Luke shut his eyes, tightly, as if to block out the sight of her. “I can give you no answers.” Each word was forced, drawn out from the depths of something like despair. Joey almost flinched, almost stepped back, remembering the bizarre juxtaposition of savagery and tenderness he had shown at the cabin. But he did not move, and she found within herself the courage to continue.
“I won’t accept that. It isn’t fair to expect me to. I need to understand, Luke—and somehow I will.”
With the softest of curses, Luke spun suddenly on his heel and strode off into the brush. Joey stood there for a long moment and set about searching for stones suitable for the evening fire. The mindless task kept her occupied until Luke returned with firewood, and then she slipped off to the pool to bathe her face and rinse her hair.
When she had finished, she rocked back on her heels and twisted her hair into a fresh braid, shivering as drops of water spattered her cheek. Her reflection in the cold, pure water told her what she needed to know. If she had lost a large part of her certainty, the one thing she had not lost was her determination.
It was only a matter of showing Luke just how determined she could be.
Luke tasted the scents borne on the evening breeze as he made his way toward camp, Joey had already begun cooking a side dish and had heated her usual coffee—that much was clear half a kilometer away. He’d had unusual luck in his hunt that night, and the sizable hare he had caught was already gutted and skinned. The small predators of the forest who had watched him from a safe distance had quickly disposed of what he’d left.
The time away from camp, and from Joey, had given Luke time to think. No human being had ever had the distressing effect Joey Randall had on him, no woman had even come close. Her insistence on questioning him about his past had presented him with a problem he had no hope of solving. He could not tell her what she seemed so determined to learn, he could not begin to explain why she had driven him to behavior even he found inexplicable.
This had never happened to him before. He had no more control over it than he had over the indifferent stars that flickered in and out behind the lacy silhouettes of firs against the darkening sky. She had no conception of what her mere closeness did to him—and he could never take the risk that she might find out.
Shifting the hare in its skin sack over his shoulder, Luke bared his teeth. He had done everything possible to keep his distance, and for a time he’d hoped she would make it easier for him by keeping hers.
When he had left camp, after starting the fire and erecting the tent, he’d spoken to Joey not at all beyond warning her that he might be gone an hour or two; she’d merely stared at him with that familiar stubborn lift of her chin. He had felt her eyes tracking him, but seldom had he been able to bring himself to meet her gaze. That in itself was a deeply unnerving experience. It confirmed everything he had realized about her—and about himself.
He could still dominate her if he set his mind to it. But it was as if all his will to do so had fled, and in the long run it would gain nothing but further pain.
Pungent smoke drifted across his path as he crossed the border of trees and into camp. She was sitting by the fire, her expression turned inward, cradling a cup of coffee in her hands. She looked up as he approached, though he knew he’d made no sound that could warn her. One more proof that she could feel his presence with senses beyond those that humans usually possessed. One more proof, and one more burden.
He did not meet her eyes as he set the hare up for cooking, though never for an instant did he fail to sense her watching him, focusing her own undefined strength and pitting it against his without knowing what she did. Or what she was.