“I’m fine, thanks.”
His politeness was grating and she straightened, out of direct range of the windows. With more force than she intended, she set her glass on the counter and filled it up, then drank it in a few gulps.
“I hope Barney’s okay.” The stray thought slipped out of her mouth. She’d gotten too used to talking to Alex. It seemed natural to blurt out her worries.
“The horse?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sure he’s fine.”
His tone didn’t invite any further conversation, but still she tried. “I wish I could check on him. What if he’s—?”
“You are not going outside.”
She had no intention of waltzing outside, but his command scraped along her independent soul. Genevieve glared at him. He returned her gaze, the remoteness in his face chilling her. “I’d appreciate it, as a favor to the man you’re currently fucking,if you’d promise me to exercise some caution for the remainder of our time together. After this is over, you can do whatever you want with all the other lunatics with guns running amok down here. Hell, maybe one of them can even service you when I’m gone.”
Oh, ouch.Having words thrown back in your face was never a good thing, and Genevieve acknowledged the hit with only a slight flinch. If he expected her to fly into a rage or burst into tears, he was going to be surprised. She was almost relieved the other shoe had dropped. What could she say? She was a fair person, and the first to admit she deserved much, much worse than a snide comment in response to her childish behavior and words.
He was still watching her, but she didn’t really know what else to say. She wasn’t about to engage and make this more of a farce. So she returned to her place by the armchair and picked up her book.
Her eyesight blurred, the words dancing in front of her. She frowned and looked up. Her breath caught. Alex’s physical form had become buried under layers of colors. Holy crap, had her full powers returned?
She couldn’t ignore the tempting lure of his aura and she bathed in it. The arousal at the topmost level was easily brushed aside. She didn’t need to see his aura to know that he wanted her, though it was nice to have some proof of how deep his lust went. The hurt underneath it tugged her heartstrings. The pink of his injuries was expected, and she gave it a cursory glance, relieved to see that it looked very faint. To experiment, she gave a few tugs at that layer in critical areas she felt may help him. The pink flared purple for a second. She heard and felt his physical body flinch.
But it was the base layer that called to her. When she reached it, her breath just about stopped.
Christ, blue. It was so damn blue. She’d never seen anything so beautiful and clear. She wanted to roll herself up in his soul, bathe in its beauty.
And he had called her an angel? According to this, he was about two steps away from serious wings. Purity had nothing to do with sexual matters or prayer. It was the basic, bone-deep soul a person was born with. Alex was so pure, her eyes were hurting.
Her instincts had been dead on. Unless she was reading him wrong, and she’d never read anyone wrong, this was one hell of a man. She felt…a bit humbled, frankly, that he had wanted her to the degree that he did.
And he was hers. There was no getting around the way her brain was clamoring for what she was seeing right now. Whether she was worthy of him or not…holy crap, what had she thrown away?
As quickly as it had come, the colors vanished, and she had to blink to bring the here and now back into focus. Everything looked a bit dull and washed out after that little acid trip.
Well. Now she certainly had some thinking to do.
11
Genevieve wasn’t goingto be sleeping tonight. Alex didn’t blame her, he was uptight as well. They’d pushed the mattress up against the wall farthest from the windows, right next to the frame of the bed. It was just an illusion of safety, Alex knew. She was sitting on the mattress, scribbling something into a notebook.
The sex from last night, combined with the adrenaline-pumping terror of Genevieve in danger, had just about wiped him out physically. When he’d heard that gunshot, he’d gotten a heavy dose of the PTSD that had kept him from returning to work after Jerry’d been killed. He’d frozen, completely useless for a critical minute. It could have cost Genevieve her life.
A showdown might very well come to a head pretty soon, so he needed to rest. With the phones out, they had no way of calling for help. Sure, if someone had managed to make it up the roads to them, perhaps the police weren’t far behind but that meant his search party had to a) still be looking for him and b) looking in the right place.
He was getting too old for this crap.
Alex pursed his lips, his gaze drawn to Genevieve. He was still smarting over her words from earlier. The fact that it was her defense mechanism didn’t matter. Combined with his terror, the things she’d said had triggered his,oh yeah, well screw youreflex.
For the past few hours he’d been sitting here trying to list every single one of her damn faults.
One, she was secretive as hell.
Maybe she has a reason for it.
Two, she was prickly to the point of being irritating.
