gun safety on the way to adulthood, but from the perspective of a lynx who never assumed on the safety of his skin in the woods.
But Regan winced, and he knew she’d taken it the obvious way. The day before way. “How’s your arm?”
“Healing,” he said. He crouched by the side of the dry pool, letting his splayed fingers push through crackling leaves to feel the faint dampness below—moisture left from the spring melt. He let his awareness filter outward, a whisper of a question.
He pretended not to notice when Regan stiffened, lifting her head—searching for what she’d heard without quite understanding from where it came.
“Here,” he murmured, and lifted his head in invitation.
She frowned, not quite certain. He gestured again, and she set the shotgun aside, sliding off the roots to land at the edge of the dry pool.
Kai beckoned her closer and nodded at his hand. “Like this.”
She crouched beside him, slowly imitating his reach for the land—stiff and wary and closed away.
Not from him—Kai understood that right away. From fear of hearing again that faint whisper.
But it wasn’t something to fear. It was something to celebrate. It was something to breathe in and exhale and feel alive about.
He eased closer, his arm reaching out beside hers, his hand covering hers, his fingers gently reaching between hers to touch the ground. “Easy,” he said. “Quiet.” He brushed his thumb over her hand, soothing her.
“What—” she said, her voice at normal volume—and then cut herself off, chagrined. When she spoke again, she did so quietly. “What are we doing?”
“Listening,” he told her.
“Why? To what?”
“Shh,” he said, close to her ear and barely putting sound behind the words. “To learn.”
“I don’t—”
“Shh. Learn.” He stroked her hand with his thumb again, and went back to the land.
Gentle burble of precious water soaking deep, feeding roots, damping ground. Hints of icy cold below, the touch of warmth above. The great, thrumming heartbeat of networked life, scampering little nails...the crunch of a seed, the hull left behind...
And the dark blot of the spot that felt nothing at all. Cold metal, a whiff of corruption—
Hurts...
Regan’s hand jerked beneath his.
“Shh,” he said, coming back to himself. “You’re safe. You’re...” He trailed off, suddenly aware that his head tipped forward against hers, that her pale gold hair tickled his face and the beguiling scent of it tickled his nose. His hand had slipped around her waist to press across her stomach, now suddenly aware of the flutter in her breathing. “Regan,” he murmured and nuzzled behind her ear.
“Not,” she whispered, freezing under his touch. “Not safe at all.” And she turned in his arms, her hand coming up to cup his cheek. He leaned into it as she leaned into him, mouth closing in on his.
Instantly, he tugged her closer, bringing them together so she suddenly straddled his thigh; she gasped into his mouth and twined her fingers through his hair, holding him so she could tilt her head to touch his lips with her tongue, a flirt that led to ferocity and his shudder of response.
He hadn’t planned to tuck one hand under the firm muscle of her bottom and tip her so she could have received him, but his body made that choice for him. He hadn’t planned to tumble over on his back so she sprawled across him—but she made that choice for him, levering him over and freeing herself to roam her touch across his chest and down his ribs and right down to rest where he strained for her. He pushed against her, and his eyes rolled back as sweet, fiery warmth gathered deep within him, beckoning a growl from his throat.
He flipped them around, his hand cushioning her head before it could hit the ground. He stalked her from there, showing tooth and showing prowl and showing the power of the lynx. Her eyes widened and her hands stilled, and suddenly they were two people aware of themselves again, breath gusting against each other’s faces and bodies trembling.
“Oh,” Regan said, as taken aback as Kai felt. “My.”
Remorse hit him—and concern. The sudden awareness that he’d let the lynx in—that he’d been just exactly what he could never be.
But she wouldn’t understand that, either—so he made himself grin, easing back to give her space as he struggled with the fact that in spite of the remorse, in spite of the concern...there was no regret. Only a kind of glory in how much he’d wanted this woman.
He couldn’t reconcile the two.
Regan gave her shirt a futile tug, twisting it back into place. “This is the part where I say I’m not this kind of girl,” she told him, brushing a stick from her hair. “And that I’ve never done this before.”
“This?”
She looked slightly taken aback. “You’re not following the script. Now you say ‘Yeah, yeah, we shouldn’t have done that.’”
He removed a final twig, caught just behind her ear. “Why would I do that?”
Because he didn’t regret a moment of it. What he’d let slip through to her, yes. What they’d done, no.
After a moment, she snorted gently. “Right,” she said. “Why would you? Truth is, I’ve done this plenty. But never just like this.”
Kai wasn’t sure how to untangle that one. “I don’t really understand.”
He understood one thing well enough: never—ever—had he felt what Regan brought out in him. Not as a teen; not in his early years alone. Not when brazen female tourists brushed against him on the town boardwalk, or when the hunters’ lonely wives opened their blouses down one more button.
Not when the Sentinel woman quietly hired for his initiation took him for the first time, unlocking all that was lynx within him—and then stayed for days, teaching him control, teaching him responsibility...teaching him how to please. Mia, staying for an extra several days to do the impossible—trying to show him everything she thought an isolated youth should know about being a man, and about being a man with a Sentinel’s strength.
But not how to love. Now he sat with Regan in the dry pool and caught his breath, his body stuck in relentless and unfamiliar turmoil. This was response; this was pure physical yearning. It was beyond anything he’d learned with that fleeting encounter.
It just possibly was everything she’d ever warned him against.
* * *
Of course Kai didn’t understand. Of course Regan would have to spell it out.
Or else pretend she hadn’t heard him.
But looking at Kai’s lightly furrowed brow, she could hardly do that to him. And still trembling as she was from his touch, she could hardly do it
