To the side was the bathroom. A tiny cubicle with a bath and toilet. It was dark, heavy with oppressed silence. Next to it was the bedroom Kiowa had never used. He could see the bed from where he stood, the narrow lines unbroken, still perfectly made with the thin sheet that had covered it during the years he had lived there. Alone.

He stepped through the room, heedless of the tracks he made in the dusty floor and entered the kitchen. A chair sat beneath the small table in a corner. The stove and refrigerator separated by the sink on the other wall. The cupboard sat in the same place it always had been, duller, smaller than he remembered. He walked to it, opened the squeaking door slowly and stared inside. The quilt was there, just as perfectly folded as it had been when he placed it on the shelf. A can of beans sat on the bottom shelf. A few magazines on another. It was as empty as his childhood had been. As empty as his life was now. Leaving Amanda had been the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. Reaching out, he touched the quilt, feeling the warmth he remembered feeling, even as a child when his grandfather had thrown it at him. So much rage. His grandfather had hated him with a strength that still had the power to cause regret to well within him.

Had his mother been searching for him when she had died? He assumed it was possible. Vaguely, he remembered a time before his grandfather had brought him to the cabin. Joseph had moved him around a lot, always traveling, always slipping in and out of town in the dead of night. Kiowa’s investigation over the years as he searched for any other family had turned up surprising facts about the man. A religious fanatic. He had been a man that Kiowa often thought would have fit in well with the blood supremacists.

He shook his head wearily. It was too late for answers, the mystery of why his mother had given him into Mulligan’s care would likely always haunt him. For so many years he had thought she had found happiness, that she had put him and his existence to the back of her mind and that she never bothered to think of the child that had been forced on her.

He reached in and gathered the quilt from the shelf, tucking it under his arm as he turned to leave the room. As he turned, he came to an abrupt stop as he came face to face with Amanda. It had been nearly two weeks since he had seen her. Nights filled with a cold emptiness that he felt swallowed by. A loneliness he had never known, not even as a child, had eaten at him. She was dressed as he had often seen her before he was forced to rescue her, mate her. Jeans molded her slender legs and a heavy cream sweater covered her full breasts, the loose material falling just past her hips. Her long beautiful hair flowed around her, thicker, more silken-looking than he remembered.

“Mighty Kiowa,” she said quietly as she leaned against the doorframe. “You’re a tough man to catch up with.”

She was angry. He could smell it on the crisp air that filled the cabin.

“How did you get here?” he asked her rather than answering her comment.

“Dash flew me in when he got word you were sighted in Denver,” she answered calmly, though her hands were clenched as she crossed them over her breasts. “He’s been looking for you ever since I woke up.”

“That doesn’t tell me why you’re here.” He could push past her, continue into the bleak existence he assumed lay outside that cabin door, but he had already walked away from her once, he wasn’t strong enough to do it a second time.

Even angry, the scent of her wrapped around his senses, making him hunger for her with a power that still failed to amaze him.

“Daddy wanted to meet you,” she finally said. “After the celebration of the passing of Breed Law, he wanted to thank you for rescuing me. He was disappointed.”

Kiowa snorted at that. “He didn’t know the truth then.”

“No. Not all of it,” she agreed, breathing in deeply. “Why did you leave like that? Without saying goodbye?”

“I wouldn’t have been able to leave if I had said goodbye, Amanda,” he finally said starkly. “I did it the best I could. And you shouldn’t have followed me like this. It was hard enough to give you back your life. You should have taken it and run.”

“Was that what you did?” She arched her brow mockingly then. “Gave me back my life? I was unaware anyone had stolen it from me.”

His teeth clenched at the deliberate sarcasm in her voice.

“This wasn’t the life you wanted, Amanda,” he snapped then. “You wanted to go home, back to your own dreams.”

“And you couldn’t have been a part of that?” Oh yes, she was angry. The scent of it filled the air like a blast of heat. “Is trotting from hellhole to hellhole more important than being with me? To working out a life we could both be satisfied with?”

He stared at her in surprise before shaking his head in confusion.

“You’re the President’s daughter, Amanda. How easily do you think your world would accept me? A Coyote Breed, one with no last name, no education. How long before you began to see what everyone did and hated me for the life you became trapped within?”

“Oh, poor Kiowa?” She was snarling with her fury. “Aren’t you just so full of self-sacrifice? Or is that bullshit you’re so full of?”

Surprise surged through him, as did a kernel of amusement.

“I’ve been accused of both.” He shrugged as though unconcerned, though a building hope was surging within him.

“I can understand why.” She was flushed, her eyes glittering with anger, her body trembling with it.

“Why are you here, Amanda?” Point-blank, there was no sense in beating around the bush any longer.

“I walked away and gave you what you asked for. After the hell you endured to escape me, what else did you expect?”

“To escape you? You think I went through those nightmarish tests so I could escape you, Kiowa?” she asked incredulously, straightening from the doorframe then as she stared back at him in furious amazement. “I did that for us. For any child we conceived. Do you think I want our children enduring what we had to go through? Being thrown into the morass of emotions and needs that half the time makes no sense and the rest of the time are nothing less than infuriating? What I did, I did for us. Not to escape you.”

He could only stare back at her, pushing back hope, stilling the welling emotions threatening to consume him.

“You wanted to go home,” he reminded her.

“With you,” she cried out. “I wanted you to see my life, too. I wanted you to see the joy of a child’s laughter, sit with you in the evenings and just be at peace. Show you my house that I worked so hard for and fix you dinner from those stupid cookbooks I bought. I wanted you to see the other side before we decided our next move. I didn’t ask you to leave me.”

“So you assumed I could read your mind instead?” He growled in frustration. “Dammit it, Amanda, I could have no more known that was what you wanted than I could have known where a bird would shit next.”

She blinked at the crude phrasing. “That was uncalled for.” Her eyes narrowed warningly. “You expect me to read your mind. To know from one minute to the next what that blank mask you slide into place means. If I can put up with that then you can learn to read my particular mind. It’s not that hard, you know,” she sneered with feminine contempt.

He wanted to laugh out loud. He wanted to let the grin that filled his soul free, but he held it back, watching as she stared at him with fierce fury.

She was his woman. She hadn’t run from it, hadn’t hated him when the heat eased.

“You still don’t get it do you, Kiowa?” she asked him softly, miserably. “I love you. The heat wasn’t just physical. With every touch, every confrontation, you took another piece of my heart. I stopped trying to understand it or to explain it. It’s just there. Then you left as though it didn’t matter.” There was the anger then, fueled by her pain, a pain he couldn’t bear to see.

“I couldn’t force this on you,” he whispered, moving to her, dropping the quilt to the table as he neared her. “I couldn’t stay and not have you, Amanda. Not take you with every breath I have. Don’t you understand that? I had to let you go.”

He stood only inches from her, feeling the warmth of her nearness, smelling not just her anger and her arousal, but something else. Something sweet and clear that seemed to fill the air around her. Love.

“What now?” she asked him solemnly, staring up at him, indecision shadowing her eyes. “I don’t want to lose you, Kiowa. I can’t lose you.”

“You never could.” He touched her face gently, his fingertips relishing the touch of her silken skin and the warmth that vibrated from her flesh. “I love you, Amanda. With everything I am. Every part of me. Soul deep, baby, I love you.”

It was more than a mating heat, more than a biological or chemical reaction. It was, as Kiowa had thought before leaving her, a pairing of souls. It didn’t have to make sense. It didn’t have to be pretty or gentle or kind, and he doubted such pairings ever were. It just was.

“Let’s get out of here.” He picked up the quilt, a part of his past he regretted leaving behind, when he regretted nothing else.

“The dream catcher is in my house now,” she told him fiercely. “If you want it back, I guess you’ll have to endure living with me for a while. I have to finish the school term. Then we can decide what to do.”

He shrugged his powerful shoulders. “I can work anywhere.”

“I guess bouncers are in high demand?” She gave him a laughing look as he led her out the door.

“Well.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “So are independent computer programmers and security analysts. I’ve been doing that for years. Dash just hasn’t accessed the information yet.”

He loved knowing something the other man didn’t. It gave him a real sense of accomplishment.

“I knew you were a bad boy,” she laughed up at him as he pressed a kiss to her forehead and led her from the cabin into the late fall air.

The jeep waited just below the cabin yard. So did the little black stealth helicopter Dash had flown her in on. The other man stood just beside the opened cockpit door a smile flashing across his face as he lifted his hand in farewell. At least for now. Kiowa was under no illusions that the other man wouldn’t try to connive him into helping him again whenever the need arose. Dash Sinclair was determined to find a place in society for the Breeds, and for his own small family. The helicopter lifted into the air on a near silent swirl of wind as Kiowa helped Amanda into the jeep. Closing her door he moved quickly to his own, jumping in and cranking the engine before turning to look at her.

“I think you need to be spanked,” he drawled then. “I’m sure you did something naughty after I left.”

Her face flushed, her eyes glowing then with lust and love and a pleasure he felt clear to the bottom of his feet.

“Oh, I’m sure I was very naughty,” she agreed with a wicked little smile. “You might even have to tie me down and torture me a little bit. Teach me a lesson so to speak.”

His cock, already painfully engorged jerked in his jeans.

He smiled, displaying the longer, curved canines at the side of his mouth.

“I’m going to bite you again,” he promised her then. He ached to feel her beneath him, shuddering as he held her in place with his mouth at her neck, his cock swelling inside her. She glanced at him then from beneath her lashes and licked her lips slowly.

“If I let you.”

Anticipation coiled hot and heavy in his loins then. If she let him. He reversed the jeep and turned quickly, heading down the steep track toward town and the closest damned motel he could check into. He would see just how much she would let him do then. Or more to the point, just how much he could convince her to let him do.

Chapter Twenty-Six