Darkness Chosen 01: Scent of Darkness by Christina Dodd

Author:Christina Dodd [Dodd, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-04-03T09:56:03+00:00

Chapter 19

Jasha was right. When Ann camped with him, it was fun.

By seven o'clock, they had reached the campsite, a small, protected grove of trees high in the mountains with a stream nearby where she could wash her face and hands. By nine, he had caught trout, cleaned them, and cooked them over a carefully built fire. By the time the northern sun was finally setting, they settled down with a feast of fresh fish, huckleberries, slightly stale sourdough bread (produced with a flourish from his backpack), and a really good bottle of Wilder Wines's 1997 Sangiovese sipped directly out of the bottle.

Food had never tasted so good, the flames warmed her hands and face while the air cooled her backside, and seeing Jasha across the fire from her gave her a thrill every time she looked up—and she looked up often.

A campout wasn't the way she'd imagined their affair would progress, but it was pretty darned wonderful.

By the time the stars had started to dimple the night sky, Ann had laughed so much she thought she might be tipsy. That was the only reason she could imagine why she made the mistake of saying, "Tell me about this deal with the devil. Who was the idiot who thought that was a good idea?"

An owl hooted. The stream burbled. A tall spiral of smoke slithered up toward the dark heavens, and the trees whispered in the wind.

Yet Jasha didn't answer, and worry seeped into her mind and stained her carefree pleasure.

Had she offended him?

Today he'd been Jasha Wilder, kind, intelligent, thoughtful, needing help, consulting her . . . yet now the fire lent shadows to his face and flame to his eyes, and she remembered, really remembered, that he'd been the wolf that chased her through the woods, held her down, and forced pleasure on her.

He took a drink from the bottle, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His voice, when he spoke, was slow and deep, reciting the story he seemed to drag from the depths of his mind. "The first Konstantine Varinski was a bad seed, a child given to cruelty, then a man who reveled in wickedness. People on the steppes said he was the devil, and that's saying something, because a thousand years ago, life in Russia was brutish and short, and only the strongest survived. After years of vicious behavior, his father threw him out and told him to make his own way in the world."

Ann slid off her log to get closer to the fire, and wrapped her arms around her knees. "Did he throw him into the snow?"

"I can only hope so." Jasha passed her the bottle.

She took a drink, then passed it back. "He was a psychotic? Maybe a serial killer?"

"If you want to put a nice face on it. To me, he sounds like a sadistic son of a bitch. For years, he wandered the steppes, fighting and raping and pillaging, and everywhere he went, the rumor that he was the devil continued to grow.

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