Without thinking, he laid his hand over hers. “As long as-”

“It’s heating up! Feel that? Do you feel that?”

She shifted, started to place her other hand on the stone. He moved, felt himself move as he might have through that wall of fire. Madly.

He gripped her shoulders, spinning her around until her back was pressed to the stone. Then sated the sudden, desperate appetite by taking her mouth.

For an instant, he was someone else, as was she, and the moment was full of grieving desperation. Her taste, her skin, the beat of her heart.

Then he was himself, feeling Quinn’s lips heat under his as the stone had heated under their hands. It was her body quivering against his, and her fingers digging into his hips.

He wanted more, wanted to shove her onto the table of rock, to cover her with his body, to surround himself with all she was.

Not him, he thought dimly, or not entirely him. And so he made himself pull back, forced himself to break that connection.

The air wavered a moment. “Sorry,” he managed. “Not altogether sorry, but-”

“Surprised.” Her voice was hoarse. “Me, too. That was definitely unexpected. Made me dizzy,” she whispered. “That’s not a complaint. It wasn’t us, then it was.” She took another steadying breath. “Call me a slut, but I liked it both ways.” With her eyes on his, she placed her hand on the stone again. “Want to try it again?”

“I think I’m still a man, so damn right I do. But I don’t think it’d be smart, or particularly safe. Plus, I don’t care for someone-something-else yanking on my hormones. Next time I kiss you, it’s just you and me.”

“All right. Connections.” She nodded. “I’m more in favor than ever about the theory regarding connections. Could be blood, could be a reincarnation thing. It’s worth exploring.”

She sidestepped away from the stone, and him. “So, no more contact with each other and that thing for the time being. And let’s take it back to the purpose at hand.”

“Are you okay?”

“Stirred me up, I’ll admit. But no harm, no foul.” She took out her water bottle, and this time drank deep.

“I wanted you. Both ways.”

Lowering the bottle, she met those calm gray eyes. She’d just gulped down water, she thought, but now her throat was dry again. “I know. What I don’t know is if that’s going to be a problem.”

“It’s going to be a problem. I’m not going to care about that.”

Her pulse gave a couple of quick jumps. “Ah…This probably isn’t the place to-”

“No, it’s not.” He took a step forward, but didn’t touch her. And still her skin went hot. “There’s going to be another place.”

“Okay.” She cleared her throat. “All right. To work.”

She did another circle while he watched her. He’d made her a little jumpy. He didn’t mind that. In fact, he considered it a point for his side. Something might have pushed him to kiss her that way, but he knew what he’d felt as that something released its grip. He knew what he’d been feeling since she’d stepped out of her car at the top of his lane.

Plain and simple lust. Caleb Hawkins for Quinn Black.

“You camped here, the three of you, that night.” Apparently taking Cal at his word about the safety of the area, Quinn moved easily around the clearing. “You-if I have any understanding of young boys-ate junk food, ragged on each other, maybe told ghost stories.”

“Some. We also drank the beer Gage stole from his father, and looked at the skin mags he’d swiped.”

“Of course, though I’d have pegged those activities for more like twelve-year-olds.”

“Precocious.” He ordered himself to stop thinking about her, to take himself back. “We built a fire. We had the boom box on. It was a pretty night, still hot, but not oppressive. And it was our night. It was, we thought, our place. Sacred ground.”

“So your great-grandmother said.”

“It called for ritual.” He waited for her to turn to him. “We wrote down words. Words we made. We swore an oath, and at midnight, I used my Boy Scout knife to cut our wrists. We said the words we’d made and pressed our wrists together to mix the blood. To make us blood brothers. And hell opened up.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, not exactly. None of us do, not that we can remember. There was a kind of explosion. It seemed like one. The light was blinding, and the force of it knocked me back. Lifted me right off my feet. Screams, but I’ve never known if they were mine, Fox’s, Gage’s, or something else. The fire shot straight up, there seemed to be fire everywhere, but we weren’t burned. Something pushed out, pushed into me. Pain, I remember pain. Then I saw some kind of dark mass rising out, and felt the cold it brought with it. Then it was over, and we were alone, scared, and the ground was scorched black.”

Ten years old, she thought. Just a little boy. “How did you get out?”

“We hiked out the next morning pretty much as we’d hiked in. Except for a few changes. I came into this clearing when I was nine. I was wearing glasses. I was nearsighted.”

Her brows rose. “Was?”

“Twenty-one hundred in my left eye, twenty-ninety in my right. I walked out ten, and twenty-twenty. None of us had a mark on him when we left, though Gage especially had some wounds he brought in with him. Not one of us has been sick a day since that night. If we’re injured, it heals on its own.”

There was no doubt on her face, only interest with a touch, he thought, of fascination. It struck him that other than his family she was the only one who knew. Who believed.

“You were given some sort of immunity.”

“You could call it that.”

“Do you feel pain?”

“Damn right. I came out with perfect vision, not X-ray. And the healing can hurt like a mother, but it’s pretty quick. I can see things that happened before, like out on the trail. Not all the time, not every time, but I can see events of the past.”

“A reverse clairvoyance.”

“When it’s on. I’ve seen what happened here on July seventh, sixteen fifty-two.”

“What happened here, Cal?”

“The demon was bound under the stone. And Fox, Gage, and I, we cut the bastard loose.”

She moved to him. She wanted to touch him, to soothe that worry from his face, but was afraid to. “If you did, you weren’t to blame.”

“Blame and responsibility aren’t much different.”

The hell with it. She laid her hands on his cheeks even when he flinched. Then touched her lips gently to his. “That was normal. You’re responsible because, to my mind, you’re willing to take responsibility. You’ve stayed when a lot of other men would’ve walked, if not run, away from here. So I say there’s a way to beat it back where it belongs. And I’m going to do whatever I can to help you do just that.”

She opened her pack. “I’m going to take photos, some measurements, some notes, and ask a lot of annoying questions.”

She’d shaken him. The touch, the words, the faith. He wanted to draw her in, hold on to her. Just hold on. Normal, she’d said, and looking at her now, he craved the bliss of normality.

Not the place, he reminded himself, and stepped back. “You’ve got an hour. We start back in an hour. We’re going to be well out of the woods before twilight.”

“No argument.” This time, she thought, and went to work.