“Breakfast,” Abby repeated. The word had a foreign ring to it.
“Do you always eat breakfast together?” Cameron asked, voicing the question she’d been thinking about.
She was fascinated by the idea of a family—or in this case a pack—spending time together over a meal of any kind, or for that matter, any reason, as if they liked one another, and as though they got along. She had ached for that kind of closeness, dreamed of it her whole life.
“Only when there are things to discuss,” Mrs. Landau replied. “My son and his mate often stay on the property, in the cottage by the wall. The others drop in fairly regularly. We usually have a houseful.”
“Is your husband at home?” Cameron asked.
“He’s in court today.”
“Court?”
“Yes. He’s sending down judgments all afternoon.”
“He’s a judge?” Cameron asked, then blinked as if he’d asked a stupid question. “Of course. Judge Landau. I’ve heard the name.”
Abby hadn’t, but Cameron’s hold on her hand produced a small electrical charge that passed from his fingers to hers, letting her know the judge was somebody special and well-respected. Cops might have to know things like that.
She wouldn’t have been able to come here on her own, Abby realized as they followed their hostess into the house. The silk and the pearls, the black shutters and the wide expanse of lawn, were a glimpse into a world far removed from hers.
Breathing in scents of polished wood, grass and faint traces of lemon brought up the dichotomy of other recent odors: blood, fear, metal bars and silver chains. She wasn’t sure if she could afford to leave those terrible remembrances behind for the time it took to eat a piece of toast served on a china plate.
On the threshold of the Landau house, Abby turned to glance at the sky, needing no wristwatch to tell her how many hours there were until nightfall. Her wolf’s intuition had all the aspects of a well-oiled sundial.
And then what? Why did she suddenly fear the dark?
“What is it?” Cameron asked with his mouth close to her ear.
“I’m a freak.”
“Welcome to my world.”
The way his lips brushed over her hair, the familiar warmth of Cameron’s breath, made her heart and her wolf jump. The truth? She wasn’t alone. And she had never been a weakling. Now wasn’t the time to forget that.
She also had her knife. Sam, who didn’t have the benefit of wolfish senses, hadn’t picked up on the blade strapped to her leg.
She had more questions—a bucket full. But glad to have the support of Cameron’s hand on hers, Abby closed her eyes as she entered the home of Sam’s enemies, her body soaking up the wild wolf vibes underlying its contradictory genteel exterior, her inner wolf beginning to claw at her insides, craving freedom now that it had had a taste of what freedom was like.
Buttered toast wasn’t going to satisfy either of them.
Chapter 31
Cameron entered the room assigned to Abby without bothering to knock. She would be expecting him.
He had observed how restless she’d been all day, while awaiting the return of the others in the Landau pack. She had paced continuously inside the house and across the grounds, making sure of his closeness with guarded glances, though she didn’t have to look at him to be assured of that.
They both were aware of the bond tying them together, as well as the exact distances separating them most of the time. That special sense of togetherness had deepened after her first shift, as if there were now four beings attached at the hip and securing the bond, instead of just two.
Cameron heard water sounds that came from the adjoining bathroom as he entered her space. Abby would probably relish a shower and be trying to cool off, unused to full-on Were heat in a city that topped a hundred degrees on a daily basis.
He didn’t envy her the months ahead of getting to know her wolf side. But Abby seemed to have passed through her Blackout phase with few visible scars to show for it. He wondered how bad it had been, without wanting to linger on the thought. She had shape-shifted in a cage, and had managed, which said a lot about the toughness of her character.
Maybe he’d join her in the shower.
Quietly, Cameron closed the door behind him and looked around her room. Abby’s old clothes lay in a pile on the floor. She’d want to burn them, and he couldn’t fault her on that.
New clothes were spread out on the bed next to the rumpled blankets she had tried to curl up on. A shirt, some loose pants, fresh underwear in an unopened plastic package and a pair of rubber sandals that might have been close to her size were yet another offering from the Landau family.
A tray sat on the nightstand, with a bowl of melting ice and a pitcher of the tangy lemon drink he had chugged at breakfast in an attempt to coat his blazing insides. Abby had eaten nothing. Drank nothing. This worried him.
He glanced up, and looked to the bathroom door, relieved to sense her there. For a minute, he’d been unsure.
Cameron leaned against the doorjamb, searching the bathroom, knowing that for he and Abby privacy was no longer an issue. The shower curtain was clear. The small room was devoid of frills of any kind. This kind of sparseness would suit Abby, he thought. Her apartment above the bar had been modern and spare.
Feeling a bit like a voyeur, he watched her from the doorway, able to see every angle and line on her ultralean body. She stood under the showerhead with both hands on the tile wall, motionless, allowing the water to cascade over her. Rivulets ran down her shoulders, over her breasts and belly and between her thighs. In spite of the hurt inside her, and having been mentally abused, she was the sexiest female he had ever seen.
And she still wore the silver knife, in its sheath, strapped to her calf.
After making a sound he hadn’t planned on making, Abby turned her head. Through the flimsy barrier of the shower curtain, their eyes met with a stunning, fiery impact, igniting sparks that spread through him.
He had been physically desirous of her before she formally acknowledged him, but grew harder when she did. This wasn’t the time to show her what he thought of her, of course, and yet he wanted nothing more. It was always that way when he saw her.
“Abby,” he said. “I...”
She turned fully, and swept the wet hair back from her face. He saw hunger in her expression that matched his. Maybe she needed to be lost in the sheer physicality of their union, and to exert pent-up energy that had nowhere else to go. He sure as hell hoped so.
He drew back the curtain, and didn’t reach to turn the water off. A light spray of water hit both him and the floor.
She reached out to him, grabbed hold of the front of his shirt and tugged. Like everything else here, the shirt belonged to someone else, but it was too late to worry about that, and how many he’d already borrowed. The look in Abby’s eyes did him in. The way she wanted him overruled everything except the need to be mates.
Fully clothed, minus the shoes he’d taken off to stretch out on the bed in the room next to hers, Cameron slipped into the shower with Abby. As the water soaked him, her fingers worked his buttons. Not slowly or carefully this time, but more like a woman who refused to wait for any kind of foreplay.
She tore the shirt from his shoulders, resting her mouth on each patch of bareness she uncovered. With her sharp little teeth, she bit down on his flesh with a force that made him growl.
He took her face between his hands and held her motionless for several agonizing seconds. Then Abby’s hands continued in her goal of getting him naked.
His shirt dropped to the tub in a sodden heap of blue and white stripes. She went for his zipper by sliding her hands over his wet skin, pausing on the indentation on his chest where the bullet wound remained but had miraculously begun to heal, then she circled that wound with her lips.
She shook him off when he reached for her, silently asking for control of this, for now. His zipper came down in a soft grating of metal on metal. His pants, somebody’s kha
kis, melted to the tub. He stepped free of the tan puddle one foot at a time, content for the time being to give Abby the lead in the direction of this encounter.
But he confessed to her, “I have to move.” And his breath came in rasps. “I can’t hang on for long, Abby.”
She smelled like oranges and soap. Her hair, with its edgy black tips, hung to her shoulders in a gleam of copper. Large green eyes bored into his.
“Payback,” Abby said. “At least in part.”
“You owe me something?”
“Maybe not yet.”
He reached for her, unable to resist the thrash of the blood pounding inside him. Slick with the sheen of moisture, Abby slipped from his grasp in a downward slide until her knees hit the floor. Her head angled toward his engorged, raging proof of how much she affected him.
When her mouth took him in, Cameron howled and curled his fingers in her hair. He hit the wall, tasted the water on his lips, wanting to push Abby away in order to regain his equilibrium, while also wanting to do nothing of the sort.
“My turn,” he whispered, dragging Abby up by the armpits and setting her on her feet. “My damn turn.”
He kissed her deeply. It was a long, deep, hungry devouring for what, in the end, could only be satisfied in another way.
He’d had her before, but this time seemed new. He had been between her legs, had tasted her with his mouth, had made love to her, front and back. The difference here was that all the cards were on the table. Abby had been brought up to date about herself. Secrets had been shattered. The only thing remaining was the effort of this moment, and how long it might last.
In order to have that moment and have Abby completely, Sam Stark’s hold on her mind had to be forgotten, had to fade as a bad memory.
He drew her closer with his hands on her backside, in a firm grip. Her breasts flattened against him. Her heart beat frantically. She tilted her head back when his kiss lightened, and allowed her room for a breath.
Her lips parted.
“Don’t,” he cautioned. “Don’t say a word.”
Her skin was slippery, and partially covered in foam. That suited him just fine. Lifting one of her legs, he caressed the place where her thigh met the velvet folds of her sex, watching her closely for every twitch, every wince, every blink, she made.
He found raw emotion etched on her beautiful face that was personal enough to be heartbreaking.
He thought about stopping this, and about allowing her to vocalize that emotion. But she rubbed against him seductively.
“I’m still stronger, little wolf,” he whispered. “So, is this what you need?”
In place of a nod, she reached between them and found something to wrap her fingers around. Her smile taunted him. Her quakes of excitement produced a sultry, smoldering heat. And though he was stronger, taller, heavier, Cameron was certain of his imminent defeat.
The lick of her tongue across his lower lip nearly sealed the deal. One long lick from corner to corner threatened to end the standoff. Abby’s fingernails did the rest, scraping slowly over him as she raised her hips a fraction of an inch—enough to give him a clear picture of her needs.
He took her. Without waiting for her reaction, he took her again. Unvoiced shouts formed on her lips. Growls rose from his chest. Each stroke he made created more feelings of ecstasy.
And when she growled back at him savagely, he paused, electrified by the sound.
He came in a fiery explosion that rocked them both—his breath suspended, his eyes closed, his chest heaving.
Time seemed to stop. All sound ceased except for the force of the water hitting the back of his neck.
When Cameron opened his eyes, his forehead was resting against the tile, and his hands were on the wall, on either side of Abby. Her head rested on his arm. He would have given her a medal if she had been able to move.
“Like I said,” he ventured teasingly with vocal cords that weren’t quite working properly. “My turn.”
Abby leaned her head back to look up at him. “Oh no,” she said.
He quirked an eyebrow before realizing something was wrong. Abby’s face had drained of the color it had only just found. Her head twitched on her long, graceful neck.
He recognized those signs.
Cameron spun her out of the shower, glancing to the window to find that the day had fled. The room beyond the bathroom lay in the shadows of an enveloping darkness, and he hadn’t noticed. But Abby had.
The first crack came from the vicinity of her spine, followed by the pop of her rib cage expanding. Abby’s eyes were wide and fearful. Her lips were bloodless.
“Come on,” Cameron said, pulling her to the door. “Hell, Abby. Can you hold back?”
“Can’t.”
But Cameron wondered, as he ran for the window to close the shutters, if that was entirely true, or if Abby sensed Sam Stark out there in the night, and was going to fur-up to meet him.
Chapter 32
Abby heard shouts coming from behind her as she landed on the lawn in a crouch, on her werewolf haunches, as the rest of her transition took place.
Electricity sparked across her nerves. Pain streaked through her like well-aimed bolts of lightning come to ground. Her racing heart didn’t seem capable of keeping up with the changes, since fear also had it thundering. Pure, unadulterated fear.
Cameron landed beside her, having climbed down from the second floor by using the trellis. Others were coming, rounding the house as if her change had tripped some sort of silent alarm. Six people, all of them in their human cocoons, all of them concerned, headed her way. Abby felt their hearts and their pulses alongside hers, though Cameron’s heartbeat was dominant, hammering at her as if she had swallowed his heart whole.
“Abby!” Dana Delmonico called to her.
This was, she supposed, a freaky party, where she had become the central theme.
“Here,” Cameron answered in her place, because she had lost the ability to speak, along with her outer shell of humanity.
Dylan Landau reached her first, gliding to a stop a few feet away. Dressed in a gray suit and matching tie, his expression was thoughtful.
Without saying anything to her, Dylan’s gaze moved to Cameron. “You’re naked, Mitchell.” Dylan yanked off his jacket.
“I don’t think that jacket will do much good,” Delmonico said, pulling up alongside the pair. “Unless he puts his legs in it.”
Abby growled her displeasure over the gathered crowd. The word freak became part of her internal buzz.
“I think he’s out there, nearby,” Cameron said.
“Sam Stark?” Dylan asked.
Abby didn’t recognize the other Weres. The detective who had lent her his leather jacket hadn’t shown up. All the Weres present, except for Dana Delmonico, were males. Abby had no idea how many of them possessed the same knack she had for changing without a full moon.
Anxious, she got to her feet and began to back away from the group. Cameron followed, circling around to stand behind her, unconcerned about being naked, his only concern for her. Abby closed her eyes, fearing that if she looked too closely at Cameron, she might completely lose her mind.
Dylan sidestepped the rest of the group, glancing toward the wall and sniffing the air. Then he loosened his tie in a motion reminiscent of the man of steel stripping off his glasses to reveal what lay beneath the disguise.
“Stark’s in the park,” Dylan said.
Everyone present looked to the wall as if they possessed the ability to see through the stone.
“He can’t possibly know where she is,” Cameron said.
“Maybe not, but he thinks she will find him,” Dylan warned.
And Dylan was right. For Abby, a whiff of Sam is what had brought on the change. She had located him from inside the house. Her wolf had immediately responded, possibly out of self-defense, and possibly out of a need for justice to be served.
She turned. Sighting the wall at the edge of the lawn, and ready to m
eet Sam once and for all, she figured she might be able to dodge a silver bullet in her new wolf form, and a medication-tipped dart, but she couldn’t ask Sam the questions still in need of answers unless she changed back in his presence.
Okay. That was dangerous. Seriously dangerous.
She looked to Cameron longingly, and he seemed to pick up her thought. “No,” he said adamantly. “We’ll call it in. Let the cops have him. You can ask anything you want of him after that.”
The suggestion was reasonable, perfect, aside from one small thing. The hatred she felt for Sam had become like a separate being, and that being was chained to her wolf. Revenge was a ravenous parasite that Sam had called forth from its slumber. Sam had tortured her mother. Sam had killed her mother.
If she couldn’t have Sam and the answers she needed, she’d have to be put out of her misery. And though she might be strong at the moment, she had never been stupid. The Weres facing her weren’t going to let her go to her death alone.
She howled. Cameron returned the sound with a human equivalent.
“Wait,” Dylan said. “Just give me five minutes. Three. All right, two at most. Let me call the others.”
Of course, she had no intention of waiting, or allowing anyone here to fight her battle with Sam.
The silver knife pulsed against her calf as if it, too, wanted satisfaction, as if parts of the moon itself had been caught up in the blade. Abby touched the handle of the knife and felt the power of its burn. Her palm sizzled, branded by the touch, but she rode those things out, conquering the pain as deftly as she had in Sam’s death cage.
She would fight silver with silver, if she had to. She’d pit a werewolf hunter against the one thing he despised most. She’d set a wounded daughter against a false father, and use her mother’s ghost to do so. And if she survived...
Leaving the thought unfinished, Abby spun on both heels and raced for the wall.
* * *
She ran, heading for Sam’s scent in the deepening dark. The beast she carried infused her with a fair amount of courage, but her pulse beat mercilessly in her throat. Sam had always instilled fear in those around him, and she was no exception. He alone had the ability to frighten her. She had no doubt that he’d try to use that fear against her again.
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