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less than three or four hours of sleep a night since her
father’s death. And now she was paying the price as wave after wave of
tiredness descended.
    With a yawn, she wrapped Blake’s flannel coat even tighter
around her, taking great pains not to breathe in deep of his tantalizing spiced
scent. The last thing she needed was to fall asleep with his scent permeating
her senses and causing erotic dreams.
    * * * * *
    She woke to the warm touch of sunlight on her face, and the
hot stare of a now-human Blake, prickling her senses.
    She sat, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands before
looking up at him towering above. He was dressed once again in his jeans. His
sweatpants, and his bloodied and ripped shirts were rolled up into a ball and
thrown a few yards away. She swallowed at the sight of his bare, hard torso
that was lightly defined with muscle, a dusting of hair disappearing inside his
pants as though an invitation to touch…to stroke.
    Clearing her throat, she asked huskily, “It was all real,
wasn’t it?”
    Blake turned to retrieve a tray with bottled water and
snacks from a hay bale nearby, placing it within her range on the warped and
aged floorboards. “Yes.”
    Her stare traveled over his perfectly proportioned body
that’d been cleaned of blood. Her womb tingled with warmth. “You’ve shifted to
human again.” Nothing like stating the obvious, but surely she would have woken
to his painful change? “I’m sorry, I…I didn’t hear a thing.”
    “Don’t apologize.” He sprawled beside her, his expression
intent, and she had to swallow past the instant dryness in her throat at his
closeness. “You’ve done nothing wrong. And shape-shifting is only excruciating
when I fight against it and leave the shift for too long.”
    Her breath caught. “You fought against it last night?”
    He nodded. “Yes. I wasn’t sure if you could handle the
truth.”
    He’d gone through hell because he thought it might be she who fell apart? How could he have possibly fought against what she imagined
would be a shape-shifter’s natural impulse? Something deep within melted and
warmed, like ice beneath an unrelenting sun. She swiped a hand over her face,
as if to clear her mind. “How is your wound?”
    He smiled satisfaction. “When I shifted, my internal muscles
pushed the bullet out, making regeneration a lot simpler and faster.” Her
fascination must have been obvious because he went on to explain, “Shifting
shape automatically heals my body as each cell alters.” He shrugged. “Painful
when one fights against the instinct, but often life saving.”
    She swallowed. She didn’t want to contemplate just how close
to death he’d been before he’d shifted. “This kind of near death thing happens
often?”
    He shrugged. “At least once or twice, especially when our
first change comes upon us in our late teens. And as we live a very long life,
four centuries or more as each shift repairs our aged cells, it’s to be
expected that occasionally we have no choice but to withhold the shift and
suffer the consequences.”
    Her mind froze, then rewound. Four centuries or more?
    The muscles in her belly tightened. “Wait. What? You’re the Blake Powell from the ancient journal?”
    He nodded slowly. “Yes.” Holy crap. Her mind whirled as more
revelations dawned. Humans would be after his kind at any cost and without
mercy if they discovered shape-shifters’ existence, discovered their near
immortality. Cancer. Disease. Aging. She could only imagine what
scientists—anybody—would do to gain such knowledge in the fight against death.
    Her voice rose an octave. “Is that why you went into hiding?
Why those people broke into your apartment and were shooting at us?”
    Except, why would they shoot at the man whose very existence
might well be the cure for every human disease on the planet? A man whose
ability to shift shape was the stuff of legends.
    “I went into hiding when your father confirmed our