Wolf Hunter. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

I’m not afraid of you.”

      “Not afraid? Then that makes one of us.”

      The white-hot Were backed her against a tree for balance, and pulled off her boots. He glanced at the silver-bladed knife attached to her calf.

      “The knife stays,” Abby said. Then the ability for speech left her.

      Not satisfied with their bodies locked together in a way he couldn’t manipulate, her lover took her again to the grass. He perched above her, and with one hand found the moist, quaking spot he needed to again enter her overheated depths.

      Abby opened for him, wanting every last bit of what he had to offer, and unwilling to wait. He sank into her with a thrust that stretched her to her limits.

      Abby gasped and threw her head back as she took him in, working to draw him deeper, while at the same time accepting his drowning kiss. Sensations overwhelmed from two sources at once, flowing gloriously from her mouth to what lay buried between her thighs.

      The taking wasn’t an easy one, or time-consuming. Foreplay belonged in the bedroom, between real lovers, and this was something else altogether. This was nuts.

      Her Were entered her again and again, hard enough to tickle the sensitive spot already close to a climax. Spasms began to build that forced her hips into him, urging him on as she closed herself around him.

      Having him inside her was at once heaven and hell and a mistake she might live to regret, but it was exciting. When he withdrew, Abby dug into him with her fingers, drawing blood with her nails to again make him pay for being a beast, the enemy, and for his part in this crazy liaison.

      Thoughts flashed by at lightning speed. She’d never see him again. A few stolen moments were all they had. If her father found out about this moonlight tryst, he’d kill her with his bare hands.

      The scent of blood filled the air. His blood. A sound of surprise slipped from his throat, though he didn’t stop kissing her. His response to her fingernails was to thrust into her deeper, over and over, building a rhythm that made Abby see stars.

      Unable to hold off what loomed so close to the surface, a cry of growled pleasure tore from her. Her eyes fluttered open. Abby found herself again looking into his beautifully inhuman eyes, and the intensity of the connection she found in them brought more lightning and tripled the emotional storm.

      She cried out again as he hit the place that had never been touched, never been found, so deep down inside her. The look in his golden eyes as he did so pierced her soul, knocking down barriers she had long held in place to keep emotion at bay.

      She opened that last little bit...and came.

      Arching her back, hit by a sizzling, fiery orgasm, Abby bucked off the grass as each successive wave of deliciously vicious pleasure overtook her.

      The world drifted in whirling flashes of bright, multicolored cartwheels that mirrored the moonlight. Sound ceased. Breath suspended as her body went rigid in the throes of a ceaseless, endless ecstasy. The man providing the pleasure held himself motionless, pinning her to the orgasm without easing up. Like her, he fought hard for each labored breath.

      “Yes,” he whispered, encouraging her to give in to the pleasure. “Yes, little wolf.”

      She crested wave after wave of ecstasy until the waves finally began to recede. It seemed like hours before the shudders ceased and the orgasm faded. Her breath finally returned as the spasms fled. Her limbs slowly regained feeling. But Abby kept her eyes shut, afraid to open them, afraid to look at the man, the stranger, the creature, who had made this incredible thing happen.

      What would she possibly say? Given what you are, we should have used a condom?

      Nevertheless, she had no way around it. She had to face him. Face this. She had to get up, get dressed and walk away.

      He wasn’t there when she opened her eyes. She saw only a dark stretch of moon-dappled grass that made reality come crashing down. She was on her hands and knees in the dirt. Her knees were aching. Her palms were scratched. Their mating session had taken on aspects of the surreal.

      He hadn’t gone. Abby heard him breathing. Her ardent lover curled around her, with his bare chest pressed to her back. They had changed positions sometime during this exotic escapade, and had gone after each other like two animals rutting.

      His arms were wrapped around her waist. Both she and this creature were slick with sweat and completely silent in the aftermath of what they had done.

      How right her father had been about some things, she thought. Weres were dangerous. They were treacherous without having to kill someone in order to earn that reputation.

      “Are you okay?”

      His question sounded oddly out of place. The resonance in his tone pulsed in her ears. She expected him to get up and walk away, having had his fill of her. Thank you, ma’am.

      Abby could not think of a single verbal jab or witticism to reply with, though she opened her mouth to try. Damn him, his question had been nice.

      It was time to get up and get away.

      What had she done?

      Sliding out from beneath her lover, Abby got to her feet. Feeling only slightly self-conscious about being naked at midnight in a public park, she muffled a startled cry as a piercing pain ripped through her right thigh, hurting so badly, she sagged back down to her knees.

      Muscles seized. Her vision began to tunnel. A haze of inky darkness descended as strong arms swept her up and a voice whispered, “It’s okay. I have you. Curse this damn park and everyone who has ever set foot in it, because I knew there would be trouble tonight.”

       Chapter 5

      Abby’s eyes fluttered open to a moving tableau. Earth, grass, trees passed by, everything wrapped in a startling, stinging round of pain.

      She gasped and sucked in a lungful of air.

      “It will be okay,” a familiar voice soothed. “We’ll get help.”

      More pain crashed over her. But as Abby breathed in the night air and steeled herself against the discomfort in her leg, she realized the discomfort wasn’t life-threatening, and that whatever had happened had merely come as a shock.

      “You’ll be all right,” the voice repeated. His voice. The man who was also a Were.

      Her wits returned. The landscape wasn’t moving. She was, caught up in his arms. The Were carried her. She wasn’t out of it enough to fail to realize that she was completely naked, and to remember that she and this guy had just shared a round of mind-numbing sex. Her lungs were filled with his scent. Her mouth felt swollen. Beside the pain in her leg, she ached deep down inside.

      Had she passed out? Fainted? If so, it would be a first.

      Glancing sideways, Abby saw that he was dressed, and that her clothes dangled from his closed fists.

      “Put me down.” Her voice sounded fairly strong and demanding.

      The golden beast stayed infuriatingly silent.

      “You forgot my boots,” she said without looking up at him. “And I’ve forgotten the magic word. Please put me down.”

      “It would be better if you directed me where to take you, if that isn’t to the closest hospital.” He spoke in the same sexy voice that had first roped her in, though it now carried a trace of anxiousness.

      “What happened?”

      “You’ve been shot.”

      “What?”

      “You’ve been shot, and we need to get help. We need that leg bandaged. I can’t just set you down if you can’t walk out of here. I can’t take that chance.”

      He gave his head a toss to move