Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Wolf Hunter

Searching, she saw nothing wolfish in his outline, though an aura of Otherness radiated from him like visible radio waves. His casual, almost nonchalant stride screamed of combustible energy tightly contained in a human casing. His long limbs and wide shoulders were topped by a tanned sculpted face and thick chin-length hair that fell somewhere on the color spectrum between gold and bronze.

Oh yes. This guy was a breed unto himself, and completely unlike anything she had come across before. He was a magnetic combination of rugged and elegant.

Too gorgeous to be human.

He wore a blue long-sleeved shirt rolled at the cuffs to expose sun-kissed forearms. An open collar showed off more skin. His jeans were faded, and she caught a flash of heavy black boots, though he advanced soundlessly with his gaze riveted to her.

Abby felt color drain from her face. Mesmerizing wasn’t the word to best describe him. Magnificent seemed a better choice. Also deadly . This beast, with his incredibly honed body outlined by the tight, fitted shirt, moved toward her little circle of light with the grace of an animal...because he was an animal, at least in part. And the overtly masculine, almost hypnotic physical details that described him were likely some kind of built-in bait for reeling in prey.

The devil always lay in the details. Her father had warned her about this many times.

Never get close to the enemy.

Hell, she’d just smashed that golden rule to smithereens through no fault of her own.

Beneath her outward quakes, Abby’s insides trembled with a mixture of fear and defiance and something else she didn’t dare address—that new thing that had no business showing up alongside this large golden wolf.

Hunger.

That’s what she felt. Hunger. For knowledge of him. For the chance to get closer to him.

Either she’d gone insane, or this guy had the ability to hypnotize her with his wolf power, because she grappled with a spectacularly idiotic, completely suicidal compulsion to have the itch forming down deep inside her scratched by a razor-sharp claw.

The breath she exhaled after holding it for so long was steamy. Aside from her need for self-preservation, and against her better judgment, this werewolf in his human form affected her in ways that were totally wrong. The highly erotic vibrations he gave off were the epitome of a perilous death trap.

She got that. She knew better. So why did her body want to meet the animal in him? What possible explanation could account for her absurd desire to fold herself into his heat?

“What do you want?” she demanded in frustration.

He replied in a voice like soft, sifted gravel. “I was wondering if perhaps you have a death wish.”

The world went white-hot beneath this Were’s unwavering gaze. Moonlight seemed to amplify every sensation rippling through Abby, all of those sensations pointing to him. No doubt about it, her sexually suggestive reactions were as dangerous as the Were himself.

She’d never been an out-and-out rebel, really, she thought now, though she had lived on the edge, more or less fending for herself since her mother died of a prolonged illness when she was a kid. In the past, she’d had no reason to flaunt her father’s strict authority, since he had provided, if not earnest affection, a roof over her head.

So, was there an actual rule about people having to do the right thing at the right time, or only what was good for them?

Breathlessness made her light-headed, a symptom of anticipating more trouble to come. Needing air, unable to stand the silence, Abby spoke in a voice shakier than she would have liked, given that werewolves, as with other predators, could ferret out fear.

“Death wish?”

He nodded. “Everyone in Miami is familiar with this park’s unfavorable mortality statistics.”

Inner warning signals went off again. Red flags waved. If she couldn’t outrun this sucker and he wished her harm, she’d have to fight.

Keep him talking. Gauge his intent.

Was he a member of the pack killing people out here? The way he rolled his shoulders reminded Abby of how much muscle lay under that cool blue cotton, and how that muscle would soon adapt to a new shape. If not an organic werewolf, known from Sam’s lectures as a Lycan, he’d have to have been bitten by another werewolf, and that bite had injected the wolf virus into his bloodstream. Human and wolf particles had fused to form a freakish new entity.

Did this guy’s raw, undulating maleness stem from the kick of some mystical ancient virus in his bloodstream, or had he always been a heartthrob?

“I know about the park,” she said.

She hadn’t really looked closely at his face. It was bad enough that the bronzed skin beneath his chin, exposed between open buttons, beckoned to her with the lure of the forbidden.

Would his flesh be smooth, so close to becoming a wolf? Abby cursed the urge to press her fingers there to find out—an action that would probably add one more body count to those unfavorable statistics he’d just mentioned.

Keep strong.

Resist the craziness.

Never get close.

“Then you do know this park is probably the last place a woman should visit, alone and at night,” he said quietly.

“Only women?”

“Anyone.”

“Am I alone?”

“That seems to be the case.”

Abby gestured at him with a wave of one hand. “You don’t count?”

Sarcasm didn’t make her feel better about her predicament. The Were’s eyes remained on her in an uncomfortably intense way, giving Abby the impression that he could see through her clothes and down through her skin to the place where the sparks of her crazy curiosity about him glittered.

She hoped to God he couldn’t see that.

Stomach tightening into a ball of uncertainty, and with her body temp soaring to a disgusting degree, she waited for what might come next, facing the Were, whose specialized internal furnace would soon fuel a werewolf’s shape-shift.

“You do know that bad things sometimes hide in the night?” he cautioned with no threatening move in her direction.

“Are you one of those bad things?”

“I could be. How would you know?”

“Well, then, I guess I’d better go before you have a chance to provide the answer.”

“That might be a good idea,” he agreed.

Movement, though, was impossible. Turning her back to this guy would be a bad idea, no matter how friendly his approach had been. Big reminder: though he looked like a human, and talked like one, he wasn’t.

Feeling the weight of the cell phone in her pocket, Abby tried to remember that Weres weren’t the only treacherous faction in town. Her father, Sam Stark, was as deadly as any werewolf and quite possibly twice as lethal, since Sam had no tolerance for anomalies like this one, and his hatred was usually backed by an element of surprise.

She wondered what color this guy’s pelt would be. Bronze, like his hair? Golden, like the rest of him? With moonlight reflected in each strand of his sleek, slightly mussed mane, whatever color of wolf he turned out to be would amount to tons of cash for the Stark accounts if the team found him. He’d bring a small fortune and it shouldn’t be any concern of hers. This wolf and others like him hurt people when the moon was full.

How close to the surface is your wolf tonight? she wanted to ask. Are you a killer?

Any of those things spoken aloud would let him know she had pegged him for a hybrid, taking things from bad to worse in a hurry. The team’s plan had always been to drive Weres like this one into the open, into the moonlight that betrayed what they were, and strike fast, strike hard. No mercy.