Bound By The Night: Dark Heat / Dark Dreams / Dark Fantasy

“I saw you.” She’d watched him head off and return hours later. Sweating. Panting.

“I should shower first.”

“Sure,” she said. “If you want to.”

He didn’t move. Monica smiled and set the bowl of pasta in front of him. Jordan fell on it like a starving beast, scooping a huge portion and digging in without so much as a second look. She served herself, eyeing him casually, though in reality she was taking in his every move.

“Good,” he grunted around a mouthful of bread.

“You were hungry, huh?”

Jordan paused. Chewed. Swallowed. He reached for the glass of red wine she’d set out and drained half the glass before answering her. “Yes.”

“Good,” Monica echoed him and set to eating her own portion. She hadn’t been exercising as he had, but she managed to put away a decent amount of pasta before she sat back in her chair to rub her belly.

Jordan had cleared his plate, plus the salad and most of the bread, and was looking hopefully toward the kitchen. “Is there more?”

“Yes. Plenty. Help yourself.” Monica watched him get up. The view from the back was as nice as the one from the front.

He caught her looking when he came back. She didn’t pretend to be embarrassed. He frowned, settling into his chair.

“I’m not on the menu,” he said. “In case you were hoping for dessert.”

Monica burst into laughter. “Oh. Was I that obvious?”

“No, actually, you’re not obvious at all.” He sat back in his chair and gave her a look so stern it made her sit back, too.

“Erm,” she said finally when it was clear that was all he was going to say. “Sorry?”

Jordan swiped at his mouth with a paper napkin and flung it down, then got up to pace a little bit. “I mean, what the hell was last night?”

Before she could answer, not that she had any clue what to say, he’d turned on his heel and stalked over to her. He should’ve been intimidating—and he was, or he would be if she hadn’t faced actual monsters, not just some guy with his boxers in a twist. When he leaned to get in her face, though, she did pull back a little.

“I thought you were in trouble,” he snapped.

“So you figured you’d save me?” Monica snapped back. “Well, that’s noble and all, but I promise you, I can take care of myself.”

“I’ve seen what that thing can do. You haven’t, not firsthand.”

She put a hand on his bare chest, no longer sweaty. He’d taste like salt, she thought. And fuck, that made her want to lick him.

“I’ve seen other things, Jordan. I’m not a shrinking flower—”

His hands gripped her upper arms, tight. She was up and out of the chair before she knew it. She thought he meant to kiss her, and she was already opening her mouth for it, but instead, he shook his head. His dark hair had fallen over his eyes.

“The next thing I know, you’ve got me fucking you,” he said in a low, rumbling voice. “And that’s it. Nothing after that. Not a damned word about it, all day long.”

“I made you dinner,” Monica whispered, torn between being flattered he was so upset and apologetic for so unexpectedly hurting his feelings.

Jordan let her go and stepped back. He was still breathing hard. Light flashed in his eyes. He turned away from her, shoulders hunched. Fists clenched.

“Why are you even here?” he muttered. “It’s ridiculous. DiNero has too much fucking money.”

That stung. Monica rubbed at her arms where his fingers had left marks. “Look, I know what I do must seem crazy. But really, there are things out there that people refuse to see.”

He swung around to look at her, brows furrowed, mouth curled into a sneer. “Sure. Like a goat sucker?”

“Among others. Yes. You work with animals—is it so hard for you to imagine that there are creatures we don’t know about?” She put her hands on her hips. “Something came through that wall. Multiple times. Something killed those animals. And something, if we don’t figure out what the hell it is, will come back again and again and continue until everything in this zoo is dead, probably including the people. Because it can, Jordan. It simply fucking can.”

“Keeping the animals safe is my job. Not yours.”

“Yeah, well, DiNero hired me to figure out what it is, okay? So once I do that, I can tell you what to do to keep them safe. My crew can come in and hunt it down, and if DiNero wants it alive, maybe we can even figure out how to tell you to take care of it. I’m sorry I stepped on your toes, if I did. And I’m sorry about last night... No, fuck that,” she amended. “I’m not sorry about last night. I needed you, and you were there. I’m glad you were. Believe it or not, I appreciated it.”

“Great. So I did you a favor?” Jordan’s scowl twisted further.

She stepped closer to him. He backed up. She took another. This time, he stayed. She’d seen a look like that before. It turned out she’d been developing a habit of wounding men’s pride, and that broke her more than anything else had.

Monica closed her eyes for a second. Thinking of Carl. How much she’d loved him and how long it had been since she’d felt that way about anyone. Maybe she never would again.

“I had a nightmare. I was attacked some time ago, and sometimes I dream about it,” she said in a low voice.

“Okay.” He eyed her warily. “And that’s my problem?”

Oh, he was going to make this difficult. “In the dreams, I relive the attack. When I wake up, I can’t get out from under it. The only thing that really helps me is to...fuck.”

“What kind of attack?”

“I was hiking with my husband,” Monica said flatly. “We’d gone into some unknown trails, stupid, I guess, but we thought it would be fun. Isn’t that how horror stories always start? We thought it would be fun at the time?”

“I don’t like horror stories.”

Monica laughed bitterly, then shrugged. “Something came out of the woods. Slashed at him. Knocked me out next, so I didn’t see what happened. It dragged him into a cave, where it killed him. It took me next. I woke up next to his body. When it came back, I fought it and killed it.”

She said it matter-of-factly, not because the story didn’t move her emotionally, but because it was the story she’d told the police and the wildlife officers and everyone else, the same story so many times the words themselves came by rote. It was the only way she could tell that story without breaking down.

Monica rubbed her arms again, this time against the chill of gooseflesh that had risen there. The food in her belly shifted uncomfortably. She couldn’t look at him anymore.

“What was it?” Jordan asked.

She shook her head. “They said it was a bear.”

“Bullshit,” he said.

She did look at him then. Her chin went up. “I don’t know what it was. I never figured it out. But I knew it was something, not a bear. It had scales. It could see in the dark. It had claws...”

She shuddered and went silent.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Jordan said quietly, “I’m sorry.”