Darkness Bound (22 page)

A snort escaped Leigh. “Should I say I’m grateful for small mercies?”

“Depends on how dangerously you want to live.” He was grateful for any sign of her spirit returning.

The humor slid away from her features. “How did I get here? And don’t keep making excuses not to tell me.”

He had known this was coming. “I opened the door and there you were. But you were icy cold and passed out.” Not such a stretch. “I put you under the quilt to warm you up. That cat was with you. So was Jazzy.” That much was true.

“That’s what happened?” She said it as if trying to remember. “How did I get down here? Where’s my car?”

“Your car’s up at Two Chimneys. You must have gotten a rock through the windshield. Sean’s fixing that. But apart from that the car seems fine.”

She frowned again. “You left to go check my car? To find it? Why would you think of that?”

He would have to be more careful.

“Sean saw it and called me. You’ve only got a few superficial scratches on your face. They’re clean.”

She twisted around to see the whole room. “I don’t remember coming here,” she said. “I know I was going to the bookshop, but… ”

He hoped she didn’t totally freak out. “Car accidents can really shock you. You’ve probably blocked it out.”

Leigh didn’t look convinced.

“I didn’t handle it well with you this morning,” he said. He wanted to rush her past any recollection of being in that house and what she saw there. “I thought I’d probably scared you off completely. Thanks for coming anyway and giving me another chance.”

Her expression softened. “What you said didn’t make much sense. Or maybe I’m scared of my own feelings. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Gabriel didn’t get his money’s worth out of me today.”

Niles didn’t care about Gabriel at this moment. He turned sideways and hooked up a knee, leaning so he could see her clearly.

“I’m sure I got everything you said wrong,” she told him.

He regarded her for an instant. “Do you hope you did?”

“That’s not fair. More questions instead of dealing with the ones we already know about.”

If she remembered what had happened to her she wouldn’t be even this calm. “Maybe I’m not sure what to say, Leigh. Talking about feelings isn’t what I do—not usually.”

“Is that because you’re out of practice or just too macho for sloppy stuff?”

“It’s not sloppy to want someone.” He felt as if he had begun to slide and a ravine opened before him. “I told you I won’t push it if you aren’t interested, but I am in love with you.”

She put her glass aside and took his, too. Then she caught hold of the forearm he’d replaced across his middle and pulled his hand free. She held it on the bed between them.

“Niles, how can you be in love with me? You haven’t known me long enough. We’ve never… ”

“Made love?” He smoothed her cheek, took one of her hands to his mouth and kissed the palm.

“That’s what I was going to say.”

“There’s something I believe in,” he told her. “If we’ve come together like this, from a long way, then it was meant to be. We didn’t know it but we were moving toward each other and now that we’re here, it’s time.”

Leigh played with a piece of her hair. “Time?” she said and sounded shaky.

“Time for us to begin.
Us.”

Tentatively, she rubbed his knuckles and stroked the tendons in the back of his hand with a forefinger.

He leaned slowly closer, expecting her to push him away. She didn’t. Niles opened her mouth under his and sucked her bottom lip gently between his teeth. And she softened against him.

The kiss went on and on, seeking and finding deeper places, neither of them trying to end it until Leigh pulled back a little before resting her brow on his. She closed her eyes and so did he.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she whispered.

“I want what you want.” He passed the tip of his tongue along her lip. “But it has to be… ”

“What I want?”

He actually shook from holding himself back. Muscles all over his body ached and his thighs contracted until they felt like rocks.

But through it all there was a longing for something else, something he couldn’t identify.

Leigh buried her face in his shoulder. He felt her breath
sighing over his skin. This was what he had hoped and longed for, wasn’t it? She was drawn to him and he could have her.

No. Not just yet.

The females of his kind had started dying when they gave birth. Then they all died—none of them survived. Niles knew he must not forget the truth about his own kind. And that he must share the truth with Leigh.

He stroked Leigh’s hair. He massaged her shoulders and wrapped his arms around her as if he could somehow shelter her from all harm. But no one had been able to save those others. He and the team hoped it would be different with Leigh, but they didn’t know for sure, he didn’t know.

A shudder shook him and he gritted his teeth. Convulsively, he held her even tighter, his face in her neck, kissing her there.

She made a sound and he winced. Carefully, he loosened his grip without letting her go. Her breasts were soft against him but her small body was firm. Firm but so slight. She would not withstand a violent turmoil waged from within her, one that could consume her life.

The risk was too great.

Still holding her, Niles said, “I should get you home. This isn’t the right time to discuss any of this.” There would never be a right time, and he felt torn apart by the sense of loss.

“I’m not going anywhere without you.” She said it, and as if to force him to believe her she dug her fingertips into his naked back. “I don’t know why but I have to be with you, Niles. It’s meant to be. There is so much I don’t understand but I think I will if I trust.”

He didn’t dare move and all but held his breath.

“Have you seen it, the film of colors that comes and spreads around us?”

And so it began, what he had expected, the revelation of what was not purely human about this woman—apart from her rare blood type. “I’m not sure,” he improvised. “Describe it to me.”

“Colors, soft, then more intense. Then a shimmering that comes through them like fingers wrapping us inside. The first time it came was after I met you. You were with me at Two Chimneys.”

“Do you see it now?”

She raised her head. Niles looked at her face and in her eyes he saw a reflection of a bright sheen. “I see it,” she said, so quietly he held her mouth against his ear. “It makes me strong. It lets me know I can believe in you. We will be together.”

“Where does the film of colors come from?” he asked, grasping for anything that would give him time to plan what to do next.

She got up and led him by the hand to the window. “Out there, I think,” she told him, leaning against his side. “I’ve thought about it and I think it comes from the water. I thought I saw it when the light was failing one night but then I wasn’t sure. And early this morning, when I was leaving for Gabriel’s, I saw it whirling up from the Passage.”

“Have you seen it anywhere else?”

“Never. And I didn’t see it until I came back here to Whidbey.”

He almost wished he hadn’t encouraged her to talk about this. “It could be a trick of the light.”

“When you were at the cottage with me it came through cracks around the door and surrounded us. I didn’t tell you then. You think I’m strange, don’t you?”

It might be nice to have that luxury. “No, I don’t.” He had learned not to discard anything as impossible. “You’re shivering. Are you still cold?”

“A little.”

At least she didn’t feel icy anymore.

If he took her, sealed her to him as his life mate, there would always be that difference between them that he could never forget, not for a moment. The team would accept her, respect her, but if she tried to run with them, she would not withstand what they found ordinary in their lives. She could not live wild in the forests when they felt the need to hide. Her humanness would not withstand being moved at the speed they sometimes needed. Today had been too much for her.

He came close to laughing at himself. Did he really think she would stay with him?

“You could wear some of my clothes,” he said. This was such unfamiliar territory. “They’ll warm you. Unless you’d rather get some of your own.”

“I won’t leave.” She stood away from him with her feet braced apart and her hands on her hips. “I’m stronger when I’m with you, and you can laugh, but you’re stronger with me.”

He didn’t laugh, but he did have to control his amazement at her words.

“Stay then,” he said. The night could be filled with revelation and even with rejection if she couldn’t adjust to him. That was if he could find a way to explain himself.

He took a wool shirt from the closet, a T-shirt, and
then a pair of heavy sweatpants. “You’ll have to hold them together but you’ll be fine once you sleep.”

She started to pull her thin silk turtleneck over her head and he turned his back.

In minutes she said, “I’m decent now,” but when he looked at her, his shirt flapped around her thighs and she held the pants up in front of her with a bemused look on her face.

Her legs were beautiful. Longer than he would have expected, smooth and shapely with narrow ankles. And her feet… he didn’t remember ever looking at feet and finding them beautiful but he did now.

“Hmm,” she murmured. Then she sat on the floor, pulled the pants over her feet and legs, managed to stand up, and pulled the stretchy waistband all the way beneath her arms. “This must look really lovely, but thank you, I’m starting to warm up again.”

Carefully, he picked her up and put her on the bed. Skillywidden leaped, depositing her minuscule weight on Leigh’s shoulder, and gave Niles the cross-eyed glare.

He produced socks and pulled them onto Leigh’s feet. They reached above her knees and the heels stuck out at the backs of her calves.

She giggled. “Now maybe you should treat yourself to a shirt before you freeze, too.”

“I am never cold,” he said.

“Hot-blooded American male,” Leigh said with a smile. “Lucky you.”

“You should probably get some more sleep.”

“We’re going to go through what you said to me this morning.” She got beneath the quilt and looked at him questioningly. “There’s plenty of room for both of us.”

“You’ll sleep better without a stranger taking up most of the bed,” he told her without conviction.

“We’re not strangers. Have we kissed and held each other—and wanted more? Or did I dream it? Did we hold each other? Did I tell you I won’t go anywhere without you? Did you tell me you loved me?”

Niles gently straightened the quilt over the bed and lay on top. Even through the down he could feel her beside him.

She was quiet and he turned his face toward hers.

“You talked to me about love feeling like being attached at the head and the heart,” she said after what felt like a very long silence.

“That’s how it feels. It’s the way I feel about you. I never expected it. Hoped, maybe, but never expected.”

“That’s a lovely thing to say.”

He took in a long breath and said, “It could be if you don’t hate the person who says it.”

Leigh scooted a little closer. All of the soft armor wasn’t stopping his body from reacting to her. “What was the other stuff you said about loving someone—what it’s like?” she asked.

He thought back and closed his eyes. “It sounds weird the second time around. I told you it’s a feeling. Wanting to have one person belong to you. I believe that only happens once in a lifetime. You never want anyone the same way.”

“But I have loved before,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “I loved once, too, but we both lost those loves, so we’re alone.” She would have to know exactly how it had happened to him but he couldn’t tell her yet. “Leigh, I told you I need to take care of you and protect
you. It’s true. But if you want me to stop talking about this, just say so.”

“I don’t want you to stop. Would there be someone else for you then—if you didn’t have me?”

“That sounds as if you’re looking for a way out,” he said.

“No, I just want to understand. I am constant. I had no lovers before Chris or since. I thought I never would again.”

“You have marked me, Leigh. For me, we are all but joined as if we were one.”

“But—”

“This is a joining that happens before the bodies come together. It’s my way of life. I want you to accept my life and my body as your own and we would be forever joined here”—he took a fist to his brow—“and here.” He spread his hand over his heart.

Leigh rolled against him. She pulled a hand free and flattened her hand on his belly. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t really know what it all means.”

“Listen carefully.” Her touch was almost more than he could bear. “You have marked me. That means if you agree, you are joined with me and we are forever sealed as one. My mind and my heart move with yours. I hear the beat of your heart—it moves through me.”