Page 40 of Hunter

“I can’t give you any guarantees.” Before he had to listen to any more whining, he turned and stalked into the night.

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Hunter pulled off his shirt, pants and shoes and climbed into bed in his briefs just like on all the nights he could remember since they’d trusted him to get ready for bed by himself.

But this wasn’t like all the other nights, he thought as he lay staring into the darkness, mulling over the way his life had suddenly changed.

The mere fact that he was thinking in such terms astonished him. For a long time, he had followed orders without questioning how they made him feel. In the space of a few hours he had been bombarded with more feelings than he knew existed. Now he was angry. Not with Kathryn Kelley. Never her. His ire was directed at his attacker and Winslow—who had spoiled dessert by stomping into the house as if he owned it.

Hunter sighed. Winslow had the right to question training methods. And tonight was supposed to be part of that. Yet it had been so much more. He felt a hollow place open in his chest. He should have stayed at the table. Finished dessert. Kept talking to her. Touching her.

But he wasn’t supposed to touch, he reminded himself, even if she said it was okay. Because simply pressing his fingers against hers had made him want to do things that were forbidden.

He tried to switch his thoughts to weapons. Clandestine communications. The art of covert operations. Anything besides Kathryn Kelley.

But he couldn’t drive her from his mind. Too much had happened since that moment he had almost run into her car. Too much had happened tonight.

He clenched his fists, unable to cope with the unaccustomed emotions seething inside him. He was a warrior. Destined for a specific purpose. His life would be short. He had come to realize that essential fact months ago and had dismissed it as irrelevant. For the first time he felt a kind of sadness. Not for the end of his life. For leaving her. That would come sooner.

He looked toward the door, remembering the sounds of her walking down the hall, getting undressed. Now he imagined her lying on the bed. Naked. Her blue eyes open. Her creamy skin against the white sheets. The roundness of her breasts. And the wonderful red color of her hair against the white pillowcase.

His body tightened as he pictured her holding out her hand to him the way she had reached across the table tonight.

He hadn’t imagined anything could feel as good as her hand on his. Or that intense. The feeling flooded back through him as he lay with his eyes closed, thinking about her, and he had to gather up a wad of bedding in each of his powerful hands to keep himself from getting up and striding into her room.

He tried to drive her out of his mind by remembering the taste of the warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream on top. In its own way, the taste was almost as good as the sensation of tasting her. Almost, but not quite. The effect of her on his senses was beyond imagining. Yet it brought pain as well as pleasure.

Once he had had the flu. He’d had a high fever, and his body had ached. He felt a little like that now. Hot and achy. It was because his body wanted to mate with hers. The urge to mate was a powerful force. He had read that somewhere. Now he understood what it meant.

In the darkness, he gave a little snort. He might want her, but he didn’t know much about how to do it. He’d probably screw it up.

The observation brought another sound to his throat. Screw. That was a word for doing it. Not a nice word, but one the men used. He had heard other words, too. Like horny. He understood that now. Too well, since he was lying here as stiff as an animal horn.

Again, his fists clenched around the wads of sheet. He kept picturing himself leaning over her, closing his mouth around the crest of her breast. Tasting her. Stroking her with his tongue. Probably she would think he was disgusting if he did anything like that.

Don’t think about it, he ordered himself.She is your friend. That is enough.Yet he knew he was lying to himself. It wasn’t enough.

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Kathryn slept fitfully, waking and thinking about the man lying in bed across the hall. So much had happened since she’d met him, that her mind was in chaos. It seemed no one at Stratford Creek besides her thought of Hunter as a human being with needs and rights. He was their test subject—who might go berserk if not handled correctly or who might escape if given the chance. But he was too honorable to run from them. That was one of the complexities of the personality they had tried to obliterate.

Now that she’d gotten a chance to interact with him, she couldn’t for a moment imagine that he was a convict volunteer. She had studied enough criminals to characterize their basic behavior. They were dishonest, shortsighted, unable to postpone gratification, and averse to following rules. They were also mean and nasty. If they weren’t dumb as a post, they were psychopaths with inadequate personalities.

All of that was just the opposite of what she’d learned about Hunter. He was fundamentally decent, law-abiding. Honest. Highly intelligent, possessed of amazing self-restraint. Ready to protect her whether that was to his advantage or not. Those were not the traits of a felon. They were the hallmarks of a good and decent man whose innate integrity had survived Swinton’s hellish experiment.

She supposed the best thing to hope for was that they hadn’t had him long enough to damage him permanently. Or, she thought with a strangled sound that didn’t quite make it as a laugh, that he’d watched enoughFather Knows Bestreruns to have some sense of life beyond the confines of Stratford Creek.

Talk about grasping at straws, she thought, sitting up in bed and swiping her hand through her hair. Life as a fifties sitcom. She could be the mom. And what would he be? Not her son. And not her brother. That had become clear. Pulling up her knees, she sat with her chin in her hands, contemplating her relationship with Hunter.

Basically, she’d been hired to work with him, and it was highly unprofessional to be considering anything beyond that. Yet she couldn’t help being drawn to him. Or responding to him physically. Just as he responded to her. Every time they touched, she could feel the heat building between them. But that didn’t make it a good idea. Really, she had to figure out a way to cool things down—which was going to be difficult with them sharing the same house.

She wasn’t going to ask for a change of quarters, though. Being near him suited her purposes too well. She had promised herself she was going to help him. And somewhere along the line, she’d come to understand that meant getting him away from Stratford Creek. The trouble was, she didn’t have a clue about how to accomplish that goal, she conceded with a stab of chagrin. And she wasn’t used to living and working under siege conditions. There was a digital recorder hidden behind an access panel in the hall. She was restricted to the grounds. And she suspected she wasn’t going to be allowed to check Hunter out on a day pass to Deep Creek Lake.

The man himself was another major problem. They’d been indoctrinating him for months, and she’d heard him tell Winslow he wasn’t going to run away. Could she convince him that leaving was an honorable option?

Hands clasped tightly together, she vowed she’d find a way to do it. And when they were someplace safe, she could help him regain his memories—starting with the few things that seemed to have carried over from his former life. Which brought her to the topic she’d been avoiding, she silently admitted. He told her twice now that he remembered her. She was more convinced than ever that they’d never met. Yet she knew there was a kind of bonding between them. How else did you account for the instant physical response that was more potent than anything she’d ever experienced in her life?

She turned that around in her mind for a while, unable to come up with any answers. Around six a.m., knowing that she wasn’t going back to sleep, she got up, showered, and dressed in gray slacks and a turquoise knit shirt. Pulling aside the curtain, she saw two security men standing at the bottom of the front steps. Close enough to come to her rescue if they heard a scream from inside. The thought made her snort. Winslow had it the wrong way around. All her experiences here had taught her they were the threat, not Hunter.

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