She didn’t trust him. He hadn’t listened to her when she asked for his obedience. She had spoken to him as if he were not a man at all. His anger—his beast—had nearly betrayed them both.
Worse, he had failed to protect Alexandra from what she feared. And he wanted to protect her. That need was as fierce and compelling as his need to remember. And just as inexplicable.
When the light in the windows turned red with sunset Kieran rose from his dark thoughts and found Alexandra at the kitchen table, bent over her book. The remains of a small meal were scattered around her. She closed the book and put down her pen when she saw him, spreading her hands over the top of it as if it could fly away like a bird.
“Do you need something, Kieran?” she asked. The wariness was in her eyes.
He pulled the second chair out from the table and sat down with care, watching the way she tensed and stopped herself from drawing back.
The flaw was in himself, this inability to communicate, to speak the right words. He looked at the wall over her head.
“In the cafe,” he began. “Why did the man call you ugly?”
She reached for the pen and curled her fingers around it. “Is that your idea of humor, Kieran?” she said hoarsely.
“I don’t understand.”
She stared at him, and he felt her disbelief. With a sharp movement she gathered up her thick red hair and pulled it away from her face. “You asked me once what I saw when I looked at you. What do you see?”
He looked as she bade him, at the clear blue of her eyes and the dark red lashes, gentle nose and full lips, delicate bones and stubborn jaw. “I see a memory,” he said slowly. “A child I played with when I was young. My friend.”
Her lips parted. “Is that… all?”
“No.” He leaned forward, holding her gaze. “I see a woman who is also my friend.” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “Hair like the leaves when they fall before the first snow. Eyes like the lake where it’s too deep to see bottom. A beautiful woman. I remember what beauty is.”
The pen slipped from her fingers and rolled across the table. She let her hair fall back around her face, the curls swinging forward like a shield. “Your memory isn’t reliable, Kieran,” she whispered.
Pain. He understood little else about Alexandra, but that he did. Like the fear. He hadn’t been able to help her in the cafe, but here…
He rose and moved close to her. “That’s why I need your help,” he said. He brushed the tips of his fingers over her hair, taking care not to touch her the way he had done before, when she’d become so afraid. Not her mouth, though he remembered how sweet it had tasted, how good it had felt under his. Not her face. But he stroked her hair as she’d stroked him when he’d been a wolf. There could be no harm in that.
Alexandra didn’t stop him. She sat very still, her eyes half closed. He should have felt contentment in touching her, being near her as he wanted to be—in knowing she accepted his nearness—but he was not. There was an ache in him, a heavy stirring in his groin that he had felt before, pleasure that was almost pain.
Part of him knew what it was, but the memories remained cloudy and half-formed. He drifted, imagining Alexandra stroking him where he ached most. Imagining her body against his as it had been that morning, the texture of her skin underneath her clothes. The supple curves so different from his own.
He remembered the way she’d looked at him before he put on the clothes she’d given him.
“You never told me, Alexandra,” he said softly. “What you saw this morning when you looked at me.”
She stirred with a slow, lingering motion, as if she had been far away. Her head turned. She inhaled sharply, scraping the chair across the floor as she stood up. With a sideways step she put the table between them.