"Alexandra." He smiled a little as he bent his head. "You are the only lady doctor I know."
Alex didn't expect the kiss, but she didn't kick him in the groin in outrage. The first part felt nice. He put his mouth on hers and used his lips to tug at hers, asking her without words to let him in. Not that she would. This was going to be only a friendly, introductory, hello-again sort of kiss. Something to jolt her brain cells into working a little better, nothing more. He'd probably kissed her a million times.
The kiss didn't ring any bells. Several alarms, however, started clanging, and she went stiff.
He noticed and backed off, although not very far. "I should have taken you when you were bespelled. I could feel your trust, your affection." He ran a big hand over her hair, stroking her curls with rough delight. "You are like no woman I've known."
"That's good," she said, wondering if she could jump back through the tent wall without his help, and if the dragonflies would come after her, "because I still don't know you."
"I am glad you do not. I played the honorable fool." The grooves running from his nose to bracket his mouth deepened. "If I had taken you when I had you in my hands, our bond would have been made complete. You would never have departed."
He was starting to sound like a stalker, not a lover. She'd have to take her chances with the tent.
"Sorry that didn't work out." She braced her hands between them. "How about you let me go?"
"No." He caught the back of her hair in his fist. "I accept that he took you from me. But this is our time, our place. He cannot be here between us. If nothing else, I will have this."
Turquoise eyes. He must have taken her away. She didn't know why or when, but she was supposed to be with him. And not here.
"I gotta go." Tears of frustration burned her eyes as she tried desperately to remember the other man, and how she could get back to him. Her body didn't help matters by ignoring her and rubbing itself up against the blond giant. "I'm not doing this. I can't."
A low hum shivered through the walls of the tent, the purple-blue dragonfly light dimming.
"You will not go to him." He wrapped one arm around her and lifted her off her feet. "He cannot have every moment of your existence. You summoned me. You want me." He put her on his eye level. "You chose me."
He took a couple of steps and dropped down with her into a pile of robes and blankets and pillows, stretching his body over hers. He pressed her thighs apart with his hands, propping himself in the space he made, on his knees and elbows.
Alex surged up and then swore as the weight and heat of his body made her body clench and ready itself for him.
"This is how it could have been for us that night." He shifted against her, lining up their hips and covering one of her breasts with his hand. His fingers closed and opened over her, kneading the tight mound, rubbing his hard palm against the pucker of her nipple. "All the while I cared for you like a brother, but I wanted more. So did you. With every breath I took I could taste your desire."
"I have a brother," Alex said, feeling a second surge of panic. "You're not him."
"You're so beautiful," he breathed, not hearing her anymore as he played with her breasts. "I've dreamed it would be like this."
Alex twisted, trying simultaneously to avoid his mouth colliding with hers and the thick, wide column of his penis nesting against her crotch. She lost. The man pushed his tongue in her mouth while he settled himself between her legs, and held her there. As he kissed and sucked at her tongue, he fitted the length of his cock against the long notch of her labia, working it over her with small, insistent nudges, only the few layers of clothing between them keeping it all from getting out of hand.
She tried to scream a no, but the word came in instead of out, a rush of excited breath, then an exhaled moan of longing.
"Yes, my lady." He rested his cool cheek against hers. "I know. You need me inside you. I can smell how hot and wet you are. Let me have you. Let me feel you on my cock."
The low, guttural demands almost sent Alex over the edge. She could hear the soft, yearning sounds coming from her throat, and the gnawing ache his erection had created between her legs shrieked to be filled and stroked and sated. If he didn't fuck her, right this second, Alex felt sure she'd go insane.
If she hadn't already.
Hunger, screaming need, and impending psychotic break aside, on some deeper level Alex knew how wrong this was. She loved another man, and that one meant everything to her.
Something else had taken hold of her funhouse and was operating the equipment. She tried to take control, but her body went into full mutiny. She couldn't stop answering the stroke of his hips, the pressure of his sex. She did want him, and she could handle that, but the fact that she didn't love him, didn't know him—
… I cared for you like a brother…
Naked, facedown on an uncomfortable pallet. A wet cloth wielded by a gentle hand smoothing over her back. Blood and herbs, warmth, safety.
The wanting and the fear slowly drained out of her, leaving behind a limp, distant feeling of déjà vu.
"Water boiled with willow bark and valerian," Alex muttered under his mouth. "Left to cool."
He moved to nuzzle her neck, and then went still. Alex looked down and saw four deep, ugly slashes rip across his chest. "No." He covered the wounds with his hand. "Do not do this, Alexandra. Not again."
Alex studied his face. The light changed from purple-blue to a reddish orange, and created grim shadows around his eyes, nose, and mouth. "Your talent. You wouldn't tell me what it was."
He didn't answer, but rolled away from her, throwing an arm over his face.
She felt grateful rather than relieved. Whoever he was, she liked him. He was a decent guy.
"I can read the minds of killers," she said, turning toward him and propping herself on her elbow. "What can you do?"
"'Kyn do not trade tales about talent. Damn you." He swore as he got to his feet and strode around the tent. "I will not relive what has been." He stopped and glared at her. "We can have more than repetitions of what was. We can make a whole new world for ourselves; can't you see that?"
She stared at the top of the tent. "So your talent is worse than mine." Under that very hot, ready-to-do-the-nasty-all-night façade was, Alex suspected, a very nice man. Why else would he be…
She sat up. "You helped me. You took care of me. I remember." The memories went as quickly as they'd come to her, and she tilted her head. "You know, when you get pissed off or upset, you smell like vanilla pound cake."
"Larkspur." He came over and knelt before her. "You are not ready for me."
She bit her lip. "That's nice."
"Alexandra." He bent forward and pressed his mouth to her forehead. "Come back. I will be waiting."
Alex nodded, although she was more interested in staring at his mouth. "I have to get out of here now, right?"
"Yes." He kissed her hard on the mouth, and then raised his head and listened. "They will wake you soon. You will be as you were with them."
"I will," she promised. She looked down at herself. "I need some clothes."
He brought a light robe to her and went to stand by the tent flap. He had done the exact same thing before, Alex thought, but this time he watched her dress.
She joined him, startled by how sore she was and how slowly she was moving. "Thank you."
"I am at your service, my lady."
She touched his cheek, took a deep breath, and then pushed herself through the tent wall.
Leaving Cyprien to attend to Alexandra, Jayr went to the men's quarters. Knocking on Rainer's locked chamber door produced no response, so she used her master key to let herself in. The warrior's rooms, which he had painted with stripes of red, orange, and purple, reflected his passion for collecting things. At the moment Rainer was obsessed with traveling shows, and the playbills, costumes, and props he arranged in various artful displays made it seem as if a circus had exploded in his rooms. His lamps stood unlit, and the place seemed unoccupied, but Rainer's scent, like strawberries warmed by the sun, colored the shadows.
"Hiding is pointless," Jayr said. "I can smell you."
"Go away," a muffled voice said from nowhere she could pinpoint. "I am resting."
"You are sulking." Like all Kyn, Jayr could see well in the dark, but the wounded man's bed lay empty, and none of his furnishings were large enough to hide him. "Where are you?"
A polite cough made her look up.
Rainer hung upside down, his bearlike body suspended from a snare rope bound around his ankles. More rope bound his arms to his sides and secured the end of a black sack, which covered his face.
From beneath the hood he said, "It's not as bad as it looks."
"Christ knows, it never is." Jayr went to the rope where it was anchored, untied it, and lowered the man down until she could grab him with one arm. She stripped off the rope and hood. Dried blood stained Rainer's sea blue tunic and vivid green trousers in patches, but it appeared that his wounds had healed. "Who did you enrage this time?"
"I cannot say. Perhaps God again." He found his feet and turned away from her. "My thanks. You should go, attend to things more important than my misfortunes."
"Your misfortunes are more amusing." Jayr lit one of his lamps and looked around the room, which had been rifled through and left in complete disarray. "Tell me who did this to you."
"Would that I could oblige you. But I went to sleep at dawn, and opened my eyes this evening to find myself in the dark and at the end of my rope." He grinned at his own pun and hobbled over to an armchair draped with a trapeze artist's glittering cape. "I suppose it was Beaumaris," he said as he slowly sat down. "He considered the entire accidental-stabbing incident most humiliating. I don't know why. It wasn't as if it landed in his cods."
