Anew: Book Two: Hunted by Josie Litton Page A

parents.” His mouth tightens with old, remembered pain.
“My mother had bruises. I knew how she was getting them but I couldn’t do
anything about it.”
    “Did you tell anyone?”
    He shakes his head. “Even then I had a sense of how powerful
my father was. I knew that no one would take her side against him. When I tried
to talk to her, my mother insisted that everything was fine. I realize now that
she was doing what she thought she had to do in order to protect her children.”
    “She loves you very much.” I haven’t spent a great deal of
time with Helene Slade but I have gotten to know her well enough to be certain
that she was and still is a devoted mother. One who did find the courage to
leave her abusive husband once she was certain that Ian had escaped him.
    He nods. “She’s a wonderful woman but nothing could change
the fact that I felt completely helpless. That scared the shit out of me and
made me really angry. I started ditching school, roaming all over the city,
looking for something, anything that could help. In a weird way, watching a
building being torn down and something new going up in its place was a reminder
that nothing’s forever, things can be changed, made better.”
    As the significance of what this place means to him settles
over me, I ask, “That’s why you carved your initials here?”
    He shrugs. “I guess. I think that I wanted to leave some
evidence that even though I couldn’t do anything to help my mother, I was still
real. I existed.”
    My throat clenches. I know all too well the pain that comes
from trying to affirm one’s existence to an uncaring universe. But at the same
time, I’m well aware that Ian is opening up to me in a way he has never done
before. First admitting to desires he has fought to deny and then revealing how
vulnerable he has felt.
    I could weep for the child he was but it’s to the man that I
turn. My fingers, coming away from the tree, twine around his. I rest my other
hand on his chest and lift myself on tiptoe. Softly, I touch my mouth to his,
giving him time to draw back should he so choose.
    When he doesn’t, I’m emboldened. If there’s any chance that
he’s right about it being better not to let the past fester… Like the spring
leaves, hope unfurls in me, small and tentative but present all the same.
    “I’m not afraid of you, Ian. You have never done anything to
harm me, and I don’t believe that you ever could.”
    The muscles in his throat ripple. I draw closer, pressing my
body against his, needing desperately to give him everything--passion, yes, but
also warmth, comfort, and above all, acceptance. Or perhaps what I truly need
to share with him is love, that mysterious, elusive emotion that I’m not even
sure I’m capable of experiencing.
    “You have too much faith in me,” he says. “You need to be
free, Amelia. After all the years that were taken from you before you were
allowed to awaken, I can’t bear the thought of denying you the opportunity to
live to the fullest.”
    Passion flares behind his eyes. His hand cups the back of my
head. “But at the same time, I want to keep you only for myself, to possess you
completely. I want to be in your every breath, your every thought. I really do
want to own you in a way that has nothing to do with any paperwork.”
    His lips brush mine, once, again, savoring, parting, taking.
His tongue thrusts deeply. The spiral of need and pleasure spins upward, wilder
by every moment, out of control. My fingers dig into his broad shoulders, my
body pliant under his hands.
    The taste of him intoxicates me. I want more. My hunger for
him is ravenous. He is light, air, hope, promise. He is everything.
    I cling to him, my arms wrapped around his waist, my hands
savoring the feel of hard, toned muscles just beneath his shirt. He backs me
against the trunk of the tree, reaches out to grasp my wrists, and stretches my
arms over my head. His big, hard body holds me in place.
    “I’ve missed