Page 18 of Captive Wilderness
“Thank you,” I murmured, opening the door, but I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me. He was already halfway down the path.
Taking a fortifying breath, I took care of business and found Kane waiting a few feet away when I opened the door again. This time when he picked me up, I held my breath, trying not to get any of his scent in my nostrils. If I could keep myself apart, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
I’d almost convinced myself everything would be fine when he settled me into the chair on the landing. Instead of leaving, he crouched in front of me. While I’d been using the outhouse, he’d found more ice and some clean socks. They were laid out next to the stump.
Without looking at my face, he took my calf in his hand and lifted my injured foot carefully onto the stump. Shivers spread across my scalp in awareness. He kept his focus on my leg as he rolled up the fabric of the sweatpants and began to unwind the tensor. I watched, mesmerized. His fingers were strong, a light dusting of hair on his knuckles and the backs of his hands. My breath caught in my throat when his thumb brushed the skin of my calf.
He paused, then continued to remove the tensor around and around. Underneath, my ankle had turned into a horrifying mix of several shades of purple. My skin was raised in lines from the tensor. God, it was ugly. The sight didn’t seem to bother him as he cradled the uninjured part of my foot in his hand, adjusting it on the stump so he could put the ice on my ankle.
For a big man, he was exceedingly gentle. I wondered if it would be the same if we had sex, or if he was one of those guys who took charge in the bedroom. The thought created a rush of heat between my thighs.
Kane froze, his thumb on the bare arch of my foot. I sucked in a breath. It felt so good to be touched right now. My entire body shouted for me to lean into him, to take more of it.
Instead, I held incredibly still, my nerves humming. When his thumb brushed the tender flesh of my arch, need flooded me. I didn’t want him to just stroke my foot, I wanted him to stroke me everywhere, to soothe the ache building inside me with each passing second.
His gaze focused on my foot, he moved his thumb again, slowly, back to where it started. My lips parted. Tension formed between us, thick and pulsating. I didn’t know if I’d experienced anything like it before.
I shivered.
Kane stood abruptly, reentering the house and coming back with a thick blanket a minute later. He settled it over my shoulders and adjusted the ice on my ankle before striding away.
I let out a slow breath. He might have left, but the tension remained. The desperate aching of my body didn’t abate.
Leaning back in the chair, I closed my eyes. What was I supposed to do? This was an impossible situation. As the ice did its magic on my swollen ankle, I weighed my options. I couldn’t pick out a random guy this time around. There wasn’t a club nearby, so I could leave Kane alone like he plainly wanted.
The forest around me buzzed with life, but I couldn’t hear anything from Kane. I didn’t know where he’d gone. For a moment, I felt mildly abandoned and slightly rejected.It’s not his fault.He hadn’t asked me to come for a visit. The man obviously liked his solitude and I’d disturbed it.
What was he doing out here all on his own anyway?
It was a long while later when footsteps alerted me to his presence right before he rounded the side of the cabin. He’d left me alone so long, the ice sock had half melted, a puddle forming under my foot. Without meeting my gaze, he crouched in front of me, removing the ice and picking up the tensor. This time he didn’t hesitate while he wrapped my foot, and he didn’t take his time. Before I could blink, he was done, the new socks back on, and he headed inside.
“Thank you,” I said. It seemed I’d done a lot of “thanking” since I’d arrived. He might have nodded in acknowledgment, I wasn’t sure.
A minute later, he stepped onto the landing but didn’t look at me as he went around to the other side of the cabin again. I rubbed my temples, a headache forming. How were we supposed to deal with this in a one-room cabin?
Tired of sitting, I shrugged out of the blanket and stood, careful to keep my balance on my good foot. My head spun from the movement, and I waited until the world slowed down. Hobbling, I opened the door and entered the cabin. Everything was as neat and tidy as it had been when I arrived. He’d made the bed. My cheeks grew warm. I could have done that.
I needed distractions from my too-thick tongue, my itchy skin, and my sensitive nipples abrasively rubbing against the material of my shirt. Curiosity made me limp toward the desk at the foot of the bed. His computer was an older style, beige, with the tower on the floor with two disk drives. The monitor didn’t have a flat screen. How long had the guy been up here on his own? Being a shifter, he could be way older than the late twenties, early thirties that he looked.
My skin tingled, the sensation climbing up the back of my scalp as I jiggled the mouse. The computer woke up and a screen full of square file folder icons appeared. Among dozens, one said, “Security,” one said, “Old Files,” another, “Ongoing.” He’d said there was no Internet. The X in the WiFi symbol at the bottom corner of the screen confirmed it. I was tempted to click on one of the file folders but then let the mouse go. He didn’t deserve me snooping when he’d been so nice to me.
My eyes were drawn to the little workstation beside the monitor. It held tiny pieces of things: wires, circuits, gears, all sorts of bits of metal. Everything neat in its own way beside what I thought might be a soldering iron. I flicked a few of the stray pieces with my fingernail. He must make things for a living. Or fun. Or whatever. Maybe just to keep busy since he was alone up here.
When I stepped away from the desk, movement outside caught my eye. I moved the thin, white curtain aside. Kane was on one of the flat rocks doing some sort of slow, controlled movement, like a martial art. But I didn’t know much about any of them except that my sister was a black belt in karate.
Even though the sight of him brought a rush of warmth between my thighs, my chest tightened at the thought of Sabrina. Was she okay? What about Mom? Would those same shifters abduct her too? Was someone after bobcat shifters for a specific reason? Experimentation? Something even worse?
Every shifter had heard of the times when we were hunted for sport and glory. It was why we were so secretive now, why our instinctsdemandedthat we stay hidden from humans. But those people on the airplane…at least one of them had been a shifter too.
Swallowing around the tightness in my throat, I forced my mind to loosen its hold on morbid thoughts and stared at Kane. He was graceful for such a large man. His hands moved and flowed in interesting patterns, always coming back to the center of his body. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, never losing balance, his focus entirely on himself and nothing else.
I became mesmerized by the fluid athleticism of it all. When I realized I was panting, I turned away from the sight. Iwould notgo out there and rub my body against him like my instincts were telling me to do.
Taking care not to lean on my ankle too much, I moved away from the window and climbed on the bed to take a closer look at his bookshelf. Quite the assortment. The man had eclectic tastes. As I read the spines, I realized I scratched at my arms and forced myself to stop. There were cookbooks, math textbooks, sci-fi and fantasy novels, horrors and mysteries, even a selection of romance novels. A horticulture manual leaned against a random assortment of magazines. A physics textbook was shelved next to a few on mechanical engineering. There was a selection of books on eastern religions, tai chi, and yoga, and one dedicated to breathing exercises.
I glanced at the stereo and the few CDs beside it. Most were classics like The Beatles, U2, The Rolling Stones, and Velvet Underground. But there was also something called Lemon Jelly and Ninja Tunes.
Grabbing two magazines, one calledCanadian Geographicand the otherDwell, I sat on the bed and leaned against the headboard, scratching my scalp and face. I got in a few minutes of reading before another flush of my heat distracted me, my breasts becoming heavy. The temperature in the cabin rose. Kane wouldn’t need to light the fire today with the way I was giving off heat.
