Free Drawing Deep by Jennifer Dellerman

Her jerk to sharp attention made him want to shake her with a frustration born out of fear, one that warned she was too skittish for his dark and demanding appetites. While it wasn’t pain he sought, he wasn’t exactly a gentle man in the bedroom, his carnal urges an aggressive sensuality that left his bed partners sweaty, exhausted and well-pleasured. Yet now it was almost a compulsion to run gentle fingers in the lightest of caresses along the curve of her cheek, a tactile desire to find out if her creamy skin was as soft as it looked.
    Not trusting his voice beyond a low, “Hey,” he stepped closer, and felt that oddly tender moment replaced with the need to sink his teeth into her flesh when she took several steps away.
    He wanted her to stay .
    “Hi. I hope I’m not bothering you. Melinda said it would be all right to come over and check out the debris piles.”
    Though there was a silent question in her tone, there was no anxiety or scent of fear. It calmed him slightly. “You’re not bothering me.” At least not in the way she thought. “I knew it would need to be inspected at some point, but didn’t expect it to be at night.”
    “Yes. Well.” She glanced at the three piles of separated material before turning guarded gray eyes back to his. Eyes that floored him. “Since we had to leave the clearing before nightfall,” the tiniest hint of censure that almost made him smile, “we couldn’t act on what we found just as the sun began to set.”
    “It’s too dangerous after dark.” He murmured, not as interested in what they discovered as what stood in front of him in ill-fitting jeans and a zipped, oversized jacket that covered her torso. Intrigued by the way she hid curves under loose or heavily-layered fabrics, he took another step toward her, breathed in only the scents Rome had informed him were false. Frustration resurfaced. “Whatever you found will still be there in the morning.”
    Rather than take another step back, Ria squatted down in front of the stone pile, utilizing the beam from the flashlight to flip over some of the rocks for a closer perusal. When she spoke, her tone held a nervous tinge that rubbed his fur the wrong way. “True.”
    As he stood there, a large, muscled male frowning down at a much slighter and weaker female, it suddenly dawned on him. She was a lone woman, out in the dark with a male she barely knew. Of course she would err on the side of caution. Especially if she knew just what he was capable of, and in light of what Lance had mentioned several months back, that Ria had a gift at seeing what lay under the surface, he had to hazard a guess that she did know. But how to ferret that information out?
    Wanting to smack the stupidity out of himself, he crossed one foot over the other and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, attempting to appear as non-threatening as possible. If she didn’t feel safe around him – a likelihood that appalled the protective aspect of his nature – she would never be able to trust him, which meant he would never get to the root of her problems. Her secrets. Needing to do exactly that, he forced his muscles to relax, biding his time until she got used to his presence.
    “Where you able to tell how old the ruin is?” Inflicting his words with the same soothing nuance he’d used this morning, he watched her reaction. The affect was unexpected. Her shoulders straightened almost immediately, as if she were offended.
    Interesting.
    “I don’t believe it’s very old, maybe a few hundred years. Which in itself creates a ton of questions.”
    “Like?”
    “Well, Gwen told us that the forest is old. As in very old. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old, but the area surrounding that particular clearing is newer.”
    Santos frowned, trying to wrap his mind around her words and line of thinking rather than on the graceful lines of her neck, displayed by the short fall of her hair. Flesh he wanted to mark with his lips