Page 54 of Fire on the Moon

Chapter Seventeen

Francesca watched the slump of Zane’s shoulders as he walked unsteadily toward the stairs. When he started to fall, she was out of her seat, but he caught himself and made it to the lower level.

She closed her eyes, sitting very still, listening to the buzzing of insects and the slapping of water against the side of the boat.

Probably the panther wouldn’t come back. But what else was out there? She didn’t know, but she had a better appreciation of the dangers of the tropical night.

They were less terrifying than the dangers inside this boat. It was personal danger of a type that she never could have imagined in a thousand years of nightmares. A werewolf was a creature of myth and legend, a creature to be feared. And here she was trapped as consort of one of those frightening beings. She had sensed power in Zane that she couldn’t explain. Now she understood.

She shuddered.

Zane had said he was drawn to her since the first moment he’d held her in his arms. If she admitted it, the same was true for her. He, at least, had realized what was happening. She had been clueless—except for the zings of feeling that had kept assaulting her since the night of the fire.

And now what? Could she walk away from him? She tried out that idea and felt a terrible sense of loss—and panic. He’d said she was his life mate. Did she have a choice about that? Or was she now under the same ancient Druid spell that held him captive?

The past few days scrolled through her mind like a video tape focusing on everything she had done. Everything Zane had done.

She’d given him a hard time, probably because she’d been frightened, and she hated relinquishing control of everything, even when she’d recognized that Zane was far better equipped to deal with her problems than she.

Still, she’d told him all her secrets, and he had told her none of his.

She made a low sound. She’d thought hers were bad. His were an order of magnitude greater. Beyond imagining until a few minutes ago. Lord, if the government knew about his abilities, they’d probably put him in a cage and try to figure out how to make a weapon out of him.

She shuddered, yanking herself away from that line of thinking and back to Zane Marshall as a man.

He might not have shared his . . . his shape-shifter secret. But since the moment she’d met him, he had done everything he could to try and save her life. For his efforts, he’d gotten shot and become a murder suspect. Then he’d pushed himself to the limit getting the two of them out of the marina and down the river.

And probably he was in his bunk, thinking she was going to walk away from him as soon as they cleared themselves of the murder charges—if they could. She shuddered, wondering if there was any way to convince the cops that they were only trying to find out who killed her uncle and why.

She wanted to stop being a fugitive. And what else? What did she want the rest of her life to be?

For long moments she sat with her elbows on the table and her chin cradled in her palms. Finally she picked up the gun from the table and started toward the back of the boat.

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As the curtain closing off Zane’s cabin slid back, he looked up to see Francesca standing in the doorway holding the gun.

“You’re going to have another try at it?” he mumbled, thinking he shouldn’t have left the weapon on the table.

“Yes,” she answered, her voice softer than he could have imagined after their talk in the main cabin.

She checked the safety, then reached over to lay the semi on the shelf above the bed before perching on the side of the bunk.

He had been lying in the middle of the mattress, trying to simply turn off his brain so that he could get some sleep. Well, that was impossible now.

“Give me some room,” she whispered.

He scooted over a little so that she could wedge herself into the space along the edge, turning to her side and pressing tight against him.

He didn’t move, didn’t let himself think about why she had come here. She didn’t speak again, and he felt his heart begin to pound as he waited for what might come next.

She lay with her head against his shoulder while she reached to trace the shape of his lips, then play her fingers over his chest, touching his nipples before finding more neutral areas.

He had thought he was too worn out to respond, but his breath caught, then caught again as she hitched up, stroking her mouth against his, just the barest whisper of a kiss that sent heat flaring to the farthest reaches of his body.

Then her tongue was stroking against the seam of his lips, and he opened for her, feeling her explore the line of his teeth and the sensitive tissue just beyond.

He wanted to hold her there, keep her where he could marvel at the wonderful taste of her and the pressure of her body against his hip. But when he started to raise his arm, she circled his wrist with her thumb and index finger.

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