‘‘Ann,’’ Jasha called from the boulder across the way, a warning he’d returned.
Ann tucked the painting into the leaves beside her, and watched him leap into their little clearing.
He was respectably dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and running shoes.
Indignation boiled up in her.
After what had happened between them, she wouldn’t have thought she could be embarrassed about anything.
But she was, and she winced when she thought how bizarre she looked—mud in her hair, on her face, bruises and scabs everywhere. And this for her first experience at lovemaking! If what had happened between them could be called lovemaking. The term seemed trite for something so cosmic. God knew it had shaken her world.
‘‘Where did you get those clothes?’’ she demanded.
‘‘In case of emergency, I have stashes hidden around in the woods.’’ He shook out a man’s long-sleeved button-up shirt.
‘‘Emergency? Like when you chase women through the woods to ravish them?’’ What a dumb thing to say. She needed to remember—he was a wolf.
The trouble was, he looked so very Jasha. ‘‘I’ve only ever chased one woman through the woods to ravish her.’’ He wrapped the shirt around her shoulders. ‘‘It was wrong of me, but I—’’
‘‘You what?’’ He couldn’t stop now.
Jasha stuffed her arms into the shirt, then held the two lapels apart and gazed at her. At her breasts, her belly, the junction of her thighs. ‘‘Someday, I’ll tell you.’’
His expression made her tweak the shirt out of his hands and, in brisk movements, button it herself. That was better than responding to his hunger with a renewed hunger of her own, and reaching for him— wasn’t it?
Of course it was. He’d admitted it himself. He’d ravished her and any self-respecting modern maiden would get herself to a police station and file charges.
But she was glad to be rid of her virginity. Had come here for this exact purpose. She just wanted him to be what she had thought he was before—the perfect man. And a completely human man, too.
She stole a glance at him.
He squatted on his heels, his hands dangling on his knees, and watched her with amusement. ‘‘You should have let me button that for you.’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Because you buttoned it crooked.’’
In exasperation, she started again.
‘‘You’re feeling better.’’
‘‘I’m a little less—’’ She hesitated.
‘‘In pain?’’
‘‘Petrified.’’
But was that good? That she was accepting the impossible?
‘‘It’s all right. Next time we make love, I promise I won’t hurt you.’’ His golden eyes warmed to a sizzle. ‘‘In fact, I promise I will make you a very happy woman.’’
‘‘That is not why I—’’ He knew that, she realized. He wanted to avoid that conversation.
She looked around at the dripping wet woods. The branches rustled as animals moved through the brush. She remembered the howling of the pack and realized—he might have a point.
He folded her collar down. ‘‘I’m always naked when I turn, and if the FedEx man shows up and needs a signature, he’s less likely to think I’m crazy if I’m wearing something.’’
Jasha talked about it so casually. Turning. As if he were a leaf. Or a door handle. And he looked directly at her, challenging her to accept him without question.
She shook back the long sleeves that drooped over her hands, took one of the cuffs, and folded it back. Anything was better than meeting his eyes.
‘‘Of course, this is Washington. There are nudists all over the place, so the FedEx man probably would simply lecture me on the dangers of sunburn.’’ Jasha took the task away from her, unrolling the slapdash job she’d done and neatly refolding the cuff.
‘‘I can do it.’’ Because she didn’t know how to let him work while she did nothing.
But he brushed her hands aside. ‘‘I think you’ve never had anyone help you do anything.’’
‘‘What do you mean?’’ She was feeling a little hostile.
‘‘When you were a kid, was there ever a time when someone helped you dress yourself?’’
‘‘No. Why?’’ She didn’t understand his point.
‘‘You do everything with a frightening efficiency, and I always wonder—were you ever a child?’’
She suffered an odd combination of hurt—for he seemed to be criticizing her—and surprise—for she never thought he noticed her. ‘‘My efficiency is the reason I’m your administrative assistant.’’
‘‘One of the reasons. So’’—he finished with the cuffs and adjusted her collar—‘‘were you ever a child?’’
‘‘I thought you were asking a rhetorical question.’’
‘‘And I’m fascinated that you don’t want to answer it. Who taught you to be so self-sufficient, Ann Smith?’’
Was he sorry for what he’d done? Was he trying to make conversation, to make amends before telling her the whole experience had been equal parts rage and foolishness? ‘‘The nuns.’’
‘‘You went to a Catholic school?’’
‘‘Yes.’’ That was true—as far as it went.
‘‘Hm.’’ His eyes were skeptical.
She shivered. She remembered how often she’d seen him look at an employee or a business rival and know the person was withholding information. She’d always been pleased and impressed, thinking he showed an almost supernatural insight into human behavior.
Well . . . yeah.
‘‘Let me see your feet.’’ He lifted first one, then the other, and tsked. ‘‘We need to get you back and put some antiseptic on these cuts. Are they painful?’’
‘‘They’re too cold to be painful.’’
He chafed her toes. ‘‘They’re ice cubes.’’
‘‘They always are.’’
‘‘I’ll have to carry you.’’ He slipped his arms behind her back and under her knees. He pulled her against him and stood. ‘‘You can put them on my back in bed.’’
‘‘Put what on your back?’’ She grabbed at his shoulders. He was warm. He was so warm.
‘‘Your ice-cold toes.’’ As if the prospect delighted him, he smiled down at her.
He intended to sleep with her.
‘‘So you’re not going to eat me?’’ she blurted.
He started to walk. ‘‘Now and again.’’
She wanted to hide her head. She wasn’t used to this kind of flesh-to-flesh contact, or to sexual teasing . . . or to the relief in knowing that Jasha always kept his word, and she had something more to look forward to.
Being eaten by a wolf who was really good with his tongue.
‘‘You can’t carry me all the way back to the house.’’ She was no featherweight, but tall and muscled.
He didn’t pause. ‘‘It’s only about a half mile.’’
‘‘That can’t be right,’’ she said indignantly. ‘‘I drove farther than that!’’
‘‘But the road winds around. By the way the crow flies, we’re close to the house.’’
The trees broke away. They were back in the meadow, and when Ann saw the fallen tree with its blackened crown, her brain, so engaged with minor matters like fantasy versus reality, sanity versus madness, and pleasure versus embarrassment, suddenly reengaged.
She’d left something precious back there. ‘‘No. I’ve got to have the lady!’’
He stopped. ‘‘What lady?’’
‘‘I found a painting of the Madonna.’’
He froze.
‘‘I lost her when I hit you, but while you were gone, I found her again and—’’ His immobility captured her attention. ‘‘Jasha?’’
‘‘Where did you find a painting?’’ He looked down at her, his face still and smooth.
‘‘When the lightning hit the tree and it fell, well, there she was.’’ And in a day of miracles, that might j
ust be the biggest.
‘‘Was she?’’ He sounded very odd, choked and almost afraid. ‘‘Where is she now?’’
‘‘She’s back there. Where we were.’’
He carried Ann back. He let her legs slide to the ground.
Ann searched. She recovered the tile. She showed it to him.
‘‘My God.’’ Jasha knelt beside her, his gaze absorbed and amazed. ‘‘I can’t believe—’’ He looked up at Ann, then back at the painting. ‘‘You found the icon.’’
‘‘You know about it?’’ Impossible!
Yet he’d called it an icon, and now that he had, she recognized the stylized method of painting, the use of vivid colors, the Madonna’s stiff pose. This was Russian—and so, she knew, was Jasha’s family. ‘‘Is it yours?’’
He gave a short, incredulous laugh. ‘‘In a manner of speaking.’’ Gently he took it from her, smoothed his palm across the Madonna’s face . . . and to her horror, his flesh sizzled, a curl of smoke rising from the burning flesh.
Chapter 8
With a shout, Jasha dropped the icon.
Ann caught his wrists in hers.
A brutal red mark seared his palm and his fingers.
"What happened?" She couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘‘You must be allergic to the finish.’’
‘‘Allergic.’’ He yanked his hands away and plunged them into the mud. ‘‘Is that what you hit me with? Before?’’
‘‘Yes.’’ That mark on his cheek, the vivid flare of red—that was a burn, too. ‘‘Why did it do that to you?’’
‘‘She did it. The Blessed Virgin. I am not to touch her.’’
‘‘I don’t know what you mean.’’ Ann picked the icon out of the dirt and wiped it with the tail of her shirt. The ragged edge caught on the material. ‘‘It’s just a painting.’’
‘‘In Russia, icons are not just paintings. The revolution is but a weak obscenity compared to the weight of years when icons embodied the Russian soul, the Russian heart, and the Orthodox faith. It’s tradition that an icon of the Blessed Virgin and the baby Jesus be given as a wedding gift, and all family icons are kept in the krasny ugol, the beautiful corner, decorated with candles and red cloth.’’ He wiped his muddy hands on his jeans, but his gaze never left the face of the Virgin. ‘‘More important, icons of the Madonna aren’t made—they appear.’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘Icon painters do not sign their work. So the icons are said to appear, to be miracles.’’
Ann looked at the picture, trying to see what had hurt Jasha.
The Virgin looked back, serene and unworried.
‘‘The Madonna refuses to let me touch her,’’ Jasha said. ‘‘But you can. She has entrusted herself to you.’’
‘‘That’s—’’ Ann drew a breath.
‘‘That’s what? Superstition? Impossible?’’ Jasha touched his cheek. ‘‘Yet I’m burned. No wonder it hurt like a son of a bitch.’’
Surreptitiously she touched the mark on her lower back. It felt smooth; if she didn’t know better, she would think that nothing was there.
She should have expected her life would take this kind of freakish turn. But after so many years of balancing atop the high wire of normal, of only Sister Mary Magdalene’s truly knowing how the infant Ann had been found and the troubles that followed, Ann thought . . . believed . . . hoped she could be ordinary. ‘‘I guess I need to change my opinion of what’s impossible now,’’ she mumbled.
He laughed sharply, and glanced around. The wind had died; the lightning was fading, the clouds thinning. ‘‘The storm is gone, but this is no place to be after dark. Let’s get out of here.’’ He slid his arms around Ann again, picked her up, and strode off.
He set a fast pace, and she read his moods very well—it was part of the job description. Right now he was worried. ‘‘Jasha, what are you afraid of?’’
‘‘That I’ll fail.’’
That made no sense, but he was panting, and his uneasiness transferred itself to her. The last rays of the sun hit the treetops, while in the woods below, the shadows multiplied and thickened. She heard rustling in the underbrush. Wild animals . . . and worse. Maybe . . . maybe things like him.
The wolves.
Jasha and Ann reached the castle in record time— humiliating to think that if she’d run the right direction, she would have returned to the relative safety of a phone and locked doors—and he took her around to the back. Here she could see the garage sitting at right angles to the house, with its four doors for Jasha’s prized cars.
And that reminded her—‘‘My poor car,’’ she said.
‘‘I’ll call someone to tow it tomorrow.’’
‘‘If it’s still there,’’ she said gloomily.
‘‘Yeah. That was a hell of a storm. Literally.’’ He laughed again, one of those short, bitter laughs that told her he knew something she didn’t.
He put her down on the porch at the back door, and held her until she regained her balance. ‘‘You okay?’’
Her feet were sore, yes. All that running had exhausted her. But she held the icon, and she was alive. Alive as she had never been in her whole life. ‘‘I’m fine.’’
He stretched up to the top of the doorsill and felt along it until he found a key; then he unlocked the door. Using his hand on the small of her back, he pressed her inside, acting as if she would turn and run at any minute.
And maybe he was right. She didn’t like the house anymore; it reminded her all too vividly of that moment when he transformed before her eyes. ‘‘Before—how did you get in?’’
‘‘There’s a dog door.’’ He gestured absently, and reset the alarm system.
‘‘Of course. A dog door. How else would a man who turns into a wolf get into his own house?’’
His swift glance assessed her.
The passions and madness had begun to pass, leaving cold good sense and a dreadful suspicion.
His expression gentled. ‘‘Ask me.’’
‘‘Ask you what?’’
‘‘The question that is burning in your mind.’’
There were so many questions. So many. Yet one bothered her more than any other. She shuffled from one foot to the other, tried to decide if she wanted to ask it or remain in blissful ignorance. But one of the many lessons Sister Mary Magdalene had drilled required she seek the truth and face it square on, so she asked, ‘‘Did you kill him?’’
‘‘Kill who?’’ He toed off his shoes without untying them and with his bare foot pushed them into the corner.
‘‘Are there so many you don’t remember?’’ She tugged at the hem of the shirt, trying to cover her thighs with cloth and belated modesty.
His generous mouth tightened in annoyance. ‘‘I haven’t killed anyone lately, if that’s what you mean.’’
‘‘Before you came in, I heard a shot. And you . . . you had blood on your mouth.’’ She tensed, desperately wanting Jasha to deny the crime, not able to bear the idea that he’d come from murdering a man . . . to her.
‘‘That’s the question?’’ It was almost dark in the small entry hall, and in this light his face was all stone and shadow, with a pale slash of his scar across one cheek, and on the other a blot where the icon had burned itself into his flesh. Only his eyes were alive, watching her with the steady intensity of a predator. ‘‘That’s all you want to ask?’’
‘‘That’s enough.’’
‘‘You amaze me.’’
She stayed stubbornly silent.
‘‘No. I didn’t kill him.’’
She sagged with relief.
‘‘He was a hunter. He was drunk and he was shooting at wolves.’’
‘‘That’s illegal.’’ And you could have been killed.
‘‘That’s a lot of things, including stupid, especially when I’m running with the pack.’’ Jasha’s grim expression broke into a grin. ‘‘I broke his gun and scared him so badly, he’ll never stop running.’’
‘
‘Are the other wolves like you?’’
‘‘You mean, do they turn? No. They’re animals, but they’re smart and they’re loyal, and although Leader doesn’t like it, he lets me run with them without a challenge. And sometimes, like today, running with the wolves is the best way to ease my frustration and my fury.’’
‘‘Do you mean because of the hunter?’’
He rubbed his thumb on her cheek as if cleaning off a mark, and stared soberly into her eyes. ‘‘My father always warned us not to turn. He said the change tore down the restraints of civilization and left us vulnerable to the wilderness in our hearts. Today I guess I proved he was right.’’
She started to place her palm over his heart; then at the last moment, she skittishly pulled back and doubled her hand into a fist. ‘‘But I like the wilderness. ’’
‘‘Don’t . . .’’ He caught her hovering hand. ‘‘Don’t tempt me. It’s all still too raw and close, and I found too much pleasure in your body.’’ He kissed her knuckles; then when her fingers loosened, he brought her open palm to his mouth and kissed its center. He watched her as he kissed her wrist, and his lips lingered over the leap of her pulse. Tucking her hand behind her back, he pulled her close.
The press of his body against hers still shocked her with its glory of heat and intimacy, and when he kissed her, the air grew sultry with need so recently fulfilled, and passion so easily aroused.
She tasted him, sinking into the pleasure. Her breasts tightened, and the warmth and dampness between her legs began to grow. . . .
With a gasp, he let her go and leaped back. ‘‘You burn me like the icon.’’
And she stood bereft, trembling and wanting, almost in tears.
Every time she showed her feelings, someone laughed, or someone scolded . . . or no one noticed.
She never got it right.
‘‘Not here. Ann, not in the entry with dirty boots and—don’t cry!’’ He wrapped his arm around her, ushered her into the utility room, and flipped on the light. The floor was tile, coats hung on hooks, and boots neatly lined the wall. There was a counter with a sink and a mirror and a small shower in the corner.
She touched her lips with her fingers. Since they’d left the woods, he’d been less a lover and more Jasha—businesslike, effective, and brisk. She’d thought that maybe one taste of her had been enough.
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