Through the Veil (44 page)

“You’re not supposed to enjoy it. I am. It’s for my enjoyment, for you scaring me to death.” He took a deep breath and flipped over, bringing her with him so that she lay sprawled over his body. “I thought I was going to lose you, Lee. You could have died.”

She lifted her head and met his gaze. “Yeah. I kind of thought I would.” She pressed against his chest and Kalen let go. He pushed up on his elbow, watching as she settled at his side and folded her legs. His mouth went dry and his cock twitched. The way she was sitting exposed the pink, wet folds of her sex. He’d thought he’d have to wait a few minutes, but now . . .

Lee’s husky chuckle caught his attention and he looked up at her face. She grabbed something and flipped it over her hips, hiding her lower body. He recognized it as his shirt. “You really ought to ask before you borrow my stuff,” he murmured, reaching out. He caught the edge of the shirt and tugged. “Maybe I want to wear that.”

She slapped at his hands. “You can wear it after we’re done talking.” Her eyes sobered and she caught his hand, held it in hers. “I know I scared you. I can’t tell you I’m sorry. I did what I had to do. You kept telling me that I could stop this, and you were right. I figured out how, but there’s no way I could have done it and guaranteed you that I’d stay safe.”

Kalen narrowed his eyes. “If you’re trying to use reason and convince me that I shouldn’t spank you, don’t bother. Reason has absolutely no effect when a man has to watch while his woman practically commits suicide in front of him.”

“Heaven forbid I be reasonable,” she said drolly.

“You can be reasonable all you want.” Kalen lay back on the thick cushion of the gel pad, pillowed his head on his free hand. “Maybe in a few years, I can look back and all your logical reasoning will make me feel better. Right now . . .” His voice trailed off. Kalen closed his eyes and sighed. “Right now, I don’t want to think about it.”

Without opening his eyes, he closed his fingers around her wrist and jerked her closer. She landed on top of him and Kalen grunted with satisfaction. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he looked up at her. “Right now, all I want to do is hold you close to me and convince myself that you are safe.”

She kissed him, a chaste, gentle kiss. “You’re holding me now. I am safe.” Then she closed her eyes and pressed her brow to his. “
We’re
safe . . . right? The Veil, the gate—I can’t feel them anymore.”

Kalen looked up at her. “We are safe. All of us. The Roinan Gate is destroyed. There is remnant energy left in the Veil, but it could only support a small gate. When that energy is gone, so are the gates.”

Her eyes closed. “We’re safe.” She started to relax against him, but then she tensed and tried to pull away. Kalen tightened his hold. “Remember what I said? Me, holding you? I’m not done holding you.”

Lee’s eyes darkened and she struggled. “Let go of me.”

Kalen’s shields were still down, and he caught one of the random thoughts circling through her mind. Not a thought—a memory. A Warlord. Tall and intimidating.
Hello, daughter.
He sensed her shock, her denial—and her self-disgust. Like a puzzle piece had settled into place, Kalen understood her sudden attempt to withdraw. “I’m not letting go. I don’t care what kind of blood is in your veins. I only care about you, Lee. I had a week to think about what my life might be like if you died. I’ve lived a life without you and it was empty. I don’t want that life again, Lee. I want a life with you. I love you.”

He threaded his hand through her hair and pulled her face closer to his. He kissed her, soft and slow. “I love you, Lee.”

Eyes closed, she licked her lips and made one of the sighing little hums under her breath. “How can you be so easy about this? How can you be so perfect?”

Kalen laughed. “Darling, I’m not perfect. I’m just a man who spent a long, long time waiting for you. Nothing is going to come between us. Nothing.” Then he squinted up at her. “You do want to stay with me . . . right? You’re not going to try to find some way back to your world?”

Now it was Lee’s turn to laugh. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Kalen, this is my world. You’re my world.”

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SEA WITCH

BY VIRGINIA KANTRA
COMING SOON FROM BERKLEY SENSATION!

If she didn’t have sex with something soon, she would burst out of her skin.

She plunged through the blue-shot water, driven by a whisper on the wind, a pulse in her blood that carried her along like a warm current. The lavender sky was brindled pink and daubed with indigo clouds. On the beach, fire leaped from the rocks, glowing with the heat of the dying sun.

Her mate was dead. Dead so long ago that the tearing pain, the fresh, bright welling of fury and grief, had ebbed and healed, leaving only a scar on her heart. She barely missed him anymore. She did not allow herself to miss him.

But she missed sex.

Her craving flayed her, hollowed her from the inside out. Lately she’d felt as if she were being slowly scraped to a pelt, a shell, lifeless and empty. She wanted to be touched. She yearned to be filled again, to feel someone move inside her, deep inside her, hard and urgent inside her.

The memory quickened her blood.

She rode the waves to shore, drawn by the warmth of the flames and the heat of the young bodies clustered there. Healthy human bodies, male and female.

Mostly male.

Some damn fool had built a fire on the point. Police Chief Caleb Hunter spotted the glow from the road.

Mainers welcomed most visitors to their shore. But Bruce Whittaker had made it clear when he called that the islanders’ tolerance didn’t extend to bonfires on the beach.

Caleb had no particular objection to beach fires, as long as whoever set the fire used the designated picnic areas or obtained a permit. At the point, the wind was likely to carry sparks to the trees. The volunteers at the fire department, fishermen mostly, didn’t like to be pulled out of bed to deal with somebody else’s carelessness.

Caleb pulled his marked Jeep behind the litter of vehicles parked on the shoulder of the road: a tricked-out Wrangler, a ticket-me red Firebird, and a late-model Lexus with New York plates. Two weeks shy of Memorial Day, and already the island population was swelling with folks from Away. Caleb didn’t mind. The annual influx of summer people paid his salary. Besides, compared to Mosul or Sadr City or even Portland down the coast, World’s End was a walk on the beach. Even at the height of the season.

Caleb could have gone back to the Portland PD. Hell, after his medical discharge from the National Guard, he could have gone anywhere. Since 9/11, with the call-up of the reserves and the demands of homeland security, most big city police departments were understaffed and overwhelmed. A decorated combat veteran—even one with his left leg cobbled together with enough screws, plates, and assorted hardware to set off the metal detector every time he walked through the police station doors—was a sure hire.

The minute Caleb heard old Roy Miller was retiring, he had put in for the chief’s job on World’s End, struggling upright in his hospital bed to update his résumé. He didn’t want to make busts or headlines anymore. He just wanted to keep the peace, to find some peace, to walk patrol without getting shot at. To feel the wind on his face again and smell the salt in the air.

To drive along a road without the world blowing up around him.

He eased from the vehicle, maneuvering his stiff knee around the steering wheel. He left his lights on. Going without backup into an isolated area after dark, he felt a familiar prickle between his shoulder blades. Sweat slid down his spine.

Get over it. You’re in World’s End. Nothing ever happens here.

Which was about all he could handle now.

Nothing.

He crossed the strip of trees, thankful this particular stretch of beach wasn’t all slippery rock, and stepped silently onto sand.

She came ashore downwind behind an outcrop of rock that reared from the surrounding beach like the standing stones of Orkney.

Water lapped on sand and shale. An evening breeze caressed her damp skin, teasing every nerve to quivering life. Her senses strained for the whiff of smoke, the rumble of male laughter, drifting on the wind. Her nipples hardened.

She shivered.

Not with cold. With anticipation.

She combed her wet hair with her fingers and arranged it over her bare shoulders. First things first. She needed clothes.

Even in this body, her blood kept her warm. But she knew from past encounters that her nakedness would be . . . unexpected. She did not want to raise questions or waste time and energy in explanations.

She had not come ashore to talk.

Desire swelled inside her like a child, weighting her breasts and her loins.

She picked her way around the base of the rock on tender, unprotected feet. There, clumped like seaweed above the tide line, was that a . . .
blanket
? She shook it from the sand—
a towel
—and tucked it around her waist, delighting in the bright orange color. A few feet farther on, in the shadows outside the bonfire, she discovered a gray fleece garment with long sleeves and some kind of hood. Drab. Very drab. But it would serve to disguise her. She pulled the garment over her head, fumbling her arms through the sleeves, and smiled ruefully when the cuffs flopped over her hands.

The unfamiliar friction of the clothing chafed and excited her. She slid through twilight, her pulse quick and hot. Still in the shadows, she paused, her widened gaze sweeping the group of six—
seven, eight
—figures sprawled or standing in the circle of the firelight. Two females. Six males. She eyed them avidly.

They were very young.

Sexually mature, perhaps, but their faces were soft and unformed and their eyes shallow. The girls were shrill. The boys were loud. Raw and unconfident, they jostled and nudged, laying claim to the air around them with large, uncoordinated gestures.

Disappointment seeped through her.

“Hey! Watch it!”

Something spilled on the sand. Her sensitive nostrils caught the reek of alcohol.

Not only young, but drunk. Perhaps that explained the clumsiness.

She sighed. She did not prey on drunks. Or children.

Light stabbed at her pupils, twin white beams and flashing blue lights from the ridge above the beach. She blinked, momentarily disoriented.

A girl yelped.

A boy groaned.

“Run,” someone shouted.

Sand spurted as the humans darted and shifted like fish in the path of a shark. They were caught between the rock and the strand, with the light in their eyes and the sea at their backs. She followed their panicked glances, squinting toward the tree line.

Silhouetted against the high white beams and dark, narrow tree trunks stood a tall, broad figure.

Her blood rushed like the ocean in her ears. Her heart pounded. Even allowing for the distortion of the light, he looked big. Strong. Male. His silly, constraining clothes only emphasized the breadth and power of his chest and shoulders, the thick muscles of his legs and arms.

He moved stiffly down the beach, his face in shadow. As he neared the fire, red light slid greedily over his wide, clear forehead and narrow nose. His mouth was firm and unsmiling.

Her gaze expanded to take him in. Her pulse kicked up again. She felt the vibration to the soles of her feet and the tips of her fingers.

This
was a man.

Kids
.

Caleb shook his head and pulled out his ticket book.

Back when he was in high school, you got busted drinking on the beach, you poured your cans on the sand and maybe endured a lecture from your parents. Not that his old man had cared what Caleb did. After Caleb’s mom decamped with his older brother, Bart Hunter hadn’t cared about much of anything except his boat, his bottle, and the tides.

But times—and statutes—had changed.

Caleb confiscated the cooler full of beer.

“You can’t take that,” one punk objected. “I’m twenty-one. It’s mine.”

Caleb arched an eyebrow. “You found it?”

“I bought it.”

Which meant he could be charged with furnishing liquor to minors.

Caleb nodded. “And you are . . . ?”

The kid’s jaw stuck out. “Robert Stowe.”

“Can I see your license, Mr. Stowe?”

He made them put out the fire while he wrote them up: seven citations for possession and—in the case of twenty-one-year-old Robert Stowe—a summons to district court.

He handed back their driver’s licenses along with the citations. “You boys walk the girls home now. Your cars will still be here in the morning.”

“It’s too far to walk,” a pretty, sulky brunette complained. “And it’s dark.”

Caleb glanced from the last tinge of pink in the sky to the girl. Jessica Dalton, her driver’s license read. Eighteen years old. Her daddy was a colorectal surgeon from Boston with a house right on the water, about a mile down the road.

“I’d be happy to call your parents to pick you up,” he offered, straight-faced.

“Screw that,” announced the nineteen-year-old owner of the Jeep. “I’m driving.”

“If I start giving Breathalyzer tests for OUIs, it’s going to be a long night,” Caleb said evenly. “Especially when I impound your vehicle.”