The Shaman Part 3

"Yes."

"Not at all," Charlie said politely at almost the same moment.

Dr. Bob forced a chuckle. "Why not? What brings you over, anyway? No luck tonight?"

"My ears were burning."

Charlie glanced at him a little guiltily and pushed her plate away.

"Ah!" Dr. Bob nodded. "I was just explaining to Charlie that you where the local medicine man." Charlie glared at the doctor. She hadn't given him permission to call her by her first name, at all, and certainly hadn't encouraged him to get familiar enough to call her Charlie. Only her family and closest friends called her that.

"Is that why you kept glancing over there? You expect me to start chanting?"

Charlie gave him a withering look. "I was looking at the clock," she said tightly.

"Your watch stop working?"

She reached for the napkin in her lap. "I'm a clock watcher."

He gave her a faint small that called her a liar. Charlie felt her palm itch and clamped it around her

napkin. "Guess that happens when you spend too much time in doors ... pale face."

Charlie was pretty sure she'd just been insulted, but she decided to ignore him.

She glanced at the clock again, just to emphasize that she hadn't been studying him since she'd come in.

"It's getting late. I should see if I can find a room. What time should I meet you in the morning?"

Dr. Bob grinned, sending Greywolf a triumphant look.

"For the samples," Charlie said pointedly.

"You're killing me! Here I've wined and dined you in the finest establishment and all you can think of is

work!" Dr. Bob said teasingly.

Charlie forced a smile at his effort, although she didn't find it particularly amusing. "Dinner's on me," she said tightly, pulling a bill out of her wallet and tossing it onto the table top.

The doctor glanced at the bill and then up at her again. His smile remained firmly in place, but there was a

glint of anger in his eyes now. "Now, that's what I need, a lady that'll keep me in style."

"Around eight?"

Dr. Bob's smile widened to a grin. "Lady, you're as tenacious as a bull terrier ... Eight it is."

There would be no samples. Charlie saw that. She'd blown it, let her irritation goad her into losing her cool. It hadn't helped that Chief Tall Tree had decided to crowd her and completely thrown her off kilter. She sent him a look of resentment.

He got up abruptly and moved the chair so she could clamber out of the bench seat. She could feel his gaze all the way to the door. She smoothed her hand over the seat of her britches self-consciously. By the time she reached the door, she felt like she'd forgotten how to walk and her a.s.s had a bulls eye on it. She tripped going out the door. Fortunately, she had a firm grip on the door handle and her foot merely wobbled in her high heel. It gave her a start, however, realizing how closely she'd come to turning her ankle, unsettling her even more.

She was huffing like a steam engine by the time she reached her car, unlocked it and crawled in. Instead of starting it, she sat staring at the darkness beyond the hood, trying to thrust Greywolf from her mind, trying to decide what to do.

She might be misjudging Dr. Bob. She hadn't really been around him long enough to know him.

Part of her job was reading people, however.

He wasn't going to give her those d.a.m.ned samples. She would arrive, pretend forgetfulness and the body

would already be gone.

Hindsight was always twenty/twenty. She realized she should've asked him to let her take samples herself

while they were still in the lab.

She hadn't wanted to seem too pushy, though. It set people's backs up, made them uncooperative.

So much for trying to b.u.t.ter him up by letting him come on to her. She'd botched that smashingly.

Sighing in disgust, she fished her keys out and started the car. She'd seen a hotel back on the highway before she'd turned onto reservation land. It was a good twenty miles, but she couldn't recall having seen a hotel since she'd gotten into town.

She'd already driven past the clinic when the thought popped into her mind. She slowed the car, glanced speculatively at the building in her rearview mirror. Her heart tripped into overtime when she realized she was considering breaking into the building and retrieving her own samples.

She stepped on the gas again, but slowed at the next corner and turned. Turning at the next intersection, she drove past the back side of the clinic. Except for the bare minimum lights that had been left on to discourage burglars, the building looked dark and completely deserted.

She saw a van as she pulled into the parking lot, however.

It must be the cleaning crew, she decided. Pulling out again, she circled the block and finally parked

about halfway down the block, watching the van in her rearview mirror.

"This is stupid," she muttered to herself. If she got caught there'd be h.e.l.l to pay.

If she didn't get the samples, she had no case.

Movement at the door of the clinic caught her attention and clinched the matter. The cleaning crew was

leaving. She debated, briefly, just driving up to them, flashing her badge and telling them she had to go in

for something. If she did that, though, it seemed likely Dr. Bob would find out and call the agency raising h.e.l.l about her after hours incursion.

She settled back, sliding low in the seat as the van pulled past her. As soon as they turned the corner at the end of the block, she got out of the car and strode briskly toward the clinic, glancing around occasionally to make certain no one was around.

Apparently everyone was either at home or down at the tavern. The streets were deserted.

She examined the entrance when she reached it. The door had a dead bolt lock. It was wired, too. She compressed her lips in disgust and glanced around again. Seeing no one, she moved around the building, checking each window. She'd gotten made it down one side when she made an interesting discovery. The wire on the window was broken.

Excitement washed over her. The security system was a sham. Evidently, it had been functional at one time, but had deteriorated and not been kept up. In most cases she supposed it would be a deterrent anyway. She'd thought it was a working burglar alarm. Most likely anybody that looked at it would.

The window was high, too high for her to climb into it. She considered it for several moments, but she liked this window. Despite the drawback, it was pretty much concealed from either street. Since it was the service alley, it was blocked from the buildings beside it by a tall fence and there was a large dumpster near each end, providing more cover from people pa.s.sing on either street.

Rising up on her tiptoes, she began shoving at the window. Slowly, it inched upward, baring a small crack. She was just trying to decide whether to hunt something to use for leverage when she was caught from behind.

She grunted, more in surprise than pain as both of her wrists were seized and her arms jerked out to each side, held with a vice-like grip than manacled her wrists to the wall on either side of the window she'd been trying to jimmy. A mixture of alarm and excitement went through her as he enveloped her in the moist heat and scent of his hard body, molding every hard, sculpted muscle on his legs, torso and arms into every inch of her own body as he captured her between himself and the unyielding wall. Her heart pounded in her chest like a jack hammer, pumping her blood through her veins in a roar that crashed against her eardrums deafeningly as he dipped his head and she felt his breath near her ear.

Chapter Five.

Charlie tried to wrest free, but found she could scarcely move in any direction. Her thoughts were chaotic with the a.s.sault of sensations. The spurt of adrenaline that rushed through her sapped the strength from her limps, left her dizzy and disoriented, made her instincts sluggish. "What are you doing here?" she gasped shakily, unable to infuse any authority into her voice.

"That's exactly what I wanted to ask you," he murmured, his voice husky with both threat and promise.

From somewhere, Charlie managed to summon enough anger to lift the haze of disorientation fractionally and, as she felt him lift his head, she leaned her own forward, slamming the hard part of her skull back against him and lifting her foot to drive her heel into his at the same time.

Luck was with him, or he'd antic.i.p.ated such a move. His feet were planted wide enough apart that she missed her target. Moreover, the difference in their heights made her head b.u.t.t ineffectual. A meaty thunk reverberated in her ears as her skull made contact with hard, bulging pec instead of his face.

He tsked her, the amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice evident. "You'll only make this harder on yourself if you try to resist."

The word 'try' annoyed her, but as she felt him guiding first one arm and then the other behind her back, renewed alarm surfaced. She didn't know whether to be alarmed or relieved when he merely manacled her wrists with one of his hands. She felt his free hand skate over her a.s.s, cupping first one cheek and then the other. She jerked reflexively when his hand followed her cleft and a fresh tide of alarm and heat enveloped her. "What are you doing?" she demanded, but her voice, shaky with conflicting emotions, lacked the authority she'd been aiming for.

Instead of answering immediately, he removed his hand and dipped his head close to hers once more. His hot, moist breath fanned along her ear and the skin of her neck as he rocked his hips against her b.u.t.tocks. She gasped as his erection nudged the cleft of her a.s.s. "Pat down."

Charlie managed to summon a weak dose of outrage, but it shrank away from her as his hand slipped around her waist and glided up her belly to cup first one breast and then the other. Her nipples hardened, thrusting hopefully against his ma.s.saging palms.

Releasing her abruptly, he stepped back. Charlie leaned weakly against the wall for a moment, struggling to catch her breath and finally managed to turn to look up at him in the feeble light filtering down the alley from the street lights at either end. Shadows shrouded his face, making it impossible to read his expression as she studied him, trying to decide what sort of threat he represented beyond clouding her judgment with desire that was as unwarranted as it was unwelcome.

"Lady ... don't look at me that," he said, his voice rough with both threat and promise.

Charlie swallowed with an effort, trying to bring her raging hormones under control.

"I did warn you," he muttered even as he closed in on her once more. Crowding her against the wall behind her, he slipped one arm around her, cupping her b.u.t.tocks. His other hand settled on her throat, his fingers curling under her jaw and pushing her face up to meet his. Charlie gasped. Dismay and a heady heat rushed through her as his mouth covered hers in a renewed a.s.sault to her senses. As if her parted lips were an invitation, he plunged his tongue into her mouth. The moist heat of his mouth, the taste and texture of his tongue as it plundered her own mouth ravaged her with the disorienting sensation of falling into a deep, dark pit. She clutched his arms, struggling against the desire to yield her soul to the devil for the pleasure he offered, so inundated with the clamor of her body for repletion that there was little room in her for clear-headed logic.

Despite that, her sense of self-preservation kicked in and she began to push against him ineffectually.

Finally, reluctantly, he pulled away, relaxing his grip on her. She didn't dare look up at him, fearful that he'd see the desire that still pulsed through her. "Satisfied?" she finally managed to say shakily.