She shook her head, her eyes flying to the window. “I don’t know who they are. I think I lost them, but”—her gaze moved quickly to the side—“uh, I got all turned around and then I just kept walking.”
Jak had an odd feeling about the woman. It was like . . . he sensed danger, but . . . that was stupid. This woman was half his size. No threat to him. But he felt . . . not right, and he wasn’t sure why. “What happened to your clothes?”
“The enemy took them before I got away.”
Jak frowned. “Tell me about the enemy.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I—” He ran a hand over his jaw, trying to figure out how to explain things to her. “I don’t know anything about the war. I’ve been living here since I was young.” He sat on the edge of the bed next to where she sat against the wall. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Does anyone talk about when it might end?”
She stared at him for a minute, a line coming between her eyes. “I don’t know a lot either. I’m uh”—she did that weird moving thing with her eyes again—“from somewhere else.”
“Somewhere where the war is not being fought?”
“Right.”
“Do you know why we’re fighting? And who we’re fighting against? There was a time when they were killing children. Is that still happening?”
“Listen, I don’t know anything else, okay?” She sounded kind of . . . mad.
The coat Jak had put around her shoulders slipped, showing the white skin of her breast and Jak’s breath stopped. He’d never seen a woman’s body before and he wanted to take the coat from around her shoulders, and the blanket from her legs, and look at her naked, study how she was different than him. Suddenly he wasn’t thinking about war or the enemy, or anything else outside of his cabin. His body felt hot, tight.
But this woman, she’d just been running from an enemy who had been bad to her in some way. And she was trusting him to help her. He stood, turning his back on her and walking to the window where he looked outside. The snow glittered, white gray and not touched except for the lonely footprints that led to his door. His own. At least if anyone came here, they would think it was just him. He could protect her. He looked to the place where he stored the bow and arrow Driscoll had given him a long time ago. He had spent hours and hours getting good with the weapon, becoming so good with it that when he used it, it felt like another part of his own body. He’d shoot to kill if he had to. His shots were strong. He never missed.
He smelled her approaching. She tried to be quiet but was not. She was no wolf. He waited . . . tensed and felt hands come around his waist. He turned fast, the woman very close to where he was. She’d left the coat and blanket on the floor and now stood before him naked. Surprise shivered through him, along with a jolt of heat. His eyes moved over her body, confusion rising like pinpricks on the inside of his skin. What is she doing?
“What’s your name?”
She seemed surprised that he’d asked the question, but after a second pause, she said, “Brielle. What’s yours?”
“Jak.”
She stepped closer, giving him a small smile as she ran her hands up the front of his shirt, over the muscles of his chest. “You’re different than I thought,” she said so quietly he almost didn’t hear.
“Different? What . . . do you mean? How would you know about me?”
Her gaze shot to him and she laughed in a nervous way. “I mean, from when I first saw you out there in the snow. I thought you were uncivilized, but you’re not.”
Uncivilized.
He didn’t understand. And she was still standing in front of him naked, and though it was making his body feel too heated, his mind was able to stay away like he’d learned to do when he stalked and hunted. It was easy for him now.
A naked woman was touching him, but that whisper of confusion wouldn’t let his thoughts quiet.
“What are you doing?” he asked her, his gaze moving over her nakedness again, seeing the pinky brown tips of her breasts, the way her waist turned inward, the tiny black dots between her legs that showed she’d removed the hair there. He wondered why she would do that. That’s where the scent was that told a male whether he wanted to mate with the female or not. Those smells told the male if the whispers spoke between them, if their offspring would be healthy and strong, and other things Jak didn’t know because he hadn’t smelled his mate yet.
“I’m thanking you for rescuing me,” she said, taking the bottom of his shirt in her hands and pulling it up and over his head. Her eyes ran over his chest, her gaze stopping on each scar one by one. Something came over her face, and he didn’t know what it was. She swallowed and took a step back, reaching out to run a finger along the worst of them, the ugly raised skin on his side that had come from the wild boar’s tusk, the one that had almost killed him. He watched her like she was a snake, and he wasn’t sure whether she was going to slither by or strike at him.
Her finger moved slowly and he hissed out a breath, the feeling of being touched by another human for the first time since he was a child making him want to fall to his knees. He wanted to push this woman—this stranger he didn’t trust—away, and he wanted to beg her not to stop. “You’ve been to battle,” she said.
He looked at her, taking his own finger and running it along the pink scar right over the removed hair between her legs and then lifting her arms where scars crossed the skin on the insides of her arms. “So have you.”
Their eyes met and her face went lighter. She looked sad. She dropped her hands. “I . . . yes.” Her voice came out choked, and the smile she wore looked like a lie. She took a deep breath and moved forward again, returning her hand to his naked skin. “Do you want me, Jak?” Before waiting for an answer, she stepped forward and put her lips on his, running her tongue along his lower lip. She gripped his head in her hands, dragging her fingernails through his hair. He wanted to pull away, but he didn’t know why. He should want this. To mate. Shouldn’t he?
The feeling of her soft, wet tongue on his mouth sent lightning shooting between his legs, making him swell and harden. But even though his body wanted, there was something not right in the way she smelled to him. She smelled like berries, but ones that were too ripe and had already dropped to the ground. Too sweet. Too much. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want to mate with her. And she was shaking again, but there were no goosebumps on her skin, and his cabin was warm from the fire.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.