LITMIR.BIZ

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staggering to regain his balance; rather than charging around to grab Marat’s gun, he somehow flipped his body around and slammed his heel into the man’s chest. Another bullet dug into the thin, hard dirt of the dry pool; Marat sprawled on his back, and the gun went flying.

      Kai landed in a crouch—impossibly upright if on all fours, and already facing Hantz again.

      “No!” Regan cried again as Aeli jerked around to take Kai from behind. She threw the useless phone aside and slid off her platform of rock and root, surfing the slope down to the dry pool with the walking stick in hand.

      Aeli reached for Kai’s vulnerable back—a move of brute force, to yank him away and toss him down—but suddenly Kai wasn’t there any longer. He dropped down to a crouch and along the way his leg whipped out, his low shin catching Hantz just above the knee. Hantz shouted in pain as the leg gave way—and Kai twisted like a cat, back in a crouch and facing Aeli, ready to drive up from below.

      But Regan had reached Aeli, too, and she’d found her temper somewhere along the way. “I said no!” she cried and slammed the walking stick down across the meat of his shoulder, close to the base of his neck. Kai leaped out of the way as Aeli fell—and when he landed and rolled, he came up with the gun in hand.

      “Sentinel!” Marat spat at him.

      “No,” Kai told him, crouching easily, one knee on the ground and the gun not pointing at anything in particular. Regan backed uneasily away, the stick still held like a bat, aware that Kai hadn’t truly needed her and that she might, in fact, just get in his way. “Just myself. But this is my home, and this is my friend. I won’t let you get hurt, either.”

      The man narrowed his eyes and climbed to his feet, dusting himself off. “There were rumors of a family here many years ago,” he said, and gestured peremptorily at the muscle twins—a command to stand down, not that either of them had actually regained their feet. “But not for some time. Just as we became interested in them, it seems they left.”

      Kai said nothing.

      The man smiled grimly at him. “We always wondered why a family would stay apart that way. And why Southwest Brevis allowed them to do it.”

      Kai said nothing. Nor did he move. For the first time Regan realized he’d been shot—that blood sheeted along the outside of his arm.

      Finally, the man said softly, “My name is Marat. Remember it. You’ll be needing it in the near future.” He jerked his head at his muscle twins, who hauled themselves upright. Hantz limped; Aeli seemed dazed. But they gathered the metal disks and returned them to their partitioned and padded cases, while Marat stood off to the side and Kai waited, still silent.

      Regan tried to pretend she wasn’t there at all.

      Marat lingered as the men headed unsteadily down the narrow cut of the dry creek leading out from the pool. He eyed Kai with a deliberate gaze, taking in his remarkable nature, making obvious note of the breechclout and leggings and even of his preternaturally quiet strength in waiting. “It would have been better for you,” he said, “if you had not interfered.”

      Kai still said nothing. Regan understood it to be not reticence, but that Kai had already said what he’d had to say.

      Then Marat looked at her, and she flinched from it, suddenly exposed. She and her stick. He said, “It would have been better for you, too. What lies between us is nothing of yours.”

      Her hands tightened around the stick. “I’m here because you were dumping on the forest.” It had been more than that, she was sure of it—but let him think she hadn’t heard that cry of pain in her head. She certainly wished she hadn’t. She wished herself sane and sound and sequestered back at the cabin, her paintbrush smearing deep color across canvas. “Maybe you shouldn’t have been doing that.”

      He smiled, and it wasn’t at all nice. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m delighted at the results of this day so far. And to think, it’s just getting started.”

      Only after he’d left did Regan let herself truly breathe again. She wanted to stagger back to the bank she’d slid down and sit against it, waiting out the shakes—but there was Kai.

      He rose. If the encounter had affected him, it didn’t show. Nor could she read his expression, though it made her shiver. “You’re hurt,” she said, and then wanted to smack her forehead. Just in case you didn’t know.

      “It’s nothing,” he told her, and looked at the gun in his hand as if he wasn’t quite sure how it had gotten there and definitely didn’t know what to do with it. “I heal fast.”

      She looked at the dark gouge of the wound and the generous flow of the blood and something in her temper snapped. “It’s not nothing,” she said sharply. “It’s not even close to nothing! And what was that all about—all that stuff about your family and Sentinels and what lies between us—”

      Kai said nothing—but he grinned, suddenly and completely, and damned if it didn’t snatch her breath away.

      Damned if it didn’t snap her straight from irate to furious.

      “It’s not funny! It’s not—”

      He took a step closer and she lost her words—she lost her glare, too, her eyes widening with belated understanding. By the time he cupped one hand behind her neck and bent to kiss her, she’d pretty much lost everything but the sense of him standing so close. Clean sweat and strength and the sweet tang of blood—it surrounded her. His mouth was warm and firm on hers, and his hand full of gentle strength behind her head, her body full of quickly rising heat. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the deepest of purrs resonated with satisfaction.

      When he took a distinct bite at her lower lip and withdrew, she followed—until she realized suddenly that her lungs burned for air. She pulled back to fill them deeply, staring at him with utter loss to define what had just happened here—from the moment she’d found herself drawn to this dry pool, to the moment she’d so completely given herself to the touch of a stranger.

      A stranger who had just fought off three goons and a gun, taking them down with a casual, violent competence. Taking them down with remorseless intent, his every move one of feral potency.

      A stranger who stared back at her from a darkened blue gaze and now looked every bit as stunned as she felt.

      Chapter 4

      The fight had left him less staggered. Being shot had left him less staggered.

      Kai Faulkes, thirty years old and never been kissed.

      Never like that.

      He made himself step back, made his expression rueful and his body still. Because he’d never known such want, and he’d never taken such liberties, and he didn’t begin to trust himself not to take more. He knew not to trust himself—not to trust the lynx that rode so close to the surface.

      He’d been warned hard enough.

      Regan touched her mouth, her cheeks full of flush, her brows drawn together in a faint frown. “I—” she started, while he was still far from able to find words. “You—” She started again, and then shook her head, impatient with her own struggle. Then she shook herself off, pushing a wayward strand of gold away from her face. “Later,” she said. “I’ll deal with that kiss later. Right now, I’ve got too many questions.”

      For this, he met her gaze without flinching; he found words. “I might not answer them.”

      “We’ll see about that.” But she scowled suddenly and turned to glare up the hill. “Will you just be quiet?”

      He hadn’t heard it—not with his body still immersed in the feel of soft hair beneath his hand and soft lips beneath his mouth—but he understood. She’d heard some mutter from the land, some reverberation of what had happened here. And she not only didn’t understand...it distressed her.

      She turned back to him with

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