The Mark of Cain (25 page)

“Really?” he asked with a tone that meant that he
was about to take full advantage of the situation.

“Yes. Really.” The way he was looking at her had her
heart beginning to race like a coalition of cheetahs chasing after one another.

One of his hands began playing with the ends of her
hair and his eyes and voice both deepened. “I think we may just have to take
advantage. What do you think?”

She put one hand around his waist and the other at
the nape of his neck, playing with his velvety stubble.

“I think I agree with you,” she said with a smile as
she lightly pulled his head toward hers.

It started out gentle; small kisses punctuated by
smiles and giggles. But, because it had been too long since they’d been alone
and they both had some pent-up passion to get out, the kisses soon deepened and
turned ravenous. At least they were both fully clothed this time. It made it so
she didn’t worry about them going too far. Besides, they would be interrupted
any moment….

Inac seemed to realize this too because he was
moving much faster than he had before. It was like he wanted to get everything
in that he could before they could get interrupted. He grabbed her hips and
re-situated her pelvis until she was basically straddling him. Then, he grabbed
her rear-end and stood, carrying her into their tent.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a breathy
whisper.

“This way we can hear them coming before they see
us,” he said as he laid her on top of their sleeping bag set on an air
mattress.

“Mmm…you’re so smart,” she said as his mouth moved
around her neck. Her eyes at half-mast, she added, “I hope they don’t come back
for a long, long time.”

“Maybe they’ll get eaten by bears,” he said, moving
his mouth to her stomach, where he made small kisses on the thin fabric of her
shirt, the warmth of his mouth seeping through.

“Mmm…be nice,” she replied, lifting his chin with
her pointer finger so she could look him in the eye.

He shot her a wicked grin. “I thought I
was
being nice.”

She giggled. “I mean about the bears.”

“Okay. Just a little lost then,” he amended before
moving his mouth back to her stomach as he pulled her shirt up slightly so that
he could leave a path of kisses on her bare flesh.

It felt
amazing
, and she never wanted him to
stop. It was when he was lightly making a zigzag motion with his tongue
descending from her bellybutton that she heard noises outside.

“Hara? Inac?” Crystal called. She had impeccable
timing. But whether good or bad, Hara wasn’t sure. A part of her wanted to
murder her for ruining where this was likely going to go, but another part was
grateful that her virginity would live to see another day.

She almost couldn’t believe that was even an issue
since they had only known each other a couple of months. It was just that Inac
did everything right. He said the right things. He did the right things. He was
just so good to her. And all of that carried into the physical aspect of their
relationship. They had such an incredible chemistry too that, added to the fact
that he seemed to know exactly what to do, she just wanted more and more.

“Where are you guys?” That was Tracker…and he
sounded worried.

“We’ll have to continue this later,” Inac whispered.
She knew it was a promise. And the part of her that wanted to sleep with him
couldn’t wait.

“I’ll go out now,” he was continuing. “You should
stay in here until you’ve calmed down.”

She nodded. He was right. He was breathing quickly
too, but not to the degree that she was. After all, he’d done this before; she
hadn’t.

As soon as he was out of the tent, she heard him
say, “Shh. Hara’s still asleep.”

“Oh, you guys were taking a nap, were you?” Crystal
asked, obviously teasing.

“Well I did drive for fifteen hours followed by
setting up camp all by myself. I figured I would try to catch a few Zzzs while
dinner cooked.”

“Did you get any?” she heard Ji ask, obviously
insinuating something close to exactly what they had really been doing. Still
obviously meaning something else, he said, “
Zzzs
, I mean?”

“Not much, what with you guys shouting all over the
place,” Inac said, a smile in his voice.

Now that she had calmed down herself, she walked
outside, giving a fake yawn and stretch to go with Inac’s story.

“Is dinner ready yet?” she asked as innocently as
possible.

When she looked over for an answer, she found Inac
sitting next to Ji on one of the logs by the fire—which was now an actual fire
with flames—her fake yawn freezing in place as confusion set in. It was odd
because Inac looked like he had Asian genes in him. Faint, but still present.
He had never looked that way to her before…and she should know; she fantasized
and dreamed about him 24/7.

She sat across the fire from the two guys, who were
busy laughing at each other’s slightly crude jokes—actually, with the way they
were laughing, she knew they were
extremely
crude and that she just
didn’t get them.

Finally, Inac asked, “What? You keep looking at me
weird.” She hadn’t realized that she’d been staring.

“Nothing…. It’s just….”

“Just what?”

“Are you part Asian?”

He laughed. “Hara, I’m part
everything
.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Really.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Well,
I
wouldn’t manage that, now would I?
I’m just a product of my genetics.”

It made her curious about his parents. If he looked
the way he did, what did
they
look like?

“At least they’re good genetics,” she said.

He laughed again, his eyes bright and carefree. “The
best!”

“Better than mine?” she asked, pretending like her
feelings had been hurt.

“Well, second best then,” he said, the fire
sparkling back at her in his eyes.

“So mine are the best?” she teased.

“Best I’ve ever seen.” He was serious, feeding her a
line that would have gotten him a kiss if they weren’t on opposite sides of an
enormous, crackling and spitting fire.

“And
yuck
!” Tracker interrupted as he sat
down next to her. “Remember the deal?”

“But we weren’t being too boyfriend/girlfriend
gross!” she said.

“You were when we’re getting ready to eat.”

“You don’t think I have the best genes?” she pouted.

Tracker turned red, making everyone else laugh.

“That’s not what I meant….”

She giggled before hugging him and kissing his
cheek. “Oh, Track, I love you so much. You’re so much fun to tease.” At that,
his flush deepened.

Because he was acting so weird, she kept staring at
Tracker for a moment, but he was avoiding her gaze. As she did, out of the
corner of her eye, she could see Inac checking on their food that he’d set in
the ashes at the edges of the fire. When she looked back over at him, he was
looking up at Track too, giving him a small, pitying smile. Looking back at
Track, she noticed him return Inac’s smile, though she couldn’t tell what it
said. The boys finally seemed to be bonding. Maybe at the end of this trip they
would be good friends. Then she could act however she wanted to with Inac and
Track wouldn’t oppose.

“I want a picture,” she declared, trying to banish
the serious thoughts from her mind.

“Ugh…” they all groaned.

“Another one?” Track complained.

“Yes. I want one of all of you,” she said, keeping
her tone clipped so that they would let her take another one. She’d been taking
pictures since the sun had come up during their drive. She’d brought plenty of
memory cards, though—she
loved
taking pictures. One of her favorite
things to do in her spare time was scrapbooking. “Please?” she said, pouting.
She knew they wouldn’t be able to resist.

And she’d been right. Soon, her boyfriend and three
friends were all huddled together, their arms around each other as she took a
picture. As she did, a wonderful feeling flowed through her. Inac was in the
middle with one hand around Crystal’s waist with Ji on the other side of her,
and another arm around Tracker. The sight brought tears to her eyes. This was
her family. And she loved them so much.

Maybe, when she married Inac one day, Track would
even be her maid of honor—or whatever—at their wedding. For some reason, she
just knew that she would be Inac’s next wife. His
last
wife. The only
wife that would matter because she would be the only one he really loved. The
one he married, not out of commandment or convenience, but because he loved
her.

And she loved him. With every day she learned
something new about him. Someday, she’d have the whole picture of who he was.
And for that, she truly couldn’t wait.

***

Inac got into the two-person sleeping bag, moving to
pull Hara into his arms. She was already asleep—everyone was—but he’d had to
calm his mind first. No matter how much he’d tried to meditate, it still wasn’t
clear; faces were swirling through the eddies in his mind, continuously
circling. But he hadn’t slept now for over a day and would just have to try.

He closed his eyes, pulling Hara’s back into his
chest as he spooned her, breathing in her hair, which was loose, falling like
starshine around her. She smelled good; a comforting smell. The scent clinging
to her was innocent: vanilla and jasmine with a hint of something intoxicating;
something that reminded him of an Indian marketplace.

Concentrating on the unknown undercurrent helped the
eddies still somewhat, though a few faces continued their heathen dance through
his mind. Finally, his mind settled on a scene, on one man, as Inac fell
asleep….

…Cain’s great, midnight black steed reared up as
lightning flashed around them, Cain’s inky hair whipping behind him like a
comet on its way to Earth to bring about the apocalypse. The wind battered the
rain against his flesh like thousands of needles pricking him, attempting to
draw as much blood from him as he’d extracted from others. Especially recently.
This particular life he was living, under the alias of Vlad III Draculea, was
full of rivers of the sweet, sticky substance.

Attempting to calm his steed, Idimmu—demon in
Sumerian—Cain glanced to the west, where fields blanketed the landscape as far
as he could see. However, instead of food, the crops consisted of men, women,
and children, their lifeless bodies held upright by the stakes stabbed through
their anuses and up through their mouths. Such was the way he punished those
not loyal to him.

It was interesting, the circumstances that had
brought him to this point. A few years ago he had settled down in Rome as a
noble by the name of Arturo working as a physician, though he rarely saw
patients—usually only when they would further his research into the body. There
he’d had a wife, Quintillia, and a son, Arturo II. Quintillia had been
beautiful, the most handsome woman in all of Rome, but she’d also been very
demanding of him.

Even now, in this colorless place, he could see her
slender form dressed in her favorite violet-blue silk body-hugging dress over a
cream silk chemise, which always came out in folds at her elbows because her
hands were eternally clasped together in front of her, the only outwardly
evidence that she was cross with him. Her hair the color of Spanish soil was
always set into thick spirals tamed by cream ribbons of silk intertwined with
the hair as it flowed down her back. Even in his memories of her, she had her
chin lifted in challenge, her voice nagging. He had bought her everything she
could desire, all with one stipulation: she would leave him to his work and not
bother him with anything trivial. She hadn’t kept her end of the bargain.

Although she’d been stern with him—her
unusual-for-the-region blue eyes hooded whenever directed toward him—she had
been extremely loving with their toddler son, lavishing so much attention on
him that he’d become a needy child; the neediest he had ever fathered. He loved
his son, but Quintillia had babied him to the point where he was completely
dependent for everything, even more so than the average four-year-old.

Cain had become so tired of his life with her that,
when he had received the angering news, a part of him had been grateful for the
good excuse to leave. That had been the silver lining in a very dark cloud; a
dark cloud that still irked him today, many years later. That was why he
remembered everything so perfectly….

…“Tommaso Parentucelli,” his man, Alberto, shouted
to “Arturo” as he walked through the enormous gold marble-laden room that
housed Arturo’s personal office. It was there, in that glory, that he made the
decisions that ruled the Mokolios. The decisions that sent men to murder or be
murdered. Ironic, seeing as how it looked fit for a god, and only gods had the
power over life and death.