Scratch by Mel Teshco Page B

a few apartments down, a
small dog yapped into life inside another. Heavy footsteps approached from the
other side of the door.
    “Yes?”
    One word. One deep, masculine, primal intonation.
    Her pulse jerked in response, her nipples tightening beneath
her black leather jacket and burgundy singlet. She swallowed hard. If this was
what he could do to a woman with one monosyllable behind a closed door, she
could only imagine what he could do with a whole sentence, and up close and
personal.
    She cursed under her breath. She’d clearly been too long
without a man, someone to ease the heavy ache of her breasts, the deep throb
between her thighs. Just as well she wanted nothing more from him than answers.
    Hesitating for a beat, she asked, “Mr. Powell?”
    She closed her eyes at his long, drawn out silence. Through
the thin door his heavy sigh was audible before he said wearily, “Who wants to
know?”
    Impatience drummed a loud tattoo behind her skull. Damn it.
A migraine was all she needed.
    “I’m here on behalf of my father. He is,” she swallowed back
a wave of bitter loss and grief, “ was an archaeologist. You may have
heard of him? Professor Thomas Leigh.” At the thick, almost suffocating silence
that followed she continued more loudly, “He believed in the existence of
human-panther shape-shifters—”
    She gasped as the door flung open and she was jerked
unceremoniously inside.
    “Enough already,” Blake growled.
    She hissed out a breath at the current of electricity
sizzling through her arm’s every nerve ending, at the cheek of him dragging her
inside. She tugged free, and looked up…and up.
    Beneath scruffy dark-blue jeans and a white t-shirt the man
was a mountain of fluid muscle and sinew, repressed energy that vibrated with
emotion and patently raw sex appeal.
    “Are you mad?” she asked through gritted teeth, all too
aware of her moistening pussy and tingling breasts as she stared at the man who
pushed every one of her buttons and then some. “All I wanted was a civilized
discussion, not to be dragged inside as if I’m nothing more than…than a cave
woman!”
    He slammed the door shut behind her and pushed home a large
bolt. When he peeled off his dark sunglasses—ludicrous inside the near dark
room lit only by a naked bulb—she took an involuntary step back. His eyes were
an unnatural gold-yellow. Beautiful, but deadly. A gaze that was way too
compelling for her peace of mind.
    She sucked in some oxygen, forcing a calm she didn’t feel.
Damn it all to hell, he really was sinfully delicious, with more vague hints of
darkness beneath his honey-warm skin that tantalized and teased even as it
repelled.
    “I know who you are,” he said.
    She searched his stare with a frown. “You do?”
    “Yes.” He blew out a heavy breath before tunneling a hand
through his thick, dark hair that was an inch away from scruffy. “I’m sorry.”
    “Wh…what?”
    “About your father.”
    “Why?” Her voice rose an octave as repressed emotions
churned within. “Because like everyone else you think the world is better off
without another crackpot and his loony beliefs?”
    “No. I’m sorry because he was a great man who thought above
and beyond the restrictions of science.”
    Hostility fled her body, leaving her oddly drained and a
little disorientated. How long had it been since someone had said something
good about her father? Too long, clearly, for her to appreciate even a scrap of
praise. Snide remarks and innuendos had become part and parcel of their life
from the moment the news had been leaked about her father’s amazing discovery.
    “You look about ready to collapse.”
    Somehow his silky rich voice stroked her senses, hummed
along the nerve endings behind her eyeballs and soothed away her stress to
revert it into another tension entirely. A tension she didn’t even want to
contemplate. If only her nipples would quit standing up like soldiers.
    “Please. Take a seat,” he murmured with a