The Black Wolf. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

or make her feel any more ill at ease than she already did.

      Cara Kirk-Killion, in whatever incarnation, had just possibly saved his sorry ass from a date with a vampire. He couldn’t believe it Using fangs had likely been Brandi’s intention all along. The skimpy lingerie had been camouflage. Lilac perfume had masked the unfamiliar scent. They probably never would have made it as far as the bed.

      Cara had freed him from having to deal with his first vampire—a bloodsucking parasite so like a human, he had fallen for its charade. What about the curvaceous body Brandi had sported, and the silky tousled hair? Would he have discovered the truth if he’d gotten close enough to the creature to discover that her chest contained no heartbeat?

      And what about Cara? Did her vampire form come with a vampire’s thirst? If she had those kinds of urges, she was controlling them well. She stood three feet from him with her hands at her sides, radiating no perceptible aura of danger, though for a few seconds back there, he’d had doubts. His ears still rang with the sound of her fangs gnashing.

      “Can you change back?” he asked, slightly out of breath from the recent adrenaline surge. “Will the vamp characteristics fade away on their own?”

      Maybe those weren’t the questions Cara had been anticipating, but they were the only ones she was going to get from him at the moment. Her eyes were trained on him. She said nothing in reply as he led her down the sidewalk.

      In the glare of his building’s exterior security lights, Rafe glanced away from her lingering gaze long enough to note the rips in the shirt he had loaned her and the blood soaking it in several spots. She didn’t seem to notice any of that.

      “We’ll need to see to those scratches,” he continued, stepping aside so that Cara could precede him to his apartment. “We can make a quick stop at my place if you’re up for that,” he added. “I have a first-aid kit.”

      When she shook her head, Rafe paused, then rallied enough of his wits to say, “Thank you, Cara.”

      Her red-rimmed eyes, still dilated by an interior darkness, met his. The tips of her extremely white fangs seem to glow against the color of her blood-flecked lips.

      “That’s what you meant when you said ‘it’s you,’ right? You smelled that vampire on me?” With the adrenaline still flowing, he kept up the nervous chatter. “Now that I think about it, I invited that thing inside. What kind of a fool does that make me?”

      Cara finally spoke. “I told you they are deceptive in their disguises. Like we are.”

       Like we are...

      She meant werewolves masquerading as humans.

      As Rafe watched, Cara’s face began to shift back, resuming the beautiful human features Rafe had first seen on the beach. The hollows in her cheeks disappeared, and some color returned.

      He couldn’t have explained what the process actually was or how it worked. When the redness around her eyes faded, Rafe wondered whether the face she now showed him was what Cara actually looked like, or if its beauty was another kind of stunt for suckers like him to fall for.

      In the light from the building, Cara was even more beautiful than she had been in the moonlight. Could he trust his eyes?

      Werewolves didn’t shape-shift easily. Transformations were always painful. Some Weres shifted faster than others, with full-blooded Lycans being masters of the pain game. Cara’s switch to vampire mode and back had been different. It was silent, fluid, as if she had merely coaxed another shape into existence.

      She continued to observe him with a keenness that made his inner wolf anxious. Just another shape-shift in my repertoire of them, her expression suggested. Nothing special.

      Hell, did she even know what special was?

      “Can you control when you become like them?” he asked, unabashedly curious. “Do you make it happen?”

      “It just is,” she replied.

      Though the fangs were gone, flecks of blood still dappled her mouth. Rafe tried not to look.

      “There’s no control button or on-off switch?” he pressed.

      She shook her head.

      “Can you do that with any supernatural creature, Cara? Look like anything that comes your way?”

      “For the most part.”

      “Christ,” Rafe muttered. “I see why you’d rather not be in an unfamiliar place when the moon is full. What could your werewolf side possibly be like when coupled with so many other talents?”

      “My wolf side isn’t much like yours,” she said and left it at that.

      The weird thing was how much Rafe desired to get closer to Cara in spite of the warning flags his mind was waving. He should have felt sorry for her and her burden, yet she seemed to be up to the task handed to her, if tonight was any indication. Though her family and background were intimidating, part of him needed to see past all that and find the real Cara. He tried to guess whether anyone had ever seen the real thing.

      Telling her he’d like to help in any way he could seemed ludicrous, given the fact that she had just killed a vampire with relative ease. Still, when he gestured again for Cara to precede him to the stairs, she obliged docilely, as if she trusted him and they were fast friends.

      As they began to move, the soft growl of a well-tuned engine broke the silence. Rafe had almost forgotten about the emergency call he’d made to his father before the vampire attack and had mixed feelings now about how quickly the call had been answered. He would lose one-on-one face time with Cara. There would be less of a chance to get to understand her.

      Cara was listening to the same sound. When she turned to him, her eyes were again the color of polished emeralds, flashing with curiosity as she wiped the flecks of blood from her lips with the back of one hand.

      “I’m sorry,” Rafe said as the musky scent of approaching Weres became more pronounced. “We’ve got company, but it’s all right this time.”

      Almost immediately, he caught sight of his silver-haired father and Cameron Mitchell, another large Were Rafe knew very well, who was a senior detective on the Miami force. They were heading their way.

      “I’ll go up and get more clothes for you,” Rafe said to Cara. “We never found yours, and the picture you present in my shirt is...”

      Cara tilted her head to one side, waiting for him to finish. He didn’t. Couldn’t. This hybrid Were was sexy, lithe, strong and more than a little bit scary.

      Yep, he was a fool, all right, for sliding into sympathy with her so effortlessly. Telling Cara he was attracted to her, scary bits and all, wasn’t going to help their situation and would confuse them both. But that was exactly what Rafe was thinking when he’d only known her for, what? About an hour? As she had said, he didn’t really know her at all.

      “Rafe?”

      His father’s deep voice was only a sampling of the kind of power Dylan Landau possessed. Cara looked at the alpha coming their way with a flicker of interest. Before stopping to think, Rafe reached out to offer her his support with a light touch on her arm.

      Fire erupted inside him as her eyes met his. More flames licked at his throat, bringing on a whole new level of heat. There was no way to acknowledge the suddenness of these feelings, their origin and what they might mean.

      “Cara. Are you all right?” his father asked, slowing as he reached them.

      When she remained silent, Rafe didn’t answer for her. He was struggling to control his own feelings. Cara had told him she needed time to adapt and get her bearings, and time was exactly what he needed, too, because his heart seemed to stop each time their eyes met. The reaction was not only absurd, it was irresponsible.

      “Come with us,” his father said, gesturing with a wave of his hand toward the car parked a short