“Look, Lindsey, it’s none of my business—”
“No, it’s not,” I interrupted, certain I knew where she was heading with this. And immediately I felt guilty with my impatience. “Look, I just…I need to be sure.”
I didn’t want to tell her about my dreams of Rafe or how thrilled I’d been to see him. Both of these things were wrong if I was committed to Connor. But I couldn’t deny that I felt an excitement when Rafe was near. Was it just because he was novel and Connor was familiar?
“It’s not fair to Connor,” Kayla said.
“It’ll be unfair if I take doubts into our future.”
Without waiting for her to respond, I got up and walked out of our tent. I felt Rafe’s presence before I even saw him. He was back in the shadows near our tent. I felt his gaze fall on me. There was so much power behind it, he might as well have touched me. I grew hot, just as I had in my dreams. I crossed my arms over my chest as I walked over to him, because I was afraid I wouldn’t have the strength of will not to touch him.
“I wanted to thank you for the blackberries.” It was an inadequate start to the conversation, but how could I explain that I’d just needed to see him again?
“The blackberries?” It sounded as though he’d shoved out the words through clenched teeth.
I swallowed hard. “And for saving my ass.”
“I can’t believe”—he shook his head before continuing—“I can’t believe you went off by yourself.”
“These are my woods,” I stated emphatically. “Our woods. I’ve always felt safe in them.”
“They’re not safe anymore. Don’t you get it?” he whispered harshly. “If anything had happened to you, if I hadn’t been there—it would have killed me.”
Before I realized what he intended to do, he grabbed me, pulled me to him, and slashed his mouth across mine, kissing me with a ferocity that left me shaking and clinging to him as though I were suddenly drowning and he were my only hope.
I’d always thought a kiss was just a kiss. I’d been wrong. My body responded with a wild thrumming—I was a string on a harp that had been plucked and was now vibrating with a sweet sound. The kiss was hotter than any I’d ever received from Connor.
Or maybe it was just that the chemistry between Rafe and me was different. I wound my arms around his neck and pressed up against him. He drew me even closer to him, with one arm against my back and his other hand threading its way through the tangle of my hair. It seemed like he intended never to let me go. We were so close together that I wasn’t sure where my body ended and his started. Moonlight couldn’t have seeped between us.
Even as I relished the incredible pleasure pouring through me, my mind was screaming that this was wrong, so wrong. I belonged to Connor. I was his. It was decided.
I broke off the kiss and staggered backward. Breathing heavily I stared at Rafe, trying to understand what had just happened. He held out a hand toward me. “Lindsey—”
“No,” I whispered. Whatever he was going to say, I didn’t want to hear it. “That was wrong.”
Turning on my heel, I raced back to my tent with the truth pounding through my mind. There were things in the forest more dangerous than cougars, more dangerous even than Bio-Chrome.
NINE
It was nearly dark the next night when we finally reached the entrance to the park. I’d spent the entire day avoiding looking at Rafe, like I was afraid that I’d burst into flames if we made eye contact or that Connor would somehow find out Rafe and I had kissed.
I felt as though I needed a more powerful word to describe what had happened last night—kiss just didn’t cut it. The intensity of the encounter was probably just brought on by fear and relief and the whisper of danger that surrounded us. But still, it had left me shaken and unsettled.
“So it’s agreed? You’re going to go with Rafe tomorrow, show him the lab?” Lucas asked as we gathered at the park entrance.
“Yeah, dude, sure,” Dallas replied.
“I have a motorbike,” Rafe said. “We should be able to make good time. How about I meet you at dawn?”
“I’m not really an up-at-dawn kinda guy,” Dallas said. “How about mid-morning?”
They agreed on a time, and Rafe left with Dallas. I wondered if he planned to keep watch over the ex-Bio-Chrome employee all night. Kayla and I had a group of bird watchers to take out the following morning. Lucas had decided that he and Connor should go to Wolford and talk with the elders.
“We’ll leave in the morning,” Connor told me. “Want to catch a movie tonight?”
I nodded, trying to sound enthusiastic when I said, “Yeah.”
I needed some Connor time, desperately, but I was so afraid that he was going to discover my lapse in loyalty the night before. Even if adrenaline had brought on the kiss, I should have been strong enough to resist. My problem was that I wasn’t sure I’d wanted to resist.
It was with a sense of relief that I walked into my cabin, as though four walls could somehow protect me from myself, from these never-before-felt feelings I had toward Rafe. It didn’t help that Kayla had been studying me all day as though she expected me to break at any moment.
“Something happened last night when you went to talk to Rafe, didn’t it?” she asked as she dropped her backpack on her bed.
“Don’t have time to talk about it. Connor and I have a date.” I walked into the bathroom and took a hot shower. Starting tomorrow, I’d have a couple of days without Connor or Rafe. Alone with my thoughts, maybe I could figure things out.
Meanwhile, I wanted to look my best for Connor, but for some reason I wasn’t satisfied with anything I did. My hair was flat, my makeup boring. The saving grace was my outfit: a short white skirt, a purple strapless top, and my white denim jacket. I even wore sandals with short heels. They made me feel sexy.
Judging by the low whistle that Connor gave when I stepped outside, he agreed. It made me feel a little less guilty about what had happened the night before.
The moon was a little larger and brighter tonight. Connor and I decided to walk to town. It would mean catching a later movie, but I was more interested in our being together than in what movie we were going to watch. Holding hands, we walked along in companionable silence. I tried not to think about Rafe but I was worried about him going off to find the Bio-Chrome lab by himself. Well, not totally by himself, of course. Dallas would be with him, but I didn’t see him as being much of a fighter if they got into trouble.