One of them, watching the tremors shake him, had asked if he was under the influence. Baran had asked, “Of what?” For some reason, the man had not seemed to appreciate the question.
Now Baran eyed Reynolds and hoped he could get through this interview quickly. Jane was being questioned in another car, and Baran did not particularly like having her out of his sight. Freika was sitting patiently by the vehicle she occupied, standing guard, but that wasn’t enough. The wolf was deadly in a fight, but it was doubtful he could hold Druas off in any extended combat.
The facts were brutally simple. If Baran was arrested, Jane was dead.
His fists clenched. He couldn’t afford to be taken. If he had to fight these men so he could snatch her and run, he’d do it. He would not allow Druas to butcher her as he had the woman Baran had just watched die.
“It’s been a bitch of a day, huh, Hoss?” the detective asked in a low, quiet voice, watching his face. “You’ve tried to save two women and fucked up both times.”
Baran’s head snapped toward the detective so hard the beads slapped his cheek. It took him a moment to cool his helpless rage and blank his expression. “So it would seem.”
“Pisses you off, doesn’t it?” The cop settled back in his seat and wrote something down on the little notebook he held. “You cut yourself all to hell trying to get the first woman out of the car, then you go tearing through the woods after a killer, only to get there too late. All you can do is watch her die in your arms. Sucks to be you, huh?”
He almost told the deputy he’d had to watch people die before, but remembered the photographer he was supposed to be. “I’ve had better days.”
“So tell me what happened.”
“I have already told you what happened,” Baran said, restraining his flare of irritation at hearing the question yet again. “Just as I told the three other officers who asked.”
“We just want to make sure we get the details right,” Reynolds said blandly. “So when was the first time you met this girl?”
Baran frowned. “What girl?”
“The girl that just died.”
He shook his head and drummed his fingers on the car’s dashboard, staring at Jane’s silhouette in the back of the other patrol car. He wanted to be done with this so he could get her to safety. “As I said before—repeatedly—I didn’t know her. All I did was try to…”
Suddenly a plump, motherly woman ran past the front of the car. Even through the closed window, Baran could hear her sobbing screams of denial.
A cop ran to meet her. She tried to push by, but he stepped to block her. She screamed something and flung herself at him just as a middle-aged man ran up to drag her back.
“That would be the momma and daddy,” Reynolds said. Baran could almost feel the weight of his coolly analytical gaze, dissecting every expression, every twitch. “That’s the thing about a small town. Somebody dies, and two minutes later the family knows it. Poor bastards.” Softly, cruelly, he added, “You want me to introduce you? I mean, you did try to save her, right?”
For an instant Baran considered planting his fist in the man’s face. Unfortunately, he still had so much riatt left in his system, the blow would probably kill the detective. He forced his muscles to relax.
The detective smiled slightly. “That’s better. Thought for a minute I was going to have to shoot your ass right here in the car. You’re a scary bastard when you want to be. Your eyes…I could have sworn…” He shook his head and closed his notebook with a tired sigh. “Okay, you can go. I gotta start looking for this son of a bitch.”
Baran lifted his brows, wondering if this was some kind of trick. “That’s it?”
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who just killed somebody, and you don’t have the look. You’ve got the eyes of a guy who’s blaming himself for not being thirty seconds faster.”
Baran smiled slightly, dryly. The detective was far too perceptive.
“Besides,” Reynolds continued, “I’ve known Jane since she was twelve years old and coming to crime scenes with her daddy. If she says you didn’t do it, you didn’t do it.”
His muscles cautiously unknotting, Baran reached for the door handle. “Thank you.”
“Don’t forget your blanket.” Reynolds had handed it to him so he wouldn’t have to walk past the crowd of onlookers bare-chested and covered in gore. “None of us needs the kind of rumors that would trigger.”
He nodded and pulled it up around his shoulders again as Reynolds radioed the other officer to let Jane out of his car.
As he got out, Reynolds leaned over and looked up at him. “By the way, tell her she needs to get a new cell number. And don’t give this one out to everybody in town, dammit. The wrong guy definitely got hold of it this time.”
The Warlord nodded. “I’ll make sure to pass along the message.”
“On the other hand, don’t.” Reynolds frowned. “We may need to put a tap on her phone. Might be useful if he calls again.”
With an effort, Baran kept his opinion of that idea off his face. All the police needed to do was listen to one call, and they’d realize he and Jane knew far more about their mystery killer than they should. That, he thought, we definitely do not need.
Baran pushed the door open as Jane get out of the other car and hurried toward him, Freika trotting at her heels.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he growled.
“God, yes,” she said, glancing toward two men, one armed with a video camera, who were working through the crowd of onlookers toward them. “There comes that jerk Clarkson from WDRT News. We don’t want to talk to him—particularly not with you covered in blood.” She led the way back toward the SUV at a speed just short of a run.
As they pulled away from the curb a moment later, she glowered into her rearview mirror at the camera pointed at their truck. “I never thought I’d ever be the one running from reporters. Usually I’m at the head of the pack.” She turned her attention to the road, a grim set to her mouth. “Damn, I don’t want to end up as that bastard’s lead story.”
Glancing at him, she read his puzzlement. “There’s an old saying in television journalism, Baran—‘If it bleeds, it leads.’”
An hour later Jane realized she was a slut.
It was, she decided, the only possible explanation. No decent Southern belle would get this turned on after the day she’d just spent. Not even watching Baran Arvid take a shower.
Dry-mouthed, she gazed through the bubbled glass door at the muscle shifting in his powerful arms as he washed all that long, black hair. She barely noticed the beads biting into her hands. He’d handed them to her when he’d taken down his bloody braids; now she clenched her fingers around them and fought to control the impulse to join him.
Yep. Slut. She had to face facts.
White runnels of soap ran down the rippled planes of pectorals and washboard abs, painting slow and sensual trails that Jane would love to follow with her fingertips.
Yet even through the glass, she could see the tired slump in his body, could tell from the slow movement of his hands that he felt drained, weighted with guilt and failure.
Jane frowned at the surge of tenderness she felt. Lust somehow seemed less complicated than this sudden need to comfort him.
It was hard to believe that this time yesterday, she hadn’t even known him at all. The hours they’d spent together had been so crammed with terror and passion they’d felt elongated into weeks. Now it seemed she knew more about the elemental core of Baran Arvid than she’d learned about her college lover in the entire year they’d dated.
Jane frowned, shifting on the lowered toilet seat. She had offered to shower with Baran, knowing his desire should be running high after spending so long in riatt, but he’d declined. He’d claimed washing away blood was not considered a romantic activity even in his own time, but she suspected the real truth was that he wanted to punish himself.
“You weren’t supposed to save her, Baran,” she sa
id, knowing his keen hearing would pick up her words even over the hiss of the shower. “Don’t torment yourself.”
He looked at her over the edge of the door. His hair was slicked tight to his head, shining and black. His gaze was brooding. “And who else am I not supposed to save?”
The bottom fell out of Jane’s stomach. “Do you think…” She had to stop to swallow her rising gorge. “Do you think he’s going to get me?”
With a sharp, violent gesture he cut off the water. “No.” His determined voice rang on the tiles. “No, he’s not going to get you.”
She tightened her grip on the beads until her fist went white. “How can you be so sure?”
Baran swung the shower door open with a hard thrust of his palm and stepped out, gloriously naked. “Because I’m not going to let him.” Grabbing the towel from its rack, he rubbed it roughly over his gleaming tanned skin, his face set as cold and hard as iced steel. “I’m not going to give him the chance.”
She knew he meant every word. Baran would die before he let Druas touch her. A cold knot of fear inside her loosened. “Sit down and I’ll do your hair.”
He took her place on the commode seat as she went to get her comb. He was toweling his black mane when she returned.
She stepped close and pushed his hands aside so she could begin. His hair was surprisingly long; she wondered how many years he’d been growing it out.
Picking up a silken fistful, she started gently working the comb through a knot that had formed while he’d been scrubbing out the blood. The activity was so mindless, so sensual, that she felt her anxiety beginning to fade.
He, however, seemed immune, judging by the way he was restlessly rubbing the towel up and down his belly and wet thighs. “I’ve killed people, Jane,” he said suddenly, his voice sounding strained.
She hesitated, then went back to tugging the comb through the knot. “Yeah, I think you mentioned that.”
“Other soldiers, enemy commanders. Mostly with a beamer, some with a knife, some bare handed.” He leaned forward, the towel hanging limply from one big hand. She dropped the handful of smoothed hair and picked up another tangled hank. Patiently she began working out the knots.
“I watched their eyes when they died,” he said. “There’s a look they get—you never forget it. Sometimes I close my eyes, and they’re there, looking back….”
Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this, but she sensed he needed to say it, so she kept her mouth shut and kept combing.
“With a couple of them, I felt a sense of triumph, but most of the time I didn’t feel anything at all. Nothing. Just dead inside. It was a job, one the high command said needed doing. So I did it.”
“I’m sorry.” The phrase felt inadequate, but she couldn’t think of anything else that wouldn’t be.
“I’ve known a few who got a taste for it. There was a soldier in my unit once…I never liked having him at my back. I often wondered if there’d been a moment when he got the hunger.”
Jane stopped in midmotion as she processed the idea. “Druas is like that,” she decided.
“Yeah.” He sat up. “I want to kill him, Jane. For that girl today, and for Mary Kelly, and Jennifer’s family. And most of all, because he put fear in your eyes.” His voice dropped to a low, deadly register. “I think I’m going to like killing him.”
“You afraid you’re going to like it too much?”
His shoulders stiffened, then slumped. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
Jane moved around in front of him and knelt between his spread thighs. “Baran, you’re not like Druas. Men like that—there’s something missing in them. Something that makes the rest of us human. But you’ve got it.”
His expression was bleak. “The Femmats always said Warlords aren’t human. Not really.”
Jane snorted. “The Femmats are full of bull.” She reached out a hand and laid it across his high cheek. “Look, I don’t care if you can rip the doors off a Toyota, you’re still human in all the ways that count. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be doing this to yourself because that girl died in your arms. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t care.”
Jane tilted her face up toward his. “If you weren’t, I wouldn’t want to do this.”
Slowly, with exquisite tenderness, she took his mouth in a slow, deep kiss.
Fourteen
Baran groaned as Jane settled into the kiss, her mouth hot, wet, and silken. Her slim body came to rest against his, all velvet curves and gentle heat. He went still like a man approached by something small and wild, instinctively afraid to do something to scare her off. Before, he’d always been the one to seduce her. To have her reach out to him now struck him as a sweet, dark gift.
Her long hands cupped the sides of his face, fingers threaded through his wet hair as she kissed him, drinking from his mouth, tasting him, filling him with the taste of her. She drew back, just slightly, and his arms tightened in protest around her slim back. He hadn’t even been aware of wrapping them around her.
Against his lips she murmured, “Come to bed. I refuse to make love to you sitting on a toilet.”
She stepped back, her eyes sultry with invitation. He rose as if hypnotized to follow her as she turned with a roll of her slim hips and sauntered for the bedroom. His erect cock pointed longingly at her sweetly curving backside as he strode after her.
When Jane peeled her top off over her head, Baran felt the breath catch in his throat at the long, sensual line of her torso stretching upward. She tossed the shirt aside with a careless flip of her wrist, then bent to pull off her jeans. His cock jerked in lust. He squelched the impulse to stride to her and snatch her off her feet. Normally it wasn’t in his nature to let a woman take the lead, but he wanted to feel the quiet acceptance in Jane’s touch.
He hungered for it.
For a moment he started to wonder why, then pushed the thought away. He didn’t want the distraction.
She stepped from her jeans and reached behind her back to open the catch of her bra, her elegant spine twisting with the movement.
When she turned toward him, lust stabbed him at the sight of her bare breasts, perfect pale hemispheres topped by long pink nipples drawn hard with need. Saliva flooded his mouth. He swallowed hard.
She stepped up to him dressed only in tiny silken pink panties he was seriously tempted to rip away. Before he could yield to temptation, she touched him, raking her nails delicately across the arch of his chest. He inhaled sharply as she swirled her fingers through the wiry curls covering his chest, then traced the muscled ridges of his rib cage.
Closing his eyes, Baran let his head drop back, savoring the sensation. Then she stepped closer until the head of his erection nudged her flat stomach, and his eyes popped open again. Her breasts were temptingly close to his eager hands. He managed not to reach for them, wanting, needing, to see what she’d do next.
She bent forward as her hands moved to curve around his hips. Slowly, delicately, she pressed a kiss to the center of his chest, right over his heart. The heat of that delicate touch seemed to spear through him. He gasped.
Jane made a purring sound and began kissing her way to one tight male nipple. He shuddered as her hot, swirling tongue danced over his skin.
Then long fingers closed gently around his balls, and his body jerked. She stroked. He moaned. She raked her teeth softly down the ridges of his ribs, stopping only to flick his skin with her tongue. He resisted the impulse to grab her, knowing where that soft, teasing mouth was headed, inch by delicious, maddening inch.
Then she was there, her soft little hand wrapped around his shaft, holding the head of his throbbing cock steady for her mouth.
She used just her tongue at first, swirling it over the velvet flesh until he had to battle the need to force his entire greedy length between her lips. The battle grew fiercer as she gave him more by slow degrees, sucking the very tip first, then a fraction more, then a fraction more.
“God, Jane, you’re playing with fire!” he groa
ned as she nibbled delicately.
He felt her smile around his cockhead. “I know.”
Suddenly she swooped her head forward and engulfed half his straining shaft, ripping a started gasp from him. Shuddering, he wondered how much of this he could take.
God, it was intoxicating, playing with him like this, taking the lead for once, feeling the tension in his big, male body as she toyed with him.
Jane worked him in deeper and felt him quiver. Savoring the taste and feel of his broad cock, she decided it was like teasing a tiger.
Sooner or later, you’d get eaten.
The thought sent wicked heat blooming through her as she remembered just what it was like to be at the mercy of this particular big cat. Smiling, she drew her mouth completely off his cock to swirl her tongue lazily over its velvet head.
Sometimes it was fun to live dangerously.
“God, Jane, deeper!” The low male growl held a faint note of threat.
She smiled and gave him a teasing lick. A powerful hand came to rest in her hair, capturing a handful of curls in silent warning.
“Jane…” The growl was deeper now, rumbling as if his control was straining to the breaking point.
She nibbled, feeling herself cream. Finally drawing back, she purred, “Is there something you want?”
The sound he made was closer to a snarl than anything else. Big hands closed around her shoulders, jerked her off the floor, and tossed her lightly on the bed behind her.
Jane shrieked out a giggle as he loomed over her, grabbed the waistband of her little pink panties in both hands, and ripped the silk in two. Without pausing, he snatched her up so only her head and shoulders rested on the bed as he braced a knee on the mattress.
Then it was her turn to gasp as his massive shaft speared between her swollen, cream-slicked lips. He lifted her into his thrust as if she were a doll, nothing more than stuffing and air. Yelping at the depth of his entry, she fisted the bedspread in both hands and held on for dear life.
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