And his first step was taking care of the one loose end he had left out there.

When Kat returned to the bedroom with a tray of food, having noted that he seemed to grow stronger the more he ate, he was asleep. Luckily what she had prepared was cold-cut sandwiches and macaroni salad. It would keep. She placed the tray gingerly on the bedside table, not wanting to wake him.

Then the lights went out with an audible grinding down of all the background sounds in the house, including the television and the weather report. She gasped reflexively as total blackness surrounded her. At the sound of her surprise, her patient shot upright in bed, grabbed her right off her feet, pinning her to the mattress underneath him, his large hand grasping at her throat until she couldn’t breathe. She choked, her hands pushing hard at the wall of his chest, her whole body trying to buck him off her. But it was like trying to dislodge a mountain. He would not be moved until he wanted to be moved. Obviously in his shocked confusion he had mistaken her for a threat and, even as she panicked for lack of air, a calm part of her mind wondered what kind of world it was that he came from that made him perceive threats around every corner. Considering his wounds, it was probably a greatly dangerous one.

She knew her only hope was to make him realize she wasn’t the threat he thought she was. So she went against every natural instinct she had to fight, dropped her hands, and relaxed completely beneath him. At the very least he might think she was already dead, threat neutralized.

It was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.

And it worked. Through the darkness she saw his face change as awareness settled onto him.

“Jesus God!” he said explosively, launching himself off her and out of the bed. He stumbled, the bedcovers tangling around his legs, and fell hard onto his backside. Kat meanwhile was dragging for much needed air, her bruised throat rasping as she coughed and tried to breathe in through an equally bruised windpipe.

“Good God, Kat lass, I’m so bloody sorry.”

He was scrambling over to her the very next second, back on the bed and running his big hands around her head. Jesus, she felt so small in between his hands. But the way he was touching her now, as if he might break her, made her also feel somehow treasured. It was a ridiculous perception, considering he’d just tried to kill her.

“It’s okay,” she lied with a cough. Well, in a way it wasn’t a lie. She was alive, wasn’t she? And she knew he hadn’t meant to hurt her.

“No, it bloody is no’! Lord help me, look at your wee throat. ’Tis bruising.” Shaking fingertips stroked her along the length of her throat and an inexplicable shiver of warmth trembled through her. Then, out of nowhere, he dropped his head down and pressed a gentling kiss at the corner of her lips, their breaths exchanging as each tried to calm theirs for their own reasons.

“It’s okay,” she whispered again, her words making the side of her mouth brush against the side of his. She could feel several days’ worth of stubble against her lips, could feel the way he was shaking for fear he’d hurt her. It calmed her. Calmed her breathing. Cleared away whatever remaining fear his actions might have caused her to feel.

And through the dark she could see the amber of his eyes. Could see the way they were almost luminescent, in spite of the fact that there wasn’t so much as a streak of lighting to be had anywhere around them. She found herself thinking that they were possibly the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen in her life.

His rapid breathing audibly subsided as well. His eyes seemed to study her face as he pulled slightly away from his brush against her lips. And understanding passed between them there in the dark. Forgiveness was given and accepted. Gears shifted. And suddenly fear and regret had melted away and something else was left in its place. Something she wasn’t sure she exactly understood. Then, as her eyes drifted over his handsome countenance she realized with an internal groan what it was.

She found him attractive. Appealing. Arousing, she thought. Oh God! I’m one of those women who let a man beat on them and then forgive them for it five seconds later!

But why wasn’t that thought keeping her from licking her lips, wetting them with a sort of anxious anticipation.

“Ah, now there’s a pretty picture,” she heard him mutter softly, his eyes fixated on the brief appearance of her tongue.

Ahnvil wanted to doubly curse himself for the fiend that he was. Oh, he had known for the better part of three hundred years that he was as much beast as he was man, a thing that acted more on instinct than it did the rules of civilization, but never had that bothered him more than it was bothering him right then. He’d just tried to kill her, for fuck’s sake! Now what? What was he thinking? He was thinking about how fine her lips might taste. Because the brief touch of his mouth before had done nothing to tell him what it would be like to press his mouth over hers and slip his tongue inside of her mouth. And the minute the curiosity crossed his mind he could no longer think of anything else.

And then, over the idea of a simple kiss, he grew hard. And by the way her eyes widened, she became instantly aware of it.

“I’m a rough beast,” he said, by way of excuse and apology. “Make no mistake about it, Kat lass. I’d never be an easy man tae be with and you’re such a wee thing.”

And instantly he knew it was the wrong thing to say. Or perhaps the very rightest thing he’d ever said because she got her back up in a fiery flash of indignant bourbon eyes.

“I am not small! Nor am I frail! Stop treating me like I’m some kind of porcelain figurine!”

“And you’re tough enough to survive a beast that grabs you by the throat in the middle of the darkness? A beast so used tae fighting for his life he’d crush you wi’out even knowing he was doing so? Wi’out a regret?” he demanded of her angrily.

Her eyes softened in their regard of him. “You sound very much like a man with regret.”

Well, it was hard to argue with that when he took a moment to think about it. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m … Ah, God, Kat lass. I know what I am but I canna think of anything but how fine you’d taste right now. What does that make me in your eyes?”

She swallowed visibly and audibly. She didn’t answer, but her gaze dropped to his mouth and a sort of answering craving seemed to blossom in her eyes. He could see it and he could feel it. Just as true as he could feel himself grow even harder at the very thought of it.