“I’m not strong. Really.” Claire beat her head on the gritty linoleum, no longer caring how dirty the floor was. “I was afraid. It was just an adrenaline rush.”
He snorted in clear disagreement. “I’m out of options. There’s only one thing left to do.”
The hair at the back of her neck prickled. She didn’t like the sound of that. Lifting her head, she watched warily as he moved back into the bathroom, out of view.
“W-where are you going?” she stammered, straining her neck to catch a glimpse of him.
He emerged from the bathroom holding his holstered gun. At the smooth sound of the gun sliding from its leather home, her throat constricted.
He took aim.
“No,” she choked, the word weak and strangled as she struggled to sit up despite the uncomfortable pull on her arms.
“I didn’t want it to come to this.” His lips thinned into an unforgiving line. Hard malachite-green eyes looked down at her, and she knew hope was useless. “It’ll be quick,” he promised.
Jamming her eyes shut, she tried to shrink into the smallest ball possible in anticipation—
The gun didn’t explode in her ears. Not like in the movies. A soft zing stabbed the air. At first, she felt only pressure. No pain. Claire opened one eye. Then the other. Gideon stood in the same spot, observing her with mild interest as he unscrewed the silencer.
Then came the pain, washing over her in undulating waves of hot, then cold. Bracing herself, she sucked in a breath and looked down. Blood soaked the front of her shirt, making it impossible to tell exactly where she had been hit. So much blood. The coppery scent overwhelmed her.
“Oh God,” she wailed, turning accusing eyes on him. “You really shot me.”
Only moments ago she had kissed him, drank passion from his lips, his body, reveled in the feel of his callused hands on her face. Hands that had now delivered her death. The betrayal hurt more than the hole in her chest. Which only made her a fool since she had known he was dangerous from the first moment they met and failed to do anything about it. She glanced back down at the blood spreading across her shirt like an orchid in bloom and cursed her stupidity. Why hadn’t she gone to the cops? Or used her gun?
But she knew the answer. She hadn’t truly believed him dangerous. In spite of everything, something about him had always struck her as…reasonable. Not a killer.
“You really shot me,” she whispered.
He nodded.
Tears blurred her vision.
“Sorry.” He nodded again, looking only faintly apologetic. “It’ll be over soon.”
She strained against the cuffs, overcome with the need to free herself and staunch the wound.
“Uncuff me! Let me at least die with my hands free.”
“You’re not dying,” he said a touch impatiently.
“It burns,” she groaned, even as the burning sensation seemed to ebb. Numbness was setting in. Death must be near.
“It’s the healing sensation.”
Claire blinked several times. “What?”
“Your cells are regenerating.”
For a moment, she allowed herself to hope, but then concluded this must be part of his plan to torture her before she died. No way could she survive a chest shot. She looked away, dismissing him, having no wish to stare into the eyes of her killer as she drew her final breath.
“Look.” He crouched down next to her and pulled her shirt up. Horrified at the mutilated flesh she was sure to see, she squirmed away.
“Stop wiggling.” He yanked her shirt higher. “See?”
Claire couldn’t resist looking.
Gideon swept his hand over her belly and ribs, wiping the blood away. Something clattered to the floor with a ping. She stared at her torso. To her astonishment, no gaping hole stared back.
“See, it already sealed itself.” Picking up whatever fell to the floor, he displayed a small, crushed piece of metal between his thumb and forefinger. “Now if this had been silver, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be dead.”
“My God.” Her eyes focused on the bloody bullet, and her eyes finally accepted what her mind could not.
Gideon unlocked her handcuffs. Claire’s hands roamed over her chest and stomach. She felt nothing beyond the slipperiness of blood.
“I’m not shot.” She looked back at the bullet, undisputable evidence.
His lips twisted into a semblance of a smile. “Oh, you were shot. You’re just not dead.”
Tearing her gaze from that tiny chunk of metal, she searched his face, her eyes scanning every line, every nuance, missing nothing. She suddenly saw him for what he was. Sane. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”
He nodded slowly. “Get cleaned up first.”
On unsteady legs, she moved to her suitcase. Her hands shook as she rummaged for clean clothes. With her mind reeling, the simple act took far longer than it should have. Once alone in the bathroom, she took a moment to lean against the door and let herself shake at will. She deliberately avoided looking in the mirror as she stripped, unwilling to look at her eyes now that she understood the reality behind them.
Standing under the showerhead, she tilted her head back and let the water pelt her face, thinking over everything Gideon had told her, everything she had once refused to believe yet now knew to be true.
Lenny was truly dead. She couldn’t pretend otherwise anymore. Yet she couldn’t blame Gideon for killing him. If he hadn’t, she would be dead. Still, she gave in to the grief, to the tears, letting them disappear in a rush of water down the drain. She told herself that once she stepped out of the shower she wouldn’t waste another moment to tears. Lenny was gone, but she was still here, and she needed to figure a way out of this nightmare.
Shutting off the water, she stepped from the shower. As she wrapped herself in a towel, her gaze slid to the mirror, to the stranger staring back, pewter eyes gleaming with a hunger that she now understood.
Without thinking, her hand snatched up the first thing it could find—a small vase of dried flowers on the back of the toilet—and let it fly. The mirror shattered with a loud crash. Shards of vase and glass rained down on the counter and floor. Still, those lycan eyes were visible, distorted through the fractured mirror. The eyes of a beast, mocking, laughing at her display of pique.
“No,” she raged, wanting to gouge them from her face.
Her hand closed around the ceramic toothbrush holder just as Gideon burst into the bathroom. He caught her arm before she could let it fly.
Prying the toothbrush holder from her clenched fist, he tugged her away, his grip warm and firm on her arm. Shards of glass cut into the bottoms of her feet and she winced, stumbling against his chest.
Gideon looked down. “Damn,” he muttered, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her out of the bathroom. Claire soon found herself on the bed, her feet propped in Gideon’s lap as he plucked glass from the soles of her feet, his hands surprisingly gentle.
She watched him silently for a moment before asking, “Why are you doing this?”
His brow creased as he concentrated on her feet. “You might be a lycan, but it’s still gonna hurt to walk around with glass in your feet.”
Claire wet her lips. “I mean, why are you helping me?”
He looked up, studying her for a moment before returning to his task. “We’ll head back to town today. We don’t have a lot of time, so you’re going to have to help. I need to know everything about Lenny. Family, friends, where he liked to hang out. There’s a good chance he knew the lycan who infected him, so we’ll start by retracing his movements of the last month.”
Claire considered him for a moment before nodding. He was helping her, trying to stop her from turning into a bloodthirsty monster. A killer. She shut her eyes and gave her head a slow shake. That was all that mattered.
Opening her eyes again, she asked, “What happens when we find the one who infected Lenny?”
“I’ll kill him.” He said it so simply,
like he killed all the time, and it was then that Claire finally accepted that he did. All except her, a small voice in the back of her mind reminded her.
“After you kill him, the curse will be broken.”
At this, Gideon hesitated, his hand hovering over her foot. “If he’s the alpha, yes.”
“Alpha?”
“Each pack has one alpha and every lycan can be traced back to that alpha, either through birth or infection.”
“So if you kill the alpha, the rest of the pack will become human again?”
“No.” His eyes cut directly to hers. “Only those who aren’t damned.” Lowering his head to examine her foot closer, he explained, “If you kill and feed, you’re damned. It doesn’t matter if your alpha is killed or not. The curse can’t be broken after you’ve fed. There’s no going back after that.”
Claire shook her head. “What if we can’t find Lenny’s alpha?”
“You’ll shift on the next full moon. And you’ll kill.”
Claire sat motionless, too horrified to even flinch as he plucked a chunk of glass buried deep in the arch of her foot. His words rolled over her, too horrible to believe. Except she was past denial.
“Even if I don’t want to?” she asked, trying to keep the desperation she felt from rising in her voice.
“Lycan instinct is too powerful. You won’t have a choice.”
Gideon slid her feet from his lap, his eyes locking with hers in a silent message. And neither will I.
Claire nodded. The words hadn’t been spoken aloud but she understood. She understood that the man who had saved her life in a dark alley might very well become her executioner. Gideon March would not spare her life twice.
Gideon buried his hand in his pocket, rolling the silver bullet between his thumb and forefinger. The bullet he had originally planned for her.
He had tracked her down intending to end it once and for all. His lips twisted wryly. That he had nearly taken her on the floor only confirmed in his mind that he had gotten way too involved with his target. He had lost all objectivity. Time was running short and she was a ticking time bomb.
Only face to face with her, he couldn’t go through with it. Unbelievable. After all the trouble she put him through, he couldn’t do it. At least not yet.
He watched her collect her things from around the cabin. Her movements were quick, purposeful. Her feet padded silently over the floor, all sign of injury gone. She clearly didn’t realize what a mess her feet had been. The average person would have needed stitches. He grunted, sliding his hand out of his pocket. Hell, she took a bullet in the chest. The average person would be dead. He might as well face the fact that there was nothing average about Claire Morgan. Or his feelings for her.
Determination etched her features as she packed. Misplaced determination. But then that was his fault. He was only prolonging the inevitable. Giving her hope he had no right to give. He ran a hand over his bristly jaw, asking himself what the hell he was doing.
The odds were against her. Lenny had been alone. With no clues to go on, it would be hard enough to locate the lycan responsible for infecting the kid—and next to impossible to track his alpha. But it was a chance. A chance Gideon’s parents never had.
His gaze drifted to her mouth, instantly distracted, instantly reminded that Claire was not like the others he had destroyed in one very big way. He’d never kissed the others. Never felt such a bone-deep want for them, not even when the females had turned their considerable wiles on him in an effort to save their wretched lives.
She was a lycan now, without control. Soon to be without conscience. He should have known better. He had succumbed to that soft mouth, to those breasts, to her hands on his cock, before reason asserted itself and he slapped the handcuffs on her wrists. A moment of weakness. That’s all. What sane man could resist a taste? Hell, she was one ball of raging hormones right now. No man was safe from her. A point he wouldn’t forget again.
She must have felt his stare. She ceased shoving garments into her bag and looked up at him.
“What?” she asked, her voice whisper soft. Her eyes reminded him of a wounded animal’s.
“Nothing.” Looking out the window at their two vehicles, he drew a deep breath and willed a return to the cold practicality that had ruled him.
He had killed hundreds of lycans in his life. Sometimes two, three in a single week. Only he had never hunted a particular one before. Never had to. But then it had never been necessary.
“We’ll leave your car here,” he announced. “On the drive back you can go over everything you remember about Lenny. Starting with his family.”
“No problem,” she muttered, pulling her suitcase off the bed and dropping it to the floor with a thud. “He didn’t have one.”
Claire leaned across his lap and yelled into the intercom, “A bacon triple cheeseburger and large fry and—”
“And?” Gideon echoed.
A warm flush crept up her face. She could have pretended she wasn’t hungry and ordered a fast-food salad of wilted lettuce and dry, prepackaged chicken, but she had missed lunch and couldn’t deny her rumbling stomach.
Her gaze scanned the menu. Swallowing her pride for the sake of her hunger, she finished her order. “And a large order of onion rings, a large chocolate shake…and a large Diet Coke.”
“Diet?” He lifted an eyebrow, his voice mocking as he asked, “You sure about that?”
“Yeah.” She sat back in her seat, her tone daring him to comment further as he drove up to the window. She might be seriously hungry, but she still liked her Diet Coke.
“Diet Coke,” he muttered, shaking his head as he passed her drink and shake to her.
She secured them safely in the double cup holder and looked at him blankly when he extended his own soda into the air. He looked down at the occupied cup holders and back at her.
“Can’t you hold it?” she asked.
“And drive?” he grumbled, wincing as he secured his ice-cold soda between well-muscled thighs. “Sure. No problem.”
She looked out the plastic window of the Jeep’s Bikini top as they waited for their food, her dark thoughts lingering like the gray, low-hanging clouds in the sky. On the next full moon she would succumb to an instinct that demanded she feed on human life.
Bile rose in her at that, and she glanced at his hard profile. Only he wouldn’t let that happen. He would make certain it never came down to that. One way or another. He would destroy her first. He hadn’t said as much, but she knew, she understood, and she didn’t blame him. Claire looked back out the window at the impending night.
There was still a chance. Claire swallowed hard and nodded in conviction, clinging to that belief. They’d find the alpha and break the curse before Gideon had to resort to such measures. He must believe it possible. Otherwise he would have already killed her.
And why hadn’t he? The question continued to bat around inside her head. What was his motivation for helping her? Was she his good deed of the year? A single altruistic measure to break up a long line of kills?
“I haven’t told you thank you.”
The soft beat of his thumbs on the steering wheel abruptly ceased. “For what?”
Claire looked at him again. “Helping me.”
His lips thinned. “I haven’t helped you yet.”
“I think you have.” Claire recalled what he had said about the police force being full of hunters like him. “Those other hunters you mentioned, would they do what you’re doing?”
“No. They’d have destroyed you that first night.” The muscles in his jaw knotted and his eyes grew intense, burning as they looked at her. “I guess I’m just growing too soft for this job.” There was both sarcasm and anger in his voice. Claire wondered to whom it was directed.
Gideon turned, relieving her of his intense gaze as he accepted the bags of food through the window. She took the warm bags, the aroma of fried food tantalizing. He shifted the gear stick and they were soon speeding along th
e frontage road. Even with the top attached, the air hummed loudly around the vehicle as they merged onto the interstate. Grease soaked through the white paper bags balanced on her lap, singeing the tops of her thighs. But she didn’t care. A burger in one hand, she shoved fries into her mouth, hardly chewing before she swallowed.
“Mind handing me my burger?”
“Oh,” she mumbled around a mouthful of hot, salty fries. She fumbled in the bag for his burger, unwrapped half of it, and handed it to him, avoiding the overwhelming temptation to take a bite.
“So,” she asked, biting into an onion ring, “how does one become a lycan hunter?” Silence stretched, so she pressed. “I mean it’s not exactly the kind of job you find in the classifieds.”
“I’ve been training since I was a kid,” he offered.
She ate another onion ring, waiting for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, she sighed impatiently. “What? Is it the family business or something? Was your father a lycan hunter, too?”
“No. Just another victim of its curse.”
Her gaze shot to him, the onion ring in her mouth suddenly dust. “He was infected? Like me?”
His jaw knotted again. “No, my mother was. My father merely her dinner.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, nausea churning her stomach. “That’s why you do this.” It was personal.
Cursing, he jerked a hand from the steering wheel to run through his hair, tousling the sun-kissed locks. “Christ. I don’t talk about this. With anyone. I don’t know why I am now.”
“Maybe you need to talk about it,” she suggested.
He slid her a bitter look. “Let’s get a couple things straight. Just because I’m helping you doesn’t mean we get friendly. We don’t chat and share life histories.” His gaze cut to her, penetrating, demanding nothing less than total agreement. “We’re not friends. Get it?”
“Yeah.” Claire understood. Even as his words undeniably stung. It should have occurred to her sooner. In the event they didn’t break the curse, killing her could be awkward, difficult, if they formed a friendship. “So how many like me have you helped before?” she asked.
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