Dark

Evernight
Publishing ®

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright©
2014 Erin M. Leaf

 
ISBN: 978-1-77130-944-8

Cover
Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor:
JS
Cook

ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED

WARNING:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
 
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This
is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

For the guy who saved me from myself, over and over
again.

DARK

Stronghold,
1

Erin M. Leaf

Copyright © 2014

Chapter One

Greyson Dark watched the girl hiking through his woods, teeth
clenched against the headache itching behind his skull.
She shouldn’t be
here,
he thought, irritated. Her long red hair slid over her shoulders as
she looked behind her for a moment, and then, seemingly reassured she was still
alone, continued along the barely viable trail. He frowned, silently slipping through
the trees in her wake. After two hundred and forty-three years in this forest,
he could walk through all of it with his eyes closed and no one would ever hear
him. What the hell was she doing here?

She stepped on a branch and nearly fell before she recovered—hands
gripping a tree an inch from a sprig of poison ivy. She shook her head and
muttered something to herself.

Greyson was too far away to hear her words, but he could imagine
her berating herself for not being careful. He wanted to yell at her, scare her
away from this place, but he never showed himself to anyone, not like his
brother Bruno. He couldn’t stand the pain of it.

The girl sighed and rubbed her temples. He moved closer, wondering
why her parents hadn’t warned her away from this place. She was clearly young,
probably still in high school. Her clear, pale skin held a scattering of
freckles that made his fingers twitch. His mother had once let him trace the
freckles on her arms, but she’d died so long ago he couldn’t remember her voice
anymore. He wished the girl would just turn around and go home.

“Is someone there?” she called suddenly.

He froze.

She whipped her head
around,
face
panicked, then abruptly took off running.

Stupid girl,
he thought, keeping pace with her as she pelted through the trees.
She’s
going to break her neck.

As if he’d willed it to happen, she suddenly went down, twisting
her ankle on a root. She cried out as she fell, hands splayed to keep her head
from impacting the dirt, but not enough to keep her from wrenching her leg.

Dammit,
Greyson thought, frustrated. His headache bloomed into a full-scale assault as
the pain of her sprained ankle flared over his empathic gift.
This is my
fault.
He stopped just out of sight and leaned against a tree as he
absorbed and controlled the emotions careening into him.

The girl rolled over, her green eyes clouded with fear as she
rubbed at her shin. A smudge of dirt marred the perfect skin of her cheek. “Go
away, Frank! I told you to leave me alone. You and your so called friends think
you’re so funny, but you’re not. You’re a jerk.”

Frank?
Greyson rubbed his eyes tiredly. So, she hadn’t been running from him after
all. He let his senses spread out, checking the land for intruders. When his
internal sight found three boys stomping along the same trail the girl had
taken, he growled under his breath. He glanced at the girl, but she seemed
stable for the moment, so he left her and took off back the way he’d come.
Those boys wouldn’t be on the trail for long.

****

Eva shoved her hair over her shoulders as she tried to figure out
what to do. Her ankle hurt like hell and she didn’t have a cell phone, so she
couldn’t call for help.
No way can I walk out of here,
she thought,
touching her ankle tentatively. It had swollen so fast she was afraid to take
off her boot.

“Drat,” she muttered, swallowing back tears. She would
not
cry, not again. She could handle this. She could handle anything, even the
assholes picking on her at school. After everything she’d been through with her
father’s death, and then having to move here with her mom, she knew she could
probably survive whatever she had to, not that she’d enjoy it.

What doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger,
she mused, then laughed bitterly.
Or makes you more miserable.
She sighed and stretched
out on the ground, ignoring the itch of dry leaves against her arms. Above her,
the late afternoon sunlight lit the clouds with pink and purple. The trees
swayed gently in the breeze and everything looked so Zen she wished she could
just relax, but the pain in her ankle wouldn’t let her. The pain in her heart,
well, she didn’t think that would ever go away.

“You’re such an idiot,” she told herself aloud. “Frank and the
others probably weren’t even behind you.” Not even a half hour ago, she’d run
into the woods near the high school after Frank and his gang of losers had cornered
her by the tennis courts. He’d grabbed her arms and mashed his lips to hers
while his cronies jeered him on. She’d swiftly kneed him in the groin and had
watched him go down, all the while thinking:
That’s the last thing my dad
taught me before he hung himself in the backyard.
Before Frank could
recover or his friends could do anything, she’d taken off.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a quiet, gruff voice said, scaring her to
death.

Eva choked back a gasp and looked up, heart pounding as she tried
not to freak out. A man stood over her, frowning. He had dark hair and deep
brown eyes shot through with specks of silver. He wore a tight black t-shirt
that clung to every muscle in a way that let her know he was not a small man.
He was movie-star gorgeous, except for the part where he looked like he wanted
to yell at her.

Oh shit,
she thought, swallowing hard.
I’m in
trouble
. She tightened her fingers around a rock, not that a puny stone
would do much good against this guy. He stared at her for so long, unmoving,
she thought maybe he was going to turn around and leave, but then he sighed and
dropped to his knees. He reached for her leg and she scooted back, ignoring how
much it hurt to move. “Don’t touch me!”

He rested his hands on his thighs. “Those boys are gone now. They
won’t be back.”

Eva stared at him. “What do you mean? What boys—” She cut herself
off.
Dammit
. Frank’s friends probably
had
followed her. She glanced down the trail reflexively and saw nothing
but dirt and trees.

The man lifted a shoulder. “Everyone knows not to come into my
woods.”

His
woods?
Great, now I’ve been caught trespassing when all I wanted to do was get
away.
Her throbbing ankle wrecked her ability to think. “I’m
sorry,
I didn’t know anyone owned this land.”

“You aren’t from around here,” he said after another long pause.

Eva eyed his hands. He wore a silver ring on his right thumb,
etched with some sort of geometric design. He hadn’t moved a muscle since she’d
pushed away from him. Maybe he wasn’t going to hurt her. She hoped not.

His thumb twitched.

“My mom and I moved here a couple months ago,” she offered
tentatively.

“I assumed as much.” His eyes went to her injured leg. “Will you
let me see to your leg?”

She chewed on her lip. She was already screwed. He could do
whatever he wanted and she couldn’t stop him. She thought about her dad telling
her she was strong and could deal with anything and had to choke back a laugh.
Or a sob.
She wasn’t sure which. Her dad certainly hadn’t
taken his own advice.
Whatever.
Wasn’t the fact that
this guy was asking permission to touch
her a
good
sign? “Yeah, okay,” she muttered.

He leaned closer,
then
touched his
fingers to her shin. He didn’t move her jeans away or try to take off her boot.
It was… weird. “What are you doing?” she asked, more confused than frightened,
now. “Do you have a phone? I can call my mom. She’ll come get me.”

“
Shh
.” He grimaced, and suddenly he
looked a lot older.
Forbidding.
His fingers went taut,
digging in a little.

Eva shivered and almost pulled away, but then warmth tingled
through her skin, easing the pain a little. She licked her lips. What was he
doing? She looked at his hair, then at his cheekbones. He had a bit of stubble,
as if he’d shaved yesterday, but couldn’t be bothered to do it again today. He
was really gorgeous.
And very much a grown-up.
Not like
the boys at school. She wished she had the nerve to touch him, but no way was
she going to do that. His eyes glittered as he moved his hand in a small
circle, as if he was feeling around for something.

“There,” he muttered, sliding his fingers down to her foot. The
warmth followed.

Abruptly, Eva realized that the pain was gone.
Whoa
. “What did you do?” She rolled her
foot. It felt fine.