He looked so determined that she gave in, reluctantly. “Okay. I’ll come and show you what I need.”
“You’re not going anywhere near your place! It’s too dangerous. Make a list of the things you want and we’ll find them.”
“You don’t have to do all this, Ian. It’s too much.”
“Sierra, if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have been driven out of your home. But I was too groggy to realize what I was doing in coming to you for help, and now look! You made a bad enemy when you shot that lioness. You’ve saved my life twice over. The least I can do is give you the protection you need until all this is done.”
She shoved her hair back, giving him a helpless glance. Ian could see from the dazed expression on her face that it was all too much for her. It had come at her too fast and she hadn’t had time to cope.
“Look,” he said gently. “Don’t think about things right now. Just go day by day. Read a book, watch TV, catch your breath, yeah? You can worry about everything tomorrow.”
“You take it easy too,” she said, abruptly stern. “Doc said you should rest. I will if you will.”
“Deal.”
“But I don’t want to just hang around doing nothing. Can’t I help Annie?”
“You don’t have to earn your keep, Mouse.”
“Yes, I do. I want to.”
To him, she was a guest and it didn’t seem right to have her working. But maybe having something to occupy her would make things seem ordinary and give her some structure. It would also be good for her to be with Annie, who was supremely normal and had no clue about Shifters or weird, unnatural occurrences.
He was amazed by her. These last few days couldn’t have been easy for her. Most people would have had a nervous breakdown just learning about Shifters. Sierra had not only managed to surmount that, but hadn’t flinched when a savage battle between big cats had erupted right in front of her. She had even killed one of his attackers and Ian suspected she had never killed a single living creature before today. Her inner strength and fortitude awed him.
“You do whatever you like,” he said. “Just don’t go out of the house without someone beside you or off the ranch without me. Otherwise, this is the all-free zone, okay? Just try to think of it as home.”
She gave him a sideways glance that said, “Don’t make me laugh.” Then she nodded obediently and went off toward the kitchen and Annie.
That obedience scared him to death. Mouse was at her most dangerous when she seemed meek. It meant all sorts of things were going on in her head.
He made sure the hands understood that she was not to go anywhere alone or be allowed to leave the homestead without him beside her. Most of the hands knew her at least by sight, while Taylor and Annie had been friends of her mother’s. It turned out that Taylor was the one who had taught her to shoot and taken her out hunting. All Ian had to do was tell them some nutcase was targeting her to trigger their protective reaction without having to go into detail.
He came back into the house to hear her talking to Annie. It sent a shiver down his spine and a kind of helpless weakening behind his breastbone. He didn’t know how often he had dreamed of Sierra being under his roof.
Belonging to him. Being in his bed. That was one of his long-time fantasies—how she would be in his bed, how she might respond to him. And now he’d had a taste of it. Now he knew what it might be like. He knew the inner shape of her mouth and the fire of it and the way her hands moved over him and how her body felt crushed against his.
He stopped the thought right there. He wouldn’t abuse her trust. She was in his care, vulnerable here, and he didn’t want to hurt her in any way. But it was sweet to be near her, to share his home with her and be able to pretend just for a little while that it would always be that way.
He and his brothers normally ate breakfast and lunch with the hands, but dinner was usually just the three of them, talking over the day’s work and planning the next. Family time, laughing, joking and sharing things. He was looking forward to spending that kind of time with Sierra.
Except it didn’t go the way he hoped. Dinner turned out to be a stiff, awkward affair, with Sierra never once lifting her gaze from her plate and saying not much more than yes, no or thank you. Where was his Mouse, all snark and defiance? He would have been happier if she’d gone back to flinging insults at him.
“Sierra, what’s wrong?” he asked at last in desperation.
“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong,” muttered Sierra, avoiding his eyes. “Why should anything be wrong?”
Even to Sierra that sounded lame. But she felt totally fazed right now. Her life had been turned upside down, a lunatic was targeting her and she didn’t know which way was up. But worse than all of that, for her, was this violent craving she felt for Ian.
She just didn’t want to be alone with him. She had stiffened up the minute she had been ushered into the dining room. She would have much preferred to be eating with the hands in the middle of their raucous friendship and teasing. She was comfortable with them. She was not comfortable with Ian or the ambience of this elegant dining room with its flowers, subdued lighting and the crystal and silverware that Annie insisted upon. It made her feel as if she should have dressed for dinner, not be sitting here in faded blue jeans and a pink chambray shirt. It didn’t matter that Ian hadn’t changed either and was just wearing his usual black jeans and tee, with that black shirt hiding the gashes on his arms. Sierra still felt completely out of place.
“Do you always eat dinner like this?” she asked edgily.
“Oh, yeah. Mom insisted. It was the one time of the day when we boys had to act civilized.” He grinned crookedly at her. “Annie is determined to keep up the tradition even though things have kind of lapsed now Mom’s gone. Neal tends to eat with a book propped up in front of him, and Simon and I are always pushing paper back and forth. Annie hates that.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you did that. The paperwork, I mean.” Being treated casually or even being ignored would have been so much better than having to dredge up polite chitchat.
“Annie would be scandalized if I behaved like that with a guest.”
“Right.”
The conversation lapsed again. Sierra couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“I’ve always wondered why your parents called you Sierra,” Ian remarked. “I’ve never heard of anyone named that before.”
Ian kept trying. She had to give him that. He wanted to be a good host and it was a shame she was such a disappointing guest. But she couldn’t relax and respond to his conventional gambits. Small talk had never been her forte.
“They were going to take a trip to the Sierra Nevadas, then they found out Mom was pregnant and they needed to put the money toward that. They named me for the mountains they’d missed.”
“It suits you.” He slanted her a provocative glance. “All sharp and prickly.”
She smiled involuntarily. Before, she had resented his teasing. Now it was a relief to be back on that old familiar ground, trading insults back and forth. But they would never really be able to recover that comforting, antagonistic dynamic. They had moved past that. Kissing him had changed everything.
She was far too aware of him. Even with her gaze fixed on her plate, she was aware of that intense green stare watching her. She wished he would stop looking at her. But then, she couldn’t stop looking at him either. Even though she kept her eyes fixed on her plate, in her peripheral vision she was aware of the precise movements of those strong, sensitive hands, found herself remembering how they had felt moving across her body, wanted them back upon her again. She could see the curve of his hard, beautiful mouth, remembered how it had tasted, how his tongue had thrust and slid against hers, could see that supple, ripped body and couldn’t help wanting it on her, in her.
God, she was insane! He was bad news. She knew that, had always known that. But she hadn’t known, hadn’t even suspected the way he could make her feel. The violence of the hunger he could arouse in her. He was everything that was wrong for her, everything she shouldn’t have—and everything she wanted.
She was relieved when dinner was finally over and she could retreat to her room. But he put out a hand to stop her. She jerked back without thinking.
His eyes widened and his hand fell without touching her. “Sierra…”
“I…I’m a little tired,” she said desperately. “I’d rather go to bed early.”
So much had happened in the last twelve hours. She had been swung wildly between extremes of shock and passion and terror. She was exhausted, both in mind and body, just couldn’t take any more right now.
“You’re afraid of me. You’ve never been afraid of me before, Mouse.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
But she was. Afraid of what he made her feel.
“I’d never hurt you. I swear it, Mouse.”
“I know that, Ian.”
He would never hurt her physically. But he could emotionally. She didn’t dare let him. She shook her head helplessly. She couldn’t even explain, because that would give away too much. What could she say? You’re too much of a temptation. I want you desperately and it scares me to death?
“I’m sorry. I’m just…”
“Tired, yeah,” he said, his lips tight, and stepped back to let her pass.
She had hurt his feelings. She hadn’t meant to and she was truly sorry. She wanted to keep some distance between them. But she could have handled it with more finesse. Sierra wanted to kick herself. She was running scared and knew it.
The next day, he was nowhere around. Annie said he had gone off as usual to work on the spread but wouldn’t be back for dinner because he wanted to do some hunting with Abel Painter and Nick Korda. Sierra guessed they were hunting for Arrhan.
“How did things go?” she asked when he came through the front door just as she was going up to bed that night.
Ian shrugged. “It’s going to be harder than we thought.”
“Why?”
“No scent trail. Arrhan’s definitely found some way to cover that up. There’s no smell of lion even around your place and there should have been.”
With no scent trail to follow, it would be impossible to track Arrhan or his people. They could hide anywhere, especially when they were in their cat forms. The state was huge, with wide tracts of wilderness. Even an army of searchers wouldn’t be able to find them.
Arrhan would have no such trouble. The Lowes were easy to locate, as were all the other Shifters in Wade County who hadn’t fled their homes. Defenders were always at a disadvantage when faced with an enemy who used guerrilla tactics to strike and then vanish.
Over the next week, two of the Lowe pride were ambushed and killed. No one went anywhere alone and they had all armed themselves. Shifters normally disdained weapons, an honorable fight being one that used only fangs and claws. But Arrhan was
dasari
and any Wade County Shifter would gun him down on sight.
* * * * *
“I should have accepted that challenge,” Kurt Lowe muttered. He was in a grim, bitter mood, the deaths weighing heavily upon him.
“You’d have lost,” Maud snapped back. “He’s thirty years younger than you and in his prime. He’d have had your throat out before you could even see it coming.”
“But it would have been just me.”
“No, it wouldn’t. None of us will accept him as lord. The Lowe pride belongs to the Lowes.”
“It’s not just a land grab,” Abel mused. “He’s got his own pride. He could just go off and carve himself his own domain in some free area a few counties over. That can’t be what he’s after. He wants to expand the numbers of his clan for some reason, to add your pride to his own. It can’t be just ego. Something else has got to be behind it.”
* * * * *
“Who died?” Sierra asked Ian later. She had been able to see and hear them talking as she came down the hallway to the living room. They had sensed her coming, but Ian had told them she knew what they were and they didn’t change the subject as they would have if it had been Taylor or Annie or any of the hands. It was clear from their cool, reserved stares that they didn’t like her knowing about Shifters. But that problem was being shelved until the crisis with Arrhan was over.
“Dieter and Harry Lowe,” muttered Ian, his lips tightening.
“Oh, no!” Two nice boys in their late teens. Sierra had known them both. Not well, just casually, but she had liked them.
“They were stupid,” said Ian harshly. “In both cases, they decided to go off alone for some damn fool reason without telling anyone. They paid for that. Don’t you make the same mistake.”
“I won’t.” Even if she had been tempted to, this would have convinced her otherwise. “Do the authorities know?”
“Castleton PD, you mean? No. They died in cat shape not in human, and Arrhan left their bodies lying in the dirt for the scavengers. I know the movies have werewolves changing back to human when they die, but we’re Shifters and we don’t. We stay in the shape we’re in when we’re killed. So the cops don’t know anything’s out of the ordinary.” His lips compressed into a hard line. “They’re buried on Lowe land and a blood debt has been sung over their graves. The Lowes will have vengeance.”