Despite the fever of lust building in her blood, Sherra snorted in amusement. “You’re deranged,” she groaned as she felt his fingers slide beneath the strap of the snug top and pull it off her shoulder.
“Mmm. Look what I found.” He nudged the neckline lower with his chin, revealing the hard, distended nipple that rose pleadingly toward him. “A pretty little berry, all ripe and sweet just for me.”
His tongue curled around it before she could steel herself for the action. She arched involuntarily, pushing it closer to his lips, a ragged wail of hunger echoing around them as she shuddered violently in his arms. Kane groaned roughly then slowly, heavily, collapsed against her.
“Kane?” Sherra swallowed tightly as Kane’s head rested on her shoulder, his big body nearly crushing hers as all his weight lay against her. Comforting, but damned heavy.
“Kane?” She poked at his good shoulder.
His breathing was light and relaxed. He was growing heavier by the second.
“Dammit, Kane.” She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she began to struggle against his body, pushing against the unwounded side until she finally, mercifully, managed to roll him off her.
“Deranged,” she muttered. “You’re certifiable, Kane. Completely insane. You should be locked up.”
And he still had a frigging hard-on. She growled in frustration as she rolled from the bed and flipped the blanket over him with a hiss of disgust. Saved by Doc’s drugs? She shook her head wearily. It was the first time she had ever known Doc’s painkillers to knock anyone out. He was as tight with the drugs as a miser with money. And now Kane was sleeping deep and painlessly while she paced the room, kicking herself for her own lack of control.
She threw herself in the chair beside his bed and stared over at his unconscious form. Served him right for letting himself get wounded to begin with, she snorted silently. If he had left her the hell alone he wouldn’t have passed out two seconds from a home run due to the drugs injected for the wound.
“Nut case,” she muttered. “You’re a danger to yourself.”
Pushing her fingers wearily through her hair, she moved from the chair to the couch.
“‘Don’t leave him alone, Sherra’,” she mocked the doctor hatefully. “‘He might hurt himself, Sherra.’”
She snorted. Even hurt, he managed to manipulate events to suit him before anyone else. She stretched out on the couch, stared up at the ceiling and prayed for patience. She had a feeling she was going to need it where Kane Tyler was concerned.
* * * * *
“She can’t control it. That’s the one thing about the females that I’ve noticed. Their bodies simply cannot deny the touch of their mate, no matter what, no matter when or where. Until conception occurs, or in Sherra’s case, I suspect when the heat eases, as it has before.”
Kane hadn’t forgotten that little kernel of information that Doc Martin had given him during a meeting earlier the next morning, but he was man enough to admit that he had wanted Sherra to come to him on her own, not because her body gave her no choice. It was the most virulent objection that he initially had against Callan and Merinus’ relationship. He had always felt as though his sister had no choice in the matter, even though she appeared deliriously happy.
But, as he made his way across the estate grounds, he suddenly found himself seeing it from a different perspective. His perspective, he admitted, but still, a different one. She was his woman. Forget the mating, forget the heat. The plain and simple fact of the matter was that she was his, whether she wanted to admit to it or not. Had the heat not been a factor, it would have been a cold day in hell before he would have treated her with such kid gloves.
Not touching her, confining his dealings with her to the sharp, sniping comments that often hurt him as much as they had hurt her hadn’t been easy. He had allowed her to run every time she needed to, and rather than chasing after her, he had given her freedom. Because he hadn’t wanted to force something that was as natural to Sherra’s body as breathing—the need to be with her mate. He jerked the small radio from its belt holder and brought it to his mouth.
“Sherra, where are you?”
He was damned tired of waiting on her to make the decision. The fact that she was willing to face the physical agonies she had suffered rather than come to him grated on his pride, even though something warmed in his chest at the thought of her attempting to protect him from the unknown. He smiled rakishly. The unknown could be damned exciting sometimes.
“Ammunitions shed.” Her voice was curt, distracted. “What’s up?”
Kane automatically turned toward the low, sprawling steel shed that housed weapons and ammo. It had been built and designed to Sherra’s specifications. The weapons that were due to arrive soon had been ordered based on her recommendations. The woman knew just as much, if not more, than he did about weapons. But it wasn’t handguns or rifles that he wanted to talk to her about.
“I’ll be there in a minute. We need to talk,” he answered tersely. He wasn’t about to go into it on an open channel.
He’d awakened that morning with an erection that could have driven nails into solid oak, it had been so hard. His arousal had abated little over the course of the morning. If what Doc Martin had found was true, then the physical bond between him and Sherra had been there since that first night they spent together. How it happened, he really didn’t care at this point. All he knew was the hunger for her and a need that had to be tenfold within her body.
He pulled open the door to the weapons shed and stepped into the cool, well-lit confines of the building. And there she stood.
Kane stared back at her as he closed the door, his teeth clenching at the signs of stress in her expression. Her eyes were dark with sleeplessness, her lips thin with the effort of fighting the heat that sizzled through her body.
“What the hell do you want, Kane?” she sniped instantly. “If you haven’t noticed, I have work to do.”
“Do you think you can fight this forever, Sherra?”
She flinched. If there was one thing that drove him crazy it was watching that betraying tremor of pain whenever she was forced to face something she wasn’t willing to confront.