As their gazes connected across the distance, Kellan’s nerves bristled. His muscles twitched. Strange as it was, after just seconds of scrutiny, he had an uncanny and urgent physical need for this woman.
Still, though she smelled delicious and stared back, she could be the wrong soul. Because he was immortal and a loner by necessity didn’t mean he was immune to every temptation that came his way.
Under the scrutiny of his unwavering gaze, the woman turned from him with a small object clasped tightly in her hand. Cell phone for emergencies? Her steps stuttered on the sidewalk before she whirled again. Unbelievably, she wasn’t running away. She didn’t make any calls. After pausing to consider her next move, she walked straight toward him.
He hadn’t used his power to influence her decision, so the move was all hers. Why, though? He was a stranger. Danger lurked on every street corner these days. Case in point, he caught a whiff of one lone werewolf to the south, potentially only half as deadly without a full moon overhead. And something dark-hearted with fangs perched on a rooftop halfway down the block.
Those things should have made him move. They should have been the center of this focus. He’d been blessed—or cursed, as he often thought—to feel the presence of these kinds of anomalies. He not only smelled them but saw into the shadows where they hid. He did his best to keep the monsters in check.
This time they weren’t drawing his attention from the woman coming his way. They had nothing to do with his sudden sense of elation.
She was his focus.
His attention was riveted.
As she approached, Kellan’s heart began to pound. Streaks of adrenaline created tension in muscles designed for fighting, as if she might pose a threat to those old vows. But the only fight here was for him to remain calm, because waiting for her wasn’t easy. Meeting this woman could turn out to be a distraction he didn’t need if she wasn’t the woman he sought.
She stopped several feet away with a question.
“Do I know you?”
The huskiness of her voice made Kellan’s nerves dance. Her tone was low and sexy. Her lips were full and slightly parted.
“I don’t think so,” he replied, economizing his comeback so that he could take in more details, like the dark crescents of sleeplessness under her eyes and the lovely lines of her long, graceful neck.
For the first time in a while, Kellan praised his special abilities for reasons other than ferreting out bad guys. He also amended his earlier conclusion. She actually was quite beautiful.
And if...
Well, if she was the one he sought...
All the better.
“Are you waiting for something?” she asked without backing away from the intensity of his keen observation.
Beyond Kellan’s sigils, other parts of his body were catching the fire of interest. Was this due to her, though, or did he just want it to be?
He had anticipated a more direct acknowledgment of being on the right track than an instantaneous craving for a woman. Then again, what did he really know about what his Makers had so carefully hidden?
Certainly he hadn’t expected to meet a female who was the equivalent of a Grim Reaper, but also perfectly fit his personal preferences physically, when it could just as easily have been otherwise.
“I’m meeting someone,” Kellan said.
“Oh. Sorry. I thought...”
“Yes? You thought?” he encouraged when she didn’t finish the remark.
“I thought I might have known you from someplace. Guess I was mistaken.”
She didn’t leave. She stood her ground boldly, as if she wanted to add something, or else wanted him to.
Kellan purposefully kept his voice steady. “Do you work in the hospital?”
He stayed close to the bike so he wouldn’t frighten her. Restraining himself from taking the few steps needed to reach her was hard. He wanted to press his mouth to hers in a kiss that might open Pandora’s box. A kiss that might let him know if nearly overwhelming odds against him finding the one person he was after in Seattle meant nothing when it came to the magic of ancient souls and secrets connecting.
The pressure of his need to know about this woman was like a fist to his gut. Her presence was curious and captivating for a man who not only had searched for such a connection, but also had forgone serious female companionship in favor of more pressing pursuits.
She stood across from him as if he had conjured her.
Maybe he had.
Still, what was she seeing? She was telegraphing her interest in him by remaining close. His senses were loud and clear about that. Some sort of combustible chemical reaction was taking place between them. The air was heavy with it, and warmer than before.
Animal magnetism at work? Lust at first sight? An instantaneous attraction between strangers on a street corner was possible, Kellan supposed, though unlikely—which surely meant that the odds against this being a benign chance meeting were in his favor.
Are you her?
With his heart misbehaving, it was impossible for him to remain inert for much longer. In order to place her importance to his cause, he’d have to get a peek at this woman’s soul. To do that, she’d have to be unwrapped. She’d have to meet him skin to skin for him to see what secrets, if any, lay hidden beneath those fragile feminine bones. And he was all for that skin-to-skin business.
“Do you recognize me?” he silently sent to her, hoping something deep inside her might rise to the surface and provide a clue.
“Yes,” she said, giving him a start.
She waved at the hospital across the street, reminding him of the other question he’d posed. “I work there, at Seattle General. Possibly that’s where I’ve seen you? Are you waiting for someone to be released?”
“Nope,” he said, unable to lie about even the simplest things. None of the Blood Knights could.
Nor was he good at small talk, especially when trying to reason things out. He kept wondering how an ancient soul could survive by being passed along from body to body in a long line of new recipients, without those recipients knowing about it. Same soul, different housing, in a special type of reincarnation. Not a myth. Absolutely real.
If this woman didn’t know what she carried inside her, though, how would she recognize him? In any case, why didn’t she run?
Did she like his looks as much as he liked hers? His appearance had once been legendary, but he was much leaner and more chiseled now. Time had done that. Time and the efforts of his quest. He’d been frozen in the body of a twenty-eight-year-old, but Kellan knew he looked older, and that he had always projected a dangerous edge. The leather and the bike helped that image along.
“I stopped for a breath and to get my bearings,” he told her.
As she continued to study him, his nerves burned. Seconds flew by in silence before she put a hand to her temple as if to ease an ache there. The brief flutter of her lashes gave Kellan the first hint that she wasn’t all right. Not just tired. Possibly she was ill. Small quakes ran through her, suggesting that her strength had ebbed.
“You couldn’t have called to me, I suppose,” she finally said. “And I guess I’m way too tired to be making sense.”
Her voice wasn’t just sexy. It was flammable.
Was that also a sign?
“Do you need help?” he asked politely, carefully managing his excitement and his reaction