10. Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Clara

“ O h, fuck! Bastion ...” I didn’t mean to moan his name as I came. I blamed it on the eggnog, but it was more than that. Bastion Weber was more than just the town’s enigma that seemed to cling to the shadows wherever I went. He’d inspired me to stand up to Hogan and helped me get away with literal murder.

His infuriatingly handsome smirk, wrapped around that candy-cane he always had in his mouth, haunted my thoughts. I wanted him. There was something about him that called to my deepest desires. But now when I was finally free to be with him, he’d ghosted me, leaving my high and dry.

I sat up, a surge of arousal leaking from my pussy. Okay, maybe not so dry.

I sat up, my legs wobbly as I headed to the kitchen for another glass of eggnog and a cookie to drown my feelings, and another shift outside the window snagged my attention.

A chill shot down my spine as I padded to the window to find the figure of a man walking away from the cabin.

Someone’s out there.

Maybe in a normal situation, if I was any other woman alone in a cabin miles away from civilization, fear would take hold. Hogan had been a piece of shit, but if he’d given me anything for Christmas, it was the gift of never fearing men again, knowing the deadly weapon I could be when provoked.

Wrenching on my pajama pants, oversized puffer coat and boots, I flew outside into the cold snow with nothing but the empty eggnog bottle clutched in my hand like a weapon.

The man turned, that smirk I knew all too well finding me through the snow. “And what are you planning on doing with that, little beast?”

“Bastion?” My insides twisted. “What the fuck? What are you doing here?”

It was the dead of night, in the middle of a blizzard. The driveway was mostly snowed in by now, and his car was nowhere in sight. “And how in Heat-Miser’s Hell did you even get up here? The roads must be shit.”

He shrugged a shoulder with the nonchalance he might have had if I’d caught him on a casual evening stroll. “I’m German. I do well in this kind of weather.”

I gaped at him with incredulous anger that seemed to be keeping me warm despite my lack of real pants. “Bastion. How did you know I was here?”

There were a million questions flying around in my mind, yet that last question I knew the answer. He always had a knack for showing up in the same places as me. My shop. The post office. The grocery store. Even my house. But this? Showing up at a cabin I’d only just moved back into. No one but the Birkmires knew I was here. Even if he’d followed me from town, I’d been up here for hours.

“Were you watching me?”

The heated look on his face, with the twinge of shame, was the only answer I needed. I wanted to be angry, and I was…but the emotion was numbed by the surge of heat twisting through my body.

“I made a mistake,” he admitted.

Ugh. He was so handsome, standing there with his jet-black hair flecked with snowflakes and his ice blue eyes catching the glow from the Christmas tree lights shining through the living room window. Any other man who’d been standing out in the freezing cold for hours would be half-frozen, wet and miserable-looking.

But here he was, looking somehow refreshed by the cold. How was that even possible?

“A mistake. What mistake? You mean stalking me constantly?” The words wouldn’t stop pouring out of my mouth. “Then ghosting me out of nowhere, making me think you’re with someone else…only to find you lurking outside my window?”

His panty-obliterating smirk was gone in a blink, and in its place was something dark and predatory that I’d only seen brief glimpses of before.

“I watch over you, Clara,” he growled, his voice laced with vindication. “I protect you.”

“I don’t need your protection, asshole. Clara saves herself, remember? You still haven’t told me why you’re here. Because as perverted as you obviously are, I don’t think you came all the way up here to watch me flick my bean. It’s Christmas Eve. Aren’t you supposed to be on a weekend getaway or some shit?”

“I was talking about us, Clara.”

Was this guy for real? My brows furrowed into an angry V. “Oh, shoot. Sorry for not being able to read minds! You never said you were talking about me; You made it seem like you were with another woman. You let me sit here all night thinking you’d just up and ghosted me.”

“I’m sorry, I was trying to surprise you.”

“With what, a heart attack?”

The way he stared at me, with all the sadness in the world, had my heart aching. But there was something else banked in his icy eyes too—something that had me feeling like I was staring at a dangerous animal through the bars of a cage. Watching and waiting, crouched at the ready in case I was foolish enough to get too close. And it was that look that had my pussy dripping all over again.

Fuck . I still wasn’t wearing underwear. I pressed my thighs together to prevent fat tears of arousal from streaking down my thighs. A phantom smile tugged at the corner of Bastion’s mouth. He seemed to know exactly what I was doing but he had enough sense not to comment on it.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. You need to stay away from me, Clara,” Bastion said, shaking his head. “I’m not safe.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been following me around for years like the bodyguard I never asked for. Now suddenly you’re the bad guy?”

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m the bad guy. I’m like one of the monsters from your books.”

I snorted. If that was the case we’d be fucking right now.

“This thing I’m trying to save you from—you can’t kill it. Not like you did with Hogan.”

With a frustrated sigh, I pinched the bridge of my nose. All I wanted for Christmas was to understand this man. I shook my head, arms folding around myself to keep me from shivering. “What thing are you talking about Bastion?”

“Something ancient…” Freshly fallen snow crunched beneath his boot as he took a cautious step toward me. “Something demonic.”

“Demonic? Ancient? Wow, sounds like a good story you’re cooking up there. Maybe you should quit tree farming and get into writing,” I said dryly, finding myself wishing I’d brought my mug of eggnog outside to warm my stiff fingers. Any sane person would have gone inside by now to leave the psycho stalker out in the cold.

Maybe it was my curse to forever be drawn to this strange man.

He was magnetic, even when he looked at me like I was something to eat. Hell, especially then.

He took another step toward me and then another, slowly shrinking the distance between us. “Oh, I’m being dead serious.”

“Yeah? Fine, let’s pretend for a second that I believe. What ancient demon lives inside you Bast? Or is this all just some metaphor?”

“No metaphor. A dark curse runs through my family, something my grandfather brought over when he immigrated from Germany. Something that runs in my blood. Something that allows me to turn into a monster.”

“A monster? Like a werewolf?”

The corner of his mouth hiked up in a devilish smirk. “Like the Krampus, Clara.”

Silence stretched between us as I waited for the punchline to drop. When none came, I laughed anyway. “Okay, now I’m being punked, right?” I did my classic gag of looking around for the hidden cameras. When I turned my attention back to Bastion, I jumped and clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle my yelp of surprise.

He’d devoured the several feet of distance between us without me noticing in under a second.

I peered around him to find there weren’t any footprints from where he’d been to where we both stood now. As if he’d teleported.

“H–how did you do that?”

He produced another candy-cane seemingly from mid-air and pushed the shaft into his mouth with that signature grin. “Magic.”

Bastion always had this mischievous air about him, despite the miasma of dark energy clinging to him, like the way he twirled the candy cane around his finger before sticking it in his mouth. His constant sweet tooth and his sarcastic jokes, paired his white hot gaze brimming with hunger, burned into my flesh like a brand.

The combination was fucking electric.

“Go back inside, Clara. You’re shaking.”

I was shaking, but it had nothing to do with the cold anymore.

He was so close we were nearly touching. My entire body burned with the need to feel his skin against mine.

Like something chemical going off in my brain, drawing me closer.

This time I took the last step forward—my chest now flush with his, my palms smoothing over his pectorals. Even over his jacket I could feel how built he was. Lugging lumber all day really kept him fit.

“You shouldn’t be rewarded for spying on me, but I’m not going to leave you out in the cold to freeze.”

He smiled, as if I’d said something funny. “I won’t freeze. My demon keeps me warm.”

“What other tricks can your demon do?”

“You don’t believe me. You think I’m joking.” He lifted a finger to trail along my jawline, sending a shiver vibrating down my spine.

“That or you really believe you’re the Krampus, and I just think you’re crazy. But so what? I made you an accessory to murder. Who am I to judge?”

He gripped my jaw, his thumb rubbing my lower lip with a growling sigh. “If you invite me inside, understand what you’re signing up for.”

“Let’s say I’m just crazy enough to believe you. I’m not afraid of you.”

“Maybe you should be.”

My chest clenched at his words, the frigid air sticking in my lungs. “If you’re so dangerous, why have you been following me around? Why did you let me kiss you the other night?”

“I had no idea just how much my demon craves you, until now.”

A flutter erupted between my thighs at the way his eyes lit up, but I stuffed down the feeling, steeling my nerves. “I’ve faced bigger monsters than you. What are you gonna do, stuff me in a bag? Take me into the mountains and beat me with a stick?”

He licked his lips, that evil gleam in his eyes growing brighter by the second until his irises were glowing with a supernatural incandescence.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do, Clara.”