Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Wolf Hunter

“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 the glossy curtain of hair that had fallen to cover half of his face. The gesture tweaked another ache deep inside Abby.

“We weren’t wrong about this park and what goes on here,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to take the brunt of that. You shouldn’t have been out here in the first place. Spending any time here...well, both of us should have known better.”

Frigging park. She’d actually been shot after making the biggest mistake of her life so far? Was that some sort of Karma?

“Bullet?”

He nodded. “Only grazed.”

“Who would do that?”

“The shot was probably meant for me.”

That announcement didn’t make Abby feel better or provide a clearer picture of what had just happened. She glanced around again, wondering who would shoot at this guy without the onset of a full moon.

She didn’t like what came to mind.

Could it be a gang warning them to keep off their turf? Other than that, who prided himself on being a kind of guardian angel for the darker areas of Miami, knowing what sort of things inhabited those places?

Good old Dad.

But Sam Stark and the team in residence this month hadn’t mentioned coming out tonight. They had nothing to gain from hurting anyone in human form, and none of them possessed the ability she had to detect species other than their own. There was no reason for the team to hunt. Plus, her father wouldn’t have missed a target. As a sharpshooter, Sam’s marksmanship was first rate.

Abby turned her head to thoughtfully scan the dark to the east of where they walked.

Couldn’t be Sam. Unless her father had in fact been looking for her, and had taken a potshot at the man keeping her from doing her job.

Unless Sam had witnessed the sexual escapade and been angry enough to get that point across.

In that case, maybe her father had meant to hurt her.

She checked out her leg and the raw skin on the outside of her thigh. Blood hadn’t pooled there, so it was, in fact, only a graze. Still, it stung like hell, and her nerves hadn’t calmed down much.

Can’t be Sam.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t be entirely sure.

The object of her sexual fantasy continued to hold her. If her father remained in the area and took better aim now, he’d have a twofer. With the next shot, Sam would lose an important piece of his business on the one hand, while bagging a Were with the other, without knowing his daughter’s lover was Were. The same beautiful wolf that actually appeared to care about what happened to her, and might even care more than her father did.

How would she explain any of this at a hospital?

“I can walk,” she said.

“How fast?”

“Fast enough.”

Broad shoulders strained against the fabric of his open shirt. When the Were turned his head, Abby felt tension ruffle through him that made her senses stir uncomfortably.

“We’ve lost them for now. Too many others patrol the sidelines of this one section of the park for gangbangers to willingly trespass so close to the boulevard,” he explained.

“Yet they’re not gone.”

That remark earned her a sober glance.

“No,” he agreed. “They’re out there somewhere, waiting.”

“For what?”

“Possibly to try another shot, better aimed this time.”

“Why would they go after you, if, in fact, they did?” she asked.