Carpathian 06 - Dark Fire

afternoon. She put it down to traveling all night. No wonder the troupe slept during the day. How else could they keep up such an insane schedule?
    She peered closely at her reflection in the mirror. Her bruised eye should still be deeply purple, swollen, and ugly, but only the faintest smudge of blue remained. Darius had healed her. Color crept up her face, and her body leapt to life as she remembered how. It was easier to recall it as an erotic dream. Darius.
    She missed him while he slept, God only knew where.
    Disliking the way her eyes were shining, she swung away from the mirror. It was bad enough that she had lingered in the shower like a lovesick calf, dreaming of him. His eyes. His mouth. His voice. The way Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    his body rippled with strength.
    "Oh, for heaven's sake." She glared at the lavish interior of the motor home. "You're acting worse than a teenager," she told herself. "He's arrogant and bossy and strange. Keep that in mind when you're going ga-ga over his looks. He's a man. That's bad enough. And he's worse than a man. He's a…" She searched for the right explanation. "A something. Something you don't want any part of. Now go check the oil. Something mundane, ordinary. Something you can relate to."
    Just before dawn he had carried her to the bus they had by then overtaken, after driving all night. She closed her eyes and could still feel the strength in his arms, the way the hard muscles of his chest felt against her soft breasts. In the early streaks of light she could see his face, sensual, beautiful, yet as harsh as time itself. He had carried her gently, carefully into the bus and laid her on the couch among the pillows. His tenderness as he covered her with a quilt was forever etched in her heart. The kiss he brushed over her temple still held traces of fire.
    And her neck. Tempest pressed a hand to her neck, then turned back to the mirror to look once more.
    His mouth had left a burning brand there, marking her as his. She could see the evidence, the odd mark that throbbed and seared and called to him. She covered it with her palm and captured the scorching heat there.
    "You are in so much trouble this time, Rusti," she murmured softly. "I don't even have a clue how I'm going to get you out."
    She attempted to eat cold cereal but found she was more lonely than hungry. She wanted to see his mouth, the way he quirked it, slow and sexy. She wanted to see the black burning of his eyes. The cereal tasted like cardboard. Why was it erotic when Darius took her blood, when the thought of any other doing such a thing sickened her? What made it repulsive when Barack had bent close yet made her entire body clench in anticipation of Darius? She touched the mark with a fingertip this time.
    "You are not going to sit here daydreaming, Tempest," she declared staunchly, vaguely wondering why she was calling herself the name Darius insisted upon. "Go do something, anything, but stop acting stupid."
    She took only a few minutes to clean up and, after petting the sleepy leopards, went outside. The heavy drapes at the windows had blocked the light out of the bus so that the day seemed brighter than ever, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut against its brilliance. The breeze was soft and playful, tugging at her hair and clothes, rustling leaves and blowing pine needles here and there about their new campsite.
    The air smelled fragrant with both pine and wildflowers. Water bubbled somewhere close by. Tempest fiddled halfheartedly with the bus engine, fine-tuning until she was satisfied. The wind made her feel more lonely than ever. Colors seemed so much more vivid when Darius was around. Everything was more vivid when Darius was around.
    Obsession. Was that what this was? Tempest filled a water bottle and slid it into her knapsack. She would go hiking, wade in the stream, and cool off. Wash him away. Whistling, she pushed her hands into her pockets and started off, determined that Darius's presence was no longer going to haunt her. But a feeling of dark op-pression began to overtake her as she walked farther from the camp.
    She tried singing, but her heart seemed heavy, her legs like lead as she took each step. A terrible sorrow was growing in her. She needed to see Darius, touch him, know that he was alive and well. She found the thin ribbon of a stream and followed it until it widened and poured in a frothy silver blanket over an