Hunter's Pride

by McKenna, Lindsay

  “Is that how you see me? A mystery?”

  Carefully unknotting the dressing on her wrist, Dev laid her arm along the hard surface of his thigh to examine the injury more fully. “From the moment Morgan showed me that color photo of you dancing the hula, yeah, that’s how I saw you. A mysterious woman with an ancient past and a magnificent, courageous heart.” He glanced down at her. She was incredibly beautiful, her lips slightly parted, her thick, black lashes resting against her high, flushed cheekbones. Dev noted the shadows beneath her eyes and saw the tension still in her features from last night’s near brush with death. Hypothermia was a silent, ruthless killer. He’d seen more than one man succumb to it on high-altitude, snow-covered slopes.

  Kulani could have died last night and Dev knew it. That thought sent a paroxysm of terror through him. It also made him talk about things he would never normally bring up. “So, what are your dreams? Is flying a helo all you want to do for the rest of your life?”

  The teasing in his tone took away some of the pain Kulani felt as he examined the deep cut she’d sustained on the inside of her wrist. A lava outcropping she couldn’t see in the darkness had opened her flesh in seconds like a razor blade. She felt him apply some of the calendula ointment around the edges of the two-inch-long wound.

  She found it easy to speak to Dev. “No…after Stephen died I wanted to stay home, sink my roots here. At the time, I was working on the mainland and flying in on weekends to be with Stephen. After his death, I wanted to make my life more into what my mother’s had been. She was a kahuna, a healer, and she knew so much about herbs. I grew up at her knee and she taught me all about them.” Kulani felt Dev place a new dressing over her wound. His touch was excruciatingly gentle and patient. She greedily absorbed his strength each time he touched her. Her mind was lulled, and hazily she wondered if he would cradle a baby in the same manner. Her instincts told her he would.

  “You want to become an herbalist then?” Dev smiled to himself. Talking to Kulani was like capturing the gentle trade winds. Her soft, husky tone seemed to filter through his body like sunlight and release a sense of joy he’d never felt before. Completing the dressing around her wrist, Dev deliberately slowed his ministrations because he wanted to keep her in his arms like this forever. That wasn’t possible right now, but he was enough of a beggar to make every second with her count, because tonight, when they made it to the floor of the valley, one or both of them could die in an instant. No, he didn’t take life lightly. Every breath he drew while she lay trustingly in his arms was a gift, he realized, as he inhaled her special gingerlike fragrance.

  Kulani rolled her head slightly from side to side. Beneath her hair she could feel the solid beat of Dev’s heart. “No…I don’t pretend to want to be a kahuna like Mom was. What I do want to do is write down the knowledge she’s passed on to me over all those years. I’ve got lots of notes lying around here and there. The kahunas have no written history—it’s passed down through word of mouth. I want to put my mother’s knowledge into a book as a lasting tribute to her.”

  “Sounds like a good project,” Dev said as he picked up her fingers. “What do you want to do after that goal is met?”

  “You’ll laugh.”

  His brows arched. “Me? Laugh at you? I don’t think so. Give me a try.”

  Sighing, Kulani barely whispered, “I’d like to have a family. Children. I’m thirty now. I want to settle down and have a real life, not a mercenary life-or-death kind of life, you know? I want to sink my fingers into the deep, rich volcanic soil here and grow herbs. I want a man who will honor my needs, my ways of being creative and being connected to this island and its ancient spirits. I dream of a man who will love becoming a father and doting on the children as much as I’m going to….”

  His hands froze momentarily as he heard the deep, welling emotion in Kulani’s halting voice. He felt her tremble slightly as she spoke the passionate words that revealed the inner longings of her heart. “Kids, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many of the little critters?”

  She smiled, enjoying the touch of his fingers. “Maybe three if we can afford them.”

  “And you found that man in Stephen?”

  Kulani barely opened her eyes. Oddly, with Dev here she no longer felt the keen grief of Stephen’s loss. “Yes…we’d talked about it. Stephen would have made a good father.” And then she raised her head and looked up at Dev. How close he was! She drowned in the dark green of his glittering eyes as he studied her thoughtfully in the silence. “You’d make a wonderful father.”

  Kulani saw surprise and then pleasure in his gaze. She watched as Dev’s mouth curved wryly. There was something so endearingly boyish about him that she ached to raise her fingers and tame some of those dark strands dipping over his brow.

  “Me? A dad? No way. I’m a loner.”

  “Even loners need family. Why not you? Look how you care for me. How you cradle and hold me. Why wouldn’t I think that you’d hold a baby just as tenderly?”

  Her insight into his vulnerable heart was startling. With Kulani, however, Dev didn’t feel panic as he had with his wife. His instincts had always warned him that Susan could not be trusted with his inner heart. Kulani was different and he didn’t try to defend himself. “I think hypothermia has addled your brain,” he admitted, scowling.

  Kulani repositioned herself against him, a sense of rightness overwhelming her. This was a man to be trusted with her heart and soul, she realized. Kulani had thought that, with Stephen’s death, she could never love again. Dev was so easy to open up to, to invite into her wounded heart. He held her like she was a precious and cherished gift. “Do you ever want to get married again?” Holding her breath against the possible answer, Kulani couldn’t wipe away the vision lingering before her closed eyes. She saw Dev holding their baby daughter in his large, scarred hands, his expression a mixture of awe and incredible joy over the little miracle he held.

  Sometimes Kulani had flashes of insight into the future. It was nothing she could trigger or control. The images had occurred often enough to tell her they might come true. The night before the fateful climb with Stephen, she’d had a nightmare in which she saw him fall to his death. She was sorry she hadn’t stopped the climb the next day. Ordinarily, Kulani never talked of these visions. Her mother, who was known to have the “sight,” the ability to see into the future, had passed on some of her genes to her, Kulani had realized long ago.

  “Marriage?” Dev said as he eased the unguent across her fingertips. “No…once burned, twice learned. Remember that old saying?”

  “And children?”

  “I told you—I’m not cut out to be a father.” And he wasn’t. He couldn’t even be there for Susan. He hadn’t been there for his baby daughter. No, he would never be a father. He was better off as a loner.

  Kulani said gently, “I would think losing your first baby would make you a little gun-shy of wanting another one?”

  With a shrug, Dev finished his ministrations. Reluctantly, he eased away and began to minister to his own cuts before he methodically repacked the first aid kit. Kulani was treading on the open wound in his heart. Suddenly, Dev didn’t want to keep protecting that wound, hiding it from her. His hands stilled as he looked up, holding her soft, ebony gaze. “Yeah, I have a lot of fear around that. I know people don’t think men feel, that when a woman loses a baby, she feels the loss more than the man.”

  “But that’s not true?” Kulani suggested quietly. He would make a wonderful father. He just didn’t want to admit it. She saw raw grief etched in his shadowed features. Outside, the wind was beginning to gust once again and the sunlight was snuffed out. In its place was a rapidly approaching rainstorm.

  “No.” Dev’s voice was unsteady. He avoided the velvet look in her eyes. What he felt for her in that moment was warming and hopeful. And frightening. He could lose her on this mission. There could be no tomorrows for them. Each second with Kulani was precious, and he
absorbed her compassionate expression. Opening his hands, he rasped, “Children are the future. But I’m not cut out to have them or be a father. I’m a big kid at heart, though….” His voice trailed off for a moment. “Our parents were professionals, but that didn’t stop them from having four of us. Growing up in Colorado, I can remember the long conversations at the dinner table every night. I can still hear the laughter and joking.” Dev smiled a little as he drowned in the splendor of her midnight eyes, which shone with stars in their depths.

  “Is there anything different you’d do this second time around if you found the right woman?”

  “Plenty,” he said with a sigh. Opening his large, scarred hands, he studied them ruthlessly. “But that just isn’t going to happen.”

  “Marriages fall apart from lack of repair, from what I’ve seen,” Kulani interjected softly. She saw the anguish in Dev’s features. With her, he was an open book, so very readable and easy to access. Her instincts told her he wasn’t that way with many people, and the moment became even more special to her. She looked up to see that the rain was beginning to wash the canyon once again. The lip of the cave gleamed as water rushed down the lava wall.

  “You nailed it,” Dev said with a sigh. Taking the calendula ointment, he reopened the lid.

  “Let me….” Kulani stretched forward and captured the small plastic jar from him. She smiled a little up into his surprised eyes. “It’s the least I can do. You nursed me. Now it’s my turn to help you.”

  Dev didn’t hesitate. Starving for her touch, no matter what the reason, he opened his hand to her. When she placed it on her knee, a ripple of need feathered through him. He watched, mesmerized, as she dipped her index finger into the golden-colored ointment and drew out just enough to lavish his fingertips with. Her flesh was warm and soft. Tiny trickles of fire licked up his hand and into his lower arm as she gently applied the unguent to each of his fingers.

  “Looks like you had some major scrapes up there last night,” she told him seriously as she studied the many abrasions and cuts. Kulani gloried in holding Dev’s hand. She felt the inherent power of him. His was a hand that could kill, but it was a hand that could heal her and her suffering heart. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I don’t know what to make of you, Dev. You crashed into my life. You scared the hell out of me. I knew intuitively you weren’t who you said you were, yet I ignored my knowing. I got all mixed up inside because your smile touched me so. It’s like the rainbows here on Kauai, like the sunlight that turns the world twenty shades of green after the five-minute rainstorms that pop up all the time over the northern end of the island.” Kulani looked up and smiled tenderly at him. Now his face was peaceful as opposed to tense. But it was the hunger burning in his eyes for her that gave her the courage to go on.

  “I was so angry at Morgan for using you to manipulate me into helping you. I don’t like being anyone’s pawn. I understand what he did and why he did it.” She finished with Dev’s right hand and removed it from her knee. He held out his left. Smiling a little as she drowned in the forest-green of his eyes, she added, “Now, for whatever reason, I’m glad it happened, in a perverse kind of way.” What she didn’t admit was her growing fear of losing him now that she had opened her heart to him. Another realization struck her: since Stephen’s death she had only been going through the motions of living—until now. Until Dev crashed into her life. He was making her feel once more. He was making her want to really live life, with a passion she’d had before Stephen had been murdered.

  “Why are you glad?” Dev felt his heart thumping hard in his chest. Heat pooled in his lower body with each light stroke of her hand upon his. How badly he wanted to capture her, kiss her and love her until she cried out in raw, utter pleasure. He knew he could give her pleasure. That made him feel good and strong. He knew he could give Kulani all that she had dreamed of. The future looked bright. But then, the present was not guaranteed for either of them. Her life could be snuffed out just a quickly as Stephen’s had been. Or his own…

  “Promise you won’t take advantage of anything I share with you?” she said with a smile, her teeth white against her golden skin as she met his mirthless gaze.

  “Oh,” Dev teased, “I probably will, but go ahead, confide in me. I did in you. And you can always hold what I’ve told you as a threat over my head should I try.”

  Chuckling, Kulani dipped her finger into the calendula ointment once again. “I’m glad you came into my life because you make me happy.” She risked a glance at him. The surprise was glaringly evident in his gaze. Chancing everything, Kulani rushed on. “I’ll probably be sorry as hell for sharing this with you, knowing your bruising male ego like I do, but I like you. I like being around you. When you’re nearby I feel safe. I know that sounds stupid, because no one can give you a sense of safety like the one you get from inside yourself. But you do….”

  He sat very still. He wanted to confess that he’d never seen Susan as a partner in his life—but he certainly saw Kulani in that role. Kulani was an utterly capable woman, strong and resourceful, who, when the chips were down, would figure things out and do what she had to do—family or no family. Fear ate at him as he admitted it to himself, for that meant Kulani had snared his heart. Oh, she held him gently, there was no question. Susan hadn’t been able to open up to him when he was her husband; even in her time of grief and need she had turned to her family, not him. And it had driven him away. Dev had been unnecessary to her. Unneeded. Kulani was the opposite. She allowed him into her life and heart. She reached out to him in her time of need. And she was able to lean on him for help and solace.

  “Okay,” he offered huskily, “it’s put up or shut up time with me, too.” When Kulani stopped her ministrations, lifted her head and looked up, Dev felt an incredible sheet of warmth flow through him. Just the way she looked at him, the starry shine in her eyes, that understanding and compassion that radiated from her like light from a full moon made him swallow hard. The words came out choked. “I like you more than a little bit. And I’m scared to death. Scared I’ll lose you, because we have so much to lose. Time is…” He looked up at the black lava ceiling of the cave. “Time isn’t on our side. I’m afraid I’ll lose you to a bullet, to a fall…. What happened this morning—that was too damned close for comfort. I didn’t know how much trouble you were really in. When I got into the cave and realized how bad your hypothermia was, I was never so scared, sweetheart.”

  Risking everything, Dev got to his knees, cupped her face and made her look directly into his eyes. “And more than anything, I’ve been wanting to kiss you breathless. Having you lie at my side shivering, your legs tangled with mine, feeling your breasts pressed against my chest and sensing the courage of your heart beating in time with mine…” He leaned down because he wanted to tell her his feelings in another language—one he was much better at.

  Never had Kulani looked forward to a kiss more than right now. Automatically, she lifted her chin and met and melded with Dev’s descending mouth. This was a mutual kiss, one that was begging desperately to be taken and given. His lips plundered hers. Opening her mouth more, she welcomed him inside. Simultaneously, she felt his strong hands move in a caressing motion from her face, down her neck to follow the line of her shoulders. As his hands cupped her breasts, Kulani moaned recklessly. She felt him smile and she leaned into his hands, welcoming him, asking him to explore her even more.

  Dev felt the precious gift being given to him as he caressed the beauty of her breasts beneath the skintight fabric. Her nipples grew hard and insistent as he grazed them in a provocative motion with his thumbs. Groaning, he felt her arms go around his neck, and she moved wantonly against him. There was such sweetness, such hunger in her clinging, searching lips. Her hands moved of their own accord, caressing the nape of his neck, tangling in the short growth of hair at the back of his head, and finally, ranging downward across his tense shoulders.

  Their breathing grew stormy. The thunder caromed throughout
the valley and matched the power of their heated, melting kisses as they clung hungrily to one another’s mouths. She was bold and yet delicate, pleasuring him with her questing lips. He liked her boldness, her taking what she needed of him to give herself pleasure. The mutual exploration detonated minor and major explosions throughout his taut body. The moment her hand ranged down across his chest toward his hips, Dev knew that if he didn’t stop her now, he never would. The mission, the danger, the urgency of their situation pounded through him.

  Tearing his mouth from her wet, glistening lips, he gripped her firmly by the shoulders. “No…not yet…not now. I’m sorry…damn, I want to take you right here, Kulani. I want to spread you like hot honey over me, lie with you and take you and make you mine….”

  His dark, husky words vibrated through her sensitized being. As he grazed her breasts one last time, Kulani moaned. It was a moan of understanding, of loss, because right now, she wanted him just as desperately. The mission came first, her head shrieked. The hammering of her heart in her breast delivered another, equally urgent message. A part of her—the woman, not the mercenary—wanted to make love with Dev right now, no matter what the cost. He could die tonight. So could she. Kulani wanted to remember the feel of him deep inside her, wanted the branding memory of his body, his heart and spirit, loving her fully and completely.

  “Damn,” Dev rasped as he forced himself away from Kulani. He saw the ripe flush across her cheeks, the brilliance in her eyes, the desire for him alone written in every nuance of her soft, haunting features. Moving his hands in a trembling motion across her hair, he whispered, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten carried away.”

  Shivering with need as he withdrew his arms, Kulani whispered, “I’m not sorry at all for anything we did, Dev. Not now, not ever….” And she wasn’t afraid of living, for the first time since Stephen’s death. This man made her feel alive once again. Licking her lips, she went on in a halting voice. “I was carrying my grief and memories around like a good friend, Dev. And then you walked in, and all of a sudden, I didn’t feel as bad as before. Every time you came around, my load of grief lightened. I don’t know what it all means, I just want you to know what’s going on inside me.”