paws slipping on the flagstone, and slammed into warm, musky wet fur.
The cougar shook off, short and sharp, and water flew. Lyn, following suit in a tidier fashion, caught the panting laughter in his expression. He loves this. The dash through the weather, the exhilaration of the run…right there in those dancing eyes, as if he’d forgotten who she was and why she was there, as if they were no more than two companions who’d outraced a storm.
She saw it the moment he remembered. His eyes shuttered; he shifted his weight away from her. And she saw in his posture the moment he decided to change; she scooted back, her long, full tail sweeping between them.
That’s when she felt it. As inevitable as the storm itself, as intertwined with the moment and the place. The deep, thrumming power of the mountain, a basso so profound that it put the rolling thunder to shame.
And dammit, woven in it all was the distinct trace of the very Sentinel who crouched before her—a smooth and corduroy-edged baritone trace, a beguiling brush of sensation even as he entered the change: a quick shake from shoulders up, a flicking twitch of skin down along his back, that elegant rise to his feet—
Except he faltered, and he fell. He crumpled down to his knees and elbows as the storm raged around them and the bass surge of the mountain’s power made Lyn’s bones hum, and his expression held astonishment and betrayal and pain.
Lyn flicked herself out of the ocelot. She went to him, crouching. “What is it?” She reached out, trying to find something identifiable other than Ryan’s trace, other than the wards around this space and those protecting the house.
Dead end.
She looked into his face and saw a dead end there, too. Hazel eyes gone into shadow, body language gone stiff and wary. He sat back on his heels, some part of his expression still lingering on surprise. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Got something in my eye.”
“That’s the most—” pathetic lie I ever heard. It made her wonder if it wasn’t an act, if Vegas had actually broken him, leaving him scrabbling in this last desperate bid for power without the chops to bring it off.
Or maybe he thought she was just that gullible.
Let him think it. No point in giving away the least advantage, even if he wasn’t all he’d been made out to be.
What the hell was that?
Good God, he’d almost lost control of the shifting, right in front of her. That hadn’t happened since…
Since puberty, when it happened to them all. Joe lingered there, sitting on his heels, knowing she was thinking about it, too—seeing the wariness hovering around her.
As if it mattered. She’d had her mind made up long before she’d met him. She had an intensity about her, a burn…Before this was over, he’d find out what had lit that fire. It might be focused on him, but it hadn’t started with him. Way too much momentum there. Alluring, shimmering intensity…
He lifted his face to the fine spray of water reflecting off the edge of the porch, let it mist over skin that felt hot. “If you’re so sure it’s me,” he said, “why not trail me instead of coming to me?”
She snorted, but the question did what he’d wanted—took her mind off his shifting stutter. She sat, bringing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. “I couldn’t trail you here without your knowledge, and you know it.”
Ah. In this, at least, she was sensible enough. She’d hidden her power from him at first, but no one could keep that up for long. Perceiving power shifts was what he did.
“Besides,” she said, still sensible, “whether you’re innocent or guilty, you want to prove me wrong, right? The best way to do that is by helping me. Or pretending to help me.”
Joe laughed. “So you’re betting you’re smarter than I am.”
“Yes,” she said, and shivered. The cleverly layered open weave of her shirt wasn’t much for keeping in the heat. Nor for obscuring the tightening of cold nipples, when it came to that. “It’s just a matter of which of us plays the game better.”
She shivered again. The storm—already moving eastward over the Peaks—had dropped the temperature by a good twenty degrees. Typical. Joe climbed to his feet. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go get warmed up.”
In response, he received a skeptical look. Eloquently skeptical, with one winged brow arching upward.
He shook his head. “I don’t care about your games. I just want to keep this mountain safe.” If they’d decided he was guilty of something, he’d be considered guilty whether they could prove it or not. If anyone knew the meaning of inevitable, it was Joe Ryan. No point in turning himself inside out over it.
“Keep the mountain safe,” she repeated flatly. And then she nodded, rising gracefully to her feet in spite of her shivers. “Okay. We’ll play it that way. Especially if it means coffee.”
Joe gave her coffee. He offered her a down-filled lap quilt, which she pulled over her shoulders, and he stopped short of offering her dry clothes. He’d long since dispersed of his sister’s clothing. No point in hanging on to it, now that she was gone. And thank God she had passed before they’d used her illness to ruin his life; thank God she’d never known.
Not that he’d much cared at the time. Too busy grieving and all that. By the time he started thinking straight again, the Sentinels had tried him in absentia, declared him not guilty but not innocent, and packed him off to this mountain where the deep, stable power was supposed to be big enough to keep him busy—taking advantage of his ability to influence slow swells of deep power—yet too big for him to mess with.
Apparently they’d changed their minds on that last part. He supposed he should feel flattered.
Instead he made coffee for a woman he didn’t know but who was already his enemy. Damn shame, that. Those eyes—
Don’t go there, boy-o.
Besides, he’d be in real trouble if they found out just how wrong they were when it came to his limits.
“We just have time to make it to Snowbowl,” he said, words she didn’t quite seem to absorb as she wandered the most public parts of the house—the entryway with its skylights, the soaring space of the great room with its cathedral ceiling and the wood stove set neatly in the corner. She’d spooked three of his four cats into brief appearance and now she drifted back to the kitchen, an area defined by half walls and countertops and otherwise completely open to the great room. “I can’t believe you have cats.”
“I don’t have them. They just live here.” He shrugged. “It amuses them.” In fact, cat number four, a little black shorthair, wound between his ankles as he pulled coffee mugs from the cupboard, her tail high and quivering. They’d all chosen him…followed him home, refused to go away, and now lived under his protection, indoors and safe from the predators of the area. “But four,” he admitted, “is the absolute limit.”
“Four,” she repeated, looking bemused. And then, finally registering his words, “Why Snowbowl?”
Coffee gurgled in the background, his sleek little onecup coffeemaker valiantly churning
