Gasping, her fingers tightened on her gun, determined not to lose it again.
“I’d really rather you not shoot me.”
“Rafe.” She breathed, her arm sagging, matching the loosening inside her, the easing within her too-tight chest. The gun dropped from her fingers.
“Kit.” In the dark, his hand somehow unerringly landed on her cheek. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, the motion making her all the more dizzy. She swayed on her feet and winced at the show of weakness.
“Kit,” he said again, and his voice suddenly sounded so far away, as if he were calling her from a great distance.
His arms caught her as she toppled over, strong bands that felt solid and firm. Warm over her nakedness.
Her lids pulled low, twin weights tugging down over her eyes that she could no longer fight. Damn. She loathed weakness, loathed that after working so hard to be the best, to be strong, capable of taking care of herself, she was on the verge of passing out.
“No,” she whispered in a weak thread of voice, her hand knotting in his shirt, twisting the fabric as she felt herself slipping away, becoming boneless and limp in his strong arms. Arms that felt good, better than they should. A man whose arms she should flee.
“I’m here, Kit, I’m here,” he replied in a voice unusually thick, guttural and low, almost as if his mouth were stuffed with cotton. Still, the sound of it swept through her like an infusion of Claire’s Christmas wassail, equally potent, burning a path to her belly.
I’m here, Kit.
And she knew he was. Even as she knew that she could not give in, could not let herself surrender.
I’m here, Kit.
The words comforted her as they shouldn’t. Especially coming from him.
Nothing had changed. He was still her enemy. Still someone she needed to escape, but she could not stop herself from sighing against the hard wall of his chest, from inhaling the warm male scent of him. From thanking God he had come.
Her resistance gave out as her fingers uncurled from his shirt. She succumbed to darkness, dimly accepting that there was no fight left in her—and knowing that when she woke he would be there. With her.
She would fight him then. Later.
Intense relief swept through him as Kit fell limp in his arms, as soft and malleable as a sleeping child. Cradling her close, he felt her slow, steady breathing ripple through her and pass into him. She lived.
His vision adjusted further to the gloom, assessing the details and nuances of her face, calm and serene in sleep. Her lower lip was puffy, smeared with drying blood. He ran a hand over her head, stopping at the goose egg–size knot buried in her soft curls at the back. Likely a concussion.
A deep sigh rattled loose from his chest. She was unharmed. He inhaled deeply. They had not raped her. The prophecy would not come to pass. At least not in her.
His hands skated over her gentle lines and curves, searching for further injuries, striving to evaluate her with clinical dispassion. The woman was unconscious. Only a bastard would take advantage of such a situation.
Not a stitch of clothing covered her. Not that he needed his eyes to see in his mind what his hands felt. He had already spent more time than he should have visualizing her lithe figure. Naked in his arms. Another first for him. She was a job. One of countless Marshans he had dealt with over the years. Christophe Marshan’s offspring had grown into quite the family line. And EFLA wanted them all dead. Those they could trace, anyway.
He had no business looking at her—lusting for her. Nothing had changed. He needed to get rid of Kit March and regain some measure of himself, of the man who never allowed his emotions to get the better of him. Especially when it came to the job. And Kit March, after all, was just a job.
His hands skated over her warm female skin, soft as silk, supple beneath his rough fingers, trying to convince himself that he didn’t want her.
Honorable or not, adrenaline sang through him, swimming hot and thick through his veins. He felt slightly drunk, his head heavy, not quite his own. No surprise, in his condition.
The beast in him fought for release, for the freedom to take her. Possess her as instinct demanded. He had to struggle hard to urge him back into his cage, especially following the heady euphoria of his kills. Fighting the untimely erection pushing painfully against the front of his jeans, he kept his fingers stretched at his sides.
Struggling for control, he sucked in a bracing breath. It wasn’t the first time he’d surrendered and let himself go. Sometimes he had to. His mother never understood that. She thought the beast should be forever suppressed.
Hunting lycans, how could he not use the full measure of his strength? But it was the first time this hunger, this lust, had followed the aggression. It was the first time he struggled so fiercely to regain himself. The difference, he realized, was that he had been fighting for her. And now he longed to claim her. His instinct begged for it, craved to sink into her soft heat.
Inhaling through his nose, he drew air deep into his lungs as he urged himself to return to normal.
Battling his rush of desire, he readjusted her in his arms and rose to his feet. Moving to the bathroom, he flipped on the light switch and wrapped her in a towel, hoping that the thin barrier might help, and also knowing he could not stroll outside with a naked woman in his arms.
Turning around again, he didn’t blink an eye over the carnage of the three bodies, only hesitated at the sight of her belongings strewn over the room. He knew the lycans had tracked her the same way he had. Through a planted GPS.
His EFLA contacts had given him her location. Just as he assumed they had alerted the lycan population. They had not, however, told him where the chip was located. And he hadn’t risked asking. It was outside his usual sphere of interest, and he had no wish to raise suspicions by breaking pattern now and asking questions that he had never bothered to ask before. He had a few more years to go before he left EFLA. He needed to make the most of them.
Leaving her things behind, he carried her out into the night, eager to go before any other lycans showed up. Eager to find some place for her to recover, for him to regain control of himself and finish the job he had set out to do.
CHAPTER 13
Kit woke with a headache from hell. A beer-mixed-with-cheap-wine kind of headache. She opened her eyes, only to shut them again, the brief flash of dim light too much to bear.
Several moments and deep breaths later, she slid her eyes open again, blinking slowly in the murky air. An unfamiliar room washed in muted light stared back at her. She began to turn her head, but stopped, jamming her eyes shut again at the resulting pain in her head. Slowly, she drew air into her lungs and willed the pain to pass.
Memory flooded her. If Rafe hadn’t arrived…
Rafe.
Heart pounding—and not entirely in fear, the fear she should have felt—she opened her eyes again.
Vague images skipped through her mind. Rafe’s shadowy figure wrestling with the lycan in the red-tinged motel room. Rafe moving. So fast. Impossibly fast. Too fast.
It was all so fuzzy, as though it had happened in a dream. Surely she had imagined the speed at which he moved.
She brought a hand to her throbbing temple and slid her hands through her hair until she reached an egg-sized knot at the back of her head.
She had passed out. How humiliating.
Her cheeks burned at such an uncustomary loss of control. Sure, she’d taken on multiple lycans before—a situation both Cooper and Gideon had advised against countless times in her training. Isolate your targets. Narrow your risks.
She could argue that she hadn’t picked her targets. They had shown up, intent on killing her—after they’d had their fun.
Still, she expected better of herself. Cooper and her brother had trained her to be better. She knew lycans were hunting her. She should never have dropped her guard. Should have taken her gun with her into the bathroom. Rookie mistake.
Her hands drop
ped to her stomach, resting over a thick down-stuffed silk duvet cover. The material felt good against her flesh. Smooth and cool.
She frowned, hesitating a moment before lifting the cover and peering down at her shadowed body.
Naked. She was naked. Of course. She had been naked when the lycans attacked. Naked when Rafe arrived.
Face burning, she dropped the covers back down. When she lifted her head off the pillow, her gaze caught her reflection in a gilt-framed mirror hanging on pin-striped wallpaper across from her. She winced. With her hair a wild mess around her head, she resembled a cartoon of someone who had stuck her finger in an electrical socket. Always the case when she went to bed with wet hair.
Below the mirror sat a crystal vase of cream-colored roses, their sweet aroma filling the room and teasing her nose. Wherever Rafe had brought her, it was a definite step up from the roach motel where he had found her.
She moved her gaze to scan the rest of the room, hoping to spy her bags so she could get dressed and leave before Rafe returned. Nothing had changed. She still needed to reach New Mexico. Needed to get away from Rafe.
Turning her head, she froze.
Beside her, he slept, the contrast of his tan skin and dark hair as shocking as ink against the white pillowcase.
Her chest tightened with a sharp breath. The barest hiss of air escaped her lips. Scant inches separated them. Her breath came easier as she realized that he slept on, oblivious to her.
Tension ebbed from her shoulders as she studied his face, those dark, intense eyes closed in sleep. His impossibly long lashes were dark crescent smudges on the sharp planes of his cheeks. He wore no shirt. His shoulders and upper chest rose sinfully and alluring above the white sheets pooled at his waist.
Something quivered inside her, swirling downward to tighten in her belly at the sight of all that muscled flesh. She could break a hand on those washboard abs.
Shaking her head, she sat up, turning her back on him.
Move it, Kit. You can slip out while he’s sleeping.
Carefully, she slid one foot over the edge of the mattress, ready to drop to the floor. At his sudden sigh, she stilled. The sheets rustled. A peek over her shoulder revealed that he had moved. The sheets crawled lower, past the dark line of hair trailing down his navel, where the hair thickened enticingly.
Her throat constricted, cutting off her breath. The sudden quivering in her stomach made her press her thighs together.
Overwhelmed by curiosity—and other emotions she dared not examine too closely—she continued her survey. His chest rose on a deep breath and her palms tingled to touch that flesh. How would he feel? Would his skin feel soft? Hard? Smooth?
Heat exploded in her cheeks, sweeping down her chest in a blaze. Her nipples tightened as if struck with cold, despite the simmering heat racing through her with the force of a firestorm.
Her face felt prickly and tight at the bold shape of him. So close. Closer than any man had been to her in a long time. Clearly. Why else would she have felt compelled to sneak a look? Especially when she should have been hightailing it out of there?
Biting her lip, she pressed a palm to her cheek, the skin warm against her trembling hand, and forced her gaze away.
She was dizzy, overwhelmed with want from that brief peek. Her hand shook against her face. Feeling every bit the perverted soul, but unable to resist, she looked again.
Her eyes rounded as he grew erect before her gaze.
Gasping, she ignored the answering ache that flared to life between her legs and clutched the sheet tighter to her chest.
Her nape prickled with awareness, her gaze flying to his—colliding with eyes dark as coffee, sinister as shadow, drilling into her with unnerving intensity. He was awake. And aware that she had been watching him, absorbing the sight of him.
Her mouth parted, but no sound fell. Scalding heat swept over her face. What could a girl say when caught ogling a man’s package? And while he slept, no less?
She pushed herself off her elbow, intent on fleeing. From him. From her humiliation.
He caught her wrist in a brutal grip, stopping her. The touch of his hand burned her there, a manacle of fire, singeing her sensitive flesh.
Their eyes locked and held. She ceased to breathe.
“Good morning,” he murmured, looking at her in that consuming way of his, his eyes glinting almost black with something that resembled both amusement and…desire? She couldn’t be sure. It had been too long.
“You’re naked.” Even to her own ears she sounded like an appalled schoolteacher.
“Observant.”
“But in bed. With me.”
“Score again.”
“Why?”
“The only rooms available were with a king-size bed.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Mary Kay convention.”
“And you had to sleep naked?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Do I strike you as the kind of man who wears pajamas to bed?”
No. He struck her as dangerous. The type of man she had no business sharing a bed with. Even if he wasn’t an agent with EFLA. He was the type of man she needed to get far, far away from.
She averted her face and tugged to free her wrist, determined to do just that.
His voice continued its low, sexy rumble, sending a lick of heat twisting through her belly. “Why in such a hurry? By all means, look your fill.”
“What?” She blinked stupidly.
“Don’t let my waking stop you.”
“Are you crazy?”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Touch me, if you like.” His dark eyes lightened then, not nearly as dark as they usually appeared, looking strangely gray—like moonlight spilling across an ink-dark sky.
“Touch me,” he repeated, his voice a rasp of warm smoke.
Touch me.
That voice, his suggestion, rippled over her skin like the teasing brush of a feather.
With a shake of her head, she forced herself back to reality with a reminder of what he was. What she was.
“Easy there, cowboy.” She scooted away from him, clinging to the sheets, tugging on her wrist again until he released her. “I wasn’t trying to get anything started. Just assessing the situation.”
“Hmm. Disappointing.” His top lip curled. “And what is your assessment?”
“Just that neither one of us is wearing any clothes.”
“A veritable Sherlock Holmes.”
“I just don’t usually wake up naked with a—” Heat warmed her face as her voice faded.
His eyes glinted. “No? Interesting.”
She had not meant to confess her inexperience.
“A charming woman such as you,” he continued. “I would have thought you suffered no shortage of men willing to share your bed.”
She glared at him, sure he was mocking her. “I’ve had more important things to do with my time.” A half-truth. She wouldn’t have minded sharing her bed with someone. A man worth having. Who wanted her in return.
“More important things,” he echoed, his voice faintly accusing. “Like hunting lycans.”
Her chin went up. “I could do worse things with my time.”
“You have no business risking your neck hunting lycans. There’s a reason women shouldn’t hunt.”
“If you’re talking about lycans being able to detect a woman due to her menstrual cycle—”
“For starters—”
She waved a hand. “That never presented a problem for me. I usually set myself up as bait anyway.”
“Damn fool,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “There are other reasons you shouldn’t—”
“What?” she demanded, leaning forward. “Tell me.”
He opened his mouth, lips working.
“You can’t,” she declared in satisfaction. “You don’t have a reason beyond your own sexist beliefs.”
With a growl, he flung back the sheets and vaulted from the bed with ease, indifferent to his nakedness. He appe
ared as comfortable in his own skin as he was in clothes. Perhaps even more. Her gaze trailed down the muscled legs. Even his feet looked good. The toes strong and clean, the nails neat and short.
Standing above her, he bit out, “It’s more than that.”
Face flaming, she watched, helpless, unable to look away as he strolled to the bathroom. There ought to be a law against men with bodies that good.
She tightened her hold on the sheet covering her, acutely reminded of her own nudity. And that he likely knew her body as well as she was coming to know his.
With the door open, she had a perfect view of his taut backside, of the dimples above each cheek at the small of his back. She suffered the sight, mouth alternately drying and watering.
She couldn’t even recall the body of the last guy she’d slept with. At least not in any great detail. Oh, she recalled the guy. Greg. She remembered him clearly. Remembered that, briefly, she had thought he could be the one. He liked tofu, cycling, and never missed an episode of Rachael Ray—for him, the quintessential female.
They had dated nine months. A record. She had contemplated sharing with him the secret of who she was—what she did. Of the evils that stalked the earth, threatening mankind. But something had held her back. A good thing, too. He dumped her for a curvaceous brunette who knew how to flambé quail with Cognac. A five-foot-three-inch blonde with the figure of a twelve-year-old girl wasn’t exactly his type. She doubted there would ever be a man to whom she could confess her unusual avocation. How many guys could handle being with a woman who kicked werewolf ass for a living? If they even let themselves believe her.
Looking away from Rafe’s backside, she swallowed to bring moisture to her suddenly dry mouth, demanding, “Where are we?”
“Still in Austin,” he answered. “I checked us into a more suitable hotel. Rodent-free. Didn’t think you’d mind.”
Scowling, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I couldn’t use my credit card. Good luck trying to find a quality hotel that takes cash these days.”
Kiss of a Dark Moon Page 9
