God, she was getting old.

Thirty years old and old. Retired. Decrepit.

And, apparently, not that dried up. Not if her constant review of his blistering kiss was any indication. She kept finding herself rubbing absent fingertips over her slightly parted lips and in the middle of remembering the feel of his mouth against hers.

No. Forget it! she kept telling herself every time. And every time she was just as unsuccessful as the time before. She was sitting in the chair in the corner of her bedroom, one foot tucked under her and the other pushing rhythmically against the floor so she was rocking and gliding gently. She had a cup of coffee perched on her raised knee, and she blew on it intermittently because it was still too hot.

He’d been asleep for about three hours and in that time she’d checked on him more than half a dozen times, doing things like checking his pulse and his bandages. Never once had he stirred and never once had he stopped snoring.

After hours of the sound it was beginning to have a lulling effect. She found herself drifting off more than once and that was when she had decided on yet another pot of coffee. By this time of day she was usually drinking tea instead of coffee …

Hell, by now she was usually asleep.

She had gone out into the living room about ten minutes ago and cautiously peeked outside. It was so dark out for daylight hours that she did something she very rarely did.

She left her house and walked out into it. Karma was utterly delighted, although a half-hour ago she’d been looking at her with consternation wondering why they were still awake and why she wasn’t the only big thing lying in her bed. The snow had not lightened in the least, but the driving ice part of the storm was in a lull, it seemed. Karma bounded through the snow, six fresh inches already added to what had already been there. It had been a heavy winter thus far, and there were huge icy piles of previously plowed snow on all sides of her driveway. Fortunately the gully on the one side made an excellent receptacle for snow. And the icy piles made Karma feel like the king of the mountain when she climbed atop them, so she would bark, great white clouds of breath fanning into the air.

The temperature was dropping rapidly, even colder than it had been when the storm had started. She could hear the heavily laden trees creaking as the wind rushed between them.

“Karma! Come on, girl!”

Karma did so happily, another indication that it was getting colder. Normally she would have been hard to get back indoors. But even with her thick coat of fur she had reached her limit, and despite thick down, so had Kat.

After coming indoors, she was a bit at loose ends and quickly became bored. She moved into the bedroom and, since she’d already cleaned up all the soiled gauze and such, she found herself picking up his cut up jeans from the floor. That was when she realized there was something in one of the pockets.

It was a necklace. A very pretty silver and onyx necklace. The silver was an oval disk, polished to a shine so that she could see a mirrored image of herself within. It was rimmed with highly polished black pearl-like stones. She guessed they were onyx, but perhaps their luster meant they were pearls. She wasn’t exactly a gemologist so she didn’t know. All she did know was that the pendant was very beautiful and very old. She had a weakness for very beautiful and very old things. That was why she felt absolutely no guilt when she hurried to the mirror and dropped the thing over her head, lifting her hair and letting it settle. As if it were made just for her, the pendant rested perfectly flat at the top of her cleavage.

“Ooo. Pretty,” she whispered, fondling the thing, feeling the cold metal and stones between her fingers.

She probably should have taken it off right away, but since he was out cold she didn’t see the harm in wearing it for a little while longer. He would never know, she told herself. And that was why an hour later she was toying with it, running the loose pendant up and down the chain. The chain had no clasp, no beginning, and no end, just delicate links that shone and glittered.

Suddenly, the freight train screeched to a halt. He awoke with a roar, shoving himself out of the bed in a huge leap until he was crashing into the wall and her innocent little hand-painted bedside lamp was lying like an incandescent murder victim on the floor. He had both hands clenched into fists and at the ready, and his skin rippled into stone and then flesh again like a rolling wave changes the color of the sand.

She leapt to her feet, holding out a steadying hand.

“It’s okay! You’re okay!” she said quickly and loudly, never knowing what might penetrate into his dubious awareness. He glared at her distrustingly for a full fifteen seconds before his darting eyes had taken in his surroundings and allowed him to relax just a fraction. Then he seemed to reconcile where he was and with a great exhalation he relaxed, slowly releasing the clench of his fists.

It was strange, but of all the thousands of questions she wanted to ask him, at the top of the list seemed to be Who the hell hurt you? It shouldn’t have been. At the top of the list should have been What the hell are you? But in all fairness, it was a close second. And since she doubted she was going to get an answer to the first, she thought she’d shoot for second best.

“C-can you tell me something?” she asked hesitantly. “Can you tell me why your skin does that … that stone thing?”

For a second he had an expression on his face like he had been caught with his pants down around his ankles … only she doubted such a thing would make him feel self-conscious. He just didn’t seem the type to care much about what others thought of him. Then again, she had, like, a total sum of thirty minutes to go by, so how would she know?

For a second she had the feeling he was going to tell her to mind her own beeswax, but after a momentary debate he ran a hand back through his wild black hair and eyed her as if judging just how much truth she could actually handle.

“I’m no’ sure you want tae know that,” he said cautiously, his body listing to the left. He was bleeding once more. With a tsk of sound she put her cup down and grabbed more 5-×-5s. She came up to him and approaching with a little caution she pressed them over his saturated bandage and leaned her weight into him. It pushed him back against the wall, which was good because it gave her a little counterforce.

“It’s kind of the elephant in the room no matter how you look at it,” she said, daring a look up at him. His amber eyes glittered in the muted light of the room, reminding her that her lamp lay on the floor. That made her frown. She’d found it in an antique barn for a song. It’d been one of her favorite acquisitions.