Page 126 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“You already are. You always have been.”

58

SCARLETT

“Not here,” Rune said after we grew lost in each other again. He pulled away from my lips. “Do I have your consent to render you unconscious?”

I stared up at him drunkenly, flooded with anticipation and the dark, decadent sweetness of my ultimate surrender.

“Wait, what?”

“It’ll be easier that way,” he said, stroking my cheek as his lips curved up slightly. “To smuggle you back to the castle the secret route. I don’t want to reveal who you are to me in the heat of the moment. This is too monumental of a move to make flippantly.”

Leaving me in a stunned, flushed, breathless stupor, he moved to a nearby dresser and pulled both bandages and a mysterious blue vial from a bottom drawer.

“Your consent, Scarlett,” Rune said as he bandaged my calf. His eyes burned with intensity, but his touch remained soft. “You have no idea how badly I want to lick this wound closed.” He slowly rose.

I eyed the tiny potion. “As if you haven’t had me helpless, vulnerable, and asleep at your disposal before.”

“Baby, stop the dirty talk,” Rune groaned. “I couldn’t possibly want you any more than I already do.”

I rolled my eyes and snatched the vial, uncorking the top and taking a swig. The magick worked near instantly. I gazed up at Rune as he held me in his arms. My eyes growing heavy, I finally pondered his mention of a secret route.

What secret route? And was he really knocking me out to make whisking me away easier, or did he not trust me enough with this classified information?

I fell into his chest, and his soft trail of fingers through my hair was the last thing I felt before my world went dark.

Fragments of memories marred my strange dream state. In almost all of them, I was reaching for my parents and Isabella, begging them with both words and desperate actions to hold me, to love me, to see me.

I still reached for Isabella. I wanted her to love me again. It was my deepest, unspoken hope that saving her life would be the act that would finally redeem me—that rescuing her would finally return our relationship to what it had been during that brief span of time after Dad died.

My unmet hope was a wound that stretched on and on, that had me ricocheting uncontrollably between independence and avoidance to yearning and attention-seeking. Over and over, I was taught that in order to protect myself from disappointment, I had to lose all expectation from anyone but me.

Growing up, I found acceptance in the interconnected tree roots on the forest floor, running and jumping and climbing over top of them as if they were a maternal source of stability. I was held by the earth beneath my feet, the dirt between my toes. I found love in the stars, in the way my voice soared in reach of them. I felt seen by the gods, by grand myths and stories, by my imaginary future friends and family of my own creation.

Jaxon taught me the healing power of friend-love, even if I hadn’t been ready to receive it wholly and completely yet. He’d had his own problems, his own way of hurting me in smaller, less grand ways. But he was doing his best, just as I had been. In this haze of dreams, I saw his smile, felt his strong arms around me, heard his witty comebacks when he was defending me against village bullies.

Then, strangely, I saw Beatrice, the older witch who served as the village’s reseller. I remembered her perplexing words when she was wishing Jaxon and me well on our travels.

“It’s good you’re leaving, Scarlett. Leave this place behind and don’t look back,” she said. “Your sister is not who you think—” She shook her head. “No, that’s not quite right. It is you who isn’t—but you don’t know that, do you?”

Then my mind flitted through my time with Rune. All those notes that made me feel like I was talking to a different version of myself—a split of my soul that had separated and branched off, always destined to come back together again.

I saw his beautiful features, his wicked smirk, felt that searing heat on my neck that alerted me that in the darkest of shadows, someone lurked. Someone watched, followed, and protected me. Someone wanted to give me all of himself, demanding the same from me in return.

I settled into the darkness, making it my new home.

When I came to, I couldn’t make sense of where I was, only the flood of panic ripping through my body. I couldn’t see through a veil of darkness, and I chewed on a mouthful of fabric. I was seated, my neck aching from my head dipping forward awkwardly. I went to rub it, but my arms strained against bindings, glued to armrests.

A strangled noise escaped from the back of my throat, muffled against the gag. I jerked against the rope. The sound of a crackling fire was the only sensation I could ascertain from my external environment other than the carpet beneath my bare feet. My ankles were bound to the legs of the chair. My thighs were spread.

When air feathered across my chest, I realized that I’d been stripped to my underwear.

My first thought was that the vampires who took Isabella had finally found me, tracked me by the scent they picked up on my bedsheets. The scent that vampires found inexplicably alluring and intoxicating.

Tastes like pure sex, my born attacker had said.

I went wild, screaming into the gag and pulling against my bindings. The chair moved back and forth as I shifted my weight. The bindings had a slight give, not excruciatingly tight. Maybe if I were to just?—

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