Читать книгу Wolf Hunter - Linda Thomas-Sundstrom, Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Страница 13
ОглавлениеCameron leaned up against a warm wood-paneled wall and scanned the room with half-closed eyes. The night outside those walls called to him. His skin twitched in reaction to the light floating through the open doorway. Answering that call was imperative, as soon as he could.
Like most pubs in Miami, the room around him was dim and smoky with an undercurrent of sweat and booze and too many men crammed into a small space. The odors fermented in his system, making breathing difficult.
He counted fourteen law enforcement officers in the crowd, plus a handful of detectives. Seven of those in attendance he knew by name; the others weren’t associated with his beat. The rest of the bar’s occupants were regulars, by the looks of things, and quite at home in the well-worn ambiance of the place. He, on the other hand, was a carefully managed mass of nerves.
Each of the men in his party were on their fourth or fifth raised glasses in honor of a fallen comrade named Stegman, the victim of the ongoing war between law enforcement and raunchy street gangs on the south side. That’s what they thought, anyway.
All of them had patted the shoulder of the man who had been responsible for taking their comrade’s killers down. Cameron’s shoulder. The shoulder aching to be free of shirts and praise and small indoor spaces because something far more primitive than the almost-constant hunt for bad guys existed outside the bar’s walls. Moonlight.
Madame Moon was full tonight and whispering to him like a lover. She taunted him mercilessly with the call of the wild, and he had to maintain a calm outward appearance at the moment, despite his growing anxiety. But centered within the chaos of his life rose a spiraling vortex of insatiable longing for freedom and for the chill of silvery light on hot, bare skin. Hunger had become a ravenous beast in itself, unpredictable and always insatiable.
“Hey, Mitchell!”
A creased-faced, gray-haired officer who went by the name of T. Garrison gave Cameron a friendly punch to the left biceps. Cameron smiled and touched his arm as if the guy had a powerful swing.
“We owe you for what you did. Davidson told us the story of how you chased those guys.” Garrison gestured exuberantly. “Next drink is on me. So is the one after that.”
In their off-duty drinking, these guys were doing justice to multiple bottles of fine Irish whiskey. Cops took care of their own, seriously mourning their fallen brothers and realizing every day that they might be the ones never to make it home from work.
They cared. Cameron sure as hell had to give them that. But he didn’t feel like a hero and preferred not to be treated like one. He had done what he had to do to keep a lot of people safe, and had, with Davidson’s help, removed four messed-up thugs from the mix. The only good thing here was that Davidson hadn’t known what they really were.
Like most of these guys on the force, he did his job—just in a slightly different way, with extra hours and the added bonus of special senses. Still, he hadn’t been able to save the man they were toasting. He couldn’t tell anyone in this room what those gangbangers really stood for, and what they’d had in mind when they’d geared up for a fight.
And here, in the crowded bar, fewer than twenty-four hours later, Cameron felt claustrophobic.
“Barmaid,” Garrison shouted. “Another round for this man.”
Though Cameron smiled his thanks, he hardly heard the offer. A fresh scent rode the breeze by the door, causing his surroundings to blur, taking Garrison’s friendly face out of focus. When added to the blistering heat of the summer night and the fall of light crossing the threshold, the fragrance came across as being something important to identify, something familiar and heady.
Roses. Also another scent that stirred Cameron’s baser instincts as he inhaled deeply and looked around the room for the source—a search that stopped near the long length of gleaming mahogany wood across from him.
Cameron’s heart gave a thump that he felt all the way to his boots. His wolf gave a whine that twisted his gut. Not quite sure if he could be imagining this, or if one beer had been one too many, he blinked and took a second look, his insides roaring, adrenaline surging.
Female pheromones, light as dandelion fuzz and seductively alluring, rode the room’s darker male buzz. Those pheromones came from the female standing behind the bar. Not just any female, either. Oh no.
A riot of mixed emotions hit him all at once, as did an instantaneous pulse of interest. Blinking slowly, Cameron choked back a growl of surprise.
Of all the bars in the world... Hell, he had walked into hers.
* * *
What are you doing here?
Get out.
Go away.
Abby had noticed him the minute he’d entered the building, and reacted with a grunt of stunned surprise.
Among the crowd of cops and detectives jammed into every corner of floor space, she perceived the big Were as intensely as if he was still inside her, on their hands and knees in the grass.
Swearing out loud, she doubled over to recuperate, repeating unladylike oaths several times more. This had to be a dream. Her worst nightmare. The Were whose name everyone here chanted couldn’t possibly forget the sight or scent of the woman he’d called his little wolf in a moment of shared passion. She hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind for one single minute.
Above the heads of the others, his height stood out. His unnaturally good looks caused her heart to stutter, as those looks had the first time she’d set eyes on him. This second sighting didn’t lessen the impact. Her thighs quivered uncontrollably. The space between those thighs thrummed as if interior body parts were warming up for a repeat of their mutual sexual assault.
He was there, ten feet away.
The big bad wolf had found her.
Unsure of what to do, Abby feared that any move might give her anxiousness away. But she couldn’t tear her gaze from him.
“Damn. You’re a cop?”
His hair, too long for a cop’s usual tidy look, kept her from viewing his face clearly—that incredibly, inhumanly beautiful face that had been like a sucker punch to her solar plexus.
And the body.
God, that body.
His taut bareness had been tight up against hers, hard, willing, and slick with sweat from the exertion of their mindless coupling.
“You can’t be here. Not now.”
He wore black and white tonight, another bit of irony that paralleled his hybrid state. A crisp white long-sleeved shirt hugged his chest. Black jeans perfectly defined his incredible physique. Again, his shirtsleeves were casually rolled up over his forearms, showing off some of the corded strength she had tested firsthand.
She saw no evidence of the blood that had marked him the night before, or signs of cuts and bruises signifying the fight he must have been headed for after pushing her away. Yet tonight he soaked up accolades for having been part of something big that had happened after she left him.
A Were and a cop.
How could that happen?
She felt dizzy with the realization that he stood under the same roof. As she continued to stare, the passing moments seemed suspended from time.
Cameron Mitchell. She mouthed the name, remembering the taste of his wolfish Otherness and the exquisite talent of his mouth and body. His job might have explained his presence in the park, but how about his willingness to take her on there? Sex in a public place wasn’t a usual cop routine, she was fairly sure, and could, in fact, get him sacked.
So, had the chances he’d taken been instigated by a simple slip of morals, or by the wolf curled up inside him? Without a full moon over their heads, had Cameron Mitchell’s animal side required him to let off steam in a sexual way?
What about her part in that?
Abby finally managed to look around at the rest of the sea of faces. She recognized a few. Though the Miami PD often frequented this bar, he had never been here, and shouldn’t have been there tonight for reasons beyond her own embarrassment. Her father mingled with the regulars, three stalwart hunters among them. The back room held guns and rounds of ammunition that no wolf pack could withstand.
If Sam and his hunters somehow knew about the Were in their midst...if her father saw her reaction to him, or something she did gave this Were away, the game would be on.
The moon was full tonight.
That goddamn moon.
As far as she knew, there would be no way for a werewolf to avoid it. Silver light would suck the wolf right out of its nesting place and make that wolf prowl.
Bad news.
She chanced another glace at Cameron, so bloody perfect from head to boot. Though her acting skills were decent, she doubted they’d get her through this. Already, her breath was ragged and forced, and her pulse soared. She hadn’t slept or eaten since her return from the park the night before. Her injured thigh, bandaged tightly beneath her jeans, throbbed like a son-of-a-gun.
She was about to lose it, and had to get away from him soon.
Trembling hands made her drop a glass, which earned her a frown from her father. She smiled back at Sam and shrugged, knowing she couldn’t afford to draw more attention to herself. On this night, both Cameron Mitchell and Sam Stark played at being one of the boys.
The energy in the room was high, and escalating. The cops in attendance were well on their way to becoming sodden. Hunters eagerly awaited the midnight hour so they could get their kicks. And Cameron Mitchell wasn’t as human as he looked.
Abby scanned the doorway, where moonlight streamed across the threshold. More light seeped through slats in the shuttered windows. These things were catnip for wolves, and also a kind of perpetual poison. And it seemed obvious, by the swiftness of her own reactions, that she wasn’t immune from either thing—that bloated moon, or the creature across the room that now stared back at her as if he’d seen a ghost.
Yes, it’s me. So what?
She’d been made, found, identified. Turmoil churned inside her, souring her surroundings. With this incredible Were’s presence breaking through what defenses she had left, the only viable option she had was to scurry away and hide. And he wasn’t going to allow that. His eyes made that quite clear.
Setting her cleaning cloth down, Abby met those eyes. A rush of adrenaline pounded through her. Leftover sparks that had never fully died out sent waves of inexcusable lust for him coursing through body parts he had already conquered as the intensity of the inexplicable connection to him resurrected within her.
Her breasts strained at her shirt, taut and aching. Her panties moistened with the desire to again have him inside her.
Turning from the sight of him, breaking eye contact, Abby stepped toward the hatch in the bar, ignoring a patron calling her name. When she looked back, he was beside her, having moved too quickly with nonhuman reflexes.
“Abby,” he said in a casual voice that took her by surprise. “Nice name.”
Gold eyes, darker indoors but no less bright or piercing, waited for her to again find them. Tightness closed around Abby’s heart. Her throat went dry.
How, she thought fleetingly, hadn’t anyone else noticed his unusual eyes?
“I’m sorry.” Her gaze dropped to the mouth that had simultaneously tortured and pleasured her. “Do I know you?”
“Maybe not. But it’s still a nice name.”
Damn him. The memory of his lips nipping at hers threatened to get the best of her, as did the recall of his first thrust into her accepting, malleable body. In the forefront of her mind sat an acknowledgment of his appetite for passion that had seriously moved things inside her.
Abby moaned softly.
“I’ve been looking for you.” His tone had turned unbearably intimate.
“All of your life?” she countered wryly, her pulse banging in time with some distant, inaudible beat.
“You never told me your name.”
“You never asked.”
“Or where you live.”
“So now you know.”
Seconds of silence passed, loaded with tension.
“I searched for you all day, covering most of the bars on the west side.”
She had mentioned working in a bar. Thankfully, he hadn’t noticed the logo on her shirt. Did that mean fate had brought him here, or just plain old bad luck that a downed cop’s friends had chosen this place to honor their comrade?
Abby waved at the crowd. “I hear kudos are due for your nocturnal heroics.”
He didn’t reply. He wasn’t the type to brag.
Abby lowered her voice. “You found the guys following us?”
“Ah, so you do know me.”
She gave him a serious look.
He nodded. “I did find them.”
“They didn’t hurt you?”
“I’ve covered up the battle scars. Another cop wasn’t so lucky.”
She said with a sorry attempt to modulate her tone, hoping her aggravating breathlessness wouldn’t show, “Why did you search for me when the deal was to move on?”
“I didn’t know we had a deal.”
“Then you terribly underestimated me.”
Abby had the feeling he wasn’t saying half of what went through his mind. Then again, neither did she. She was two for two on the danger scale, and quickly upping the ante.
“Would you like to talk, Abby?”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“Abby,” he said again, as if tasting the name.
Though she felt a throb begin at the base of her spine in anticipation of what he might say next, Cameron Mitchell didn’t follow with anything important. In fact, he allowed her a few seconds to get a grip on herself instead of the edge of the bar.
Abby tried to center herself. Grinding her teeth together to keep from shouting, she pressed both hands over her hips to smooth not only her shirt but also the twitching body beneath it—reactions that were a complete giveaway as to his effect on her.
“Well, here I am,” she said. “What now?”
“We talk in private. That’s a start.”
“You’re a hero, and these guys want to be with you tonight.”
A hero and a gentleman. An irresistible combination.
“You’re resistant,” he observed.
“I’m trying to ignore you, and you’re not making it easy.”
He said nothing and continued to study her.
“There were two of you out there?” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue before biting down with her teeth on the lower one.
“Three, in the end, when other cops arrived,” he said.
“And you were doing your job by watching the park. It actually was a real job?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “for what happened. That other cop was a friend of yours?”
“I consider all of them friends.”
Abby acknowledged that response with an inclination of her head, and waved at the door. “You’ll be back out there tonight?”
Moonlight is what you’ll need. Your secret is out.
“I’m out there nearly every night,” he confessed. “Working overtime has become a habit on nights when I can’t sleep.”
“But not in uniform. You didn’t wear one last night, and you’re not wearing one now.”
“I’m on my own time.”
“Patrolling that park to look for bad guys, alone, increases the odds of getting hurt,” she pointed out.
“Maybe. It is, however, a necessity.”
He had answered hesitantly, as though he had disclosed more of his secret than he’d meant to. Abby supposed that everything he said could be taken two ways, because this was a creature straddling both worlds. Cameron Mitchell had one foot in this one, and the other foot someplace foreign, and straight out of myth. Would any purely human soul truly be able to understand what that felt like?
Would Sam, if he knew that a Were could be a cop?
Abby wanted to shout out to her father that Cameron Mitchell was one of the good guys, after all. The fact that there really were good Weres was a validation of her former theory that now made her feel sick.
How many others like Cameron Mitchell had her father’s team captured unquestioningly with the shoot-on-sight method of hunting? Had Sam ever taken the time to find out?
“Some of the people in this bar will also be out there tonight,” Abby said meaningfully.
How much could she give away with Sam looking on?
“Guys who aren’t cops, but have a similar agenda.”
Had Cameron understood her cryptic remark? He glanced at the crowd over his shoulder.
“Possibly more of them than you know,” Abby cautioned. “For reasons other than the reasons you might expect.”
A secret in return for a secret. He’d go away and avoid the park tonight, and she’d only have to live in private with the fact of what she had done the night before, with him.
Did this veiled warning to him about the danger in this room fall under the category of helpful werewolf hints?
“You’re not talking about yourself, I hope.” An edge of concern returned to Cameron’s voice as he turned back to her. “You wouldn’t go outside on a night like this?”
“Nope. I’m not in need of another good lay, since the last one was decent enough to last me awhile.”
Cameron Mitchell studied her openly, blatantly, not caring if anyone noticed. His face showed no emotion. His tone was carefully managed. “Meet me in an hour.”
“No.” Abby slammed a glass down on the bar. With all the noise going on, no one in the crowded room paid attention. Each successive round of drinks meant that voices got louder. More people had come in, blocking Sam’s view of her flushed face.
She couldn’t breathe.
“Meet me,” Cameron Mitchell repeated.
“Bite me,” Abby whispered. “Oh, wait, you did that already, plus a whole lot more.”
He seemed to think over her remark. She expected a growling reply that didn’t come, and let loose a sigh of exasperation. She was sweating, a sign of her body rebelling against this test of her willpower. She fielded the urge to hurdle the bar and either jump into this Were’s talented lap, or sprint for the door. High drama either way. Endless trouble.
He wasn’t helping. He caused her internal chaos.
No. That wasn’t exactly true. She had brought this on herself, by being unable to resist him last night.
No way she was going to find out what he would be like tonight when moonlight hit him, though—the same moonlight she had always detested for its role in twisting monsters out of their napping places. Moonlight that also had the power to affect her in strangely personal ways that she would not dare mention to the wolf across from her.
Nor would she be clearer about the danger awaiting this Were tonight. Sam had a lot of friends, a couple of them nearing where she stood transfixed by a creature they had hard-ons to hunt.
Her lips moved, though she wasn’t sure what she’d say until she heard it. “It’s quite ironic, you know, that you’ve come to the one bar in Miami that you should have avoided at all costs.”
As Cameron Mitchell searched her face in a replay of his riveted attention of the night before, Abby counted her heartbeats without having to press a finger to her neck. The suspense of this meeting mounted. Emotions flowed as if a tap had been left open. She felt anger, fear, love, hate, longing and lust—all there at once as this man’s eyes continued to hold her hostage. His gaze was both fire and ice, disconcerting and suggestive, taunting and sympathetic. His golden eyes were equally strange, and utterly familiar.
“I know what you are,” she said.
That surprised him. The mouth that had pleasured her so completely and adeptly nearly twenty-four hours earlier opened. But he didn’t speak. Instead, he carefully scanned the room before returning his attention to her. Then he raised an eyebrow questioningly.
“I knew last night what you are,” Abby said. “I knew what followed us out there, and what those gangbangers who killed your friend really were.”
The room seemed to darken once she’d gotten that out. Movement slowed. Voices dulled to a background murmur. None of that was real, though, and only the effect of meeting this wolf again so soon, and in less than stellar circumstances.
Did she want to speak to him of things beyond this terse confession? Yes. In another minute, though, her father would come over to see why she hadn’t filled orders, and who this guy was. If luck was with her, after one look at his daughter—at the pink face and the visible quakes—Sam might merely assume her to be ill, and cut her some slack.
Or else he might put two and two together and come up with wolf.
Swiping at the trickle of perspiration sliding down the side of her face, Abby wondered what would happen until then. Possibly another standoff between Cameron Mitchell and herself?
She felt so damn hot. And the wolf who was a badge-carrying member of the Miami PD had gone mute.
More than any of that, the thing she feared more than all the guns in Miami lay just past that doorway, up in the sky. Like a giant magnet, the moon whispered to her as though she were one of the moon’s cult, and as though that light ruled what flowed in her veins to some minor degree.
“Abby.”
She tossed her hair, unwilling to listen to anything her one-night stand had to say. The dilemma of what to do next was an excruciating one. If she stayed still, the hammer would fall. Being near to this Were made it too difficult to keep herself in line.
She felt jazzed, wired up—not all of that due to the fact that she had toyed with a wolf and was dealing with the consequences. The bigger fact here was that she had been scouting for Weres for so long, she might have started to feel like a wolf herself.
