Captured by Desire (3 page)

Fear’s icy fingers clawed at her chest, turning her blood cold.

“They’re gone,” he said.

Jules looked into his eyes, his calm demeanor helping to soothe her ragged nerves. With her heart pounding in her chest, all she could do was thank God Cristian hadn’t left with the others.

She blew out a breath as she sat up. “What now?”

“I should take you back to the village,” he said.

Jules’ temper immediately rose, pushing aside her fear. “I paid you quite handsomely to help me find my father.”

He quirked a dark brow. “I said I should, I never said that’s what I’d do.” His Romanian accent thickened with his anger.

Jules loved his accent as much as she loved to look at him. She tucked a strand of hair that she had loosed from her braid the night before behind her ear and gazed into the dying embers of the fire.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

His eyes narrowed before he looked away. “My parents came up here two weeks ago and never returned.”

“You think whatever is out there got them?”

He shrugged indifferently, but it was telling. Jules pretended a lack of interest as she ran her fingers through the thick mass of hair.

His sharp gaze moved to her. “You said your father wrote you. Did he say what the creature was?”

Jules hesitated. How much to tell him? Most thought her father a freak or completely insane for what he did, but she had seen enough to know there were unexplained events and beings out in the world.

She decided since Cristian hadn’t left with the others, nor refused to take her onto the mountain, that he deserved to know what her father had discovered.

“There are some people who believe in ghosts and demons,” she said as she gathered her hair in her hands and began plaiting it. “They spend their days and nights tracking these beings. Upon occasion they even remove them from people’s homes.”

“You’ve seen this?” he asked.

Jules chuckled. “Oh, yes, I’m afraid I have.”

“Does it frighten you?”

“Of course, but my father taught me how to fight them and protect myself.”

He nodded absently. “He came out here looking for a ghost?”

“No,” she admitted. “He came to Romania because there were rumors of a supernatural being in these mountains.”

He sighed and all but rolled his eyes. “You aren’t talking about vampires, are you?”

She held back her laughter. “No, not vampires, although the lore your country has on those creatures is amazing.”

“I know,” he said with a frown. “So, what was your father after?”

She finished braiding her hair and turned her gaze to him. “There is a small community of professors and others who have seen creatures not quite human. My father has chronicled many such findings, and what prompted the surprise trip to Romania was a creature that has never been seen, a creature that many thought only myth.”

“Until now,” he finished.

“Exactly.” She couldn’t hold back her excitement. Her father had found something astonishing, and if he wasn’t missing, she wouldn’t be holding back her enthusiasm.

“What kind of creature?”

Jules sighed and prayed Cristian didn’t bolt once she told him. That is, if he knew what it was. “It’s called a Wendigo.”

He didn’t bolt, but he did sit straighter, his eyes intense as he stared at her. “Are you sure?”

“That’s what my father wrote in his letters. He said he was close to discovering for certain, but he was also terrified because everything he’d found and seen proved the creature is here.”

Cristian rose to his feet and began to pace in front of her. His normally fluid body was tense, his jaw clenched. “If it’s a Wendigo, you shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m not going back.” The dread in his green eyes had nearly done her in. Not only did he know exactly what a Wendigo was, he knew how dangerous it was.

He stopped pacing and glared at her. “You don’t understand, Jules.”

“I most certainly do,” she said as she climbed to her feet. “I may very well die on this mountain, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay to find my father.”

He raked a hand through his hair in frustration. “We need to get moving.”

She kicked dirt on the dying embers and gathered up her things. When she straightened, Cristian was waiting for her.

“Do you have a weapon?”

She touched her bag. “I have a pistol, but if it’s a Wendigo, it won’t do much good.”

“I’d rather know you have some kind of weapon,” he said and turned away from her.

Jules hurried to catch up with him, while her fear settled around her stomach like an iron manacle. “And what about you? Do you have a weapon?”

“Yes.”

She waited for him to say more, but only silence met her glare. “What kind of weapon?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It most certainly does. It’s just us versus this evil. My weapon won’t be much good, if any at all. Will yours?”

“Yes.”

Jules nearly growled, she was so irritated with his one-word answers. “Cristian-”

He suddenly stopped and faced her. “I swear to you, Jules, I’ll protect you.”

She didn’t move as he walked away. His words penetrated her mind and helped to put a lid on her growing terror. But she had seen something in his eyes, something that made her pause. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Cristian was more than just a man looking for his parents.

He seemed more like a man on a hunt.

Chapter Four

They spent another full day moving as quickly as they could up the mountain. Several times Cristian had to make himself slow down so Jules could catch up with him, but never once had she complained.

After he had vowed to protect her, she had closed herself off to him. It bothered him more than he had wanted to admit. As he listened to her talk about her father’s work, he began to hope she might understand what he was, understand that he wasn’t evil.

It was a hope he should never have felt, for now that she had distanced herself, he felt her loss keenly. How one small woman, after only a few days, had come to mean so much to him, he didn’t know.

Maybe it was because they each searched for someone. Maybe it was because the Wendigo had taken from both of them. Maybe it was because she put her complete trust and faith in him to keep her safe, but whatever it was, he had felt a connection.

Cristian didn’t want to sense that connection, but it was there – intense, powerful. Tangible.

There was no getting away from it. He knew because he’d tried.

He glanced over his shoulder to see her breathing heavily and immediately stopped. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said between ragged breaths.

He sighed. “You’re a stubborn woman.”

She chuckled and pushed a strand of chestnut hair from her face. “My father says that to me quite often. I got it from my mum, though my father has a stubborn streak as well.”

“Where is your mother?”

Jules sat on a fallen tree and pulled a canteen from her bag. She drank deeply before answering him. “She died from a fever when I was ten.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “It’s life, I suppose.”

He leaned back against a tree and watched the sun sink in the sky. It would be dusk soon. He needed to find them somewhere safe before nightfall.

“I thought I’d get used to not hearing the animals,” she murmured uneasily. “The silence is…deafening.”

Cristian opened his mouth to reply when he sensed something move behind him. Immediately he was next to Jules. He yanked her to her feet and pressed her back against a tree to shield her.

He looked down into her upturned face and nearly groaned to find her breasts pressed against his chest. He only had to dip his head to take her lips, to taste the sweetness of her mouth, but the threat around them kept him from doing just that.

In the stillness, nothing moved. Being this close to Jules, he couldn’t stop the desire flooding his body. His cock swelled and blood roared in his ears. Her lips parted and her eyelids lowered, tempting him to take what was near, to sample her lush curves and willing body. Cristian told himself to step away, but the yearning in his body refused be ignored.

His head began to lower to hers, to kiss her full lips. Her soft body was pressed against him from knee to chest, making his blood sing with a lust so powerful the world faded away.

Her chest began to rise and fall rapidly, and her fingers dug into his arms. Cristian gripped her hips and bit back a moan as she shifted her body, rubbing against his aching shaft.

His body exploded with desire and the uncontrollable need to take her, to bury himself in her wet heat and thrust into her until they were both sated and weak with pleasure.

And just as his lips were about to touch hers, something moved out of the corner of his eye. Fear and anger that anything would dare to harm Jules replaced the desire rushing through him. Instantly, his claws lengthened as he raised his head. He could feel the beast within him yearning to be released to face the evil tracking them.

“Cristian?” Her voice held a note of fear.

“It’s here.”

It moved deftly, and near silently. All he had seen was a blur, but even then he had known it was the Wendigo. He stepped away from Jules and hurriedly looked around. He had precious few moments to get her safe before the Wendigo attacked.

“Get on the ground,” he told her.

She did as he instructed without complaint or question. Cristian threw down his bag and set about marking the ground with the ancient symbols his parents had taught him when he was just a child.

“What is that?” Jules asked.

“They’re markings,” he answered without looking up. “They will keep the Wendigo away from you. Just don’t leave the circle.”

He finished the second marking and moved on to the third. Even then he could hear it approach. He hurried to the final point in the circle to dray the fourth symbol. Once it was finished, he stood and faced Jules.

She rose and moved toward him. “Aren’t you getting inside the circle with me?”

“No.” He clenched and unclenched his hands. This could well be the last time he spoke with her. He hated that he hadn’t been able to taste her lips, to know her body. “Jules, promise me no matter what you hear, no matter what you see, that you won’t leave this circle. I can’t fight the Wendigo if I don’t know you’re protected.”

“You’re frightening me,” she whispered, her beautiful sherry eyes large with fear.

He grimaced. “I know. There’s no time to explain. Please trust me.”

“I do.”

Jules watched the man before her. She didn’t like being left alone, and the thought of him fighting the Wendigo single-handedly left her sick to her stomach. But she knew by the stubborn lift of his chin that she couldn’t talk him out of it. He had sworn to protect her, and he intended to keep his oath.

It had grown dark quickly, more quickly than it should have. She glanced at the sky to see if a cloud had covered the sun, but saw nothing.

When she looked back at Cristian, his gaze had moved over her shoulder. And then, before her very eyes, she watched his teeth lengthen into fangs. She took a step back and noticed his fingernails had grown into razor-sharp talons.

And then she heard the breathing behind her. She whirled around expecting to see the Wendigo. Instead, all she saw was trees.

In the next heartbeat, Cristian ran off into the trees, leaving her behind. Her legs gave out and she crumpled to the earth, her knees drawn up to her chest as night claimed the land.

Jules covered her ears with her hands as the screams and growls of the Wendigo and Cristian raged through the night. Afraid of what she might see, she squeezed her eyes shut, her heart pounding so fiercely in her chest she was sure it would burst within her.

In all her studies of the supernatural, never had she seen or heard of what Cristian had turned into before her very eyes. But she didn’t fear him. He could easily have killed her while they had been alone, but he hadn’t.

He was out there now protecting her from an evil so powerful she feared that, come morning, she would be alone in the mountains.

Alone and powerless.

Tears burned her eyes as she imagined her father facing the Wendigo. She had only one chance of making it off the mountain, and that was with Cristian.

She took a deep breath and tried to stop her body from shaking as she began to hum to block out the bellows and growls.

* * * *

Cristian pushed Jules from his mind. It was the only way he could find the Wendigo, yet a part of him couldn’t stop worrying and thinking about her. If she left the circle, she’d die.

He had seen the terror in her sherry eyes, and he was grateful she hadn’t seen him turn completely. He didn’t want to have to explain what he was.

His strides lengthened as he ran through the forest. The Wendigo moved as quickly as the wind and as quietly as a thought. But Cristian had seen it, and it was just a matter of catching it now.