Wolf Hunter

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  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 inv
iting 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.