Claiming the Wolf. Michele Hauf

if she were a sodden sack of laundry. He only encountered a few odd looks at the half-clad, soaking wet man as he went along the way. He growled at an elderly gentleman who’d suggested he take his antics to the privacy of his own home. The French were such snobs.

      Hart dropped the vampiress onto the ceramic-tiled floor inside his apartment, not wanting to lay her on the suede sofa. Without a glance behind him, he aimed for the bathroom, striping off his wet pants and the few remaining shreds of his shirt. Walking right into the glass-walled shower, he turned on the hot stream. “Bloody yes, I needed that.”

      Ten minutes later, he grabbed a towel and wandered out to the living room to find the vampiress alert, crouched against the door and flexing to stand as he approached. She put up her fists, as if ready to go a couple rounds with him.

      That gave Hart a mirthless chuckle. “Feisty longtooth, aren’t you? Here.” He tossed her the towel, and she pressed it to her gut, which didn’t bleed anymore, but then, he hadn’t expected it to. “You healed?”

      She nodded.

      Anger returning in a whirl of energy, he fisted the air as if he’d just laid the punching bag flat. “What the hell are you about? Going after my principal, then nearly drowning me? And this?” He slapped the side of his neck where the bite wounds had finally healed, yet had marked him forever in ways no wolf could comprehend.

      “Just doing as I was ordered.” She straightened, lifting her chin defiantly.

      Despite her bedraggled, wet-rat appearance, her eyes were bright blue and her thick lips were jeweled with water that dripped from her candy red hair. The dark clothing clung to a long, narrow frame defined by lean muscle.

      Hart’s first assessment of her stood: gorgeous. Yet deadly. And too cocky for a vampire standing before a wolf who could shear her head from her neck with one flick of his wrist.

      “Why did you do it?”

      “Do what?” Hart snapped, pacing before her, unsure yet if he should get out the stake he kept in a kitchen drawer—he’d lost the gun in the Seine—or shove her out the door and wish her good riddance.

      “You saved my life.”

      He flung a hand outward, dismissing the heroic deed. “Wasn’t like you were going to die.”

      “No, but I would have been stuck down there forever.”

      “Yet still alive. So there. I didn’t save your life.”

      She heaved out a sigh and nodded. “Either way, I owe you one.”

      “I don’t need a favor from a longtooth, thank you very much.”

      “I know. You hate me. I’m supposed to hate you.” She lifted the clump of her wet hair and squeezed the water out onto the floor. “What’s your name?”

      He snarled, thinking she had some nerve. By rights he should bring her in to the compound to let the pack serve her the justice they saw fit.

      I’m supposed to hate you. Like she wasn’t sure whether or not she should?

      “Hart,” he offered briskly. He never used his first name; Christian was too sissy. “You can take the towel with you. Just get the hell out before I decide to serve you as chum for the pack.”

      Wrapping the towel about her shoulders, she opened the door. A sigh preceded her darting glance at him. Sadness wafted through the air and permeated Hart’s chest. He felt the hit directly and sucked in a breath.

      “Name’s Danni Weber,” she said. “Tribe Zmaj. I know it doesn’t change things, but...sorry about the bite. I was in survival mode.”

      With that, she closed the door, and Hart let out his breath.

      “Sorry? About changing my life forever?” He grabbed the nearest thing—a pillow on the couch—and hurled it at the door so hard the seams split and out spilled thick white stuffing.

      Hart slapped a palm to his neck. The wound was achy and hot. He would have preferred death over a bite, any day.

      Two

      Danni stood naked before the mirror mounted on the back of her bedroom door, inspecting her smooth stomach. Gliding her fingers up the skin, taut with underlying muscle, she frowned at the absence of a scar below her ribcage. That her body healed at an insanely fast rate did not cease to bewilder her. It was unnatural. Wicked. Perhaps even demonic.

      Truth was, it was vampiric. And thinking the V-word ignited a wrenching twist in her gut. She hated what she had become. Or did she fear it?

      A little of both, for sure.

      Pressing a palm to the mirror she opened her mouth and watched as she willed her fangs lower. It didn’t hurt, but accompanying their descent, she felt a strange tingling for fulfillment, to satiate her needs with blood and sex. Another wicked, demonic thing that had become a part of her life.

      It was all Slater’s fault.

      She’d not called him this morning to check in. Revealing her incompetence wasn’t so much a risk to her status in the tribe as it would be to her brother’s neck. Literally. No, she had to avoid Slater for a few days until she could again put herself near the pack leader, Remington Caufield. And this time she wouldn’t screw things up.

      The sticky tracking device had slipped off her finger before she’d gotten it on the principal. And the device being miniscule, she hadn’t a chance to find it in a dark nightclub. She’d fled in a panic. The pack wolf who had pursued her—Hart—had been a surprise.

      This lurking about and spying business wasn’t her thing. Though tribe Zmaj seemed to think it was. As a former soldier, Danni could reconnoiter a site, sneak up on the enemy, and had even begun training to scout out landmines. Getting close to a werewolf to plant a tracking device? So out of her comfort zone.

      But she had to do this. She must not fail a second attempt. Or David, her brother, would suffer for it.

      She tapped her fang and sneered at her reflection. “I won’t let this happen to you, David. If it’s the last thing I do.”

      Hart plowed a right hook into the punching bag, held by fellow pack member Tony Santenolli. The wolf grunted and let go of the bag, stumbling backward.

      “Hart, I think you’ve got it. You got something anyway. Why so angry?”

      Angry? Light on his feet, Hart dodged side to side, fists wrapped in tape up by his face in defensive position, before he swung again, and sent the bag flying toward Tony’s growling face. He wasn’t angry. He was...

      Hungry. For something he couldn’t quite name. Not food, that was sure. The hunger had been gnawing at him for days, since he’d woken the morning after his swim in the Seine. And yet, that deep, dark twist in his gut and curdling at the back of his throat did have a name. It coiled in his nostrils, drawing in Tony’s musky, metallic scent from beneath his skin.

      Blood.

      “I’m cool,” Hart huffed. He delivered another iron blow to the bag and felt the sting in his forearms. The best way to avoid the truth? Beat on something.

      “Yeah? Well, I’m wrecked, man. You’re beating me bloody.” Leaner, and not as dedicated to the gym but still a powerful force, Tony shoved off from the bag and swiped a hand over his sweating brow.

      “I don’t see any blood on you. Come on, bloke!” Hart delivered a high kick to the bag with his bare foot. Mixing in Muay Thai with standard boxing moves was his thing. He loved the martial arts workout and never missed a day. “Give me a challenge!”

      Tony waved him off and grabbed a water bottle from the weightlifting bench.

      It had been three days since Hart’s plunge into the Seine. He’d thought to walk it off, get on with his life. He’d detailed his chase after the vampire assassin to his principal, but had left out the part about her being a female—and