Bound By Desire (The Acadian Curse) by Rebecca Lyndon

still
seemed pretty far from the horizon. She decided to stop by Maggie’s
shop to waste a little more time. Besides, she figured fresh baked
pie had never hurt anyone’s cause.
    The way Grant was staring at that bag now, as
though either the means for redemption or damnation of his soul
rested inside it, made Sarah think that she’d timed it just
right.
    She risked another step. He looked up at her
face. He didn’t need to say a word to stop her. His body was tense
and still. The strange light was back in his eyes, rising and
falling, growing then fading. Both sides of him were struggling for
control, the same way they had the night before. Right now, it
looked like a draw.
    For half a second, Sarah doubted her own
resolve. She glanced westward. The sun’s edge was just barely
touching the mountain line. It was now or never.
    “Let me inside, Grant. Please.”
    He stared at her, hard. His lips were pressed
together so tightly that they had almost disappeared.
    Sarah slowly rose up the last two stairs. He
made no move toward her or away. She lifted her hand and wiped away
the sweat that had begun to bead on his brow.
    “Please,” she repeated.
    Sarah leaned in closer and brushed her lips
against his. That was it. She wouldn’t push him any farther.
    There was more than a hint of glittering
emerald in his stare when she pulled away.
    “Are you sure you want this?” His voice was
thick and rough. She wasn’t sure which part of him was asking. It
didn’t matter. They were both him.

    Sarah swallowed past the quickly swelling
lump in her throat and nodded. It was her hands that were trembling
now.
    “Then come with me.”
    Before we both change our minds. He
stared at her, almost apologetically, before he turned and strode
inside. Sarah followed. She set the pie down on the foyer table and
locked the front door behind her. Grant was obviously past thinking
about such trivialities. He was already halfway down the hall. The
thin fabric of his T-shirt was now stretched so tight that she
could see each muscle in his back working underneath as he
walked.
    He threw open a door next to the kitchen and
disappeared through it. Sarah sucked in a breath through her
clenched teeth. She looked down at her hand. It was still wrapped
around the cold metal doorknob. Apparently, she wasn’t as sure
about this as she’d thought.
    But she was committed.
    “In for a penny…” she whispered to herself
before she let go of her last chance of escape and raced to catch
up.
    A flight of stairs led down to a basement.
Below, another door—this one thick, dull steel—hung open. Beyond
it, Sarah could make out bare walls bathed in a fluorescent
glow.
    Her legs felt shaky as she took the first
step, and it wasn’t just from excitement. Sarah hated basements,
always had. In her mind they were always dank, dark holes in the
ground, just like the one her grandmother had had. Her rational
mind knew that Grant’s wouldn’t be anything like the rotted wood
and flickering bulb basement of her childhood, but it didn’t
matter. There would still be monsters hiding in the corners, only
this time they wouldn’t only be in her imagination.
    “The door will shut in thirty seconds. Once
it’s locked, it won’t open until dawn.” A deep voice carried up
from the bottom. Grant’s voice was changing quickly now.
    The time for thinking was over.
    Sarah hurried down the rest of the basement
stairs. Her feet moved deftly despite the weakness that had set up
in her knees. She didn’t stop running until she was in the center
of the room.
    The bunker he had created beneath his house
was every bit as stark as she imagined it would be. It was smaller
than she envisioned though, not more than a ten by ten foot square.
The walls were the same dull steel of the door. The only concession
to comfort was a thin beige carpet covering the floor. The light
came from a single industrial-looking fixture adhered to the
ceiling. A simple folding table and chair