Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [862]
“All right.” She hesitated for a moment, then started walking toward the cabin, her boots crunching in the snow. “Bring some firewood while you’re at it. Folks use this place as a trail shelter now, so you should find some in the shed out back.”
He waited until she had gone inside the log shelter before he pulled his weapons duffel out of the plane and headed around to look for the woodshed. The Arctic air slapped at him as he strode through the unspoiled snow. He welcomed the chafe of the bitter, cold weather. He needed the clarity of the icy wind.
And still he burned inside for Alex.
He wanted her badly, and it would take nothing short of a glacier swallowing him whole to douse any of the heat that she ignited in him.
CHAPTER
Fourteen
Alex walked into the one-room cabin and closed the door behind her to seal out the cold and, she hoped, steal a minute of privacy so she could deal with the tumult going on inside her. She leaned back against the weathered panel and exhaled a long, tremulous sigh. “Get a grip on yourself, Maguire.”
She wanted to pretend the kiss didn’t mean anything, that the simple fact Kade had pulled away first should tell her that even he thought letting things get heated between them was a bad idea. Except things were already heated. More than heated, and denying it wasn’t going to make the fact go away. There wasn’t anywhere far enough that Alex could run to outpace the desire she had for Kade. And the kicker was, she didn’t want to run from that feeling. For the first time in her life, there was something that scared the hell out of her but didn’t make her itchy to bolt.
No, even worse, her feelings for Kade made her want to draw closer to him.
Scarier still, she felt that Kade might be someone strong enough to lean on, strong enough for her to open up to—really open up to—about everything she’d been holding inside her for so long. Some part of her wanted to believe he might be the one man strong enough to stand beside her through any storm, even one thick with monsters, where the night had teeth and the wind roared, bloodthirsty with hunger.
Kade would stand with her.
Alex knew that in much the same way she had always known when someone lied to her. Although she couldn’t seem to read him as she could other people, the same innate sense of hers told her that it was because Kade was unlike other people in some way. He was unlike any man she’d ever met or might ever meet again.
That same odd but unshakable instinct had been at work on the flight out from Harmony, when she had come so close to telling him the truth—all of it—about why she and her dad had fled Florida. The truth about what exactly had killed her mom and little brother.
It had been a struggle to work against the impulse that wanted her to let Kade in, and as she’d tossed him the polished lie that she’d used on so many others without the slightest compunction, not being honest with Kade had made her feel awful. Imagine that—she’d withheld one of the most fundamental truths about herself from everyone in Harmony who’d known her since she was a child, yet after just a few days of flirting with a stranger, she was ready to lay it all out on the line for him.
But Kade wasn’t a stranger to her now. He hadn’t felt like a stranger, not even that first night in the back of the church, when his bright silver eyes had met her gaze across the room.
And if all they’d been doing in the time since was merely flirting, then why did her heart feel like it was battering against her sternum every time she was near him? Why did she feel, against all logic and reason, that she belonged with this man?
With the cold of past memories and the uncertainty of the future crowding in on her, she needed something strong and warm to hold on to.
Not just anything, or anyone … but him.
She needed Kade’s warmth now—his strength—even if only for a little while.
The woodshed in back of the cabin had a decent supply of seasoned, split logs, kept dry and stacked inside the snug outbuilding that bore Henry Tulak’s initials above the door. It was