The Beholder (17 page)

“How did you find it?” he asked casually.

“The coyote told me.”

“And you believe a coyote?” His lips curled cynically.

“Actually, animals do not have the guile to lie, unlike shifters and humans.” She saw his golden brows snap together in a scowl, and she enjoyed getting that little dig in. “The cave’s just east of here.”

He slid his large warm hand into her gloved one as naturally as if they held hands all the time. The ease with which he did it surprised her. Maybe she’d been too hasty in judging him. Maybe he could open up, a little. Then she felt him responding to her touch, that insatiable desire flowing through him and into her.

He tried to repress it, but it was a marching band parading through her mind. When she couldn’t take it any longer without responding, she pretended to trip and broke the contact.

“Oops.” She grabbed a tree trunk.

“Are you okay?” He reached for her.

“Yep, just dandy.” She leaped back from the pure fire in his hands. If she touched him again, she’d be all over him.

He took her measure with his keen eyes. “Can’t take the heat, huh?” A wicked look of triumph gleamed in his vivid green eyes.

“What?”

“You’re reading me.”

“Am not.”

“Uh-huh.” A calculating light blazed in his eyes.

It seemed like the more she drew back from him, the more he seemed drawn to her. Maybe it was the feline part of him that enjoyed the hunt. What would happen if she allowed him to catch her? Her last thought sent a shiver through her. She felt him eyeing her as she ignored him and plodded through the snow.

N
ina followed Kane along a narrow rocky path that went straight up. She panted heavily and lagged behind, unable to keep up with him.

Kane turned and shot her an impatient look. “If you take my hand, we can go faster.”

“I’ll make it.” She was determined to keep her distance.

Annoyance forced his brows together as he paused long enough to pull up a limb protruding from the snow. He broke off a good-size straight piece of wood, then handed it to her. “Here, use this.”

“Thanks.” It fit her hand perfectly and would make a fair walking stick.

He turned and continued up the slope, both packs swaying on his shoulder. Even though he was wounded, he climbed like a goat through the snow.

She watched the confident sway of his wide back, the way his golden hair twined around his shoulders. She couldn’t help but look at his tight butt and corded thigh muscles pumping as he climbed. Good golly, he had a nice body. She felt his hardness between her thighs again, his hands on her breasts, his tongue in her mouth. Her breasts tightened, and an unbidden ache settled in her lower belly. She just refused to let go of their woodland encounter. Look at something else. She did, his butt, dead center in her line of sight.

“Do you think we’re close?” Nina huffed, more from her own desire than being out of breath. “Yes.”

“You sound really certain.”

“I’ve been here before.”

“Nice of you to tell me.”

“Didn’t think it mattered since you had the coyote giving you directions.” He shot her a sidelong glance with an added flash of his white teeth. Mother Nature sure knew what she had been doing when she created alpha seniphs. A male shouldn’t be that wicked and tempting.

Thankfully, he turned around, went a few steps, then dropped out of sight.

She hurried to catch up and found the cave’s entrance, overgrown with snowcapped honeysuckle and blackberry bushes. A small path used by animals to frequent the cave veered off to the left. She took that path.

Warmth hit her as soon as she entered, and she breathed it in. Her frozen cheeks and lips began to thaw. Pitch blackness surrounded her, and she turned on the
flashlight. The cave looked about thirty feet wide, but its height was half that. The rounded-smooth craters of the ceiling dropped drastically, then met a wall of rock with deep fissures. Farther in, the flashlight could not penetrate the darkness. Nina couldn’t see Kane. A moment of panic seized her as she thought of his wounds.

“Kane,” she called, worried.

“Here.” His rumbling voice echoed from the cave’s shadowy recesses.

She followed his voice to where the cave walls narrowed and spotted him squatting by the backpacks; the ceiling had dropped so low, he couldn’t do much else. The light hit the commanding bone structure of his face, the square, even brow, the perfectly shaped noble nose. For a moment his skin glowed luminescent gold, and the sight of him caused the breath to catch in her throat.

“You’re blinding me.” He squinted at her, then rummaged through a backpack.

“Sorry,” she said, not realizing she’d been staring at him and pointing the flashlight right in his face.

She forced her gaze from him and shined the light on spirals of steam drifting up from a hot spring. The pool was about ten feet wide, clear, rocks shimmering in the bottom. It looked shallow, but the depth of clear water could be deceiving.

She heard a pop, and saw that Kane had opened a bottle of wine. He dropped the opener back in the backpack and held it out to her. “Want a sip?”

“No thanks.

“You have a first-aid kit in your backpack. We really should check out your shoulder.”

“We’ll leave it for now.” He turned up the bottle and took a long pull on it, watching her intently now.

Heat filled her traitorous body as she said, “So, you knew about this cave?”

“Yeah. Came here as a boy with Ethan.” He pointed the tip of the bottle toward several crayon drawings on the wall. One was of a stick figure with a cape on it. The other was a better rendering, and she could make out a human form, wearing Batman’s costume.

He motioned to the stick figure. “Ethan drew that. Must have been about six at the time.” Sadness softened the hard gleam in his eyes.

“You colored the other one?” Nina crouched low and touched the sketch with her fingers. She imagined two happy brothers playing here, unaware that one of them would become a monster.

“Ethan used to call this the Bat Cave. I was Batman, he was Robin.” A parody of a smile slid past his lips. “The spring was our Bat Pool. We killed many a villain down at the bottom.”

“You must miss him,” she said. She felt her heart go out to Kane. It couldn’t have been easy for him, watching a brother he cared about slip away from him. For a brief moment she saw through the emotional wall that he’d erected, and she glimpsed a faraway sadness in his expression that wasn’t guarded. She wanted to reach out to him and take his sadness away.

“After he left, I did. I wished I could have traded places with him.”

“His sickness wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, but I felt helpless. All I did was run the winery and secretly mail a care package to him every now and then.”

“You had to keep it hidden from the pride?”

“Yes, or there would have been hell to pay.”

“Then you did everything you could.”

“Not enough.” He ran a finger absently around the top of the wine bottle.

It broke Nina’s heart to see the utter bleakness in his expression.

“Do you really think you can save him?”

“I have to try.” The cold aloofness settled back in as quickly as it had come.

It was miserable knowing Kane would be hurt by Ethan’s death, but he would have to be destroyed. Thoughts of the pain his brother’s death would cause Kane ate at her.

“I hoped he’d think of this place and make camp here, but no such luck.” He shrugged his burly shoulders, then took a long draw on the Zinfandel, as if it might dull his disappointment.

Kane could have informed her that there was a chance they might find Ethan here. His lapse just drove home the fact he would sacrifice her or anyone that stood between him and his brother.

Sorrow settled in the pit of her belly. It shouldn’t bother her, but it did. What did you expect? He’s your kidnapper. And the man who’d made her feel real passion, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

She watched Kane’s large Adam’s apple working
in his throat; then he set the wine down and shed his jacket. It was hard to miss the inch-long dark spot of blood on his shirt, stark against the blue flannel. His shoulder wound had bled, but not as much as she had imagined.

He turned and eyed her, those spellbinding green eyes shining like emeralds in the light. His tawny beard had thickened along his strong jaw and sensual mouth. With his lumberjack flannel shirt and worn jeans, he looked like a rugged, virile gold miner. He gazed at her like she was the gold vein he wanted to mine. He was so handsome and irresistible her heart skipped in her chest.

“What’s the matter?” The wary glint in his eyes softened for a second.

“Nothing. Where’re the bandages? It’s time to redress your wounds.”

“Don’t need them.”

“Why?”

In seconds he unbuttoned his shirt and had it and the bandages off.

His body drew her attention, and she got an eyeful of his broad shoulders and muscle-bound chest and the golden hair spattering it. It tapered to a thin line and trailed along the ripples of his abdomen, then disappeared below the waist of his jeans. He faced her, hiding the scars on his back from her view, but he kept his eyes on the pool. Blood had soaked the bandage on his shoulder. The spot wasn’t wide and looked as if it had stopped bleeding on its own. But the dressings needed changing.
She said, “Please, let me get the gauze.”

“Don’t. The spring water will do the trick.” He made quick work of the laces on his hiking boots, then his shoes hit the ground with heavy thuds. He tore off his socks, exposing perfectly formed feet, thick, strong ankles and long toes. His agile fingers went for the button on his jeans.

Nina realized what he was about to do. She dragged her eyes away and turned around in a hurry. “This is a bad idea,” she said.

“It’s just a dip. You can join me.” His voice was deep and husky and layered with all sorts of erotic promise.

“I don’t think so.”

“You afraid of me?”

“No.” She was afraid of herself.

“Good, ’cause I won’t seduce you again.”

“Keep it that way.” The sexual part of her he had awakened hoped he didn’t mean that; still, his rebuff stung.

Something about hearing his jeans hitting the ground in a sensual whisper made her breath quicken. Her fists tightened at her sides as she conjured up an image of what he would look like totally naked, his body dripping with water. She licked her lips and recalled his hard shaft thrusting against the soft flesh between her thighs. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed as a wave of heat slid down her belly and into her groin. But then she recalled what happened after he’d spent his lust. How she’d tried to reach him emotionally and he’d almost bitten her hand and pulled away. No, she didn’t need another rejection. Or a man, for that matter. She was happy—well, until
Kane Van Cleave had taken her prisoner and made her feel real passion.

“I’d say you have a choice to make,” he said with wry amusement. “Join me, or not.”

Nina disliked that languid challenging tone in his voice, as if he’d won and was just waiting for her to cross the finish line.

The air was warm, much better than outside; still, she was freezing. The steam coming off the water was sauna hot. She felt the damp heat from where she stood. Getting naked was a narrow path to disaster, but she was fed up with her well-ordered life. She wanted to do something impulsive for once, live in the moment.

A loud splash sounded behind her. A deep, contented moan issued from the pool. “You coming in or not? It’s about a hundred and two degrees. The water feels like silk—”

She couldn’t resist any longer and blurted, “Okay, since you promised to keep your distance.” She flicked off the flashlight and thought she heard a derisive snort, but he could have been clearing his throat.

Pure blackness surrounded her; then she went to work disrobing. The cover of darkness gave her self-confidence, and she quickly began peeling off her layers of clothes.

When she shed the last of her long johns, she felt the cool air on her skin, sending goose bumps down her naked flesh, hardening her nipples against the inside of her bra. It occurred to her that this was the most impulsive thing she’d ever done in her life. In the past, her every move seemed driven or calculated by the
feelings of others, or by her powers. This she was doing because she wanted to. It felt like she was soaring. She couldn’t remember one day without the weight of her gift ruling her life, even as a small child. She’d never really felt the freedom and reckless abandon of childhood. Meikoda had said Nina was born with an old soul. She didn’t feel old now. She felt young and vibrant and just a little daring to be skinny-dipping in a pool with an alpha shifter.

She unhooked her bra and kicked off her panties.

His breathing grew shallow and rapid. Did the water feel that good?

She groped her way to the pool’s edge, the blackness dense and blinding. “Where are you?” she asked. “I don’t want to jump on your head.”

“Move a little to the right.” His husky voice rasped through the cave’s emptiness.

Nina froze and gasped. “Oh my god! You can see me.” She put her hands over the isle of hair between her legs, using them as fig leaves. Luckily her long hair fell almost to her waist, covering her breasts. How could she have forgotten he could see in the dark?

“Don’t cover up, Nina,” he said, his voice caressing her name. “You’re beautiful.” His words were filled with deep sexual overtones that promised ravishment and sensual kisses and something much more intense than their interlude in the woods.

She could feel the alpha magnetism spilling from him like a fountain, filling the whole cave, bombarding her, somehow touching every inch of her body. Her heart began to thunder in her chest; then an ache of arousal
poured into her breasts and belly. “You’re despicable,” she managed to say, her voice tremulous.

“Yes.” He sounded proud of that fact.

In the next instant, he showed her how ruthless he could be.