Blackout. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

on,” he urged, riding out his own body tremors, pressing his back to the brick wall of an ancient apartment building and hearing the words as his human self would have said them. Seems the shelter theory had worked again, for him.

      He held tightly to the woman in his arms as he finished rearranging back to a more acceptable shape. The hair covering his body sucked inward with a pinch and a sting. His jaw unhinged, then jammed back into his face. The woman in his arms was jolted as he tripped. He nearly went down when his knees bucked, but he didn’t let her fall.

      The cop doubled over in his arms as each pain hit her, riding it out as best she could, no doubt drawing upon the superior pain threshold of a Florida law enforcement officer. Though her face was ashen and her breathing harsh, her skin still appeared smooth in the shadows hiding them both from the moon. Her bareness felt soft against the bareness of his chest, and very feminine.

      He hoped to God she couldn’t feel anything below his waist.

      “It hurts, I know,” Dylan soothed, setting his shoulders, itchy all over, and fearing the beast would win in another minute or two, no matter the reprieve. She felt so very good in his arms.

      The beast wanted her. The pressure inside his chest had grown incredibly intense. His blood backflowed in an audible rush. It was either speak or scream.

      “Out of the moonlight, the process will be stalled temporarily,” he said, cresting the wave of distress causing his voice to emerge sharper than he had anticipated. “If you take in too much moonlit air, even in the shadows, if you breathe too deeply, the process will accelerate again.”

      He rocked her gently. “Do you understand?”

      The woman in his arms shook her head, unable to understand anything, hurting. Dylan didn’t want to remember the details which might help her further; refused to delve mentally into his own experience, though watching her brought some small portion of it back. The unparalleled pain of a body coming unglued. The darkness that had seized his mind, and now would be doing the same to hers.

      “You’ll be okay,” he said. “The roof over our heads will slow the damn thing down, at least until you can breathe.”

      The woman stopped twisting, as if she had heard what he’d said, though her teeth continued to chatter behind her full pink lips. Lips he could have kissed to stillness in some other time and place.

      “Calm down,” he urged. “Relax if you can.”

      Of course there was no way in hell she could relax. Some beastlike entity was inside of her, fighting to gain control, angry over the difficulty it was having. Worse yet, his own beast was fighting against restraint. His beast liked what he held in his arms. A naked female was catnip, no matter her choice of careers. Up close and personal, she could have been anyone.

      For sure, she was a knockout. A prize. Her breasts were firm, full and surrounded by tan lines. Very small patches of white barely outlined her drawn, rounded pink nipples. The white parts gleamed in contrast to her caramel-colored abdomen and arms. Below the woman’s hips, between her thighs, lay a thatch of dark fur with its own white triangular outline.

      Thong bikini.

      Dylan inhaled a heady whiff of brunette: suntan oil, cotton and a shampoo smelling a little like tea. Somehow, alongside the pert peachy nipples, the perfect mouth and the buff abs, having a woman in his arms who looked and smelled like food made his transition less fluid, trapping him in a hellish sort of limbo, neither here nor there.

      His sternum bulged in an expansion that hurt like a son of a bitch. Then came a piercing stab to his solar plexus. His hands, still wrapped around the woman, elongated, thickened, then furred up with sharp claws extended. Seconds later, they returned to normal—whatever the hell normal for a werewolf was. The beast’s protests were wearing him down. Dylan wasn’t sure if his body could stand much more, for much longer. The deal with the beast was to share, and he’d broken the contract.

      Exhaling a long breath, fearing his beast’s intentions where this woman was concerned, Dylan bent his knees. He set the writhing woman down on her butt on the sidewalk, glanced at her with regret that he couldn’t be of further assistance, and stuttered a quick “I’m sorry.”

      And he really was sorry.

      As a matter of fact, he’d never been sorrier.

      He had to go. His future depended on it. Maybe even hers.

      About to turn, loath to leave the woman alone, Dylan hesitated seconds more. The cop’s change had slowed, as he’d predicted. She had stopped shaking. Her chin was lifting.

      Run.

      It would be social suicide if she saw his face. Big trouble if the officer ID’d him. There was a slight possibility she could. He was in court on a daily basis. Cops came and went.

      But damn, how could he leave her here? Like this?

      Taking her home with him would be out of the question. Nor could he stuff her back into her car where another prowling unit might find her in some gelatinous state. He could hear the radio in her car crackling now. Dispatch could be trying to reach her. Would they consider her AWOL if she didn’t respond, and send back-up?

      “Look,” he said to her as her dark hair parted to reveal her extremely wan face.

      His words failed, as her eyes began to open.

      Run.

      He tried again to speak, muscles gathering for flight. “I’ll get you back to your car. It’s the best I can do. You can’t stay here on the street. It isn’t safe.”

      He would have laughed at the absurdity of the comment if the situation weren’t so serious. Other people would be running from her if she set one foot into the moonlight. Most of them would be frightened to death. And this luscious little cop’s job in law enforcement would be history.

      But her beautiful face was contorted with pain. Her teeth had sunk into her succulent lower lip, drawing blood.

      “Ah, shit.”

      The beast didn’t give a fig for careers. The beast wanted this woman. Did he, Dylan, with his mind intact, even want to know what the beast might do to a female?

      Anxious, wary, Dylan yanked the woman upright, slid his continually morphing arms around her, and lifted her up again. Wondering if this waxing and waning of the beastly shift would eventually stop or if he’d wind up in a straightjacket in some dank jail cell, he moved to step off the curb. Out there with the moonlight, at least he’d be as unrecognizable as any human could be. He could, with luck and a short leash on the beast, get the cop back to the relative safety of her car.

      Foot suspended, he chanced to look down at her, nestled in his arms.

      When her green eyes met his, Dylan stumbled, blinked. His insides went liquid. Wind seemed to rush at his ears. The awkward impression came that he’d just looked into the eyes of the Moon herself. Large luminous green eyes, suddenly clear for all their former shock and surprise.

      Beneath those eyes, her trembling lips parted.

      Dylan wanted to duck as she said in a throaty voice, deep, smoky, and as erotic as if she had just placed a hand on his groin, “Landau. Right? D.A.?”

      Every cuss word Dylan had ever used or heard flowed through his mind as his foot hit the pavement. Plus some new ones. The hell with her job, he’d just destroyed his own.

      The kiss came. Not from this woman’s mouth, as he would have liked, but from somewhere high up above them. The moon’s metaphysical voodoo. Like spilt silver honey, sweet for a second or two but deceptively cruel soon after, Dylan felt the initial coolness turn volcanic as his face begin to shift. His vocal chords twanged and began to seize.

      Rushing to get a last word in, he uttered a retort he sincerely hoped she’d heed. “Nope,” he said, parroting the excuse he heard every single damned day in his gig as an attorney, only this time in his own defense. “You