Storm was gone, too.
FOURTEEN
Evalle shut her eyes, then opened them again, willing Storm to still be standing there.
Nope. No Storm. No Tristan.
Nothing but vine-strangled jungle surrounded the small clearing near the lake where she stood.
Where had Storm gone? Had Tristan taken him . . . or harmed him?
Nobody could have luck this crappy but her.
She raised her fist to the heavens. “I have had it! Just kill me now and spare me all this crap!”
“What’s your problem?”
She jumped and lowered her arms to find Storm standing right in front of her. Pain, aggravation and frustration balled in her chest. He’d just made her crazy by disappearing. “Where in the blazes did you go?”
“To put on real clothes. I had a canvas bag I can hook my neck through to carry clothes with me for shifting back into human form.” He wore a pair of faded jeans and a dark brown T-shirt.
Her heart did that weird dance it had been perfecting every time this Skinwalker was around.
Which she was not letting him know after he’d glared at her and acted as if she’d allowed Tristan to grope her. What had all that posturing between him and Tristan been about?
He wasstillglaring at her. “Back to why you were asking to be struck down where you stand? What’s your problem?”
“I’ll tell you what my problem is, Storm. First you change my aura to gold, then you act like I was committing a crime with Tristan.”
“Letting him out of his cageandallowing him to touch youarecrimes.” The fierce edge in his voice had a ring of possessiveness.
The steamy air between them shuddered with awareness.
She’d consider how she felt about that later when she didn’t have to find a way back to another continent. “I didn’t let him out, not intentionally.” She was not going into detail about how Tristan had grabbed her and lunged through the invisible barrier. “Tristan had agreed to help me.”
Storm made a sound that couldn’t have been construed as flattering. “Help you do what? Practice for a wet T-shirt contest?”
Out of a knee-jerk reaction, she looked down to see her soaked shirt clinging to her breasts. Her nipples puckered. She crossed her arms over the damning mammaries and glared at him.
She refused to feel guilty about any of this. “Demons attacked us. One of them ripped up his arm.” That didn’t faze Storm, whose eyes still narrowed with dark thoughts. She added, “And they crushed my knee. Tristan carried me here with his only good arm so we could wash the demons’ saliva out of our wounds.”
The swift change in Storm’s face from anger to concern trimmed the edge off her irritation, but his face closed down again just as fast. He eyed her leg suspiciously. “Doesn’t look crushed.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. When you walked up, he was showing me how to heal myself.”
“Whatexactlydid Dr. Tristan show you?”
Sarcasm did nothing to improve her mood. She should be getting frostbite from his cool reserve, but Storm didn’t seem as angry as before.
She huffed out a long breath and tried once more to clear up Storm’s misconception. “Tristan has more experience than me at being an Alterant and knows how to control the change to his beast. He taught me how to tap levels of power before shifting so I could heal safely.”
Feet apart and arms crossed, Storm might as well have had a Not Sold sign hanging from his neck. “So you shifted.”
“No, of course not. That’s the great part. I onlydrewon my Alterant powers.” She couldn’t get past his stony exterior. Or that suspicious glint in his eyes. “What’s with you? Ten minutes ago I faced losing my leg . . . and probably my life. Never mind.”
She took an angry sidestep and grimaced at the pain still streaking up her leg.
Concern broke through his hard gaze. “Your leg was really crushed?”
