“I don’t give a fuck about the damned pact, Seraphina.”
“That didn’t stop you from using it as an excuse to make me feel like an idiot.”
Sparks ignited in the shadowed pools of his eyes. “If you really think my walking away from you that night had anything to do with the pact, then you are an idiot.”
She sucked in a breath, ready to hurl a curse at him, but he didn’t give her the chance.
In less than a pace, he closed the distance between them. One strong hand slid into her loose hair and around her nape. The other splayed against her lower spine as he drew her to him and took her mouth in a blazing hot, hungry kiss.
Seraphina moaned as pleasure and need swamped her. Her breasts crushed against the firm, muscled slabs of his chest. Against her belly, his cock was a thick, solid ridge of heat and power and carnal demand. Hunger tore through her, quicksilver and molten. It burned away her anger, obliterated her outrage and frustration. As he deepened their kiss and his tongue breached her parted lips, all she knew was need.
She speared her fingers into his thick, soft waves and clung to him, lost in desire and oblivious of their surroundings. Willing to ignore everything so long as Jehan was holding her like this, kissing her as if he’d been longing for it as much as she had.
He drew back on a snarled curse and looked at her. His eyes snapped with embers, his pupils nothing but vertical slits in the middle of all that fire. His wet lips peeled back off his teeth and fangs as he drew in a deep breath, scenting her like the predatory being he truly was.
For a moment, she thought he was about to pick her up and carry her off to some secluded corner of the camp as if he owned her. She wouldn’t have fought him. God, not even close.
But as they stood there, Sera felt a subtle sting start to needle her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes started to burn, then the next breath she took carried the grit of fine sand to the back of her throat.
The storm.
It was arriving even sooner than Karsten had warned.
She didn’t have to tell Jehan. Pulling her close, he tucked her head against his chest and rushed with her toward the nearest outbuilding as the night began to fill with a roiling swell of yellow dust.
CHAPTER 10
By the time they reached the aluminum-roofed storage building several yards ahead, the biting wind had picked up with a howl. Sand churned across the camp, blowing as thick as a blizzard.
His body still charged with arousal, Jehan held Seraphina against him as he threw open the rickety wooden door. “Inside, quickly.”
She no sooner entered the shelter than a muffled cry somewhere amid the storm drew both of them to full alert. The voice was small, distant. Unmistakably terrified.
“Yasmin.” Seraphina’s face blanched with worry. “Oh, God. The little girl who came to greet us when we arrived. She and some other children ran off to play a few minutes ago.”
The cry came again, more plaintive now. There was pain in the child’s voice too.
Jehan cursed. “Stay here. I’ll find her.”
Without waiting for her to argue, he dashed back into the night using the speed of his Breed genetics. The little girl’s wails were a beacon through the blinding sea of flying sand. Jehan followed her cries to a deep ditch on the far side of the camp. At the bottom of the rugged drop, her small body lay curled in a tight ball.
“Yasmin?”
At the sound of her name, she lifted her head. Agony and terror flooded her tear-filled eyes. The poor child was shaking and sobbing, choking on the airborne sand.
Jehan jumped down into the ditch. Crouching low beside her, he sheltered her with his body as the sandstorm roiled all around them. “Are you hurt?”
Her dark head wobbled in a jerky nod. “My leg hurts. I was trying to hide from my friends, but I fell and they all ran away.”
Jehan gingerly examined her. As soon as his palm skated over her left shin and ankle, he felt the hot pain of a compound fracture. The break streaked through his senses like a jagged bolt of lightning. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get you out of here.”
He collected Yasmin into his arms and carried her up from the ditch. At the crest of it, Seraphina was waiting. A heavy blanket covered her from head to toe as a makeshift shield from the storm. She opened her arms as Jehan strode toward her, enveloping him and the child as the three of them made their way across the camp.
“She needs a medic,” he informed Seraphina as she murmured quiet reassurances to the scared child. “I felt two fractures in the lower part of the left fibula, and a fairly bad sprain in the ankle.”
Seraphina’s brows knitted for a second, then she acknowledged with a nod. “The medical building is in the center of camp. This way.”