He was too. Damn tired of it. The floor beneath his feet trembled. The walls expanded and contracted. The light overhead swayed. The child’s eyes grew large and round. She looked to the one standing behind his grandmother.
“I can take down the house. You’re fast. I know you’re fast, but you’re not goin’ to be able to save the kid. You take somethin’ of mine, lady, and I’m gonna take somethin’ you love.”
The scent, not the blood scent, but the other, the one he’d smelled in the swamp was getting to him. Flooding his lungs. Doing something to the chemistry of his body, so that he felt alive in every cell, with every breath. He told himself it was adrenaline, but he knew it was far more than that, and it was dangerous. Just the beckoning, exotic scent of her, like a mixture of jasmine and silken sheets.
The little girl stood up, and the floor trembled, throwing her back to the ground. Behind Nonny, the woman gave a small cry and tossed the knife to the floor. His grandmother didn’t move, but remained standing in front of the woman, clearly protecting her.
“That was unnecessary, Wyatt. She wouldn’t have hurt me. She was protectin’ her child. Both of them were shot by the same men who pushed me down in the swamp. I’m of a mind to go huntin’ them with my squirrel gun.”
He ignored the warning note in his grandmother’s voice. She didn’t know what she was dealing with. This was no ordinary woman and child. He couldn’t feel the psychic energy, that was true, but they were both enhanced and that didn’t bode well for anyone in the room – especially his grandmother.
“Step out from behind Grand-mere. I want to see your hands.”
The room had settled. He kept an eye on the child. She was no ordinary toddler, that was for certain. She’d stayed too still. She hadn’t made a sound, not even when the ground shook and she’d been frightened. Her reactions seemed more animal than human to him. She would be unpredictable and he wasn’t dismissing the possibility that she was dangerous – not after seeing the reactions of the guards at the Wilson Plastics compound.
The woman took one step to her right – toward the baby. She didn’t look at the child, but he had the feeling she communicated with her. The woman was small, but she had all the curves a woman should have and then some. Her hair was thick and dark, like a pelt, woven into some intricate braid, but what was most unusual were the strange dark patterns stamped into the mass of nearly blue black hair.
For one moment, his entire being focused wholly on her. His heart did a curious somersault and his cock stirred in spite of the circumstances. She was built for long, lazy nights on the bayou, and images of her naked and writhing beneath him came out of nowhere.
Her eyes were unusual. Large. Framed with heavy black lashes. The color was difficult to define. One moment they looked normal to him, a deep nearly purple violet, nearly as rich as her hair, but there was a diamond ring around the dark center that spread through the darker color like a starburst. She was small, curvy and compact. Even from where he was standing, he could see the defined muscles in her slender arms and shapely legs – and he’d seen her run with a bullet wound in her.
He hadn’t been with a woman in a long time and he’d always been careful to stay away from the wild ones, because he knew himself. He was jealous and mean and wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off them once he got started. He’d sworn off women and he had no heart. He was blaming the momentary lapse on the knife. Bayou men loved women with knives – at least those in his family.
“How bad is it?” he asked, to break the tension and distract her – and himself. “And please don’ grab the baby like you’re thinkin’ and dive out the window. I don’ want to be fixin’ the damn thing tonight, and Grand-mere would have my hide for scarin’ you.”
Le Poivre, more simply called Pepper, tried not to stare at the mouthwatering man who had interrupted Nonny cleaning and binding their wounds. She had seen him in the swamp, just earlier, casually giving a guard a beating. He’d fascinated her with his fluid movement, the sheer savagery of his attack, the casual way he kept at the guard. He’d been breathtaking. Poetry in motion. Fascinating.
He’d walked into his grandmother’s parlor knowing she was there, but he’d entered with supreme confidence anyway. He dominated the room. Commanded it. She was used to men thinking they were in control, but none of those men had Nonny’s grandson’s command. Or his sheer sexual pull.
Everything about him screamed sensuality, from his dark, wavy hair to his hooded, intense eyes and a mouth that told her he could kiss the socks off a woman. She knew a dangerous man when she saw one, and this one looked like an avenging angel. She wondered, for just one moment, how it would feel to have a man like that charging to her rescue as he so clearly was doing with his grandmother.