Closing the door with a soft snick, Shea looked futilely for a lock, then silently admitted that even if there had been one, it wouldn’t have kept out the man who had just left. She’d never seen a man more . . . powerfully male. It was more than his muscles, though they were plenty impressive. There was something else that fed into the indomitable male thing. A sort of aura that clung to him. One that spelled danger to anyone foolish enough to cross him.
Which she definitely planned to do.
Mating ritual?
She really didn’t think so.
But even as that thought blasted through her mind, her body was reacting in a completely different way. Desire pumped through her, making her skin feel heated and too tight. Her mind was shouting at her to run and her body was urging her to stay.
He’d saved her, after all.
Rescued her from a mob that would have killed her, given half a chance.
But he’s not even human.
Hard to forget the way those flames leapt and danced across his skin. Hard to forget the flash of something dangerous in those pale gray eyes of his, too.
Shea blew out a breath, and tried to come to grips with what had happened to her life in the span of a few short hours. She knew only one thing for certain. She had to get away. From the man asking too much of her and from the enemies she knew would now be tracking her relentlessly.
She had to disappear.
Again.
She leaned back against the closed door as her gaze swept the plush room. She had to give her kidnapper credit. At least he’d brought her to a damn palace. But an elegantly appointed trap was still a trap.
“Where the hell am I, anyway?”
Malibu, she remembered suddenly, though knowing where she was didn’t help her any. Long Beach, her home, her car, were about thirty miles away. He’d swept her out from under a murderous mob and taken her from everything familiar only to drop her into the middle of the unknown. Fine, she told herself with a nod of her head. She’d been in tough places before this one. She knew all too well how to deal with threats. She’d been handling her own safety for years now. It was him she didn’t have a clue how to deal with.
Torin.
Just thinking his name sent ripples of awareness spreading through her. She closed her eyes against the sensation of impending . . . something. It was something she couldn’t name. The moment she did, though, images dredged up from some distant corner of her mind flashed across the backs of her eyes like a kaleidoscopic slide show. Faces, places, voices all presented themselves in a staggering flood that made absolutely no sense. It was as if they were someone else’s memories rushing through her mind, but if that were true, why was she seeing them?
She saw fires burning, heard a scream that sounded as though it was pulled from the depths of a soul. She glimpsed a blossoming darkness that stretched and spread like a black flower rising from death’s garden.
Instantly Shea opened her eyes, gasping for breath even as her stomach did a fast lurch. She clamped her mouth shut and swallowed convulsively against the sudden urge to retch. Things were bad enough without her being sick on top of everything else. She knew she couldn’t afford to give in to whatever it was she was feeling. She had more important things to consider at the moment. Nerves jangling, mind still reeling, she pushed away from the door, crossed the room to the balcony and stepped outside.
Lifting her face to the cold wind driving at her, she hoped to let the images that were still fresh in her mind fade away. For months now she’d been having dreams filled with frightening shapes and sounds. She never could remember them on waking, but more than once she’d shot out of bed, desperate for a breath that wouldn’t come. Now, though, those mental dream collages were stronger, clearer. She didn’t know what was happening, but whatever it was, she was convinced it had something to do with Torin.
So the sooner she got away from him, the better.
The icy breeze off the ocean pushed at her as if trying to keep her in the room. But Shea knew better than that. She couldn’t stay here. Yes, he’d saved her from the mob, but he hadn’t let