Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Seduced by the Moon

After taking another deep breath, Gavin dropped to a crouch. The sultry smells floating upward from the cabin were disturbing to him for so many reasons. One major problem was that they could easily mask the other, more feral odor he’d been out here searching for.

The woman’s presence was trouble, any way he looked at it, and also a reminder he didn’t need about the better times in his past. And the woman in that cabin might be in danger out here from bigger, badder things than him.

Who are you? he wondered. Hasn’t anyone warned you about this place? Told you that four deaths in and around the area are four too many, and that a woman by herself might be asking for trouble?

Determined to let this go, Gavin straightened and half turned. That woman wasn’t his problem. He had more serious things to worry about. There was a damn good possibility he wasn’t the only monster nearby, and if that theory proved true, odds were less than good that he’d ever see another sunrise.

“Leave her alone. Get out of here. Let her be,” Gavin warned himself.

Not so fast...

An additional beam of light drew his gaze.

He turned back.

The cabin’s door opened, throwing a narrow strip of yellow across the boards of the covered porch. A figure emerged to stand in that beam, and although the features were shadowy from this distance, Gavin’s heart exploded in a flurry of racing beats.

The woman stood in the open doorway as if his thoughts had drawn her out. As if she knew he was there, watching her, and felt his presence.

Seeing her jolted the beast inside him.

He’d been right about this woman. Anxiousness rode the breeze. She was tense, uptight and high-strung, like an animal about to spring.

But she was also small, blonde, and only half-dressed.

Gavin stared at the half-dressed part, and the long, lean, very bare legs that melted into delicate ankles and shoeless feet.

His inner wolf gave a soft, muted whine that scattered when he cleared his throat.

Christ, temptation was a bitch.

So was being a goddamn werewolf.

As for you, woman...

His attention snapped to identify another smell.

Metal.

The woman on the porch had a gun?

Gavin realized with a sudden flash of intuition that the icy chill now ripping through him wasn’t due only to the alluring sight of the woman, or the scent of her weapon, but to the thing closing in on them from the mountain.

He must have gauged the strange lure of this area correctly if the prodigal beast he sought returned two days early. Forty-eight hours shy of that next full moon.

“Ah, hell...”

With renewed wariness, he glanced again at the cabin and the beauty on the porch whose white T-shirt highlighted her slender torso, and whose face was hidden by a cloud of fair hair. He already felt protective of her. Felt as though he knew her somehow.

She might have courage enough to try to protect herself, but no gun he knew of would save her if the thing he chased turned its attention her way. He whirled, his boots digging up clumps of dirt. No time to waste. If the visitor heading this way was what he hoped it might be, he needed to lead that abomination away from the cabin.

With a final look over his shoulder, Gavin took off at a jog because his gut told him he needed to stop this killer before it claimed another poor soul.

Chapter 2

Although no one showed up to confront her as she stood on the porch, Skylar knew she was no longer alone, and that she wasn’t dreaming this time. Not a chance in hell.

Her father’s gun felt heavy and cold in her hands. It was loaded, and she knew how to fire, just as all the Donovan girls did. Their father had been diligent about his daughters’ self-defense.

That didn’t stop the shaking, though. She had to hold the gun with both hands as she faced the unknown. Someone was out there. This was real. And at this time of night, that felt like bad news.

Of course, it could be a lost hiker. Maybe it was her father’s crusty caretaker coming by to check on the property, or out for a late-night stroll. But the persistent flush of internal heat told her that those possibilities were false and that someone else was here.

Instead of retreating inside and locking the door behind her, Skylar stood her ground, scanning the night beyond the meager pool of porch light where evidence of a visitor lay in the sudden silence of insects.

Biting her lip hard enough to taste blood, she ventured a call. “Where are you? Who are you?”

The silence was unnerving. She worked at drawing a breath.

“Not going to show yourself? I’m here, waiting.” She pointed the revolver at the trees on the hillside, upped her volume. “And I’m not happy about it.”

The taunt produced no results, but she couldn’t give up. Someone was there, somewhere. What if it wasn’t some innocent hiker? Suppose her father’s killer had returned?

She had to consider that possibility. She refused to believe that her diligent, first-rate climber dad might have fallen to his death. The conclusion she’d come to, independent of her sisters’ opinions, was that if David Donovan had fallen, someone must have pushed him.

“So who are you? Have you come for me?” she said to the quiet night, getting nothing back. No response at all.

“No time for hide and seek,” she called out in a last-ditch effort to make contact as she backed up slowly, crossing the threshold in a shuffle of bare feet.

A change in the air made her pause. Moving the gun, she refocused her aim on a point just south of the path up the hillside.

“Best to stay inside,” a man’s voice advised from somewhere near the closest trees. “And lock the door. It might also be a good idea to leave here tomorrow.”

Skylar’s heart skidded over one too many beats, leaving her breathless. “Who are you?” she called out.

“Ranger, patrolling the area. There’s been some trouble around here.”

She waved the gun. “I know that, and I know how to use this.”

“Better to move on before you have to use it,” he said. “A woman alone is far too tempting as a target.”

“How do you know I’m alone?”

“It’s my business to know who’s in the area.”

“You’ve been watching the cabin?”

“As much as I can, but right now I’m needed elsewhere.”

“Where’s your car, or whatever rangers use to get around in?”

“Over the hill behind me.”

“You run around on foot in the dark?”

“There aren’t too many paths worthy of a vehicle around here, beyond the main road.”

“I don’t need you to stand guard,” Skylar said. “Thanks, but you can get on with your business.”

“Fine. Just offering a friendly warning. Can’t be too careful this far out of town.”

Skylar waved the gun again. “I’m well aware of that.”

“Well, good night, then,” the invisible ranger, if that’s what he really was, said.

“Good night,” Skylar echoed.

The night air changed again, rearranging itself as though something heavy had been removed and the darkness filled in the vacuum left behind. The result was a powerful charge that left Skylar swaying on her feet.

This could have been her imagination, she supposed as she shrugged off a new round of chills. But one thing was clear. She had no doubt whatsoever that this ranger’s voice was the voice from her dreams.

The same damn one.

She’d bet her life on that.

* * *

“You’re too far out there,” Trish said over the phone the next day in the authoritative tone reserved for bossy older sisters.

“It’s temporary, so I don’t mind.” Skylar rubbed her bloodshot eyes. Ten minutes of sleep while sitting by the window all night, gun in hand, wasn’t nearly enough for a clear head.