Hunting Medusa: The Medusa Trilogy, Book 1 (22 page)

She slid her hands down to the base of his erection, then back up, rubbing one thumb over the tip of him.

He caught her hips and yanked her close, his mouth descending to cover hers roughly.

Andi let him take over, not disappointed to find him eager and demanding, his hands urging her to swift arousal and finally release. They barely made it to the bed before the explosion claimed them both.

This time when he whispered, “I love you,
meli
,” she didn’t even flinch. She smiled into his throat and held him closer.

Kallan sat on a rough boulder next to the shore the next day, watching Andrea wander closer to the water. She looked absolutely relaxed, delighted with the small pebbles she’d paused to examine more closely.

His call from Stavros last night still troubled him. His cousin was furious he’d missed Andrea in Maine. Livid that he’d gone to Ohio on Great-Uncle Ari’s say-so and found nothing. And he was absolutely the angriest that Kallan could ever remember that Kallan was brushing him off.

Stavros would be even more determined now to find her. He had never taken defeat gracefully, not even when they were kids skipping rocks on a lake, or when they were a little older and participating in the training exercises that were tradition for boys in their family.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He should just leave the damned thing in the suitcase and check his messages once a day and only carry the new phone in case he actually needed to make a call. For some reason, he’d put the old one back in his pocket. Habit.

Andrea glanced up when he pulled the phone out, and her smile faded.

Stavros again.

He stuffed the phone away and pushed to his feet.

She stood still, a wet rock in her hand, when he got to her. “How would you like to see Inverness?” he asked.

“When?”

He brushed a smudge of dark, grainy sand from her cheek. “Tomorrow.”

She nodded silently.

He wrapped his arms around her and stared at the rolling waves. Running wasn’t something he’d ever expected to do. He’d never run away from anything before. Ever.

But he’d run to the ends of the earth to keep Andrea out of harm’s way.

Andi didn’t mind traveling into the Highlands. She hadn’t ever imagined she’d get to visit Scotland. She certainly hadn’t thought she’d be seeing it with a man who was so incredibly attentive to her, in and out of bed. Or with a man who whispered “I love you” on a regular basis.

She definitely hadn’t imagined she’d get a warm, tingly feeling in her middle every time he said it.

That made her a little nervous. More than a little nervous, to be very honest.

She was afraid she was starting to believe. To believe the man who’d come to kill her was in love with her. That they could have a future.

And if she believed that—that she might have something she’d stopped dreaming about years ago, something now within her grasp—the risk of losing her life would be much, much more difficult to accept than when she’d expected to spend the rest of her life alone.

They were walking hand-in-hand on Culloden battlefield when Kallan suddenly went still, his entire body stiffening. His fingers around hers tightened almost painfully.

“Phone?”

He shook his head. “We need to go.” Without another word, he turned her back toward the parking area and hustled her into the car before speeding onto the road. They’d driven half an hour in the wrong direction before he relaxed enough so his knuckles weren’t white on the steering wheel.

Andi’s stomach had knotted on itself about a hundred times in the past thirty minutes, and she wondered what the hell was going on.

“I don’t know who it was, or even exactly where, but one of my cousins was nearby. Too close,” he said at last, uncurling one hand from the wheel to reach over and give her leg a gentle squeeze. “I don’t think he realized we were there, and he’s definitely not following us.”

She took a shallow breath—feeling some of the tension banding her chest ease—then another, deeper breath. “Now what?”

“Back to Inverness. For now.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “You want to play with the GPS?”

It took her several tries to punch in the right address for their hotel, so the GPS would give them the correct route back to the city. Even when Kallan caught one of her hands in his, her fingers still shook.

Being on the run sucked.

Being on the run and knowing that one’s pursuers could stumble on one anywhere in the world sucked even more.

She bit her lower lip as she stared out the car’s side window. She knew believing was no good. Not when his family could find her anywhere in the world. She had no future, with or without Kallan.

“It’s okay, Andrea.”

“No, it’s really not.” She realized her fingernails were digging into her palm and uncurled the fist she’d made subconsciously with her free hand. Crescent-shaped marks remained when she looked. “Can all of the Harvesters sense one another?”

“No.”

She looked over at him, her hand dropping back into her lap. “No?”

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “No. There are a few of us that I’m aware of, but it’s not something we tend to share.”

“Why not?”

He inhaled slowly, steering the car onto the road the GPS indicated. “Because some of my cousins don’t like when another gets into their territory, or their hunting grounds.”

“Like Stavros?”

“Like Stavros.”

“He doesn’t have that ability?”

He shook his head.

Andi pondered that while he drove along narrow, winding roads.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Maybe we should have stayed in Maine.”

He shot her a disbelieving look. “And let him kill you?”

“That isn’t what I meant.” She frowned. “If he didn’t know you were there, he might have given up when he couldn’t find me.”

“Andrea, even if he couldn’t sense the protection spell you had on the cave, you don’t know my cousin. He doesn’t give up. He’s still there, traipsing through your forest trying to figure out where you went.” Frustration laced his tone.

She flexed her fingers in his grip, wiggling them until she could link them with his. “But that doesn’t mean he would find me. I’m not as helpless as you seem to think.”

Kallan clenched his jaw even tighter. “I don’t think you’re helpless. If you went to that cave without me, however, all your magic would have brought him right to you. If he had come there three days sooner, and I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have been able to fight him off. He’d have killed you, and you wouldn’t have been able to stop him.” His grip on her hand was almost painful now.

Andi tugged on her fingers, trying to free them, but he didn’t release her. “I wouldn’t have gone easily. And if he’d come then, most likely,
he’d
be dead now.”

She could actually
hear
his teeth grinding together, and the faint sound alarmed her slightly. “That does not make me feel better,” he said after a moment. “We have to find a way out of this without you winding up dead.”

She stopped trying to pull her hand away and let out a slow breath. “I don’t want to argue with you, Kallan.” She just wanted to stop the threat to her life.

“Let’s check out of the hotel and head north.”

She blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “O-o-okay.”

He lifted their joined hands to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to argue with you either.”

She nodded when he glanced over at her again. “We’ll have to go back, though, you know.”

Something flashed through his eyes, too quickly for her to decipher. “We’ll see. Maybe we ought to find out everything we can about the amulet.”

She settled deeper into her seat. “Like if there’s any way to get it besides cutting it out of my back?” Pain pricked at the center of her chest.

“That wasn’t what I meant. Are you trying to pick another fight?”

She shut her eyes. “No. I just hate feeling like this. Like I can’t do anything to put an end to this. Like one way or another, it’s going to end badly.” She heard the GPS recite new instructions. “Like I’m wasting time.” Now that she’d had time to think, now that her flight instinct had eased from their initial escape from her home, her stand-and-fight instinct had come back with a vengeance.

The car jerked to a stop in the middle of the road, and she turned to look at Kallan, startled.

The expression on his face was shuttered, but she saw the flash of anger and pain in his eyes clearly this time. Her heart beat faster.

“‘Wasting time’? Exactly what does that mean?”

Her chest tightened. “I didn’t mean with you,” she whispered. “I meant in trying to escape the inevitable.”

His expression didn’t change. “Which is what?”

“Someone in your family is going to wind up killing me, Kallan.” The pain in her chest squeezed tighter, making breathing more difficult. “I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to avoid it forever. So why run? I’d rather face it fighting than running like a coward.”

His eyes darkened, but he remained silent for a moment. “I see,” he said at last, setting the car in motion. That was all.

Andi felt the lump in her throat swelling, and closed her eyes, leaning against the headrest and turning her face toward the window. Her eyes and nose stung, and she was afraid she was going to burst into noisy tears any second. She concentrated on inhaling and exhaling slowly, though it didn’t stop the stinging. She felt a tear burn its way down her cheek, but she left it alone rather than wipe it away and let him know she was crying again like some leaky human hormone overload. Her damned hormones should be back to normal by now.

It was some time before the car came to a complete stop, after the city went blurring past her, and he turned the engine off.

By then, a whole lot of tears had slipped down her face, but she refused to make a sound to give herself away.

One of his fingers glided over her wet cheek, and she inhaled unsteadily, trying to swallow back a sob.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry again, Andrea.”

She couldn’t open her mouth, or that sob was going to make its escape, and it had friends crowding behind it. Lots of friends. Instead, she turned her face further toward the side window.

He cupped her chin, pausing when his fingers encountered more wetness on the other side of her face, then turned her toward him.

“Ah,
agaph
,” he whispered, leaning close enough to rest his forehead against hers. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” she managed, the sob turning to a hiccup.

“I can see that.” Despite his light tone, he didn’t smile, his green eyes somber.

“Still hormones.”

He nodded. “If you say so.” He wiped tears from her cheeks, his touch gentle.

Andi gulped in some air, desperate not to cry in front of him again. Not like she had the other day. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried that way. And to do it twice in a span of only a couple of days? She’d
never
done that. Not even when she first became the Medusa.

He kissed her lightly. “You trust me, right?”

She nodded, unwilling to speak again and completely lose control.

“Trust me to keep you safe from my family.” His thumb stroked under her eye, gathering fresh tears and swiping them away. “They will never get through me to you.”

She shut her eyes and felt more wetness slide down her face. “Damn, why can’t I stop crying?” A sob rushed past her lips.

He released her seatbelt and pulled her into his arms. “It’s all right,
meli
.” He kissed her temple, then shifted so her head rested on his shoulder. “I promise, it’s all right.”

Her breath kept coming in jerky little gasps, and her chest hurt from trying so hard not to cry.

“Let go, Andrea. You’ll feel better after.”

She shook her head, but burrowed her face into his shirt.

One of his big hands rubbed slow circles up and down her spine. “I love you,
agaph
.” He kissed the top of her head. “Even when you fight with me.”

It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her.

The sobs burst past her lips now, and all she could do was hang on for the duration.

Kallan held on tight, letting her cry until there was nothing left. He murmured into her hair, rubbed her back. And closed his own eyes, wishing he could absorb some of her pain.

Wishing she could let down the last of her barriers and let him into her heart.

He had a terrible feeling that was the source of her pain. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. Except wait and see.

He wasn’t very good at waiting.

When she finally stopped crying, she lay against his shoulder, hiding. He let her for a while, stroking her hair and her shoulder, while he inhaled her sweet scent. After a few more minutes, she sat up, reluctance etched in the lines of her face, with her red nose and eyes swollen from crying.