“No one should be forgotten.”
“You live in a dream, Firefly.”
“And you, Morgan? Have you forgotten what it is to dream?”
Morgan released his aching fingers from the bedpost. “Men dream. Wolves do not. I know which is better off.”
“We fool ourselves,” she said. “I pretend just as much as you do that nothing really matters. At least I know I’m pretending.”
“Then you know that Niall Munroe cares nothing for you,” Morgan said cruelly. “He may take your body if you offer it, as he would from any whore.”
“Perhaps I’ll choose to give it to him. Have you forgotten the pleasures of the body, Morgan? Oh, no—I do remember you have enjoyed Tamar’s company from time to time. She must be very skilled, and she knows exactly what she wants. Athena is only half a woman, isn’t she?”
Her words slashed at Morgan from heart to belly. “Athena—” he began, choking, “Athena is… more than a woman. More than you can—” He broke off, breathing hard. Caitlin stared at him, her freckles as lurid as wagon paint.
A light tap came on the door. Harry stepped in, oblivious, filling the room with his voluble and sunny presence.
“Ah, Morgan, my boy. Ulysses said I would find you here. Caitlin, how are you on this very fine afternoon?”
“Isn’t it snowing outside?” Caitlin asked, craning her head toward the lace-curtained window.
“So it is, so it is. But that should not dampen our pleasure in a most unexpected visit. One of the ranch hands just came to report a wagon coming up the lane. Some hired conveyance and driver, no doubt, for these mountain passes.” He rubbed his hands. “Is it not wonderful news, Morgan? Our very own Miss Athena has come at last.”
Chapter 14
Morgan stood toe to toe with Harry, looking down a full foot at the older man. “You brought her here,” he accused. “You and Caitlin.”
Harry’s brows arched toward the ceiling. “Why, my boy, this is her property, after all!”
Morgan growled and walked around him. His heart sent jolts of lightning up and down his body with every beat. Had he not been waiting every day for this? Had he not sensed, deep in his soul, that she could not stay away any more than he could stop thinking about her?
But Harry and Caitlin had arranged this between them, played with his life and Athena’s as if they were ivory pieces on Harry’s chessboard. Morgan wouldn’t have been astonished if Caitlin had planned her own injury, just to push him and Athena together.
But he could refuse to play by the rules they had set.
A cool, supple body blocked his path. If he had not been so preoccupied, he would have smelled Tamar a mile away, and avoided her.
“My wolf,” she said. “What makes you frown so? Have the hunters set one too many traps for your liking?” She smiled, and he was driven back to the memory of kissing those lips, holding that willing body against him in the night.
He could have had her a thousand times since, if he had so much as looked at her. But he had kissed Athena. One kiss, lacking even the most basic intimacies of the flesh, and he was ruined for the taste of another mouth.
Tamar could have taken any number of lovers in the troupe, for all her strangeness. Instead, she chose to pursue him. She had schemed her way into one of the rooms in the main house, and had become impossible to avoid completely. Morgan had finally realized that she believed she had some claim on him because of their brief liaison.
Why, he did not understand. He had offered her nothing. Whatever ambition lay behind her calculating eyes, he could not fulfill it. Her beauty was like a jungle flower he had heard of, intoxicating to look at but thick with the smell of rotten meat.
“Yes,” he said. “Too many traps.” He tried to pass, but she held out an arm to stop him. She had great strength for a woman, coiled and always lying in wait.
“You will never have her,” she said. The very calmness of her voice set his hair on end. “She would spit on you, my wolf, like all gadje.”