Moon, Bitten

Chapter Ten

            Kate dropped her clutch and Julie’s ridiculously high heels clattered somewhere to the floor as she flattened her back firm against the door. Every bit of her awareness tuning to the fierce cadence of her rapid heart as it hummed a frantic rhythm against her breast. Each flitting breath commencing sharply as her ears strained for the sound of tires turning over gravel.

          She pressed her hand over her heart, feeling it beat promptly against her palm at an exhilarating rate, propelled wildly by every intangible, invigorating feeling that now tingled with unfathomable stirrings at the remembrance of Ronan’s touch, a touch deemed most intoxicating. Never had a man, especially one so formidable at face value, touch her with such surprising coaxing gentleness, yet with an underlining hint of dominance that stoked her inner fears. She had felt his possessiveness in each assured stroke of his fingers as they had whisked brazenly over her.

          He’s all wrong for you. Her subconscious warned subtly. And she knew it but somehow couldn’t dismiss the attraction.

          She shook her head as if to rattle some sense into her scrambled thoughts as to what she was feeling. She couldn’t feel any particular way for this man, especially a man who was very much a stranger and every bit the danger she was fleeing whose reputation bespoke of all the troubles she feared.

          She couldn’t pinpoint it – but a small part of her believed Ronan the worse kind of danger.

          She barely knew the man and yet she felt –

          Groaning inwardly, she swept her hands through her tousled hair, recalling how he had entangled those lean, masculine fingers through its length.

          What was wrong with her?

          She shouldn’t feel a smidge of stirring for this insanely good-looking Adonis donned in leather? What did an extremely attractive man such as him want with someone like her? But she felt something, almost akin to a thin, obscured thread that drew her to him – a fierce and enigmatic urge to be with him that couldn’t be explained. He had stoked something in her, at first the tiniest of stirrings had somehow flared precariously to a fiery and unwarranted burning that seared her from the inside out.

          Surely it was nothing and whatever she felt would later prove to be an equivalent of a school girl’s crush for a man way out of her league.

          She had to remember her purpose for being at BlackMountain and so far she was doing a pitiful job at laying low. If Danny found her, he would see to making her life a living hell or worse even.

          She shuddered at the latter thought as a tremor coiled down her spine.

          Please … she prayed silently, closing her eyes.

           

          Kate breathed in a steadying breath and quickly dismissed every ugly and ominous thought of Danny that had somehow seeped unknowingly to the forefront of her mind. She welcomed the distraction of Julie dashing for the stairs above her and immediately sought to wipe the terror-stricken expression from her face. Julie was prone to vast and ongoing questions – questions that Kate certainly didn’t want to answer.

          She darted for the kitchen, her ridiculously high-heels and clutch forgotten.

          “You’re home!” Julie exclaimed eagerly.