Taming The Shifter

“You were too busy strangling the life from that man,” she reminded him.

“Yes,” he said, frustration gnawing at him that she had stopped him from doing what had to be done, what apparently should have been done years ago so that other lives wouldn’t have been lost and destroyed. Now the bastard, Reagan, had gone underground. He hadn’t been easy to find the night Warrick had chased him into that dead-end alley; he would be even harder to track down now. Thanks to Detective Kate Wever.

“Why?” she asked. “I fired the first two shots into your shoulder, but you wouldn’t stop. You were in such a murderous rage.”

He couldn’t deny that he had been. “I had a damn good reason.”

“You should have stopped beating him when I told you to,” she said, “then I would have taken a report and you could have explained your actions.”

But he had been beyond explanations. Beyond reason. All he’d known was his hunger for vengeance, the exact same hunger he should be feeling for her—just for vengeance. But, despite the gun she held on him, another kind of hunger gnawed at him—and only that thin sheet separated her naked body from his gaze, from his touch. His fingers itched to reach for the sheet, to tug it off. But she would undoubtedly shoot him again.

“Explain the situation to me now. Why were you trying to kill that man?” she asked. “You called him a killer.”

Reagan was. But Warrick shouldn’t have told her that; it was none of her business. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t share his story without disclosing secrets he would really die if he revealed. That story haunted him, like he had tried to haunt her. Since she kept staring at him as though he were a ghost, he must have been successful haunting her. But he didn’t bother correcting her misconception; it was better that she think him a ghost than what he really was. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, but he couldn’t shake off the pain any more than he could the hunger. “Some people just need killing.”

She sucked in an audible breath and adjusted her grip on her gun, steadying the barrel that was still pointing directly at his chest. “That’s not for you to decide.”

“It wasn’t for you to decide that he should live and I should die.” Because she had let that bastard live, more would likely die. Maybe even her...

She drew in a shuddery breath. “You gave me no choice. I couldn’t just stand there and let you kill him.”

“So instead you killed me.”

“But you’re not dead,” she murmured, reaching out the hand not holding the gun toward his face. And as she did, her sheet slipped a little lower and revealed the deep cleft between her breasts.

He sure as hell wasn’t dead, not with the way his heart pounded frantically as desire coursed through him. Then her fingers brushed across his face, scraping over the stubble on his cheek until her fingertips covered his lips. Heat sizzled between them. He uttered a gasp of breath, and she shivered.

“You’re not a ghost, either.”

“No,” he admitted, moving his lips against her fingertips.

She shivered again, and her nipples hardened even more, pushing taut against that thin sheet. “If you’re not a ghost, what are you?”

“Well, I’m no angel.” But if he was, Warrick would be an avenging one. Or he would have been had she not interfered. Because she had, he had lost his chance for vengeance...against his enemy.

Her interference should have made her his enemy, too. He’d told himself that she was. And that was why he couldn’t leave her alone even though he no longer had any reason to stay in Zantrax. Except vengeance. Against her.

Liar.

His tense, aching body called him on his lie. He didn’t want vengeance on her. He just wanted her. Her fingers still pressed against his lips, he didn’t have to speak—to explain. All he had to do was lean closer...to her.

* * *

Kate’s heart hammered against her ribs. He was staring at her mouth with that intense, eerie topaz gaze. He was going to kiss her. And just like she hadn’t wanted to shoot him in the alley, she didn’t want to stop him.

He had broken into her apartment and had been watching her sleep. And instead of shooting him, she was going to let him kiss her? After all of those sleepless nights, she had totally lost her mind. She had no doubt anymore.

Only desire.

She had touched him to see if he was real or if her fingers would pass right through him like mist. But she couldn’t stop touching him, skimming her fingers along his jaw to his lips—which were surprisingly soft and warm. She wanted to taste them, too. She slid her hand to the nape of his neck and tugged him closer so that only a breath separated his lips from hers.

He was breathing. Fast and ragged. And his heart was beating. She could feel the vibrations of it despite the small space that separated his body from hers. His skin radiated warmth to hers, making her tingle in reaction.

He was no ghost. No dream.

“What the hell are you?” she murmured again. “Indestructible?”

“I’m destructible,” he replied with a heavy sigh that teased her lips.

“You weren’t wearing a bulletproof vest,” she said. “I saw the gunshot wound, saw you bleeding.” Her trembling fingers skimmed down his neck to the buttons on his shirt. She needed to see the scar, needed to understand how a man could have survived such an injury. If he was a man...

He caught her fingers in his hand. “If you see my scars, I’m going to have to see yours.”

Goose bumps lifted along her bare shoulders and arms. She had scars, but hardly anyone knew about them. How could he know? The fear she should have been feeling the minute she’d discovered him in the shadows finally coursed through her. The hand holding the gun tightened on the grip.

“Who are you?”

He chuckled and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Poor Kate, you can’t figure out if you want to kiss me or kill me.”

She gasped at his arrogance and his perception. And the desire that jolted her with his touch.

“Remember how well that worked out for you last time,” he goaded her with a wink, his long thick lashes brushing against his chiseled cheekbones. “You can’t kill me.”

“You said you’re not indestructible.”

“Killing someone isn’t the only way to destroy them.”

She knew that better than most. “Is that what you’re trying to do to me?” she asked. “Destroy me?”

Reporting an officer-involved shooting and being unable to produce the body had harmed her career. Seeing glimpses of him everywhere after she thought she’d killed him had harmed her sanity. That had to be why she was so addled, so confused—that she’d asked none of the questions that she should have, that she hadn’t fired her gun.

He sighed again, raggedly, and leaned his forehead against hers. Then his hand slid from her cheek, down her neck to clasp her throat. “Like you, I can’t figure out if I want to kiss you or kill you.”

Chapter 2

The barrel of the gun jammed hard into Warrick’s chest. He smiled in anticipation—not of the bullet but of her mouth beneath his, her lips opening for his possession. And he wanted to possess her.

In every way.

A clock chimed, the metallic clang reverberating from the living room beyond her closed bedroom door. He had been out there before, when he had checked out her whole place after coming through her window. The open living area was as big a mess as her clothes-strewed bedroom. But out there newspapers and mail littered the couch, small table and countertop. Only the grandfather clock standing on the wall next to the front door was neat and polished—its wood and brass gleaming. The old clock chimed again.

His skin tightened, tingling and itching. He shouldn’t have made his presence known to her—not this close to midnight. But when she’d awakened with that emotional shout, he hadn’t been able to just walk away—no matter how much he should have. He had been watching her...to see if the man she’d let get away that night was also watching her. Or that was what he’d told himself—that she might lead him to Reagan. Or maybe he’d just liked messing with her because of that—because she’d let Reagan go while she’d shot him.

The chime clanged again.

He didn’t have enough time. Not for what he wanted to do to her. And with her.

The clock chimed for the fourth time. And another, higher-pitched chime echoed it as someone rang the doorbell. Kate’s eyes widened as she glanced from him to her bedroom door.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said.

And the clock chimed again.

“No,” she agreed. “I’m going to arrest you.”

“Arrest me?” he asked. “For what?”

“Breaking and entering, for one,” she said. “And assault.”

“I haven’t assaulted you,” he said, flinching as the clock chimed for the sixth time. His scalp tingled, and his jaw grew tight, his teeth aching from the pressure. He didn’t have time to assault her. He had to leave. Now.

He pulled back from the tantalizing closeness of her sensually full lips. And closing his eyes against the sexy temptation of her naked body covered with just that thin sheet, he stood up and stepped back from the bed.

Her doorbell echoed the chime again. And he opened his eyes.

Still clutching that sheet to her body with one hand, she stood up, too, and kept the gun barrel trained on him. “I’m arresting you for the assault of that man in the alley.”

He focused on her face, anticipation of another kind winding through him. Maybe Reagan was still here. Maybe she would lead him to his father’s killer. “He swore out a complaint against me?”

Her lips thinned, pressed tightly together—refusing to answer him.

He clasped her bare shoulders in his hands. “Did he? Do you know where he is?” Maybe he hadn’t completely lost his trail.

She shook her head.

“Then no complainant—no case—no arrest,” he said, as that damn clock chimed for the seventh time.

“I will swear out a complaint.”

“If we hadn’t been interrupted,” he said, trailing his fingers down the bare skin of her shoulder in a caress, “you would have no complaints.” And then, despite the damn chiming clock and doorbell, he leaned down and brushed his mouth across hers.

Damn. Like honey and caramel and all the sweets that had always been his weakness, she tasted just as good as he had known she would. Too good for him to resist deepening the kiss. With gentle pressure, he parted her lips with his and dipped his tongue inside her mouth.

She closed her eyes and pressed her body against his. But he stepped back so that only their lips touched, clinging. He didn’t want to break the kiss. Didn’t want to leave her. But the damn clock chimed again.

* * *

Lips tingling, breath coming in ragged pants, Kate finally opened her eyes. But he was gone. Cool air chilled her skin from the breeze blowing through the open window. Had she left that open? Or had he opened it?

Or had he ever really even been there? She still couldn’t believe that the man she had shot, the man she’d watched die, had been in her bedroom. It wasn’t possible. But then, his dead body disappearing wasn’t possible, either.

Fists pounded at her door, her visitor having abandoned the bell and whatever patience he or she might have possessed.

Kate couldn’t blame them; she had kept them waiting for a long time. But hell, it was midnight. Who would visit her so late—except him?

Had he actually been there—or had she dreamed it all? No, impossible.

She could still taste him on her lips—as dark and dangerous and rich as his eerie topaz gaze and gleaming black hair. Another knock and the twelfth chime of the clock pulled her to her senses.

Still holding the gun, she thrust her arms into the sleeves of the robe draped across the foot of her rumpled bed and one-handedly secured the belt. Then she rushed to the front door before her crazy visitor woke the whole damn apartment complex. “What the hell—”

Palms lifted up, Paige stepped back from the doorway. “Don’t shoot.”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” Kate challenged her blond-haired friend.

“Because we’re your friends,” Paige replied. Their other friends stood behind her. Brown-haired Elizabeth “Lizzy” Turrell, the red-haired assistant DA Campbell O’Brien, and Dr. Renae Grabill, the trauma resident with her short, dark hair and haunted gaze. Like Kate, Renae saw too much tragedy on the job.

“You woke me up,” Kate said. That alone had to be a shooting offense, especially when the dream had been as real and erotic as the one she had been having. But if it had been a dream, it had been the most vivid one she’d ever had.

“Looks like you were having one hell of a night,” Campbell perceptively remarked, lifting an auburn brow above one of her green eyes. “Is he still here?”

Lizzy snorted. “When’s the last time you saw Kate with a man?”

“Yesterday, but she was handcuffing him,” Campbell admitted. “Maybe she’s into that kinky stuff, though.”

“I’m into getting my sleep after a shift,” Kate said and feigned a yawn. “And you know why I was cuffing that guy—I was on duty.”

“You’re never off duty,” Paige said.

“You need to take a break once in a while,” Lizzy added.

“That’s what I was just trying to do,” Kate pointed out, “when I was sleeping.”

“Sleep sounds good,” Renae agreed. As a trauma surgeon in a crime-ridden city, she never got enough herself. “But you were supposed to meet us at Club Underground.” She had agreed to meet them this Friday since none of them had to work the next day.

Kate shuddered.

Even though Paige owned the place, Kate hated it for so many reasons. When Paige had first bought the club, someone had relentlessly stalked and terrorized her at the place.

That had been years ago. Paige’s stalker was gone now, but Kate still didn’t know the whole story. She just knew that her friend was safe and happier now than she had ever been. The investigator in her wanted to find out exactly what the hell had gone on at the creepy underground club. But because Paige was her friend, Kate hadn’t pressured her for details. She hadn’t wanted to disturb Paige’s happiness.

Now Kate had her own worries. Her own stalker.

That was another reason she hated Club Underground. Him. She had shot him in the alley behind the building. But she hadn’t killed him, like she’d thought. It wasn’t his ghost haunting her; it was him—gaslighting her.

“Hey,” Paige said with a chuckle. “That’s my place you’re disparaging.”

“Not disparaging,” Kate said.

“Just avoiding?” Paige probed, her blue-eyed gaze narrowed with concern. “You’re lucky Sebastian gave up on waiting for you to open the door. He took off when you didn’t answer the bell. He’d be quite upset that you’re not patronizing the club anymore.”

Sebastian, Paige’s younger brother and the long-time manager of Club Underground, had talked his sister into buying the place after she’d given up the law profession years ago. With his movie-star good looks, he could talk anyone into anything. Usually he talked women into his bed.

“He probably realized that waking up a detective is not a good idea,” Kate said, tapping her lowered gun against her thigh.

“He probably realized that there was somebody more welcoming waiting for him,” Campbell said.

“Since you wouldn’t come to happy hour, we brought happy hour to you,” Lizzy said.

Paige held up a bottle of white wine, and Kate snorted in disgust. Then Campbell raised another bottle, of liquor nearly the same amber as the man’s topaz eyes. Whiskey was Kate’s drink—when she drank, which wasn’t often. Just during happy hour, which was whenever the busy women managed to get together.

“You’ve been so busy the past couple of months,” said Renae who was equally, if not more so, busy but always made time for her friends, “that we’ve missed you.”

“So let us in,” Campbell said.

“Sorry,” Kate murmured as she stepped back so her friends could enter her messy living room. She had one couch, which was littered with clothes and newspapers, and a coffee table that was buried under plates and fast-food containers. If she’d known she was having visitors...she still wouldn’t have had time to clean up. Not with the shifts she worked and not with all the time she spent off duty trying to solve a case nobody believed was a crime—because they hadn’t seen the body.

But she’d seen the body. That night and again in her bedroom.

“Kate?” Lizzy asked, her soft voice full of concern. She was the mom of the group—having raised four kids on her own. She tended to mother them, too. “Are you sure everything’s all right?”

Kate nodded and lied, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Her place was small, hardly enough room for herself. But she picked up and tossed stuff aside, making room for her friends just as she had made room in her life for these women; their friendships were vital to her sanity. She had never needed them more than now.

Renae and Campbell dropped onto the floor while Paige and Lizzy squeezed together on the couch, making room for her to join them.

“I’m really glad you guys came over,” she said with gratitude for their friendship and their concern.

But she dare not tell them about her other late-night visitor, or they might think her as crazy as she already thought herself. He couldn’t have really been in her bedroom—in her bed. She couldn’t really have kissed him.

He was dead. She’d killed him.

* * *

Warrick hit the ground on all fours then glanced over his shoulder at the leap he’d taken off the fire escape outside Kate Wever’s fourth-floor apartment. “Damn...”

“You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself,” a deep voice murmured.

He tensed and cursed. He couldn’t be discovered. Not like this...not after he had already turned into the form he took every night from midnight till dawn. But the man was too close for Warrick to disappear, unseen, into the shadows.

“But I already know that you don’t die easily.”

Finally recognizing the voice, Warrick whirled around, claws drawn—teeth bared as he uttered a warning growl.

“And neither do I,” Sebastian Culver reminded him. “So you can put those away.”

Warrick had just been messing with the other guy. He felt no hostility—only gratitude. He sheathed his claws and grinned at the dark-haired man. Well, actually, Sebastian wasn’t a man—or not just a man. Either. “I’m glad to see you again.”

“I can’t say the same,” the vampire replied, his voice and pale blue eyes cool. “I thought you would have left Zantrax by now.”

“I have unfinished business here,” Warrick said, tensing at the other man’s unfriendly tone. Why was the guy hostile toward him now? Had Reagan gotten to him somehow?

“She,” Sebastian said as he gestured toward the bedroom window four floors up, “better not be your unfinished business.”

Warrick had been in Zantrax long enough to hear the underground gossip. Sebastian Culver was quite the playboy. Had he been involved with Kate? Or did he want to be? Warrick’s guts knotted, jealousy twisting them. “Why?”

“Because if she is,” Sebastian replied, “it’ll make me regret saving your sorry life.”

“I appreciate your help that night.” Warrick had wanted to thank the man for a while for pulling him into the underground passage to the club when Detective Wever had briefly left the alley after shooting him. Sebastian hadn’t brought him into the club but to a secret room between it and the passageway—and to a special surgeon. “But you can’t actually save a man who can’t die.”

“You can die,” Sebastian said. “Same as I can die.”

“But I wouldn’t have died that night.” The surgeon, Dr. Ben Davison, had eased his pain, though.

“But your secret would have been discovered,” the vampire pointed out. “And to men like us, that’s worse than death.”

“And will lead to death.” Someone’s death...

He glanced up to that dimly lit window, too. She hadn’t turned on any lights in her bedroom, so she must have left the door open to the living room. What was she doing in there? Maybe someone other than Sebastian had been ringing her bell. Who?

“She’s a smart woman,” Sebastian said. “She’ll figure it out.”

“Your secret or mine?”

Sebastian gestured at him—in his changed form. “Your secret is more obvious. You cut it close.”

“Cut what close?” he asked, feigning innocence.

“I saw you jump out the window,” the other man informed him. “You were with her.”

“Jealous?” he couldn’t resist goading.

Sebastian uttered a sigh of such weariness that it revealed he was much older than his physical appearance would lead one to believe. “I’m concerned.”

“For her or me?”

“I don’t know you.”

Yet the man had been compelled to help a stranger—a strange creature, no less. Fortunately one legend—the one about vampires and werewolves constantly being at war—was myth.

“How well do you know her?” Warrick asked, that insidious jealousy winding through him again. He hadn’t been a jealous man until the people he’d loved the most had betrayed him. But he’d been a fool then. Their betrayal had made him much wiser.

“Kate is a friend,” Sebastian replied. “A good friend.”

“Does she know your secret?” Warrick asked. “Does she share your secret?” He didn’t think so; he had felt no fangs when he’d kissed her—only softness and warmth.

“She’s human,” Sebastian said. “And unaware of the Secret Vampire Society.”

“For now,” Warrick said, worry joining his jealousy. “But if she’s as smart as you think, she will figure it out.”

“You’re not one of the society,” Sebastian said, his light blue eyes narrowed as he studied Warrick. He must have noticed his concern because he added, “But you know its rules.”

“Our pack shares many of those same rules.”

“If a human learns of the secret society, she becomes a threat that must be destroyed,” the vampire said.

Warrick sighed with regret. “That’s one of the rules we share.” A rule that was necessary to protect the pack.

“The society has an amendment to that rule,” Sebastian admitted. “If a human learns the secret, he or she can avoid death if they become a member of the society.”

“A human can only become a member of the pack by mating with one of the wolves...” He swallowed hard, choking down bad memories and a pain he had once thought he would never survive. It had been much worse than the bullets Detective Kate Wever had fired into his shoulder and his heart. “For life.” There was more to it than that, like with vampires—biting was involved. But it was more a brand than a feast.

“The society’s rule is supposed to be the same,” Sebastian said, “but too many exceptions have been made to it for it to be stringently enforced.”

“That might be the rule that the pack enforces most stringently,” Warrick said. That was why he had lost so much. The love of his life, his family, his pride, his trust...

And now, dallying as he had with Kate Wever, he must have lost his damn sanity, too. He hadn’t really wanted vengeance against her; he had only been telling himself that so he’d had a reason to stick around. He’d also told himself that Reagan might not have left. But he wouldn’t have known because after she’d shot him, all Warrick had been able to see was Kate.

She was beautiful, but there was something else about her—a strength and an integrity—that attracted him.

But why would Reagan have stayed? If he was as smart as Warrick had always believed he was, he wouldn’t have stopped running yet. He was probably far, far away by now.

“You don’t have to worry about Kate,” Warrick assured the vampire. “I will be leaving Zantrax.” There was no reason for him to stay now. But he caught himself sneaking another glance up at her window.

“Going home?”

He shook his head. Just as he had no family, no mate, no honor—he had no home, either. “I still have unfinished business. I just don’t think it’s here any longer.”