Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (11 page)

Our lovemaking was slow at first, as we took time to get used to the feel of each other’s body. I lifted my hips to match each of his thrusts, taking him deeper into my womanhood each time we moved. Mark soon began to grind his hips against me faster and faster, the pace of his movements growing more frenzied until at last we both cried out our release. I could feel him spasm inside me as we lay riding the waves of pleasure until they abated. When they were done he lay atop me, trembling and breathing heavily.

I stroked his back lazily as my own breathing slowly returned to a semblance of normalcy. After several minutes, Mark
raised
up on his elbows and looked at me. “Are you alright?” he asked.

I smiled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

His expression was one of mild chagrin. “I was a little rough there towards the end.”

My smile widened, and I lifted my head to kiss him. “Do you hear me complaining?” I countered with a chuckle.

Mark’s eyebrows rose and a lazy smile spread across his lips. “Are you telling me you’re one of those women who likes a bit of… shall we say, unnecessary
roughness…in the bedroom?” he queried.

I lifted one corner of my mouth into a lopsided grin. “Mark, we’re not exactly normal remember? By nature our bodies are designed to handle a little more than the average amount of wear and tear. So baby, if you can dish it, I can take it.”

He grinned wider. “You really shouldn’t have said that,” he warned, lowering his mouth to mine once again.

After our second round of lovemaking, we lay twined together in the middle of his full-size bed, and I suddenly recalled that Herugrim was still wandering the driveway outside. Mark jumped up and pulled his jeans on, saying he would put him back out to pasture with the others. When he returned several minutes later his eyes were wide.

“What the hell happened to your back door?” he asked.

I laughed as I sat up, gathering the sheet around me. “That, uh, was me,” I said. “I heard Moe and Cissy barking so I looked out my office window, and when I saw Herugrim at the side of the driveway I panicked because I knew you’d been hurt, but I didn’t know how. So I was a little forceful in opening the door.”

I looked up at him. “How did you get hurt, by the way?”

Mark came and sat beside me on the bed. “A garter snake spooked Herugrim, and he threw me—or tried to. My foot got caught in the stirrup and I got a little trampled before I could get free of him.”

“Oh God,” I cried, throwing my arms around him and holding him tightly. “If you hadn’t been
dhunphyr
, I cringe to think what could have happened to you.”

“Sweetheart, it’s okay,” Mark whispered, rubbing my back as he held me. “As you can see, I’m fine.”

I sat back, noting that now even the bruises had faded away, and it was as if he had never been hurt. “I know,” I said. “It’s just that… Well, now that you’re finally here in my life—”

He frowned. “What does that mean?”

I cupped his cheek in my hand. “You have so much to learn about the supernatural world. And one of those things is something we vampire types call pair-bonding.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Vivian Drake—well, you, I suppose—wrote about it in
Everland
. That stuff is real, too?”

I nodded. “It was one of the things that lead some of the more enlightened vampires from a long time ago to conclude that they weren’t really dead, because how could something that was dead and soulless have a soulmate?”

“And the part where it starts with dreams?”

I nodded again, holding his gaze as I said, “I’ve been dreaming about you since I was a child. You were always as you are now, fully grown and handsome. At first you protected me in my dreams, fighting off all the monsters my imagination conjured. As I grew older and became a woman, our relationship changed.”

“Did you know what I was then?” he asked.

With a shake of my head, I replied, “No. All this time I honestly thought you’d be a regular ol’ human. I didn’t know you were a
dhunphyr
until you showed up yesterday.”

He chuckled. “So that’s why you hired me.”

I laughed, too.
“Partly.
Okay, maybe mostly. I just knew that now that I had you in
my life, I couldn’t let you go. I would have paid you any price to keep you here, even though I still don’t understand what a Marine would want with a job like this.”

Mark took my hands in his, sighing. “When I told you that piece of shrapnel should have killed me, I wasn’t kidding. I lost a
lot
of blood that day. Coming so close to death and surviving really brought home the fact that I’m not entirely human. That’s why when given the opportunity, I opted out despite the fact that I once believed I’d be a soldier my entire life. I needed to get my head on straight, figure out what it all meant. When I saw your ad in the paper, I suddenly felt that the kind of manual labor it takes to be a farmer was just what I needed to help me feel human again.”

Although there was no real reason to feel sorry for him, my emotions stirred for the turmoil he’d gone through all his life, not knowing or understanding what he was. I leaned forward and kissed him tenderly, before I leaned back and told him, “Well, it’s like you said… At least now you don’t have to live with it alone.”

Mark nodded, smiling lightly, though it fell a moment later. “What does this mean for us?”

I felt my cheeks color with the heat of sudden embarrassment. “Uh, I really hope you don’t think I’m the kind of woman who hops into bed with someone she’s just met, because I’m not. I’ve only ever had one lover, and that was more than fifty years ago.”

He cocked his head to the side in curiosity. “Can I ask what happened to him?”

“Arthur was actually more than my lover,” I began slowly. “He was my husband. I knew that he wasn’t you and never could be, but I met him during a time in my life when I just wanted someone to love me. And he did. He was a very sweet man, very kind…and also dedicated to serving his country. Arthur was in the Army; he died when the Allies stormed the beach at Normandy on D-day.”

I honestly hadn’t thought of Arthur Caldwell in many years. Memories of that sweet man were just too painful to bear, and thinking of him now had me recalling that broken feeling I’d gotten when the Army chaplain had showed up at my door to tell me he’d been killed in action. I felt tears fill my eyes and I blinked furiously to dispel them,
then
suddenly felt Mark’s warm, strong arms surround me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What have you got to be sorry for? I’m the one who should be sorry. It’s obvious those memories still hurt you,” he said.

“But I don’t want you to think that I was being unfaithful to you, or that I don’t care about you.”

Mark sat back, holding my face gently in his hands. “Saphrona, in 1944 I wasn’t a gleam in my father’s eye—in fact, my father wasn’t even born yet. You can’t be blamed for living your life, for taking a chance on love when I wasn’t even around to be here for you.”

“So you’re okay with this? All this predestined soulmate stuff?”

He echoed the lopsided grin I had given him earlier. “I admit that it’s a little on the weird side, but then my whole life has been filled with weird. I mean, there was my condition, which I had no explanation for. And our dogs—remember I told you we’d always had a dog? Well, we had two before Angel, and they both disappeared mysteriously. Just one day took off and never came back.”

I thought of the reason why but held my tongue. Though I wanted to explain that to him as well, I also recognized that it wasn’t my place. I would let Angel—or rather, Juliette—explain that bit to him.

“Besides,” Mark was saying. “I’ve been feeling something ever since I met you. I couldn’t explain it before, but the moment I saw you I knew I would take whatever amount of money you could afford to pay me, because I had to get to know who you were. I just knew that I one day I wanted to be with
you,
just like this.”

“I bet you didn’t think it would happen the very next day,” I joked.

Mark grinned. “I didn’t have a clue,” he admitted. “But now that it has, I honestly can’t imagine spending one day of my life without you.”

“You won’t have to,” I said, kissing him again.

I’d meant for the kiss to be just a light peck—after all, we had already made love twice, and the daylight wasn’t going to last forever. There was still work to be done, which now included fixing the back door of my house. Mark, apparently, had other plans in mind, and I happily went along for the ride.

When we had sated ourselves a third time, I sighed reluctantly and said, “As much as I have enjoyed this afternoon’s extracurricular activities…”

Mark smiled. “So have I,” he said as he brushed his hand lazily up and down my arm.

“…we should get moving,” I said, pushing up on my elbow to look down at him. “The back door needs to be fixed and the animals aren’t going to bring themselves in.”

He sighed in the same resigned manner that I had. “Plus, I got blood on the carpet and need to find something to clean it with.”

“Just think,” I said, patting his six-pack abs as I rose. “You’ll get to enjoy my cooking again tonight, and any other night that you feel like coming down your stairs to knock on my back door.”

Mark chuckled as he, too, rose and came around the bed to gather his clothes. “Gonna have to repair the doorframe first, babe,” he said as he dragged his briefs and then his jeans on. “Besides, I was thinking that, you know, with this soulmate stuff going on between us, I might just move into the house with you. I mean, if you want me to. I’ll stay here if you’d be more comfortable—”

With a grin I jumped to my feet and threw my arms around him, holding him tight for a moment before standing back with what I knew was an ear-to-ear grin. “I was thinking of asking you if you’d like to move into the house with me, but I was afraid it would be too soon to bring it up.”

His smile was identical to mine, though he did sober some and say, “I know a lot of people would think we’re crazy, considering we just met—my mom and sister included, if she were even in the country. But I figure why the heck not, you know? You and I already know that we’re meant to be together, so why delay the inevitable?”

“Why indeed?” I agreed, still smiling hugely and feeling like I was about to burst with happiness.

Mark and I shoved each other back and forth playfully as we dressed, and I had finally pulled my jeans up and was tucking my shirt in when I froze at the sound of feet pounding up the stairs—

—two feet, not four.

Mark went on alert, and though I was definitely older and more than likely stronger than he was, he pushed me behind him as he moved cautiously toward the bedroom door. We heard the apartment door fly open and hit the wall, and I felt my blood drain out of my face as Juliette’s voice rang out, calling her brother’s name.

“Mark! Mark, where are you?” she cried with alarm.

Though he was obviously stunned, Mark ran out into the living room. He stopped short at the sight of his sister standing stark naked in the middle of his apartment.

“Jules?
What—how?” he stammered. “And why the
hell
are you naked?!”

I stepped up beside him and laid my hand on his arm, ignoring the widening of Juliette’s eyes. “Sweetheart, remember me telling you that there was a lot about the supernatural world you needed to learn? Well, she’s one of them.”

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Mark looked between Juliette and me, clearly dumbfounded.

“Why don’t I get something for Juliette to wear, so we can all sit down and talk, hmm?” I suggested.

My new lover turned to me. “You know my sister’s name?”

I smiled, “Mark, you told me her name last night, remember?”

“Then how do you know she’s…?”

Juliette sighed. “Because of this,” she said, dropping down and shifting into animal form before us.

“Whoa!” Mark exclaimed, back-stepping away from the dog who had moments ago been his little sister.

Juliette immediately shifted back into human form and stood with her arms akimbo. “What, you’re okay with her being half a bloodsucker, but your little sister turning into a dog scares you?” she scoffed.

Mark shook his head as if to clear it,
then
squared his shoulders. “You did
not
scare me. I just wasn’t…prepared for that,” he said gruffly. I noticed he was no longer looking directly at her, but at a point somewhere over her right shoulder.

“Juliette, why don’t you go canine again until I get some clothes for you to wear,” I suggested a little more firmly. “Then we’ll all go down to the house, sit down at the table like the normal people that none of us really are, and have a nice, long chat.”

The younger woman nodded mutely, shifting once more and trotting back out the door. Mark stared after her for a long moment.

“My sister…is my dog,” he said at last.