Don't answer.

Don't look. But it was compulsory. He glanced back before he could stop himself and there he saw her leaving the cabin with no coat on.

"Zarek!" She stumbled in the snow and fell.

Leave her. She should have stayed inside where she was safe.

He couldn't.

She was helpless alone and he wouldn't leave her outside to die.

Mumbling a fetid curse that would have made a sailor cringe, he went to her side. He picked her up roughly and pushed her toward her house. "Get inside before you freeze to death."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You can't stay out here, either."

"Believe me, princess, I've slept in worse conditions than this."

"You'll die out here."

"I don't care."

"Well, I do."

Zarek would have been far less stunned had she slapped him. At leastthat he would have expected.

For a full minute he couldn't move as those words rang in his ears. The idea that anyone cared whether or not he lived or died was so alien to him that he wasn't even sure how to respond.

"Get inside," he snarled, shoving her gently back through her door.

The wolf growled at him.

"Shut up, Sasha," she snapped before he had a chance to. "One more sound out of you and I'll makeyou go outside."

The wolf sniffed the air indignantly as if it understood her, then darted to the back of the house.

Zarek shut the door while Astrid trembled from the cold. The falling snow melted, making her instantly wet. He was wet too, not that he cared. He was used to physical discomfort.

She wasn't.

"What were you thinking?" he yelled at her, sitting her down on the couch. "Don't you dare take that tone of voice with me."

So he growled at her instead and stalked to the bathroom where he could grab a towel from the rack. Then he headed to her bedroom and grabbed a blanket.

He returned to her. "You're soaked."

"I noticed."

Astrid was surprised by the sudden, unexpected warmth of a blanket covering her, especially given his angry, gravelly words that had all but called her an idiot for going after him.

Zarek wrapped her up tightly, then knelt before her. He pulled her fur-lined slippers from her feet and rubbed her frozen toes until she could again feel something other than the painful burn of cold.

She'd never experienced cold like this before and she wondered how many times Zarek must have suffered from it with no one there to warm him.

"That was a stupid thing for you to do," he said harshly.

"Then why didyou do it?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he dropped her foot and moved around her.

She didn't know what he was going to do until she felt a towel covering her head. Tensing, she expected him to be rough.

He wasn't. In fact, his touch was amazingly gentle as he toweled her hair dry.

How strange was this? Who would have thought he would take such tender care of her?

It was completely unexpected.

Perhaps there was more to him than there appeared...

Zarek gnashed his teeth at how soft her damp hair was as it fell against his hands. He tried to keep the towel between it and his skin, but it didn't work. Strands of her hair continually brushed his flesh, making him burn.

What would it be like to kiss a woman?

What would it be like to kissher !

He'd never before had the inclination. Every time a woman had tried, he'd moved his lips away from hers. It was an intimacy he had no wish to experience with anyone.

And yet he felt the yearning for it now. Felt a hunger to sample the moist, rosy lips of Astrid. What are you? Mental?

Yes, he was.

He had no place in his life for a woman, no place for a friend or companion.

He'd learned from the hour of his birth that he had but one destiny.

Isolation.

Even when he tried to belong, it didn't work. He was an outsider. That was all he knew.

He pulled the towel away from her hair and stared at her, wanting to run his hand through those damp strands and comb them. Her skin was still ashen and gray from the cold. But she was no less lovely. No less inviting.

Before he could stop himself, he laid his bare hand against her chilled cheek and let the softness of her skin pierce him.

Gods, but it felt so good just to touch her.

She didn't pull away from his touch or cringe. She sat there and let him touch her like a man.

Like a lover...

"Zarek?" Her voice was full of uncertainty.

"You feel like ice," he growled, then left her. He had to get away from her and the strange feelings she stirred inside him. He didn't want to be around her.

He didn't want to be tamed.

Every time he had allowed himself to be tied to another human, he'd been betrayed.

By everyone.

Even Jess, who had seemed safe because he lived so far away.

An echo pain stabbed his back.

Apparently Jess hadn't lived far enough away.

Zarek glanced out the kitchen window where the snow continued to fall. Sooner or later, Astrid would sleep and then he would leave.

Then she couldn't stop him.

Astrid started to go after Zarek, but stopped herself. She wanted to see what he would do. What he intended. Sasha, what is he doing?

She held herself still and used Sasha's sight. Zarek was unbuttoning his coat. Her breath caught at the sight of his bare chest. Every muscle on his body rippled as he removed the coat and draped it over the back of her ladder-back chair.

The man was simply gorgeous. His tawny, bare back and wide shoulders inviting. Delectable.

But what stunned her was his right arm and shoulder, which were a total mess from Sasha's attack.

Astrid gasped at the sight of what her companion had done. Zarek on the other hand didn't seem to be the least bit bothered by his vicious wounds. He went about his business as if nothing had happened.

"Do I have to look at this?" Sasha whined in her head. "I'm going to go blind looking at a naked man."

"You're not going to go blind and he's not naked." Unfortunately.

Astrid was a bit taken aback by that uncharacteristic thought. She'd never ogled a man before, but she found herself transfixed by Zarek.

"Yes I am, and yes he is. Naked enough to make me lose my lunch anyway."

Sasha started out of the kitchen.

"Sasha, stay."

"I'm not a dog, Astrid, and I don't care for that commanding tone. I stay with you by my choice, not by yours."

"I know, Sasha. I'm sorry. Please, stay for me." Growling in a manner very reminiscent of Zarek, Sasha loped back into the kitchen and sat down to watch him.

Zarek paid no attention to Sasha while he moved about the kitchen looking for something.

She frowned at him pulling out a small pan. As he moved toward her fridge, her breath caught at the sight of a stylized dragon tattooed onto the small of his back.

And right above it was the fierce-looking wound where someone had shot him.

She cringed in unexpected sympathy. For the first time in a long while she actually felt sorry for someone. It looked vicious and painful.

Zarek moved as if he barely noticed it.

He went to the fridge and pulled out her milk and the big Hershey candy bar she'd bought on impulse. He poured the milk into the saucepan and then added pieces of the chocolate to it. How strange. He'd bit her head off and intimidated her, then tended her, and now he was making hot chocolate.

"It's not for you," Sasha said to her.

"Hush, Sasha."

"It's not. Wanna bet he tries to poison me with the chocolate?"

"Well, then don't eat it."

Zarek turned around and leveled a sinister sneer at Sasha. "Here, Lassie, want to go find Timmy in the well? C'mon, girl, I'll even open the door for you and toss you a biscuit."

"Here psycho-Hunter, wanna find my teeth in your-"

"Sasha!"

"I can't help it. He bothers me. A lot."

Zarek looked over at the water and food bowls that Astrid had placed on a small tray that was about four inches off the floor for Sasha.

Sasha bared his teeth. "Not my food, man. You contaminate it and so help me Iwillbite the shit out of you ."

"Sasha, please."

Zarek approached the stainless steel bowls.

"I told you, Astrid, the bastard is going to poison me. He's going to spit in my water or do something worse to it."

Zarek did the most unexpected thing of all. He bent down, picked up the almost empty water bowl, washed it out in the sink and refilled it with water, then carefully returned it to the tray.

Astrid wasn't sure which of them was the most shocked by his actions. Her or Sasha.

Sasha moved to his bowl and sniffed it suspiciously.

Zarek returned to the sink to wash his hands. Once the chocolate milk was warmed up, he poured it into a mug and brought it to her.

"Here," he said, his voice ringing with its usual rude, hostile note. He took her hand and led it to the cup.