He was alive. Alive, but unconscious.
I doubted he was much older than me, maybe just over twenty, and he was clothed entirely in black leather. Only his arms and head were bare. I saw what looked like a black strip of leather lying beside his head. I thought it might have once held the longish hair that was currently spread about his head in a dark halo. Even in his present state, I could see that he was handsome and incredibly intimidating.
Then a troubling thought occurred to me. I looked at his big hands where they lay limp in the snow at his sides. Hands like that could easily rip a girl my size to pieces. There was no blood on them, but still…what if?
My eyes snapped back up to his face when I heard a low moan. A frown pinched his thick brows together, but I could still see the dark crescent of his lashes as they rested on his sharp cheekbones. I knew that if I had any chance of escaping whatever gruesome things had taken place here, I had to move fast. Very fast.
Slowly, I stepped back with one foot, the snow crunching lightly under my weight. The rise and fall of his chest stopped and I held my breath, praying that he wouldn’t awaken. I waited what seemed like an eternity for him to start breathing again. When he did and it looked unlikely that he would wake up, I stepped back with my other foot. Then I stopped. And waited. And watched.
Nothing.
Encouraged, I took another step back. Then another. When still there was no indication he was waking, I picked up the pace a little. I kept my steps as light and soundless as possible.
When I’d successfully put nearly ten feet between myself and the stranger, I turned to navigate the trees. I shifted sideways to slide between two laurels then stepped around a huge oak tree…and ran right into a wide chest covered in skin tight, black leather.
My breath caught in my throat. I looked behind me, back at the now empty impression in the snow. The stranger was gone and was standing right in front of me, staring down at me with furious silver eyes.
The chirp of my alarm clock woke me. Really woke me. I was in my bed, in my room, gasping for air like I’d run a marathon. My heart was hammering against my ribs.
It was just a dream, Carson. Just a dream, I reassured myself. It had felt so incredibly real; I was still shaken from running into that huge stranger.
I lay back against my pillows and concentrated on taking slow, steady gulps of air. I counted backwards from ten and, as usual, it calmed me. Another Porter family trick.
Pushing my covers aside, I made my way to the bathroom to turn on the water for my shower. As I shed my pajamas, I noticed how cold my fingers and toes were and decided that I must’ve kicked the covers off at some point during the night.
As I walked past the mirror to step into the shower, a dark spot on my cheek caught my attention. I leaned over the sink to look closer. It was a single red drop. I wiped it away with one finger and brought it around for inspection. My heart kicked up to a quicker pace. It looked like blood.
I stepped back to examine myself for injuries, almost hoping to find one. I’d rather have scratched myself during the night than think that it had somehow come from my dream.
I stood in a shaft of Saturday morning sun that was streaming through the bathroom window. The light turned my normally mousy-brown hair to a glistening spun gold in a way I hadn’t noticed before. It looked almost as if the color had lightened overnight to a beautiful honey blonde.
Shaking off the distraction of my hair, I inspected my face. I saw no injuries or scrapes and still no evidence of the abrasions that had been there the evening before. In fact, I was as good as new, the skin on my arm, hip and leg having healed as well.
“What is going on?” I asked my reflection.
Having no answers, I pushed the troubling thought aside and focused on the day ahead and skirting Dad’s questions about where my scratches had gone.
After a quick shower, I dressed and went out to the garage, knowing Dad would already be out there. And he was. Still working on