LITMIR.BIZ

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might possibly understand.

      It wasn’t something he’d ever done before.

      Guard yourself. Guard others against who you are.

      Lessons once impressed hard on a vulnerable youth soon to be on his own.

      Her obvious chagrin at reacting to the land passed, submerged in everything else that had happened here. “That needs care,” she said, latching onto the most obvious need—looking at where the Core bullet had furrowed along the curve of his biceps.

      But the arm would wait; it would heal faster than she could imagine. Other things wouldn’t wait at all. For he needed to sweep through this area and make sure Marat had truly gone. No matter what his family had told him about staying out of sight—about what the Core would do if they ever learned of him.

      They cannot suffer you to live, his father had said, his arm around his mother’s shoulders, his younger sister, Holly, lingering at his mother’s side, sniffling and confused—their things packed as they prepared to leave him. Never forget.

      He hadn’t forgotten. But he was the only one here. The only one who knew the Core had finally infiltrated this remote and pristine area.

      “Kai,” Regan said, aiming a pale blue gaze his way with intent, regaining some of her composure—but not without the hint of remaining uncertainty.

      Self-retribution slapped home. This woman wasn’t Sentinel; she wasn’t lynx. She wasn’t born to be a protector. She’d been threatened and she’d fought back—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still frightened.

      She didn’t need to walk back to the cabin alone.

      She lifted one honey-gold brow, striking a note of asperity. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re bleeding everywhere.”

      It would stop soon. He’d been hot, his system in high gear from the change. Already he’d cooled down, his injury throbbing sharply. Healing quickly didn’t mean not hurting.

      Sometimes, he thought, it meant the opposite.

      “I’ll come,” he told her. “But first I need to make sure they haven’t left anything behind.”

      She climbed up the slope just far enough to reach the root and rock upon which she’d originally taken her stand and sat there, long legs thrust over the side, heels digging into the dirt.

      “All right, then,” she said, grasping for an equanimity she couldn’t quite pull off. “But if you faint from blood loss, I’m going to find my phone—” she glanced around, already looking “—and find a signal and call for help. That’ll mean cops and an ambulance ride down the mountain to Alamogordo and the nearest hospital. And somehow I get the feeling that’s exactly what you’re trying to avoid.”

      And Kai said nothing. Because Regan Adler saw—and heard—a lot more than she wanted to admit.

      Even to herself.

      * * *

      Regan rested the walking stick against the porch railing, breathing a sigh of relief to realize she’d regained her internal balance on the way home. She was here—she was safe. The encounter in the woods was already fading, tinged with the absurdity of it all, diminished by the physical memory of Kai’s touch still tingling at her mouth, at her nape, at every single spot he’d so much as breathed on.

      “So,” she said, as if it had been a casual hike on an average day, “what’s with the breechclout anyway?”

      She turned to look at Kai and discovered him no longer just behind her. Discovered him, in fact, at the edge of the woods—waiting in patience and silence, as seemed to be his norm.

      Discovered, too, that Bob the Dog had risen to his feet, his hackles a stiff brush down his spine and over his rump. Since when did Bob have hackles on his rump? And though he stared at Kai as he might assess any intruder, she saw no true challenge there—just concern and puzzlement. “What’s up with you?”

      His low tail wagged once in acknowledgment, but he didn’t look at her. He didn’t turn his massive head from Kai’s direction, his nostrils twitching as he lifted his head slightly, hunting scent.

      “It’s fine,” Kai said. “He’s figuring me out.”

      “What’s there to figure? Bob, he’s a guest. Deal with it.”

      Kai shook his head. “He’s probably scented me around. He needs to put the pieces together.”

      Suddenly Regan understood. “Good grief—Bob, you’re afraid of him!” The hackles weren’t a threat...they were a sign of fear.

      “Cautious,” Kai said, by way of both agreement and correction. And he sat, cross-legged, in the straggly grass of the clearing.

      Regan reached for the door. “You two figure things out. I’ll be back in a moment.” She headed inside—and though she hadn’t locked the door that morning anymore than they ever locked the door in this remote place, she wondered if that had been a mistake.

      She found herself glancing around the cozy living area, checking that the shotgun leaned where she’d left it, that the papers on her father’s desk had gone undisturbed, that the catchall drawers in the little dresser hadn’t been left ajar. And she thought not of the morning as she did it, but of the Realtor from the day before.

      Huh.

      It didn’t stop her from moving briskly through the house to the bathroom, where she rummaged through the built-in cabinet for first-aid supplies. She pushed aside the earthy ceramic teapot and set bottles and bandages on the tiny, wooden kitchen table before she went to the sink, washing up while she peered out the biggest window in the back of the house to spot the horse in the paddock.

      He heard her and called out a suggestion of carrots, completely unconcerned with the oddities this day had wrought so far. Regan toweled her hands dry with a smile and returned to the porch.

      She found Bob half in Kai’s lap, leaning that big head against Kai’s bare chest and...

      Crooning.

      Kai rubbed the dog’s ear with an expert hand, eliciting a moan of canine delight. “Either they love me or they won’t get near me.”

      “Well,” she muttered, “he loves that old cat, too.”

      And Kai smiled and patted the dog. He pushed to his feet, replete in his breechclout and buckskins, and stood there looking more wild and more masculine than Regan would have thought possible.

      Mine...

      She started at that—the insidious murmur in her head, offering not just the intrusive, but the unexpected. How did that make sense?

      No more sense than the way he’d kissed her—or the way she’d kissed him back, this man she barely knew. Or that she’d responded to his touch as if she’d been waiting for it.

      “Regan?”

      She spoke a little more abruptly than she’d meant to. “Come inside. Let’s get you cleaned up.” And led the way.

      He entered more warily than she expected, hesitating at the door just long enough so she looked back with impatience—and then, once inside, looking as though he might just step out again. His gaze flicked around the room to absorb the homey space, the unpretentious and utilitarian nature of her father’s small desk, the little chest of drawers, the couch and the small television. His expression lit up at the sight of the bookshelves that held not only books, but her mother’s ceramics, and the stark, engaging nature of his features reminded her all over again that he’d reached for her in the woods.

      She squirmed away from the thought. She wasn’t ready for that honesty. She still had too many things to hide. From him...from herself.

      “In the kitchen,” she told him, and watched while he again hesitated in the doorway, his gaze skimming the appliances, lingering at the window and finally

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