Scent of Darkness (18 page)

"That's . . . sort of over-the-top." But she wasn't surprised. When she'd spoken to Konstantine on the phone, he'd had a deep baritone and a way of making every phrase seem sensational and dramatic.

"That's the trouble. It's not. He told us over and over the Varinskis would come, and we had to be prepared." Jasha's voice got gravelly. "He would say I wasn't prepared enough. He would say that the long peace had made me complacent, and that I got what I deserved. And I guess he was right."

Shyly, Ann put her arm around Jasha's waist and hugged. She knew he was thinking about his father in the hospital.

"But I'll never forgive myself for the hurt my negligence caused my family. And you." He hugged her back. "And you."

"You didn't—"

"Don't lie to soothe my feelings. You came dressed to seduce me, and you got . . . this." She felt him gesture at their surroundings.

"The stars are very romantic," she said.

As if she'd caught him by surprise, he choked, then chuckled. "Papa's the reason I have clothes stashed in the forest. Everywhere I'm going to take you, there's provisions and blankets. You'll be warm. You'll be dry. You won't go hungry."

She was surprised he even brought it up. "I know you'll provide for me." That he wouldn't had never occurred to her.

He stopped. He kissed her. "There isn't another woman I'd want with me on this journey. And— here's the highway."

They stepped out onto Highway 101.

"We'll go south for a few minutes, then turn inland," he said.

"South? That's great." South to her meant towns and freeways and civilization and, eventually, California.

"For now"—he walked back into the woods and came out pushing a small motorbike—"let's give the Varinski a workout."

Chapter 17

Six hours later, when the motorbike ran out of gas and the feeble headlight died, Ann didn't know where they were. She knew only that she was sick of hanging on to Jasha's waist, her butt vibrating as the roads turned to trails and the trails turned to tracks, all leading upward.

"That should do it." Jasha sounded satisfied as he helped her off and dropped the kickstand.

She rubbed her rear and stomped her feet, trying to get some feeling back into her legs, and looked around. It was still night, the longest night in the history of the world, and this place looked like all the other places they'd been: wild, forest covered, and dark. Really, really dark. As in never-seen-an-electric-light dark. Her eyes hurt from staring, and she didn't know whether they were open or shut.

"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."