“We will stay on the first floor,” he told her. When both women stared at him, he added, “Mari is tired and hurt. The stairs will be too much for her.”
“Shoot, I didn’t think of that. Of course you can stay downstairs. Let me get some clean linens and make up a room for you.” Annie hung up her coat and disappeared down a hall.
“I don’t think you have to worry about these people,” Lilah chided. “I’m sure they believe our story.”
“For now.” The sheriff had taken an instant dislike to him, and would probably check on their identities as soon as his phones and computer were functioning again. The only way to know what the man was thinking would be to have Lilah read his mind, but he wasn’t allowing Ethan Jemmet within ten feet of her. “You must be exhausted.”
“After what happened the last time I fell asleep, I don’t know if I’ll ever close my eyes again.” Her smile turned rueful. “I hope Annie’s water heater is still working. I’m dying for a long, hot shower.”
The image that came into his head made heat surge through him, and he took off his hat and jacket. When he noticed her staring, he went still. “What is it?”
“You can’t feel it?” She reached up and ran her fingers over his scalp, which was no longer bare. “It’s like black mink. Sometimes mine does that, you know, seems to grow a couple of inches overnight, but yours is . . . ” She stopped herself and gave him an apologetic look. “It’s okay. I mean, it happens to all of us. Sometimes our fingernails and toenails do the same thing.”
He caught her wrist, and then brought her hand to his mouth to kiss her palm. “It’s only hair, Lilah. Not snakes.”
She stared at his mouth. “Snakes?” she echoed, her voice soft and dreamy.
Annie emerged from the hall, her mouth curling on one side. “You two really
do
need a room. Come on, it’s just down here.”
The room was large, not as crowded with things, and had an adequate bath adjoining it.
Lilah seemed enchanted, and ran her fingers over the heavy stitching of the old white coverlet on the large bed. “What a gorgeous quilt.” She bent closer. “Wow. It’s all one piece.”
“Whole cloth,” Annie said. “I make ’em myself on a rack in the back room. Helps pass the time when I don’t have guests.” She gestured toward the bath. “I put some nightclothes in there next to the towels. Before you go to bed, turn the taps on to a trickle. It helps keep the pipes from freezing. If you need anything, I’m right down the hall. Good night.”
“Thank you.” Lilah waited until the other woman left before she sank down onto the bed. “She’s such a nice woman. Everyone here is.”
“Yes.” They were all a little too welcoming for his taste, but as isolated as the town was, strangers were probably a novelty to them. Once he locked the door and checked the windows, he investigated the size of the bath. The freestanding tub appeared to be large enough for both of them, and the thought of bathing with Lilah made his blood surge. He ran the taps to check the temperature, and then shut them off and walked back out.
“There is no shower, but I think—” He stopped as he saw Lilah using her thumbs to type something on the keypad of a mobile phone. “How did you get that?”
“I swiped it from the doctor.” She finished and pressed a button. “There we go.” She smiled up at him. “I thought with the storm clearing I’d try to send a text to Samuel’s e-mail. Looks like it went through.”
The sound of the man’s name made something brutal and ugly twist inside him. “What did you tell him?”
“I couldn’t risk going into details, so I just gave him the phone number. Hopefully he’ll call back soon.” She set the phone aside and rose to her feet. “Walker, Samuel was changed when he was a baby, like me. He’s my friend; he can help.”
“So you think.” He turned his back on her. “What if he was one who betrayed you?”
“He’d never do that.” She sighed and came up behind him. “I know after what happened to you that you don’t want to trust anyone, but there are good people out there.” She rested her hand against his back. “Not everyone wants us dead.”
“You think death is the worst that can happen to you?” He turned and seized her by the arms.
“I know it isn’t,” she said quietly.
He saw the frostfire in her eyes, the gentle green of her irises dividing into crystals of molten gold and glacial blue, until he felt sure she could see into the black depths of his soul. And still he couldn’t spare her. “How did they find you, Lilah? Who told them your name, and where you lived, and what you are?”
“It wasn’t Samuel,” she insisted. “He doesn’t know my real name, or where I live, or even what I look like. About a month ago I messed up and used my ability in front of some people. They told some reporters about it and the story made the news. We think GenHance monitors the papers and police reports and other things like that so they can identify us. So if you want to blame someone, it was probably me.”
Someone knocked loudly on the door, and he released her, striding over to yank it open.
Ethan Jemmet stood outside. “Mr. Kimball, you and I need to have a word.”
“Tomorrow.” He tried to shut the door, but the sheriff blocked it with one hand. “We’re tired, Sheriff.”
Ethan glanced over his shoulder at Lilah before averting his gaze. “It won’t take long.”
He closed the door behind him and followed Ethan into the front reception area. Once there, Ethan produced a clear plastic bag marked with the word EVIDENCE across a red strip. Inside the bag was a torn, bloodied shirtsleeve.
“I went back out to the main road to have a look around. I found your tracks.” He held up the bag. “And this.”
He kept his expression impassive. “It’s not mine.”
“Seeing as you still have both arms attached, I gathered as much. I found it sticking out of the snow, a yard away from your tracks.” He tucked the bag back into his jacket. “Now you want to tell me what you really saw out there tonight?”
Killing the sheriff would not improve their situation, but it would do wonders for his mood. “When we escaped from the truck, the storm virtually blinded us. My only concern was finding shelter. Someone could have slaughtered an elephant a few inches away, and I doubt we would have seen it.”
Ethan regarded him steadily. “I don’t believe you, Kimball.”
He curled his hands against a burning sensation that shot through his fingers. “I don’t care what you believe, Sheriff.”
Ethan Jemmet took a step forward, and suddenly the crowded room shrank in on them. With one lunge he saw himself ripping out the other man’s throat, and his jaw ached to do just that.
The sheriff’s aggressive stance shifted, and his anger faded into astonishment as his mouth moved and shaped a soundless word.
“What?”
Ethan took a step back, shattering the unseen tension between them. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk again tomorrow.” Without another word he turned and walked out into the night.
Denied an outlet, the rage roiling inside him made going back to the room seem foolish, but he needed to see Lilah, to soak himself in the gentleness of her, the warmth of her. She would bring him back from this, this wildness, this terrible need to chase and attack and kill. And when he walked into the room, and saw her standing by the window, he knew she was watching Ethan Jemmet walk away from the inn. A slight smile curved her lips, as if she was thinking of something that gave her pleasure.
Samuel, or Ethan? Or both of them? The final, frayed strand of his control snapped.
She heard him before he reached her, and turned. “Is everything—”
He pulled her into his arms, sweeping her away from the window as he made her look at him.
“Do you think of him?” he heard his voice snarl. “Do you want him?”
“The sheriff? No. Why would I?”
He filled his hands with her hair as he shifted her backward until he had her pinned against a wall. He lowered his body against hers, flattening her breasts against his chest as he parted her thighs with his knee. “What about this Samuel?”
“Samuel’s a friend.” Again she didn’t cower from him, but looked into his eyes without fear. “Walker, I’m not with anyone. I don’t have anyone. I can’t be with anyone like that.”
“You are with me.” He dragged her hand to his mouth and buried his mouth against her palm, catching the mound of her thumb between his teeth before he lifted his head. “Be with me, Lilah. Be with me, or send me away.”
She went still, her expression stricken.
He’d gone too far. She didn’t want him, and he couldn’t spend another moment near her and not have her. He drew back. “I will go.”
“No.”
Lilah had never in her life thrown herself at a man, but the thought of Walker leaving her sent her into some kind of instinctive frenzy. Before he could say a word, she had her arms around his neck and pulled his head down until her mouth could touch his. As kisses went, hers was clumsy and desperate, so pathetic in fact that he didn’t move a muscle.
She made her hands slide down so he could straighten, but she couldn’t seem to take them off his chest or look him in the eye. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No,” he agreed in a strange voice.
Her head whirled as Walker’s hands clamped on her waist and he lifted her off her feet. Three steps later she was flat on her back on the bed, and his hands were tearing at her clothes and his. She felt the air on her thighs just before his hips parted them.
Lilah shifted her legs, widening them as she curled her right leg over the backs of his knees. Her movements inflicted a subtle abrasion over his erection as she positioned herself, opening her body wider to him and caressing him with the small notch of her sex. The soft curls of her body hair tangled with his. Then he was pushing into her.
Walker looked down the length of their bodies, watching his penis sinking into her. His expression was such a sublime blend of frantic desire and blessed relief that Lilah knew he felt as desperate for it as she did.
Despite her need her body was not ready for him; she felt the dry tightness of her flesh dragging painfully at him as his shaft went deep. He must have felt the resistance, too, for he stopped to reach down and squeeze his shaft. She felt the cool silkiness of fluid seeping from his cockhead and softening his passage. He pressed deep until she felt the broad base seat against her folds.
He was almost too much for her, and they both felt it. Lilah clutched at him, her nails digging in as her body spasmed around him and her breasts pressed into his chest. He cupped the back of her head, holding her brow to his shoulder, rubbing his hot face against her hair as he shuddered.
The weight of his body, the aching invasion of his penis, and the violent way they had come together all dissolved away as she discovered the heat they generated together was more than physical. It went deeper, stirring and revealing some alien clarity inside her that she never knew even existed. It had been hiding, perhaps waiting for him, all this time. Now that he was inside her, it flowered around him, opening her mind as well as her body to his.
I am to be yours
, she thought to him.
Yes.
He answered without hesitation.
Always.
Walker held himself inside her without moving, allowing her time to adjust. Feeling the weight and fullness of him brought a rush of tenderness and excitement. The emptiness of her body and her heart vanished, and Walker became the world. Everything made sense now, and she had no idea why. She didn’t care, either. The smell of his skin, the force of his strength, the mesh of their bodies, were all that concerned her.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, lifting her lips to kiss him. Her mouth opened under his, drinking in the sounds he made, filling her head with dark hungers. He rolled with her off the bed and onto the floor, pinning her there as he tore open her shirt and bared her to his mouth. For a few moments he played with her, suckling her gently, until she groaned and rolled her hips.
Walker seemed to snap then, for he swore and dragged her over onto her hands and knees, yanking her into position and holding her there with one arm around her torso as he crouched over her. The spike of his cock impaled her again, this time with one furious stroke, and her back arched up, shifting her hair to fall over her face, exposing her nape.
Lilah felt him latch onto the back of her neck with his teeth, sucking at her flesh with his mouth while he drove into her body with pounding strokes. He fucked her without mercy through one orgasm and then another before he came.
The jet of his seed seemed to pump into her for hours, but even that did not mollify him.
He lifted her from the hard floor, carrying her over to the bed, dropping her onto her back before covering her with his body. Lilah could see her face like a pale mote in the blackness of his eyes, a small blurry oval of blue and gold and rose and cream. All she could hear was the slick collision of his flesh to hers, the liquid rhythm of his cock as he worked it into her, and the helpless, needy sounds coming from her own lips.