On The Prowl Page 0,57

they were already lovers. His arms answered, wrapping her breath-stealingly tight for a second, then loosening. He ran his hands up and down her back, buried his nose in her hair. "I have wanted this," he said fiercely. "For so long, I have wanted..." His breath shuddered out.

Silence wrapped itself around them then – a silence of heartbeats and breaths settling into a shared rhythm. Kai closed her eyes so she could absorb the feel of him through muscle, scent, and skin.

Which wasn't touching his, dammit. Though the way their bodies were touching, she knew he wasn't sexually indifferent to her. Not anymore. "I've wanted, too," she said softly. "I still do."

He raised his head. She saw his throat work as he swallowed. "Kai." He said her name the way he smiled – as if he'd just found it, just this moment wrapped his lips around the sound. He ran both hands along her hair. "I can't... if I'm to keep you safe, I can't be distracted."

"You're turning me down."

He grimaced. "I'm turning us both down, but it's hard." His eyebrows lifted in brief surprise. "That was a pun, wasn't it?"

Actually, it wasn't hard. Not anymore. "Ah... did you do something just now? Because you aren't... things changed."

"I control my body. I've been controlling it around you from the first day we met. The wanting is still there, but it isn't reinforced physically."

Well. He'd been controlling his desire from the time they met? That struck her as a good news, bad news deal. He'd wanted her all along, but he didn't want to want her... because sex was too lonely without a bond, he'd said.

But friendship was a bond, a strong one. That tipped things to the good news side, she decided. "Who's this queen that sent you here?"

"I'll tell you." With a sigh he released her. "Sit with me and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

Chapter 11

When Nathan was sent to Earth to find a renegade mage, a redheaded queen was sitting on England's throne. The Spaniards had just founded the first European settlement in North America at St. Augustine, and William Shakespeare hadn't yet set foot on a London stage. In Italy, a young man named Galileo Galilei was disappointing his father by studying pendulums and other nonsense instead of medicine. And the Purge was just beginning.

For thirty-two years, Nathan had tracked the mage. When he finished his hunt, both Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth were dead; Jamestown had been established; and the Purge was over, with thousands of Gifted dead at the hands of the Inquisition, their governments, or their own neighbors. And Nathan had been stranded, cut off from all he knew, even from his proper shape.

"Ilke had violated many laws, committed many sins," Nathan said, "but the queens don't intervene in lesser matters. But he crossed one line too many when he practiced death magic."

Kai lay against Nathan's chest, listening to his heartbeat as well as his voice. His arms were around her; his colors swam with hers. In front of them the mage light burned steadily like a heatless campfire. "Death magic, huh? He' must have been a major bad guy."

She heard a smile in his voice. "Hellhounds aren't set on the trail of jaywalkers. You are... okay with this? That my purpose was to hunt and kill those who broke the queens' laws?"

"I'm okay with policemen and soldiers. Your role was something like theirs."

He fell silent, toying absently with the ends of her hair in a way she found most distracting. Not that she wanted him to stop. Finally he said, "I haven't killed only at my queen's command. When I was stranded here... an able-bodied man can't simply decide to never again use his hands and arms. Common sense and instinct will defeat him. That's how it is for a hound and the hunt. I couldn't simply decide not to hunt, but it was hard, very hard, to learn how to choose my own hunts. The queen never loosed me lightly, so I tried to choose as she might have, but at first I didn't understand human society. Death isn't always a solution. Even when the prey is causing obvious harm, killing can spread ill instead of containing it."

"Have you... here in Midland, I mean. Have you hunted here?"

"Not a true hunt. Not to the death, except for the ghoul. I've learned to take satisfaction in lesser hunts, though. I couldn't be a law officer otherwise."

"Ghoul? You mean there was –