CHAPTER TWELVE
HIGH ABOVE THE trees, Rinna looked down, searching for the spot where she had left Logan. She had flown away, thinking that if she wanted to keep going, she could fly off into the distance. Fly far north or far south where Falcone would never think to look.
But she had known she would not leave, could not leave. Something had happened between herself and this man, and she ached to know what it was, even if she was also afraid of where the connection would lead.
So she circled the area. First she flew back to what he had called the convenience store and watched uniformed men bring out a man on a cart, the one who had the weapon that sent the deadly missiles into goods and people. He looked pale and sick. The men in uniform could have killed him in there. But he was still alive.
That was not the way of her world, and she struggled to understand. If warriors in Sun Acres had caught a man who was robbing and killing, they would likely execute him on the spot, unless they thought he could give them information. Maybe it would turn out that he hadn't been doing anything wrong. But by then he would be dead.
Too bad for him.
Less than a mile away she saw a house with a line in the rear yard and laundry flapping in the breeze. Nobody was there and she swooped down, inspecting the clothing.
She saw T-shirts and short pants. Diving at the line, she pulled out some of the pins that held the clothing in place, then tossed items of apparel to the ground—one eye on the house, lest someone come outside with one of those weapons and shoot at the bird thief.
But nobody came, and she was able to take away her booty. The clothing was short and thin. But it was enough for modesty.
She gathered the items in her beak and rose into the air, striking out for the tall pine tree where she had left Logan. It was farther than she thought, and she felt panic rise inside her when she thought she might not be able to find him again. Then she saw the tree and circled overhead.
When he heard her wings beating the air, he sat up and raised his head, scanning the sky. She landed lightly beside him and set her offerings on the ground.
She wanted to nuzzle her beak against his fur, but she only snatched up a shirt and pair of very short pants, then flew low to the ground, landing behind a tangle of brambles where she could have some privacy.
Once she was alone she took a moment to catch her breath and prepare her mind. After silently offering a prayer to the Great Mother, she sent her thoughts into the pattern that she had been taught as a little girl.
Not the pattern of a bird. The pattern of her human self. And her body flowed into her woman's shape.
She flexed her arms and legs, stretched her muscles, then, conscious of her nudity, snatched up the shirt and pulled it over her head. Once she'd also climbed into the pants that barely covered her butt, she looked down at her body. The clothing was very skimpy. She could see her breasts through the thin fabric of the shirt. And because the air was chilly and the wind was blowing, she could see her nipples standing up. Logan had seen her naked. Now she was covered up. But she knew from watching men and women that a little covering could draw a man's interest more than nudity.
When she returned, Logan had finished with his own ritual—the chant he said to change—and had pulled on another pair of the short pants. They were a little too tight and gave her a good view of his body through the fabric as he flexed his arms, pulling on the shirt. It fit him better.
They stood facing each other, and she knew he was looking at her the way she was looking at him, taking in physical details. She struggled not to fold her arms across her chest or to clench her fists at her sides. Months ago she had made the decision that getting close to any man near her age was dangerous.
Logan had made her want things she had denied herself, yet she still didn't know if she could trust him. Or trust herself.
He broke the silence by saying, "Thank you for bringing the clothes—and for coming back."
She hadn't known for sure whether he'd understood her fear. Now she gave a small nod, unable to move closer and unable to move away, either.
He was the one who took a slow step toward her. When she didn't back up, he dared another, then another. And when she stayed where she was, he closed the remaining distance between them and gathered her into his arms.
She was afraid. Yet his embrace felt right in some deep, fundamental way that she couldn't describe. Like when she'd been a little girl and Haig had hugged her to take away hurt or sadness.
Only this was different. Her closest relationship in all the world had been with Haig, but she knew that what she felt for Logan was more than that. For one thing it was sexual.
As she considered that component, she acknowledged fear simmering below the surface of all the other emotions. But she had learned to deal with fear, and she could deal with it now. She had to, because she wanted to reach out to Logan in a way she had never reached for Haig. He was like a father to her. Logan was—She couldn't allow herself to finish the thought.
Instead, she sighed out his name as she buried her face against his shoulder.
"Rinna. Thank you for coming back," he said again.
"I think I had to."
He tipped her head up, so that he could meet her eyes. "Don't hide from me."
"I… I'm trying not to," she said in a shaky voice. "But maybe I'm not the woman you need," she heard herself say, because honesty had become as important as anything else that existed between them.
"Don't lie to yourself or to me," he said gruffly, then claimed her mouth. Before, his kiss had been gentle. This kiss was charged with power. It should have alarmed her, instead it was the most natural thing in the world for her to open her lips for him.
He made a gratified noise and angled his head, deepening the contact, and as his lips moved over hers, she was swamped by a raft of sensations. The feel of his hard muscles, The subtle scent of his body. And the exquisite mouth-to-mouth contact. Waves of heat seemed to come off of him, heat that should have seared her flesh and her mind. But it didn't burn. Well, not in a painful way. Instead, it made her own temperature rise in response.
His kiss was hungry and possessive, and she knew in that moment that she had been waiting for him all her life.
When he realized she wasn't going to pull away, some of the desperation went out of him. He nibbled at her mouth, gauging her response before increasing the pressure, taking her lower lip between his teeth, then easing up so that she was astonished to hear herself making a small sound of protest. Was she begging for more? It sounded that way to her own ears—and surely to his.
He drank her in for long seconds, then drew back, his eyes meeting hers.
He held her gaze for a charged moment, then dipped his head again, feasting from her mouth as his hands stroked up and down her back.
She knew they were the two halves of one whole. And she had been incomplete all her life without him.
He swirled his tongue over the sensitive tissue of her inner lips, then probed more deeply, claiming possession in a way that thrilled her. She felt herself giving over to the heat he kindled in her body. Her nipples grew hard. And with the tightness came a kind of yearning ache high up between her thighs.
Still, a frisson of alarm crept into her mind.
She knew he didn't understand that part. He only knew that she was responding to him sexually, which made him confident that she wanted the same thing he did.
One of his hands tangled in her thick hair. The other slid under her shirt and stroked up and down her back. When she swayed on her feet, he steadied her, then moved back, propping his hips against a tree trunk and splaying his legs so that he could equalize their heights.
With a sound of satisfaction, he cupped his hands around her bottom and brought her aching center against the hard shaft of his erection.
That was the instant when full-blown panic came leaping to the surface. She stiffened in his arms. "No. Please. No."
Maybe he had been waiting for that to happen, because he dropped his arms and raised head, looking down at her.
"Every time we get close, you back away," he said in a gritty voice.
"I don't want to," she managed to answer, astonished that she had voiced her own thoughts so accurately.
"Tell me what's going on."
She wanted to turn away, instead she stayed facing him, struggling with too many emotions. And because she saw the wounded look in his eyes, she forced herself to be brutally honest. "I know you won't hurt me. Somewhere in my mind I know that, until the scary part takes over."
He dragged in a draft of air and let it out in a rush, his gaze never leaving hers. "Rinna, did someone… force himself on you?"
She wanted to look away. She wanted to deny the shameful secret that she hadn't even shared with Haig. But she knew that lying to Logan would be the worst thing she could do. "Yes," she answered in a barely audible voice.
"Who?"
Still she had to look away when she said the name. "Falcone."
"The bastard. I'll kill him."
"Stay away from him. He'll kill
you"
she cried out. She was still grappling with her own emotions. She had told her terrible secret to Logan, and she waited for the world to fall in on top of her. When heartbeats passed and she found the earth was still solid under her feet, she let out the breath she'd been holding.
"Can you tell me about it?"
"Not yet," she answered, then took a step back, looking up at the night sky. It was cloudy and she smelled rain. When Logan raised his head and sniffed the air, she knew he did, too.
"We need to get inside."
"Where?"
"I'm not sure. I think we're too far to make it home from here before the rain."
Casually, he reached for her hand, and gave it a squeeze before leading her through the woods.
"Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me why you keep backing away," he said. Then, to her relief, he dropped the subject. "Where did you get the clothes?" he asked as they walked.
"From someone drying them outside. I guess they're going to get wet."
"Yeah."
She swallowed. She had her own questions. And she might have been afraid to ask them, except that she was discovering that nothing was forbidden with this man. "Back at the convenience store… the man with the weapon… you said there was no violence here." The sentences came out disjointed and jerky, and she wondered if they sounded like an accusation.
Logan didn't break his stride. "Not as much as in your world, but there is always violence in any society. Sometimes it comes from inequality. Sometimes from bad people. Or greedy people. So I'd say it was just bad luck that we arrived at the Easy Shopper when we did."
"The Easy Shopper?"
"That's the name of the place."
"Oh." She swallowed. "That man, the robber. I felt the desperation and the hatred inside him. I think he would have killed the woman who owned it."
"She probably doesn't own it. More likely she was working for someone."
"Um," she answered, assimilating that new piece of information. Someone trusted the woman enough to leave her with all those goods.
In her memory, Rinna pictured the scene again. "Then cars came with flashing lights."
He turned his head toward her. "The cops. That's slang for the police. Like soldiers. They keep order. But I don't think it's like in your world. We have soldiers, too. But they don't operate in the civilian world here unless there's a national emergency." He sighed. "That's probably getting too complicated."
"I know you're trying to give me the… the short course."
"Yeah. We have laws, and most citizens obey them. If you break the law, the cops come after you."
"And throw you in a dungeon," she said promptly.
"Well, not a dungeon. Jail. Which I assume is a little more humane. And what happens depends on how bad the crime was. You might get caught stealing—and be able to put up bail. I mean, you give them money that says you will stay in town until your trial. You get a lawyer, and you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. I get the feeling that in your world, you are presumed guilty unless you can somehow prove you didn't commit the crime."
"Yes," she whispered, still trying to process a bunch of new concepts. But there was something else she needed to understand. "Tell me about the weapon the robber had. I've heard of something like that, but I've never seen it."
"A gun."
"It hurts worse than a knife. And you don't have to be close to the person to use it?"
"It may not hurt worse, but can do more damage inside the body."
She shuddered. "I think we used to have those."
He nodded, then asked his own urgent question. "Can the soldiers figure out where we've gone? Do they have a way to track us? With smell, for example?"
She considered the possibilities. "If they brought a shape-shifter, he might track us. But shape-shifters aren't all that common. I don't think Falcone has one."
"That's good."
"What about that trap that Falcone used? Could he get us with that?"
Again she tried to come up with a logical answer. "He thought he would find no shape-shifters here. When he caught you, he probably reconsidered the wisdom of using it."
" 'Probably' being the operative word."
"Yes. We can't be…"
"Careless," he finished for her.
They had come out of the woods and were facing a narrow road. The middle was paved with a smooth black material. As they started walking to the right, the gravel at the sides dug into the bottoms of her feet.
"We need shoes," she murmured as she stepped from the gravel to the level black surface.
"How do they get it so smooth?" she asked.
"Machines with big metal rollers that press it down."
As she tried to imagine that, rain began to fall, first lightly and then with more force.
"I don't know about you, but I've had it for tonight. I need a place to rest and get out of the weather," he said.