And the thought of it both excited her and terrified her.

Stars in heaven, she didn’t want this.

The wind whipped around them, branches and entire trees tumbling end over end, flying past. The storm raging outside was nothing compared to the one raging within her. The hunger burned until she feared she would turn to ash. She needed release, and she needed it now, but the thought of being covered, of being entered . . .

A deep quaking began in her limbs, her stomach souring even as the heat raged between her thighs. She wanted Fox, desperately. If only she didn’t. If only she could turn it off. She wasn’t at all sure how much longer she could stand this, or what she would do when she couldn’t.

She pulled her knees against her chest and dipped her forehead onto them, curling tight, struggling to ease the terrible need. But nothing worked.

Feeling a gentle tug on her hair, she opened her eyes to find that Fox had wrapped a lock that had escaped her braid around his finger. Her heart squeezed, recognizing the need to comfort in his expression, even as he refrained from touching her more directly.

Tilting her head sideways to look at him, she found him watching her with blue eyes deep with longing and gentle understanding. Even as desire leaped like an electrical arc between them, he caressed the back of her head.

“I would never hurt you, pet. Never.”

Somehow, he saw the battle inside of her. Could he also tell she was coming apart at the seams? That she wanted him as badly as she wanted to run the other way?

He leaned forward, pressing his lips ever-so-briefly against her temple. When he pulled back, his gaze was soft as down. “You looked in need of it.”

Pressure welled in her chest. He was stealing her heart.

He lifted his hand and lightly stroked her head, and she melted against his side. Slowly, he curved his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him, giving her a dozen opportunities to pull away. But she didn’t. She needed his strength, his comfort.

For so long, she’d felt nothing, nothing but rage and hatred. Now everything had changed. The rage toward the shifters was gone. Certainly the rage toward this shifter. How could she hate a man who’d risked everything to save her, and not just once? He was a good man, a kind man whom, against all reason, she was coming to adore.

Her mate. That’s what he might well have become if she were different. If she could be the woman she’d been before. But she couldn’t, she knew that. And she didn’t want to be. She wanted to reclaim the coldness, to once more become the unfeeling warrior. But to do that, she had to get away from Fox, and that wasn’t going to happen. Not now. Not within the Mage labyrinth.

So for this time out of time she would enjoy the closeness of another, the feeling of no longer being alone. And try to keep from destroying herself in the process.

As loose brush swirled into their small windbreak on the howling gale, she closed her eyes, hiding her face against Fox’s shoulder. Thank the ancient queens that he’d been caught with her, for she’d never survive this alone. If only he weren’t tearing down her defenses, brick by brick, awakening a desire and a need inside her that she feared would tear her apart.

Fox held Melisande against him, his hand on her shoulder, his body on fire, his heart breaking because he got it now. For a moment, when she first pulled away from him, she’d let her shields down, and he’d felt like he was staring into his sister Sheenagh’s eyes again in those horrible months after she’d been attacked. The fear. The anger.

Goddess. He’d already figured out Melisande had been captured. Now he’d seen blaring evidence that she’d been raped. No wonder she froze every time they got too close. His heart squeezed with pain at her suffering even as the rage stirred inside him.

If Castin was to blame, the male would die a thousand deaths before Fox handed him over to Melisande for the killing blow.

Finally, he understood how she could be so hot for him, so wet, yet push him away. But she hadn’t pushed him away at all, not really. He’d scared her. No, the situation had scared her. But, goddess, she wanted him. One moment she’d smelled of wild heather and the next her scent had exploded, turning lush and carnal—wild heather crushed beneath writhing bodies deep in the act of sex. And still it filled his nose, his lungs, making his cock throb with wanting. It was her mating scent, he was sure, and it was driving him insane. Goddess in heaven, he hoped it went away soon because her arousal was sending his into orbit.

Finally, the winds began to die down. High above, the sun peeked out.

“Mother Nature appears to be over her pique.” Fox placed a soft kiss on Melisande’s head, then released her and pushed himself up, rising from the small windbreak to make certain they were still alone. The small, tropical forest was a shambles, but he saw no sign of life.

“Let’s take a look around.” He held out his hand to her.

As she placed her hand in his, Melisande met his gaze. Heat remained in her eyes, and a wealth of frustration. But as he smiled at her, the sapphire warmed with a hint of an answering smile. He resisted the need to haul her into his arms and against his heart for about four seconds, then did just that, pulling her close for a simple hug.

To his relief, she wrapped her arms around his waist and returned his hug briefly before pulling away, but not before he felt the way she still trembled. And not before he was enveloped, all over again, with that lush, carnal scent.

Her arousal hadn’t died at all. He watched as she fought for control, her jaw hardening, her back straightening as she turned to survey the area. A tough little warrior, despite everything. Tough on the outside, aye, but beneath that hard façade, he was beginning to see a different side of Melisande, one filled with a sweetness the other Ferals would never believe.

Deep inside, his fox snarled, a possessive sound this time. Mine. And he knew it was true. This woman was coming to mean far too much.

Moving out from the trees, they once more came upon the dead Mage.

“I’m going to see if I can pick up a trail,” Fox told her, hoping the shift to his animal might douse the sensual fire in his body, at least for a little while. He shifted, sighing with relief as the sexual need died away, then he turned his attention to the task at hand. He began sniffing around the bodies, then followed the trail back to the pit, padding all around the two sites.

Finally, he returned to her, brushing against her hip with his side, delighted when her fingers dove into his fur, stroking him.

Ah, that feels good, pet.

“I’m thinking you’re the pet.”

He grinned at her. Keep your hands on me like this, and I’ll be whatever you want me to be.

He tensed slightly, worried his words would drive her away after what happened in the windbreak, but the look she gave him was one of wry amusement and her hand continued to stroke him.

“I like the feel of your fur. It’s incredibly soft.”

Her hand moved to the top of his head and he pressed into her touch, loving it.

“Did you find the trail?” she asked.

Aye. Castin’s scent doesn’t extend beyond this small area. It’s as if he appeared at the site of the pit and left this world immediately following the battle with the Mage.

“Perhaps that’s what happened.” She moved to the front of him, running her fingers along the side of his neck as he melted from the sweet feel. “Or perhaps the labyrinth is messing with us just as the mountain did. If the labyrinth is part of the mountain’s magic, it probably is.”

Aye.

“So, what now? Someone is bound to come after us again. Maybe Mage.”

I agree. I suggest we stay close to the beach, where we’ll have plenty of warning of anyone’s approaching. In a spray of sparkling lights he shifted back to human form. The sensual energy he always felt upon turning human in Melisande’s presence hit with a blast of desire that nearly drove him to his knees. Goddess. He found her with his eyes, saw the answering flare of heat, and he had to fist his hands at his sides to keep from hauling her into his arms. The need to touch her, to taste her, to mate with her was burning him alive.

With an audible groan, raking both hands through his hair, he turned away and started toward the beach. Melisande fell into step beside him. He eyed the ocean, wondering if it was cold enough to douse the fire in his loins. As they walked, he curled his hands into fists, fighting the natural inclination to hold out his hand to her. Touching her in any way was a bad idea right now.

“Do you see anything living?” he asked, trying to shift his thoughts to something other than the fire burning in his blood. The sun, now fully out, beat hot on his scalp and shoulders adding to the sense that he was burning alive. “I’ve seen no wildlife, not even a seagull.”

“There was a goat in the seaport, but he was tied to one of the carts.” Melisande’s voice sounded as strained as his own, her words laced with a huskiness that did nothing to ease his discomfort. “So is this an ocean without fish? And if we had a boat, how far could we sail before this world ended? Would we hit the edge of the warding and burn? Or slide right through into yet another world?”

He didn’t answer. He’d barely heard her questions through the need pounding through his body. From the water’s edge, he turned back, observing the landscape, to all appearances, a deserted island.

But he knew it was more than that. It was a trap. Another stop along the gauntlet.

While his warrior’s brain constantly logged senses and impressions, searching for threats of any kind, his man’s brain was wholly on the woman at his side. A woman so ripe with need for him that they were both shaking from it. Yet she was a woman who wouldn’t . . . couldn’t follow through.

“Melisande, was your capture by the Therians part of the reason the Ilinas faked your extinction a thousand years ago?” He was treading on delicate ground, but he wanted to understand.

“No. They had nothing to do with one another. My capture by the Therians happened lifetimes before the Mage attacked us. We never intentionally faked our extinction, by the way. Not at first. A thousand years ago, Ariana and Kougar fell in love. The Mage feared the Ilinas and Ferals would join forces and sought to keep that from happening. Up until then, the Ilinas had stayed out of the war between the shifters and the Mage. We tended to prefer the more virile shifters in our beds, but we’d never fought beside them, not since the Daemon Wars. And never against the Mage.

“The Mage . . .” She stopped abruptly. “They attacked us,” she said harshly. “Their poison killed ninety-six Ilinas, more than two-thirds of our number, leaving the rest of us clinging to life for several centuries. When we emerged again, we realized the immortal world thought us extinct, and finally understood why the Mage had not finished us off as they could so easily have done. They’d tapped into Ariana’s queen’s power and had fed the poison to the rest of the race through her. And they still possessed that ability. It became critical that the Mage poison master not learn that Ariana still lived before I could hunt him down and kill him.”

“And did you?”

“No.” The word was filled with acid. “The poison had some kind of magic in it that kept me from ever finding him no matter how close I got. Ariana and Kougar finally tracked him down not long ago. And they killed him.”

Fox frowned. “I don’t understand. If Kougar and Ariana were mated a thousand years ago . . . did Kougar know what had happened?”

“No. He thought their mating bond had severed. He believed Ariana dead all that time.”

He’d never heard of a mating bond severing without the death of one of the pair. “Then how . . . ?”

She scowled and turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Fox swallowed his questions with difficulty, for he had a cartload of them. But he’d clearly hit on another traumatic event. Goddess. Two-thirds of her race wiped out in a single attack. He couldn’t fathom the scope of such a tragedy. Yet she’d lived through that after being captured and, almost certainly, raped by Therians. So much misfortune. Then again, she’d lived over a thousand years. Lifetimes more than a thousand, by her own account. And what that meant, exactly, he had no idea except that the woman had history, and baggage, in abundance. Reason aplenty for the hard shell she’d acquired, a shell that appeared to be disintegrating around her.

With everything he learned, with every glimpse he got into who she was and the events that had formed her, the more intrigued he became. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know everything.

She turned back to him, her temper of a moment ago gone, a wry smile tilting her mouth to one side. “Sorry. Tender subject.”

“I’m hopelessly nosey when it comes to you.” He grinned at her, and to his utter delight, a full smile bloomed on her face, transforming her features from merely beautiful to exquisite. His pulse raced, his knees weakened as he basked in the glow of that smile.

“You should do that more often, pet.”

“Do what?” But an impish light lit her eyes, making them sparkle, and he thought he just might have heart failure.

“Smile.”

“I’d forgotten how. Until you.” She frowned, but it was a quick, unheated thing, as she shook her head. “You’re making a wreck of my life, you know that, don’t you? I liked not feeling. And you’re making me feel again. Too much.”

He stopped her, his hand on her arm, and turned her toward him, caressing her cheek with his palm. “You make me feel things I’m not comfortable with either, Mel. If I’m upending your life, so, too, are you upending mine. What the future brings, I can’t fathom, but I hope you’re part of it.”