Free Nightshine: A Novel of the Kyndred by Lynn Viehl

spoke had nothing to do with regret.
    “I know you.” He lifted a length of her hair to his nose, breathing in before he let the gold-shot strands fall back into place. “Your scent, the feel of your skin, everything about you is new to me. We’ve never met before I saw you on the bridge; I’d swear to it. But . . . I know you.”
    “I’m pretty sure I would remember meeting a guy your size.” She eased out of his arms and turned her face away. “Maybe in another life.”
    “Reincarnation is a fantasy. This life is the only one we have.” He didn’t understand why she wouldn’t look at him, until he glanced down at his body. Not only was he stark naked; he sported a monumental erection. He pulled the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around his hips. “I do beg your pardon, Charlotte.” He wouldn’t apologize for kissing her, not with the taste of her still on his mouth.
    “Not a problem. In my line of work, I see plenty of naked guys,” she advised him. “But if you really want my forgiveness, stop calling me Charlotte.”
    “I’ll try.” By this time he couldn’t think of her as anything else, but he had no wish to antagonize her. “Charlotte is a lovely name. Why do you prefer Charlie?”
    “Charlotte is too old-fashioned. Here.” She brought him a large gold velour robe. “I found a supply of men’s and women’s clothes. Mostly casual stuff, like this.” She tugged at the edge of the cloth wrapped around her breasts.
    He studied the vivid orange sarong under the lacy white shrug she was wearing. Both made her look like a present waiting to be unwrapped, he thought, until the reason why she was wearing it dawned on him. “He took our clothes from us? He left us both here naked?” When she nodded, he felt a surge of violent anger. “Did he touch you?”
    “I don’t think so.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I checked myself thoroughly, and I didn’t find any bruises or other signs of an assault.”
    What she didn’t say was that she still felt violated. Taske wanted to find their abductor and beat him senseless. Even better, now that his back had been healed, he could. “Where is this bastard?”
    “I wish I knew.” Her expression turned grim. “I’ve looked through the entire place, and there’s no one here but us.” She pointed to a speaker set into the wall. “A man spoke to me through that yesterday, after I woke up. What he said repeated a couple of times, so it had to be a recording. He said this was our new home.” Again she looked as if she wanted to say more, but lapsed into silence.
    Taske looked around the room. “Did you recognize any of the surrounding area outside the house?”
    “I didn’t go out,” she admitted. “By the time I finished going through the house it was dark, and I really didn’t want to leave you alone for long.”
    She averted her eyes, and a slight change in her stance suggested she wasn’t being entirely honest with him. “My dear, surely you know you can trust me.”
    “Of course I do.” Now she turned around and brought her hand up to her chest, pointing with one finger to one side of the ceiling and then the other. “If you’re feeling all right, maybe we can take a walk down to the beach.”
    Taske glanced up discreetly and saw the two security cameras mounted on swivel bases; she had turned her back on them to conceal her hand movements. As he deliberately walked back to the glass wall, he heard the faint whir of gears and confirmed with another glance that one of the cameras had followed his movements. Now he understood her odd silences; they were being actively monitored.
    Taske hoped whoever was spying on them was close by. The fury streaming through his veins needed an outlet. “I’ll need to dress first.”
    “The clothes are in here.” She gestured for him to follow her into a walk-in closet. Once they were both inside, she leaned close to whisper, “There are cameras in all the rooms and hallways. I don’t