he said, and she smiled.
He hung up, and she realized that for the first time, she didn't entirely believe him when he said the words.
Sophie left work a while later, tossing her bag onto the passenger seat of her car as she climbed in. She started her car, which ran better than it ever had, thanks to Calder, and turned toward the highway that wound its way through the forest. Happily, that meant taking Rockway, which was one of the most scenic driving routes in the entire state. Rockway Mountain looked over the city of Copper Falls, out to Lake Superior. The combination of forest, lake, and lighthouses made for an absolutely beautiful view. The sky was deep blue overhead, and autumn’s last leaves clung to the trees. For the most
part, branches were bare, and the world was caught in that breath of waiting, that phase between the pleasantly cool days of autumn and the brutal freeze that came with winter. It was as if everything, including those last remaining leaves, wanted to cling to the comfort of autumn for as long as possible.
Sophie could relate.
As she drove, she listened to the soothing piano sonatas she’d put on her mp3 player. She’d been trying all manner of things to try to deal with the curse, knowing, even before that morning, that she could not rely on Calder to help her with everything. First of all, because she’d always done for herself and wasn't about to change that now, and secondly, and perhaps most importantly, because they both deserved so much better. She would rely on herself, and keep herself together. Meditation, yoga, soothing music… she was using all of them with varying degrees of success to keep the insanity at bay, to keep the fear of what she now was from completely overwhelming her.
Shadow. She was Shadow. She was death, and blight, and violence. She was everything she’d never hoped to be. The Light, her beloved Light, was about life and love and honor. And she had lost it, and Marshall waited in the wings, biding his time until he decided to truly use her in a way she knew she would hate herself for. His kind were strengthened not only by how many Shadow witches they controlled, but also by how much violence and chaos happened around them.
His presence alone caused a bit of that. She’d noted through the grapevine that in the past few weeks, which lined up with Marshall's arrival in Copper Falls, arrests had quadrupled. Theft, vandalism, and violent crimes were all on the rise, which was shocking to the tightly-knit year-round community of Copper Falls. It was because of Marshall and his influence, and she knew he planned to use her to somehow add to his power even more.
Which was why she was driving through the national forest chasing a child’s story.
The marks of a Shadow witch were all there in the story the woman had mentioned. And if there was another Shadow witch around, one who was perhaps not under Marshall’s control, maybe she could learn from her. She had these powers, and she hated them. They felt filthy and oily and wrong. But she had them, and she knew that if she didn’t learn about them, if she didn’t figure out how to do things with them, she would truly be at Marshall’s mercy. He wouldn’t teach her anything other than the bare minimum he would need to to reach his goals and demonstrate his control over her. She had a feeling, as with so many other things in her life so far, that staying a step ahead of Marshall would mean taking control of her magic, learning what she could do with the meager amount she possessed.
Shadow Sworn (Copper Falls Book 2) Page 5
