eyes, darker indoors but no less bright or piercing, waited for her to again find them. Tightness closed around Abby’s heart. Her throat went dry.
How, she thought fleetingly, hadn’t anyone else noticed his unusual eyes?
“I’m sorry.” Her gaze dropped to the mouth that had simultaneously tortured and pleasured her. “Do I know you?”
“Maybe not. But it’s still a nice name.”
Damn him. The memory of his lips nipping at hers threatened to get the best of her, as did the recall of his first thrust into her accepting, malleable body. In the forefront of her mind sat an acknowledgment of his appetite for passion that had seriously moved things inside her.
Abby moaned softly.
“I’ve been looking for you.” His tone had turned unbearably intimate.
“All of your life?” she countered wryly, her pulse banging in time with some distant, inaudible beat.
“You never told me your name.”
“You never asked.”
“Or where you live.”
“So now you know.”
Seconds of silence passed, loaded with tension.
“I searched for you all day, covering most of the bars on the west side.”
She had mentioned working in a bar. Thankfully, he hadn’t noticed the logo on her shirt. Did that mean fate had brought him here, or just plain old bad luck that a downed cop’s friends had chosen this place to honor their comrade?
Abby waved at the crowd. “I hear kudos are due for your nocturnal heroics.”
He didn’t reply. He wasn’t the type to brag.
Abby lowered her voice. “You found the guys following us?”
“Ah, so you do know me.”
She gave him a serious look.
He nodded. “I did find them.”
“They didn’t hurt you?”
“I’ve covered up the battle scars. Another cop wasn’t so lucky.”
She said with a sorry attempt to modulate her tone, hoping her aggravating breathlessness wouldn’t show, “Why did you search for me when the deal was to move on?”
“I didn’t know we had a deal.”
“Then you terribly underestimated me.”
Abby had the feeling he wasn’t saying half of what went through his mind. Then again, neither did she. She was two for two on the danger scale, and quickly upping the ante.
“Would you like to talk, Abby?”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“Abby,” he said again, as if tasting the name.
Though she felt a throb begin at the base of her spine in anticipation of what he might say next, Cameron Mitchell didn’t follow with anything important. In fact, he allowed her a few seconds to get a grip on herself instead of the edge of the bar.
Abby tried to center herself. Grinding her teeth together to keep from shouting, she pressed both hands over her hips to smooth not only her shirt but also the twitching body beneath it—reactions that were a complete giveaway as to his effect on her.
“Well, here I am,” she said. “What now?”
“We talk in private. That’s a start.”
“You’re a hero, and these guys want to be with you tonight.”
A hero and a gentleman. An irresistible combination.
“You’re resistant,” he observed.
“I’m trying to ignore you, and you’re not making it easy.”
He said nothing and continued to study her.
“There were two of you out there?” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue before biting down with her teeth on the lower one.
“Three, in the end, when other cops arrived,” he said.
“And you were doing your job by watching the park. It actually was a real job?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “for what happened. That other cop was a friend of yours?”
“I consider all of them friends.”
Abby acknowledged that response with an inclination of her head, and waved at the door. “You’ll be back out there tonight?”
Moonlight is what you’ll need. Your secret is out.
“I’m out there nearly every night,” he confessed. “Working overtime has become a habit on nights when I can’t sleep.”
“But not in uniform. You didn’t wear one last night, and you’re not wearing one now.”
“I’m on my own time.”
“Patrolling that park to look for bad guys, alone, increases the odds of getting hurt,” she pointed out.
“Maybe. It is, however, a necessity.”
He had answered hesitantly, as though he had disclosed more of his secret than he’d meant to. Abby supposed that everything he said could be taken two ways, because this was a creature straddling both worlds. Cameron Mitchell had one foot in this one, and the other foot someplace foreign, and straight out of myth. Would any purely human soul truly be able to understand what that felt like?
Would Sam, if he knew that a Were could be a cop?
Abby wanted to shout out to her father that Cameron Mitchell was one of the good guys, after all. The fact that there really were good Weres was a validation of her former theory that now made her feel sick.
How many others like Cameron Mitchell had her father’s team captured unquestioningly with the shoot-on-sight method of hunting? Had Sam ever taken the time to find out?
“Some of the people in this bar will also be out there tonight,” Abby said meaningfully.
How much could she give away with Sam looking on?
“Guys who aren’t cops, but have a similar agenda.”
Had Cameron understood her cryptic remark? He glanced at the crowd over his shoulder.
“Possibly more of them than you know,” Abby cautioned. “For reasons other than the reasons you might expect.”
