He was quite, quite naked. Magnificent. Athena bit down hard on her lower lip, struggling to escape the dreamlike unreality that had taken her mind captive. All her senses were working again, but her thoughts spun around and around in helpless circles.
She knew what she had seen. She knew.
Morgan took a step in Athena’s direction. A trouper came up behind him and slung a heavy cape over his shoulders. Morgan fastened it and strode toward Athena, looking neither to the right nor left. Her view of him was blocked by the small crowd of circus folk who gathered about her. They seemed afraid to speak. Her own tongue was frozen.
“Miss Athena! Are you well?” Harry French’s voice shook as he crouched beside her. “I have no words to express our—”
“Later, Harry.” The crowd parted for Morgan, and he came to stand before her chair. His eyes—wolf’s eyes—held hers. “Can’t you see she needs quiet?”
Harry backed away. “Of course. Of course. Let her lie down somewhere. I—”
Without waiting for Harry to finish, Morgan swooped like a striking eagle and gathered Athena into his arms. She felt the thumping of his heart against her side, and his breath in her hair. His steps were so swift that she seemed to fly through the air on invisible wings.
No one had touched her this way except her brother, Romero, or Brinkley when they carried her to or from the carriage or from one chair to another. Those occasions had been impersonal, a matter of necessity. This was very different.
Morgan Holt held her. He could as easily have pushed her in the chair. She was not on the edge of death, no matter how shaken she was. But he carried her straight across the ring and through the rear entrance—the “back door,” she incongruously recalled—to an antechamber furnished with chairs, a table, and a cot.
He laid her on the cot and settled her comfortably, smoothing her skirt without touching any higher than her knees. Lightning raced up and down her body, spiking below her waist. Phantom sensation—but oh, how wondrous!
Drunk. She felt as the inebriated must feel, though she had not touched a drop. Morgan produced a thin wool blanket and draped it over her. He dragged a chair beside the cot and sat down, wrapping the voluminous cape about him. She could not seem to forget that he was completely naked underneath it. His face was just a foot from hers, and she could see every detail of his features, so much more than she had remembered.
“Miss Munroe,” he said. His voice was rough as gravel and filled with concern. Yes, concern, from Morgan Holt. “You are not hurt?”
“No.” She smiled like a mooncalf. “I am quite all right.”
He got up and stepped behind a blanket hung across one corner of the tent. He emerged a minute later in shirt and trousers, pausing to fill a mug with water from the pitcher on the small table. “Drink this,” he said, pressing the edge of the mug to her lips.
The very mundane act of drinking restored her sense of reality. “I saw…what you did,” she murmured. “I saw everything.”
A muscle in his jaw tensed and relaxed. No denial came. He simply waited, staring into her eyes with all the grim patience of a natural predator. He looked ferocious enough to tear her limb from limb, but she was not afraid. Oh, nothing nearly so uncomplicated as fear.
It was not she who needed reassurance now.
She reached from under the blanket and touched his hand. He clenched it into a fist under hers.
“I understand why Harry would not tell me what you do in the circus,” she said, gathering her words with care. “I am not shocked, or horrified. I know I am not mad.” The shaking started again, a delayed reaction like the prickling that came to fingers warmed by the fireside after long exposure to bitter mountain winds. “I will not give your secret away. You see, I have one of my own.” She took a long, deep breath. “I am like you. I am a werewolf.”
Chapter 7