Naked Edge (28 page)

Feeling ashamed, she slid over to the passenger seat and buckled up again, staring out the window as Gabe drove her truck out of the underground garage, an enormous steel mesh gate lifting to let them out. Julian was there, waiting for them in his unmarked police car--a dark Chevy Impala. Gabe drove through the parking lot, turning west onto 13th Street and heading toward Speer, while Julian followed a couple of car lengths behind to make sure no one tailed them.

For a time, they drove in silence, Kat's sense of shame growing. She deserved to feel ashamed, reacting as she had. There was no such thing as skinwalkers. She knew that. Skinwalkers were no more real than witches or fairies or goblins or any other creature dreamed up to explain the unexplainable. And yet, when she'd realized it was a human bone ...

She shivered, chills skittering down her spine.

Without a word, Gabe reached over and turned on the heater.

Kat supposed she should call Uncle Allen and tell him what had happened. He'd hold a special
inipi
for her so she could sweat out the evil. But Allen had enough on his mind without having to worry about her. Besides, the evil, if there was any, was inside the heart of the person who'd mailed that package, not inside her. No skinwalker had sealed that envelope, addressed it, stuck a stamp on it, and dropped it in the mail. A human being had done that. That's what she had to remember.

Whoever had sent it was trying to use her culture against her, trying to make her believe her life was almost over, trying to frighten her.

And he succeeded, didn't he?

Beneath the dregs of her fear she felt it--anger. Anger at herself, at the person who'd done this, at Officer Daniels and those who protected him. White-hot, it built slowly, moving upward from her stomach, chasing away her chills, dispelling her lingering sense of dread. She wasn't some helpless victim. She had her mind, her courage, her spirit. She wasn't a sheep to be spooked and herded. She wouldn't let anyone,
Bilagaanaa
or Indian, manipulate her.

She looked over at Gabe, hesitant to say anything, but feeling the need to redeem herself in some way. "You must think I'm silly."

"Silly?" He frowned. "Why would I think that?"

For a moment she thought he must be teasing, but when he glanced over, his expression was serious. "How I reacted . . . It was . . . ridiculous."

"No, it wasn't." He reached over, took her hand, gave it a squeeze. "You're being way too hard on yourself."

"But skinwalkers ..." She wanted to explain, but it was still hard to say the word out loud. "They don't exist."

"I know there's no such thing as ghosts, but if someone rigged my house so that I started hearing clanking chains at night and seeing strange transparent shapes drifting past my bed, I'd get pretty creeped out." He glanced over, gave her a lopsided grin. "I'd run the other way faster than Shaggy and Scooby."

"Are they friends of yours?"

He laughed. "You've never heard of Scooby-Doo?"

"Scooby who?"

But this only made him laugh harder. "Never mind. The point is that every culture has its mythical monsters, and just because we know in our rational minds that they don't really exist doesn't mean people can't play on those fears."

He looked over at her, all trace of humor gone from his face. "I'm not going to let him hurt you, Kat. Whoever he is, I'm not going to let him hurt you."

GABE PARKED KAT'S truck in his garage beside his SUV so that no one would see it and know she was there. He disarmed the alarm system and carried her suitcases inside to his bedroom. "Make yourself at home. Let me know if you need anything."

He left her to settle in and went to double-check the doors and arm the alarm system. Once he was certain the place was secure, he went downstairs and grabbed his hunting rifle and extra ammo for both the rifle and his HK semiauto, which he still wore in his shoulder harness. He loaded the rifle and carried both it and the extra ammo upstairs, leaning the rifle against the wall beside the entertainment center and stashing the ammo on the floor beside it. He'd never taken anyone's head off before, but he was ready to do just that.

Get past this, motherfucker, whoever you are.

He'd just started digging around in the refrigerator, trying to figure out what to make for supper when he smelled it--smoke. He walked toward his bedroom and saw Kat holding what looked like a bald eagle feather over a curling tendril of smoke rising from a bundle of white sage that sat in a large abalone shell on top of his chest of drawers. Eyes closed, she spoke soft words he couldn't understand, wafting the smoke over her head with the feather.

She was smudging--praying and purifying herself to wash away the feeling of taint that receiving and holding the bone had left on her.

Feeling like an intruder, he started to turn away, but just then she opened her eyes and saw him. She picked up the abalone shell and took a hesitant step toward him, feather still in hand, uncertainty in her eyes.

Gabe nodded.

She walked over to him, then used the feather to waft sage smoke against his body, whispering foreign words. He caught the smoke in his hands, drew it over his head, the pungent, earthy scent somehow revitalizing, the moment strangely intimate.

By the time she stepped away, the sage bundle had stopped smoldering. She set the abalone shell down on his dresser and placed the eagle feather in a long, slender box that looked like it had been carved by hand. Then she looked up at him and gave him a tremulous smile. "Thank you."

"Are you hungry?" He wasn't sure her stomach was up to eating just yet.

"A little." She seemed to hesitate. "I really just want to take a bath."

At the word "bath," an image of her naked and sitting in his tub blindsided him, sending his thoughts in a distinctly nonspiritual direction. "You go ahead. I'll make supper. Let me know if you need anything."

Like my help undressing or washing your luscious body or. . .

Yeah, he was despicable.

He willed himself to walk away, heading back to the kitchen where he rummaged mindlessly in the fridge and the cupboards, unable to concentrate on dinner, testosterone shorting out his brain, making it terribly hard to think about anything but what was happening in that tub.

He grabbed stuff to throw in a salad and set it on the counter, then opened the freezer. He had chicken, of course, but he also had elk fillets, buffalo rib eyes and trout. But could her stomach handle any of that? Maybe he should just make omelets.

He decided to ask. He walked to the bathroom, leaned toward the door, and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Kat had left the door open just a crack, and there, in the bathroom mirror, he could see her reflection.

His mouth went dry.

She sat with her back against the foot of the tub, shaving her legs, her dark hair tied in a hasty knot at the back of her neck, tendrils spilling around her face. Her breasts swayed gently with her movements, her dusky nipples tight, her caramel skin rosy from the heat of the water, the scents of white sage and honey rising with the steam. Then she raised one slender leg out of the water and slid her razor over glistening skin.

Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

He was in so much trouble.

KAT RINSED THE shaving cream from her leg, set her razor down on the side of the tub, then reached for her soap, which had slipped into the water and bobbed near her toes amid floating leaves of white sage.

"It's the soap, isn't it?"

She gasped and looked up to find Gabe watching her. He was leaning against the bathroom sink, black turtleneck stretched across his chest, his pistol resting against his left side in its shoulder holster. He looked more than a little dangerous--in an oddly appealing, very male way. His gaze slid over her, his eyes dark.

She fought the urge to cover herself. He'd already seen her completely naked, had already touched her everywhere. "The ... the soap?"

"Your skin always smells like honey." His voice was deep and warm and seemed to fill the small room. "It's the soap."

The soap.

She stared at it for a moment, the way he was looking at her making it hard for her to think. "It's honey soap. A friend of mine ... She, um, makes it in her kitchen using honey."
Of course she makes it from honey, Kat!
"Honey from her own hives."

For a span of heartbeats, he just stood there, watching her, his gaze all over her, a look of restrained male desire on his face. Heat flooded Kat's cheeks, her body seeming to come alive with memories of last night as the silence stretched between them.

Then, at last, he spoke. "Do you want me to go?"

And she realized she didn't. "No."

He crossed the small room in a single step and slowly knelt beside the tub, his gaze never leaving hers. Then he pushed up his sleeves, took the soap from her, held it to his nose, and inhaled, his eyes drifting shut. "Mmm."

The masculine rumble of his moan sent a rush of heat to her belly, anticipation coiling inside her.

He opened his eyes, rubbing the soap between his hands to work up a lather, his lips curving into a smile that made her pulse skip. "Just lie back and close your eyes. You're in good hands."

Good hands.

Oh, yes, he did have good hands, and the thought of them touching her almost made her squirm. She leaned back against the tub and closed her eyes, only to have them pop open again when she heard the clink of the soap dropping into the soap dish.

He chuckled. "I said close your eyes."

Barely able to breath, she did as he asked, her nipples drawing tight, her entire body tense, as she waited, impatient, wondering what exactly he would do. But what she felt first wasn't his hands on her breasts, but his lips as they brushed warm and whisper-soft over hers once, twice, three times.

"Kat." He kissed her upper lip, then her lower lip, flicking it with his tongue, catching it between his lips, nipping it.

Then his hands slid over her breasts, soap slick and hot, cupping and shaping them. His fingers caught her nipples, teased them to aching points, giving them little tugs she felt all the way to her womb. She gasped and arched her back, offering herself to him, awed by the delicious feeling of skin sliding over soapy skin. The sensation unleashed a torrent inside her, left her feeling hot, wet, empty.

Oh, she wanted him! She couldn't deny it, couldn't ignore it, couldn't lie to herself about it. She wanted Gabe.

"You're driving me out of my mind." Gabe drank in the sight of her, inhaling deeply, her musky scent mingling with the scents of honey and white sage. His groin throbbed, his cock almost painfully hard, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He'd thought about unzipping his jeans, just to relieve some of the pressure, but he didn't want to do something that would make her pull away. Besides, he couldn't seem to take his hands off her.

She lay against the back of the tub, her eyes squeezed shut, her lips parted, her breathing rapid. She held tightly to the sides of the tub, as if she thought she might drown. Her wet skin was flushed from the heat of the water and the heat of her own blood, her cheeks rosy. Her dark hair had come loose from its knot, the ends floating in the water around her. And her breasts . . .

They filled his hands, her wine-dark areolas like puckered velvet, their tips hard little nubs that pressed against his palms. He caught one between his thumb and forefinger and rolled it lightly before doing the same with the other, gratified by her little whimper and the way she arched upward, pressing her thighs tighter together to ease the ache he'd built there.

He couldn't let her get away with that.

He scooped up water with his hands and let it trickle over her breasts to rinse the soap away, knowing the heat would intensify her pleasure. "Do you like that?"

She answered with a gasp. "Gabe!"

The way she said his name was like a plea--a cry for release that he was more than willing to answer. He slid one arm behind her neck to cradle her head, lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her deep and hard, needing to bury himself inside her any way he could. Then he reached down with his free hand, skimming circles over the smooth skin of her belly, over her hips, over her thighs.

Her wet fingers clenched in his hair, and she drew him closer, whimpering into his mouth, her tongue warring with his, her hips lifting almost out of the water, letting him know without words where she needed his touch most.

He dragged his mouth from hers, slid his hand between her thighs, forcing them down and apart. But the tub was narrow, too narrow to give him the access he wanted. He lifted her right leg so that her calf rested on the side of the tub, opening her fully. And, hell, yeah, he looked--stared--her erotic beauty hitting like a punch to the gut. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?"

"I . . . I don't ..." She watched him through wide eyes, her breasts rising and falling with each shallow breath, and he could almost feel her uncertainty. Well, that uncertainty would end right here and right now.

"You are beautiful. I'll show you." He slid his arm out from beneath her neck, stood and grabbed his shaving mirror off the shower wall, its little suction cups making popping sounds as they pulled free from the tile.