Sex and strength and sun-warmed dirt and some kind of plant she didn’t know.
Part of her wanted to savor it, simply revel in the heady flavor of it and enjoy the hum of satisfaction her body still clung to.
But it also made her remember his words, I love you, and the way her heart had responded to them.
She turned the wrong way out of the cottage when she fled, and ended up dead-ending at another cottage where a pair of mountain lions were sunning on a little porch.
“Sorry, wrong turn!” She waved apologetically and turned around to creep back past the cottage she and Graham had just defiled, crossing her fingers that he wouldn’t appear in the doorway.
Then she was wandering down white gravel paths at random, not sure what cottage she was in; the key that Scarlet had given her was apparently wherever her bra had gone.
Downhill took her to the beach, and Alice spent an hour or more walking the length of it back and forth with her shoes in her hands, trying to make sense of the thoughts tumbling through her head. Secrets. Her family. Fifty million dollars. Mates. Love.
It wasn’t love.
She turned her t-shirt around the right way, but it didn’t help her head.
She finally found her way back up to the bar deck overlooking the pool. The bar itself was unmanned, but there were tempting bottles of beers in a glass-doored cooler and Alice considered taking one. Probably something stronger was called for. Probably water was smarter.
Before she could decide, a voice from behind the bar startled her. “It looks like it would taste good, but it’s mostly bubbles and regret.”
A woman was sitting on a milk crate behind the bar, her head just below the level of the counter. Her knees were tucked up close in front of her and clutched in skinny arms. She had long, messy brown and white braids on either side of her head, and her brown eyes were big in her thin face.
“That sounds about right,” Alice said dryly. She opened the door and took one, pulling the cap off without a bottle opener and taking a large gulp. “You must be Gizelle.”
“We’ve met before,” Gizelle said dreamily. “You were there the day it rains blood.”
Alice raised an eyebrow at her, and Gizelle shook her head firmly and stood. She was taller than Alice would have guessed from her crouched form.
“I’m Gizelle,” the woman agreed, lifting her chin. “You came with Neal.” She didn’t offer to shake hands, and stayed an almost-uncomfortable distance away.
Alice nodded. “Have you run into him yet? He was eager to see you again.”
A dozen conflicted expressions passed over Gizelle’s face and she shook her head. “I’m trying not to run,” she explained cryptically.
“How’s that working for you?” Alice asked dryly, thinking of her own flight from Graham’s bed.
“Dubious results,” Gizelle admitted.
Something occurred to Alice. “They say you can hear other shifters’ animals, is that true?”
Gizelle blinked at her. “Yes, sometimes,” she said trustingly.
“What does Scarlet’s animal sound like?” Alice tried to sound casual.
Gizelle considered. “It’s a whisper, even when I touch her, like wind in leaves, like a far-off song I can’t understand.”
Alice frowned. That wasn’t much to work with. “Like... birdsong?”
“Rustling feathers...” Gizelle said in sudden alarm.
For a moment, Alice thought the beer was hitting her rather harder than she was accustomed to and she wondered if the bartender stocked shifter-strength alcohol. Then she realized that the earth beneath her feet was actually moving, shaking back and forth in a gentle rumble that subsided almost as soon as she recognized it.
An earthquake. Mary had warned her that the resort had been having little flurries of minor quakes. Cluster quakes, they were called, nothing to worry about at all.
Gizelle did not seem to share that opinion.
She dropped to the ground with a shriek of terror, curling into a tiny ball and weeping.