The Dark Ones Read Online Free PDF Page A

to her. She put the bottle to her lips and tipped her head back, taking several deep swallows. When she was done, she wiped her mouth with the back of a wrist and passed the now much depleted bottle back to him.
    Mark stared at the bottle in mock astonishment. “Damn.”
    She smiled again. “Thirsty.”
    “Fuck. I guess so.”
    He took a smaller swig and screwed the cap back on before tucking the bottle away again. “So what do you wanna do?”
    “You.”
    Mark laughed.
    Natasha wasn’t smiling now. “Serious.”
    Marked stopped laughing. This wasn’t a joke. “Whoa. Wow.”
    Now she smiled. Just a little one that dimpled the edges of her mouth. It made him stare at her lips, which looked plumper than usual. And darker. The sweet curve of her mouth had never looked so inviting. He realized she’d applied fresh lipstick very recently, something she rarely did prior to their nighttime excursions. There was a reason for that. Only an idiot wouldn’t get it. The deviation in her routine was a conscious thing. Between now and the time he’d seen her last—at the end of the school day—she’d made up her mind about something.
    Something involving him.
    Holy shit, I’m probably gonna fuck her tonight .
    Yes, all signs pointed to Mark Bell getting laid. And that was an infinitely cool fucking thing to happen anytime, but with this girl there was something extra special about it. God, she was so beautiful. Those lips. That delicate jawline. The big eyes and meticulously tweezed eyebrows. The cascade of lush black hair over her shoulder. The slender but achingly feminine body. She wore a very short black skirt over tight black leggings, accentuating the shapeliness of her legs and roundness of her ass. The very small Emily the Strange baby doll T-shirt made her medium-size breasts much larger than usual.
    He wanted desperately to kiss her.
    To . . . to . . .
    She put a hand over her mouth and giggled.
    Mark blinked. “What?”
    She pointed at his crotch. “Your . . . bulge.”
    Another giggle.
    Mark glanced down and saw what she was talking about. A massive hard-on tented the crotch of his jeans. “Oh . . . shit.”
    She laughed again. “It’s okay. I’m not offended. It’s just . . . wow.”
    Mark reached into his pants and adjusted the angle of his erection. She could say she wasn’t offended all she wanted, but it was goddamn embarrassing to leave it poking out like that.
    Natasha’s expression turned solemn with shocking suddenness. “Oh.”
    Mark frowned. “What?”
    “It’s just that . . .” She sighed and looked sad. “. . . I don’t know if all that . . . will fit in my mouth.”
    Feminine laughter.
    Mark groaned. “Wow. You are really fucking funny.”
    She giggled more.
    “Wait. This mean you’re gonna blow me?”
    “We can start there.”
    He took a step toward her, eager hands reaching for her. She placed the palm of a small hand flat against his chest and stopped him in his tracks. “Whoa. Not so fast. I mean, you can kiss me, whatever. But the fucking has to wait.”
    He groaned again. “What? Why? We could get in my car—”
    She shook her head, adamant. “No. I’ve got a better idea.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So tell me.”
    “You know that creepy old house?”
    He knew the house. They all did. Their friend Derek McGregor had stumbled across it during a solo outing one night several months back. Derek liked to venture out alone a lot. It wasn’t that he was antisocial. Well, no more than the rest of them. Within the group, though, he was as relatively gregarious as any of them. He had some quirks. Again, it went with the territory. You didn’t get to be a Dark One by being Joe or Jane Normal. One of Derek’s things was that he liked to go exploring. He would walk out deep into the woods and poke around. He was sort of an amateur archaeologist. Sometimes he found cool things. A rusted canteen with the letters CSA stamped across the bottom. A rusted pistol with the