Page 9 of From the Darkness

Quickly, he found his way down from the cliff, into the house, into the child’s room, where he stood beside her bed, gazing down at her.

She stirred in her sleep but didn’t waken. He reached out a hand, then let it fall back to his side. Better not to disturb her now. He would let her be . .

But the woman . .

He would go to the woman. Bree. Or was it Bonnie? Come back to him at last. The thought of her set off a humming in his head. An eagerness. An urgency. A need to recapture the past.

***

Bree’s eyes snapped open.

Fear leaped inside her chest as she fought to remember where she was. Then, from below her, she heard the crashing of waves against solid rock, and recent events flashed through her mind—the drive from Maryland, Ravencrest, and everyone she had encountered since arriving at this cold, massive house.

Her jaw clenched. She tried to relax and almost succeeded—until it registered that the room was dark, except for a small beam of moonlight filtering through a crack at the edge of the drapes.

But she’d deliberately left the light on in the bathroom—hadn’t she? Why wasn’t it burning now? Had the electricity gone off all over the house? Or had someone turned off the light in her private quarters?

A tremor rippled across her skin as her gaze shot to the door that led to the hallway. It was closed.

Mentally, she went over her actions before going to bed. She’d been so tired she could barely function, but she did remember locking the door.

Under the covers, her nails dug into her palms as her hands clenched. Was that what had awakened her—the small noise of the latch springing open? Or had someone come in another way?

Silently she damned herself for falling into bed without thinking things through. She should have checked the closet for hidden passages. And she should have fetched the gun from her suitcase.

It was a special model Frank Decorah had supplied her, a weapon that came apart into innocuous looking pieces. She should have put it together, but she simply hadn’t thought she’d need the gun in her locked bedroom.

Now she lay very still under the covers, her eyes slitted, trying to look like she was still asleep. Her gaze flicked to the bathroom door, to the closet, probing the shadows—fighting the feeling that the walls were pressing in around her.

She saw no one, heard no one, yet she sensed she was no longer alone in the room. The air around her seemed to have thickened so that it was difficult to draw in a full breath. And she was sure that somebody or something was watching her.

Strangely, her body felt drugged, and she was afraid that if she tried to move an arm or a leg, it would be impossible to make the muscles work. All she could do was lie there, waiting for something to happen, her breath shallow.

Earlier, on the access road leading to the mansion, mist had slithered in white tendrils over the blacktop. Now, somehow, that same mist had crept into the bedroom, spreading across the floor like a white, undulating river of vapor.

The effect was eerie and so totally out of her experience that she could only stare at the fog-like wisps while the edge of panic sank its sharp claws into her.

She knew a scream was locked in her throat. Yet at the same time, she felt a kind of humming anticipation. Something was going to happen. Was already happening.

A cloud drifted across the moon, and the almost nonexistent light around her faded to black. A small gasp escaped her lips, a mere puff of air. If she could have made her muscles work, she would have sprung off the bed and dashed toward the door.

But her limbs were heavy, heavy as sandbags. At the same time, a feverish expectation swelled inside her until she felt she would explode if something didn’t happen.

Please. The supplication was only in her mind. She didn’t have the power to speak aloud as she lay there with her heart thumping inside her chest. Slowly, inexorably she sensed someone coming toward her. It was a man. She didn’t hear his footsteps, but she caught his clean male scent—mixed with the smell of soap and spicy aftershave. The scent she had caught outside on the driveway. Only more potent.

And suddenly her anticipation was stronger than her fear.

She knew he had come to a stop beside the bed, knew he was bending over her. In the depths of the darkness, she couldn’t see him, but she knew very well he was there. She should order him out of her bedroom. Yet the words stayed locked in her throat.

The air around her stirred, and she felt his warm sweet breath against her face. For heartbeats, nothing more happened. Then she felt a gentle pressure against her lips.

It was a light kiss, butterfly light, brushing back and forth. A caress that teased and tantalized her senses even as it set off a shiver that was part sensual response and part fear.

For the moment, at least, fear won, and she found her voice. “No.”

He didn’t accept the denial. Instead, he absorbed the word of protest from her lips. Deliberately, he increased the sensuality, increased the breathless feeling in her chest as his lips moved over hers with practiced male assurance.

Her eyes drifted closed. Her heart stopped and then started again in overtime. She wanted to lift her arms. To push him away? To pull him close? She couldn’t say which, and she did neither. She only lay there with her eyes closed, drawn into the experience until she was returning the kiss—tentatively at first and then with more assurance as her need for him grew stronger.

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