Draw One In The Dark(29)

No, this was worse than the lion. She turned facedown on the mattress and buried her face on her pillow.



The bedroom was in deep darkness, partly because it was the only room in the entire house that had only one tiny window—very small and high up on the upper corner of the back wall. Now she wondered if the full light of day was near.



What kind of an idiot was she?



Was she now suddenly attracted to hard-luck cases? She'd always laughed at women who came to the diner and, over breakfast with their equally clueless friends, complained about being disappointed by men that, surely, they knew were no good from the beginning. If you picked up with ex-cons, drug addicts, thieves—how could you expect anything good to come of it? Why would they respect you when they'd never respected another human being?



She knew this. So, why would she take this one in? Why? He wasn't even any good at being bad. He was a mess of trembling jelly between bouts of dangerous behavior.



She remembered him in the parking lot, under the moonlight. Pale skin and muscle-sculpted body, and those eyes . . .



Okay, so he was pretty. Since when was pretty worth all this trouble? The world was full of handsome men who weren't her problem. Men who would run the first time she turned into a panther.



And there was the problem, and there she came to and stopped. Because for all else that might be said for Tom, he wouldn't run.



Neither—probably—would Officer Trall. She remembered the disturbing moment when he'd lowered his glasses and fixed her with those recognizable golden eyes that, even in human form, with normal sclera, iris, and pupil, were unmistakable. And he looked just as good in human form.



She threw back the covers.



Again, pretty he might be, but that man was trouble. Pure trouble. He was a shifter, yes, but he was also a police officer. And what did the officer want with her? Why did he want to meet her? She was not so innocent that she didn't notice—of course she did—that he'd mentioned the bathroom, which meant the paper towels. Was it a threat? Was he blackmailing her? Blackmailing her into what?



She remembered the lion in the parking lot of the Athens—virile and energetic and very, very male.



She bit her lip. She wished she could convince herself that it would take a lot of blackmail to get her to what the Victorians called a fate worse than death. But she doubted it. If Tom hadn't been there, if he hadn't pulled her into the car, she very much suspected she would have shifted and . . .



And then there was Tom. His image flickered through her mind, as she tossed her thin blanket and turned first this way, then that. He'd been so gentle, so . . . respectful, when he helped dress her shoulder. Which, by the way, should hurt, shouldn't it?



She sat up in bed and prodded at her bandaged areas, but nothing hurt. Perhaps the antibiotic cream was also an analgesic. She had a bad habit of buying whatever was on sale without reading it too carefully. Well, just as well it didn't hurt. She lay down again, and closed her eyes.



But her thoughts went on behind her closed eyelids.



What was she going to do with Tom? Did she have to do anything with Tom? How far was she responsible for him?



She saw his features close at her comment, she saw his lost expression, all pale face and huge, shocked eyes. She saw him the parking lot, dragon-form, muzzle bloodstained, and in the bathroom of the Athens, all over blood, his long, dark hair caked with it. She saw him in her living room, half-dragon and mostly man, clearly out of control.



What had he meant to do? Attack the officer? Why? For speaking out of turn?



All right. So, Rafiel Trall might have sounded like he was blackmailing her—blackmailing them. But she wasn't sure he was. There was something to his expression—a softness, a hopefulness . . . that made her doubt that he meant to threaten her. And even if he were. What did Tom mean to do? Eat him? Was he so devoid of any sense of right and wrong? Had no one ever told him you didn't eat people? Ever?



The bed felt too hard, the blanket too hot, the sheet too wrinkled beneath her tossing body.



She was never aware of the moment at which she fell into a dreamless sleep.





* * *




Kyrie woke up with the phone ringing.



The phone was on the dresser, across the room from the bed. The ring itself, seeming to run up and down her nerves like fire, carried her halfway there, still asleep, and she woke up fully with the receiver pressed to her ear, while she heard herself say "Hello" in a sleepy voice.



"Ms. Smith?" the voice on the other side was a masculine purr, dripping with sensuousness that caressed the syllables, making the "Ms." sound dangerously like "Miss" and "Smith" sound like a compliment, an indent proposition.