Wolf Hunter. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

Hell, woman, I could be one of those criminals. I could be lethal.

      She had to know how easily she could be overpowered by a larger source. Surely she understood that this park was off-limits for a reason. She had confessed to knowing the awful statistics.

      She eyed him keenly in return with an intelligent emerald-green gleam that suggested she was no fool. Her defiant stance lent her a certain air of capability. Yet she had been alone at night in a place where no other human dared to trespass. This meant no one would probably be coming to her rescue, and that if he desired to give in to the force of his rising libido, she’d be his for the taking.

      He put a hand to his forehead, hoping to stall those thoughts, and posed a string of silent questions.

       Why are you here?

       Why this odd attraction?

      Unable to help himself, he studied her.

      For all her defiant attitude, she was small. He topped her by a full head or two. She had a hard-muscled sensuality that cut into him as though she had wielded the blade near her boot—the blade that sang to him of its presence as if it were alive.

      She wasn’t a classic beauty or the stuff most men couldn’t forget after a first glimpse. No hourglass curves, big breasts or blond curls. Lean, taut arms were exposed by a sleeveless black shirt. Baggy cargo pants hid the sculpted lines of her legs. Straight, shoulder-length hair, a brilliant shade of auburn with purposefully dyed dark black tips, seemed to him an edgy color combination.

      She moved again, closer.

      Damn her.

      Her fragrance intensified, filling his lungs with each breath he drew in. Every woman had her own unique smell, but this one...this one smelled like candy.

       One touch. Only one.

      He pressed his palm to her cheek and waited to see her reaction. Her eyes blazed. His own reaction wasn’t so simple. The beast inside him began to unfurl, adding depth to his illicit desire to possess her. His need to circumvent control began at a cellular level and dug in deep.

      “Don’t you get it? I can be dangerous,” Cameron said to her. “There’s something about you.”

      She did not reply. How could she, after that confession?

      Neither did she run.

      Which made matters worse.

      Her skin felt like velvet, an intoxication that streaked through him. The fact that he hadn’t been with a woman for a long time came home to haunt him. He hadn’t indulged since the damn gangbanger he’d been cuffing in a raid bit him, changing his life forever.

       I’m in control. I can do this. Stay firm and see to her safety.

      He chanted that silent internal directive several times before deciding that she had to do the moving. He couldn’t be trusted. Not completely. Not so close to a full moon.

       How do I make you go? Scare you? Be the bully you had expected me to be? Maybe another touch will frighten you into doing the right thing.

      Testing that theory, Cameron let his open hand linger on her cheek, almost able to hear time ticking away. Yet she didn’t take him up on the invitation of a hasty retreat.

      He felt so damn beastly.

      A roar of conquest rumbled in his chest as his heart changed rhythm to adapt to hers, lifting and falling in a series of vertical spikes. With utmost willpower, he fielded an oncoming rush of adrenaline.

      The nameless woman’s legs were apart, with her feet planted. She had fisted her hands at her sides. Her teeth were clenched. But in her eyes lay another kind of unspoken invitation.

      When his fingers slid slowly downward, she flinched as if she’d been stung, and blinked slowly. The level of her defiance in the face of rules governing two strangers meeting in dangerous places made his needs escalate. Cops were adrenaline junkies out of necessity, but this situation flowed out of the box. He was hot for her and wanting closeness. Any kind of closeness.

      A growl erupted from his throat unchecked. Hell, he hadn’t meant to do that.

      The woman beside him swayed in reaction to the sound. Her delicate face lost some of its color. Long lashes fluttered. Her chest rose and fell quickly with each new breath. But she stood there with her pulse racing hard enough to lift the skin beneath her right ear, movement that caused the two small diamond studs in her lobes to sparkle.

      When she finally moved, it was in a way Cameron truly hadn’t expected. She stepped closer, pressing her chest to his, her hips to his. Suggestively.

      Her eyes were on the top button of his shirt. She kept her gaze there while her body telegraphed quite clearly what she expected to happen.

      Cameron swore. Restraining himself took real effort and came close to being the hardest thing he had ever attempted, after being a cop for five long years. More than anything, he wanted to throw her on the ground and prove just how dangerous he could be. His wolf liked the idea.

      “You haven’t gone,” she said, speaking now through seductively moist parted lips.

      “Neither have you.” The blood in his veins thrashed, racing toward the places already erect and ready for action.

      “I’m thinking about going,” she said.

      “Maybe you should think harder.”

      She shook her head. “My advice to you is to take it or leave it before I change my mind.”

      Another streak of heat tore through Cameron, magnified by surprise. What had she just said?

      She had no qualms about this? About sex with a stranger who could have been anyone, and was, in actuality, so much more?

      “I don’t know what game you’re playing, or what you’re up to,” he said, “but I just told you I never accost women in dark places, and I wasn’t lying.”

      “Okay. Leave it, then.”

      Cameron stared down at her, his stability tumbling. Finding this female had temporarily taken his mind off pressing problems. Imagining what he’d like to do to her was a luxury. But finding her alone in this park on a night like this—especially on a night like this—made all those sinful thoughts unacceptable.

      Several gangs called this place their home turf. The whole area stank of wolf gone mad, and those mindless badasses, minus the fur, were out tonight and always up to no good. No werewolf could resist the play of moonlight so near to a full. He hadn’t been able to ignore it.

      He could barely ignore this, or her.

      Despite his eagerness, and after a monk-like few months, mating with this woman, on this spot, just wasn’t possible. He was what he was, and had been for a while. Wolf particles had been introduced to his bloodstream, creating and sealing a wolf to his system, leaving him unstable.

      It had taken days of severe agony in order to recover from the initial nightmare of the bite that had made him a hybrid. In his mind, the image of the hyped-up bastard that had chomped on his arm remained fixed.

      He might have lost his mind completely for a few of those terrible days afterward. Nothing of that existed now, other than the brief remembrance of uttering prayers about needing to be put out of his misery.

      Yet he had survived. And closeness to others had become impossible, at home and at work. He stopped returning the stares from women on the street, and made no dates. He quit having drinks after-hours with the guys on his beat. All that withholding was paramount, and out of necessity, until he found out as much as he could about his present state, and about the control necessary to maintain it.

      He existed now in werewolf infancy, with no way to anticipate what might happen if his emotions got involved. What if he hurt a woman by accident?

      So you, he wanted