“Then you’re very adept at reading body language. Your timing was perfect each time you intervened with Rud when you were stalling, waiting for the sun to set.”
“You heard us, even when you were in the ground.” She kept moving from branch to branch, picking up the pace just a little in order to get back to the tree house. She didn’t know why, but she felt she would be safer.
“It just so happened that Rud made his play above our resting places. Bad luck on his part.”
Was there a slight trace of amusement in his voice? Or like Luiz, was it in his mind? The moment the question came to her, her breath caught in her throat. Was she catching glimpses of other people’s thoughts? That would be invasive. Intrusive. Horrible. She wasn’t the kind of woman who invaded other people’s privacy, yet it was possible she was catching glimpses of their emotions.
“Do you feel?”
“Feel,” he echoed.
This time, he sounded wary. So much so that she stopped andturned to face him, wanting to see his expression, but he wasn’t wearing one. His handsome face was an inscrutable mask. Her heart skipped a beat.
His gaze was hot as it swept over her. More than hot. Hunger was there. A fierce, possessive element crept into his gaze. “Yes.” His answer was curt. “Emotions are new after centuries of not being able to feel, so I’m still struggling to get used to them. At times, they feel overwhelming.”
She wasn’t certain what to do with that admission. The worst was Luiz had told her only a lifemate could restore emotion to a Carpathian hunter. That meant Tomas Smolnycki Jr. had a lifemate, and if the indications were anything to go by, he lusted after her. Men cheated. She was disappointed that her hero was a man who would cheat on a woman who had guarded his soul and restored his emotions. She knew jaguar shifters weren’t faithful. Apparently, neither were Carpathians.
She turned away from him, feeling inexplicably sad. He’d been her hero, her mentor, the one person she’d stupidly poured her heart out to. She’d told him everything about her life—other than the fact that she was a shifter. She’d told him her hopes and dreams. She’d shared her ideas on conservation with this man.
True, her first letters had been childish, but as she’d grown up, throughout her college years, and with each internship in the various rainforests she’d traveled, she’d written to him to get advice. After, when she’d returned home, she wrote to him detailing every aspect of her trip, the others who had traveled on the journey with her, what she had learned from them and what her takeaway was. He had always been encouraging. It often took months before he’d reply, but he always did.
Not only did Sarika feel sadness; she felt betrayed. The entire exchange added to her feelings of loss. Of the need to run. She wanted to retreat somewhere safe, to some hole she could crawl into, where she could lick her wounds in peace without the worry she might be giving too much away to anyone.
“You don’t want me to read your thoughts,sivamet, but you’re giving off an alarming emotion, one I am having trouble dealing with. If you don’t confide in me what’s wrong, you will leave me no choice but to do the very thing you don’t want me to do. I see no reason for your distress, yet it is overwhelming.”
“Thoughts should be private,” she said without turning. She picked up her speed. They were much closer to the tree house and, hopefully, a place for her to hide, just for a short while. She needed respite from the terrible mantle of sorrow that pressed down on her. She had lost everything. Her hopes. Her dreams. Her cousin. This place was a labyrinth of deceit and danger. She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t want to be a part of it.
“That is the way of human beings and shifters, not Carpathians,” he pointed out gently.
He was close. So close. She was running lightly on the branches of trees, and suddenly his warm breath was on her neck, just below her ear. His tone was low and intimate, causing that rush of heat through her veins she couldn’t control.
“I should point out, I’m not Carpathian,” she said, pouring snippiness into her voice. Not just snippy attitude but as haughty as she could make it. Irritated. Annoyed. She made it as clear as she could by body language that he was to back off and quit breathing on her.
“Perhaps you need to understand more about our species,” he murmured in that velvet tone, the one that stroked over her skin and gave her goose bumps and—if she was being honest—all kinds of erotic ideas she’d never once in her life considered.
If Carpathians had playboys in their species, and clearly, they did, Tomas had to take the prize. He was very skilled at seduction. Thankfully, the tree house loomed ahead. Ignoring the man following so close, she leapt for the series of fungi that were actually steps leading up to the wraparound porch.
Luiz leaned over the railing, watching her, studying her expressionand body language. He straightened slowly, his gaze resting on Tomas. He wore that mask of his, but there was something very unpleasant in his eyes.
That gave her pause, mostly because that blatant warning didn’t seem to faze Tomas in the least. When she cleared the railing, he was right behind her. She stopped abruptly, not wanting her cousin and Tomas to square off, which they clearly were about to do.
Chapter
8
How had she gotten into this mess? Sarika took a deep breath and faced her cousin. Already her head was pounding. It hurt just to move. She was prone to migraines when she was stressed.Stressedwas a silly word that did not in any way encompass how she felt.
Tomas should have stayed beside the railing, but he didn’t. He stood just behind her and slightly to one side. She knew he wasn’t looking for a confrontation between Luiz and himself; he was, in some alpha Carpathian way, declaring to Luiz something she didn’t understand but scared the hell out of her.
“Luiz.” Tomas used his easy, casual tone. He stepped around her, stood face-to-face with her cousin and clasped his forearms.“Én jutta félet és ekämet.”
“Veri olen piros, ekäm.”
Tomas stepped back. “I have,” he said in English. He moved to stand behind and to the side of Sarika. This time, he put a very gentle hand on her shoulder. When she tensed, he tightened his fingers in warning, and she subsided.
“Perhaps you could tell me what you said to one another,” she invited, leveling a challenging gaze at her cousin. She was far too aware of Tomas standing close, his body heat she couldn’t ignore, an amazingscent that called to her. His hand was no longer on her shoulder, but he was so close that she felt his breath on her neck.
“We greeted one another as warriors. As brothers,” Luiz explained. “He said to me, ‘I greet a friend and brother.’ He did so because we have known each other for years.”
