Kindling The Darkness. Jane Kindred

into him.

      Oliver steadied her, instinctively avoiding her arm and shoulder, instead catching her about the waist. His hands nearly circled her. Lucy looked up into his intense russet eyes. There were similar-colored highlights in the salt-and-pepper hair, and what she’d thought of as a tan was a matching cinnamon-bark undertone in his skin, evenly warm...everywhere.

      Her spine twitched as she resisted a full-body shiver. This was no time to indulge her overactive wyvern hormones. It would be a disastrous mistake. She breathed in his scent—a damp, dusty smell like the desert after rain when the creosote bushes released their resin. She could swear she felt one of her ovaries dropping an egg.

      “No, no. Hell, no.” Lucy pushed his hands away and pulled on the rest of the robe, tying it with a jerk. Her hands were sweating.

      Oliver blinked and took a step back, his expression mortified. “That wasn’t a move. I was just trying to make sure you didn’t crack your head on the basin.”

      “I know it wasn’t a damn move. I wasn’t talking to you.”

      He blinked again. “Who...who were you talking to?”

      Lucy’s head was starting to throb. She groaned and clutched it in both hands, unconsciously rubbing the spots at her hairline where a pair of ruby dragon horns had protruded just hours ago.

      “Are you all right?”

      Lucy shook her head and regretted it. “I need to go home.”

      “You can’t drive in this condition.”

      “Don’t tell me what I can do.”

      Oliver sighed patiently. “Your injuries aside, when was the last time you slept?”

      “I don’t sleep.”

      “You don’t sleep.”

      “I don’t have time. I catch a power nap when I can.” The truth was that she couldn’t sleep at this time of month. And she really had to stop smelling his desert-dusty-rain smell right goddamn now.

      Lucy pushed past him and headed for the door. She wasn’t sure if it was chivalry or indifference that kept him from trying to stop her as she advanced into the hallway weaving like a drunk. She stumbled and landed on her ass on the carpet runner at the top of the stairs. Good move. Idiot.

      Oliver stood watching her, arms folded, from the doorway of the bathroom. “Would you like the double bed or the queen?”

      She let out a low growl of defeat. “Can I just sleep here? Maybe put a grave marker on it and call it done.”

      He laughed, his right cheek dimpling in a way that made her want to growl more. “I’ll get you a blanket.” He crossed to the linen closet and took one out. “Of course, the queen room is right here if you prefer.”

      Lucy followed his glance to the open doorway on the other side of the bathroom. A high, fluffy-looking bed with a down coverlet posed invitingly beneath a sloped ceiling. “Why do you have so many rooms?”

      “It’s just three bedrooms, actually. But I’ve been planning to turn it into a B and B since I bought the place and took over the bookstore. I’m thinking of calling it Bed, Book and Candle.”

      “Nice.” The bed really did look enticing. “Maybe I could catch a few winks.” She got to her feet, steadying herself against the wall, and accepted the blanket. With a questioning look, Oliver offered his arm. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she touched his bare skin right now, but she knew it wouldn’t be good. “Thanks. I think I’ve got this.” Somehow, she managed to pull off a semblance of normalcy, making it inside the bedroom and closing the door before she collapsed gratefully into the downy oasis.

      She was almost asleep after all when something she’d been aware of in the back of her mind came to the fore. Oliver’s bare chest had been notable for more than its exquisite form. He had four puckered scars, impact craters with jagged starred edges that looked distinctly like the kind made by bullets. It meant nothing, probably. Maybe he’d been in Afghanistan or Iraq. But they had the pale pink color and sheen of a recently healed injury. And they were placed almost precisely where the shots she’d fired into the hell beast would have landed yesterday morning. And lycanthropes were known for rapid healing.

       Chapter 5

      Lucy was gone in the morning. Oliver hoped to God she’d gotten some sleep. His sleep, on the other hand, hadn’t been good. He couldn’t get her off his mind. For an instant last night, when he’d caught her from falling, she’d looked at him with what he could have sworn was naked desire. It had shocked him. And the next instant, the look had been gone, leaving him wondering if he’d imagined it.

      He worried the ring on his right hand with his thumb. Vanessa’s ring. She’d been gone for more than five years, but he still couldn’t take it off. Transferring it from the left hand to the right was the most he’d been able to do. It reminded him not only of his loss but also of his part in it. He was responsible for Vanessa’s death.

      Oliver imagined what she’d say to him. You can’t take credit for the failures and ignore the successes. But the raid that day had been more than a failure. Darkrock had no business going into an unsecured nest without doing the proper reconnaissance first. And Oliver had gotten cocky, imagining that despite the disadvantage of not knowing how many vampires were holed up in the meth lab or how organized the vamps were, he had what it took to handle whatever they found. Darkrock had sent him, so Oliver had gone.

      Vanessa had been his partner, in life and on his Darkrock team. Their team was first, positioned in a side alley near the den, and Oliver and Vanessa had scaled the fence into the weeds and garbage. Oliver had kicked in the back door while the other members of the team made a frontal assault. They’d expected a handful of meth addicts sharing needles and sharing each other’s depleted blood. They’d expected any vampires, at least, to be sluggish with the daytime hour. What they hadn’t expected was an ambush.

      A very sophisticated operation had been overseeing the nest—a nest of donors, not vamps. They’d fed Darkrock an anonymous tip about the place, one that seemed reasonable on its face. It was a known hangout for meth heads, and meth heads were often mixed up in the trafficking of blood. Because of that symbiotic relationship between addicts and vampires, a house full of addicts often ended up breeding a house full of low-rent, weak vamps. And those that remained donors had only a short shelf life, so the siring vamps would move on once the supply dwindled.

      When Oliver and Vanessa and the rest of the team had busted into the house, they’d expected to round up the victims and vamps with little resistance. Instead, they’d been set upon by very healthy, bloodthirsty vampire lords. One of them had Vanessa before Oliver even knew what had hit them, and the rest of the team was dead. The vampire lord holding Vanessa had smiled at Oliver, reading his mind, knowing what Vanessa was to him, before taking a drink.

      Oliver slammed his fist down on the counter, jarring the coffee cups. He didn’t need to go down that road again. That was a dead end. In more ways than one. As he got the coffee started for the morning, his phone vibrated on the counter beside him, skittering across the slick shellac. He was on call for the Jerome Volunteer Fire Department this week, and they were calling him in.

      After shutting down and locking up, he headed over to the firehouse, expecting some cat in a tree or a kitchen fire at the burger place, but a two-alarm fire was in progress at the newly built storage facility off State Route 89A on the road down the mountain toward Verde Valley. Oliver’s crew was assigned to search and rescue while the first crew fought the blaze. The storage units were brick and metal, but the summer had been dry, and maintenance hadn’t been kept up to clear weeds and brush from around the facilities. And some clever asshole had thought treated wood-shingle roofing would be a good idea for a storage facility on a mountainside. In a town that had burned down more than once.

      Since most of the units were locked up,