“It makes me so sad.” Behind him, Larkin echoed his thoughts.
He turned to glance at her and froze. The moonlight bathed her nudity in silver. She was a study in ivory and charcoal. Her hair, shoulders and breasts gleamed with a pearl-like luminescence, while shadows threw a modest veil across her abdomen and the fertile delta between her thighs. Rational thought deserted him.
She inclined her head toward Kiko. “She feels the pull of the wild, but can’t respond the way she wants because she’s been trapped in a nebulous existence between wolf and dog, unable to call either world her own.” She fixed her pale eyes on him. “Is that how you feel? Trapped between two worlds?”
He still couldn’t think straight. He understood the question, but his focus remained fixed on her. On the demands of the physical, rather than the intellect. “Larkin…”
She made the mistake of approaching, the moonlight merciless in stripping away even the subtle barrier of the shadows that had protected her. “Your family is such an emotional one, but you’re not, are you?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Don’t be so sure.”
A slow smile lit her face and she tilted her head to one side. With her cap of curls and delicate features, she looked like a creature of myth and magic. “So you are one of the emotional Dantes?”
It took him three tries before he could speak. “If I touch you again, you’ll find out for yourself.” The words escaped, raw and guttural. “And I’ll have broken my promise to Primo.”
For a long moment time froze. Then with a tiny sigh, she stepped back, allowing the shadows to swallow her and returning to whatever fantasy world she’d escaped from. Everything that made him male urged pursuit. He knew it was the moonlight and Kiko’s howling that had ripped the mask of civilization from his more primitive instincts. He fought with every ounce of control he possessed.
As though sensing how close to the edge he hovered, the dog trotted past him to the open doorway. There she sat, an impressive bulwark to invasion.
“You win this time,” he told her. “But don’t count on it working in the future.”
With that, he turned and walked away from a craving beyond reason. And all the while he rubbed at the relentless itch centered in the palm of his hand.
She’d lost her mind. Larkin swept the sheet off the bed and wrapped herself up in its concealing cocoon. There was no other explanation. Why else would she have stripped off her few remaining clothes and walked outside like that, as naked as the day she’d been born? Never in her life had she been so blatant, so aggressive. That had been Leigh’s specialty, not hers.
Leigh.
Larkin sank onto the edge of the bed and covered her face with her hands. What a fool she was, believing for even a single second that she could embroil herself in the Dantes’ affairs and escape unscathed. Maybe if she’d been up front with Rafe from the beginning it would have all worked out. That had been the intention when she’d asked to be assigned to the Dantes reception.
Her brow wrinkled. How had it all gone so hideously wrong? He’d touched her, that’s how. He’d dropped that insane proposition on her and then before she could even draw breath or engage a single working brain cell, he’d kissed her. And she’d lost all connection with reason and common sense because of The Inferno.
The Inferno.
She stared at her palm in confusion. She wanted to believe that it was wishful thinking or the power of suggestion. But there was no denying the odd throb and itch of her palm. She couldn’t have imagined that into existence, could she?
A soft knock sounded on her door. It could be only one person. She debated ignoring it, pretending she was asleep. But she couldn’t. She crossed to the door and opened it, still wrapped in the sheet. He’d pulled on a pair of sweatpants and seemed relieved to see that she’d covered up, as well.
“It’s late,” she started, only to be cut off.
“I’m sorry, Larkin. Tonight was my fault.” He leaned against the doorjamb and offered a wry smile. “I thought I could control what happened.”
“Not so successful?”