“Your eyes betray you. I dare such things because, my dearest Miss Holmes, you are as uncommon a werewolf as you are a female,” Ethan said softly, Shelly’s bared fangs inches from his throat. “Above all things, you relish control and your freedom. If you so forget yourself as to tear me limb from limb in this laboratory, you will have to deal with untidy matters even your formidable powers of logic and prevarication cannot explain. My experiments are so volatile-never more than this one, I might point out–that I had this entire laboratory reinforced in case of an explosion. Even you cannot knock down a steel door, and my man servant will return by morning.”
To Shelly’s astonishment, he even went so far as to stroke the ruff of fur over her ear, though he could barely reach it, so tall was she on her hindquarters. “I am thus free to irritate you at my whim.”
While she stared down at him, her jaw growing slack at his temerity, he leaned closer still, until his breath stirred the fine hairs at her ear. “And above all things in life, it is my goal to see you lose that control when you are beneath me writhing in pleasure. You must in truth, be a wild woman.”
Even in her lupine form, Shelly felt a responsive thrill of pleasure in her female parts. She felt herself starting to change back into a woman simply from the longing he inspired. Leaping down, she backed two steps. He spanned the gap in one stride, the stalked becoming the stalker.
“Come to me, Shelly Holmes. Let us find rest in one another. We will work together much better in our investigations as a team.”
Shelly’s desperate gaze went between the hunter and the door. It did indeed look like reinforced steel, and the only windows were tiny affairs, far too narrow for her to slip through even if she could reach them.
To win this battle, she didn’t need the skills of a werewolf. She needed the skills of a woman…Rusty as they might be.
As she closed her eyes and allowed the womanly urges to grow, she noted that the sky was lightening outside.
Dawn approached. The first dawn after a full moon. She had to get out of here and check to see what Luke Simball had done after his humiliating defeat, and what he had become.
Instinctively, Shelly knew they would all too soon face a creature part lion, part werewolf.
And in that final battle, if she rejected him yet again, would Ethan Perot be friend or foe?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The door suddenly seemed very far away, for Ethan blocked it. Even if she somehow found the key, it was too late to run. He knew. He knew she was a werewolf; even worse, he knew she was more strongly attracted to him than any man she’d ever known. This confrontation had been brewing between them since the first time they met, appropriately enough, in a crypt, and she was tired of avoiding it. As he said, they needed to get it out of the way so they could both concentrate fully on the titanic battle to come for Arielle’s soul.
If the werewolf couldn’t cow him, perhaps the woman would.
Indeed, his hands were loose at his sides, and he watched her change with utter fascination--and absolutely no trace of fear.
She made no attempt to hide her transformation, flaunting the power of the wolf that somehow enhanced both the power and stature of the woman. Her back arched as she stood on her hind legs, the front paws changing into long, graceful arms, the muscular rib cage softening into the curvy bosom of a woman boasting a long, indented waist. Her hind legs straightened and grew shapely, the calves lean and long and muscular, the fit female form made sleek by the strength of her counterpart.
And when Shelly Holmes, fiftyish woman, detective extra ordinaire, stood before him, the residual stare of the wolf, direct, hungry and without pity, still glowed from her greenish gray eyes. “Come near me at your peril,” both females warned implicitly but explicitly.
At first, he seemed to heed her. He stayed put and feasted his fill of her from the top of her thick brown hair to the tips of her pink toes, lingering on points in between.
Legs spread, arms loose at her sides, she let him look. Her gaze strayed up and down, too, with its own primitive brand of hunger. She eyed the apex of his thighs, where his proper breeches displayed a most improper protuberance. She hesitated, for she still didn’t want him to know how much he, too, fascinated her, but the question came of its own accord. “I do not frighten you?”
A sound that was a strange mixture of pain and delight came from his lips. One minute he was halfway across the room, the next he was there, holding her hand to the front of his pants. When she froze, afraid to touch, afraid not to, he nuzzled the hair away from her ear, whispering into it, “Yes, you frighten me. You arouse me so much I feel like a lad again, you make me wonder, and care and hope again, for in you I see the possibilities of life and love. Dangerous emotions for a man my age. And I know you reciprocate, Shelly Holmes. I feel it here,” a hand cupped her breast right over the pounding of her yearning heart. “And here,” the hand had the temerity to tenderly rub the moisture between her legs. “Quit fighting yourself.”
Shelly arched her back, feeling the same strange mixture of pain and delight. Delight radiated from his touch, making her very glad she was a woman, but pain also assailed her at the same time, for unlike him, she knew there was no future in this joy. She was a lone wolf long before she was subject to the lupine madness, and there would be no life mate for her. Aside from the fact that she was a werewolf with a very long life span, inside she was still a woman of intellect and reason, passions held firmly in check.
Neither persona was suited to fidelity or infatuation, and both were equally wary of the depth of feeling this man inspired.
He saw it in her eyes even as they touched the most intimate parts of one another. She might as well have stated, “You frighten me, too” for that was the truth of the matter. Still, when his gentle finger probed a bit higher, finding the bud of her womanhood and bringing it to full bloom, even a lifetime’s worth of discipline could not block him or the way he made her feel. He bent his head to sip of the hollow of her neck, as if only there could he find sustenance, his lips warm and vital and male.
But all along, his movements were gentle and tentative, as if he knew he played with a combustible chemistry. And then the elements flaming between them since their first meeting burst into roaring life…Groaning a sound very like the one he’d made, she hauled his head up and latched her lips onto his.
In the stoic march of days, this was only their second kiss chronologically. But in the timeless communion of bodies and minds only lovers know, they fit together, two halves of a missing whole, in that ineffable connection that had forged dynasties and changed the course of history. The tenuous link between two like minds was now strengthened by two healthy bodies. The kiss was desperate, famished, as if they both keenly knew time marched against them. If this would be their only interval together, they would mark it well.
Her mouth moving urgently under his, Shelly tugged desperately at his breeches. He helped her, his mouth still locked on hers, drinking a man’s most basic nourishment from her lips, her tongue, even running his own tongue over her teeth, suckling at one of her still slightly pointed incisors..
His wild need called forth her own. His breeches were off, his shirt half unbuttoned before she realized she’d ripped them.
He laughed into her mouth. “Totally unfair, madam. You have no clothes on for me to rip.” And then, to her utter shock, he scraped his fingernails delicately from her nape to the curve of her buttocks, hard enough to redden her skin. But a thrill of pleasure tremored through her so strongly that her knees quivered. “But you like it better like this. What a passionate creature you are. It’s criminal that you hide it so well.”
How did he know this of her? He touched so easily this wild streak that was part of her even before she became a werewolf, yet no other man had ever mined this deeply into her most private fantasies. Most men were intimidated by her, even in this basic act of copulation.
And then…he turned her around and ran his tongue over the sam
e path, tenderness more blistering to her skin than the scrape had been. This time her knees did buckle, and he caught her in his arms. He lifted her and set her gently on the edge of the long scientific table, conveniently bare of breakables.
Her eyes flamed now, all the wildness of the wolf and the woman bare for him to see. “You planned this.”
“Is there a more appropriate place to experiment with such a volatile mixture as the two of us? We are both scientists.” Gently he nudged her legs apart. “I hoped you would reciprocate in this most personal exploration.”
What was he yammering on about? Why didn’t he just get on with it? She measured his fullness in her hand, admiring, “I knew you were well endowed.”
He leaped to her touch, sighing his own delight. “And you are a wicked woman, teasing me so until you got me to this state.”
“As I recall, you suggested I needed to ah, what was it? Ah yes, praise this part of a man’s anatomy more.” And suiting action to words, she bent and took him tenderly into her mouth.
It was his turn to grind his teeth as he’d made her do so often. He rose still more to her homage, and then, with a hoarse groan, he shoved her back on the table and stepped forward into the vee of her legs. He nudged her that first tantalizing bit, but he stopped at the moist gate to her body. He caught her head in his hands and said through his teeth. “Look at me. I want you to know whom you belong to. By your own choice.”
She shook her head, closing her eyes, telling herself she was lost to the moment and that while she’d regret it later, she wanted it now. That’s all it was, all it could ever be: one moment.
He shook her shoulders slightly, pulling away still further until the warm contact was broken. “Look at me, damn you! Say my name. Say, ‘Ethan, I want you.’”
She turned her face away, eyes still closed.
A vicious curse was her only reward.
He pulled away and stomped to his pants. She opened her eyes, astounded. He stopped, when he obviously wanted her at least as much as she wanted him. For such a foolish reason? She sat up, watching him put a leg wrong into his pants, curse even more viciously, and then turn them out correctly.
When he was somewhat dressed, his ripped pants held up by his belt, he turned to look at her coldly. His hand went to his shirt pocket and removed the key, which he dangled before her. “Odd place to look, what? Even odder than you didn’t try. Think on this, my stubborn darling: while you’ll allow yourself to be swept away to passion so you can curse me later, that is not what I want from you. And this night is not the only time we’ll ever have. I’ll chase you past hell’s minions to the gates of heaven if need be, but you will not escape either me or yourself. This taste of passion is but the beginning. But…you have to reach back to me before I’ll go further. Otherwise I leave you to burn in the hell of your own unfullfilment.”
He stalked to the door. She slipped down from the table, feeling totally naked and exposed, and not just physically. She looked about for the blanket. She’d wrapped it about herself when they both heard the noise at the door.
A scraping, then a grinding of metal. As Ethan inserted the key in the complex lock, the mechanism began to twist before their astounded gazes.
Shelly rushed to the door, stuck her nose to the crack and smelled. “It’s Luke!”
She and Ethan both tried to catch the inside of the latch and stop it from twisting further, but with a hideous grinding noise, it turned under their fingers to a twisted wreck of metal.
Footsteps receded.
Shelly and Ethan looked from the inoperable door, to the tiny windows in the foot thick walls of the basement.
When she looked back at him, he winced.
“This is why I choose to remain alone. And I will never forgive you for trying to seduce me out of my resolve, especially if Arielle pays the price for your egotism.”
And she began stalking around the perimeter of the room, looking for egress where there was none, somehow regal even in the tattered blanket.
Luke Simball drove away from Ethan’s laboratory, confident he’d twisted the complex locking mechanism enough to stop it from opening, even under the great pressure a werewolf could apply. How fortuitous Perot had whisked the nosy bitch to his impenetrable lair, not realizing that Luke, far from cowed, had trailed them with his newly amazing olfactory abilities. Shelly’s smell was unique, part woman, part wolf, and when he’d cleaned himself at his rooms of the blood, his strength far greater than ever before, it had not been difficult to retrace his steps to the woods and then follow the scent she’d left behind to the road, where Ethan’s heavily indented boot tracks disappeared into the rut of a carriage’s wheels. Since Luke had already discovered where Ethan lived, it had been easy enough to find them at his flat…and lock them in.
As he got back into his carriage to begin the last journey that would complete his powers, he enjoyed the varied scents he could now detect on the breeze. Now he had the keen sight of the feline and the keen sense of smell of the canine. He felt indomitable, unconquerable, after the additional surge of strength that came to him with the full moon. Once Seth was dead, and Arielle’s link with her mother was forever severed, he’d take his rightful place in eternity as Mihos, with the descendant of Isis and Cleopatra at his side, just as the legend foretold.
His thoughts were pleasant company, and he arrived quickly at his destination. It was still early, and he knew Arielle had not yet returned, but that suited his purposes. He knocked twice on the door of Hafford Place, eyeing the dawn tingeing the sky. When the butler answered after the fourth knock, Luke used his most cultured tone. “Forgive the earliness of this intrusion, but I wonder if I might have a word with his lordship?”
The sleepy butler rubbed his thinning hair beneath his night cap, fumbling for his spectacles in his robe pocket and obviously not finding them. He squinted into the dimness. “I don’t know, sir. May I say who is calling?” At this ungodly hour, added his tone.
Taking care to stay in the shadows, Luke replied, “Seth Taub. I have news of Arielle.”
The door swung wide and Luke entered, pulling the door shut behind him and locking it.
Inside the lit foyer, the butler could finally see the caller. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth, but the call for help never came.
An enormous paw with the hard claws of a wolf, but the ability to retract like a lion, and the combined power of both, slashed his throat from ear to ear so deeply that the man’s head sagged to the side. The carotid artery sprayed its contents on the walls and floor. The butler was dead before he hit the ground. Luke stepped over him, transforming back into a man, wiping his now human hand on the butler’s robe and locking the door, putting the heavy bolts in place.
How easy was the becoming now he had no pangs of conscience or regret. Seth would never defeat him now, even if he allied with the were woman, should she find a way to get out of that basement.
Soundlessly, his feet seemingly weightless on the old stairs, he slunk down the hall to the servants’ quarters and locked the door. With a strength greater than any he’d ever known before his battle with Shelly Holmes, he lifted a hall armoire almost twice his height and set it in front of the servants’ door as easily as if he moved a toy.
Then, knowing his time was still limited because Seth and Arielle would sense his intrusion, he hurried up another level to the master bedroom quarters. He preferred not to kill the earl, at least not until he’d turned Arielle into the powerful feline goddess she was meant to be. For now, he was useful.
But he had to find and destroy the book Isis had left her daughter, for only then would their link be forever torn. Only then could he repair the damage Seth had done in his sexual congress with the chosen one. Hatred burned, acrid and unrelenting, in Luke’s stomach, and he broke open the earl’s locked heavy oaken door as if it were kindling.
The Earl of Darby awakened to a most unusual sight. He blinked, thinking his nightmares had followed him into daylight.
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br /> But a ghastly creature came forward out of the dawn half light, limned in shadow and bright. It was part lion, part wolf, part man, and all lethal. The creature had the long mane of a lion but the neck ruff of a wolf, golden hair mixed with brown, and a face that had a wolf’s snout but a lion’s eyes and flat ears. From the waist down, he had the legs of a man, but they were far more powerful than any normal man’s could be.
Most ghastly of all, what remained of Luke Simball was smiling, and cold intelligence and malice gleamed from the glowing green eyes.
“Arielle,” whispered the earl, sitting up in bed.
“Precisely,” responded a cultured voice all the more horrifying given the visage from which it came. “You will take me to Isis’s effects. Now. Or Arielle dies. If she is not mine, she is Seth’s minion. Only you can save her.”
Trembling, the earl threw back his covers and arose.
As dawn fingered the horizon, Seth and Arielle awoke with a mutual start. Automatically, they turned to one another, replete with the wonders of their new bond. But as they began to embrace, the searing vision came to them simultaneously. Seth leaned over the side of the bed, holding his head, as Arielle gasped and sank back against the pillows.
“Luke,” Seth groaned as Arielle whispered achingly, “Father!”
Luke, blocking the estate’s doors. Luke, breaking down the earl’s bedroom door to force him into his dressing gown and down the stairs.
Most terrifying of all, the brief glimpse showed them how Shelly’s bite had changed Luke: the even more lethal way he moved, the glimpse of red madness in the green eyes as the setting moon caught them when they passed a window, golden hair mixed with brown, and a face that had a wolf’s snout but a lion’s eyes and flat ears. From the waist down, his human legs were so muscular they looked the legs of Hercules.
And then they were flying out of the small bed to gather the clothes they’d flung to four corners, trying to squelch the tormenting visions..
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