hers. “I shouldn’t have come here like this. I should have known better than to let it get so close.”
He turned to go, torn and hurting.
“What do you mean? What’s getting close?” she called after him as Gavin, broken and unfulfilled, strode across the yard, vaulted the fence and headed for the hillside, leaving perhaps the sweetest night of his life behind.
Skylar didn’t call for the ranger to stop as she stood in the doorway staring at the darkness settling over the mountains. The noise they’d heard hadn’t just interrupted her first unplanned one-night stand, it had jangled her nerves.
Harris’s haste in getting away from her would have seemed like a slap in the face if it had been for any other reason than going after whatever had made that terrible sound. His disappearance gave her breathing room to contemplate what she’d been about to do—to him, with him.
This whole night had proved a fairly spectacular hiccup in her present situation, and she wasn’t all that clear about what she wanted right then—a man or a creature that was more than a man. She wasn’t certain that a mere man could have done it for her.
Freud would have had a field day with that information.
So would her big sister.
Trish, as the most stable of the four Donovan sisters, wouldn’t appreciate that her sibling was in heat and lusting for a tryst with anyone who came along, let alone lusting for a werewolf. After a conversation like that with Trish, there’d be a reservation in a white padded cell and some little blue pills—a scene that hit too close to home.
Skylar stared outside.
Harris had warned her to lock the door. Yet as far as she knew, wolves, no matter what size, couldn’t handle a doorknob. So what good would a lock have done to protect her from the animal Harris said he needed to chase?
Reason told her that Ranger Harris had lied, that he might be hiding something.
Part of her wanted to listen to his advice anyway. The other newly rebellious part that would have taken a stranger to bed urged her to follow him and see for herself what was urgent enough to end their lovemaking session before the real fun began.
The guy had been seriously distressed over the sound they’d heard. There was no way she’d imagined that. And though her body, too, was trying to warn her about this sound, and shudder after shudder rocked her stance in the doorway, Skylar couldn’t let lies and secrets become an integral part of her new reality.
She was different here. She was letting go of her own secrets, one by one, and open to taking new risks.
Should she go after the ranger? In the dark?
What if her father had fallen to his death while chasing figures from his dreams?
She wasn’t familiar enough with the trails to find footing or have directional cues without proper sightlines. Her cell phone wasn’t good for much because the GPS was almost nonexistent.
As for wanting to jump into the sack with this guy, maybe she just needed a night with an honorable man for a change. Harris, at least, ran out on her before placing a ring on her finger.
Backing up, Skylar listened hard to Harris’s fading footsteps. With him went the rest of the evening’s light.
Her heart refused to slow as she backed from the doorway. Confusion reigned. The room dimmed around her, but Skylar didn’t reach for a lamp. Seconds flew by, then minutes.
Finally, she shut the door and leaned against it with her eyes closed, picturing Harris’s tight, tanned flesh pressed to her bare skin. Feeling, even now, his breath on her face.
* * *
Gavin picked up the trail of the monster much more easily than he could have hoped, almost as if the bloodthirsty beast wanted him to.
He didn’t know what to make of that, but it was too late to consider anything other than finding his prey. His blood was up. His muscles were seizing. The beast inside him recognized this other beast in an unseemly way.
I’m not like you, Gavin wanted to shout. I’m no killer.
But shouting would amount to a calling card and telegraph his presence...if the thing didn’t know already.
As he jogged up the steep path, the old thoughts returned, though answers to his questions had never been within reach. If he wasn’t like that monster, he had to suppose that the blood passed from beast to beast somehow got diluted in the transfer.
His wounds made him suffer a change, but until he knew more about what had happened to him, he had to think of his cursed condition as a disease.
Hell, the differences between him and his maker had to be studied. He couldn’t exact a physical change without a full moon, yet he’d been attacked without one. Feelings inside of him shifted, internal stirrings came and went, but no full transformation happened for him without that commanding silver light. When he did morph, he became a strange mixture of both man and wolf, and not more of one thing than the other.
This damn beast was wolfish, with a lot of something extra added that had no relation to Homo sapiens. There was no full moon tonight, nor had there been the night before, which solidified the supposition that this monster either remained permanently furry, or could fur-up at will, with or without the moon’s kiss.
So different. Yet I sense you, beast, as though what I’ve become isn’t too far removed from what you are.
Part of that beast truly had become part of him.
Gavin’s thoughts kept churning as he climbed the hillside trying to sift through facts, in search of answers.
He’d tried locking himself away to avoid the moon’s treacherous call, which only made things worse. Unable to change its form, his body had betrayed him anyway. He’d nearly gone mad with the shakes, unconscious spells, roiling stomach upheavals and bouts of fever. His mind had eventually succumbed to the madness. He’d lost control of his temper, lost his mind to the pain of withholding the transformation and ended up in some godforsaken place on the mountain with no recollection of how he got there or what he might have done while his mind was in a fog.
Lesson learned. It was a freaking sharp-witted curse that developed immunity to thoughtful manipulation.
He had to give in to the physical changes in order to remain in charge mentally. Succumbing to the moon’s lure was necessary. As long as he changed shape, he was okay. Keeping as far away from other people as was possible near the full moon had allowed him to weather this out.
He got that now, and guessed that without the wolfish form there’d be no survival of this monster’s horrific species, hence the absolute need to shift. That furry demon’s teeth and claws had created another similar freak, and so that had to be the way the moon’s cult passed on. If he stayed in these mountains whenever there was a full moon, he’d be safe enough, he hoped. Others would be safe.
Gavin stopped suddenly, skin chilling, senses wide open.
