Chapter Forty
Present day
Helen was sure she was going to die, and she was sure it was going to be bloody and painful. But if Tyler could endure a violent
death, so could she. That’s when she heard the strange flap, the wings of something flying, but it was so much louder than
a normal bird. She opened her eyes to a flash of black in the air, and she heard the word, Run, as plainly as if someone had said it in her ear.
So she did.
She took off across the clearing. She couldn’t pump her arms freely with the lantern in her hand, so she dropped it, letting
the moon guide her. She heard growls and barks, and she knew she was being pursued. Any moment, teeth were going to bite her
nightgown and pull her body to the soft earth and begin the assault on her flesh. At least she would die running though.
One of the wolves appeared beside her and lunged.
In the darkness she couldn’t see the details of it, but she could imagine its sharp teeth, and she lifted her knee and felt it smack the front of the wolf’s body.
It yelped, and she staggered and ran on.
In the next instant, multiple black shapes curved in front of her, forcing her to whirl to the left, like a frightened sheep.
Those shapes seemed to hold their position as she ran, but there were new sounds now of growling at her feet, a sickly expectation in the pit of her stomach that her ankles were about to be gashed open.
But then, somehow, she reached the tree line at the clearing—it was unbelievable they hadn’t caught her yet—and she started
weaving through the trees. It was so dark she was going on instinct, letting the forest lead her, and she no longer heard
the growls.
She didn’t dare look back until, at last, she broke out of the trees and into the meadow behind the farmhouse. Her legs were
burning and she was out of breath, but she ran with everything that was left until she reached the front door.
Inside the kitchen, she fell to her knees: heart pounding, chest burning, crying. It was the first time in a very long time
that she had openly wept. God, she was so stupid. What had she been thinking?
Still sobbing, Helen sat back to examine the cut on her leg. The scrape wasn’t too terrible but still deeper than she expected.
She pulled herself to her feet and went to the sink, where she got a white hand towel from the cupboard. She dampened the
towel and used it to clean the cut, her blood staining the towel red.
As the tears ran freely down her face, a new feeling started to take over. Somehow, she had outrun wolves. She knew on the one hand it was impossible—both the presence of wolves and outrunning them. Already she was questioning if
it had really happened, and yet she felt a deep and powerful strength spreading through her body, a disturbing kind of exhilaration
unlike anything she’d ever felt. And whose voice had that been in the woods telling her to run? She wished it had been Tyler’s
voice but knew it wasn’t. The memory of it—Run—was nagging at her. It had felt so familiar.
And suddenly, she knew.
Isaac.
That had been his voice.
Thinking, she set aside the hand towel. Likely it had been her own voice she’d heard, but because Isaac had taken up residence
in her mind, in her moment of terror, she had drawn strength from imagining his voice.
Isaac.
Desire flooded in, dark but insistent, demanding that she act upon it. Ever since Isaac had shown up, he’d been spinning her,
expertly separating her desire from her sense of loyalty, and now he held on to her desire. Subterfuge by centrifuge.
Helen untied her shoes and stepped out of them. She peeled her socks off and tossed them aside too. All she wore now was the
silk sleeveless nightgown with a pair of cotton underwear beneath it.
She glided across the kitchen, feeling the lightest she’d felt in so long, through the living room and down the hallway. Outside
the guest bedroom, she hesitated for only a second. Then she opened the door and stepped inside. There was a candle still
burning faintly on Isaac’s bedside dresser, the flame almost out. Its faded orange glow danced against the wall.
She took in Isaac’s sleeping form, motionless under the blankets.
She moved toward the bed, but as she reached it, she realized he wasn’t in it. It was just a rumple of blankets.
The room was empty.
Not for long though.
When Isaac stepped up behind Helen, she didn’t hear the floorboards creak, didn’t hear him breathing, but she knew he was
there. She could feel the nearness of his body calling to hers. She turned her head just slightly in acknowledgment, and he
stepped closer and lifted her hair. He kissed her neck, and she briefly wondered if it tasted salty. She had just run over
a mile and could feel a light sheen of sweat all over her body.
She closed her eyes and leaned back against him, feeling his body through the thin fabric of her nightgown. Her hair fell back around her shoulders as his hands moved to her thighs, then to her waist, and then just below her breasts as he felt the shape of her.
Helen spun around to face him. Even though the room was dark, she could still see that his eyes had no trace of doubt in them.
It seemed cruel that he could be so sure of this, but she pushed the thought away. She had almost died in the woods tonight.
She reached up to touch his cheek.
Isaac turned his face into her hand. For a long time, all she could feel was the softness of his lips against her palm and
the rise and fall of her chest on a never-ending breath.
And then she wrapped her arms around him and put her mouth on his. Ever since their kiss in the yard two nights ago, she’d
been circling the moment, waiting for it to come back around, knowing it would, even as she had told herself it wouldn’t.
She was tired of being tolerated.
She wanted to be craved in a way that blocked out everything else in the world.
As Isaac returned the kiss, his hands moved down her body. He lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried
her to the bed and sat down on the edge of it with her on top. His hands grappled with her nightgown, pushing it up around
her hips.
“Are you sure?” Isaac asked.
He didn’t mean it, that she could tell. Oh, he’d stop of course if she said to, but he didn’t really care about Wade or even
what it might do to her. She had an uneasy collision of feelings—guilt, fear, desire—and it made her angry. All of it. Her life made her angry, so she pushed Isaac flat on his back and pulled up his shirt. Her hands traced the scar on his stomach. He’d
almost died too. They were part of a survivors’ club.
Isaac pulled her head to his and kissed her.
Then suddenly he sat up again and stood, lifting and turning quickly to set her on the center of the bed.
He climbed on top of her, his head hovered inches from hers, and she closed her eyes.
This felt like the last moment to say Stop, never mind, sorry, I was wrong.
But already it was too good. She couldn’t walk away.
Helen opened her eyes and inhaled sharply. Isaac’s eyes: They had turned pure black.
He stilled, watching her carefully. The moment was a question. Helen closed her eyes again and answered by reaching for him.
She pulled his face into her neck and told herself she hadn’t seen what she had—or maybe she didn’t care even if she had—and
when he lifted his head again his eyes looked normal, and she almost believed her own lies.
When he finally entered her, he went very slowly, but it wasn’t her sense that he was being careful, watching her for signs
and giving her time to adjust. She sensed it was because he was savoring a leisurely kind of ownership over her. He smiled
down at her, and it was dark and victorious, and she didn’t know if it turned her on more or made her mad. God, both.
She dug her fingernails into his back. She had no idea if he liked that, but she didn’t really care. They moved together and
it was sweet and only a little sharp, so she pulled him deeper into her, harder.
She didn’t want it to feel like a whisper. She wanted it to feel like a shout.
Her sheer nightgown had been pushed up around her chest—somehow it had never made it over her head—and it was an afterthought
of silk caressing her neck as Isaac’s hands found her breasts and squeezed and then moved down to her waist until finally
he gripped her hips so she felt tethered to the bed as he moved in and out of her, steady, forceful, as if this transgression
had been his right all along.
Eventually, Helen pushed up against his chest and said, “I want to be on top,” and they moved into that position. That was
the only thing spoken during the entire encounter, but so many words flashed through her mind, some of them dirty and delicious
and some of them desperate and devastating.
As she rode him, she felt the pressure building inside of her.
Through the darkness, she could see his gaze roaming up and down her body and she could tell he was getting close too.
His hands grabbed on to her, tried to change her rhythm to what he needed, and she pressed one hand lightly to his throat to tell him to stop and he immediately obeyed.
It was his fast acquiescence that pushed her closer.
Keeping her hand on his throat—because she was still a little mad and it felt a little good—she lowered her head.
That’s when she saw the blood on the white sheets next to her.
She immediately thought of the virgins through the centuries, losing their innocence in arranged marriages they never wanted.
It took her a moment to understand what her blood was doing on these sheets, and then she remembered the cut on her leg and the wolves in the woods and Isaac’s voice commanding her:
Run.
She pressed her hand harder against his throat and felt herself come.