His jaw set. He couldn’t send her back. He couldn’t take her back. The girl was demon bait. Not safe with him, but definitely unsafe alone.
Another soft, distressed sound escaped her throat. Without thinking, he lifted a hand from the steering wheel and laid it on her knee. His kind only touched to fight or to mate, acts of passion. But Lara woke something deeper inside him, an urge to comfort, a need to protect. To possess.
Her eyes opened suddenly, bril iant gray.
Their gazes locked. A look burned between them, bright and clear as the sky arching overhead, powerful as the river rushing over the rocks below. Under the brim of her bal cap, her face flushed.
He looked away, unaccountably shaken, to focus on the road.
“I can’t believe I fel asleep,” she said huskily.
She needed a little rest after yesterday. After last night.
Flashback to her smooth bare legs, her bra-less breasts, her voice saying,
He cleared his throat. “It’s the adrenaline.”
Her winged brows rose. “I thought adrenaline made you alert. Survival instinct. Fight or flight.”
High in the sky, a black speck circled, joined by another and another. Crows, he thought. Or gul s, black against the sun.
“In the short term, yeah.” He slid his hand from her F o r g o t t e n s e a 17 7
knee, gripping the steering wheel, fol owing the narrowing, winding road away from the Interstate. “But sooner or later, your body crashes. You can’t live tensed up al the time.”
“Unless being aware of the danger is what keeps you alive.”
His attention sharpened. He glanced over at her again.
“Are you picking up on something? Some demon thing?”
She moved her shoulders restively. “No. Not exactly.”
The back of his neck prickled. “No? Or not exactly?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. It’s just a . . . feeling. Not very useful,” she added apologetical y.
She didn’t give herself enough credit. He wanted to chase the frustration from her face, the shadows from her eyes. “A hol ow feeling?”
“Not real y. More like a—”
He rol ed over her. “Because you’re probably just hungry.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Hungry.”
The edge in her voice made him grin. She’d be okay now.
“We’ve been on the road over five hours,” he pointed out.
“We need to refuel.”
The coastal road was strung with smal , bright settlements like lobster buoys in the water. On the outskirts of the next town, he spotted a sign. sherman’s clam shack.
home of the 24 hour bkfst. He pul ed into the narrow parking lot that wrapped around the side, out of sight behind an eighteen-wheeler.
A line of crows perched along the low-pitched roof. He tugged on the door, making the bel inside jangle. One of the birds launched noisily into the air.
Lara shivered as she slid past him. What had she said?
The smel of gril ed onions and fried clams, maple 178
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
syrup and strong coffee, met them at the door. The wal s were paneled, the counters faded yel ow linoleum, the floor worn past recognition. A smal TV flickered beside the pie case, its volume turned low enough to blend with the hiss of the fryer.
Three men hunched at the counter, an older guy with grizzled brown hair under a red bandanna, a stocky guy with weary eyes in a weathered face, a younger one, muscled, confident, with tattoos poking from beneath his flannel shirt.
Al three turned their heads as Lara walked in.
Appreciative. Assessing.
Iestyn put a hand at the smal of her back, sending a clear signal.
The young guy continued to stare until Stocky gave him a nudge.
Iestyn steered Lara to a booth between an elderly couple and a family—father, mother, toddler, kid—occupying a table of dirty plates and wadded-up napkins.
Iestyn sat Lara with her back to the counter, slid in where he could watch the door. Lara craned to look over her shoulder.
