“No, I know what I did. I—why aren’t you gone? You should be gone.” She’d closed down the channel. It always made the conjuring go away. It had worked all day long, while the shaman tortured her with abomination after abomination.
His mouth compressed into a thin line and his grip gentled, but he didn’t let her go. “Evelyn, it’s me. You didn’t conjure me. I followed you down here.”
I am not this whimsical. If anything, she was too practical. She thought everything through, she was deliberate and he smelled so good and felt better. It didn’t make any sense. Closing her eyes, she tried to calm her ragged breathing, but her heart slammed against her ribs like a wild thing seeking escape. If she calmed down, she could erase the conjure, it would work.
A hard, impatient breath touched her cheek and she startled to find him leaning into her, his mouth just a scant inch from her own. “It’s me,” he repeated and then his lips brushed over hers, a warm teasing caress. “It’s me, Evelyn. I’m right here.”
The touch sizzled and her mouth opened. He shuddered—or maybe it was her—and then the teasing caress turned firm and his mouth closed over hers. The sweep of his tongue demanded entry and she welcomed it. She melted into him and desire flamed through her. The kaleidoscope burst and color fountained up, burning through the confusion and the pain and the grief and a tiny moan escaped her throat.
She drifted on the torrent, rising and falling to the feel of his tongue twining with hers. Heat enfolded her and then he jerked back. His pupils were so wide, the darkness flared out to drown the blue. Her breath came in hot, jagged little pants.
“Dammit,” he swore and peeled her hands off of him. Spinning on his heel, he turned with another jerk and strode off. Not evaporated. Not disappeared. He walked—away.
What the hell just happened?
Chapter 16
Kid, The Mountain
He didn’t slow until he reached the barn, slamming the door open without worry for startling the animals—they’d been turned out to enjoy the spring weather. The forge was warm, but he’d need to fire it up to get the metal hot enough to start hammering on something.
Everything inside of him shook. He’d followed Evelyn to try and correct the insult he’d given her—an unfair, and completely unmeant insult. He’d been direct, owned up to his bad behavior, and asked for her forgiveness. But her reactions had been all over the place and the low tingle at the back of his neck spread until it was a thousand different bees assaulting him. When tears pooled in her eyes, he’d thrown caution to the wind and given into his instincts.
Hugging her had been a mistake. His fragile shield shattered with the first touch and then he’d been dragged into the torrent of wild emotions tangling through her. Grief. Disbelief. Fear. Loneliness. The most gut wrenching of loneliness overwhelmed him, only to tumble down the slopes of her horror.
Wrenching the bellow wide, he pumped at the forge’s fires. He wanted them burning hot. Needed it. Everything inside him was raw, filled with jagged edges. She thought she’d conjured him and the idea of it was so awful to her, he’d felt it. She’d turned on herself, full of panic and hysteria. He had two choices, drain it away from her or shock her out of it.
Hastily, he’d gone for shock because he couldn’t stomach feeding off another person. Not again. Not now that he knew her. Her emotions already overpowered him, flooding his system with wildness.
He kissed her.
Kid damn near broke the handle off the bellows remembering the first sweet taste of her flower-petal lips. He’d meant to do no more than that brush, but her mouth opened and warmth flooded through him. Once just wasn’t enough. Hunger clawed up his insides like a wild beast desperate for another and then another.
Fists clenched, Kid bowed his head. He’d been a heartbeat away from stripping off her clothes and sating the demand roaring through him.
“What are you doing?” Wyatt carried a sack of feed over his shoulder and another under his arm. Stacking the burlap bags, the eldest Morning Star brother dusted off his hands and waited for Kid to answer.
“I need to hammer something.” It took effort to grit the words out. Need kindled in his blood like a range fire. He’d dealt with months of abstinence and, hell, it had been hard, but the lack of any available women and the constant struggle to understand what was happening to him preoccupied him enough to bury that hunger.
It had woken with a vengeance and it wanted Evelyn.
He wouldn’t use her that way. Her fear burned like acrid bile in the back of his throat. The self-loathing and disbelief coated it, making it a sticky lump he couldn’t spit away. But the desire he tasted in her, the first sweet brush of it…Kid slammed his hand back onto the edge of the bellow and started pumping it again. He needed to break something, pound it until his body was too damn tired to do anything else. If he didn’t—he cut off the thought ruthlessly. He wouldn’t use her that way.
Never her.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder and Kid spun to face Wyatt, violence thrumming through him. “What happened?”
“Does it matter?” Wildness burned in him, he wanted to lash out. To punch away the pain, the confusion, and the desire scalded him.
“Maybe. You’re really riding the edge.” It wasn’t a question. “How bad?”
Lie or truth? Did it matter? “Bad.” His skin itched and his muscles trembled violently. He’d seen Cody shift before, the way his skin slid off his body and the muscles and bones contorted. He’d felt the agony of his change, a hell of a lot like what ripped through him in this moment, only the blades were deeper and they eviscerated Kid.
“What do you need?” Wyatt’s gaze blazed cold and assessing, but the concern—Kid didn’t imagine it. It lay right under the surface of the ice.
“I want to break something, to destroy it.” The hell with it. He’s seen my worst. “I thought I had that shield down. I made it happen and she shattered it with one touch and I’m drowning in the need for more, for her.” Fists clenching, Kid fought the sway, the way every cell in his body seemed to lean toward the door. Toward the outside. Toward Evelyn. “I didn’t hurt her. I left before I could. But I have to do something with all of this or I’ll—” He didn’t want to think about what he would do.
“You want to hit something,” the other man said, backing up a pace and pulling his hat off. He tossed it onto a hay bale and made a beckoning gesture with his fingers. “Hit me.”
Eyes narrowed, Kid studied his posture. “What?”
“You said you wanted to hit something. No gifts, no powers, just you and me. Fists on fists. It’s physical contact and it’s brutal, but it’ll work.”
“Until one of us drops?” He lifted his brows. Touching Wyatt, even a passing brush, used to scare the hell out of him. Not anymore.
A single nod. “No gifts.”
“Good.” He didn’t even finish uttering the word before he lunged at the other man. His shoulder caught Wyatt in the midsection and he drove the larger man back into the side of the stall. The wood cracked, but Wyatt’s fist slammed into Kid’s jaw. Stumbling backward, he dodged Wyatt’s advance and caught him with a hard blow to his shoulder. Back and forth they traded blows, dancing at first warily around each other and then colliding with brute force.
The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth and his right eye twitched after the second blow. Grappling, Kid fought the leverage of Wyatt’s seemingly greater strength and used his head to batter against the other man’s nose. They crashed through one of the door and wood splintered.
“We’ll have to fix that,” Wyatt grunted.
“Later.” Kid slammed into him again and they hit the ground, rolling and wrestling for dominance, but Kid managed to break free and slammed his elbow into the side of Wyatt’s head. He’d been wrestling with older brothers for years and Sam and Micah had always had size as an advantage.
They traded blows, backing off and slamming into each other until they collapsed side by side in the dirt. Blood tr
ickled freely from Kid’s lip and he couldn’t suck in a deep breath without his ribs hurting.
“Better?” Wyatt actually sounded winded.
“Yeah.” Kid nodded.
“Good. You want a break?” A hint of humor crackled beneath the words.
Kid laughed and groaned as pain stabbed him in the chest. “I can keep going, old man. Don’t hurt yourself.”
The bald statement hung out there for a moment and then Wyatt chuckled. “Give me five minutes, Kid, and we’ll see who needs help getting up.”
“Sounds good.” Neither of them moved and Kid closed his eyes. Beating the hell out of Wyatt helped. The insanity raging inside of him quieted and hunger ripping him up seemed sated. Maybe violence had the same effect on it…
He frowned.
“Don’t start thinking,” Wyatt cautioned. “Just enjoy the moment.”
Pushing up on his elbows, Kid struggled to sit. His right eye had nearly swollen shut and he leaned away from Wyatt to spit out blood. “No, I think I need to consider this all while I’m hurting.”
He could almost feel the sharpness in Wyatt’s regard as the other man focused on him.
“This worked for all of it.” He exhaled the words on little hard pants. “The hunger? It’s gone.” The quietness of it left a kind of satisfied fullness to him. Without the constant gnaw and need to suppress it, it was like he could see it fully for the first time. “It never used to get this bad, before…”
“Before what?”
Touching two fingers to the corner of his eye, he drew his hand back to look at the blood on his fingertips and the abrasions tearing up his knuckles. “The hunger. Most of the time, bedding a woman fixed it. But it really hasn’t, not in months. Not since my gift woke back up.”
“After the New Mexico Territory?” Wyatt made it all the way to his feet and held out a hand. Bastard recovered faster. Kid would have to hit him harder next time.
Clasping the offered hand, he let Wyatt pull him to his feet. Kid winced again at the fresh cascade of aches. Oh, he was going to hurt tomorrow. “After Cody…that changed me, didn’t it?”
“Possibly.” Wyatt shrugged. “What did you do exactly?”
“He was in agony. That hunter guy? The other wolf had captured him and was torturing him. Cody didn’t talk about it after, but I could feel what was happening to him and, the moment he started skinning him? I felt all of it. He would have killed him. Cody couldn’t function past the pain ripping into him, so I took it. All of it. Every drop,” Kid coughed and spat out another mouthful of blood. The cut on his lip hurt every time he opened his mouth.
“You were out when I got there.” Wyatt bent over at the waist and rested his hands against his thighs. Red marks mottled his face and his nose was bloody and a little crooked. He squinted at Kid. “You were unconscious the whole time I was there and you had other injuries.”
Kid nodded. “Wolf attacked me. Ripped the hell out of my side and chest. Noah healed me on the way back, but it was the second time that happened. Cody’d cut me up before.” A scowl crossed Wyatt’s face and Kid waved his hand. “Way before, after Sam arrested Scarlett and Cody was trying to get her back.”
A grunt. “They should have called me.”
“Well, they didn’t. And personally, I’m glad.” At Wyatt’s arched brows, Kid grinned. “You didn’t like me then. Probably would have killed us.”
The older man considered the idea and shrugged. “Probably.”
“But it changed me. I woke up without anything, no gift. I couldn’t feel—didn’t feel—anything. I thought maybe I’d made it go away.”
“Now you think you fed it completely full.”
Kid nodded. It was a gruesome thought. “Don’t tell Cody. I’d do what I did for him again without hesitation, no matter the cost. He doesn’t need to feel responsible. He changed some after that, too. He got a lot more protective.”
Wyatt nodded slowly. “We’ll figure it out. You’re better now than you were five months ago. You grow stronger every day. Don’t give up.”
The compliment mingled with the encouragement surprised and pleased him. Pats on the back were a rarity in his life. “I don’t intend to.” Standing up straight hurt like hell, but he embraced the ache. Cause it felt good, too. Felt alive. “Now I have to go apologize to Evelyn again.”
“Why?”
Well, it could get him hit—again. But what the hell… “I kissed her.”
Evelyn, The Lake
She should have returned to the house directly, but after the scene with William… No, she didn’t want to face any of the others at the house whether it were the shaman or Wyatt. Instead, she turned to walk along the edge of the lake. Her lips tingled at the way William had kissed her and she could still feel the sweet caress and lush taste of him. It had been so much more than she ever imagined.
And I’ve imagined it… Shock and wonder bubbled up from deep inside. She had imagined kissing him, not overtly, or at least she didn’t think it had been overt. But I did…from the moment I woke up. A breeze tugged at her hair and despite her earlier exhaustion, she wasn’t tired anymore. If anything, she felt better. Lighter, somehow.
Following the curve of the lake, she circled a large rocky outcropping jutting out toward the water. It created a natural shelf. When her father was on the mountain, he’d trained with others, too. Though he mentioned them only in passing, she had the sense of a larger community.
Based on snatches of their dinner conversation, at least two other men were somewhere on the mountain, but she’d yet to see them. William, like her, came here to learn. Maybe he was the son of one of her father’s contemporaries. A kernel of frustration formed in her stomach.
“Evelyn?” The masculine voice intruded on her irritation and tension spiked through her. The unfamiliar sensations writhed in her belly and spread heat from her breasts to her thighs. Wrapping her arms around herself, she paused, but didn’t turn.
“Yes, William?” Carefully she explored the channel in her mind. Always so vibrantly aware of it, she found it quiet and not pulsing. She hadn’t conjured him, which meant she had kissed the real him and he’d been a witness to her emotional breakdown earlier. Embarrassment warred with shame and, beneath it all, curiosity thrummed. Why had he kissed her? She had no experience in carnal matters, none. No man ever kissed her as he had done. A shiver skated over her skin. Would he do it again?
Did she want him to?
“It seems I owe you another apology.” His voice sounded odd and her shoulders stiffened at the words. Why was he apologizing now?
Risking a look over her shoulder, she glanced at him and froze. Spinning all the way around, she stared at the blood staining his shirt and his lip—and further up to the eye that had nearly swollen shut.
“What happened to you?” Forgetting for a moment her earlier confusion, she closed the distance between them. An unfamiliar ache tightened in her chest. Who had hurt him?
A lopsided grin met her question. “I needed to beat on something. Wyatt gave me a hand.”
“Beat on something?” Her eyebrows climbed and she dug into her pocket for a handkerchief. Turning back to the water, she soaked the edge of it and returned to dab at the blood on his cheek and jaw. “Or get beat on?” The other man held a quiet sense of power, deep and forbidding. William was kinder, gentler, and anger sparked deeper down. Refusing to examine the feeling closer, she tried to clean up the mess he’d made of his face.
“He looks as bad, if not worse.” Another crooked grin. His lower lip had begun to swell. Blood stained his teeth and a fist curled inside of her. She ignored the faint humor and continued to dab, careful of the very obvious cut. They’d need something cold for his eye, but she suspected he couldn’t see anything out of it anyway.
“Why were you fighting?” He’d left her to go hit something? After he kissed her? His apology floated back to the front of her mind. “And why are you apologizing to me again?”
“Evelyn,” he caught
her hand as she tried to dab his lip. “You really have to stop touching me.”
Lightning zinged up her arm from the contact of his fingers against her palm. He didn’t push her hand away. If anything, his grip tightened.
“You’re bleeding.” That mattered to her.
He sighed and the pupil in his left eye seemed to expand—she couldn’t tell about the right, not with how swollen it had become. “It’s hard to think when you’re touching me.” The admission seemed to cost him, so she pulled her hand away. For the barest moment, he resisted her withdrawal and then he let her go. Exhaling a breath, he backed up a step.
“Why is it so difficult?” An unusual excitement churned in her at his admission.
He sighed and frowned. Waving a hand at the lake, he pointed to the path she’d been following. “Can we walk?” He waited for her nod before setting off. It took her a moment to see how stiffly he moved and he’d shifted a hand to cross over himself, holding his ribs. Just how much damage had he done in this fight?
“William, maybe you should sit down.” She kept a wary eye on him. If he collapsed, he was too large a man to carry back alone.
“This isn’t really that bad.” He assured her with another lopsided smile. “I feel better than I did before.”
Confused at the hurt biting into her, she frowned. “Did I make you feel bad before?” Heat scalded her cheeks at the wildly inappropriate question.
He stopped walking and faced her. Their gazes locked and he raked a hand through his hair. “Not at all. Far from it, in fact. I liked kissing you. I really liked kissing you.”
“So why are you apologizing for it?” The very idea stung.
William tilted his head back and looked up at the sky. “How much about me do you actually know, Evelyn?”
Tingles spread through her at his use of her name. The ridiculous sensations warred with rational thought and she actually had trouble answering the question. “Not very much. I know you found me.” And she remained profoundly grateful for his actions. “And I know you must be Fevered, like me. But…” She frowned. “I guess I don’t really know what you can do. I don’t really know what any of you do.”
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