Wolf Hunter

“I’m thinking about going,” she said.

“Maybe you should think harder.”

She shook her head. “My advice to you is to take it or leave it before I change my mind.”

Another streak of heat tore through Cameron, magnified by surprise. What had she just said?

She had no qualms about this? About sex with a stranger who could have been anyone, and was, in actuality, so much more?

“I don’t know what game you’re playing, or what you’re up to,” he said, “but I just told you I never accost women in dark places, and I wasn’t lying.”

“Okay. Leave it, then.”

Cameron stared down at her, his stability tumbling. Finding this female had temporarily taken his mind off pressing problems. Imagining what he’d like to do to her was a luxury. But finding her alone in this park on a night like this—especially on a night like this—made all those sinful thoughts unacceptable.

Several gangs called this place their home turf. The whole area stank of wolf gone mad, and those mindless badasses, minus the fur, were out tonight and always up to no good. No werewolf could resist the play of moonlight so near to a full. He hadn’t been able to ignore it.

He could barely ignore this, or her.

Despite his eagerness, and after a monk-like few months, mating with this woman, on this spot, just wasn’t possible. He was what he was, and had been for a while. Wolf particles had been introduced to his bloodstream, creating and sealing a wolf to his system, leaving him unstable.

It had taken days of severe agony in order to recover from the initial nightmare of the bite that had made him a hybrid. In his mind, the image of the hyped-up bastard that had chomped on his arm remained fixed.

He might have lost his mind completely for a few of those terrible days afterward. Nothing of that existed now, other than the brief remembrance of uttering prayers about needing to be put out of his misery.

Yet he had survived. And closeness to others had become impossible, at home and at work. He stopped returning the stares from women on the street, and made no dates. He quit having drinks after-hours with the guys on his beat. All that withholding was paramount, and out of necessity, until he found out as much as he could about his present state, and about the control necessary to maintain it.

He existed now in werewolf infancy, with no way to anticipate what might happen if his emotions got involved. What if he hurt a woman by accident?

So you, he wanted to say to the female with the shining green eyes, are the ultimate temptation.

Until he knew everything, and maybe not even then, he wasn’t relationship material. And it was a given that a one-nighter with a pretty woman in a notoriously feral park wasn’t a win-win for anybody, under any circumstances. This close to a full moon, any thought to the contrary would be pure lunacy.

If you knew what resides at my core, Green Eyes, and what I have become, you would run off, screaming.

I hate what the moon does to people, she had said.

Those words still echoed in his mind.

Its beauty is deceitful, she’d said.

Looking at her now, he wanted to say, If you only knew what deceit actually is.

His wolf stirred, raising goose bumps on the back of Cameron’s neck. The wolf was searching for an early way out. This wolf, Cameron feared, might want to bite somebody back.

Oh yes, I want you, both man and wolf agreed when eyeing this woman, though in spite of the physical need pounding through him, he had told this woman he was a gentleman.

No joke.

Still, he had to admit that she possessed a streak of wildness unlike anything he’d encountered in a female, and this sparked his pleasure buttons. Part of him voted to take her up on her offer of closeness. Heck, most parts did. He was hard in all the right places and aching to act.

Didn’t everyone need company on a dark summer night?

Even a monster?

As the scent of female hormones floated in the moonlight, Cameron’s heart thundered. Her face was dewy, and enticingly damp. The slightest flush of pink had returned to her cheeks. Those large emerald eyes, slowly lifting to the level of his neck, his jaw, and continuing upward, were wide open. Her generous lips opened as if she’d say something else or take back what she’d said about him either taking her up on her offer, or leaving it.

He almost wished she would take all this back.

Cameron ran his hand over her black T-shirt, his heated palm sliding slowly from the rounded collar to the swell of her breasts. The shirt was thin. He felt her fullness as if there were nothing between his hand and her skin. And indeed, she was lacking undergarments that would have taken precious time to remove.

The raised buds of her nipples were an erotic discovery and a telling symptom of her heightened state of arousal. She was exotic, narcotic, and had become his drug of choice on a moon-filled night.

After all, the whole gentleman thing only went so far.

The sting in his fingertips announced the closeness of claws that had no business intruding on tonight. A ghostly shudder of lengthening ligaments tickled Cameron’s spine as his baser side pined for release, when in reality, he and the wolf were one, and inseparable.

The feisty woman’s heart beat frantically beneath his hand. She dripped with the same moonlight that would soon issue a command for him to trade one shape for another, and the light made her features appear more angular, and riddled with shadows. She was moonlight personified...and he was going to use her. Because, swear to God, she looked as if she could handle what he wanted to do to her, and like it.

Stroking upward from her breast, wedging himself tighter against her, Cameron allowed the beastly cravings some room, just this once, and angled his ravenous mouth toward hers.

Chapter 4

His face came close. Their breath mingled. The stranger’s supple mouth closed over hers with a kiss that made Abby stagger.

She let him touch her. Let him kiss her. Their closeness was combustible. With that first meeting of their eyes he had become the need. The must have. Rampant desire for him ruled her, fed her, drove her toward a storm of emotion that wanted him inside her. Nothing else would do.

She couldn’t allow herself to examine the reasons behind this sudden irrational craving.

So, really...who was the animal here?

She kissed him back, giving in to the sensations. His hot, demanding, talented mouth rendered her breathless. When their tongues touched, a blistering dance began between mouth and lips and bodies straining to get at each other.

He tasted like midnight. Like moonlight on a mountaintop. Like a howl of wildness echoing through a vast valley. And a lot like the physical manifestation of greed. No human connection could be like this, she realized. None ever had.

Her mouth clung to his, nipped at his. As the kiss went from dry to damp, moving quickly toward savage, Abby raked his lower back with her fingernails, wadding up his shirt to get at the taut flesh beneath, desperate to make him pay for what he was doing to her. Both of them needed to share the pain of accessing the forbidden.

His skin radiated the heat of a hundred bonfires, burning, singeing. His mouth piled fire on top of fire in an overlapping grid of flames. Being close to him was a pleasure that existed in a land beyond thought and consequences, falling into the realm of her pure carnal fantasy.

Maybe this was why werewolves were feared. Because of what they had to offer.

His masculine body felt solid and rock-hard against hers. His embrace became an all-consuming bliss. She pulled at his shoulders and wrapped her hands in his hair, wanting to be closer to him still, processing the danger as sublime.

Her feet left the ground. Air whooshed out of her lungs as her back hit the grass. Her companion dropped to his knees and stretched out on top of her, as breathless as she was.

And this felt good.

Writhing beneath his weight, Abby tore at him with trembling hands, her fingers finding his waistband, and beneath it more fiery skin that simultaneously burned and beckoned.

Hell, in a minute, she would howl, even if she didn’t know how.

When he paused, she formed challenging words against his lips. “What’s wrong? Did you get an A in self-control?”

In answer, a growl rolled from his throat and into her, its vibration the biggest surprise of all. As if that growl had tickled something hidden inside her, Abby felt the rise of her own voice, coming from a place she hadn’t known existed.

The sound she made shot through her, emerging as an echo of his. Her body twitched in shock.

“Well, well,” her sexy companion whispered, his golden gaze boring into her. “I suppose that makes things infinitely easier.”

He lifted her up before his remark had time to register, and set her on her feet. He peeled her T-shirt over her head, then ripped open his shirt with a pop of pinging buttons. Warm hands eased her pants and underwear over her hips, and down her thighs.

She was naked, and quaking in anticipation of his next move. But he stood there, looking at her with a gaze that nearly did her in.

Damn him and the moonlight he rode in on, she was not going to beg.

He sidled up to her at last, the heat radiating off his shirtless chest like that of an inferno. His arms encircled her waist. Their chests met with a jarring impact. They were going to do whatever it took to address this raging passion. There would be no stopping it. She was in the arms of the enemy, and had willingly crossed enemy lines.

The scratching sound of a zipper opening stirred Abby’s blood. His hands stroked upward over the curve of her buttocks, and up her spine. His fingers splayed over her rib cage. When he elevated her again, she wrapped her legs around his waist.

Her boot heels dug into the backs of his thighs. The boots and the knife in its leather sheath were all she had now, but notice of those things distanced as the glorious cock he settled her over took all remaining breath away.

She clung to him as she slid down his length, the pleasure of having him between her legs exquisite and extreme.

“I’m not afraid of the night,” she said without knowing why. “And I’m not afraid of you.”

“Not afraid? Then that makes one of us.”

The white-hot Were backed her against a tree for balance, and pulled off her boots. He glanced at the silver-bladed knife attached to her calf.

“The knife stays,” Abby said. Then the ability for speech left her.

Not satisfied with their bodies locked together in a way he couldn’t manipulate, her lover took her again to the grass. He perched above her, and with one hand found the moist, quaking spot he needed to again enter her overheated depths.

Abby opened for him, wanting every last bit of what he had to offer, and unwilling to wait. He sank into her with a thrust that stretched her to her limits.

Abby gasped and threw her head back as she took him in, working to draw him deeper, while at the same time accepting his drowning kiss. Sensations overwhelmed from two sources at once, flowing gloriously from her mouth to what lay buried between her thighs.

The taking wasn’t an easy one, or time-consuming. Foreplay belonged in the bedroom, between real lovers, and this was something else altogether. This was nuts.

Her Were entered her again and again, hard enough to tickle the sensitive spot already close to a climax. Spasms began to build that forced her hips into him, urging him on as she closed herself around him.

Having him inside her was at once heaven and hell and a mistake she might live to regret, but it was exciting. When he withdrew, Abby dug into him with her fingers, drawing blood with her nails to again make him pay for being a beast, the enemy, and for his part in this crazy liaison.

Thoughts flashed by at lightning speed. She’d never see him again. A few stolen moments were all they had. If her father found out about this moonlight tryst, he’d kill her with his bare hands.

The scent of blood filled the air. His blood. A sound of surprise slipped from his throat, though he didn’t stop kissing her. His response to her fingernails was to thrust into her deeper, over and over, building a rhythm that made Abby see stars.

Unable to hold off what loomed so close to the surface, a cry of growled pleasure tore from her. Her eyes fluttered open. Abby found herself again looking into his beautifully inhuman eyes, and the intensity of the connection she found in them brought more lightning and tripled the emotional storm.

She cried out again as he hit the place that had never been touched, never been found, so deep down inside her. The look in his golden eyes as he did so pierced her soul, knocking down barriers she had long held in place to keep emotion at bay.

She opened that last little bit...and came.

Arching her back, hit by a sizzling, fiery orgasm, Abby bucked off the grass as each successive wave of deliciously vicious pleasure overtook her.

The world drifted in whirling flashes of bright, multicolored cartwheels that mirrored the moonlight. Sound ceased. Breath suspended as her body went rigid in the throes of a ceaseless, endless ecstasy. The man providing the pleasure held himself motionless, pinning her to the orgasm without easing up. Like her, he fought hard for each labored breath.

“Yes,” he whispered, encouraging her to give in to the pleasure. “Yes, little wolf.”

She crested wave after wave of ecstasy until the waves finally began to recede. It seemed like hours before the shudders ceased and the orgasm faded. Her breath finally returned as the spasms fled. Her limbs slowly regained feeling. But Abby kept her eyes shut, afraid to open them, afraid to look at the man, the stranger, the creature, who had made this incredible thing happen.

What would she possibly say? Given what you are, we should have used a condom?

Nevertheless, she had no way around it. She had to face him. Face this. She had to get up, get dressed and walk away.

He wasn’t there when she opened her eyes. She saw only a dark stretch of moon-dappled grass that made reality come crashing down. She was on her hands and knees in the dirt. Her knees were aching. Her palms were scratched. Their mating session had taken on aspects of the surreal.

He hadn’t gone. Abby heard him breathing. Her ardent lover curled around her, with his bare chest pressed to her back. They had changed positions sometime during this exotic escapade, and had gone after each other like two animals rutting.

His arms were wrapped around her waist. Both she and this creature were slick with sweat and completely silent in the aftermath of what they had done.

How right her father had been about some things, she thought. Weres were dangerous. They were treacherous without having to kill someone in order to earn that reputation.

“Are you okay?”

His question sounded oddly out of place. The resonance in his tone pulsed in her ears. She expected him to get up and walk away, having had his fill of her. Thank you, ma’am.

Abby could not think of a single verbal jab or witticism to reply with, though she opened her mouth to try. Damn him, his question had been nice.

It was time to get up and get away.

What had she done?

Sliding out from beneath her lover, Abby got to her feet. Feeling only slightly self-conscious about being naked at midnight in a public park, she muffled a startled cry as a piercing pain ripped through her right thigh, hurting so badly, she sagged back down to her knees.

Muscles seized. Her vision began to tunnel. A haze of inky darkness descended as strong arms swept her up and a voice whispered, “It’s okay. I have you. Curse this damn park and everyone who has ever set foot in it, because I knew there would be trouble tonight.”

Chapter 5

Abby’s eyes fluttered open to a moving tableau. Earth, grass, trees passed by, everything wrapped in a startling, stinging round of pain.

She gasped and sucked in a lungful of air.

“It will be okay,” a familiar voice soothed. “We’ll get help.”

More pain crashed over her. But as Abby breathed in the night air and steeled herself against the discomfort in her leg, she realized the discomfort wasn’t life-threatening, and that whatever had happened had merely come as a shock.

“You’ll be all right,” the voice repeated. His voice. The man who was also a Were.

Her wits returned. The landscape wasn’t moving. She was, caught up in his arms. The Were carried her. She wasn’t out of it enough to fail to realize that she was completely naked, and to remember that she and this guy had just shared a round of mind-numbing sex. Her lungs were filled with his scent. Her mouth felt swollen. Beside the pain in her leg, she ached deep down inside.

Had she passed out? Fainted? If so, it would be a first.

Glancing sideways, Abby saw that he was dressed, and that her clothes dangled from his closed fists.

“Put me down.” Her voice sounded fairly strong and demanding.

The golden beast stayed infuriatingly silent.

“You forgot my boots,” she said without looking up at him. “And I’ve forgotten the magic word. Please put me down.”

“It would be better if you directed me where to take you, if that isn’t to the closest hospital.” He spoke in the same sexy voice that had first roped her in, though it now carried a trace of anxiousness.

“What happened?”

“You’ve been shot.”

“What?”

“You’ve been shot, and we need to get help. We need that leg bandaged. I can’t just set you down if you can’t walk out of here. I can’t take that chance.”

He gave his head a toss to move the glossy curtain of hair that had fallen to cover half of his face. The gesture tweaked another ache deep inside Abby.

“We weren’t wrong about this park and what goes on here,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to take the brunt of that. You shouldn’t have been out here in the first place. Spending any time here...well, both of us should have known better.”

Frigging park. She’d actually been shot after making the biggest mistake of her life so far? Was that some sort of Karma?

“Bullet?”

He nodded. “Only grazed.”

“Who would do that?”

“The shot was probably meant for me.”

That announcement didn’t make Abby feel better or provide a clearer picture of what had just happened. She glanced around again, wondering who would shoot at this guy without the onset of a full moon.

She didn’t like what came to mind.

Could it be a gang warning them to keep off their turf? Other than that, who prided himself on being a kind of guardian angel for the darker areas of Miami, knowing what sort of things inhabited those places?

Good old Dad.

But Sam Stark and the team in residence this month hadn’t mentioned coming out tonight. They had nothing to gain from hurting anyone in human form, and none of them possessed the ability she had to detect species other than their own. There was no reason for the team to hunt. Plus, her father wouldn’t have missed a target. As a sharpshooter, Sam’s marksmanship was first rate.

Abby turned her head to thoughtfully scan the dark to the east of where they walked.

Couldn’t be Sam. Unless her father had in fact been looking for her, and had taken a potshot at the man keeping her from doing her job.

Unless Sam had witnessed the sexual escapade and been angry enough to get that point across.

In that case, maybe her father had meant to hurt her.

She checked out her leg and the raw skin on the outside of her thigh. Blood hadn’t pooled there, so it was, in fact, only a graze. Still, it stung like hell, and her nerves hadn’t calmed down much.

Can’t be Sam.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t be entirely sure.

The object of her sexual fantasy continued to hold her. If her father remained in the area and took better aim now, he’d have a twofer. With the next shot, Sam would lose an important piece of his business on the one hand, while bagging a Were with the other, without knowing his daughter’s lover was Were. The same beautiful wolf that actually appeared to care about what happened to her, and might even care more than her father did.

How would she explain any of this at a hospital?

“I can walk,” she said.

“How fast?”

“Fast enough.”

Broad shoulders strained against the fabric of his open shirt. When the Were turned his head, Abby felt tension ruffle through him that made her senses stir uncomfortably.

“We’ve lost them for now. Too many others patrol the sidelines of this one section of the park for gangbangers to willingly trespass so close to the boulevard,” he explained.

“Yet they’re not gone.”

That remark earned her a sober glance.

“No,” he agreed. “They’re out there somewhere, waiting.”

“For what?”

“Possibly to try another shot, better aimed this time.”

“Why would they go after you, if, in fact, they did?” she asked.

“You mean a reason that didn’t involve getting lucky with you?”

The remark sounded like forced lightness—an excuse that didn’t work, a cover-up that sent Abby’s mind into overdrive.

She tried again. “Who are you?”

“Just a guy.”

“Oh no. Not just a guy. It doesn’t take a genius to know that.”

When he didn’t respond, Abby said, “Okay. Listen. We don’t owe each other anything, like sharing names, phone numbers or Sunday dinners.” She glanced at the surroundings for the source of his nervousness, shoving aside her own discomfort.

“I don’t feel anything remotely like the kind of pathetic female in need of carting around or being rescued from her own mistakes,” she said. “I can manage a grazed leg.”

When he looked at her questioningly, a prickle of fear underscored Abby’s sense of balance. Uncertain about whether this guy’s closeness caused the flutter in her belly, or if something else wasn’t quite right, she gritted her teeth. The icy chill at the base of her neck brought up a fresh round of anxiety.

In contrast, the shirt pressed against her hip and shoulder felt soft and silky. Abby recalled all too well the smoothness of the Were’s back beneath it, and how she had marred that skin with her nails.

Holding up one hand, she saw blood under her fingernails. She remembered the heat-tempered smell of blood in the air. That had been his blood. Now, the scent of hers mingled with the memory of his.

Another jolt of pain struck, slightly milder this time and ending up as a dull, persistent throb that Abby had to compartmentalize. Danger lurked. They had to get out of the park.

“Put me down and I’ll be on my way. You don’t have to take me anywhere. You aren’t responsible for what happened, and don’t have to wait around to get to know me better.”

“That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think? Imagining that I’d want to know you better?”

“Actually, I can feel how much you’d like that.”

He didn’t smile. Though he was hard enough beneath his jeans for Abby to feel the ongoing state of arousal that told her how much he might appreciate another round of death-defying sexual antics on any available surface, the Were’s expression was deadly serious.

“Someone’s coming,” she guessed.

“Yes.”

No way could she ask whether that someone was human, or something other than human, because that would let the cat out of the bag regarding her ability to detect Weres.

“I can walk,” she repeated. “I promise.”

He looked down at her, his face a mask of doubt.

“Promise,” she said.

He stopped walking long enough to set her on her feet—reluctantly, Abby thought. Although her leg protested when she put weight on it, luckily it didn’t give out.