Sentinels: Lynx Destiny. Doranna Durgin

her head before it could hit the ground. He stalked her from there, showing tooth and showing prowl and showing the power of the lynx. Her eyes widened and her hands stilled, and suddenly they were two people aware of themselves again, breath gusting against each other’s faces and bodies trembling.

      “Oh,” Regan said, as taken aback as Kai felt. “My.”

      Remorse hit him—and concern. The sudden awareness that he’d let the lynx in—that he’d been just exactly what he could never be.

      But she wouldn’t understand that, either—so he made himself grin, easing back to give her space as he struggled with the fact that in spite of the remorse, in spite of the concern...there was no regret. Only a kind of glory in how much he’d wanted this woman.

      He couldn’t reconcile the two.

      Regan gave her shirt a futile tug, twisting it back into place. “This is the part where I say I’m not this kind of girl,” she told him, brushing a stick from her hair. “And that I’ve never done this before.”

      “This?”

      She looked slightly taken aback. “You’re not following the script. Now you say ‘Yeah, yeah, we shouldn’t have done that.’”

      He removed a final twig, caught just behind her ear. “Why would I do that?”

      Because he didn’t regret a moment of it. What he’d let slip through to her, yes. What they’d done, no.

      After a moment, she snorted gently. “Right,” she said. “Why would you? Truth is, I’ve done this plenty. But never just like this.”

      Kai wasn’t sure how to untangle that one. “I don’t really understand.”

      He understood one thing well enough: never—ever—had he felt what Regan brought out in him. Not as a teen; not in his early years alone. Not when brazen female tourists brushed against him on the town boardwalk, or when the hunters’ lonely wives opened their blouses down one more button.

      Not when the Sentinel woman quietly hired for his initiation took him for the first time, unlocking all that was lynx within him—and then stayed for days, teaching him control, teaching him responsibility...teaching him how to please. Mia, staying for an extra several days to do the impossible—trying to show him everything she thought an isolated youth should know about being a man, and about being a man with a Sentinel’s strength.

      But not how to love. Now he sat with Regan in the dry pool and caught his breath, his body stuck in relentless and unfamiliar turmoil. This was response; this was pure physical yearning. It was beyond anything he’d learned with that fleeting encounter.

      It just possibly was everything she’d ever warned him against.

      * * *

      Of course Kai didn’t understand. Of course Regan would have to spell it out.

      Or else pretend she hadn’t heard him.

      But looking at Kai’s lightly furrowed brow, she could hardly do that to him. And still trembling as she was from his touch, she could hardly do it to herself.

      “Like this,” she said, “means that I’m feeling overwhelmed. There’s a difference between kissing a guy I’ve only recently met and...what just happened. How much it happened.”

      He watched her with a quiet intensity that made her want to squirm away—even as her body cried, Yes! That’s what I want! He asked, with more caution than she expected, “Is that good or bad?”

      “It means I don’t know what to do.” She shook her head, climbing to her feet. “You are a strange man, Kai Faulkes.”

      He lifted one shoulder in what looked like concession, still sitting—more comfortably now, she thought—as he drew his knees up, hung his arms around them and looked up at her. “About yesterday,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

      Yesterday. At the library, when she’d been so busy enjoying being with him that his prying had felt like a slap. “It was nosy.”

      “Maybe. But it’s important.”

      She gave him a cross look. It seemed altogether unfair that this gorgeous and entirely out-of-place man could stir her up so when she had so many other things to think about. “I don’t see how it could possibly be important.”

      “Because it’s still with you. Because there is a thing between the two of us, and I want—” He shook his head, looking at a frustrated loss for words.

      She knew the feeling. “That’s no excuse.”

      He didn’t argue it. “You felt it, too, just now.”

      Yes. She had.

      Much as she wanted to deny it, as much as it frightened her, she had. And there he was, watching her...and understanding. Comfortable with it, comfortable with himself. Comfortable here.

      Not out of place at all. More in place than anyone she’d ever known. Including herself.

      Regan knew she should run from this man. She knew he wouldn’t stop pushing. Or asking.

      She knew she didn’t want to answer.

      Only moments since that kiss—that encounter—and she sat back up on the roots, looking over the dry pool. Looking at Kai.

      He crouched, one knee to the ground and his fingers pushed against the silty, packed soil, just as he’d knelt beside her—around her—but in a different location. Triangulating.

      What and how—that, she didn’t want to know. She let herself watch, and let her mind roam.

      He remained motionless—his eyes closed and head slightly tilted—for so long that when he finally stood, she came to sharp attention. He took three certain steps into the rock-strewn detritus and bent to prod the ground.