She did as he asked. He walked with her, sinking down onto his heels as she took a seat facing him. She hadn't realized she'd been hurt until she felt the cold touch of the homemade compress against her brow. She winced, sucking in a sharp breath. In reflex, her hand went up to her forehead, where Mal still held the ice pack in place. His skin was warm beneath her fingertips, the feel of his strong bones and tendons burning instantly into her brain.
The touch lingered, too long.
Too heavy with unspoken, unbidden, meaning.
They were too close like this, intimately so. He crouched before her. She with her legs spread on either side of his large body as he leaned in to tend her. His face was level with hers, near enough that she could see the first glimmer of amber burning into the cool gray of his irises. Near enough that she could feel the air crackle in the few inches that separated their bodies, electrified with a palpable tension neither of them seemed to expect.
With a scowl, he pulled his hand away from her, placing the compress of melting snow onto the table behind her. "This wasn't a good idea."
Danika swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. "You mean helping me tonight, or ..."
"All of it," he replied tersely, a thick growl that rasped through his teeth and the lengthening points of his fangs.
But he didn't withdraw from where he hunched before her, and his eyes remained fixed on her face, tormented and stormy. C an" aSmoldering with the same dark longing that had begun to kindle inside her. He snarled a curse, low under his breath. "I have to go. I have to get back to the club before Reiver notices I'm gone."
"Don't," she blurted, shaking her head when he started to move away from her. The thought of being left alone, just Connor and her, after the night they'd already had put a chill in her veins. And she couldn't bear the idea of Reiver possibly finding out what Malcolm had done for her and meting out punishment. "Don't go back there. How can you even think of going back now?"
"I have a job to do, Dani. Simple as that."
"Reiver is an animal," she reminded him. "He's a beast who trades in human lives. You said yourself he would've had me and my child murdered in cold blood."
"Yes," Malcolm agreed tightly. "Reiver is all those things. Worse, in fact. A pity you didn't realize that sooner, before everything went to hell tonight."
There wasn't much blame in that accusation. Rather, a stark dread. A fear in his eyes that his anger didn't quite mask. She searched that haunted gaze, hurting for him, wanting to understand who he'd become. "What happened to you, Malcolm? What happened to your face, to your name ... to the man you used to be?"
"He's gone, as dead as you are now." His mouth was a grim line, a muscle ticking in the side of his savaged, beard-shadowed jaw. "A hell of a lot can happen in a few hundred years, lass."
"Yeah," she said. "I guess it can. I never thought I'd see the day that Malcolm MacBain tossed away his honor and his good name in order to serve someone like Reiver."
"We all make choices. And I have my reasons," he murmured. With that hissed reply, he finally did withdraw from her. Dark lashes shuttering his gaze, he rose to his feet.
She stood with him, nose to nose, refusing to let him shut her out. "Tell me."
"Let it go, Danika." The words were a deep rumble, coming from his chest.
But she couldn't let him walk away. She stared at him harder, pushing her wayward talent in his direction. "You hate him."
He didn't answer; but then, he didn't have to. His big body radiated loathing.
"It's not loyalty that makes you serve Reiver," she said. "It's rage. Isn't it?"
His thoughts answered her like a reflex: He took something precious from me. Everything I had. I will stop at nothing to make him pay.
Danika closed her eyes as the grief of that pledge sank into her consciousness. "Mal, I'm sorry."
He roared a dark curse, and then his hand Cthe1C;Mal,s were on her arms, gripping her firmly, hauling her into the shadow of his powerful body. Into the face of his fury. "Goddamn it, woman! Stay out of my thoughts." His grasp held tighter, his eyes bright and wild now, lips peeled back from his enormous fangs. "Why couldn't you have stayed the bloody f**k out of my life?"
Danika had never cowered before a man, not Conlan or any other Breed male. Not even Reiver, or the brutal messengers he'd sent to her cottage earlier that night. But Malcolm's fury was a storm that slammed into her, stripping her of her courage. Buffeting her with a ferocity that left her shaking, breathless.
He was a dangerous man. Even more so because he was wounded, deep down. Festering with a hatred that was eating him alive. She saw that now. And something more in the searing amber fire of his eyes.
Desire.
The interest that had sparked between them before was burned away now. Turned into something far more consuming as Malcolm's hot gaze bore into her, then slowly settled on her parted lips. Another thought arrowed from his mind into hers, uninvited this time, dark and startling in its carnality.
She could have told him to release her. As formidable as he was, as volatile and strong as she knew him to be, he would have taken his hands off her in an instant if she'd wanted him to.
But that wasn't what she wanted.
And he knew it as well as she did.
"Danika," he rasped thickly, eyes flaring hotly. Then his mouth was on hers.
The contact was explosive, staggering. It had been so long since she'd been touched, kissed, desired. Malcolm's lips seduced, demanded, claiming hers with a passion that stole all the breath from her lungs. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed the feeling, and even though a part of her had not let go of Conlan-might never fully let him go-the part of her that was still vital, still alive and warm and female, could not deny this need for comforting. For physical, intimate contact.