“I am sure you will. I expect you will.” She set Her hands on Her hips. “Do not fail Me, Aristotle. It has been many years since your family has fulfilled its duty. It may be very bad for you and yours if you fail again.”
Aristotle nodded, bowing, his face flushed a ruddy color. Embarrassed, She was sure, by the reminder of the failures of recent years. Good. He and his should be humiliated to have been outwitted by the Medusas of the past several generations.
“I would hate to have to return to see you on this matter again, Aristotle,” She said, gentling Her tone just a little. “I understand you are loyal to Me, even if one of your number is no longer.”
His mouth tightened. “I will make sure we get her this time, My Lady.”
Athena nodded. “I will be monitoring your progress.”
She was gone before Aristotle looked up.
Chapter Nine
Andrea watched Kallan’s fingers skim over the keyboard of his laptop, as he logged into his family’s site to enter his latest false clues.
She got to her feet and wandered around their room. They’d already unpacked their toiletries when they showered before their first walk, so she could see toothpaste and brushes littering the counter in the bathroom when she passed the open door. The open suitcase lay on the chair beside the dresser, with its meager contents revealed: two days’ worth of clothing, her backpack, and—still tucked into the inner pockets—their cache of weapons. She’d checked. Surreptitiously, of course, when she was taking out fresh clothing, but her blade still rested in the suitcase where she’d packed it yesterday.
She felt a twinge of guilt at having felt the need to check for it. But the dagger had been her constant companion for many years. Every girl born into her family received a similar weapon when she had her first period, a rite of passage for the Medusa’s descendants, one of the first they all shared.
“Do you need to send anyone email?”
She started, turning to see Kallan offering his laptop to her. “No,” she said after a moment. “Not for a few days.”
He nodded and closed it down. Then he turned an intent green gaze back onto her.
Her heart beat faster.
“Do you want to talk about earlier?” He got to his feet, and she jumped, then took a deep breath when he put his laptop away.
She flushed. “Not really.”
He set his hands on his narrow hips when he straightened up, studying her for several long moments. “I think I’d like to.”
She swallowed, her mouth dry. “Leftover hormones.” She jerked one shoulder in a shrug.
“Still? You think so?” He lifted one hand to push his hair away from his face, making her think she’d like to do that too—to slide her fingers through his hair.
She caught herself and frowned. “Yes, I do.” That was all it was. “And stress. It’s been a rough week.”
He nodded slowly, once. “If you say so.” He moved toward her, but she held her ground this time, despite her racing pulse and the little voice in her head urging her to move.
He stopped a foot away. “Do you trust me, Andrea?”
She blinked. “Yes.” She hadn’t had to think about it. Clearly, she trusted him now. He’d spirited her across the ocean to avoid the cousins intent on murdering her. If that didn’t mean she could trust him, she didn’t know what did.
He looked satisfied with her answer, faint tension lines disappearing from around his mouth. “Ready for bed?”
She frowned when he moved around her to go into the bathroom. What the hell was that about? When she got to the open door, he was brushing his teeth. He glanced over and winked at her.
She’d missed something, obviously.
She was still pondering it when he came out of the smaller room. He brushed a kiss on her cheek as he unbuttoned his jeans, then stopped moving. She heard the faint buzz of his old cell phone vibrating, and watched his expression harden.
He took the phone from his pocket and looked at the screen, his mouth flattening.
Her mouth went even drier. “Stavros?”
He nodded, then pushed the talk button, holding his free finger to his lips in a signal for her to be quiet.
Andi didn’t need to be told twice. In this case, she didn’t need to be told once.
“Hello, Stavros. How is your hunt going? Any luck in Maine?”
She walked unsteadily to the foot of the bed and sank onto the mussed blankets, her heart galloping.
“Too bad. I’m sorry you missed me in Ohio. I thought we’d have her for sure.” Though he kept his tone light, his expression was hard. He stretched out his free hand to stroke over the top of her head. “Team up? Why? We cover more ground this way, moving over separate areas. Besides, I thought you believed your lead was the one?”
She shut her eyes and bent her head, her stomach roiling and making her glad she hadn’t eaten much for supper.
“Really? Uncle Ari’s idea?” His tone was strained now, and when she looked up again, tension lined his face. “I’ll think about it and see what I can come up with here, in the meantime. Did you see Anatole’s message yesterday? He’s in Mexico, thinks he’s on the right trail.” His knuckles were white on the phone.
Andi took a quick breath, lifting one hand to cover his where it had fallen to her shoulder.
He flashed her a quick, forced smile. “All right. I’ll talk to you in a few days.” He thumbed the off button and tossed the phone into the open suitcase across the room, then dropped his head back and shut his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, pushing to her feet and wrapping her arms around him. Under her cheek, his cotton shirt was warm, and beneath that, his heartbeat rushed along—thump-thump, thump-thump.
He folded his own arms around her and exhaled slowly. “Not your fault.”
It was her fault, even though she knew it was simply an accident of birth for them both.
“Get naked, Andrea.” As he spoke, he pulled at the back of her sweater, tugging it off her shoulders.
She eased back and let the sweater drop from her arms. His expression shifted from worry to desire in a flash. Her blood thickened in her veins, making the need pulse harder, almost painfully, through her body.
He tugged his shirt over his head, then unzipped his jeans and let them fall to the floor.
His body was beautiful, she thought, watching as his erection swelled and rose toward her. His thighs went taut as he braced himself when her hand lifted to touch him. Just a glancing brush of her fingers on his skin.
She unbuttoned her shirt and yanked it free of her jeans, then tossed it aside so she could touch him again, this time wrapping her fingers around the thick, tempting shaft.
“Andrea.”
She smiled, and wrapped her other hand around him too, squeezing.
“Oh, Goddess.” His hips jerked toward her.
She slid her hands down to the base of his erection, then back up, rubbing one thumb over the tip of him.
He caught her hips and yanked her close, his mouth descending to cover hers roughly.
Andi let him take over, not disappointed to find him eager and demanding, his hands urging her to swift arousal and finally release. They barely made it to the bed before the explosion claimed them both.
This time when he whispered, “I love you, meli,” she didn’t even flinch. She smiled into his throat and held him closer.
Kallan sat on a rough boulder next to the shore the next day, watching Andrea wander closer to the water. She looked absolutely relaxed, delighted with the small pebbles she’d paused to examine more closely.
His call from Stavros last night still troubled him. His cousin was furious he’d missed Andrea in Maine. Livid that he’d gone to Ohio on Great-Uncle Ari’s say-so and found nothing. And he was absolutely the angriest that Kallan could ever remember that Kallan was brushing him off.
Stavros would be even more determined now to find her. He had never taken defeat gracefully, not even when they were kids
skipping rocks on a lake, or when they were a little older and participating in the training exercises that were tradition for boys in their family.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He should just leave the damned thing in the suitcase and check his messages once a day and only carry the new phone in case he actually needed to make a call. For some reason, he’d put the old one back in his pocket. Habit.
Andrea glanced up when he pulled the phone out, and her smile faded.
Stavros again.
He stuffed the phone away and pushed to his feet.
She stood still, a wet rock in her hand, when he got to her. “How would you like to see Inverness?” he asked.
“When?”
He brushed a smudge of dark, grainy sand from her cheek. “Tomorrow.”
She nodded silently.
He wrapped his arms around her and stared at the rolling waves. Running wasn’t something he’d ever expected to do. He’d never run away from anything before. Ever.
But he’d run to the ends of the earth to keep Andrea out of harm’s way.
Andi didn’t mind traveling into the Highlands. She hadn’t ever imagined she’d get to visit Scotland. She certainly hadn’t thought she’d be seeing it with a man who was so incredibly attentive to her, in and out of bed. Or with a man who whispered “I love you” on a regular basis.
She definitely hadn’t imagined she’d get a warm, tingly feeling in her middle every time he said it.
That made her a little nervous. More than a little nervous, to be very honest.
She was afraid she was starting to believe. To believe the man who’d come to kill her was in love with her. That they could have a future.
And if she believed that—that she might have something she’d stopped dreaming about years ago, something now within her grasp—the risk of losing her life would be much, much more difficult to accept than when she’d expected to spend the rest of her life alone.
They were walking hand-in-hand on Culloden battlefield when Kallan suddenly went still, his entire body stiffening. His fingers around hers tightened almost painfully.
“Phone?”
He shook his head. “We need to go.” Without another word, he turned her back toward the parking area and hustled her into the car before speeding onto the road. They’d driven half an hour in the wrong direction before he relaxed enough so his knuckles weren’t white on the steering wheel.
Andi’s stomach had knotted on itself about a hundred times in the past thirty minutes, and she wondered what the hell was going on.
“I don’t know who it was, or even exactly where, but one of my cousins was nearby. Too close,” he said at last, uncurling one hand from the wheel to reach over and give her leg a gentle squeeze. “I don’t think he realized we were there, and he’s definitely not following us.”
She took a shallow breath—feeling some of the tension banding her chest ease—then another, deeper breath. “Now what?”
“Back to Inverness. For now.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “You want to play with the GPS?”
It took her several tries to punch in the right address for their hotel, so the GPS would give them the correct route back to the city. Even when Kallan caught one of her hands in his, her fingers still shook.
Being on the run sucked.
Being on the run and knowing that one’s pursuers could stumble on one anywhere in the world sucked even more.
She bit her lower lip as she stared out the car’s side window. She knew believing was no good. Not when his family could find her anywhere in the world. She had no future, with or without Kallan.
“It’s okay, Andrea.”
“No, it’s really not.” She realized her fingernails were digging into her palm and uncurled the fist she’d made subconsciously with her free hand. Crescent-shaped marks remained when she looked. “Can all of the Harvesters sense one another?”
“No.”
She looked over at him, her hand dropping back into her lap. “No?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “No. There are a few of us that I’m aware of, but it’s not something we tend to share.”
“Why not?”
He inhaled slowly, steering the car onto the road the GPS indicated. “Because some of my cousins don’t like when another gets into their territory, or their hunting grounds.”
“Like Stavros?”
“Like Stavros.”
“He doesn’t have that ability?”
He shook his head.
Andi pondered that while he drove along narrow, winding roads.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Maybe we should have stayed in Maine.”
He shot her a disbelieving look. “And let him kill you?”
“That isn’t what I meant.” She frowned. “If he didn’t know you were there, he might have given up when he couldn’t find me.”
“Andrea, even if he couldn’t sense the protection spell you had on the cave, you don’t know my cousin. He doesn’t give up. He’s still there, traipsing through your forest trying to figure out where you went.” Frustration laced his tone.
She flexed her fingers in his grip, wiggling them until she could link them with his. “But that doesn’t mean he would find me. I’m not as helpless as you seem to think.”
Kallan clenched his jaw even tighter. “I don’t think you’re helpless. If you went to that cave without me, however, all your magic would have brought him right to you. If he had come there three days sooner, and I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have been able to fight him off. He’d have killed you, and you wouldn’t have been able to stop him.” His grip on her hand was almost painful now.
Andi tugged on her fingers, trying to free them, but he didn’t release her. “I wouldn’t have gone easily. And if he’d come then, most likely, he’d be dead now.”
She could actually hear his teeth grinding together, and the faint sound alarmed her slightly. “That does not make me feel better,” he said after a moment. “We have to find a way out of this without you winding up dead.”
She stopped trying to pull her hand away and let out a slow breath. “I don’t want to argue with you, Kallan.” She just wanted to stop the threat to her life.
“Let’s check out of the hotel and head north.”
She blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “O-o-okay.”
He lifted their joined hands to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to argue with you either.”
She nodded when he glanced over at her again. “We’ll have to go back, though, you know.”
Something flashed through his eyes, too quickly for her to decipher. “We’ll see. Maybe we ought to find out everything we can about the amulet.”
She settled deeper into her seat. “Like if there’s any way to get it besides cutting it out of my back?” Pain pricked at the center of her chest.
“That wasn’t what I meant. Are you trying to pick another fight?”
She shut her eyes. “No. I just hate feeling like this. Like I can’t do anything to put an end to this. Like one way or another, it’s going to end badly.” She heard the GPS recite new instructions. “Like I’m wasting time.” Now that she’d had time to think, now that her flight instinct had eased from their initial escape from her home, her stand-and-fight instinct had come back with a vengeance.
The car jerked to a stop in the middle of the road, and she turned to look at Kallan, startled.
The expression on his face was shuttered, but she saw the flash of anger and pain in his eyes clearly this time. Her heart beat faster.
“‘Wasting time’? Exactly what does that mean?”
Her chest tightened. “I didn’t mean with you,” she whispered. “I meant in trying to escape the inevitable.”
His expression didn’t change. “Which is what?”
“Someone in your family is going to wind up killing me, Kallan.” The pain in her chest squeezed tighter, making breathing more diffi
cult. “I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to avoid it forever. So why run? I’d rather face it fighting than running like a coward.”
His eyes darkened, but he remained silent for a moment. “I see,” he said at last, setting the car in motion. That was all.
Andi felt the lump in her throat swelling, and closed her eyes, leaning against the headrest and turning her face toward the window. Her eyes and nose stung, and she was afraid she was going to burst into noisy tears any second. She concentrated on inhaling and exhaling slowly, though it didn’t stop the stinging. She felt a tear burn its way down her cheek, but she left it alone rather than wipe it away and let him know she was crying again like some leaky human hormone overload. Her damned hormones should be back to normal by now.
It was some time before the car came to a complete stop, after the city went blurring past her, and he turned the engine off.
By then, a whole lot of tears had slipped down her face, but she refused to make a sound to give herself away.
One of his fingers glided over her wet cheek, and she inhaled unsteadily, trying to swallow back a sob.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry again, Andrea.”
She couldn’t open her mouth, or that sob was going to make its escape, and it had friends crowding behind it. Lots of friends. Instead, she turned her face further toward the side window.
He cupped her chin, pausing when his fingers encountered more wetness on the other side of her face, then turned her toward him.
“Ah, agaph,” he whispered, leaning close enough to rest his forehead against hers. “Don’t cry.”
“I’m not,” she managed, the sob turning to a hiccup.
“I can see that.” Despite his light tone, he didn’t smile, his green eyes somber.
“Still hormones.”
He nodded. “If you say so.” He wiped tears from her cheeks, his touch gentle.
Andi gulped in some air, desperate not to cry in front of him again. Not like she had the other day. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried that way. And to do it twice in a span of only a couple of days? She’d never done that. Not even when she first became the Medusa.
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