He touched the tip of her nose, gave her a wry smile. "Too much gray in your black-and-white world?"
Her expression stayed serious. "It scares me."
"Don't be."
" You scare me, Kade. All my life, I've run from the things that frighten me, yet with you ..." She released a slow, uncertain sigh. "With you, I can't seem to stay away." He stroked her cheek, smoothed the pads of his fingers over the light creases in her brow as she looked up at him. "There's no reason to be afraid when you're with me," he told her, meaning it completely. But then he bent his head and pressed his lips to hers, and the kiss meant to be tender reassurance ignited into something wilder as Alex kissed him back so openly, teasing his mouth with the tip of her tongue. All of the heat that had leapt between them the night before in Pete's parking lot sprang to life again now, only swifter, more intense for the hours of longing Kade had known in between. He was on fire for this female, dangerously so. Kissing her was risky enough; desire already had his fangs stretching from his gums, his vision going sharp with the flood of amber light that would soon fill his irises. Seducing her had not been his goal here, no matter what his mission for the Order was, or how badly he wanted to unravel Alex's secrets to satisfy his own personal curiosity.
He drew back, his head held low, face turned away from her to hide the changes he could not let her see. Changes that would startle her.
Changes that he would not be able to explain.
"What is it?" she asked, her soft voice husky from the kiss. "Is anything wrong?"
"No." He shook his head, still cautious to keep his face shielded as he willed his lust to cool.
"Nothing wrong at all. But it's too damned cold to be standing out here. You must be freezing."
"I can't say I'm feeling any chill at the moment," she replied, making him smile despite the war raging inside him.
"We should go inside." He didn't wait for an answer before he walked around to the passenger side of the plane. "I just need to grab my gear. Go on ahead. I'll be right behind you."
"All right." She hesitated for a moment, then started walking toward the cabin, her boots crunching in the snow. "Bring some firewood while you're at it. Folks use this place as a trail shelter now, so you should find some in the shed out back."
He waited until she had gone inside the log shelter before he pulled his weapons duffel out of the plane and headed around to look for the woodshed. The Arctic air slapped at him as he strode through the unspoiled snow. He welcomed the chafe of the bitter, cold weather. He needed the clarity of the icy wind. And still he burned inside for Alex.
He wanted her badly, and it would take nothing short of a glacier swallowing him whole to douse any of the heat that she ignited in him.
Chapter Fourteen
Alex walked into the one-room cabin and closed the door behind her to seal out the cold and, she hoped, steal a minute of privacy so she could deal with the tumult going on inside her. She leaned back against the weathered panel and exhaled a long, tremulous sigh. "Get a grip on yourself, Maguire." She wanted to pretend the kiss didn't mean anything, that the simple fact Kade had pulled away first should tell her that even he thought letting things get heated between them was a bad idea. Except things were already heated. More than heated, and denying it wasn't going to make the fact go away. There wasn't anywhere far enough that Alex could run to outpace the desire she had for Kade. And the kicker was, she didn't want to run from that feeling. For the first time in her life, there was something that scared the hell out of her but didn't make her itchy to bolt.
No, even worse, her feelings for Kade made her want to draw closer to him. Scarier still, she felt that Kade might be someone strong enough to lean on, strong enough for her to open up to--really open up to--about everything she'd been holding inside her for so long. Some part of her wanted to believe he might be the one man strong enough to stand beside her through any storm, even one thick with monsters, where the night had teeth and the wind roared, bloodthirsty with hunger. Kade would stand with her.
Alex knew that in much the same way she had always known when someone lied to her. Although she couldn't seem to read him as she could other people, the same innate sense of hers told her that it was because Kade was unlike other people in some way. He was unlike any man she'd ever met or might ever meet again.
That same odd but unshakable instinct had been at work on the flight out from Harmony, when she had come so close to telling him the truth--all of it--about why she and her dad had fled Florida. The truth about what exactly had killed her mom and little brother.
It had been a struggle to work against the impulse that wanted her to let Kade in, and as she'd tossed him the polished lie that she'd used on so many others without the slightest compunction, not being honest with Kade had made her feel awful. Imagine that--she'd withheld one of the most fundamental truths about herself from everyone in Harmony who'd known her since she was a child, yet after just a few days of flirting with a stranger, she was ready to lay it all out on the line for him. But Kade wasn't a stranger to her now. He hadn't felt like a stranger, not even that first night in the back of the church, when his bright silver eyes had met her gaze across the room. And if all they'd been doing in the time since was merely flirting, then why did her heart feel like it was battering against her sternum every time she was near him? Why did she feel, against all logic and reason, that she belonged with this man?
With the cold of past memories and the uncertainty of the future crowding in on her, she needed something strong and warm to hold on to.
Not just anything, or anyone ... but him.
She needed Kade's warmth now--his strength--even if only for a little while. The woodshed in back of the cabin had a decent supply of seasoned, split logs, kept dry and stacked inside the snug outbuilding that bore Henry Tulak's initials above the door. It was customary in the bush that wanderers looked out for one another, leaving fuel and food for the next person and respecting the land in order to preserve it for others as well as oneself.
As Kade pulled from the supply and set his logs aside, he considered what he might leave in exchange for the fuel he would be burning for Alex in the cabin. He knelt down and unzipped his duffel bag. The only thing he carried that would prove useful to someone in the wild would be his weapons, but the Rogue-killing guns he carried were far too valuable to leave behind. A knife, then. He had more than one in his pack.
As he reached into the duffel in search of a blade he could stand to part with, his boot heel caught on something hard and white, jammed between the floorboards of the woodshed.
"What the hell?"
He moved aside to get a better look at what he might have crushed under his foot. A bear tooth. The long, sharp ivory point was wedged deep into the seam of two boards, as though it had been ground in by countless boots before his. But it wasn't the tooth itself that made Kade's blood go cold in his veins. It was the thin length of braided leather attached to the tooth.
Precisely the same kind of leather band that had been fastened to another bear tooth he'd seen just recently.
The one he'd found stained with dried, aged human blood and hidden in Seth's private cache of little treasures. The twisted collection of souvenirs, kept by a killer.
His brother had been here.