After months of increasingly sensual flirting, it’s time for Max and Jessie to take their relationship to the next level. A remote cabin in the wilderness seems like the perfect place to finally give in to the volcanic desire that’s been building between them.

Their first night together is every bit as amazing as Jessie anticipated. But the weekend quickly takes an eerie turn as strange things start happening and a mysterious dark figure begins stalking them in the woods. Something far more powerful and terrifying than they’ve ever known....

The Darkest Embrace

Megan Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Copyright

Chapter 1

The GPS’s carefully modulated female voice had informed them it was “recalculating” twenty minutes ago, and so far the percentage bar at the top of the unit had remained at a solid, unyielding and entirely unhelpful eighty-eight percent. Jessie wasn’t worried—they were on a major highway, the scenery was pretty and she was with Max. She didn’t mind the drive.

Max, on the other hand, had already apologized several times, sheepishly admitting he hadn’t bothered to print out directions or look at a map beforehand. Now he gave a frustrated sigh and reached to reset the device. “I’m sorry, Jessie. I really didn’t think Karen would let me down.”

Karen? Jessie kept her expression neutral. She’d known Max for nearly five months. They’d been dating seriously for three. He’d often referred to an “ex”—sometimes the “evil ex” and sometimes “that crazy woman I was with,” and once, after a night of too many beers, he went so far as to say “that insane fucking bitch.” It was the only time Jessie had ever heard him swear. It had been so sexy that she’d have pounced him right then and there if they’d been alone instead of in the middle of his best friend’s living room at a party. He’d never said his ex’s name.

“Recalculating,” the GPS said.

“Shut up, Karen,” Max said, visibly irritated, and shot Jessie another apologetic look. “Sorry.”

Jessie burst into laughter. “Karen’s the GPS?”

He nodded, watching the road as he fiddled with the unit. “Yeah, you can pick the voice for it. John, Alex, Lisa...”

“And you picked Karen.” Jessie laughed again, wishing she could lean over to kiss his face right off but keeping herself in her seat instead. There’d be plenty of time for kissing when they got to the cabin—at least if she had anything to do with it.

“Yep.” Max grinned.

Jessie melted.

They’d been introduced by Jessie’s friend Kelly, who was dating Max’s friend Len. Kelly had confided to Jessie that Max had had a spectacularly bad breakup that he wasn’t really ready to date anyone, that he was a super-sweet and nice guy who wasn’t going to expect a lot from her, but they really needed another couple to get this great deal on a night out at the local casino, and would Jessie please, please, please do Kelly this favor and agree to go out with him? Jessie, wary because Kelly had set her up with a couple of real douche bags in the past, had only agreed because Kelly promised to pay for her share of the night out. As far as Jessie was concerned, a steak dinner and a hundred bucks’ credit for the slots was worth a night out even with a total jerk—though Max had turned out to be anything but. He was everything Kelly had promised, and more. They’d become an easy foursome after that for nights out, and after a few weeks, Max had hesitantly asked to exchange phone numbers “so we don’t have to go through Kelly if we want to get together.” Five months later, they were on their way for a weekend of camping in the remote wilds of northwestern Pennsylvania, and Jessie was determined that it was going to be a romantic weekend getaway.

Their first.

Five months since that first “not a date,” three months since Max had asked her if it would be okay if they went to the movies without Kelly and Len. He’d taken her to see a truly awful superhero flick and left her on her doorstep with nothing but a kiss on the cheek. Since then, they’d graduated to casual hand-holding, a few make-out sessions that had always been inconveniently interrupted by one thing or another and a lot of increasingly suggestive text message exchanges. Max was a flirt, but he seemed more comfortable with innuendo over the phone or online than in person. He’d told her he thought people took things too fast, and while it had been refreshing at first to discover he was such a gentleman, Jessie was ready for more.

So funny, she thought, watching him as he concentrated on the road ahead, occasionally glancing at the GPS to confirm they were still on route. Five months of being together almost every day, if not in person, then on the phone or messaging, had taught her a lot about Max. Jessie knew his favorite color, his brand of cologne, that he hated raisins cooked in anything and called them “Satan’s boogers.” She knew the name of his first dog, where he’d grown up, his shoe size and that he loved pecan pie but hated lemon meringue. She knew so many bits and pieces of him that she didn’t doubt she knew the whole...except for the parts about his ex. That was an open, blank space in the lexicon of Max.

They were both in the early thirties with several relationships under their belts. Jessie, in fact, had been married once already to her college sweetheart, Doug. He’d been vindictive and nasty, fought with her over money and levied accusations at her with such vehemence that Jessie had found it difficult to believe she’d ever once loved this guy enough to think she could spend the rest of her life with him. Yet, to her, Doug still had a name. He was an asshole, but she wouldn’t have called him crazy. She wasn’t afraid to talk about the mistakes she’d made with him, but she didn’t feel like she had to go over them ad infinitum either. She understood Max’s hesitance in moving forward, but not his completely closed-mouth attitude about it. Whatever had gone on with Max and his mysterious ex must have been horrifying to have affected him that way.

“In point two miles,” Karen intoned, “take exit 4A on the left.”

“We’re almost there.” Max tapped the steering wheel and gave Jessie another grin. “Just about another forty-five minutes or so once we get off the highway.”

“Good.” Jessie shifted in her seat. She needed to use the bathroom, stretch her legs, soothe the growing rumble in her stomach. They hadn’t stopped since lunch, both of them eager to make the four-hour trip as fast and easy as possible.

“It’s so beautiful here,” she said a few minutes later when they’d taken the exit as Karen instructed and then another couple of side roads. Tall evergreens rose on both sides of the road, so thick she couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond the twisting two-lane road. “How’d you find out about this place?”

Max shrugged. “Online. A buddy of mine told me about this site where you can book out-of-the-ordinary weekend getaways—stay in a castle or a tree house, things like that. I figured a cabin in the woods wasn’t all that exotic, but I wasn’t sure you’d be into something...weirder.”

“So long as there’s indoor plumbing and hot water, I’m good.” She looked at him when he didn’t answer. “There is indoor plumbing, right? And hot water?”

He burst into laughter, looking at her. “Yes, there’s—”

“Look out!” Caught up in looking at him, Jessie hadn’t been paying attention to the road in front of them. A dark flash of something big moving in front of them caught her gaze.

Max swerved. The Chevy Suburban shuddered as it crossed what would have been the center line on a bigger road. The tires dipped into the rut on the side of the road as Max yanked the wheel in the other direction, keeping the big vehicle from going into the ditch but sending them bouncing so hard that Jessie’s seat belt locked against her shoulder and neck. The suitcases in the back rattled, the clink and clank of bottles in the boxes of food they’d brought along becoming the alarming crunch of broken glass. Jessie was sure the SUV was going to cross the road completely and hit the trees on the other side, but it came to a skewed stop with a squeal of brakes.

“Are you okay?” Max unbuckled his seat belt to lean across to her. “Jessie?”

Touched that his first thought was for her but a little too shaken to speak, she nodded. Something big and dark moved at the passenger side window, skittering around the back of the Suburban. With a gasp, she twisted in her seat to look out the back window.

“Something’s back there,” she said.

Max looked, too, but the road on both sides was still clear of anything but asphalt and shadows. “Did you see what it was?”

“No.” Jessie took a few calming breaths. “It was fast whatever it was.”

“Deer probably. They’re all over up here. Glad we didn’t hit them.” Max shook his head. “Thank God you were paying attention. Hey, you sure you’re okay?”

He scooted closer to twist a tendril of her hair away from her face. When he leaned in to kiss her, Jessie slipped a hand up to cup the back of his neck, holding him close. The kiss started off sweet but lingered, turning sexy. Max broke it, his lips still so close they brushed hers with every word.

“We stopped really suddenly. You might be a little sore,” he whispered.

“Maybe you’ll have to give me a massage,” Jessie whispered back and kissed him again, her mouth open and waiting for his tongue.

He gave it to her in soft, slow strokes that got faster when she moved against him. His fingers wound in her hair, tugging a little to bring her closer. Everything inside her melted and turned liquid. Heat pooled low in her belly at the soft moan from the back of Max’s throat. Her fingers found the seat belt buckle and unclicked it so she could slide across the bench seat toward him.

His mouth opened wider, their teeth clashing just a little as she moved. His hand in her hair pulled harder as she dug her fingers into his shoulders with one hand, the other high on his denim-clad thigh. She shivered at the bunch and shift of his muscles under her hand.

The rap of something hard on Max’s window scared them both into breaking apart. Breathing hard, her heart already pounding from the taste of him, Jessie put a hand to the throbbing pulse at the base of her neck. Max had put out an arm to shield her, but relaxed a little at the sight of a black-and-red plaid shirt and a bearded face peering through the glass. The man on the other side of the window rapped again, a wide gold ring clinking on the glass.

“Sit back,” Max murmured. He cracked the window a little, smart enough not to open it more than half an inch. “Hi.”

“Youse okay?” The man leaned a little lower to stare across Max’s shoulder at Jessie from under bushy eyebrows that raised a little when he saw her. “How ’bout you, ma’am? You all right?”

“Fine. We’re both fine.” Max cracked the window a little more. “Almost hit a deer.”

“Yeah, they’ll try to run you off the road around here, that’s for damn sure.” He nodded and took a step back from the Suburban as he tapped the roof, then bent again to look in the window. “Where you headed?”

“We’re going...camping,” Max said with a pause.

“Oh, up at Romero’s, I bet?” The man’s grin showed white, even teeth too large for his mouth. Jessie had thought him to be a lot older until she saw that grin—now she’d have put him in his late twenties instead of forties, and the change was startling.

Max glanced at her, then back at the stranger. “You know it?”

“Yeah, I know it. It’s my brother’s place. It’s up the road a ways. You’ll have to take the next two lefts before you get to the lane. I can go ahead of you, if you want.”

“That’s okay,” Max said evenly. “We have a GPS.”

The man guffawed. “Good luck with that. We get shit service out here. Cell phones, too. Might as well use smoke signals for all the good they’ll do. But, hey, if you just take the first two lefts, you’ll get there. You can always stop in at Dave’s Meats if you need more directions.”

He thumped again on the roof and took another step back. He made a show of looking up and down the road, then at the SUV. “You didn’t hit the deer, did you?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Max shook his head, already moving to put the SUV in gear.

“Good.” The stranger’s voice dipped so low for a second that it was almost impossible to hear him through the window. “Good you didn’t hit it. Your tires, though. They look a little low.”

“Yeah? Damn.” Max craned his neck to look into the driver’s side mirror as Jessie did the same on her side.

She couldn’t see the tires, and she wasn’t about to get out of the Suburban and look—or let Max. There was something creepy about that guy, something she couldn’t put her finger on and was probably just her overactive imagination. Even so, there was going to be no getting out of the SUV.

Max must have had the same idea because he nodded at the guy through the window and put the truck in reverse, carefully executing a perfect three-point turn to get them back on the road in the right direction. As he pulled away, Jessie looked over her shoulder to watch the guy get smaller in the distance. That’s when she realized what had been so strange. The man had needed to lean down to look in the Suburban’s window, but the vehicle itself was huge.

“He must’ve been super-tall,” she blurted, twisting again to look behind her, but the stranger had disappeared. “And where’d he come from anyway?”

“Hell if I know,” Max answered as he took the first left. “But I sure hope he gave us good directions.”

* * *

Max should have known better than to trust the GPS. Now he was going to look like an idiot to Jessie when they couldn’t even make it to the cabin he’d spent so many hours carefully researching to find. He’d wanted this weekend to be perfect—romantic and sexy, just like Jessie herself—but it wasn’t off to the greatest start.

“There,” she said, pointing. “There’s Garden Stop. Oh, and there’s Dave’s Meats.”

It was a normal-looking gas station and convenience store with old-fashioned pumps out front but modern neon advertisements in the spotless plate glass window in the front. It also came complete with the obligatory sexless, ancient person in a rocking chair, smoking on a pipe. Max looked at the gas gauge and figured it was better to be safe than sorry. He pulled up to the pumps, but the sign said he had to prepay inside.

“No credit card payment,” he said ruefully with a glance at Jessie who was peering around him at the front of the store. “We’re really in the boonies.”

She laughed and unbuckled her seat belt. The click of it reminded him of how she’d slid across the seat to him before, which reminded him of the way her mouth had felt on his and how she’d smelled and sounded, and then his dick was starting to stir and he had to concentrate on something else so he didn’t embarrass himself.

“I hope they have a restroom,” she said as she got out. “And that it’s not too gross.”

They had more than a restroom—they had a full set of showers, available for only five bucks, according to the sign. HUNTERS WELCOME was hand-lettered on the faded sign. Jessie looked at it, her mouth quirked in the half smile that drove him a little too crazy for comfort.

“I’m sort of afraid to see what kind of shower they have in there.”

“I’ll go inside, pay for the gas. You need anything else?” he asked, thinking about the crash of glass from the back of the truck. He should check it out, see what had broken and what they might need to replace.

Ten minutes later, he’d paid for the gas inside. And while it pumped, he’d opened up the truck’s double back doors to assess the damage. The plastic crate he’d packed with a couple bottles of wine had tipped, and the rich earthy smell of the good Bordeaux he’d picked because Jessie liked red better than white hit him in a wave. Shit.

The damage got a little worse when he tried to pick up the glass and promptly sliced his thumb at the base. Bright blood welled to the surface, just a bead at first but then a rapid gush as he cradled it to his chest. Jessie came around the back of the truck just then, her mouth open to say something that she stifled at the sight.

“Max, what happened?”

“It’s nothing. Just a flesh wound,” he joked, knowing she’d get the reference to Monty Python. They’d watched it on one of their first dates.

She took his hand and looked at it, not even wincing at the sight of blood. She frowned. “No, it’s not. That’s pretty deep. What did you cut it on?”

“Wine bottle.” He used his chin to show her the broken bottles inside, the dark wine splashed all over the rest of the groceries.

“Well,” she said with a grin, “that’s too bad, isn’t it?”

A second later, though, she was frowning again in concern, his hand cupped in hers, her thumb pressing the wound to stanch the blood. “You need stitches. Or at least a bandage. C’mon, I’m sure they have something inside. Go wash your hands in the bathroom. I’ll see what’s in the store.”

He wanted to protest, reassure her that he was fine. Manly enough to handle just a little flesh wound. The truth was, the cut was already throbbing, the blood flow slowing but caked into his skin, and the way the skin gaped was making his stomach hurt.

Jessie closed her hands over his, gently cupping his wounded thumb. “Go.”

In the restroom, he used a paper towel to turn the hot water faucet until a trickle of first lukewarm, then scalding water shot out and splashed his front. Max did the best he could to clean it, but it was starting to hurt a lot more and he muttered a particularly creative string of curses.

Turning from the sink, he caught sight of the advertised shower, a narrow stall with a sagging, mildewed curtain shielding what looked like equally moldy tiles behind it and a steadily dripping showerhead. You’d have to pay him a helluva lot more than the five bucks they wanted to charge to get naked in that thing. On impulse, he twitched the curtain aside and stepped back at once with a stifled shout.

It looked like an abattoir.

Summers growing up as a kid, Max had spent a lot of time on his uncle’s farm. Uncle Rick and Aunt Lori had raised a few dairy cows, kept a bull, a coop of chickens, one or two pigs. They kept animals for food, not profit, and definitely not for pets. Max had learned that the hard way after he’d adopted a spindle-legged calf named Doey. Years later, when he watched the film version of The Silence of the Lambs, the scene in which Clarice described the sound of the lambs screaming had sent him from the theater faster than any of Hannibal Lecter’s tooth-sucking comments about fava beans. To this day, he couldn’t eat veal.

The barn had looked like this shower stall the day he’d found them slaughtering Doey.

Max backed up so fast that the heel of his boot caught on a ridge of tile. To catch himself from falling, he flung out his injured hand. Fresh pain, bright and wide and thick, covered him, and he let out a yelp that echoed in the dimly lit room. He could smell it now, he thought. The stink of old, dried blood. And hear the soft buzz of flies battering themselves against the small window set high in the wall.

Shit and blood, that’s what Uncle Rick had always said brought flies. Shit and blood.

Outside in the late-afternoon sunshine, the scene in the restroom seemed surreal. When he came around the corner, he found Jessie talking to the old woman/man sitting in the rocker on the front porch. Rather, the ancient lump of wrinkles and raggedy clothes was talking. Jessie seemed to be just listening.

“Stay out of the woods,” the old person was saying.

Jessie glanced up at him, her expression so carefully neutral that he could tell she was trying hard not to laugh. “Thanks, Mrs. Romero.”

“Who this?”

Jessie reached for Max’s good hand to pull him closer. “This is Max, my boyfriend.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d called him that, but it was still so new the word tied knots in his gut. “Hi.”

Mrs. Romero tipped her wizened face toward his, her eyes asquint, mouth still sucking greedily on the pipe. “You bleeding?”

“He cut his hand,” Jessie explained, pulling out a package of gauze bandages and first aid supplies from a cheerfully bright yellow plastic bag. “I’m going to fix him up, though. He’ll be okay.”

This set Mrs. Romero cackling so much that she pulled the pipe from her lips to point it at Jessie. “Oh, I betcha. He’ll be perfect.”

Another burst of cackling laughter sent the old woman into a spate of thick, congested coughing that bent her forward so far that Max was sure she was going to tip right out of the rocker. The door behind Jessie opened and a blonde woman wearing jeans and a denim shirt came out to grab Mrs. Romero by the shoulders and keep her upright. It took Max a second or two to figure out what seemed so off about the woman: Just like the guy back on the road, the blonde woman was extremely tall.

She shot them both an apologetic look. “Sorry. Mom, Mom! Mom, you got to calm yourself.”

Jessie backed up a few steps to get out of the way. “Sorry to upset her.”

The blonde woman shrugged, patting Mrs. Romero on the back until the coughing fit eased a little. Mrs. Romero fixed Max with a solid glare and pointed her pipe at him. “Perfect.”

Somehow, the way she said it didn’t make him feel perfect.

“Sorry,” the blonde woman said again. “She’s...old.”

“We need to get going,” Max said. “We’re supposed to be getting to the cabin.”

The blonde stood. “Oh, you’re the renters? Freddy’s been waiting for you so he can show you around, how to use the stove and stuff. You’re late.”

“We ran into a little trouble on the road,” Max said. His hand gave a twinge.

She shielded her hand to look up at the sky. “You’d better get moving, then. It’s getting dark and you don’t want to try to unpack in the dark. Storm’s coming.”

“There aren’t any lights?” Jessie asked with a quick glance his way.

“Gas lights,” the woman said as she rubbed Mrs. Romero’s back and the old woman turned her face to the side and spit on the porch floor. “Gas heat, stove, hot water. But you don’t want to be out too long after dark, the bugs will eat you alive.”

“Better bugs than Mrs. Romero,” Jessie said with a soft giggle when they were back in the truck and she’d torn open the package of bandages to work on his hand.

An innuendo rose to his lips about being eaten by Jessie being better than anything, but he quashed it. What was so easy for him over text or instant message never came out right in person. Instead, he let her take his hand to clean it with the antiseptic wipes she’d bought. It stung, but that wasn’t why he hissed in a breath. It was when Jessie took his hand and gently kissed the wound before pressing a gauze pad against it and wrapping it with a bandage that his heart skipped and thudded. Not to mention the rise in his pants.

Still cupping his hand in hers, she looked up at him from under her lashes. “This could make it hard for you to use your hand.”

“Yeah...” Max croaked, throat suddenly dry.

“Well,” Jessie said with a slowly spreading smile, “it’s a good thing you can still use your mouth.”

Chapter 2

The final trip to the cabin was as scenic and lovely as the first part of the journey, and thankfully much less eventful. Max eased the Suburban down increasingly narrow and isolated roads. Over a ravine, the wooden bridge little more than a series of heavy timbers. Past a few other cabins, some with lights or curious faces in the windows, but most dark. Then, finally, up a long, winding dirt track with the trees so close that they brushed the sides of the SUV, and...

“Wow,” Jessie gasped at the sight of it.

The cabin featured two pretty gables and a covered wraparound porch with carved columns and loads of intricately carved wooden gingerbread trim. Soft yellow light shone from the upper windows and from inside, but a brighter glow shone as they parked in front. At home there might still be light in the sky, but here in the forest, night was already close. The front door opened and a shadowy figure emerged holding a lantern. Jessie was already getting out of the truck, but paused at the sight. Surely the man wasn’t ducking to get out through the door?

“Hi! Freddy Romero.” The man held out his hand toward Max and gave Jessie a nod. “You’re late. Got scared you weren’t coming.”

“Ran into a little trouble on the road,” Max said.

Freddy gave a startlingly loud laugh, his teeth bright and shining in the growing dusk. “Deer.”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“My brother Jason told me,” Freddy said. “Said he came across you. Everything okay?”

Max nodded. “Yep.”

Jessie moved closer to him to look around Freddy. “It’s lovely here.”

“Right, right. Let me show you around, get you settled. Get out of your way before the storm hits,” Freddy said with a grin that was closer to a leer. “Give you your privacy.”

The tour of the cabin took ten minutes, five minutes longer than necessary, as far as Jessie was concerned, because there wasn’t really much to learn. Freddy paused in the doorway with his lantern, pointing out a list of places where they’d find instructions, if they needed them, for the hot water heater, the stove, the hot tub.

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