Abby held herself tightly to keep from squirming. If Weres like this one possessed animalistic superpowers, he’d have already noticed that she had become a heat-sensing Geiger counter for the very thing that should have had her screaming. Her fevered flesh and skin-ruffling gyrations were the equivalent of inviting the fiery hand of death to slide between her legs.
Hell with that. Due to his looks and masculine vibe, this Were probably had a harem of women willing to take him in. He didn’t need one more willing supplicant. Besides, wolves and humans did not mix, except when those things in an anomalistic fashion resided within one being.
The situation sucked. All outcomes seemed dire. Whatever outlandish thing was taking place between this werewolf and herself had gummed up logic. He was seducing her without any effort on his part at all. He didn’t have to be blatant about it because the seduction worked. All he had to do was stand there, looking like a sexy hunk.
Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. Get out. Get away.
You, she wanted to shout to the creature across from her, are the very thing my father and his teams despise. There has to be a reason for that.
Lifting her chin defiantly, Abby backed up a step. This is the final test. Will you pounce?
As it turned out, he didn’t do anything of the sort. Instead, he calmly asked her a question.
“Why do you hate the moon, if you don’t mind me asking?”
The question was as unexpected as the earnest ring of curiosity in his voice.
“You said you hate it,” he reminded her.
“I hate what the moon does to people,” Abby said.
Her companion glanced up at the light. “You don’t find the moon beautiful?”
“Its beauty is deceitful, as beauty often is.”
If he got the point and the allusion to himself, he didn’t show it. He took a step toward her, closing some of the distance separating them and setting off another round of sparks that burrowed well below Abby’s waistline. He continued to study her face as if whatever he sought there might be important.
What did he want? An apology for the atrocities her father and his team had inflicted upon his species? Did he want revenge, when he had to know how many humans Weres had killed in Miami in the past year alone?
In hindsight, she should have covered up the logo on her T-shirt that advertised a bar that just happened to also be a field office for Sam Stark’s hunters. She hadn’t taken the time to change, in a hurry to get outside, away from the crowd. Maybe this guy had already made note of it, which would be bad news.
Move, Abby. Hesitation is no longer an option.
No wolf could be allowed to discover where the team kept court, or seek to uncover the source of her own unusual connection to their breed. Those were secrets for keeping behind closed doors, under lock and key, especially when facing a Were male of this caliber.
Damn it, the spell he had put on her had to be broken. Her murky, inexplicable attraction to him had taken her too far off base. She had feared this kind of face to face for a long time.
Use the phone. Make that call.
Yes, and what would she say to her father if he answered the phone? That she’d screwed up this time? That she’d been mesmerized by a wolf? There was no way Sam’s team could find her like this, feverish and out of commission, when so many others expected her to be a chip off the old guy’s block.
Plus, all of a sudden she wasn’t so sure about wanting the team to find the Were across from her who was too damn pretty to be a rug on some billionaire collector’s floor.
“Got to go.”
She needed to hear the urgency in her voice. The muscles of her upper back twitched. Although her heart rate again spiked, she didn’t go anywhere because backward wasn’t the direction she really wanted to take. Every molecule in her body strained to get closer to the wolf in his human skin, while her mind struggled to find a way out of this standoff that made sense.
Do the smart thing. Turn and sprint. Hope he won’t follow.
Why hadn’t she at least tried that?
Was he touching her? No. Yet she felt as if he were.
Could he be holding her there physically with his wolf aura? Yes. Hell, yes.
This wolf was the real deal, times ten. And he was what? Being friendly? They were having a chat, as though the word species didn’t matter?
If this Were internalized her scent, or any other of his cousins trapped her with a purpose the next night, she’d make the obituaries, or worse. One swipe of a claw or a bite that deeply pierced her skin and she might become one of them.
Considering that she survived at all.
Abby’s lips parted for a speech she didn’t make. Without thinking she inched toward this Were like a bug drawn to light, her body, independent of her mind, urging that forbidden touch as if part of her actually wanted to burn. As if the secret guilt she had built up over the years about the whole hunting scene, as well as the lectures from her father, the loneliness she’d endured for so long and the image of werewolf pelts hanging from ceiling beams, would burn with her.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Abby waited for sanity to intervene, hoping it would hurry.
“Will you let me go?” she asked breathlessly.
“Of course you can go. Though I really would like to make sure you get where you’re going safely.”
An offer of safety from the scariest thing out here?
As if she was supposed to believe him.
“Nights here are always dangerous,” he said. “Tonight feels especially tense. Do you sense that?”
“Why care about me at all? You don’t even know me.”
“It’s what I do.”
“You make a habit of accosting women in dark places, and then woo them with the promise of a compromise?”
“I try to make sure that no accosting goes on, actually.”
“Are you some sort of vigilante?”
“Something along those lines, yes.”
“I don’t recall asking for your help.”
“Can you assure me that you know the difference between looking for danger and actually finding it?” he countered. “No one comes to this park after dark for fun or shortcuts. Not even if they carry a knife.”
Okay. So she hadn’t really supposed he wouldn’t know about the knife, scent being one of a werewolf’s strongest attributes, and silver being repugnant to them. But why hadn’t he hidden his knowledge of the knife, when it
