I grinned at him. Just grinned and then tugged off my helmet, hopped off the bike, grabbed him by the shirtfront, and pulled him into a kiss. And God, that was a kiss, his frustration over the failed hunt for the hound mingling with the thrill of the jump and the triumph of his fuck-you escape.

A breathtaking, mind-blowing kiss, and when it ended, I was sitting in front of him on the bike, no idea how I even got there. I kept kissing him, hands in his hair, straddling him as I leaned back onto the bike. I slid my fingers to his crotch, rock-hard, and murmured, “Yes?”

“Fuck, yes,” he said, his breath ragged.

I managed to get out of my jeans more easily than I’d have thought possible on a bike. Then he bent to kiss me again and that kiss, that kiss …

It was like being in the forest after the hunt, the smell of loam and pine needles, the smell of night and sweat and the hunt, those times when I’d swear I heard the hounds and the horses as he kissed me, as he pushed into me, hungry from the chase. This time, though? This time I wasn’t lying on the ground, and when I closed my eyes I didn’t feel the thrum of the idling bike under me. I felt as if I was still on the horse in that vision, except it wasn’t Arawn with me—it was Ricky, stretched out over me, pushing into me, and God, oh God …

Fuck, yes, indeed.

I said that aloud, when we finished, and Ricky gave a ragged laugh, burying his face against my neck, saying, “Yeah …” He straightened, and then turned off the bike with another chuckle, saying, “Guess I should shut that off next time.”

“Mmm, definitely not.”

I reached up and pulled him down into a kiss, and we stayed there, locked together, until I realized it might not be the most comfortable position for him.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “Probably getting a little tired of holding up the bike, huh?”

“What bike?” he said, and kissed me again as I laughed.

A couple of minutes later, we were off the bike and on the blanket from his saddlebags, lying half naked in a grungy alley.

“If you close your eyes,” he said, “you can imagine that faint eau de garbage is actually a nearby swamp. I did catch a whiff of something decomposing. Just need a big pile of deer shit nearby and we’d be right at home.”

“You say the sweetest things.” I craned my neck and looked up at the sky. “I think that’s a star up there. Or is it a plane?”

“A star. Blinking and moving fast. They do that in the city.”

He pulled me against him, and I snuggled in, the heat of his body perfect against the chill night air. I closed my eyes, and when he kissed me I could smell the forest, see it, feel it and hear it all around me, and then I was there, not just imagining it but lying in a forest glen. I could feel the warmth of him still on my skin, but he was gone. I didn’t jump up. I just stretched out on my stomach, toes brushing the grass.

A whine floated over on the breeze. I lifted my head and squinted. Another whine came. Then a sigh. A deep, shuddering canine sigh.

The hound.

I rose and hurried to the edge of the clearing. I could hear the hound, sighing and shuffling, as if moving about. I jogged toward the sound and spotted it near a cabin. The hound guarded the door, and while I could see no sign that it was bound in any way, it felt bound, as it looked into the forest as if longing to run. It was a perfect fall night and yet the hound couldn’t enjoy it, and I felt the grief and the frustration and the sadness of that as it paced and then, with a sigh, lay down in front of the cabin door.

When I started forward, the hound lifted its head and peered into the darkness. Its red-brown eyes glimmered as it searched, as if sensing me but seeing nothing. Then it stood and whined and tried to come to me but stopped short and gave a growl, ears pricked forward, seeing me and …

No, not seeing me. Not sensing me.

“Forest,” Ricky whispered, and I was back in the alley, Ricky pulling from the kiss, saying, “The hound is in the forest. Guarding a cabin. You …” He grinned and pulled me into a tight hug. “You found it. Thank you.”

“Um, you … saw … what I was …?”

He grinned again as he rose. “Forest. Cabin. Hound. That is what you were seeing, right?”

“Yes, but how …?”

“No idea. Hound radar plus omen vision, I guess. We should have skipped the riding around and gone straight to bike sex.”

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the bike sex that did it.”

“Of course it was. Anytime we need to figure something out, we’ll start with bike sex. If that doesn’t work, we’ll keep trying until it does.”

I laughed as I pulled on my jeans. “As for a location, though, all I got was forest.”

“I know where to go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

We were about a half hour south of the city, long off the highway, on roads I’d never seen before until, finally, Ricky brought the bike to a stop at the side. I could see forest across a moonlit field. He tilted his head, considering, and then squeezed my thigh, telling me to hang on, before he turned the bike into the field, rolling slowly over the rough ground. When we reached the edge of the forest, he idled there and I tugged off my helmet. I could feel tension strumming from him as he looked into the woods.

“Wrong place?” I said.

“No, just wrong.”

As I leaned against his back and looked into the woods, I felt what he must. Uneasy. Unwelcome. This wasn’t like other forests—no sense of invitation, of adventure, of voices whispering in the dark for us to come play. I looked at this stretch of woods and I felt that ancient sense of the forest as alien territory. Dangerous territory. The dark unknown.