"Not you, ma mie." He pulled her down until only a whisper separated their lips. "Tell me again."

"It's not—"

"Tell me again." Gabriel rolled over, tucking her under him. "Tell me when I'm inside you."

"Gabriel." She wound her legs around his hips, offering herself to him. He pushed into her, hard and fast, almost knocking the breath out of her. "I love you."

Alexandra woke up naked and lying facedown on an uncomfortable pallet. Someone with very gentle hands was washing the wounds on her back, but whatever they were using didn't irritate or sting but soothed. For a few minutes she simply enjoyed the relief.

"I'd like the recipe for whatever you're putting on me," she said at last.

"Water boiled with willow bark and valerian," Korvel told her, "left to cool."

"Sounds herbal. You sure you boiled it?" Alex craned her neck to see the captain in only a pair of trousers, sitting on a three-legged wooden stool by the bed. Barely healed claw marks slashed across his chest in four places. "Did you lock him up?"

"My master is sleeping."

"That's not what I asked you, Korvel."

"Dr. Keller, I cannot lock up the high lord of the Darkyn." He rose, picked up the stool, and moved it closer to her upper body. "Be still. I am not finished."

Alex laid her cheek on her folded hands and studied Korvel's face. In the firelight, like now, he seemed more ordinary than movie-star handsome, but there was something compelling about him. "What's your talent?"

He didn't answer, but squeezed out a soaked cloth over her back, letting the warm liquid pour over her wounds.

"I can read the minds of killers," she offered. "Is yours worse than mine?"

"Kyn do not trade tales about talent." He pulled up the sheet covering her legs and hips and tucked it around her. "It is undignified."

"So it's worse than mine."

He almost smiled. "Does anything discourage you?"

"The Bush administration, our foreign policy, and Alison getting kicked off Project Runway," she told him. "So on a scale from one to ten, how bad is your talent?"

"It has never failed me." Korvel got to his feet. "Even when I wish that it would."

Under the grim all-business, fight-to-the-death warrior façade was, Alex suspected, a very nice man. Why else would he be playing her nurse?

"I'd help you, but intelligent design screwed up our arm-to-back motor skills." She tested her shoulders, moving them and wincing. "He really did a number on me, huh?"

He nodded. "You do not heal like us."

"When I'm not being held hostage, I actually heal pretty fast. Being here has slowed me down on a couple of levels." She frowned as a clear image of herself being beaten with a copper pipe passed through her mind. "Quit thinking about killing me."

"I do not wish to kill you."

She didn't like the way he said it, at least until she breathed in. "You know, when you get pissed off or upset, you smell like vanilla pound cake."

"Larkspur," he said, coming over and looking down at her face. "When I go to wash at dawn, I can sometimes smell lavender on my clothes. From you."

"That's nice. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy." Too warm, too fuzzy. "And a bit like a skunk."

"You do not smell like one."

Alex was staring at his mouth, but she didn't know quite why. Then she did, all in a rush, as soon as her breasts tightened and something very neglected and sulky stirred between her legs.

Which brought home some facts: She was naked, alone with Korvel, and in his bed. In a very small room with no real ventilation. "I have to get out of here."

"Yes." Korvel didn't move. "Unfortunately, so do I. It is not your doing, Doctor."

Pornography popped into her head, starring the captain of the guard and herself. "You know what I'm thinking?"

"My talent put the thoughts in your mind." He flashed his fangs as he spoke. "No human woman can resist me. Neither, I fear, can you."

"You can make any woman want to ... fuck." She pushed herself up with her arms. "Give me my clothes." She remembered Richard had torn them from her. "Give me some clothes. And turn off your talent. This minute."

He brought a light robe to her and went to stand by the fireplace, averting his gaze. "I apologize. I have always controlled myself before this."

Alex wanted his hands on her breasts. His tongue in her mouth. His cock in her pussy. "Try harder."

"I am not seducing you," he pointed out. "However much I wish to at this moment."

Alex felt herself go wet. "Yeah. No. Christ, I am out of here." She went to the door, startled by how sore she was and how slowly she was moving, and stopped there. "Thank you for patching me up, Captain."

"I am at your service, my lady."

"God, don't ever say that to me again." She opened the door and hobbled out.

Chapter 16

Although some Brits returning from the Continent grumbled incessantly about it, Nick never minded riding at the back of the Eurotunnel shuttle. The shuttle company put bikers in the back for safety reasons, but all Nick cared about was that they let her book and pay for her ticket online, and the thirty-five-minute trip from Calais to Folkstone meant that she and Gabriel didn't even have to get off the bike. Besides, the most interesting passengers on the trip were always the bikers.

Making the channel crossing today were mostly weekend solo bikers, but one German couple on a wicked black-and-silver Triumph Tiger outfitted for transcon touring parked next to her and exchanged admiring looks. Knowing Gabriel couldn't see it, Nick described the couple's bike to him.

"You sound as another woman would when she describes a diamond necklace," he teased.

"I can't ride a necklace," she told him. "That bike I could take around the world. In a heartbeat."

"BMW GS?" the German man asked her.

Nick seesawed her hand, making the man's wife giggle. Her German was nonexistent, so she pointed to the different parts of the bike she'd rebuilt and named the make of the new parts. She then pointed to the reinforced molded luggage containers fastened to the custom rack at the back of the Triumph, and fluttered her hand over her heart.

Gabriel unexpectedly said something in very precise, rapid German to the couple, who responded enthusiastically. When he had finished, he said to Nick, "I told them that you admired their motorcycle. They are envious of your ingenuity with your engine refittings."

"Danke," she said to the couple. At least she could say that much. She glanced back at Gabriel. "I should take you with me every time I cross over. You could be my interpreter."

"I have never traveled through the Channel Tunnel," Gabriel said. "I suppose it was the thought of being under so much water."

"We're forty-five meters down. We could swim, but it takes a whole day and my bike would rust to pieces." She leaned back against him and enjoyed the way his arms came up around her waist to pull her closer. "I was really bummed to hear that the company that built this had to file for bankruptcy over the summer. I'd hate it if they have to shut it down; it's the fastest way to get from France to England and back again."

He kissed the side of her neck. "You are impatient about everything."

"You didn't think so on the train from Toulouse," she reminded him.

Nick wasn't quite sure how to classify what Gabriel did to her. He had sex with her, of course. That was the clinical way of looking at it. Over the last couple of days they had gone at it like bunnies. But he also made love to her, the way the heroes did in chick movies. And then he took her, too, as dominantly and erotically as some of the Emma Holly novels she'd read.

"That trip should have taken much longer," Gabriel insisted. "They drove the train too fast, and then you rushed us through the station."

Nick thought about the Interpol bulletin she'd seen when they'd passed through the station at Calais. Whoever had given them the description of her had told the artist that she was a boy, but despite that it was a fairly accurate sketch of her face on it. The list of properties she'd burglarized didn't include the ones where she'd found Kyn and released them, so the holy freaks were definitely involved.

She couldn't tell Gabriel she was being chased by Interpol any more than she could explain about her parents; he'd want to know all the details. She also wondered if the same bulletins were being posted around London, and how she would feel if he found out she was a thief—and a liar.

He won't find out. He can't see me or them.

Nick knew she might be able to keep the truth from Gabriel because he was blind, but that wouldn't keep the authorities away. They could see her just fine, and with Father Claudio and the men from the house in Toulouse helping them, they'd soon change the description on the bulletin from a boy to a girl.

As the shuttle stopped at Folkstone station and the vehicles were driven off, Nick's nerves got the better of her. She wasn't sure she could even do this. "How long do you think this meeting with your friend in the city is going to take?"

"Only an hour at the most."

Not much time for her. "Can he get you in touch with your friends? I mean, the ones who are Kyn?"

"Croft serves the suzerain of London. He can put me in contact with any Kyn in the world." Gabriel tugged at a piece of her hair. "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious." She saw a customs officer and two police constables approaching the rear of the shuttle, led by an elderly man walking with a familiar-looking cane. "Gabriel, we might not make that meeting."

His arms tightened around her. "What is it?"

"Father Claudio is here. They're checking each shuttle deck." She saw Claudio pointing at her and Gabriel, and the two constables picked up their pace. "Fuck me, he just made us." She turned, checking the clearance in front and behind the bike before kicking up the center stand. "Strap on the helmet and hold on to me."