Harlequin Nocturne May 2015 Box Set: Wolf HunterPossessed by a Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  His body accepted whatever she wanted to do. Fate had brought them together, and they were safe. Other than fate, how else could being with her like this be explained?

  He uttered a curse when her silky hair tickled his shoulder. He let loose another oath when she bit down hard on a spot near his collarbone with her small human teeth. As if that bite possessed some magical property Landau’s medicine lacked, the pain of the wound that had sidelined him melted away, replaced by the sheer passion and excitement of the moment. He had never been so hard and so ready. He had never loved anything or anyone so much.

  Abby knew this, of course. She had to.

  The sound of his zipper opening broke the silence. She slithered down his body, dragging his pants along before returning to position her damp, inflamed sex over his pulsing erection.

  With his hands on her hips, Cameron lifted her slightly, far enough to ease her over him. He sighed as her scorching heat took him in.

  She was not to be held back. Expertly, intuitively, she took over, moving quickly to take all of his hardness inside. Each inch she traveled left waves of incredible pleasure. As if sharing his pleasure, she threw her head back, exposing her long, bare neck. Raising himself, Cameron took that smooth, pale flesh between his teeth.

  She liked this. Her lush lips parted, though she made no sound. Cameron held back a howl as each movement of her sleek body threatened to do him in. The pleasure was too intense, his reaction too quick, and too soon.

  “Slow down, Abby. Please.”

  Sweeping her into his arms, Cameron got to his feet. She allowed this, but barely. His bedroom was down a short hallway that seemed to stretch for a mile. Cameron carried her there, insane over the way her bareness met with his, and the way her legs curled over his forearms.

  In his room, he tossed her onto the mattress and glanced down at her with his wolf vision to see the expression she offered him in the darkened room. That expression was the epitome of a need so great it registered as violent.

  Abby wanted this for reasons only she understood. He guessed one of those reasons to be the necessity for an outlet to release the surprising, life-altering events of two nights in a row in that damn park. She had to be jumbled up inside.

  He’d give her that release and more, gladly. He would make her see how much he cared.

  Kneeling beside her, perched above her plushness, he waited out the seconds ticking by. She didn’t reach for him this time, but lay there, looking up at him with her arms spread wide and her legs slowly opening.

  It was the invitation he needed.

  He tore the silver knife and its sheath from her ankle and threw it away, then ran both hands up her legs, following with his eyes, drinking her in.

  He found her sweet spot, the apex between her thighs, and pressed his warm palm there. She groaned softly, and gritted her teeth. When he inserted a finger, she arched off the bed. When he added another, she grabbed at the sheet, writhing beneath the intimacy of his touch.

  He dropped to his knees and held her legs steady. One long lap of his tongue over her sex was all he could manage before his body threatened to burst.

  “Not so slowly, then,” he said, moving up beside her. He ached to get on with this. He wanted to hear her shout.

  He entered her only far enough to bury the tip of his desire, and took a deep breath to settle himself. His heart raced, beating against the hole in his chest. Abby’s blistering heat beat at him, inside and out. She was sultry, her every move naturally sensual. Her eyes were wide open and shining with a wildness she could hardly contain. She whispered his name softly, in the purr of a low growl...

  And he sank into her with a plunge so deep it filled her to her core. Their hips ground together so tightly it seemed to him as though they were one in body and in spirit. He felt spasms rock her, and the rush of molten heat that met him as she wrapped herself around his length.

  All of that sent him hurtling past the edge of control.

  And then she wrapped her long legs around him, as she had before, in the dark, in that blasted park, encircling him with her fire, holding him captive. Trapped in her embrace, his only option was forward.

  He eased back and entered her again, exerting himself in the desire to reach what lay beyond that molten core, wanting to find Abby’s wolf, needing to access her soul.

  He drove himself inside her wet, waiting depths again and again, building a rhythm, each thrust coaxing her orgasm to unfurl. Over and over, deeper and deeper he went, wearing down her veneer of handling this until their bodies slammed together so hard the bed shook. Glass in the window beside them rattled, and still, Abby’s eyes dared him to give her more.

  “Someday, wolf to wolf, Abby, we’ll go there.”

  Perhaps sensing his slight hesitation, Abby’s long, lithe legs became a sleek, fleshy vise.

  Okay.

  All right.

  Cameron drove into Abby one last time with an effort fueled by every need he’d ever had, all bundled into one motion. He didn’t do this for himself. Not completely. This was a sharing. An example of how much he cared. He meant it as a promise for a future, offered to her on a rumpled bed, in his room, in his home, on his terms. He offered her this with his own soul tied up in a big red bow.

  “For you, Abby.”

  Her hips stilled. Her legs loosened. Suddenly motionless, Abby gasped aloud. Inside, her climax rose, its progress tickling his erection. It hurled upward to meet him, and his body responded with a pause that gave her room to imagine what lay ahead.

  She began to tremble. Strangely enough, so did he. Abby’s shudders spurred him on.

  He drove inside her with a final furious thrust that might have split a normal woman in two...and then he joined her in an orgasm that drowned out the world and everything in it.

  As their bodies locked together, and they were unable to breathe or twitch, their pitched voices mingled in a howl of ecstasy that shook the rafters.

  There were few hints of anything human in the sound.

  Chapter 22

  The world revolved in moving patterns of light and dark, taking all breathable air with it, leaving Abby with a sense of unreality. She blinked slowly, trying to catch hold of something permanent and unmoving with which to center herself, but only Cameron’s body, lying across her naked one, kept her from spinning out of control.

  He wasn’t asleep. He might have been daydreaming of an inevitable physical rematch, just as she was, because his pulse hadn’t slowed much. His resilient skin was slick with a fine film of sweat, as was hers. The sex had been strenuous. Possibly they should have paid more attention to Cameron’s wounds.

  Maybe he was silent now out of the need to recoup his strength. Or maybe this was Cameron being chivalrous in giving her time to recover, not realizing that their erotic antics hadn’t taken anything from her, and had, in fact, been invigorating, even challenging, in ways she didn’t fully understand.

  One thing was certain. Cameron Mitchell was not only compelling but addictive. Better than food. Far beyond anything reasonable. He was the perfect rogue in bed, the seducer, the lover, the man, despite an injury that should have slowed him down. And all that beautifully sculpted muscle, so close and scented with their sexual drives, drove her crazy, still.

  Cameron seemed too good to be true, and she had fallen for him, hard. She had to fight to keep her hands and her mouth off him, and purposefully deflect the desire to scan his formidable outline. And if she craved him so much, why did she imagine she’d learn more on her own, without him by her side?

  Why was she going to leave him? Family secrets, that’s why. She would be no good to anyone without knowing her background. What she really was, and who her mother was. First on that to-do list would be facing Sam, no matter how difficult and dangerous that might be.

  Sam was out th
ere, and only he had the answers to everyone’s questions, especially hers. Sam, who had proved himself a complete bastard several times over, held the key to both her past and her future. She’d never be whole or at peace until she learned about those secrets.

  If Sam had been willing to pull the trigger tonight, setting his sights on his adopted daughter, how had he lived with a Were for any period of time whatsoever as his wife?

  Cameron rolled over onto his side, allowing her a full view of the length of his truly magnificent body. All perfect. All there in plain view, right up to the bandage taped to his chest. Behind that bandage lay some of Sam’s brutal handiwork. But though Cameron had been shot with silver just hours ago, the injury hadn’t prevented the culmination of their raging carnal desires, which showed just how strong Cameron really was.

  Leaving him, even temporarily, would be the toughest thing she’d ever done.

  “I want to know everything about you,” she said softly, something she wanted nearly as much as round two of the extreme physical pleasure he gave her. Yet the rush of a newly discovered kind of blood in her arteries also gave Abby a feeling of being left behind on her own life story, and a sense of hollowness remained after being sated.

  “Everything about you,” she stressed, running a hand over his shoulder.

  When he looked up, Abby averted her gaze.

  Night flooded through the window next to the bed. The moon had dropped from its position high up, where it had lorded over its Were children, though strong light flowed over nearby rooftops and into Cameron’s backyard. That light had now become part of her, and the key to a strange existence. At present, its pull remained deniable, but for how much longer?

  She was a Lycan, and as such, her pelt would bring a fortune to anyone capturing it. She’d be hunted by the best teams Sam had with no letup, because Sam now knew for sure what she was. It seemed that he might have known all along what she had the potential to become. Was that why he had kept her around? Not out of any kind of familial loyalty, but to grow his own special million-dollar pelt?

  Abby’s stomach heaved up nothing but emptiness. Her involuntary convulsion made Cameron raise a hand to turn her head.

  “Abby.” His tone was serious. “We can’t take it back. We can only move forward, making the best of what we have.”

  She had granted Cameron access to her body, and desperately needed him again—inside her, merging with her. Only with their intimacy had she forgotten the rest and briefly glimpsed her own real strength. Together, they equaled something truly special.

  And yet she was about to leave that behind.

  She was going to leave him to find the truth about herself.

  “I know that,” she said. “But I’m stuck, neither here, nor there. No longer fully human, yet unable to shift into the thing I could become.”

  “Never fully human to begin with,” he pointed out.

  “So your friend says.”

  “He’d be the one to know. You can sense Weres, but it seems reasonable for Lycans to be able to sense more, sense things beyond what the rest of us can. From what I understand, Lycan blood has been around for quite some time. Years. Centuries.”

  When Abby’s eyes met his, her instinct was to let her body’s needs take over. Stay with Cameron. Figure this out. The sparks in his eyes and in his touch made her inner fires sizzle and dance, yet as if she’d been the one shot with that silver bullet, Sam’s secrets left their own dark hole of disturbed emptiness.

  “I don’t deserve you, or this,” she said. “After what I’ve done to Weres.”

  “Don’t, Abby. Don’t even think things like that,” he argued. “How were you to know?”

  But she should have known better, Abby thought. And she’d be good to no one until she found herself.

  “I have to go.” She continued to caress his face. Sensing the protest building up inside him, she placed a finger over his lips to try to hold the arguments back. If he said something logical, she might give in, change her mind, leave those questions unanswered. If he kissed her again, she’d lose sight of her goal.

  He took her hand in his and squeezed her fingers. Raising himself onto one elbow, he said, “I can’t let you leave. It’s my job to protect people, and the trouble out there stinks.”

  “People,” Abby said, “is a term that doesn’t describe either of us, really.”

  “You have claws, and not much else to help you face what’s waiting, Abby. What good are the claws when those hunters have guns? A fight with teeth and nails is personal and face-to-face. What’s the distance covered by a bullet shot from a gun or rifle? Where’s the sport in that? Those hunters don’t have to really see you. They won’t look into your eyes and see the light of humanity in them.”

  “They also kill monsters.” It was a weak protest, at best.

  “They do, but their sense of sport has gotten out of hand.”

  “Yes. Way out of hand,” Abby agreed. “But maybe we caused Sam to do this. My mother and I. Maybe something my mother did caused him to hate Weres so deeply.”

  “You didn’t know your mother?”

  “She died before I could.”

  Cameron nodded. “Are you thinking that Sam might have killed her?”

  She stared at him. The prickles along her spine returned because, damn it, she hadn’t thought that, hadn’t allowed herself to consider the idea...until now, when it was out in the open, and spoken with the voice of a man who had been bitten by a werewolf and had his life changed forever.

  Possibly she had been dreading that particular scenario.

  Could Sam have killed her mother?

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe he had something to do with her death. I don’t know.”

  These were terrible thoughts, horrendous suppositions. She had tried to find out about Sonja Stark so many times, and come up short. She’d hid her search, hoping someday Sam would toss her a bone.

  “I won’t rest until I find out,” she said.

  “I can help with that, Abby. The department has access to all sorts of information.”

  Again their gazes connected, causing a stir deep inside Abby. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because I’m like you? Because I have nowhere to turn, and don’t understand what I am?”

  “Because I want to know you better, too, and this seems like a good way to start.”

  Glancing to the window, Abby was able to draw in her first decent breath in a long night of turbulent events. “Thank you, Cameron.”

  He sat up to face her. “You don’t want to stay here, with me?”

  “I can’t. Not now.”

  He took that in. “Dylan and the others will help. You heard them say so.”

  “How do we know they spoke the truth?”

  “About you?”

  “Yes. About me.”

  “Is there another explanation for your inability to shift, when your claws proved the point?”

  “It doesn’t feel right.”

  “This feels right.” Cameron caught her elbow and, with a simple snap of his arm, brought her closer to him, level with him and down on her side, so that she had no option but to study his face. He said, “I’m not sure it would be like this if we weren’t alike to some degree.”

  His statement brought her more sadness. Abby held her tears back by the sheer force of her dogged determination not to weaken any further.

  “Then why did Sam marry a Lycan, someone so unlike him, and a creature he hunts with each full moon? What was that like for my mother?”

  Cameron pulled her closer, close enough to render his face a bronze blur in the darkened room. He placed a kiss on her forehead, and another one on her cheek. His large hands cupped her face so that she had to stay motionless.

 
His lips brushed her mouth, then came back to linger. Not a real kiss—merely a breath and a touch and a reminder of the benefits of remaining with him. But she didn’t really need a reminder of that, and moaned when his hands eased over her neck, her shoulders and arms. He found her right breast, and closed his hand over her fullness with a palm made of pure, radiant heat.

  Unable to fight him, Abby shut her eyes. Just this once, and for one more time, she wanted to be Cameron’s partner.

  Her pulse quickened when he lightly rubbed his fingers over her. No one had ever touched her like this, as though each part of her nakedness was something to be treasured. Cameron wanted her. He might even love her.

  Arching her spine, she pressed herself against him. His reaction was to roll her onto her back. Wanting his mouth on hers, Abby reached for him. But he shook his head, having other ideas about where to place his lips.

  With a slow lap of his tongue over the raised bud of her nipple, he then closed his velvety lips over it, his tongue teasing and darting in an agonizingly delicious process.

  It was too much pleasure for her, all at once, and in one night. Abby bucked off the bed. But one of Cameron’s arms slid beneath her, holding her firmly as he followed his caresses with a soft suckle that electrified her into stillness.

  And for her, this was...

  Was...

  Indescribable.

  He continued to lick and nibble and bite, holding her captive with each new action until the rhythm of her rising orgasm beat at her insides, threatening to end this session way too soon. She was completely helpless against the oncoming tide.

  Cameron halted that internal pressure by lifting his head. “Not done,” he said in a sexy, throaty tone of promise. “No need to rush. Go with me, Abby. Trust me. Let me have all of you tonight. Stay.”

  There was no way she could have replied. Again, the room was spinning. Cooler air breezed across the front of her dampened body as he moved backward, leaving a downward trail with his talented tongue. She felt his hand between her thighs, encouraging her legs to open. He rubbed her swollen sex in the same way he’d rubbed her breast, slowly, back and forth, adding pressure with each pass.