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door, she stood staring at it, listening to the roars of rage from outside, meaty thuds of fists meeting flesh, crashes as bodies met walls or furniture instead and the sounds of splintering wood when they did.

     

      The expectation that the sounds of battle would either diminish very quickly or be accompanied shortly by the wail of sirens went unrewarded. Slowly, her body unable to maintain the heights of panic, the adrenaline rush eked away, leaving weakness in its wake. Wobbling toward her bed, she dropped onto the side of the mattress weakly, plugging her fingers in her ears, trying to master the shaking. After what seemed an ungodly amount of time, the sounds of the fight finally diminished and then ceased completely. As relieved as she was that the fight had ended, visions of bodies laid out in the yard danced in her head. The urge to check and see wasn't hard to suppress. She didn't really want to see the results of the battle, particularly when it occurred to her that she might hear the victor pounding on her door at any moment.

     

      The thick wooden panel and locks suddenly seemed woefully inadequate given the way Con and Balin had been throwing one another around. Scrambling toward the headboard, she coiled herself into a tight ball, listening tensely until she couldn't even maintain that much and her muscles relaxed of their own accord.

     

      The blankness shock had produced evaporated after a while and chaotic thoughts poured into her mind. Uppermost was the question of what had happened. She drew a blank. There were holes in her memory. She'd been too groggy from interrupted sleep and her anger that they were making so much noise there was no chance of any wild animal coming within miles to remember anything very clearly about her trip over to the neighboring cabin. Con's wholly unexpected kiss, to say nothing of the effect it had had on her, had completely fixated her mind from beginning to end.

     

      She had no idea what had been going on in the cabin behind them, or what might be going through the minds of the others, but she doubted very much that they could possibly have gotten the impression that she was struggling to break free. What little resistance she'd managed to muster had been feeble at best and nothing they could've noticed. Even Con didn't seem to have noticed.

     

      That ruled out the possibility, as far as she could see, that it was some chivalrous desire to protect her that had sparked the fight.

     

      Unless they'd been doing some of that macho male talk beforehand, wagering on who could get in her pants fastest or something like that?

     

      The violence of both men's reactions still seemed way too excessive for that supposition. Men talked, especially young men, establishing their manhood with their peers in counting coups with women, she knew, besides their propensity to relive their experiences for the sheer enjoyment of it by talking about them. That still didn't explain the challenge and counter challenge between Con and Balin. For that matter, although it was a while before she recalled it, Jared, Dakota, and Xavier had all been bristling with challenge. Their expressions, every line of their taut bodies, had projected barely leashed violence ready to explode.

     

      So much for her budding theory that they were just ordinary, everyday guys who dressed differently!

     

      If any one of the men had established squatters rights on her and had any reason to think she ‘belonged’ to them, she could've understood hostility—not that excessive, but some challenge. But they hadn't.

     

      She could envision far more easily a group of randy young men egging on the one that had caught her, or watching with relish, hoping to ‘tap that thing’ in their turn.

     

      They'd been drinking. She'd tasted it on Con, but he hadn't been drunk or even close to it. She didn't recall anything about any of the others that had seemed to imply they weren't in