The Dark Places Read Online Free Page A

wanted it
hanging on their walls…. Featureless gray-and-beige deserts. Pale
green lakes. Bleached-white skies. And dominating over it all, the distant but blistering white sun star
of this dreary little mining planet. Not all the planet was covered with deserts—just most of it.
    “You know, I really hate Harnaru,”
I said, thinking about the scorned canvasses stacked against a wall in my
studio room’s tiny closet. “I never should have tried painting something I
hated,” I muttered to myself. I’d half-forgotten Matt’s presence.
    His silence lasted a long minute,
as if he was immersed in deep thought. Then he captured my hand in a firm
grasp. “Why did you come to Harnaru ?”
    I glared. “It was a far as my
savings would take me in this system, third class,” I snapped. I resented these
questions. On the frontier planets, no one so much as poked into anyone else’s
past. Everyone took it for granted that you wouldn’t be crazed enough to stray
out here if you weren’t trying to outrun bad memories or grim situations. It
was common courtesy not to ask about anyone’s past, like I was trying not to do
to Matt Lorins. What demon is he escaping
out here on the frontier? Mine? A manipulative family.
    Matt’s strange dark eyes steadily
absorbed my mutinous look. “Would you like to leave Harnaru?” he asked, keeping
his intense gaze fixed on me.
    “As soon as I save up enough for a
ticket somewhere else,” I vowed through clenched teeth.
    “Would you like to leave sooner
than that?”
    “What do you mean?” My tone came
out brittle, and I was sorry to be acting hostile to Matt, who had just treated
me to a wonderful—up to that point—evening.
    Was
that green haze clouding over his eyes ? Was
there something wrong with the torch lights? I blinked, and they’d regained
their unusual dark aspect with their central fireworks. Maybe that Sauran cordial deserved more respect . I filed away a mental
note not to touch another drop that night.
    “What I mean, Kailiri, is that I
have enjoyed this evening with you and I’ve no desire to see it end,” he said
quietly. He drew a deep breath and tightened his arm about my waist. “But it’s
your decision as to how we shall go on from here.”
    My eyes widened. He was an
attractive, intelligent man with beautiful manners—and he hadn’t asked me to
split the tab. If he was alluding to spending the rest of the night together, I might be persuaded—if he got me in
the mood…. But that other thing he’d mentioned about leaving the planet raised
my alarms. The media had inundated the public with stories about off-world
abductors and slavers snaring unwary females.
    Conscious of the close-by crowd, I
lowered my voice. “What does leaving Harnaru have to do with this evening?” I
sounded belligerent to my own ears and winced.
    Matt gave me a lazy, charming smile
before he lowered his head and covered my lips with his. My breathing must have
stopped, because my head felt giddy. Spontaneous tingling shot through me under
the spell of his warm, questing lips.
    He raised his head, and a puzzled
frown drew his dark brows together over his compelling eyes. Then he captured
my dazed look in his unblinking stare. Gazing into his eyes this close, with
his desirable lips poised a mere finger’s length away, felt like drowning in a
dark pool lit with green-and-golden fire sparks. An insidious chill crept
through my body and surrounded my heart, and I couldn’t suppress the quiver
that seized me.
    At first I thought the shiver
response sprang from a creeping chill caused by cooled-down desert air borne
into Marnu upon a sly night breeze. But when Matt’s arms encircled me and drew
me closer, as if the diners didn’t exist on the balcony, I knew the chill’s
source sprouted from a deep uneasiness. Would
harm befall me with this man ?
    I couldn’t think. One kiss had
toppled me into turmoil, and the shivering continued. It was like standing
unprotected out in a