Marked in the Dark

The room smelled like cedar and smoke.

That was the first thing I registered — not where I was, not how I got here, not why my limbs felt like they'd been dipped in wet concrete. Just the scent. Cedar. Smoke. And something else underneath, something my body recognized before my brain caught up.

Pine. Fresh snow. Skin warmed by fire.

My head was thick with fog. The wolfsbane they'd slipped into my drink was still crawling through my bloodstream, dulling everything — my thoughts, my vision, my ability to care that I'd been shoved into a pitch-black room by my own stepsister.

Happy birthday to me.

I tried to sit up. The sheets were expensive — high thread count, cool against my burning skin. This wasn't some cheap motel. This was someone's suite. Someone important.

A hand closed around my wrist.

I flinched. My pulse spiked so hard I felt it in my teeth.

"Easy." A man's voice. Low. Rough at the edges, like he'd been dragged out of sleep — or like he was fighting to stay in control of something. "I'm not going to hurt you."

His grip was firm but not painful. His palm was enormous — it wrapped around my wrist completely, and the heat radiating from his skin made my breath stutter.

Who the hell —

"Where am I?" My voice came out hoarse. Pathetic. I hated the sound of it.

"Same place I am." A pause. "Wrong room. Wrong night. Wrong everything."

His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist — right over my pulse point — and something detonated inside my chest. Not fear. Not panic. Something deeper. Something that made my wolf — the wolf that had been silent my entire life, buried under years of wolfsbane — stir.

For the first time in twenty-four years, I felt her move.

Just a twitch. A flicker. Like a candle flame guttering in a sealed room.

What the —

"You're shaking," he said.

I was. My whole body was trembling, and I didn't know if it was the wolfsbane or the adrenaline or the fact that this stranger's hand on my wrist felt like the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth.

"I'm fine," I lied.

He laughed. Low and quiet, more breath than sound. "You're a terrible liar."

The mattress shifted. He was close now. I couldn't see him — the room was absolute black, no window light, no crack under the door — but I could feel the heat of his body like a wall of fire. He was big. Tall. The kind of frame that took up space without trying.

"I should go," I said. My legs didn't move.

"You can barely sit up." His voice was closer. Right beside me now. "Whatever they gave you — it's still in your system. You need to wait it out."

They. So he knew I'd been drugged. He hadn't done it.

I turned my head toward his voice. Saw nothing. Just dark.

"Are you — were you drugged too?"

A beat. "Something like it."

His hand left my wrist. I immediately wanted it back. What is wrong with me?

Then his fingers found my jaw. Gentle. Barely there. Tracing the line of my chin like he was trying to memorize my face by touch alone.

"I'm going to kiss you," he said. Not a question. Not a demand. A warning. The kind of warning that gives you three seconds to say no and means it.

I should have said no.

Instead, I said: "Okay."

His lips were soft. That surprised me. Everything else about him was hard — his chest, his arms, the rigid muscles of his abdomen that I mapped with my palms as he lowered me back onto the pillows. Eight clean ridges. I counted them twice.

He kissed like he was making a promise. Slow at first, tasting, testing. When I opened my mouth to him, he groaned — a sound that vibrated through my ribcage and made my toes curl — and then the slowness caught fire.

His hands were everywhere. My waist, my hips, the curve of my thighs. He gripped me like I might dissolve, and the wolfsbane in my blood turned every nerve ending into a raw wire. I felt everything. The calluses on his fingertips. The heat where his breath hit my collarbone. The low, involuntary sound I made when he pressed his mouth to the base of my throat and sucked.

"First time?" He paused. His voice was strained — a man holding a detonator, trying not to squeeze.

My body had gone rigid without my permission. He'd noticed.

"If it's uncomfortable," he said against my ear, warm and unbearably gentle, "tell me. I'll stop."

He'll stop. That — more than anything — made me want to keep going.

I reached up. Found his throat in the dark. Bit down on his Adam's apple — not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to make him hiss.

"Protection," I whispered.

His hand reached for the nightstand. I heard a box open. A wrapper tear.

"Good girl," he murmured, and the words landed somewhere south of my navel like a lit match.

He was gentle first.

Then he wasn't.

Then he was again.

He cycled through it — tender, fierce, tender — like he was reading my body in a language he'd been born speaking. When I gasped, he slowed. When I pulled him closer, he gave me everything. When I cried out and buried my face in his neck, he wrapped both arms around me and held me so tight I could feel his heartbeat against my breastbone, steady and strong and mine.

Mine?

Where did that come from?

I lost track of time. Lost track of my name. Lost track of everything except his mouth, his hands, the sounds he made when I —

No. I wasn't going to think about the sounds. Not now. Not ever.

(I was absolutely going to think about the sounds.)

Afterward, he didn't roll over and fall asleep. He pulled me against his chest, tucked my head under his chin, and ran his fingers through my hair for what felt like an hour. His breathing evened out long before mine did.

He got a warm towel from somewhere — the bathroom, I assumed — and cleaned me up. Every part of me. Carefully. Thoroughly. Like it mattered.

Like I mattered.

No one had ever touched me like that. Like I was something worth being careful with.

This man has excellent post-performance etiquette, I thought deliriously. Five stars. Would recommend.

My eyelids were heavy. The wolfsbane was dragging me under. But just before I fell asleep, I felt something.

A sharp, bright heat — right at the curve where my waist met my hip. Like a lit cigarette pressed to skin for half a second. I flinched, but it was gone as fast as it came.

I was too far gone to think about it.

I slept.