***
The trail seemed brighter. Maybe the moonlight was clearer now, or maybe she could see better without the parade of flashlights clouding her night-vision. Maybe she felt more sure-footed with her hand wrapped in Damon’s.
Everything else was a fog. Sophie tried to recount what had happened in the last few hours to bring her to this point—to leading a virtual stranger deeper into the forest with every step—but she couldn’t focus her thoughts. Somehow, the man she dragged behind her had always been there, waiting for this moment of rebellion. She’d never met him before, and she’d known him forever. She was liquid simmered too slowly for too long. Unstable. Heated by years of careful confinement and set ablaze by this bizarre combination of chance and fate. His was not the only mask tossed aside in the grass tonight.
It was purely too simple to make sense.
“Where are we going?”
His voice broke the near-silent rhythm of their footsteps, and Sophie boiled over. She turned to face him, still half-expecting to find the trail empty behind her. Still half-expecting to find her arms wrap themselves around cold air. Instead, they found the heat of firm shoulders, and her fingers a shaggy tangle of dark hair. An inch from her lips, Damon exhaled an uncertain breath. She crushed it.
He kissed like he danced. Slowly and beautifully, but belied by the tiniest trace of doubt. How someone so obviously practiced in any art could seem so tentative tore at her remaining sense of self-consciousness.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“Where are we going?” he repeated, and this time she heard him.
Sophie felt the desperate dig of his fingertips through the smooth fabric of her dress, and she schooled her mouth into a neutral expression before it gave her away. It didn’t seem fair to feel so empowered and vulnerable in the same moment, but she took comfort in knowing that he was as engulfed in this as she was.
“I don’t know…. I-I can’t take you home with me.” That should have been obvious long before she began leading him down the trail. She couldn’t exactly kick Hollis out of their bedroom, even if she did manage to sneak him past the other dozen people who lived in the house with them. Shit! This is ridiculous—I’m an adult, after all!
Damon kissed her again, the scent of his breath heavy in her face, an essence of earth and heavy fermenting fruit. The sliver of doubt she’d sensed was masked in urgency as his hands slipped down her back. “You’re place?” she asked, hoping that she didn’t sound as tactless to him as she did to herself.
He froze, his hand stopped short against her thigh, and looked her in the eyes. “That’s not an option, Sophie.”
“Why not?” She twined her arms around his neck and pressed herself closer to him.
“It just isn’t. I can’t explain.”
Sophie was too far past her boiling point to take no for an answer. She moved her face next to his and pressed her mouth into the hollow below his cheekbone—the niche she’d discovered when they were dancing. “Why not?” she asked again, quietly but so close to his ear that he was sure to hear her. The short stubble along his jaw scratched the inside of her lip as she spoke.
“No.” Damon pushed Sophie back to an arm’s length in a swift, fluid glance that made her gasp in surprise. “What are you?” he asked slowly.
He’d asked the same thing back at the Festival, and Sophie swore she saw red sparks glimmer like embers from his eyes as he asked it again. Now I am imagining things. In answer, she took one of the hands that held her at bay and wrapped it around her waist. With her other hand, she took his face and ran her thumb over the narrow scar across his cheek. “Just kiss me again, Damon. Please.”
As the last shred of his resistance fell to the dead leaves at their feet, a desperate and animalistic growl issued from Damon’s throat. But before she could revel in his surrender, Sophie was consumed in fire. When she finally caught her breath, she found her back pressed roughly against the bark of a tree, the hem of her dress hiked up to her knees. “Damon….”
He stepped back from her, shuddered, and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her off of the trail and into the dense trees that grew north of where the farm lay ahead—the direction from which he’d emerged onto the path earlier in the evening. Sophie had to jog to keep pace with him, and she couldn’t help but laugh out loud at their sudden flight into the forest. Damon shot a fleeting glance over his shoulder that silenced her.
“I need for you to listen to me. Carefully.”
“Uh—okay,” she answered, her feet tripping over the uneven ground.
“Carefully, Sophie. I mean that.” He reeled her closer and slowed his pace just enough to allow her to walk side-by-side with him. “I’m taking you to my home. It isn’t far from here.”
“Okay,” she said again and threaded her fingers through his.
“We have to leave before midnight—well before midnight. Do you understand?”
Sophie giggled. “What? Do you have a curfew or something like that?”
“Yeah. Something like that.” His response was too curt for her liking, but his eyes held the same longing. “Do you understand?”
She tried to force her voice into solemnity as she replied, but it was no easy task with her heart racing from the combination of her excitement and the mad dash through the trees—now compounded by a growing list of questions about her stranger. Midnight, she considered silently. Okay, that’s still a few hours away.
“I understand,” she started, but her feigned gravity shattered as soon as she opened her mouth. “Lead on, Cinderella.”
Damon squeezed her hand, and she was sure for the merest second that she could see red sparks of conspiratorial glee in his eyes again. This little adventure had gone from simply weird to downright bizarre, but she felt too alight with curiosity and passion to consider turning back now. Why on earth would he have a curfew? Maybe he’s younger than he looks?
She eyed him again as he led her onward at the same swift pace, past the parts of the woods she had explored with the commune kids. No way, she decided. If anything, he’s older than I thought at first. She shot down the idea of just asking him as inappropriate, then laughed out loud again at the realization that nothing was less appropriate than running off into the woods with a man she’d met just hours earlier.
“Shhh.” Damon stopped suddenly behind a wide tree and turned to face her. He placed a finger over her lips. “We’re here now. Stay quiet, and stay close.”
Sophie brushed his finger aside as she stood on tiptoes to reach his face. He grinned and met her kiss halfway. “I mean it,” he said.
“I know you do. You’ve made that abundantly clear. Quiet and close.”
He nodded and took her hand again. Sophie peered around the trunk of their hiding place and gasped loud enough that Damon wheeled around to admonish her.
Sorry, she mouthed, but she couldn’t drop her gaze from the strange and intimidating house standing before her in the darkness. Its outline was difficult to make out clearly, but she could tell from the numerous lit windows that it stood four stories tall, and the wall they walked along now was constructed of enormous rounded stones. If there was a road or driveway leading to this place, it must have been somewhere on the other side. Sophie was by no means a stranger to stealing into the houses of her friends at the farm—particularly Adam and Sparrow’s—or even of sneaking them up the back stairs of her own house, but this was different.
Damon led her to a heavy wooden door with no stoop or adornments—a back door, she assumed—and rummaged a ring of keys from his pocket. He opened it slowly and peeked inside for several seconds before waving her toward him. Inside, the house was a museum of immense, antique-looking furnishings strangely juxtaposed with modern appliances, but room after room disappeared in a hurried blur as Damon led her toward what she assumed to be the center of the house, up a stone stairway carpeted with fading red runners, and down a long hallway that ended in a single black door.
“My room
,” he whispered so quietly that she had to read his lips; her own heartbeat did more to disturb the silence. He pulled out the key ring again, swept her inside, and closed the door behind them. “The others won’t disturb us here,” he said in a tone still somewhat lower than his normal speaking voice.
“The others?” Sophie asked, but her question was swallowed whole as he enveloped her.
***
Flicker Blue 1: Plain Jane Page 19
