Dating Outside Your DNA

by Karen Kelley

  Erin swallowed. “His punishment was for the court to decide.” She stepped back, but he didn’t let her go. “Uh, do you mind?”

  “Yeah, I do.” His eyes glittered down at her. “If we’re gonna be working together, we need honesty between us.”

  “We need you to find the killer.”

  “Oh, I will. Don’t worry about that. I always catch my prey.”

  So the rumors claimed. The hunters from Night Watch were known throughout the U.S.

  “You’re shivering, Erin.”

  “No, no, I’m not.” She was.

  “I make you nervous. I scare you.” A pause. His gaze dropped to her lips, lingered, then slowly rose back to meet her stare. “Is it because I know what you are?”

  She wanted his mouth on hers. A foolish desire. Ridiculous. Not something the controlled woman wanted, but what the wild thing inside craved. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Don’t I?”

  Erin jerked free of his hold and glared at him. “Few things in this world scare me. You should know that.” There was one thing, one person, who terrified her—but now wasn’t the time for that disclosure. No, she didn’t tell anyone about him.

  If she could just get around Jude and march out of that door—

  “Maybe you’re not scared of me, then. Maybe you’re scared of yourself.”

  She froze.

  “Not human,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Not vamp.”

  Vamp? Thankfully, no.

  “Djinn? Nah, you don’t have that look.” His right hand lifted and he rubbed his chin. “Tell me your secrets, sweetheart, and I’ll tell you mine.”

  “Sorry, not the sharing type.” She’d wasted enough time here. Erin pushed past him, ignoring the press of his arm against her side. Her body ached and the whispers of hunger within her grew more demanding every moment she stayed with him.

  Weak.

  She hated her weakness.

  Just like her mother’s.

  “You’re a shifter.” His words stopped her near the door. She stared blankly at the faded wood. Heard the dull thud of her heart echoing in her ears.

  Then the soft squeak of the old floorboards as he closed the distance between them.

  Erin turned to him, tilted her head back—

  He kissed her.

  She heard a growl. Not from him—no, from her own throat.

  The hunger.

  Sure, he made the first move, he brought his lips crashing down on hers, but…she kissed him right back.

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  He stilled in the act of scrubbing the day’s sweat from his face and waited to see if Cady had something to say, or if she’d only come for the facilities because she couldn’t wait. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable if she had.

  But she didn’t say or do anything. Best he could tell, she was standing unmoving just inside the door. And since his clothes were in a pile somewhere near her feet and his towel on the edge of the sink, he needed her to do whatever it was she’d come to do and get out.

  So he nudged her. “First my truck, and now my shower. Is nothing sacred?”

  “Sorry,” he heard her mutter. “The TV wasn’t working.”

  What the hell? “You came to get me to fix the TV? Did you try calling the front desk first?”

  “No. I mean, the TV works fine. It just wasn’t…working. As a distraction.” She groaned beneath her breath, the sound giving off an emotion he hadn’t heard before. “I needed a distraction.”

  She had dozens of channels broadcasting more distracting crap than a person could need in a lifetime. She wasn’t making any sense. And he wasn’t exactly comfortable here with the situation.

  “You’re looking for a distraction? In here? Where I’m bare-as-the-day-I-was-born naked? Cady, Cady, Cady.” He clicked his tongue. “You devil.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Then what’s it like, boo, because you coming in here saying you need a distraction kinda leads me down that road.” He stared at the shower curtain where he could see her shadow on the other side. It was the strangest way to be having a conversation, not one he was exactly good with.

  The water was beating down on his shoulders as he stood with his hands at his hips, keeping his secrets out of sight the same way Cady was on the other side of the cheap white vinyl keeping hers.

  His were of a physically personal nature; he didn’t hang it out for everyone to see. But her own package of mysteries was obviously pretty damn heavy. After all, it had sent her seeking refuge in a steamy wet bathroom when she had a perfectly comfortable bed to hide out in.

  King leaned into the spray, rinsed the shampoo from his hair, the soapy water from his face, neck, and chest. He was clean and ready to get out, but he was also butt naked, and she was standing between him and his towel.

  Except standing wasn’t exactly the right word. Even through the curtain he could see her nervous movements, pacing, rocking, leaning over the sink and talking into her hands instead of to him.

  He’d had enough. “Cady, either talk to me or get out so I can get out.”

  “I can’t go back out there.”

  Then talk it was. “Because?”

  “I just can’t. In the city, I felt safe. The incident with Alice aside,” she added. “In the city, I was just another nameless person in the crowd. It was easy to stay out of sight, lost, bland, blending in.”

  She was not bland. She was anything but. “And somehow that all changed with me taking you home.”

  “That place is not my home.”

  No, but it used to be. She had a lot of history there. Was standing out now what was bothering her? “You think the gossip mill is all churned up with tales of your face meeting your mother’s fist?”

  “It’s not the tales and the gossip that scare me.”

  Scared? That’s what she was feeling? He would’ve thought something like rejected, dejected. Embarrassed. Any one seemed more in order. “Then what scares you?”

  “That after all these years, they’re finally going to catch me. And kill me when they do.”

  Okay, now this was getting spooky weird, but the thing about feeling safer sharing a room? If she thought someone was after her, it made sense. Made him glad, too, he’d kept his gun close. At least until he knew more.

  Like whether she had a real reason to be frightened. Or whether she was some kind of schizo whack job. “They? Who is they?”

  It took her several seconds to respond. He sensed her move again, lean back against the wall beside the door. “I don’t know their names, or even who they are except for being friends of the guys who went away for Kevin’s murder.”

  Real enough. So far. “And you think they’re after you?”

  “They’ve been after me since the trial.”

  There were a dozen things he wanted to ask, all related to wondering why she was still living here in this part of the country when she had no ties. Why, if there was a legitimate threat, had she not found out who they were and filed a restraining order?

  But her fear was immediate, her need for a diversion urgent enough to bring her in here while he showered. He ended up asking, “And you think they’re here? Now?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just…When I looked out the window, I saw a truck idling behind yours, then rolling forward slowly and stopping as if searching for our room. Or searching for me.”

  He didn’t want to discount what she was feeling, or ignore what she thought she’d seen. But he’d been the one driving, and nothing about the traffic around them had struck him as strange or hostile.

  No, he hadn’t been on the lookout for a tail or had any reason to be, but those early years behind bars had left him with a good pair of eyes in the back of his head.

  As far as he knew, they were still working, and they hadn’t seen a thing. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  She bit off
some not so nice words. “You’re sure I’m hallucinating? Is that it?”

  Women. Twist and turn everything a man said. “No, I’m sure you saw what you saw.”

  “But until you see it for yourself, then it doesn’t count.”

  “I didn’t say that either.”

  “You didn’t have to. You don’t believe me.”

  What he believed was that they weren’t going to get anywhere with this barrier between them.

  He shut off the water, grabbed his wet rag and held it with one hand in the most strategic of locations, then whipped the curtain out of the way and met her gaze.

  The hooks clattered the length of the rod, and Cady jumped, her eyes going wide as she took him in in all of his Garden of Eden glory.

  Then a smile teased one corner of her mouth upward, and a knowing brow followed suit. “Nice fig leaf.”

  He glared, moved his other hand to his hip to secure the terry cloth from both sides. “I can’t talk to you when I’m naked and you’re not.”

  “Are you saying you want me to take off my clothes?”

  That hadn’t been the response he was after, but now that she’d brought it up…“If you’re not up for doing that, then I’m going to put mine on. You can stay and watch, or stay and help, or you can turn your back until I’m dried off and dressed. And we can pick up this conversation then.”

  She’d lost a bit of her smirk during his speech, and though she hadn’t run screaming out of the bathroom, he wouldn’t be surprised if she turned and did.

  He wasn’t much to look at as it was, but dripping wet and naked save for his terry cloth fig leaf—the rag itself growing wetter with all the dripping going on—he could scare the chocolate out of an M&M candy shell.

  So it left him feeling strangely naked and vulnerable when she was slow to reach for the handle, and even slower to open the door, leaving him behind with an expression he swore was tinged with regret.

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  Whatever the Seer wanted, the Seer got, be it for his comfort or his whim or his pleasure.

  She stood, staring at the chair on the raised dais at one end of the chamber, the chair where he sat when the visions came. From the expression that filled her green eyes, she knew it as well.

  Had she witnessed his power? Had she watched as the magic within him exploded into a vision of what was or what would yet be? As he influenced the high and the mighty of the surrounding lands and clans with the truth of his gift? Walking over to stand behind her, he placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her back to his body.

  “I have not seen you before, sweetling,” he whispered into her ear. Leaning down, he smoothed the hair from the side of her face with his own and then touched his tongue to the edge of her ear. “What is your name?”

  He felt the shivers travel through her as his mouth tickled her ear. Smiling, he bent down and kissed her neck, tracing the muscle there down to her shoulder with the tip of his tongue. Connor bit the spot gently, teasing it with his teeth and soothing it with his tongue. “Your name?” he asked again.

  She arched then, clearly enjoying his touch and ready for more. Her head fell back against his shoulder, and he moved his mouth to the soft skin there, kissing and licking his way down and back to her ear. Still, she had not spoken.

  “When I call out my pleasure, sweetling, what name will I speak?”

  He released her shoulders and slid his hands down her arms and then over her stomach to hold her in complete contact with him. Covering her stomach and pressing her to him, he rubbed against her back, letting her feel the extent of his erection—hard and large and ready to pleasure her. Connor moved his hands up to take her breasts in his grasp. Rubbing his thumbs over their tips and teasing them to tightness, he no longer asked; he demanded.

  “Tell me your name.”

  He felt her breasts swell in his hands, and he tugged now on the distended nipples, enjoying the feel and imagining them in his mouth, as he suckled hard on them and as she screamed out her pleasure. But nothing could have pleased him more in that moment than the way she gasped at each stroke he made, over and over until she moaned out her name to him.

  “Moira.”

  “Moira,” he repeated slowly, drawing her name out until it was a wish in the air around them. “Moira,” he said again as he untied the laces on her bodice and slid it down her shoulders until he could touch her skin. “Moira,” he now moaned as the heat and the scent of her enticed him as much as his own scent was pulling her under his control.

  Connor paused for a moment, releasing her long enough to drag his tunic over his head and then turning her in to his embrace. He inhaled sharply as her skin touched his; the heat of it seared into his soul as the tightened peaks of her breasts pressed against his chest. Her added height brought her hips level almost to his, and he rubbed his hardened cock against her stomach, letting her feel the extent of his arousal.

  As he pushed her hair back off her shoulders, he realized that in addition to the raging lust in his blood, there was something else there, teasing him with its presence.

  Anticipation.

  For the first time in years, this felt like more than the mindless rutting that happened between him and the countless, nameless women there for his needs. For the first time in too long, this was not simply scratching an itch, for the hint of something more seemed to stand off in the distance, something tantalizing and unknown and somehow tied to this woman.

  He lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her gaze off the blasted chair and onto his face. Instead of the compliant gaze that usually met him, the clarity of her gold-flecked green eyes startled him. Connor did something he’d not done before, something he never needed to do: he asked her permission.

  “I want you, Moira,” he whispered, dipping to touch and taste her lips for the first time. Connor slid his hand down to gather up her skirts, baring her legs and the treasure between them to his touch and his sight. “Let me?”

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  Copyright © 2009 Karen Kelley

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  ISBN: 0-7582-5032-0