Medusa’s Master

Bolt? What if-

She broke off her panicked train of thought sharply. These sorts of thoughts were exactly why she’d sworn off relationships entirely by the time she’d graduated from college. She just didn’t need the insecurity and uncertainty of it all.

“I-”

“You-”

They spoke simultaneously, and she was quickest to murmur, “You first.”

He huffed in what sounded like frustration. “I ought to apologize, but the only thing I can think of is to ask you to do that again with me. That was…amazing.”

The tone in his voice on that last word was almost worshipful. Abject relief turned her innards to jelly. “Really?”

He opened his mouth to answer and she waved a sharp hand to cut him off. “Strike that. I’m not sixteen and don’t need the boy to tell the girl he liked kissing her. If you liked it, you’ll do it again sometime. If not, I’ll live.”

He swept her up in his arms before the words had hardly escaped her lips. His mouth swooped down on hers this time with all the aggression-and finesse-she’d expect of a hunky Special Forces soldier who’d had his pick of women for most of his adult life. His body, his mouth, his hands, his essence, surrounded her, drew her in to him until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began. It was much more than a kiss. It was a blending of souls. She was staggered by the sensations, both physical and emotional, that he evoked in her so effortlessly.

When he finally lifted his head to smile down at her, she could only stare up at him in shock.

He remarked matter-of-factly, “All right then. I believe we’ve established that I like kissing you and plan to do it again. Thoroughly and often.”

Her toes curled into the cold sand, squishing it up between her toes pleasurably. Thoroughly and often, huh? Her pulse leaped at the thought.

He added ruefully, “I promised you a walk on the beach, didn’t I? And I never break a promise.” He gestured at the silver strip of sand stretching away from them. “Which do you want? The ocean side or shore side?”

“Which side would your mother tell you to take?”

He grinned. “She’d tell me to walk on the ocean side where the water’s deepest and coldest and let you dribble your tender little toes in the foam.”

“Well, let’s not disappoint your mother,” she replied lightly.

He laughed warmly. “Honey, when you give her grand-kids, she’ll think you walk on water.”

Kids? Them? The mere thought knocked her completely off balance. Jeff steered her along the water’s edge, mindful of her tender little toes. Which was ridiculous, of course. The two of them regularly swam in water much colder than this as part of their training. They both had experienced depths of hypothermia most people never imagined, let alone suffered through. With her small body mass and low body fat, cold water training was particularly miserable for her.

“What are you thinking about?” he murmured. “You’re frowning.”

She started. She never showed facial expressions if she didn’t want to, and at the moment she wasn’t going out of her way to exhibit a frown, thank you very much. “I am not frowning,” she disagreed.

He stopped and turned to face her. “Are too. I can feel you frowning without even having to look at you.”

If she weren’t consciously focusing on her expression at the moment, her brows definitely would have slammed together in a big frown. “What? Are you psychic?” she asked lightly.

“It’s Cupid’s Bolt. We’ve got a connection, darlin’. I’m tellin’ ya. We were meant for one another.”

“What’s my mood now?”

He grinned. “You’re annoyed that I read you like an open book, but it doesn’t take being psychic to know that. You’re also wildly attracted to me and confused as hell over what to do about it.”

“That’s a pretty good pickup line. I bet you get lots of girls with the whole ‘destined for each other by Cupid’s arrow’ bit.”

One second she was walking down a starlit beach, and the next he’d spun her around to stare up into the face of fury. Although dark shadows shrouded his features, she couldn’t miss the genuine anger rolling off him.

“I’ve never spoken of that to any woman, let alone experienced it with one. It’s a long and honored tradition in my family, and I would never use it as a cheap pickup line.” His gaze narrowed even more. “Trust me. I don’t need a line like that to get laid. I get all the girls I want without it.”

After that kiss he’d planted on her, she didn’t doubt it. But then a second reaction overcame her. She struggled for a moment to identify it, and then froze in shock. She was jealous. She staggered back from him, stunned that the idea of him sleeping around with women he casually picked up bothered her so much. Something was wrong with her. Her emotions were flying all over the place. She was never like this! Her hormones must be out of whack. Or maybe she hadn’t gotten enough sleep recently.

Formally, she said, “I apologize if I offended you or your family’s honor.” She made a low bow of apology with her palms pressed together before her.

She straightened, and Jeff was peering at her quizzically.

“What?” she muttered. “That’s how I was taught to apologize.”

“Why the bow?”

“If you wanted to strike me, I was giving you an opening to do it.”

“Why in hell would I want to do that?”

“To save face, of course.”

Comprehension lit his face. “You really were raised in traditional Asian fashion, weren’t you?”

“You have no idea.”

His hand touched her upper arm and then slid down to her hand. He turned, tucking her hand in his elbow and commenced walking. “Tell me about it.”

She never talked about it. Not the grueling hours of workouts, not the secret training methods that elevated her skills beyond what most mortals dreamed of, not the traditional code of honor, passed down for centuries from warrior to warrior. Nor did she talk about the slow death of the ancient way of life that had forced Hidoshi to pass his legacy on to an orphan girl he’d picked up out of a gutter.

Jeff murmured, “I’ll tell you about my life if you’ll tell me about yours.”

To her shock, she heard her voice say, “I was born in Seoul, Korea. My grandfather was from Japan. He raised me on a small farm in the country.”

Hidoshi hadn’t been her blood relative as far as she knew, but he’d adopted her in an ancient, if not legally recognized, ceremony. More to the point, he’d pulled her off the streets where she’d been wandering as a toddler and had likely saved her life. And then there was everything else. Her education, her martial arts training, the affection and respect he quietly gave her. Somehow, calling him her grandfather wasn’t nearly description enough of what he’d meant to her.

“You love him a great deal, don’t you?” Jeff murmured.

How did he do that? If she didn’t know better, she’d say the guy was, indeed, psychic, the way he picked her thoughts out of thin air. “He meant everything to me.”

“Past tense. He passed away?”

She nodded.

“When?”

Under normal circumstances, she’d politely change the subject about now, or if someone waxed persistent, she’d tell them outright it was none of their business. But for some reason, she found herself completely lacking in her usual reluctance to talk to Jeff about Hidoshi.

“He died when I was seventeen.”

“How did you end up in the States?”

To her knowledge, she’d never answered that question to a single living soul. Only a few anonymous clerks in the American consulate in Seoul knew once and had hopefully forgotten long ago. Jeff stopped walking and turned to face her as if he knew this was something very private and personal to her. He could really stop doing that.

She ventured to look up at him and was startled at the depth of compassion glowing in his gaze. It wrapped around her, offering comfort and quiet understanding. In her own sudden flash of insight, she realized he’d lost