Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

He didn’t like hiding this way. That was plain enough. He wanted to go out there, confront the man and get this over with. As relaxed as the hand around the Ruger might be, the rest of him fairly trembled with tension-a condition that Karin knew very much for certain, given the juxtaposition of their legs.

The building gave a sudden little shudder. Karin jumped, unprepared for the intruder to be here. She shrank inside her skin, trying to grow small, except her heart had suddenly grown bigger, pounding so hard there couldn’t possibly be room for it. Be small. Be very small.

Dave lifted his chin, just enough to catch her attention. Just enough so he could nod at her, a bare fraction of reassurance that somehow made a difference.

The old henhouse gave another shudder. The brute, trying to yank the door open. No way. It would take a shovel and crowbar to clear that thing. But she could easily picture the man-one hand yanking at the door, one hand braced against the door frame. Braced against the huge old poison ivy bush, grown to treelike proportions. She smiled.

Dave must have thought she was losing it. He put a hand on her lower leg, gave it a reassuring squeeze. Even with the building shifting around them and dirt raining from disturbed cracks between slats, she still smiled.

Another thirty-six hours and this man’s hands would be swollen with a weeping rash. If Barret Longsford wanted men hunting Ellen Sommers, he’d have to send out a new crew.

Didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

That thought took the smile off her face, all right. She was going to have to hide out for weeks, maybe even months. She’d lose her planting season, and she might have to give away the livestock. The thought made her downright grim.

Dave’s hand squeezed her leg again, and she scowled at him. I’m not frightened, you overprotective caveman-I’m mad. As mad at Dave Hunter as anyone. Mad at Ellen, too, for not warning her about this boyfriend.

Not that she’d had a lot of time to talk.

Another jerk on the door, this one in frustration. And then, unexpectedly, something slammed up against the wall beside Karin’s head. She jumped, nearly levitating, and only barely avoided a startled squeak. Had he simply been frustrated? Or maybe even trying to flush them out. Maybe they’d left too many clues. Even a city boy could read crushed grass.

An equally startling voice bellowed, “Damn dog, shut up!”

Shortly thereafter, Dewey did. God, please let him be all right. Please let that mean the intruder was moving away. She started to sit up and Dave squeezed her leg again, kept his hand tight until she looked his way and he could shake his head. She responded in kind, a denial, and he leaned forward enough so she could hear his barely vocalized words. “We’ll be sitting ducks when we leave this place. We have to know he’s gone.”

Okay. Score one for him. Karin settled back against the slats and observed that he’d acquired an artistic slash of dirt across one cheek, but the cobweb in his hair just looked yucky.

And then the sheep darted across their paddock, the soft tickety sound of their cloven hooves catching Karin’s ear; the cow, too, trotted heavily away. The goats. Edith’s bell rang wildly, her startled bleat cutting through the air.

This time Karin did sit up, straight up. “Son of a bitch!” she whispered. “He’s not messing with my goats!”

He sat up to grab her arms, neatly trapping her. “No,” he said. “We can’t leave now.”

“We damn well can!” So what if hiding had been her idea in the first place. She wasn’t about to sit back and listen to the man mess with her livestock. She jerked against Dave’s grip, accomplishing nothing, and subsided to a glare. Just for the moment, but it was long enough for him to lean close.

“Listen,” he said, his voice low.

“Listen, nothing. Hiding only works as long as he’s not taking it out on-”

“No, I mean…listen.” He cocked his head.

Karin swallowed a protest and closed her eyes, shutting out the visual distraction.

Silence.

“He’s not hanging around,” Dave murmured.

She opened her eyes again, drawn smack into his gaze. Even in this dim light, his eyes seemed bright. “Dammit,” she whispered. “I should have known better.”

And she should have. She was raised to know better-she was raised to play the games herself. She took a deep breath; his hands on her arms relaxed. “Ow,” she said, feeling it then. “That big carnival geek already left his mark on that arm.”

“Sorry.” He looked abashed and gently rubbed the arm in question. “Carnival geek?”

“Yeah, one of those guys who bites the heads off live chickens.” She scowled. “He’d better not-”

He grinned, ducked his head. The cobweb looked back at her, tangled in hair cut just a little too long to be conservative, just a little too scruffed. “I’m sure your chickens are safe.”

“Easy for you to say.” The scowl deepened. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten why all this is happening. You got ol’ Barret worried-you made him come looking. He’s been out of my life since before the accident, and now he’s back and not in a good way. And then-” she narrowed her eyes even more “-you put your hand on my ass and you pushed.”

He took said hand off her arm and regarded it in a bemused way. Then he looked up at her, no visible regret. “Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

When had they gotten this close?

The moment he got here.

“You like this with all your witnesses?” she asked him, not pretending it didn’t hover there between them, contact about to happen. Or that she didn’t want it or that she hadn’t wanted it since he’d braced her in her laundry room. Had nothing to do with why he was there, only with the energy that tightened between them at every inopportune and inappropriate moment.

She liked it. It made something inside her hum. A hum in need of use.

He considered the question, giving it a respectful amount of thought. He gave a definitive shake of his head. “No,” he said. “I’m like this with…” Another moment for thought there, and then he turned those blue eyes on her full bore and said, “You.”

It was a simultaneous thing-the leaning forward, the head-tipping, the perfect mesh of skin and lips, fingers in each other’s hair, breathless gasps at just the right time to say more of that please right now. Cramped together in a filthy old henhouse, surrounded by junk, the carnival geek lurking…

It was perfect.

Totally perfect.

Totally mind-blowing, lips-blowing, body-tingling-

His hands left her hair and slid down her sides, up and under her shirt, up her back to span the width of her shoulder blades, tugging her closer. Hands that saw enough work to be callused, not so much they were sandpaper rough. Perfect.

Karin made a wordless noise of demand and hitched closer to him, dropping one hand to the inside of his thigh. He groaned something…it took her a moment to realize it was a noise of heroic determination, and by then her fingers had crept upward. On a quest, those fingers. He jumped, pulled his hand out from beneath her shirt and clamped it onto her wrist. “Now!” he managed to say, just barely, before dipping back into the kiss.

Now was perfect, too. Right now. This now.

Except what he’d said, she realized, hampered by her lips as he’d been, was actually not now.

And then she was thinking again, pulled back to stare at him from only inches away, her pulse pounding in all the right places. Places that wanted attention. Immediately. But she was thinking again and she knew he was right. Not with their unwanted visitor still lurking, their retreat not yet arranged. She had to call Amy Lynn. She had to…she had to…