Читать книгу The Black Wolf - Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Страница 11

Chapter 2

Standing on the sidewalk, Rafe stared at the darkest stretch of beach with his senses wide-open. The wind had changed, taking the mysterious scent with it. He listened to the waves and muted music from one of the hotels. There were no police sirens tonight, and for the moment, no noisy tourists. It was just him and the beach.

Nevertheless, his pulse continued to race as if he was about to discover something. He hoped whatever that was justified his reluctantly giving Brandi the heave-ho. She hadn’t gone without a pouty fuss.

Rafe buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his jeans. He scanned the beach, looking pretty much like anyone else who might be out for a nighttime stroll, except for the badge pinned to his belt. He hadn’t taken the time to put on his shoes.

A half-moon overhead made the wave foam look silver and the sand appear as soft as velvet. Yet all was not so calm beneath the surface. The farther he had walked from those glittering hotel lights, the more his senses nagged about something being different tonight, something he had to pay attention to. If the strange scent had reached him on his balcony, its source couldn’t be far off.

When his cell phone buzzed with a text message, Rafe cursed the interruption. Still, the number that came up on his screen was an important one. This would have taken precedence over a call from his department anytime. It was his father asking him to come home. Judge Landau seldom made such a request.

“Okay,” Rafe muttered without immediately texting back. His attention was fixed on the water, where a solitary figure had emerged from the waves.

A woman.

She stood near the sand with the water swirling at her feet. He was pretty sure she was naked. Although the idea that occurred to him was insane, Rafe ran a hand over his eyes, imagining that he could be looking at a mermaid.

Of course, there was nothing strange about someone taking a nighttime swim, so he should just turn around and head home. But the feeling of stumbling onto the mystery that had called him here had gotten stronger, along with that unidentified scent.

Using the special abilities that allowed all Weres to see in the dark with more precision than their human counterparts, Rafe stared hard at the woman near the shore, even though his mind issued a warning about infringing upon her privacy.

The moonlight shone on the water behind her, presenting him with her slim silhouette. Her legs were slender. Long wet hair cascaded over bare shoulders.

Though Rafe couldn’t see the woman’s face in the dark, even with his considerable Were talents, he knew she was looking straight at him with the same kind of scrutiny. The intensity of her attention was electric.

“You all right?” he called out. “Are you alone? The tides can be quite treacherous for anyone swimming solo.”

The mermaid offered no response.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Rafe said. “Sorry if I interrupted whatever you were doing.”

Maybe she thought he was some kind of pervert for staring at her. Could he blame her? On the other hand, if she did turn out to be a mermaid...

He shook his head sharply, clearing away that ridiculous notion. Again, though, he got the funny feeling this woman was connected to what brought him out here tonight in the first place. Since there was no one else around, he had to consider that she could very well be ground zero for the sensations running through him.

He didn’t see a towel or a pile of clothes that might belong to her on the sand. She made no move to turn away or cover her bareness with her arms. Being naked all alone was one thing. Being naked on a public beach was another.

“Do you need something to wear? Maybe someone took your clothes while you enjoyed your swim?” he asked.

The woman didn’t speak. Her earthy, not quite identifiable exotic scent floated around her like a cloud.

“You can have this.” Rafe removed his shirt and held it out to her, then shook it as an enticement for her to take his offering.

“Fine.” He lowered his arm when she made no move toward him. “But you really can’t walk around like that. Not here.”

“Why?”

Her question rendered him speechless for a few beats. She had a deep, throaty voice unlike any he had heard lately. Sort of a whisper. Almost a purr. It moved the wolf buried deep inside him with the kind of physical response usually reserved for a full moon.

Rafe shook that off, too. “You might scare the tourists,” he managed to say. “Or receive a proposition or two that you find offensive.”

When the woman shook her head, her waist-length wet hair swirled. Though he wanted to see more of her, Rafe figured she already thought he was a perv.

“There are no strings attached. The shirt is a gift.”

“I don’t know you,” she said.

The sexiness of her tone produced a strange fluttering sensation in his chest, which Rafe also found absurd given the circumstances. Hell, he wasn’t going to arrest her for indecent exposure, because he was the only one out here at the moment, and honestly, what he could see of her was quite decent. What he had to do was to go away and leave her alone.

And yet her rapt attention kicked his pulse upward another notch, and the air between them seemed to be charged with ions like those preceding an oncoming storm system.

There was danger here, his instincts warned. He had to tread lightly if he hoped to understand what that danger was.

“I’m with the police,” he said to explain his continued presence.

“And you’re a werewolf,” she returned with way too much insight and confidence.

Rafe was stunned. “Werewolf, is it?”

She spoke again. “I’ve heard that Weres around here have to try to fit in. You look human.”

“Why would you think I’m anything other than human?” he asked.

“Practice.”

After waiting a few more heartbeats, Rafe said warily, “If I’m a werewolf, what does that make you for recognizing me as such?”

“I guess I’m harder to define.”

“Maybe you can try.”

“I’ve been cautioned not to do that,” she said.

“Who cautioned you?”

“One of you.”

“A werewolf, you mean, or a cop?” Rafe pressed.

Although a cloud passed over the moon, bringing a brief, temporary dullness to the night, Rafe saw her nod her head.

She said, “The ghost warned me.”

Another spike of surprise struck Rafe. Though he didn’t have the specific details about this woman, her reply made who this had to be extremely clear to him. The scent that had drawn him here and the prickly premonitions about the possibility of danger finally came to a head. Mystery solved. One part of it, anyway.

“You are Killion’s daughter,” he said.

This was the female his pack was expecting. She was supposed to be an extremely rare kind of shape-shifter hybrid. Hell, maybe she could have been a mermaid.

“Yes,” she said.

“What are you doing here, and without your companions?”

Rafe connected this shapely vision in front of him with the text message he’d received from his father moments before. Cara Kirk-Killion must have escaped from her transport and her guards. His pack would be looking for her.

“Those guys were responsible for your safe passage to the estate,” he continued.

“I don’t need guards. Maybe you’ve heard why?”

She didn’t give him time to reply. With a quick turn on her long legs, the female that everyone in their pack had been warned to avoid at all costs until proper introductions had been made...just walked back into the sea.

Leaving Rafe to stare after her.

* * *

Cara didn’t stop to consider the possibility that the Were on the beach would follow her until she felt the pressure of a hand on her arm.

The touch came as a shock. No one had dared to touch her in the past for fear of what kind of shape she would end up in and how far into their souls she could see. One touch was all it took for her to adapt her form to the shape of whatever kind of being had reached out. Sometimes all it took for her to shift her shape was closeness, eye contact or a connecting thought.

Once she had melded to their shape, she could read them easily and see into their souls. She could at times predict their futures and understand their needs.

This Were had broken with tradition. Possibly he didn’t know better than to get too close to a member of the Kirk-Killion clan. Yet if he knew about her guards and the estate, he had to belong to the Landau pack and be privy to their secrets.

“It isn’t safe out here,” he warned, letting his hand drop.

“It’s never safe,” Cara replied, longing to get back to the silence and buoyancy of deep water, dreading having to go to the Landau place, where more Weres like this one awaited her arrival and she would be fenced in.

“I mean that if you’re as special as everyone seems to believe you are, you’d be a hot commodity around here and possibly hunted for your many talents,” the Were said. “It’s not safe to be on your own in a strange city.”

Cara still felt the burning sensation of his hand as if his fingerprints had been stamped on her skin. Did he also feel the heat? Had the call already gone out about the necessity of finding her?

More time was what she needed. Time to herself. Time with the water, which had been lacking at her family’s inland estate. Time to experience a few more precious moments without the shackles of Were society.

“I’ll take you there,” the Were beside her said, skipping over all of the things they hadn’t yet mentioned about why she was in Miami and how she had gotten away from the guards. “To the house,” he added.

She had escaped one net only to be ensnared by another. The big Were next to her, with his moon-streaked brown hair, lean, muscular build, chiseled features and light eyes, looked capable enough of handling any surprises that were in store.

Because he was in human shape tonight, Cara maintained her human countenance. She also kept her voice. However, she sensed the wolf curled up inside this guy as if it were her own and knew that it was strong, like hers. Being near him messed with her delicate equilibrium. She was drawn to him without knowing why.

He looked at his hand suddenly, as if he also felt the burn caused by one brief, simple touch. Then he glanced back up at her.

“I don’t like being caged,” Cara said, watching him closely, observing how he fisted his hand and the way the wind played with strands of his hair. He was as good-looking as her father, with prominent cheekbones and wide-set eyes. He was tall, with broad shoulders and moonlight-dappled golden skin. All of those things reinforced the Were’s wolfish nature, and yet he wasn’t a full-blooded member of the species. Human blood also ran in his veins; she perceived the slightest hint of an altered fragrance. One of his parents had, at one time or another, been human.

“That’s what you believe will happen when you accept our hospitality?” he asked. “You’d be caged?”

His voice disturbed her with its low, cautious, controlled quality. The Were’s earthy, masculine vibe caused another new ruffle in her widening awareness of the world outside her family’s gates. This was her first time meeting a male Were who looked as if he might not be too much older than herself.

“Why else would my parents shun this place and everyone in it, if not that for the fact that they no longer fit in?” Cara replied.

“From the stories I’ve heard, your parents withdrew from the rest of the pack because it was in their own best interest.”

Yes. She knew that. But it was only a small part of why the Kirk-Killions had withdrawn. And she didn’t owe this Were any explanations.

“I need time to get myself together,” she said. “It’s not easy for me to come out of the seclusion I’m used to.”

To her surprise, her companion seemed to get that. After a brief silence, he nodded and said, “I’ll wait for you on the beach.”

Cara didn’t know what to make of that. He was going to leave her alone for a while?

“What if I swim away?” she asked.

“Then you will be someone else’s problem.”

He didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Cara heard how his pulse pounded with the effort it took for him to let her have her way. She had no doubt that he would come after her if she tried to leave the area, and that shaking off this guy might be a difficult task. The strength of his inner wolf and all those rippling muscles made him a worthy opponent.

“Who are you?” she asked, more intrigued about him than she wanted to be.

“Name’s Landau. Rafe Landau. And I can assure you that though my family’s estate has walls, those walls are there only to keep trespassers out.”

Landau...

The Miami pack was both run and protected by his family.

She didn’t really believe in coincidences, and yet what were the odds she would run into a Were of this caliber so soon after ditching the guards his family had sent to bring her there?

“Can you promise me that’s the truth? I won’t be a prisoner behind those walls?” she asked.

“I can.”

The handsome Were allowed one little thought to slip past his mental defenses, and Cara caught hold of it easily. Neither fear nor anger ruled Rafe Landau’s thoughts. He wasn’t afraid of her at all. When she saw the image he held in his mind, she smiled.

“I could be one, you know,” she said. “If there were such creatures.”

He was staring at her openly. His heart continued to pound.

“Who knows?” she added. “Since you’re granting my wish by letting me explore the sea, maybe your wish will come true.”

“What wish?” he asked, frowning.

Cara’s answer was meant as a subtle warning of her power. This Were might be strong, but he wasn’t truly in control now that a werewolf-vampire-banshee hybrid like Cara Kirk-Killion was in Miami.

“About mermaids,” she said as she dived beneath the next incoming wave.