it was followed fairly closely by her father’s untimely death...
The father who, as a famous psychiatrist dealing in other peoples’ problems, had, it turned out, sometimes dabbled in his own world of make-believe.
Werewolves were his idea, after all.
Not only had her dad believed those creatures existed, he must have thought they roamed the mountains of Colorado, right outside this cabin’s door—which was likely the reason he often retreated here under the premise of needing alone time.
Beasts, for God’s sake.
Like the one in my dreams.
So maybe fantasies were contagious and could be inherited, and stumbling on her father’s secrets had spawned her own nocturnal reveries.
Skylar pulled the blanket up to her neck. Seconds later, she flipped onto her back, staring at the ceiling of the small rustic bedroom.
“Screw the pity party,” she murmured. Because truthfully one thing, at least, was clear. She felt liberated by the empty spot on her ring finger.
Seeking comfort in the lavender-scented feather pillow, Skylar vowed to stick to her plan: finish going through and packing up her father’s things and then return to her apartment in Miami, where her wedding dress still hung on a hanger. The dress would have to be returned eventually. If she ran into Danny, she’d just have to deal.
She could do that.
In truth, her life sucked sometimes. No mother, no father and no fiancé...but what the heck? She had three loving sisters and the deed to this cabin.
“Bring it on, sexy nightmare!”
Plumping up the pillow, Skylar blew out a breath and dared to close her eyes. Refusing to behave, her heart spiked again.
Swear to God, she was sure the man in her dreams was out there now, waiting for her. Whispering to her. Compelling her to listen.
And why the hell shouldn’t she?
* * *
Gavin Harris turned his face to the night wind, catching a whiff of a fragrance completely foreign to the rest of the forest smells surrounding him. It was a sudden sensory bombardment that didn’t belong here and was, even as he breathed it in, a detour from his agenda.
Eyes shut, he wrapped his senses around the uniqueness of the rich, sweet scent, separating each component with his fine-tuned wolf senses.
Female, he concluded. Young, supple flesh. Musky pheromones. Traces of soap and denim. Tantalizing feminine scents that weren’t in any way related to the more monstrous odors he sought tonight, but were oh so compelling.
He shook his head hard to ward off the distraction, and muttered, “Forget it.” Investigating the source of these new smells would mean detouring from his objective, which had to remain his greatest priority. He was on watch, hunting his own version of big game.
That objective was an important one. Vital.
But damn...
The rosy feminine perfume floating to him from the cabin in the clearing below him caused a visceral physical reaction similar to being shocked by a cattle prod. All the little hairs on his arms stood up. Tingling nerves made his muscles twitch.
He smelled the woman in that cabin as easily as if she stood in front of him, in person.
And she was alone.
Stepping forward brought the cabin into view through a gap in the trees. Gavin leveled his gaze on the dark windows and inhaled deeply, concluding that the woman down there was the only human in the area at the moment. She occupied a cabin that had been originally been built by old Tom Jeevers, making it smell a whole hell of a lot better than its line of former occupants had.
Something else?
The agitated, tinnier scent of anxiousness wafted to him, adding a second, spicier layer to the woman’s floral bouquet. Either she was anticipating something, or was in some kind of trouble. A fight with a companion, lover or husband, maybe, that caused a ruffle in the atmosphere? The long-anticipated arrival of a lover who was late?
“Lucky bastard,” Gavin muttered. If she had a husband, that guy would get to smell her every damn day.
With a quick glance up at the sky, Gavin widened his stance, knowing he shouldn’t linger too long in the moonlight. Though the moon wasn’t completely full tonight, that bugger was close enough to that phase to affect him in adverse ways. All the enhanced senses were just a start.
A quick glance down the length of his body found it not actually foreign, but increasingly unfamiliar as each lunar phase progressed. The extra muscle that he hadn’t worked out in a gym to maintain helped to add bulk. His height had stretched a good inch or two above his normal six-one.
His jeans were tighter. Shirts now strained at the seams. The only measurements remaining the same were his feet, slammed into his boots.
Then there was his hair. The tangle of chin-length waves were darker and much longer than he was used to, tickling his ears, making him wonder how long he’d been patrolling this section of the mountain ignoring most of the perks of civilization.
Could it have been two years?
Damn if everything hadn’t changed in the span of those years. Out of necessity, he’d pretty much become a loner. And though he patrolled this area of the Rockies regularly, during those past two years four people had died. One of them was the last man to occupy the cabin now emitting a woman’s enticing pheromones.
Oh, yes. And within those two years he, Gavin Harris, Colorado Forest Ranger, had regrettably, unforgettably, become a beast tethered by a silver chain to the devilish disk in the sky. Moon. As absurd as that seemed.
He closed his eyes again, shook his head. Having a woman down there, so very close, and smelling like heaven, served to highlight his shitload of personal issues.
People who abused the clichéd phrase no crying over spilt milk had never experienced their skin turning inside out or their muscles expanding to nearly twice their size in the span of sixty seconds. They’d never felt the pain of fingers splitting open to spring a full set of razor-sharp claws, and a jaw disconnecting bone by bone.
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
