Dark Curse by Christine Feehan Page A

on the earth.
    "Well, it's hard to explain. Mostly we do sexual research together. You know, sex in every culture down through time."
    "Very funny."
    "You deserved it. You had that tone."
    "I had a tone?"
    She swept her green gaze over him and began walking back toward the inn, very aware of him pacing beside her with the silent stride of a jungle cat. "Actually, I explore caves and I've been researching life forms in ice caves." There was an edge of haughtiness in her voice. "So answer my question: Do you know much about healing? Or do you know someone who does? We were attacked by a hybrid—part plant, part snake—and very venomous."
    He caught her elbow and brought her to a halt. "Did it bite you?" He was already running his hands up and down her arms, tilting her head this way and that. And then she felt the thrust of his mind against hers.
    It was such a shock, the sheer intimacy of his mind merging with hers. There was nothing at all soft about him. He could erupt into violence with swift efficiency. When she had thought him one of the most dangerous creatures on earth, she hadn't even come close to understanding the killing machine that he was, yet he hid nothing from her. He didn't attempt to pretend to be different than he was, and she saw that he could. He could have appeared gentle and sweet, but he gave her the respect of showing her exactly who and what she was dealing with.
    Lara inhaled sharply. Her aunts had told her Carpathians were powerful. They had presented them as heroic, hunters of the vampires, protectors of human and mage alike. She was unprepared for the ruthless, merciless mind of the hunter. And he was beyond any arrogance she'd ever known.
    She couldn't prevent the tremor of awareness or the little shiver of fear. The heat of his body enveloped her, warmed her, driving out the cold of the night when she had forgotten to regulate her temperature. She attempted to retreat, slamming down the barriers in her mind. She had always been powerful, but it had been years since she'd had to utilize her abilities to conceal her mind from any other and she was slow and rusty.
    "There is no need to hide yourself from me," Nicolas said. Not only was her body shivering, but so was her mind. He had triggered a well of fear, tapping into some long-ago memories of someone close to her who had misused and abused her trust. "I cannot lie to you, nor do I attempt to access what you will not give me freely. I look only for parasites and wounds. The snakes are more deadly than you can know."
    She let her breath out, somewhat relieved. He hadn't examined her memories of that lost little girl. He didn't know who she was or what she was. There was always power in knowledge and she trusted no one—least of all the man who could make her body come alive when she had been frozen for so many years. She didn't trust anything that happened so fast, or that walked in an ancient land of enormous power.
    "The snakes injected venom into my friend. There were tiny parasitic organisms in the venom and the blood of the snakes burned like acid." As she spoke, she moved away from him, a delicate feminine retreat.
    Nicolas wanted to smile. He didn't smile easily. Hadn't smiled in five hundred years, but her girly reaction when she was trying to be a fierce warrior was so cute. Cute . He had never understood that word before. He'd heard it a thousand times but had no real concept of the meaning until that moment. Instincts told him she wouldn't appreciate being considered cute when she thought of herself as tough, so he kept his observation to himself.
    She was shorter than most Carpathian women, barely coming up to the middle of his chest, but her body was all feminine curves. She considered herself overweight—he'd caught that small bit of information before he narrowed the flow of information to specifics. He didn't understand that either. She was perfect, but then he would have thought her perfect no matter what she had looked like.