Harlequin Nocturne May 2015 Box Set: Wolf Hunter\Possessed by a Wolf (5 page)

Hell of a lot of bad timing here.

In the back of his mind lay the question of whether the immediacy of their connection meant something. The look in her eyes, and the way those eyes had seared into him, suggested there might be more in store.

A nagging suspicion suggested that he had better find out what this connection to her meant and if, after all was said and done, he truly would be able to forget her. In the meantime, because she had sidetracked his intention to capture and interrogate another Were tonight, his personal quest for information about himself had been put on hold.

Chances were good that they'd get off easily and chock tonight's events up to nothing more than a casual, if unusual, event that happened to men and women all the time, all over the world. Casual sex between strangers. Case closed.

Snapping his teeth together so hard that his jaw burned, Cameron said, “Fire up, woman,” to the enigmatic female by his side, and increased his pace.

* * *

Abby's legs felt weaker than normal and in need of a break. She'd just had a lover between them, and evidence of that was an ache that spread outward from her womb like cracks in a breached wall.

Her breathing was harsh, her chest taxed. Over the sounds she made, she heard their pursuers. At least two of them, and maybe more. These were Weres the one holding on to her didn't want to meet, or didn't want her to meet.

The park was brimming with monsters tonight. The one gripping her hand dialed back his speed after calling for more of it, considerately matching his stride to hers. Leaving him would have been a good idea, if it weren't for the other creatures not far behind that likely had the scent of her bloody leg in their noses.

Every few seconds, she stole a glance at her lover, wondering as she watched his shirttails fly and his bare chest muscles ripple, how anyone on the bad end of society, including his own gene-spliced alternate species, could possibly expect to deal with him in any confrontational circumstance.

She felt the power in him, and had taken some of that power inside her. Remnants of that energy washed over her now, and yet every move he made seemed angled to make him appear human. Nevertheless, could an angel hide its wings for long? Could a devil hide its horns? A werewolf was a werewolf, and she had just been intimate with one.

Oh yeah, and guess what? She had liked it.

“Don't slow down on my account,” she said as they rounded a corner. “I can take it.”

Her mind clung to the thought that if she had mistakenly accused her father for her wound, and didn't call in soon, Sam would come after her for real—maybe not out of fatherly love for his daughter, but out of a strong business sense. There had never really been much love or admiration between them. Hardly any at all. Actually, none at all.

With her fingers securely curled in the Were's hand, they raced past a brick wall that had seen better days and smelled of moss, finding an alley of palms. Dogs barked behind the tall fences, pinpointing Otherness without having to see it as she and the wolf passed.

Although the uneven earth here made sprinting difficult, Abby was determined to shake the Weres on their trail and remove herself from the picture. She was eager to pretend tonight never happened, and hopeful that the guy next to her would do the same. She had tucked into her mostly boring little life of being an animal control officer by day and a bartender by night.

All for the best.

When she got back to the office, she'd report the bad guys like she was supposed to do and pray that this big, beautiful Were would take his moonlight shift someplace else. She'd be convincing. She would get over this, and forget about him. The grazed leg she'd keep to herself.

Without a hint of warning, her companion slammed to a halt. He spun her around to face him and said soberly, “Go. Now. Don't look back.”

“I can...”

“Now.” It was a command. “You do know your way? You weren't lost?”

“I know where I am.” Abby barely got that out before again feeling his breath on her face. Her eyes closed as his mouth met hers almost angrily, and in the manner of someone who might never get enough of what he'd found. His tongue swept over her teeth, and across her lips. She kissed him back.

Lord help her, this wasn't over.
Can't be over.

The kiss lasted only seconds before he tore himself away. Letting go of her hand, he gave her a shove.

“Go,” he reiterated. Whirling from her, he began walking, not away from the creeps following at a distance, but toward them, with his head lifted and his long stride purposeful.

The sheer weight of his larger-than-life presence filled the night as Abby watched him go. Her heart did not stop its infernal pounding.

Sensing her hesitation, he stopped only once to glance back. Across a span of withered grass their gazes met. He didn't acknowledge a similar reaction to the one that had her reeling, or let on that he felt the same. Blood striped his shirt. Her fingernails had put some of it there. Her injury had done the rest.

Mirroring the twitch that set his shoulders, Abby finally spun around. Without reaching for her phone or making the call that might have sent the team scrambling, and maybe even helped this one lone wolf in the short run, she sprinted for the road.

She'd take no chances. This big Were was nothing she'd be willing to share. He'd be her secret. Her very private secret, added to so many others.

On the plus side, she might have been a fool tonight, but at least she wasn't going to be a dead one.

The TTD motto served her well here.

Live to fight another day.

Chapter 6

C
ameron felt himself distancing from normal human perceptions of his surroundings, as though his humanness danced on a last remaining thread of control.

Angling his neck, he heard a crack. Then another. But this wasn't a night for the beast to exert itself to a full extent—at least, as far as he knew. So whoever was out here would be in the same boat, minus the badge tucked inside his pants pocket.

As if he had wished them into existence, the miscreants came around a corner in single file, which would have presented him with an opportunity to gain something of an upper hand in a fight, if it weren't for the fact that they had moved too close to a busy street for a fight to go undetected.

“Are you boys heading in the wrong direction?” he called out.

“What direction would that be?” the shaven-headed guy in front responded.

“Oh, I don't know. Toward trouble, maybe?”

They didn't laugh. Halting a couple yards away and meeting shoulder to shoulder in a united front, as animals in the wild sometimes did when eyeing a potential meal, they studied him impersonally with flat black gazes. The odor of wolf gone bad hung heavily in the air.

Cameron held up his hands and kept his voice light. “Just doing my job. Keeping the streets safe.”

The tallest of the gang, wearing a torn white T-shirt and baggy pants, took the initiative. “Why don't you do your job someplace else?”

Cameron shook his head. “No can do. This is my beat.”

“You're a cop?”

Cameron shrugged.

“A filthy badge-carrying pig?” The speaker turned to his companions. “I thought I heard him squeal.”

The other three gangbangers chuckled on cue, cut off when the lead dog spoke again. “Or was it the girl that squealed?”

Cameron's hands opened and closed, readying for a skirmish. “What girl would that be?”

“The one you let get away. The naked one.”

“Well,” Cameron said, “I'm wondering what that has to do with you.”

“That bitch needs riding. She's been broken in.”

Cameron squeezed his hands tighter, sure he felt one claw spring through his fingertip, though that couldn't be right.

“Go home, boys,” he said. “There's plenty of help here on the street if I whistle, and I'm sure you have better things to do than wait for what will happen.”

“We'll make a deal,” the leader of the unholy pack said. “You stay away from this park, and we'll let you off with a warning this time.”

“Why? Are you hiding something out there?” Cameron asked.

“That's none of your business. You might be a cop, but we know what else you are. We can spread the word.”

“Really? What am I?”

“A freak,” the guy said. “And all alone out here most of the time.”

Cameron nodded. “Does that make us cousins? Should I feel warm and fuzzy?”

“What you should feel is scared.”

“Scared of you?”

“Us, and others like us who can be your worst nightmare.”

“Sorry,” Cameron said honestly. “My worst nightmare has already come and gone.”

He realized someone was approaching from the street behind him before he had finished the statement. An authoritative voice rang out. “Is there trouble here?”

Recognizing the voice, Cameron called back, “Davidson, is that you?”

“Mitchell? Yeah, it's me. Stegman is in the cruiser. Do we need to call him?”

Cameron eyed the pack of animals that looked at the moment like any Miami southside street gang with too much attitude. He smiled. “So, what will it be, boys? A truce, for tonight?”

“That would be a shame,” the tall guy replied. “Because I really feel like fighting, and the odds are in our favor.”

“The odds, I think, will be slim, since cops also carry guns.”

The big dog waved the suggestion away. “It just so happens that we eat guns for breakfast.”

Cameron nodded. “We'll do some damage, though. I'm sure your pals here will agree that you might want to take your games elsewhere.”

“We don't play games,” the lead dog snapped.

“Then maybe you should consider it,” Cameron warned, though it became obvious by the way the gang advanced, and the way they simultaneously reached for whatever they had tucked into their waistbands, that the damn hybrid idiots weren't going to take his advice.

Davidson, a veteran cop and as smart as cops came, trotted around the corner. The poor guy had no idea what was in store, or that Miami could actually produce something worse than a street gang claiming public territory for their own.

If Cameron's claws weren't aching to spring a full night ahead of time, he might have been able to warn his badge-carrying brother of the danger ahead. But he looked down at his hands to make sure the sensation wasn't real as the mindless Were pack barreled forward with the force of a battering ram.

Chapter 7

C
ameron 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.