Page 40 of Marked

“Just the scenery?” Caleb asked, turning to face me. In the gentle light, his eyes seemed to glow, and my heart did a complicated flutter in my chest.

“Maybe the company too,” I said softly and watched his smile grow.

We wandered the square, our pace unhurried. Every few steps, Caleb would point out something—the old clock tower that never quite showed the right time, the bookshop that had been running for three generations, the ice cream parlor that made everything in-house. His hand never left the small of my back, and I tried to pretend I wasn’t hyperaware of every point of contact.

“And that’s where I had my first job,” he said, nodding toward a coffee shop with exposed brick walls and oversized windows. “I was terrible at it. Broke three espresso machines in my first week.”

“You? Terrible at something? I’m shocked.”

“I contain multitudes of failure,” he said solemnly, but his eyes danced with humor. “Just don’t tell Marcus. He still brings up the Great Coffee Disaster.”

The mention of his brother sent an unexpected thrill through me. I pushed the thought away, not ready to analyze why just hearing Marcus’ name made my scar tingle.

“You’re thinking too hard again,” Caleb murmured, guiding me toward a bench near the fountain. The mist from the water caught the lamplight, creating tiny rainbows in the air.

“Just trying to figure you out,” I admitted, settling beside him. “You and your brothers.”

“What’s there to figure out?” His arm draped across the back of the bench, not quite touching me but close enough that I could feel his heat.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe why two gorgeous, successful men seem so interested in some random guy who just inherited a cottage?” The words came out sharper than I intended, confusion and attraction finally bubbling over.

Caleb was quiet for a moment, studying me with an intensity that made my scar pulse. In the soft lamplight, his eyes seemed to shift, flickering with an electric blue glow that should have terrified me but instead made something deep inside me stir in recognition. A low rumble, almost like a purr, emanated from his chest.

“You really have no idea, do you?”

“About what?”

He shifted closer, and my body immediately betrayed me, leaning into his space like he had his own gravitational pull. His hand came up to cup my cheek, and the touch sent electricity racing across my skin.

The rumble in his chest deepened, almost possessive, and I caught the flash of something wild in his expression before he controlled it. “How special you are,” he said softly, thumb brushing my bottom lip. His skin felt fever-hot against mine, and the scent of him—pine and leather and something untamed—made my head spin.

I should have pulled away. Should have made a joke, kept things light. Should have been terrified by how inhuman he seemed in that moment. Instead, I froze, caught between thecompeting urges to flee and to press closer. My scar was singing now, a warm buzz that spread through my whole body, like it was trying to tell me something my mind couldn’t comprehend.

“Caleb,” I whispered, not sure if it was a warning or a plea. My rational mind was screaming that this wasn’t normal, that people’s eyes didn’t glow, that they didn’t growl or purr or make you feel like prey and protected all at once. But my body… my body knew something else entirely.

He leaned in, slowly enough that I could have moved away. I didn’t. Couldn’t. The pull between us felt ancient, primal, like gravity itself. His breath ghosted across my lips, and I caught another flash of that electric blue as my eyes fluttered closed—

A clock chimed somewhere, making me jump. Reality crashed back in, and I jerked away, heart pounding. For a moment, I could have sworn I heard something like a frustrated growl rumble through his chest, but when I looked at him again, his eyes were normal, his expression carefully controlled despite the tension in his jaw.

“I should—we should probably head back,” I stammered, standing so quickly I almost tripped. “It’s getting late.”

Caleb rose more gracefully, but I caught the flash of disappointment—and something darker, more possessive—in his eyes before his easy smile returned. “Of course.”

The drive back to Cedar Grove was quiet, but not uncomfortable. Caleb kept one hand on the gear shift, occasionally brushing my knee, while I watched the trees blur past and tried to make sense of my reactions. Why did my body respond so strongly to him? To them?

When we pulled up to my cottage, Caleb walked me to the door like a perfect gentleman. But there was nothing gentlemanly about the way he looked at me or how my pulse jumped when he stepped close.

“Thank you for dinner,” I managed, fumbling for my keys, trying to ignore how my hands were shaking. Not from fear—which was probably the strangest part of all—but from the way his presence seemed to fill all the space around me, wild and magnetic.

“Thank you for saying yes.” His voice was low, intimate, with an underlying rumble that made my spine tingle. When I glanced up, his eyes were doing that thing again, electric blue bleeding into their normal color like ink in water. “We should do it again sometime.”

“Maybe,” I said, even though we both knew it was a yes. My scar pulsed in time with my heartbeat, like it was trying to reach out to him. The rational part of my brain was still screaming questions—about his eyes, about the inhuman sounds he made, about why my body seemed to recognize something my mind couldn’t grasp—but the rest of me just wanted to lean into his heat.

He smiled, and for a moment I caught a flash of something predatory in his expression. He leaned in, brushing his lips across my cheek, and I could have sworn I felt him inhale deeply, like he was memorizing my scent. The touch sent sparks racing through me, my scar flaring hot enough to make me gasp. His answering growl was so quiet I almost missed it, but it vibrated through me like a physical caress.

“Sweet dreams, Kai,” he murmured against my skin, his voice rough with something wild and barely contained. And then he was gone, moving with an inhuman grace that my mind tried to dismiss but my body remembered.

I stood on my porch, skin burning where he’d touched me, scar humming like a live wire, watching his retreating form. The questions crowded my mind: Why did he sometimes move like something other than human? Why did his eyes glow? Why did my body react to him like he was something I’d been waitingfor my whole life? And why, despite all the warning signs that something wasn’t normal here, did I feel safer with him than I ever had before?

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