The Darkest Embrace by Megan Hart Read Free Book Online

was...naked.”
    She laughed again at the way he shuddered saying the word. But he was right. The thing in the woods had been naked. Sexless, too. “And there was something wrong with its face.”
    “Red eyes.”
    “Yes, that. But its mouth, too.” She used her hand to demonstrate, placing her fingers in a circle around her mouth and pulling her hand away, fingers closing, to indicate the way the tapering mouth had looked to her. Like a tube or a funnel. “A proboscis,” she said.
    Max’s brows went up.
    “Like...a butterfly,” she explained.
    “That thing was no butterfly.”
    Jessie patted the couch beside her until Max came over to sit. “No, but it looked like that, didn’t it? Like a fleshy...tube. Thing.”
    Max made a disgusted noise. “I thought that was its tongue.”
    “Whatever it was,” Jessie said, “it was big. And fast.”
    “It didn’t attack us that second time.” He turned toward her, his knee pressing hers. “It looked right at us, but it didn’t come after us.”
    Jessie shifted, stretching her arm out along the back of the couch to toy with his sleeve. “Maybe it’s territorial? And we were in its territory before. Maybe it has young or something that it was trying to protect.”
    “Like it’s an animal.”
    She paused, thinking again of the way it had moved. How it had looked. “It’s not human, Max. Unless it’s some crazy sort of inbred monstrosity.”
    They looked at each other.
    “Well,” Max said.
    “It was an animal,” Jessie told him. “It had to be.”
    “Maybe it was an inbred monstrosity of an animal.”
    It should have been impossible for her to laugh right now—with her aching ankle and their disabled SUV, a washed-out bridge and some freakish thing stalking them from the woods—but she laughed anyway, because Max could always make her laugh. It was one of the things she loved so much about him....
    Oh, shit, Jessie thought with something like wonder. She loved...
    Something huge and loud clattered on the front porch, interrupting her thoughts and sending Max rocketing from the couch to grab up a poker from next to the fireplace. Jessie tensed, heart pounding, but relaxed a little when he turned from the window. In the firelight his hair looked very dark, his eyes very blue.
    “The wind blew the swing over.” He looked out the window again, up and down, before turning back to her. “There’s a bunch of trees down in the yard, too, but nothing else.”
    She let out the breath she’d been holding, and it turned into an unexpected yawn. Max came back to the couch and set the poker close at hand when he settled in beside her. Jessie scooted closer.
    His hand passed over her hair when she snuggled against him. “You should go to sleep. I’ll stay up. Keep watch.”
    “No way. You think I could sleep up there by myself anyway?” She stifled another yawn and wriggled as close as she could, even if it meant suffering the ache in her ankle when she shifted.
    Max kissed the top of her head. “In the morning, someone will come.”
    “You think so?”
    “I only rented the cabin for the weekend,” he reminded her. “I’m sure Freddy will be by to make sure we’re all checked out.”
    “Unless he can’t get across the river.” Jessie breathed Max’s delicious, familiar scent. She’d have recognized him anywhere by the combination of fabric softener and soap, the musky hint of his cologne.
    Max was quiet for a few seconds. “Then we’ll hike our way out.”
    Jessie tipped her face to his, not laughing this time. “You know what?”
    He looked down at her. “What?”
    “If I had to be stranded in a cabin in horrible storm with some creepy monster thing outside terrorizing us, I’m glad it was with you.”
    He looked surprised, but only briefly. His mouth creased into a smile she could feel against her mouth when he kissed her. “Same here.”
    With a sigh, Jessie snuggled back against him. In silence, she watched the fire leap and crackle, and