Forgotten (60 page)

“
What are you going to do
down there—make some kind of repair? Fix something?” Kate
asked.

He nodded. “There
is
something I need to
fix—a problem long left unresolved. But as I said, I don’t think it
will take long. I’ll be back soon.”

“
All right. I’ll…make
myself a cup of tea or something.” Kate sighed.

“
You could…could go
through your things.” Rone’s throat worked and it was clear he was
forcing the words out. “See if there’s anything…anything you want
to keep.”

“
No.” Kate shook her head
and looked down at her hands. “I don’t remember buying any of those
clothes and I don’t really have room for any of the furniture or
anything else like that.”

“
As you wish.” He nodded
gravely. “Think about it while I’m gone though. Anything you want
is yours.”

Except you—except your
heart,
Kate thought. But somehow she
managed to keep herself from saying it out loud. Suddenly she had
the almost insurmountable urge to go to Rone and throw her arms
around him. For some reason she just wanted to touch him—to hold
him and be close to him. As close as she could possibly
get.

Stop it,
she told herself fiercely.
Stop it—he doesn’t want you anymore. Not like that.
But she couldn’t get rid of the restless
feeling—the overwhelming urge to be close to him. She squeezed her
hands into fists at her sides, forcing herself to stay in her seat
until he finally left.

After the big Kindred was
gone, she jumped up and paced restlessly. Why was she having this
weird feeling? The blinding urge to be close to him? It was almost
like a need, gnawing inside her. What
was
it?

Trying to ignore the strange feelings, she
sat back down and stared blindly at the navcom for some minutes
before it occurred to her to check his other destinations. It was
probably being nosey but what the hell—she would probably never see
him again. It wouldn’t hurt to look into where he was going when he
left her on Earth. Just two stops he’d said. Where else was he
going after he got rid of her?

Kate told herself she didn’t care but it
wasn’t true. And besides, she thought she was beginning to remember
a little about the controls she’d apparently once handled with
ease. If what her memory was telling her was true, the navcom not
only set the course for the ship, it also controlled various search
engines—very useful for research when you were going to a new
planet.

Leaning forward, she punched in a few
tentative commands. The navcom obligingly lit up, displaying the
coordinates for the next two destinations.

“
What’s this?” Kate
muttered to herself. “Why is he going back to Flame and Frost?” For
the resort was the destination Rone had punched in for his first
stop after dropping her off.

The second destination was back on his home
planet of G’nera. The navcom even gave the exact location he was
going to.

“
Corith al Cruthe,”
Kate read aloud, frowning. “Now why does that
sound familiar?” She felt like it was something she ought to
remember but she couldn’t for the life of her place it. Maybe it
was just another memory that was lost or buried in the shifting
sands of her subconscious, never to be recovered.

Shrugging, she went back
to the first location—Flame and Frost. Kate couldn’t fathom why the
big Kindred would be interested in returning to the place where
they’d had so much trouble and trauma. She knew
she
certainly never wanted to go
back. Not after Madam Shadow had nearly caned the skin off her
back. She—

“
Oh no,” Kate whispered to
herself. “Oh…oh my God!”

Turning back to the navcom, she typed in a
few more commands. The more she used the complicated-looking
equipment, the easier it seemed to become. Soon enough what she was
looking for came up—the result of Rone’s last information
search.

“
Gregory R. Compton, DDS,”
Kate read aloud, the apprehension growing in her gut. “Sacramento,
California. Oh my God—it
can’t
be.”

But it was. One of the links on the
viewscreen showed a picture. There was Greg—much as she remembered
him—except minus most of the hair on the top of his head. But there
was no mistaking that self-satisfied smirk. Kate felt sick at the
sight.

The first article she clicked on was about
his dentistry practice.

So he became a dentist—it
figures. Getting paid to cause people pain would be right up Greg’s
alley,
Kate thought.

Then she came to another article—this one
was about how Greg was being investigated for alleged improper
contact with a patient after he’d drugged her for a procedure.
There was another article in the same vein and then another and
another. Apparently several women had come forward to complain and
then the reporter in the case had dug up Greg’s past accusations
from college.

Kate wondered what kind of a deal his lawyer
had made to even allow him to practice dentistry or any kind of
medicine at all. They must have buried the college date-rape case
really deep or had the record expunged somehow in order for him to
go on and have a career and a normal life. But apparently he
couldn’t stop himself from going back to his old tricks.

Her stomach clenched and she felt the same
old wave of guilt rush over her.

I should have spoken up. I should have
contributed to the evidence the police had. Maybe he would have
ended up behind bars. Maybe I could have made a difference.

Or maybe your testimony
would have been discounted too,
whispered
a little voice in her head.
Greg’s family
had plenty of money to throw at the problem—what were you but just
another scholarship girl too poor to even afford full
tuition?

Well, that was probably true, Kate comforted
herself. She read farther, hoping to find out that Greg had finally
gotten what was coming to him. But to her dismay, the next article
was about the charges being dropped on some kind of technicality.
He hadn’t even lost his license to practice dentistry!

“
You fucking creep,” she
muttered angrily, scrolling through more articles that said the
same thing. “I hope you know Karma’s a bitch. One of these days
what you did is going to catch up to you and…”

She trailed off, putting a hand to her
mouth. She’d been so caught up in learning about her old attacker
she’d forgotten her earlier suspicion.

Rone looked him up,
she thought.
And then he
went down there to find him. With a big-ass wrench in his
hand!

She seemed to hear the big
Kindred’s voice in her ear,
“There is
something I need to fix—a problem long left unresolved.”

“
Oh my God,” Kate
whispered to herself. “Did he really…?”

Before she could even finish her question to
herself, she heard the muffled thump of the small shuttle docking
with the Finder and then Rone came back into the main cabin. He was
still carrying the heavy hyperdrive spanner he’d left with. The end
of the spanner had something that looked like red paint smeared all
over it.

Only Kate knew it wasn’t paint.

“
My God,” she whispered in
a low, trembling voice. “You—you went and found Greg and you
killed
him!”

The big Kindred scowled.

“
No, I didn’t kill him.
Unfortunately the Earth authorities intervened before I could
finish and I had to leave. So the bastard is still
alive.”

“
Alive? But…but the
blood…” Kate stood on shaky legs and pointed at the red-smeared
spanner.

“
Oh, that.” Rone shrugged
as though it didn’t matter. “I never said he wasn’t
wounded
. I dislocated
his jaw and he’ll probably never walk again. But he
is
still alive. Don’t
worry that it wasn’t a fair fight,” he added, seemingly as an
afterthought. “He had a weapon too—a gun. But he missed me. I
didn’t give him a chance to shoot twice.”

His casual admission of
violence should have turned her stomach. Instead, when Kate took
another step towards him, she felt a rush of dizzying desire—a deep
wave of need so strong it left her feeling breathless and weak in
the knees. What was wrong with her? It was the same strange feeling
she’d been having right before he left only ten times…no, a
hundred
times
stronger.

“
So this…this was why you
wanted to stop in Sacramento,” she said, trying to ignore the weird
rush of need and sound normal. “To…to avenge me.”

“
It is my right and my
duty to avenge my mate of any wrongs committed against her,” Rone
growled, still scowling. “To punish her attackers.”

“
And that’s why the place
you’re going after you drop me off at Mimi’s is back to Flame and
Frost? You’re going to punish them too? Going to take your spanner
to Madam Shadow?”

Rone glowered at her. “No—it’s shameful to
do such a thing to a female—even to a sadist like her. What I have
in mind for her is a taste of her own medicine. I intend to cane
her—to give her stroke-for-stroke, exactly what she gave to you.
That’s all.”

Kate shook her head, still fighting the
strange tidal pull that wanted to drag her to him.

“
I don’t understand—why
bother?” she demanded. “Why bother to avenge me—why go to the
trouble of tracking down Greg or punishing Madam Shadow when I’m
not even technically your ‘mate’ anymore?”

“
You
are
my mate and you will be until
the day I die,” Rone growled.

“
Then
treat
me like your mate!” Kate
demanded. Stalking forward, she poked a finger in his broad chest.
“Don’t run away from me, Rone—don’t run away from
us.
Stay. Or let me stay
with you.”

An agonized look flitted over his face.

“
I
can’t.
Not after what I did to
you.”

“
Will you
stop
with that? You
didn’t hurt me—not like Greg did!
I’m
the one who threw away the
stayback flowers.
I’m
the one who came to you. Yes it was scary and intense but it
was damn sexy too!” Just thinking of her wild night with his Beast
made the desire inside Kate surge almost uncontrollably. But to her
dismay, she could see she wasn’t getting through to
Rone.

He shook his head. “I’m such a hypocrite,
doing what I did to your old attacker.”

“
He probably deserved it,
according to some of the articles I read.” This close to him, Kate
was beginning to catch a whiff of his warm, spicy scent again. It
was still muted but she could definitely pick it up—it only
increased the strange need she was feeling.

“
I deserve much worse,”
Rone said in a low voice. “But I will deal with myself last. For
now, I have to avenge you before…”

“
Before what?” Kate
demanded but he only shook his head.

“
I have to go. We need to
get you back home.”

He tried to push past her
but Kate wouldn’t let him. The fine cord of self -control she’d
been desperately holding onto finally snapped and the flood of need
and desire…of
hunger
rushed over her, overwhelming her completely.

Standing on her tiptoes, she reached up and
tangled her hands in the thick black hair at the nape of his
neck.

“
I
am
home,” she snarled, glaring at
Rone. And then she dragged him down for a brutal kiss.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The spanner fell from his
nerveless fingers and clanged loudly on the floor. Rone barely
noticed. All he could think of was the female in his arms—because
Kate
was
in his
arms somehow. In his arms with her legs wrapped around his waist
and her hands still tangled in his hair.

Rone gripped her full, luscious bottom in
both hands, unsure if he was trying to push her away or pull her
closer. Her warm, sweet, feminine scent was invading his senses
even as her lush little mouth ravaged his. It was such a familiar
aroma that at first he didn’t realize anything was wrong. Then he
smelled it—the strange, sweet, wild note entwined with her normal
scent. He’d smelled that on her only once before so strongly—it was
absolutely unmistakable.

“
Gods,” he muttered
hoarsely, pulling back at last from her punishing kiss.
“You…you’re…Kate, I smell the
hunger
on you.”

“
Is that what this is?”
She moaned low in her throat and rubbed against him, pressing her
full breasts against his chest and her crotch against the hard wall
of his abdomen. Even through the denim jeans she wore, Rone could
feel the insatiable heat of her pussy.
“God,”
Kate gasped, throwing back
her head. “I feel like I’m going crazy, Rone! Like part of me is
starving…I’m so…so
empty.”

“
That’s the
hunger
all right,” he
said grimly. “I’ve seen you have it before, but only once this
badly—that time we were separated that I told you
about.”