And then there was that mouth of hers, that outrageously sensual, generous, responsive mouth. He bent forward again slowly, giving her plenty of time to respond as he lowered his mouth to hers. She scowled but didn’t push him away, nor did she say anything, and as his lips brushed hers, she lifted up her face to kiss him back again.

This time the kiss he gave her was gentle and fleeting, while his unruly cock throbbed with the most painful hard-on he’d ever had, and all he wanted to do was rip her clothes off and take her until she screamed with pleasure.

As he lifted his head, he told her, “Sleep now. Tomorrow you can show me how to make the colloidal silver and cast the rune.”

A glint appeared in her eye, which was his warning. “Can I? Oh, thank you, thank you! I’m so glad I can do this since I had absolutely nothing else on my agenda for the day tomorrow, other than serving your needs. Asshole.”

Earlier, her insouciance had made him angry, but this time he laughed. When she would have said more, he put his hand over her mouth.

Looking into her angry eyes, he said, “And when you teach me, I am going to get you a gun, along with silver bullets. It won’t be legal, so you’ll have to keep it hidden, but at least you’ll have an effective weapon you can use if you run across another lycanthrope, and you won’t have to rely on your contact spells.”

Her expression changed, the anger vaporizing. As he lifted his hand away, she said, “You’ve got a deal.”

“Get some rest.” He lifted off her, and in the absence of her body in alignment with his, the air felt cold.

It wasn’t cold enough.

As she curled in the blanket, he left the room, pulling the door closed but not latching it. He grabbed his bag from the kitchen and stepped into the bathroom to take a biting cold shower. Only then did his erection finally subside.

Afterward, he grabbed a blanket from the linen closet and went to the sitting room. The settee wouldn’t be the worst place he had used for a bed.

Robin perched on the arm of a chair near the gas fire, his skinny, hairy arms wrapped around himself. When Nikolas entered the room, the puck glanced at him, then went back to staring at the fire.

Nonverbal, Sophie had said. Possibly trauma induced.

As Nikolas stretched out on the settee and plumped a pillow under his head, he said quietly, “Good night, Robin.”

Just before he closed his eyes, the monkey slipped off the chair and loped back to the bedroom.

Chapter Nine

When Nikolas left the bedroom, Sophie half expected she would lie awake and kick herself for indulging in that stupid kiss. Instead, she fell immediately into a dark pit and slept like the dead, without dreams, until she came alert with a jerk.

The feeling was reminiscent of the first time she had laid eyes on Nikolas, in that blasted vision back in LA. She could sense the day had advanced well past early morning. Ugh, at this rate, she was never going to get her days and nights sorted out. At least she had slept, really slept, and not tossed and turned from nightmares all night long.

A slow, rhythmic scraping sounded from somewhere else in the cottage. It sounded metallic and grated on her nerves. Pushing out of bed, she ran her hands through her hair in a lame effort to tame it somewhat, but it sprang from her fingers in a wild, untamed mess.

She felt dull and hungover, and oh my God, had she really kissed Nikolas last night? Where was her sanity?

I’m not just blaming it on jet lag, she thought. I’m blaming it on post-battle emotions.

She knew others who experienced post-battle highs. The guys she had worked with at the precinct were often edgy and boisterous after a conflict involving violence, and those who were unattached often indulged in one-night stands.

But she never had.

She glared at the bed as if it were responsible for her own lapse in judgment, while the memory of Nikolas’s mouth moving over hers sent a thrill of remembered heat through her body. He was off-the-charts sexy, damn it, and an asshole, two things that were, apparently, her kryptonite.

Sophie Ross, she told herself, you need therapy in the worst way.

Just don’t kiss assholes. That’s all you’ve got to do. You can eat anything you want, drink anything you want, you can do anything else that you want, and if you get into that house like you think you can, you’ll be able to sleep in every morning all you want.

You have one job. Just don’t kiss assholes.

The cottage was cool, and she shivered as she dug through her luggage for a pair of flannel pants and a long-sleeved knit shirt. Donning the clothes, she slipped her feet into flip-flop sandals and went to see what was making that irritating noise.

She found Nikolas in the kitchen. He appeared to have recently showered. He wore another pair of black pants, but he hadn’t put on a shirt yet, and his hair was wet and slicked back, outlining the strong, graceful bone structure of his head, neck, and shoulders.

He had positioned his chair so that he sat in a patch of sunlight streaming in through the window, and he was running a whetstone along the edge of his sword, sharpening it with slow, steady strokes.

She glared at him. His beauty was hard and uncompromising and completely, entirely masculine. Without a shirt, she could see scars on his torso, and for all his lean height, he had the bulky muscle of a swordsman across his shoulders and down his arms and back. The slanting sunlight sliced across his face, highlighting the sharp cheekbones, the bold, straight nose and lean jaw, and it lit the flat surface of his signet ring into a blaze of fiery gold.

So he was mouthwateringly handsome. Inhumanly handsome. So what. Enjoy the view while you’ve got it.