Page 29 of Hunter

She wouldn’t ask about his secrets. Not yet. Not until he trusted her enough. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered.

“What?”

“All the bad things they’ve done to you.”

“It must be,” he said in a strangled voice.

“No.”

He turned his face away from her, and she sensed that he’d kept himself alive and sane in this place by hiding his doubts and fears, trusting no one. God, what an existence, she thought as she stared at the stiff, unyielding set of his shoulders.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he asked without looking at her.

There were no words to express all the things she wanted to tell him. Blindly she reached toward him with her arms, folding him close to her as if she could lock the horror of Stratford Creek away.

At first his body was rigid, then, as she ran her hands over the taut muscles of his back, he gave a little sigh and relaxed into the shelter of her arms.

She held him for long moments, feeling him let go of the wariness heartbeat by heartbeat. When he spoke, it was in a barely audible voice. “I saw two people like this. Outside in the woods. A man and a woman. Holding each other. Touching lips. It made me feel. . . strange to watch. I felt it again when I touched you.”

He lifted his face and stared down at her, a deeply intense expression on his face. A millimeter at a time, he lowered his head and brushed his mouth softly, experimentally against hers.

She didn’t move, couldn’t move. She could only stand there feeling the gentle pressure of his warm lips on hers, enjoying the contact on a level that went beyond the physical. She had told herself that he needed her. It seemed that in this place of evil, she needed him as well.

He raised his face a fraction, looking down at her as if he couldn’t believe she was clasping him to her.

She gave him a little smile. “He touched her hair,” he said, imitating the gesture, his fingers stroking through her tresses as he made a low sound of pleasure. “Your hair looks like fire. But it does not burn. It prickles. Not just on my fingers. Other places.”

She should pull away from him, she told herself. He probably didn’t understand that there were limits to this kind of interaction. Yet she couldn’t let go.

She had taken a job at Stratford Creek because she thought she’d be safe on a secure government installation. Every moment here had added new levels of turmoil to the chaos of her life. And it seemed the only person who had touched her on a human level was this man that everyone else treated like an outcast.

His fingers skimmed her face, the column of her neck, gently, so gently. “You are not afraid of me.” He said it in wonder.

“Should I be?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I could hurt you.”

“But you’ve shown me that you won’t,” she said with absolute conviction.

His lips came back to hers, the pressure harder, more insistent. There was no finesse to the kiss, only an unschooled urgency that was strangely exciting.

She kissed him back, her own lips parting to capture the taste of him more fully.

She heard him make a rough sound in his throat as his fingertips traced along the line of her neck and over her collarbone.

She sighed deeply. So did he.

“Good. That feels good,” he said in a thick voice. “Like the memory of—you.”

Yes, the memory, she thought. She still didn’t understand how she and this man who had named himself Hunter were tied together. Yet as they stood here touching and kissing, it was hard to doubt there was an unexplained link between them. Perhaps destiny had brought them together.

His lips captured hers again, made a bolder foray that set up little currents along her nerve endings. When the kiss ended, she moved her head against his shoulder. She was drifting, letting things happen, letting her response build because he was right; it felt good.

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