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“Friend?” He snorted under his breath. “That human thinks he’s more than a friend to you.” Jehan’s sharp blue eyes narrowed. “He was more than that at one time, wasn’t he?”
“No.” She shook her head. “We went on a few dates, nothing more. I wasn’t interested in him.”
“But he was interested in you. Still is.”
“You sound jealous.”
He exhaled harshly through flared nostrils. “Call it observant.”
“I called it jealous.” She stepped closer to him in the moonlight, weathering the heat that rolled off his big body and flashed from the depths of his smoldering gaze. His jaw was clamped hard, and the dark-stubbled skin that covered it seemed stretched too tightly across his handsome, perturbed face. “Why the hell should it bother you if Karsten is a friend of mine or something more? It’s not like you have any claim on me. I could go after him right now and there’s really nothing you can say about it.”
A low sound rumbled from deep inside of him. “I would hope you don’t intend to try me.”
“Why? Because of some stupid pact?” Her voice climbed with her frustration. “You don’t even believe in it, but yet you want to pretend we have to live by its terms.”
“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?”
