Rogue Rider

“I’m going to contact the state police and hand this over to them. But first, I’ll call the local shelter and get you set up, Reseph.” He turned to Jillian. “It was good seeing you.” He strode out of the room.

“What does he mean, shelter?” Reseph’s crystal eyes searched hers.

Crap. Jillian blew out a long breath. “It’s where you’ll stay now. Matthew and the social workers will help you find out who you are.”

His jaw clenched so hard she heard it pop. “And if that doesn’t happen?”

“Then they’ll get you the help you need to take care of yourself.”

He stepped closer to her, overwhelming her with his size, his presence, his masculine, outdoorsy scent. “I don’t want to go to a shelter. I want to stay with you.”

“You can’t.” She backed up, needing to extricate herself from the magnetic pull that seemed to surround him. “You need things I can’t give you.”

“I don’t know these people.” He sounded so distraught that she almost reached for him. God, how easily he stirred emotion in her. Another reason he had to go. “I don’t want to know them.”

She had to get tough. But not for him, for her. “Reseph, I have enough to deal with on my farm. I can’t keep an extra stray.”

“Stray?” He was on her in a flash—she didn’t even have time to be afraid or question his intentions, because his mouth was on hers and his body was a hard wall against her curves. “Does this feel like I’m nothing but a stray?” he murmured against her lips.

Good… God. No, it didn’t, but she couldn’t risk an emotional attachment, especially with someone who could turn out to be a serial killer or something. Talk about a guy turning out to be something different than you’d thought.

“Reseph, please…”

He renewed the kiss, taking her face in his broad hands, and it didn’t occur to her to protest. In fact, when he ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, she opened for him. He took advantage, driving his tongue against hers and then slowing it down to nibble on her lower lip. His masterful possession had her melting bonelessly into him. Her breath grew ragged as she got lost in his kiss and the feel of his body pinning hers to the wall.

Her own body strained to get even closer to him. All sense of time and place became only a hazy niggling in the back of her mind as Reseph’s thick thigh separated her legs and his chest pressed against her br**sts.

“Take me home, Jillian.” His whispered words tickled her kiss-swollen lips. “I promise you’ll never think of me as a stray again.”

Tempting. So damned tempting.

“What the—?” Matthew’s voice cracked in the small room, making her jump. “Get off her, buddy.”

Reseph went utterly, dangerously still. Then, very slowly, he turned his head. “Fuck off. Buddy.”

Whatever Matthew saw in Reseph’s expression made him step back and flex his hand over the pistol at his hip.

Oh, shit. Heart pounding, Jillian slid out from under Reseph’s body and put herself between the two men. “It’s okay, Matthew. We were just saying good-bye.”

Abruptly, the menace surrounding Reseph evaporated and hurt flashed in his eyes. She almost gave in. Almost asked him to come home with her. Instead, she managed a shaky smile.

“Take care, Reseph.”

And with that, she got the hell out of there.

Six

Pain lanced Reseph as Jillian walked away, becoming a deep, sharp ache when he heard her truck peel out of the parking lot. She’d left him. She’d really left him. And it hadn’t even seemed to be all that hard to do. She hadn’t looked back, had run out of the building as if she couldn’t wait to be away from him.

But why? He might not remember being with any women, but he knew desire when he saw—and felt it. When he’d kissed Jillian, she’d reacted like a female who needed her male na**d. She’d thrown off more heat than her wood stove, and her body had melted into his so fluidly, so easily, that if they’d been alone, he had no doubt he could have been inside her in a matter of minutes.

So why had she abandoned him?

“It’s for the best,” Matthew, that dick, said. “She’s had it bad enough without having to deal with you, too.”

Reseph ignored the crack aimed at him. “What’s she had to deal with?”

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” Matthew gestured to the door. “Come on. I’ll take you to the shelter.”

Having no choice, Reseph grabbed his department store bag and allowed the dick to drive him a mile away, to a building that looked like an old prison. Or prison hospital.

Deputy Dick confirmed his suspicions. “This used to be a sanitarium.”

“And now it’s a homeless shelter? You have a big problem with homelessness here?”

“We had to reopen it when the demons came. It’s not a homeless shelter as much as it is a women’s shelter.” He gestured to a side yard, where a half-dozen kids were building a snowman near the swing set. “Most of them have homes.”

“Then why would they be living here with their kids?”

“A lot of their husbands went off to fight and never came home. These women are afraid to be alone.”

“But the demons are gone.”

The deputy’s expression turned sad. “Not for them.”

They went inside, and shit, the shelter was depressing. Someone had tried to dress the place up with colorful paint, construction paper artwork, and cheap Christmas garland on the gray, cracked walls and rusted iron railings, but it was still a gore-toad in a kitten suit.

Wait… what the hell was a gore-toad? Were things starting to come back to him? God, he hoped so. With Jillian gone, he needed something to grab onto.

And dammit, why had she left him?

A gray-haired lady met them at the desk, and Reseph allowed her to lead him to a cell with concrete walls, a cot, and a two-drawer metal filing cabinet that doubled as a dresser.

This was going to be his home.

It was nothing like Jillian’s warm, cozy cabin.

The lady, Nancy, handed him a clipboard with paperwork. “I need you to fill out everything you can, and sign where indicated. There’s a sheet of rules and a schedule you need to agree to. Everyone chips in to help out, from cleaning to laundry to yard work and cooking. Men’s bathroom is down the hall.”

She left him alone with his paperwork and a skinny black pen.

He sank down onto the cot with his plastic bag of everything he owned in the world. But even that wasn’t his, was it? Jillian had bought the stuff for him.

So what now? He didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to be away from Jillian. That kiss… damn, that kiss. He’d been attracted to her before, but there had been some serious chemistry behind the intimacy they’d shared.

Yeah, the earth had moved for her so much that she left you like a mongrel dumped at the pound.

His fingers tightened on the bag. Maybe he’d scared her more than she’d let on. Maybe he’d been too much of a burden.

He considered everything she’d done for him, from hauling him to her house and taking care of him, to cooking for him, buying him clothes, and getting him help. Okay, so he’d been a burden. But he didn’t have to be. While he worked on trying to find out who he was he could help out around her house. Earn his keep like he’d be doing here.

“She didn’t give you that option, idiot.”

Muttering to himself, he looked out the narrow, barred window at the playground, where a woman was watching over kids engaged in a snowball fight. Every once in a while, she smiled at them, but Reseph recognized her nervousness. Her tense posture was set in fight-or-flight mode, and her gaze kept darting to their surroundings, as if she expected monsters to jump out at her at any time.

These women are afraid to be alone. Matthew’s voice rang in Reseph’s ears.

These females’ demons were still haunting them. Jillian was like that, too. He’d seen it in her eyes when they’d been in the barn the other night. Had Jillian been hurt? Or widowed? She hadn’t mentioned a husband, but maybe his loss was too painful to talk about.

Reseph had to find out more. Surely someone knew Jillian well enough to discuss her.

He tossed the clipboard aside and headed to find Nancy. She wasn’t at the front desk, but he heard her voice coming from a room down the hall. He slowed as he approached, singling out her voice from the other two females.

“I’m not sure I like having a man staying here,” Nancy said. “Especially not one with amnesia. He could be an ax-murderer for all we know.”

So… judge-y. Insulted, Reseph bit back a curse. Nancy could be right, but he could also be a world-famous surgeon who donated time and money to orphans in third-world countries.

“Didn’t the deputy say they were going to run his fingerprints?” asked a woman whose voice was a two-pack-a-day rasp.

“That’ll only help if his fingerprints are in a database,” said another woman.

“I don’t know about you,” Two-packer said, “but given what happened to the Bjornsen couple, the fact that this Reseph person was found only a mile away from them makes me nervous.”

“Bjornsen couple?” Nancy asked.

The woman’s smoky voice lowered even more. “The Bjornsens are that weird couple who moved here from California.”

“I met them once,” Nancy said. “What happened to them?”

“Shh. I don’t think this has been made public yet. I only know because I overheard Sheriff Miller talking on his phone at the Purple Plate. He was saying that the Bjornsens had been slaughtered in their own trailer a couple of nights ago. Quite the coincidence that this man shows up with no memory at around the same time.”

Reseph’s gut twisted. He didn’t think he’d have done something like that, but “think” was the key word here, wasn’t it? He didn’t know much of anything. Although he was reasonably certain he wasn’t an altruistic world-class surgeon.