Free Shameless Desire (The Outlawed Realm) by Tina Donahue Page A

in the distance.
    She opened the door, grabbed his arm and pulled him into her kitchen. It wasn’t easy, given his superior strength and size. However, surprise gave Gwen a faint advantage. Handing him a dishtowel, she asked, “You all right?”
    He blotted his face and nodded.
    Gwen didn’t want to ask but couldn’t help herself. “Was anyone out there?” Had he killed that person? Had he eaten—
    Uh-uh. No way did she want to think about that.
    “No,” he said. “The scent faded. He must have gone.”
    There was a God. She bolted the door and peered through the curtains one last time to make certain her backyard was still empty. Not seeing anything that didn’t belong there, she spoke to Staci. “Grab a towel from the hall closet and get his jeans.”
    Gwen went to the thermostat and set the heat to eighty-five degrees. She wanted to ease the chill Kuma must have felt from having stood on her porch in the buff. If not for Staci’s presence, Gwen might have used her body, hands and mouth to do the job. “It’ll be warm in here in a few…”
    She didn’t finish, noticing Staci wasn’t moving except to chew on the edge of her thumb as she regarded Kuma’s balls and cock. His rod was more flaccid now than earlier, but still awesome.
    “Hon,” Gwen prodded, “he needs a towel and his jeans.”
    “Ah, sure.” Staci backed out of the kitchen, her attention still riveted to his groin. She bumped into the jamb before pivoting to go down the hall.
    When her cousin was finally out of sight, Gwen went to him and spoke as quietly as she could, “What happened out there?”
    “Nothing.” He tossed the wet dishtowel on the counter and faced her, all naked and sexy, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do. On his realm, it probably was.
    It took a great deal of effort for Gwen to concentrate on his face rather than the other delicious parts of him. His irises were gray again, no longer that odd silvery shade. His lips were a faint pink, not black, his nose well defined, not at all as it had been when he’d left a few minutes ago, and how she’d seen him earlier tonight in the alley. “You killed that man who attacked me.”
    “I kept him from harming you,” he countered.
    Right. How could she have forgotten that? She sure as hell hadn’t been able to erase the awful images of Kuma going at the thug. “You tore away his face. That happened to another man days ago. I saw his body in the ER. Did you…” She couldn’t continue.
    “Another of my pack did that.”
    There was more of his kind here? Gwen clutched her elbows to keep from shivering. “The man’s hands and feet were missing. Why? Are his fingerprints and toe prints like yours—nothing but single circles? Were you afraid a patrol unit would see them?”
    He regarded her. “What’s a patrol unit?”
    “Cops…police…the authorities…guards that keep people safe.”
    “You have such a thing here?”
    Clearly, he wasn’t that familiar with the way things worked on this side. Or, at least, how they should. “Some might argue that we don’t, but yeah. Answer me. Why were his hands and feet missing?”
    “Without hands, he can’t hurt or kill any longer. If he has no feet, he can’t follow those he preys on.”
    “Here you go,” Staci said for the second time tonight as she hurried back into the room. She held the towel and all of his clothes—jeans, tee, suede jacket—at arm’s length, as though afraid to get closer to Kuma even as she resumed ogling him.
    In silence, he rubbed himself dry and pulled on his jeans, leaving the rest of his garments in a heap on the linoleum. A Chippendale’s stripper couldn’t have captured Gwen’s attention more. She noted the dark hairs hugging his arms, his muscles flexing with each movement. In a few more seconds, she’d be on her knees before him, begging him to do her.
    Maybe it was time to stop behaving like a sex-deprived virgin and get a handle on this. She