Jared by Sarah McCarty Read Free Book Online Page B

unusual.”
    His frown deepened. “Why?”
    She rolled her eyes and jerked her chin off the shelf
of his fingers. “If I knew that, I could fix it, couldn’t I?”
    He caught her chin again. “You need to feed.”
    “No, I don’t.” She’d just gotten over the vomiting and
pain of the last feeding. She wasn’t going through it again until she
absolutely had to.
    “You’re weak.”
    “Only compared to you.”
    “You’ll slow me down.”
    She had an easy solution to that. “Leave me behind.”
    His grip on her chin tightened to near pain. “As
Sanctuary bait? I don’t think so.”
    “How do you know I’m not one of them?”
    That made him pause. He appeared to debate the issue
for two seconds and then shrugged. “I don’t, but whether you are or not is
immaterial. You’re going with me.” He dropped his hand to her shoulder,
frustrating her plan to bolt. “However, it does bring up the question of what
you’re doing out here in the middle of nowhere, alone.”
    “Well, I didn’t start in the middle of nowhere. I had
help getting here.”
    “By the men I saw you with.”
    “Yes. They had some sort of take-me-to-their-leader
fetish.” She cast him a look. “Not unlike yourself.”
    He smiled and then, when she shivered, he pulled her
against him. Her cheek settled naturally against his chest. God, he was big.
And warm. As she stood in his arms, fighting to keep from snuggling in, he
seemed to get warmer. In another minute she realized he was. He was regulating
his body heat. Elevating it for her. He put her hands under his shirt. His
abdomen sucked in on a quick gasp.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Nothing to be sorry for. I’d just forgotten how cold
a woman’s hands can get.”
    When she tried to withdraw them, he shook his head.
“Stay put until you warm up.”
    It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her
in over two hundred years. She tried to think of the moment as a purely
clinical one, tried to think of his stomach as an impersonal fire-place, but
the longer she stood there in the cold night air, the more aware of him she
became. The ridges of muscle beneath her hands, the raw masculinity he exuded
with every breath, his heat, the draw of his power. Jared of the Renegades, she
decided, was a very dangerous man. She withdrew her hands from his skin.
    “All warm?”
    He wasn’t even breathing heavy. Apparently, she didn’t
have the same effect on his senses that he had on hers. “Yes, thank you.”
    He grabbed his gun. “Then let’s go.”
    “Go where?”
    He pointed northwest with the rifle. “Up that slope.”
    Slope? It was a mountain! “What’s up there?”
    “Food.”
    She looked at the slope and then back at him. “There’s
no need to climb the mountain on my account.”
    He caught her arm and turned her in the direction he
wanted her to go. “There’s every need.”
    “It’s not going to make a difference.”
    “That I’ll have to see for myself.”
    She dug in her heels. “I don’t see why we have to go
up so you can make a point.”
    The corner of his mouth twitched. “Because that’s the
way I’m going.”
    It was the opposite way she was supposed to be
heading. “I can’t go with you.”
    He didn’t look back, just kept on walking. “I wasn’t
aware that I was giving you a choice.”
    She braced her foot on a log, grabbing his wrist with
her free hand for added strength. “You have to.”
    He popped her over without even so much as a tug on
her arm. “Why? Do you have a man to get back to?”
    The push of his power was suddenly stronger, coming at
her from multiple angles, testing for the truth.
    “Yes.”
    The growl surrounded her, spinning her around. She
couldn’t see anything. She stepped closer to Jared, searching the forest. Then
she looked up. Jared’s eyes were red, brilliant with heat and energy. And
anger. Oh hell. She took a cautious step back, watching him carefully. She
might have just jumped from the frying pan into the