The Untamed Heart. Kit Gardner

know.” Tucking the rifle under one arm, she pushed open the door. Huck awaited her at the foot of the porch steps, shaggy black tail pumping back and forth, tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth. She didn’t pause to ruffle his ears. “C’mon, boy.”

      In long, loping strides, she set out across the field, Huck hunkering low into his trot right at her side. Dew clung to her boots and dampened her pants clear to her knees. The air hung still, chilled and eerily calm, the silence broken only by the swishing of her boots through the grass. And then he howled again and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The sound echoed up into the trees like the wail of a dying animal.

      She quickened her pace, bursting into the clearing with the rifle gripped at the ready. She went instantly still. So did Huck beside her.

      Devlin stood with his back to her, straight and still as a hundred-year-old sycamore, swathed in some mysterious cocoon of unawareness. He wore nothing except a pair of very tight black pants that looked as if they had been cut off to grip just below his knees. His legs were exceptionally lean and long muscled, nothing like the tree trunks that had powered her father and brothers through the mines for years. But though she’d seen her brothers in all stages of undress throughout their youth and into manhood, she’d never been so suddenly and completely fascinated with the shape of a man’s legs, the tapering breadth of his bare back or the meaty muscles of his buttocks.

      Not even on the knoll.

      The sun rising over the treetops colored his skin coppery gold and set his unbound black hair aflame with blue. Despite the air’s chill, his shoulders glistened with a smooth, dewlike sheen.. All along the curve of shoulder and bicep, his muscles rippled below the thinness of skin even as he stood motionless. Willie bit her lip, disturbingly aware of a desire to feel the heat of all that skin and sinew beneath her palms. Her blood hammered a pulse in her ear. Her mouth went dry.

      Lightning quick he moved. One leg arced up at an inhumane angle toward the nearest thick tree, stirring the leaves that hung above his head. It was an explosion of energy and movement in the span of one heartbeat. Had she blinked she would have missed it. Had he misjudged his distance or his angle, he would have driven his bare foot into the thick, gnarled trunk.

      She didn’t breathe. He paused, again motionless, soundless, and yet he stood as if every muscle poised at the ready to respond to some invisible enemy. His scream erupted, blood chilling and eerie. And then in an explosion of movement, he lunged at the tree, legs arcing, arms firing. With fists and feet he beat into the bark, spun, then jumped in a frenzied attack, punctuating each blow with a low, guttural shout that seemed to bring a surge of power to each strike.

      Willie watched in horror, expecting blood to be streaming from his hands, legs and feet. But there was none. The man was crazy. Still, as Willie watched, her horror became fascination. There was a mystical beauty to his movements, something she couldn’t comprehend or define. He was more animal than human, more mysterious than the wolf, more dangerous.

      Willie drew the rifle against her chest. She took one step back. A twig cracked beneath her boot. She froze.

      Devlin spun toward her and went instantly still. Hell’s fire blazed in his eyes. His chest barely moved with his breaths. Fists clenched against his thighs. Arm muscles popped. His legs braced wide, gripped and taut, ready to strike again.

      In that moment, he was everything wild and hungry and beautiful that Willie could have ever imagined. And he was all male, his masculinity so blatantly displayed by his skinmolding britches she felt her legs turn to water and the blood rush in her ears. The rifle slipped from her hands.

      He moved toward her with great powerful strides and all she could see was the sun reflected in his eyes and the curl of his lip, like that of a ravenous wolf. She whirled, tripped and felt the ground tip under her feet.

       Chapter Four

      Sloan caught her arm and lifted her back against him. “There’s nothing to fear here, Wilhelmina. Except your gun, and it’s on the ground. Can you stand?”

      She spun around in a whirl of coppery curls that fell to her hips. “Of course, I can stand,” she snapped, shoving up her chin just to make certain he could see the determination in her eyes. His touch had obviously driven the fear out of her. She took one step back, then another, blinking as if she didn’t know what to do with her eyes. Skittish, not naive. The broken heart had no choice but to cloak itself in a thick wall of defense. As he watched her draw the black dog close against the side of her leg, he wondered if she had good reason to hate all men, or fear them.

      “I heard you howling. I thought you were calling to the wolves. But you weren’t.”

      He felt an unexpected surge of satisfaction. She was more curious than afraid. “Wolves howl to confuse an enemy.”

      She glanced at the tree. “Is that what you were doing?”

      “It’s called a kiai.” He watched her lips move in silent repetition. Perhaps she could understand what others never could. Maybe she would see beyond labeling him a madman and a peculiarity. “The kiai brings power to a blow and can confuse an assailant.”

      “What assailant?”

      Sloan inclined his head at the tree and watched her. “My imaginary opponent.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “You were fighting a tree.”

      “I could spend an entire lifetime perfecting my movements and mental awareness fighting that tree. I’ve fought many before, straw pads before that, even wet sand.”

      “That’s why your hands don’t bleed.” She watched him extend his fingers along his thighs. “Do all men fight trees in England?”

      “None that I’ve known.”

      “It’s like an art form.”

      “As much as any other.”

      “You could kill someone with your hands.”

      He looked into her eyes and saw a spark of suspicion flare. “I never have.”

      “But you would.”

      “The way of the empty hand is not to kill, but to defend, even to the death.”

      “The empty hand. You mean, no gun.”

      “No weapon.”

      “That’s unheard-of here. Everyone carries a gun.”

      “That’s why everyone needs to. I’ve never felt a need to prove that I can fight. I still believe disputes can be solved peaceably. Many battles are won without firing a single bullet.”

      “Not here.”

      “Not even in England.” He watched a bird soar high overhead. “It’s always better to walk away from trouble, even if it’s the tougher course.”

      “Trouble inevitably follows.”

      “Then you deal with it, efficiently.” His gaze rested on her. “You’re not satisfied.”

      “I’m never satisfied.”

      “I believe it. Maybe you wish to learn.”

      Her face lit with the wonder of a child untainted by grief or despair. In an instant, the defenses vanished. He felt something twist in his belly, a pain and longing so deep his breath caught.

      “You can teach me to move like you do?” she asked.

      “Not in one day, or a year. It’s part of the ancient ancestral heritage of an island race in the Orient, based on the teachings of the monks that live in the mountains in a place called Ryukyu.”

      “You were born there?”

      His fists flexed. “I’ve never been to Ryukyu.