woman to be so…well, soft-looking. Even attractive. But she was. She had the kind of beauty that crept up on a guy, making him want to keep staring…searching, noting new discoveries as he mapped out the finely sculpted contours, one by one. The full lower lip was only part of a lush, pink mouth that begged for the carnal aggression of a kiss…among other things. Things he had no business thinking about doing with a perfect stranger, not to mention a human one.
So get your bloody mind out of the gutter and stay focused! his conscience muttered.
Determined to continue his appraisal with a more critical eye, Eric searched for her first flaw, but failed to find one. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but she was pretty, in a wholesome, appealing way. Her face was somewhat round, with a small nose and sweeping brows that arched over big blue eyes. Instead of making her look childish, the delicate features gave her an air of womanly innocence that would catch any man’s attention. That made him want to be the one to corrupt her…to open those bright blue eyes to things that were warm and wet and undeniably wicked. To the harder, more primal angles of pleasure.
And there you go slumming around in the gutter again.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, wondering what was wrong with him. He hated to admit it, but she was affecting him in a way that made him want to turn around and get the hell out of there. It was more than just the dangerous, unwanted sexual attraction building inside him. Though that was bad enough. But for some inexplicable reason, he almost felt as if the human posed some kind of threat to him, which was ridiculous. He was the monster in this scenario, the thing to be feared in the silence of the night—not her. And yet, his chest felt too tight, his muscles coiled, ready to burst into movement, and he shoved his hands in his front pockets, his jaw so tight it made his teeth ache. Sweat broke out over his forehead and collected in the small of his back as he indicated with his chin that he wanted her to roll down the window, more determined than ever to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.
In response, she lifted one of those beautifully shaped brows and glared at him. Without so much as the flicker of a lash, Eric glared right back, letting her know he wouldn’t be as easily cowed as the scouts. When she didn’t budge, he made his tone as non-threatening as possible, knowing his size could be intimidating to a lot of women, and said, “I’m not going to hurt you, lady. I just want to talk.”
She leaned a little closer to the window and ran her gaze over his tall form, working from his scarred hiking boots up to his short hair, then shook her head and raised her chin a notch higher. Eric choked back a low groan, thinking why me? Why couldn’t his friend Jeremy have been stuck with this tonight?
“Look, I can be as stubborn as you are, so save us both the trouble and just roll down the damn window,” he ground out, unable to soften the gruff edge to his order this time. He was uncomfortably aware of his wolf steadily prowling closer to his surface, taking note of her in a way that caused a deeper sliver of alarm to slip down his spine.
This time, she didn’t shake her head in response to his…request. Instead, the crazy-assed woman narrowed her eyes and lifted one closed feminine hand. Then she very deliberately extended her middle finger.
What the…?
Eric stared…a little stunned, thinking there was something definitely not right about her.
Taking his hands from his pockets, he braced them on either side of her window and leaned forward, so close that his warm breath fogged on the glass as he spoke. “You can’t stay by yourself out here in the middle of nowhere, so either turn this thing on and get the hell out of here,” he said in a low, painfully controlled tone, “or start talking.”
If looks could kill, Eric had no doubt he’d be drawing his last breath just about then. But at least he got the desired results. She uncrossed her arms, the scooped neck of her long-sleeved T-shirt revealing a shocking jolt of cleavage that was damn hard not to stare at. He forced his dark gaze back up to her face just in time to see her mutter something he couldn’t quite hear, but could all too easily decipher on those sexy lips. Then she angrily reached for the window lever.
The second the window cracked open, he pulled in a deep breath, his razor-sharp senses searching…seeking. With her strange behavior, he’d half expected her to reek of alcohol or drugs, but he couldn’t pick up a trace of either. Instead, she smelled…like a puzzle. Fresh and clean and delicious, but almost painfully complicated. Like something he needed if he wanted to figure out an answer, even though he didn’t have a clue what the question was.
And it sure as hell isn’t anything to do with me.
For a split second, Eric was almost disappointed by that particular truth. By the fact that his wolf didn’t recognize that warm, mouthwatering scent as something that belonged to them. Something they were meant to own and claim and possess. But that was nothing short of insane. He lowered his arms and backed up a step from the bus, determined to put some distance between them. As well as knock some sense into his wayward libido.
That scent made him want to…No. He gave his head a hard shake, ignoring a bad idea that would only lead to an even worse situation.
She was the kind of trouble he didn’t need. Or want. And once she drove out of his life, he’d forget her as easily as he forgot every other woman who’d ever stirred his interest. It was a given. A fact. He just had to convince her crazy little ass to get off the pack’s private property, and that would be that.
Should be easy enough, considering how his species resided at the top of the food chain, and hers didn’t. Even though she didn’t know he was different, she would sense the predator in him. Would know this wasn’t a safe situation for her to be in, the same way she’d naturally avoid a dark alley or a snarling, snapping animal. It was instinct. Simple self-preservation.
But as Eric stared down into narrowed eyes that burned like a heat-glazed summer sky, he knew, with his own gut feeling, that it wouldn’t be that cut-and-dry. Knew she was going to be a pain in the ass, which should have bothered the hell out of him. But it didn’t.
No, what bothered him was how much he and his wolf were suddenly looking forward to the challenge.
Chelsea Smart refused to take her glare off the man standing beside her bus. What exactly had she managed to land herself in? Something wasn’t right, and while common sense demanded she get the hell out of there, her heart refused to budge, knowing this spooky mountain might prove to be her best chance at finding Perry. Not that her younger sister was a child in need of supervision. At nineteen, Perry was old enough to make her own decisions—even if they landed her in a crapload of danger.
Unfortunately, Chelsea was afraid that was exactly what had happened. And with no one else willing to act as Perry’s rescuer, she’d gathered what was left in her meager checking account, taken emergency leave from her teaching job in Virginia and hit the road in search of her only sibling. That’d been two weeks ago. Now she was almost out of money, low on gas and worn down to her last nerve, her frustration mounting with each passing moment.
The small pistol she’d bought three years ago rested in her lap, beneath the afghan she’d pulled over herself before the other two men had scared fifty years off her life, knocking on her window and waking her from a restless sleep. She resisted the urge to reach down now and stroke the cold metal for comfort, assuring herself that it was there. She could only assume this giant bulk of a man staring at her with dark gray eyes was meant to achieve what the other two had failed to do, and get rid of her. Hadn’t he told her as much?
When he’d pulled up in a massive, black, testosterone-oozing
