her.
Well, that was a turnaround. She found it a little unnerving to be the subject rather than the observer.
Sliding onto the stool beside her workbench, Vivien indicated the second stool. Dain considered it, and then her, as though he thought one of them might leap up and bite him. He didn't sit.
She cleared her throat. "You said something about a bone?"
"Yes. I'd like your opinion on this." He took a cloth-wrapped bundle from the pocket of his coat and carefully unwrapped it before handing it to her. "I found it in a field about twenty miles northeast of here."
She thought there was more to the story than that, and she thought he wouldn't tell her, even if she asked. Reaching for a pair of gloves out of habit, she snapped them on. Their fingers touched as she took the bone from him, and even through the latex, a charge of electricity leaped between them.
Unnerved, she dropped her gaze, studied the object in her hand. She had to stretch her fingers to encompass the whole of it.
Definitely bone. One side blackened by fire, hot enough to scorch but not hot enough to incinerate.
Frowning, she turned it carefully in her hands. "It's not human…" And yet, it almost was. "The anatomy suggests this animal walks plantigrade" she glanced at him and explained" on a flattened foot, rather than digigrade."
"Digigrade?"
"That means on their toes, like dogs or cats."
Her pulse was strong, loud, pumping a hot current of blood through her veins. The bone in her hand spoke to her. Powerful. Raw. Calling something inside of her.
Her gaze snapped to Dain, to his hard, sexy mouth, drawn taut. A bolt of raw attraction jolted through her, inappropriate, unwelcome.
Frig, not now .
Mortification slapped her. Inexplicable yearning was one more symptom of whatever was slowly driving her mad. Lately, along with the lapses in time, she'd been subject to these escalating sexual urges, fantasies of an unknown shadow lover. They were so powerful, frightening, hitting her at unexpected times, leaving her gasping.
When she'd first recognized what was happening, that the variations to her personality were becoming more intense, more frequent, she'd documented the changes, creating a spreadsheet to follow the pattern. At first, the desires had been weekly, escalating to daily. It had gotten progressively worse. For the past few days, she'd been hard-pressed to keep all her waking thoughts away from fantasies of a nameless, faceless lover.
Only now he had a face. A name. Dain Hawkins. Oh, God .
She wanted to kiss him, suck on his lower lip, bite his skin, taste him, salt and man. Hot, lush, she wanted that, craved it, the taste of him on her tongue, the feel of him flexing above her, pumping into her.
Heat pounded through her, spiraling up, feeding dark, sultry imaginings of him naked against her, skin to hot skin, hard male muscle. She tore her gaze away.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God . What was wrong with her?
The bone almost slid from her hand, and she set it on the table with scrupulous care.
"Sorry," she mumbled, panic biting at her with sharp little teeth. "Sorry."
He was watching her so closely, as though he sensed there was something very wrong. "You look ill," he said, not solicitous, just an observation.
"Some water. From the kitchen. Up the stairs to the left," she murmured, desperate to be alone for just a moment, to catch her breath, to get her thoughts and her cranked libido under control. Get him away from her before she ripped off her clothes, and his, and yanked him close so she could lick him and suck him…
Heat spiraled through her.
Until recently, she'd never felt this way. Never . In fact, she'd spent most of her adult life wondering if her libido was abnormally low.
"Water. Please," she whispered urgently.
His gaze slid to the bone on the table, then back to her. He reached for it, closed his hand around it. Turning away, he strode up the stairs. She watched him go, her gaze riveted on the way his body moved as he