Lord of the Wolfyn - By Jessica Andersen Page 0,66

anything, but her eyes went sympathetic as she tightened her reins in one hand and held out the other.

He hesitated momentarily, wishing he could say something that would unravel the tangle they had wound up in together, connected yet not, and with so much confusion around them. The perfect words didn’t come to him, though. They probably didn’t even exist.

Exhaling, he took her hand and swung up behind her, but stayed well back on the saddle skirt and held on to the cantle for balance rather than tucking himself right against her as he longed to do. And, as they rode into the first reddening of dusk, there was only silence between them. They had said what needed to be said, after all. Now they had jobs to do.

Which seriously sucks, he thought. But all of a sudden the human words didn’t come as easily as they had before, as if the past twenty years were being canceled out now that he was back in his home realm.

The idea was damned disconcerting. Worse, the past three days suddenly seemed a little distant and indistinct, too, as if they had happened to someone else, in another lifetime. It was as if Reda was already gone, like he was already forgetting what they’d had together, when she was sitting only inches away.

“We’re coming up in the world,” Reda commented later that night as she poked at the folding bowl she had suspended on a tripod over the small, sputtering fire. “This cave is much nicer than the last one. It even came with utensils.”

“Tonight a cave, tomorrow a castle, gods willing,” Dayn said from the rear of the space, where he was cobbling together a small horse enclosure from the remains of a large corral.

The huge cavern, which had been the hideout of an outlaw band that Dayn and a detachment of guardsmen had tracked and arrested just prior to the sorcerer’s attack, offered a small stream, a scattering of useful items that had somehow escaped the looters, three exits that let out at various points in the forest and accommodations for the bay horse, who she was still calling MacEvoy after the shop owner, even though the stoner-quiet personality he’d originally shown her had gone right out of his furry head the second he saw Dayn.

The horse was too tired and hungry to be in full-on panic mode anymore, and had gotten somewhat used to carrying a wolfyn, but even as he hoovered down the travel cakes his seller had thrown in along with the tack and clothes, he kept a white-ringed eye on Dayn.

No wonder there weren’t any normal horses in the wolfyn realm. They had probably all died of fright, or else been eaten. Or both.

Shuddering at the thought and the echoing slurp-crunch noise it put in her head, she glanced over at Dayn, and caught him looking at her.

They both shied away and went back to their tasks, but the already tense air between them strung itself a little tighter, as it had been doing, degree by degree, ever since he’d boosted himself up behind her and done his damnedest not to let their bodies touch.

Was it possible to simultaneously exist in both heaven and hell, or whatever this realm called them? She thought so, because she was there right now.

Part of her, idiot that it was, was basking in the glow of having rescued him so grandly, and having him right at hand now. That part of her kept reminding her that they had spent the past two nights alternately making sweet love and screwing each other blind, both equally satisfying, and it relentlessly dredged up increasingly erotic memories as the night wore on. The sensory replays tortured her, turning her insides to molten heat and putting a longing tug between her legs each time she looked at him and thought that it was nearly time for them to hit their bedrolls.

Another part of her, though, said she’d be better off sleeping outside in the cool, foggy night. That part of her was all too aware of MacEvoy’s ringed eyes and flattened ears, and knew she should take a cue from the horse—prey animal that it was—and keep her distance.

“Stew’s almost ready.” She poked at a lump of rehydrated meat floating in a brown slick that looked entirely unappetizing, but smelled great.

“Just let me get these last three rails up.”

She snuck a peek, and this time caught him turned away, which gave her a few seconds to