Jaguar Night by Doranna Durgin Read Free Book Online

Isn’t that enough?”
    She tucked that wayward strand of hair behind her ear again. “I suppose it is. Now, do you think you can get on this horse?”
    He blinked. He hadn’t been expecting the concession—not from a woman who’d been so fiery, so opposed to him from the start. He wasn’t sure what it meant—what she was really thinking. And so he was cautious when he said, “Brevis regional will be here in a couple of days.”
    “I can’t stay out here that long,” she said, quite sensibly. “And if you think I’m leaving you, think again. I know exactly what I gave you last night, and how long it’s going to take to get over it. I doubt you can even take the jaguar.”
    And boy, wouldn’t he love to prove her wrong! Except when he reached for the jaguar, just for the feel of the jaguar, he found a deadness he’d never experienced before. An emptiness. He fought a sudden stab of panic.
    “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll wear off. But until then, you need a place to stay.”
    And bring her more deeply into this mess, with the local Core, under Fabron Gausto’s rule, more aggressive than he’d ever suspected? “I’ll be fine here,” he said. “They think I’m dead.”
    “Then there won’t be any problem with having you at the ranch.” She stood, stretching. Two of the three jackets slipped off; the T-shirt pulled high to expose a tight, smooth line of skin. “Look,” she said, bending to scoop up the jackets. She rolled them lengthwise and shot him a direct, spearing look. “I’ve got a horse coming in this afternoon. I need to be there. Can we just do this thing?” As if she didn’t have circles under her eyes and a certain grim determination to her movement.
    And every moment he argued with her was a moment she wouldn’t be on her way home. He nodded; it took her by surprise much as her own recent concession had startled him, and she relaxed visibly.
    There were already saddlebags resting over the horse’s loins; she tied the jackets over them and returned to the house, giving the floor and hearth area a careful inspection. “Can’t have the slightest bit of the herb stuff left out,” she said. “It’d kill anything smaller than a dog, with the whammy I put on it.”
    Whammy. Oh, yeah. The Sentinels would just love that.
    Meghan pushed away the exhaustion of the night, the turmoil of the morning, the fears for the future—even the odd feeling in her bones. She focused on her hands, where they tightened the girth one more time for the rugged ride home with a rider who wasn’t likely to keephis balance. “Have mercy on him, Luka,” she murmured as Dolan finally made it to his feet, wobbled there a moment and pretended to have found his strength.
    She would have believed it, too, if she didn’t know what he’d been through this past night—or if she hadn’t seen him in full strength only days ago, full of prowl and power in either form. He made it to the gaping doorway and leaned there, and somehow made it look casual. She knew better than that, too.
    “I’m not sure about the wards,” he said. “I thought I left them strong…but the Core followed me in without much trouble. I—”
    “Can’t see them,” she said, only belatedly realizing she’d not only finished his sentence, but to judge by the startled look on his face, done it accurately. Or was that expression more properly called a glower? “I’ll come back later and see what needs to be done.” Not that the homestead often found use, but it still deserved some respect and protection. “I can do wards, but…not right now.” She ran a hand down Luka’s shoulder. “We’re ready when you are.”
    He wasn’t. And he wasn’t going to be. She saw the flicker of despair on his face, there and gone again, right back to the tough-guy glower. For a scant moment, she wondered if it might not actually be best to leave him here. But even if the Core thought him dead, they might figure out they were wrong. And