Читать книгу Wolf Hunter - Linda Thomas-Sundstrom, Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Страница 8
ОглавлениеAbby stared in shocked silence as the Were in his human incarnation advanced in a balanced combination of hard angles and mounds of lean muscle.
He stood tall enough to tower over her, and was twice as broad. A first glance proved him to be brutally handsome. His energy was electrifying. Looking at him kicked the scalding Miami summer temperature up several notches and turned her shudders seismic. Her heartbeats thundered in a way that any Were worthy of its species would be attracted to.
Searching, she saw nothing wolfish in his outline, though an aura of Otherness radiated from him like visible radio waves. His casual, almost nonchalant stride screamed of combustible energy tightly contained in a human casing. His long limbs and wide shoulders were topped by a tanned sculpted face and thick chin-length hair that fell somewhere on the color spectrum between gold and bronze.
Oh yes. This guy was a breed unto himself, and completely unlike anything she had come across before. He was a magnetic combination of rugged and elegant.
Too gorgeous to be human.
He wore a blue long-sleeved shirt rolled at the cuffs to expose sun-kissed forearms. An open collar showed off more skin. His jeans were faded, and she caught a flash of heavy black boots, though he advanced soundlessly with his gaze riveted to her.
Abby felt color drain from her face. Mesmerizing wasn’t the word to best describe him. Magnificent seemed a better choice. Also deadly. This beast, with his incredibly honed body outlined by the tight, fitted shirt, moved toward her little circle of light with the grace of an animal...because he was an animal, at least in part. And the overtly masculine, almost hypnotic physical details that described him were likely some kind of built-in bait for reeling in prey.
The devil always lay in the details. Her father had warned her about this many times.
Never get close to the enemy.
Hell, she’d just smashed that golden rule to smithereens through no fault of her own.
Beneath her outward quakes, Abby’s insides trembled with a mixture of fear and defiance and something else she didn’t dare address—that new thing that had no business showing up alongside this large golden wolf.
Hunger.
That’s what she felt. Hunger. For knowledge of him. For the chance to get closer to him.
Either she’d gone insane, or this guy had the ability to hypnotize her with his wolf power, because she grappled with a spectacularly idiotic, completely suicidal compulsion to have the itch forming down deep inside her scratched by a razor-sharp claw.
The breath she exhaled after holding it for so long was steamy. Aside from her need for self-preservation, and against her better judgment, this werewolf in his human form affected her in ways that were totally wrong. The highly erotic vibrations he gave off were the epitome of a perilous death trap.
She got that. She knew better. So why did her body want to meet the animal in him? What possible explanation could account for her absurd desire to fold herself into his heat?
“What do you want?” she demanded in frustration.
He replied in a voice like soft, sifted gravel. “I was wondering if perhaps you have a death wish.”
The world went white-hot beneath this Were’s unwavering gaze. Moonlight seemed to amplify every sensation rippling through Abby, all of those sensations pointing to him. No doubt about it, her sexually suggestive reactions were as dangerous as the Were himself.
She’d never been an out-and-out rebel, really, she thought now, though she had lived on the edge, more or less fending for herself since her mother died of a prolonged illness when she was a kid. In the past, she’d had no reason to flaunt her father’s strict authority, since he had provided, if not earnest affection, a roof over her head.
So, was there an actual rule about people having to do the right thing at the right time, or only what was good for them?
Breathlessness made her light-headed, a symptom of anticipating more trouble to come. Needing air, unable to stand the silence, Abby spoke in a voice shakier than she would have liked, given that werewolves, as with other predators, could ferret out fear.
“Death wish?”
He nodded. “Everyone in Miami is familiar with this park’s unfavorable mortality statistics.”
Inner warning signals went off again. Red flags waved. If she couldn’t outrun this sucker and he wished her harm, she’d have to fight.
Keep him talking. Gauge his intent.
Was he a member of the pack killing people out here? The way he rolled his shoulders reminded Abby of how much muscle lay under that cool blue cotton, and how that muscle would soon adapt to a new shape. If not an organic werewolf, known from Sam’s lectures as a Lycan, he’d have to have been bitten by another werewolf, and that bite had injected the wolf virus into his bloodstream. Human and wolf particles had fused to form a freakish new entity.
Did this guy’s raw, undulating maleness stem from the kick of some mystical ancient virus in his bloodstream, or had he always been a heartthrob?
“I know about the park,” she said.
She hadn’t really looked closely at his face. It was bad enough that the bronzed skin beneath his chin, exposed between open buttons, beckoned to her with the lure of the forbidden.
Would his flesh be smooth, so close to becoming a wolf? Abby cursed the urge to press her fingers there to find out—an action that would probably add one more body count to those unfavorable statistics he’d just mentioned.
Keep strong.
Resist the craziness.
Never get close.
“Then you do know this park is probably the last place a woman should visit, alone and at night,” he said quietly.
“Only women?”
“Anyone.”
“Am I alone?”
“That seems to be the case.”
Abby gestured at him with a wave of one hand. “You don’t count?”
Sarcasm didn’t make her feel better about her predicament. The Were’s eyes remained on her in an uncomfortably intense way, giving Abby the impression that he could see through her clothes and down through her skin to the place where the sparks of her crazy curiosity about him glittered.
She hoped to God he couldn’t see that.
Stomach tightening into a ball of uncertainty, and with her body temp soaring to a disgusting degree, she waited for what might come next, facing the Were, whose specialized internal furnace would soon fuel a werewolf’s shape-shift.
“You do know that bad things sometimes hide in the night?” he cautioned with no threatening move in her direction.
“Are you one of those bad things?”
“I could be. How would you know?”
“Well, then, I guess I’d better go before you have a chance to provide the answer.”
“That might be a good idea,” he agreed.
Movement, though, was impossible. Turning her back to this guy would be a bad idea, no matter how friendly his approach had been. Big reminder: though he looked like a human, and talked like one, he wasn’t.
Feeling the weight of the cell phone in her pocket, Abby tried to remember that Weres weren’t the only treacherous faction in town. Her father, Sam Stark, was as deadly as any werewolf and quite possibly twice as lethal, since Sam had no tolerance for anomalies like this one, and his hatred was usually backed by an element of surprise.
She wondered what color this guy’s pelt would be. Bronze, like his hair? Golden, like the rest of him? With moonlight reflected in each strand of his sleek, slightly mussed mane, whatever color of wolf he turned out to be would amount to tons of cash for the Stark accounts if the team found him. He’d bring a small fortune and it shouldn’t be any concern of hers. This wolf and others like him hurt people when the moon was full.
How close to the surface is your wolf tonight? she wanted to ask. Are you a killer?
Any of those things spoken aloud would let him know she had pegged him for a hybrid, taking things from bad to worse in a hurry. The team’s plan had always been to drive Weres like this one into the open, into the moonlight that betrayed what they were, and strike fast, strike hard. No mercy.
But this wasn’t a killing night. Tonight her job had been only to locate some Weres. See who was around.
“And I found you,” she whispered as her interest in the gorgeous Were reached broiling status internally, as if her mind and body were engaged in a war of ethics, while the big fellow on the edge of the light continued to prove how good his acting skills were.
It was a standoff. Checkmate.
Who would make the first move?
Daringly, Abby let her gaze drift upward to his face before immediately wishing she hadn’t. His features were chiseled, with high cheekbones and a full mouth. He had a strong jaw and arched brows. She refused to meet his wide-set eyes.
Daring to speak again in a voice husky with strain, she said, “What are you waiting for?”
After a long pause, he replied, “Why don’t I walk you home?”
Abby shook her head. “Don’t think so, but thanks all the same.”
“There could be others out here, much worse than me.”
“Really? Much worse?”
“I can assure you of that.”
“Then why are you out here?” she asked.
“I like to walk and think.”
“In the dark?”
“Yes.”
“Here?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe you’re some kind of danger junkie,” she suggested.
“It’s a possibility. What about you? Is danger your drug of choice, or were you trying to get somewhere and got lost?”
Unclenching her hands, Abby then fisted them again, rattled by the stilted repartee. The heat, both hers and his, had become suffocating. He had a gaze like a frigging laser beam that wouldn’t let up or miss much. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was whether this guy would try to hurt her, or not.
Why don’t you make your move?
“Danger isn’t really my thing,” she said.
“Yet here you are, in a place that attracts it.”
“Not for long.”
Listening hard, Abby separated the layers of city noises. Cars paraded down the boulevards in the distance. The faint buzz of insects reached her from the trees to her right.
The air was filled with the smells of dry, sun-drenched pavement and the bitter odor of crushed grass and leaves. Above those things something else, some other scent, surfed the night air. She tagged it as the not-so-sweet odor of the unseen.
Her scalp pricked. Her racing heart gave an extra thump. This Were’s wolf was close to the surface and getting stronger. Whatever lay inside him that she had easily connected to wasn’t going to go away with a bit of conversation.
Something else bothered her, needled at her. If this guy was an Alpha, he’d have a pack close by.
Her odds in favorably dealing with the situation plummeted. At the same time, her morbid fascination for the wolfman kept Abby focused. She wanted to know so much more about him, and about what went on here. Her appetite for those things grew by the second.
Abby held herself tightly to keep from squirming. If Weres like this one possessed animalistic superpowers, he’d have already noticed that she had become a heat-sensing Geiger counter for the very thing that should have had her screaming. Her fevered flesh and skin-ruffling gyrations were the equivalent of inviting the fiery hand of death to slide between her legs.
Hell with that. Due to his looks and masculine vibe, this Were probably had a harem of women willing to take him in. He didn’t need one more willing supplicant. Besides, wolves and humans did not mix, except when those things in an anomalistic fashion resided within one being.
The situation sucked. All outcomes seemed dire. Whatever outlandish thing was taking place between this werewolf and herself had gummed up logic. He was seducing her without any effort on his part at all. He didn’t have to be blatant about it because the seduction worked. All he had to do was stand there, looking like a sexy hunk.
Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. Get out. Get away.
You, she wanted to shout to the creature across from her, are the very thing my father and his teams despise. There has to be a reason for that.
Lifting her chin defiantly, Abby backed up a step. This is the final test. Will you pounce?
As it turned out, he didn’t do anything of the sort. Instead, he calmly asked her a question.
“Why do you hate the moon, if you don’t mind me asking?”
The question was as unexpected as the earnest ring of curiosity in his voice.
“You said you hate it,” he reminded her.
“I hate what the moon does to people,” Abby said.
Her companion glanced up at the light. “You don’t find the moon beautiful?”
“Its beauty is deceitful, as beauty often is.”
If he got the point and the allusion to himself, he didn’t show it. He took a step toward her, closing some of the distance separating them and setting off another round of sparks that burrowed well below Abby’s waistline. He continued to study her face as if whatever he sought there might be important.
What did he want? An apology for the atrocities her father and his team had inflicted upon his species? Did he want revenge, when he had to know how many humans Weres had killed in Miami in the past year alone?
In hindsight, she should have covered up the logo on her T-shirt that advertised a bar that just happened to also be a field office for Sam Stark’s hunters. She hadn’t taken the time to change, in a hurry to get outside, away from the crowd. Maybe this guy had already made note of it, which would be bad news.
Move, Abby. Hesitation is no longer an option.
No wolf could be allowed to discover where the team kept court, or seek to uncover the source of her own unusual connection to their breed. Those were secrets for keeping behind closed doors, under lock and key, especially when facing a Were male of this caliber.
Damn it, the spell he had put on her had to be broken. Her murky, inexplicable attraction to him had taken her too far off base. She had feared this kind of face to face for a long time.
Use the phone. Make that call.
Yes, and what would she say to her father if he answered the phone? That she’d screwed up this time? That she’d been mesmerized by a wolf? There was no way Sam’s team could find her like this, feverish and out of commission, when so many others expected her to be a chip off the old guy’s block.
Plus, all of a sudden she wasn’t so sure about wanting the team to find the Were across from her who was too damn pretty to be a rug on some billionaire collector’s floor.
“Got to go.”
She needed to hear the urgency in her voice. The muscles of her upper back twitched. Although her heart rate again spiked, she didn’t go anywhere because backward wasn’t the direction she really wanted to take. Every molecule in her body strained to get closer to the wolf in his human skin, while her mind struggled to find a way out of this standoff that made sense.
Do the smart thing. Turn and sprint. Hope he won’t follow.
Why hadn’t she at least tried that?
Was he touching her? No. Yet she felt as if he were.
Could he be holding her there physically with his wolf aura? Yes. Hell, yes.
This wolf was the real deal, times ten. And he was what? Being friendly? They were having a chat, as though the word species didn’t matter?
If this Were internalized her scent, or any other of his cousins trapped her with a purpose the next night, she’d make the obituaries, or worse. One swipe of a claw or a bite that deeply pierced her skin and she might become one of them.
Considering that she survived at all.
Abby’s lips parted for a speech she didn’t make. Without thinking she inched toward this Were like a bug drawn to light, her body, independent of her mind, urging that forbidden touch as if part of her actually wanted to burn. As if the secret guilt she had built up over the years about the whole hunting scene, as well as the lectures from her father, the loneliness she’d endured for so long and the image of werewolf pelts hanging from ceiling beams, would burn with her.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Abby waited for sanity to intervene, hoping it would hurry.
“Will you let me go?” she asked breathlessly.
“Of course you can go. Though I really would like to make sure you get where you’re going safely.”
An offer of safety from the scariest thing out here?
As if she was supposed to believe him.
“Nights here are always dangerous,” he said. “Tonight feels especially tense. Do you sense that?”
“Why care about me at all? You don’t even know me.”
“It’s what I do.”
“You make a habit of accosting women in dark places, and then woo them with the promise of a compromise?”
“I try to make sure that no accosting goes on, actually.”
“Are you some sort of vigilante?”
“Something along those lines, yes.”
“I don’t recall asking for your help.”
“Can you assure me that you know the difference between looking for danger and actually finding it?” he countered. “No one comes to this park after dark for fun or shortcuts. Not even if they carry a knife.”
Okay. So she hadn’t really supposed he wouldn’t know about the knife, scent being one of a werewolf’s strongest attributes, and silver being repugnant to them. But why hadn’t he hidden his knowledge of the knife, when it couldn’t be seen? The forged silver blade would be a wolf’s worst nightmare if it touched skin. No human could have smelled it.
Maybe that knife was why he hadn’t made his move.
Tilting his head slightly, he said, “Something about you drew me to you, if you want to know the truth.”
“Yeah, like I haven’t heard that line a million times,” she said. “I work in a bar.”
No matter how hard it became, she had to keep reasonably calm, at least on the outside. A frightened human’s scent, she’d been told, was a veritable aphrodisiac for hyped-up hybrids.
But how did their sense of awareness translate to a human that might not be frightened enough and, instead of fear, held an illicit fascination for this one?
“Are you really so fierce, I wonder?” he asked.
“You have no idea.”
“You’ve no need for company?”
“Not yours.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Then go, and I’ll watch your back.”
“Or stab me in it.”
“Direct, but way off the mark. I don’t have any reason to harm you. And you have the knife.”
“Maybe the weapon deters you?”
“Honestly, I like to think of myself as one of the good guys. What does that knife say about you?”
It was a good question. Because of it, Abby’s conscience nagged. What if he turned out to be okay, after all? There were decent folks along with the bad in most cultures, though her father had not once mentioned that possibility with werewolves.
She did know about this good-bad thing in other animals, though, being an animal control officer three days a week. There were nice dogs and bad dogs, and she had quickly learned how to tell the difference. Telling signs started with the eyes.
Could that ability translate to decoding good and bad Weres?
Who was he really?
How different was this Were’s world from hers?
What did it feel like to carry a fully formed wolf inside, and be part of such a dangerous minority that had to hide from the masses?
No one had explained those things to her, because no human she knew had the answers. Her father killed werewolves on sight. If he had interrogated any of them, she’d never heard about it.
Here was her chance to find out about the so-called enemy, and she couldn’t afford to take that chance. Not out here. Not like this, when it had become increasingly obvious that she wasn’t thinking properly.
Will you really let me go, wolf, or is this some sort of cat-and-mouse game?
Time to find out.
“Well, then, I’ll be on my way. I’d like to say it’s been fun...” Her sentence faded when he took another step forward, bringing his heady physical powers of persuasion with him.
Abby widened her stance defiantly, her body exhibiting more visible signs of distress. The mere fact that she had questioned herself and her motives for being here meant that she’d started to cave. The Were knew this. Animals zeroed in on weakness. His silence told her he recognized what her body wanted in spite of her arguments to the contrary, and in spite of their differences.
He would have noticed her flushed face and averted gaze. He’d feel the return of heat she gave off and intuit with his wolfish senses about the very private spot between her thighs that had seldom been accessible to anyone, yet had become a quaking mass of need for a stranger.
Not just any stranger.
What was wrong with her? Who could interpret the idiocy of what she’d been thinking and feeling? One more step, and she’d feel his breath on her face.
This is not okay.
“But you’d be lying.” He completed the sentence she had left dangling, in a tone that wafted over her like a length of fine, drifting silk. “About the fun.”
“Yes,” Abby admitted. “I’d be lying.”
She knew right then and there that it was too late for escape. Electrified excitement charged through her. Moonlight sparkled around them like a desert sandstorm, dulling the edges of reality, making closeness to a wolf seem viable. Making sexual fantasies with one seem viable.
Hell, possibly she did have a death wish.
And God...his eyes, drawing her to return his gaze, turned out to be gold, like the rest of him. A light, pure gold.
“I won’t hurt you. Go on. Take off.” The gruffness of his voice suggested that he might be sharing her inner turmoil.
“If you follow me, you’ll know where I live. I can’t allow that,” she said.
He held up both of his hands in a gesture of placation. “Then I’ll just wait here. I won’t follow.”
Abby’s left hand hovered over the pocket that held her cell phone. Her right hand straddled her right thigh above the knife by her boot. But she didn’t use either escape route, imagining she already felt his heated breath on her cheek.
Up close, this guy was outrageous. He oozed male masculinity and owned the term raw animal magnetism. This wolf was sex on long, lean legs, and seduction by design. He smelled like a man, not a monster. Drifts of aftershave, damp cotton fabric and musky male moistness floated in the air.
She wanted him in a really bad way, and there was no excuse. Her chest hurt. Bones ached from standing at attention. Her heart felt as if it had been squeezed, and not one breath she took in seemed sufficient to fix her oxygen deficit. It had been a long time since she’d been this close to anyone of interest. Her life had been that of a loner for reasons that necessitated never allowing anyone in.
At her father’s bar, she had remained more or less camouflaged, which made coping skills in dealing with her inner angst so much easier. She did her job. She did what she was told to do in order to be left alone afterward. Alone time away from Sam Stark and his gang had always been a reward.
Did it take a creature so unlike herself to make her desire something more? Someone not completely human who had to understand what it was like to feel out of place?
Damn it, she had caved. Someone had to pull her away because she couldn’t do it herself. The dichotomy of what she had been taught versus what they had going on here ratcheted up the tension of her internal tug-of-war. There had to be some good with the bad, and she wanted proof of that.
The pulses of desire passing through her were richly intense. Just looking at this guy was a treat and a pleasure. Doing anything more, however, might be suicidal.
“You have the police on speed-dial?” Her companion pointed to her pocket. “In case you meet someone else out here who’s not so accommodating?”
Another surprise. The concern in his tone sounded genuine.
An inexplicable flush burned its way up Abby’s neck and into her cheeks. The exposed triangle of flesh at the base of this guy’s neck had become like a glimpse into a world completely foreign to her—a world that was off-limits, new and untried, yet something she suddenly and desperately wanted to find out about.
Would he act on her show of weakness at last? Take advantage? Push her over the edge?
Abby briefly closed her eyes.
Despite everything in her life so far, and while knee-deep in danger, she wanted very badly to see what lay beneath his baby-blue shirt.
She wanted to know what made this Were worth so much to the team, and why he hadn’t yet hurt her, when the people in her life wouldn’t have given him the same consideration.
More than anything, she desired to run her tongue along the crease of his lips, drink deeply from his Otherness and truly indulge in the flavor of night. She would get those longstanding questions about his species over with, once and for all.
Right now.
“Perhaps you’d like me to go first?” he asked soberly. “The sooner you’re out of the area, the better. That’s a fact.”
He raised a hand as if he’d touch her, then let it fall before he did. Hoarsely, and as though the words stuck in this throat, he said, “My advice? Run away, little girl. Run fast.”
On quaking legs, Abby stubbornly stood her ground. “You first.”
His sigh struck her like a soft caress. “All right.”
When he took a step back, the strange bond that had sprung into place between them stretched tight.
“Good night,” he said without leaving her or turning away. The bastard just stood there, his golden gaze riveting.
Perhaps sensing how the mood had changed, he shook his head and smiled warily. Though misplaced, the smile dazzled, lifting the corners of lips Abby fantasized about licking, and making him seem way more human and approachable.
Suddenly, she felt like the animal here.
His unexpected exhibition of lightness seemed a confirmation, a mutual acknowledgment that the link that had sprung into place between them had grown red-hot and all-encompassing for no apparent reason, other than that old adage about the craziness of animal attraction.
That smile made something inside Abby shatter. Pieces of the reasoning process scattered like confetti. Sparks imploded down deep inside her with an interior fireworks display, creating a craving for this Were like no other, a craving the equivalent of a wave of primitive primal need.
Swearing beneath her breath, Abby realized that she truly hadn’t finished with this Were. She knew with absolute certainty that the treacherous moon above their heads that was nothing more to most people than a silver disc orbiting the earth was now about to become either her keenest enemy...or her future lover.
Fully aware of the risks, and discounting the consequences, she took that last stride forward...
And looked up just far enough to see the surprise on the gorgeous Were’s face.
