SECRET OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

“Will you take my dress for cleaning and brushing, Mrs. Daugherty? I may need it again soon.”

“I will indeed.”

“Also, can you bring your girl tomorrow? I may have another appointment in town.”

The older woman chuckled. “Will you, now. Well, I s’pose my daughter can spare me an extra day or two this week. Good night, Doc Jo.”

“And you.” She waited until Mrs. Daugherty had closed the door, and sank into the tub. If only she had that wine now…

“Johanna.”

She sat bolt upright in the tub, sending water splashing over the edge.

Quentin.

Chapter 14

She was quite naked. Quentin knew that, had known before he walked through the door. The scent of her skin had carried into the hallway, a perfume of bare flesh tinged with the minerals in the water and a trace of perspiration that carried the unmistakable signature of arousal.

Not blatantly sexual, perhaps. But arousal just the same. And it had drawn Quentin to her with the force of a deadly compulsion.

He stopped at the sound of her indrawn breath. He’d given her warning. She was safe behind the screen. But he wasn’t safe. He wasn’t safe at all.

All day long he’d chopped at the fallen tree, trying to sweat her out of his system. It hadn’t worked. Harper’s words rang in his head with each blow of the axe, and he’d paced and listened and smelled the air for the first hint of her return to the Haven.

Now she was here, and he couldn’t wait any longer.

“Quentin?” Her usually steady voice carried a quiver. “This is not a good time. I will speak with you in the morning—”

“You were gone all day.” His words sounded harsh even to his own ears.

“Please leave,” she said. He heard the splashing of water, imagined her covering her full breasts with her arms in an instinctively protective gesture. He wet his lips.

“I won’t hurt you.” An absurd statement. Of course he wouldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t rush around the screen and scoop her from the water and lay her on the bed and ravish her…

“I would appreciate some privacy,” she said.

So would I. With you. He struggled to rein in his unruly imagination. His mind was spinning wanton images of him and Johanna cavorting in her bed, of her uninhibited cries as he entered and rode her, of her skin flushed with passion.

He could see far more than just her face if he stepped around the screen. He wildly considered going back out to the yard, amid the stacks of newmade firewood, and resuming his attack on the fallen oak he had yet to defeat.

It wouldn’t help. Nothing helped.

“Mrs. Daugherty told me you went to meet a doctor,” he said. A male doctor.

“That is not your concern,” she said sharply. Johanna was seldom angry.

Her indignation did nothing to quell his own helpless arousal. Nor did the heavy scent of a man’s expensive cologne on her clothing, in the room—and underlying it, too faint to identify, the smell of a strange male.

He moved to her bed, where she’d laid out her undergarments. They smelled only of her. The chemise was of material too coarse to be of the best quality, but he stroked it against his face as if it were made of the finest silk. He inhaled her.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “This is not appropriate behavior. Leave at once.”

She spoke as if to a child. Or a madman. He laughed hoarsely. “What are you afraid of, Johanna? I just came in to say good-night.”

Do what she asks, he told himself. Leave.

Why should you? another part answered. Harper said she wants you. Make her admit it.

He sat down on the edge of Johanna’s bed, trapped between two conflicting forces. His mind was the battleground. He couldn’t get a grip on his thoughts, let alone make them obey his will.

“Quentin?”

He didn’t trust himself to answer. The ugly, lustful propensity within him ruled his voice. Another Quentin spoke in his mind, a second self, mocking his restraint—twisting in his brain until the agony made him reach for a bottle that wasn’t there.

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