Moon Marked

Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

In the secret war between humans and werewolves, Jonathan Baird and Nikki Reese were natural enemies. Born with the genetic gifts needed to join the secret society of hunters, Nikki had been raised to see all Lycans as her enemy…even if hunting them brought on a powerful craving for sexual release.

It was that craving that drew werewolf Jonathan to Nikki. Though he also sought the rogue creatures that threatened the secrecy of his people’s existence, his organization sent him to watch her…but he lusted after her, too. When a hunt goes bad and Nikki is infected with the Lycan virus, Jonathan couldn’t resist coming to her aid, igniting an insatiable desire between them. Will their passion bring together the two rivals, or will old loyalties die hard?

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER ONE

The temperature was somewhere between hot and hell.

Leaning against the sun-soaked brick of an old apartment building, Nikki Reese rolled her shoulders to move the trickle of perspiration from between her shoulder blades, silently cursing the fine folks who proclaimed leather the best choice for protective gear.

Her skin was on fire beneath the tight leather pants and vest. True enough, though, the airy blue hospital scrubs worn for her day job wouldn’t turn away a pair of razor-sharp canines coming her way with intent to do damage. Which made leather her friend, her armor, her ally in the war between humans and Others in Miami, where a full moon brought out the worst in its citizens.

So, what mattered most? Comfort, or life?

“Life, hands down,” she affirmed, flicking her gaze from the dark spaces separating the buildings to the moonlight overhead.

Tonight, the moon was huge, round-faced and bright enough to cause retinal damage since no one had yet invented infrared Ray-Bans. And although the mottled silver disc in the sky provided enough light to see by, there were plenty of dark places left for moon-ruled monsters to drag unsuspecting souls into.

Like the alley across from her.

“Damned if I’ll let that happen.”

She kept her attention narrowed on that alley. Five more minutes, by her honed internal clock, and the moon would be full-bloat and straight up. Falling silver moonbeams would activate the creatures of Miami’s underbelly and draw them into the open. Not just the criminals, thugs, drug lords and other various human bloodsuckers occupying the seedier side of metropolitan neighborhoods, but the moon junkies, howlers, and her special targets, the reason she was here when she could have been sleeping: the human-wolf hybrids. Werewolves.

The word caused a flutter in Nikki’s stomach that was half fear, half thrill, and one hundred percent adrenaline rush.

“Who’s the adventure junkie now?” she muttered, attuned to the same spot where she had last seen one of her Others of choice. Last month. Twenty-eight days ago, when she’d hit a big male Were with a tranquilizer dart and it hadn’t even slowed him down.

Lessons learned? One: It’s always wise to overestimate the pharmaceuticals. Two: Never underestimate the long arm of the Miami P.D., whose street trawling had kept her from tagging her target, virtually ruining three months of planning, watching and waiting. Distracted midshot by flashing red lights, what should have been, given her ability with a gun, a bull’s-eye, had ended up a graze. She’d lost her target. Those pesky cops doing their job of keeping the peace could have gotten her killed.

Plus, if those fine officers had seen her in this sweltering leather getup, they might have found out who else patrolled their streets in the nighttime hours, and maybe even why. A secret agenda kept strictly on a need-to-know basis, as it had been for hundreds of years. Cops not on the invitation list.

“No one said it was going to be easy.”

Erasing the extraneous thoughts from her mind, Nikki felt something brush her consciousness. Wary, she brought her head up, seeing nothing but sensing a subtle shift in the air that her radar suggested was more than just heat rising off the hot pavement.

She knew this feeling seeping into her bones, way down deep, despite the second-skin armor. She had been craving, and at the same time, dreading, this particular oncoming Otherness.

There was no mistaking the signs. The already-scorching summer heat built to impossible levels for a short span of time, dispersing scent through the humid air that wasn’t human related. Not sweat, cologne, aftershave or hair gel. Not damp fur or dirty paws. Instead, a diluted mixture of those scents floated toward her like another layer of atmosphere that had been cooked in a furnace and then sent oozing toward the moonlight tipping the toes of her boots.

A tingle of apprehension manifested in the valley between her breasts, then shot downward toward her thighs in an almost sexual manner, high-alerting Nikki to the fact that the sucker somewhere in her immediate vicinity was male. For a hunter, confronting a werewolf of the opposite sex was akin to meeting a lover. The flush of anticipation. Intoxication of being near to something foreign in origin. Fear of the susceptibility of getting caught up in the moment and possibly winding up dead.

But she had been trained well, she reminded herself—fashioned into a fine-tuned mold by a system of checks and balances dating way back. She was one of only ten hunters in Miami. Ten per city was the deal someone had made with the devil, once upon a time, when werewolves and other creatures had been rare finds anywhere, let alone within a city’s limits. And when even human populations had been relatively sparse.

In the beginning, Nikki supposed, ten hunters might have been sufficient to have some control over Were packs, culling out the riffraff, maintaining a decent human-to-Other ratio. Now however, ten hunters seemed an absurdly insignificant number against the extremes of the escalating violence percolating up from the dark spaces. The new breed of werewolves were creating ganglike packs by biting innocent people and passing along several mutated strains of the ancient Lycan virus.

Hunters called this new phenomenon Dilution.

Supersaturation.

That human-to-Other ratio had changed dramatically in just the last twenty years. In a bad way. What was once one hunter per twelve or twenty werewolves was now one per a hundred, maybe more. True numbers were hard to grasp since some of those werewolves had gone underground, but the sheer magnitude of werewolf sightings in Miami alone, by her fellow hunters, had become mind-boggling, and posed a serious threat to the Homo sapiens population. Think very bad guys carrying around polluted Lycan blood that caused their minds to veer off track.

So, here she was. Nikki Reese, E.R. nurse in the daytime, werewolf hunter after hours. She’d taken an oath to help set the ratio straight, and she was hungry to do her part in keeping the peace as well as the secrets.

She might have been fairly new to hunting solo, but she’d been on enough runs to know the routine. Watch. Wait. Tag. Track. Drag. Which was exactly what she intended to do here, near this alley, big male Were, or not.

Slowly, with her eyes trained on the darkest spot, Nikki reached for her weapon, updated since her previous outing.

“Shoot first.” She raised the dart gun, took aim. “And dream about sex later.”

A sensual, steadying sigh passed through her lips. Her heart upped its tempo as the night, like liquid, slid over her, further dampening the space between her thighs.

“That’s right,” she whispered. “Come out, you hairy son-of-a-bitch.”

The blackness across from her seemed either to stretch or fill up and expand, its supernatural content pushing at its edges. Feeling this reconfiguration of the shadow’s boundaries in the pit of her stomach—in the way all genetically enhanced hunters were able to do—and sensing the shape and species of the creature within the nearby pool of darkness, Nikki sucked in a quiet breath.

The shadows moved. Nikki remained motionless.

Like Mom before me, I’ve been born to this chase, she reaffirmed to calm herself further. Mother to daughter was how she had inherited the special sensory elements required for this work. Good old mom had passed along some pretty interesting genes that enabled her to perceive Otherness in its many forms and invest in the desire to do something about it.

She was special, she’d been told. One of very few people privy to the knowledge of the secret society of hunters, and who could actually attempt to take a werewolf down.

And she was right on track in her training. Dangerous, even. If no external distractions got in her way, and if this large male werewolf in the alley proved to be unregistered or unmarked by the moon’s brand, he would be toast. Then she could vent the thrill of the tagging with an orgasm—as soon as she got home, and alone—to ease off of the incredible high and fulfill the cravings that hunting these creatures created. Sexual cravings inherent in the symbiotic relationship of hunter and hunted, male and female.

An age-old game.

More movement in the shadows at the top of the alley made Nikki ready on the trigger. Her body buzzed with live, channeled energy directed toward those shadows. Again, deep down inside of her, a hot, wet longing built up in unmentionable places. The big guy was real close now and smelling strongly of the pheromones his shape-shifting produced. Wolf testosterone was over-the-top, and this guy had already morphed, having been touched by moonlight somewhere within that alley space.

Moonlight on a pelt of werewolf fur had its own distinct, unforgettable odor that drifted to Nikki now. For a hunter attuned to her prey, it was a complete turn-on.

In ten seconds, max, his large carcass would appear. An angry mass of unending muscle, sinew and bone with no purpose at all, really. One of God’s mistakes.

One second.

Two…

“Easy does it, Nik. Wait.”

She heard the lumbering pad of his feet on the pavement and the soft scraping sound of claws on the brick. The longing inside of her began to blaze, in the manner of an internal searchlight trying to burst out of her skin.

“Come to mama, beast.”

Then there he was, emerging from the dark. As tall as the street sign, his head was thrown back and his jaws were open, exposing rows of jagged, lethal, gleaming yellow teeth.

Nikki applied pressure to the trigger without squeezing all the way, halted by the sudden terrible realization that the big guy wasn’t alone.

“Shit.”

Her whispered oath had been soft, but vehement enough for a werewolf’s miraculous hearing to pick up. The big head, shaped nothing like a wolf’s really, and more like a Frankensteinish version, swung her way. A menacing growl pierced the dark, damp air, reaching Nikki with the efficacy of a shout.

Shoulders twitching annoyingly, Nikki stood her ground. Peering down the barrel of the gun, she shouted, “I’m fairly sure you are just one wolf too many.”

She squeezed the trigger, adding as the dart winged its way toward its target with the speed of a lightning bolt cutting through a cloud, “And we just can’t have that, can we?”

She knew she was in trouble the instant the dart hit the werewolf and it roared its displeasure. An impression of the approach of the second Were, too close for comfort, possibly too late to do anything about, arrived hot on the heels of her tag.

Spinning in place, she raised the gun, reached to reload—and felt a set of dagger-sharp claws penetrate her protective layer of clothing as if that leather was…butter.

Jonathan Baird ducked beneath the overhang of a green-and-white-striped awning, his attention fixed on the shapely leather-clad vixen down the block. The one with the gun.

She was intent enough on the alley not to have noticed him yet, though he could see her quite clearly. It would be only a matter of seconds until she became aware of his presence.

He recognized the striking brunette at once, of course—the woman who interfered with his work and wore her hair in a ponytail. Who could miss her? He’d kept his eye on her from his first sighting, liking what he saw, although she was, in essence, his rival. His opposite, if you considered her take on the word species.

The hunter was tall, maybe five-six or -seven. She was young and slim, her arms, abs, and legs toned to tautness and shown off to perfection in that skintight outfit. She held a dart gun professionally steady in both hands.

Jonathan found himself wondering, in spite of the danger of the moment and her preference for donning leather in Miami in the summer, what color her eyes were, and what her voice might sound like. Things he couldn’t use his enhanced senses to find out about from a distance, but were on his mind.

Details don’t matter, he reminded himself. I’m here to watch her, not to bed her.

Yet he would have liked nothing better than to bed her.

Every single part of him agreed with that.

Immediately, his decision about details not mattering aside, he imagined what peeling those leather pants off her would be like, and what he might find beneath. Lightly tanned, creamy skin beaded with moisture? Her own jet-hued triangle of fur between her legs that he could slide into?

“Pure fantasy.” He shook his head. He was here because it was his business to feel his way around the members of the secret society she belonged to, not her body. She actually was a rival, or would have been at one time until the path of her society and his own organization had begun to run with a parallel purpose. The hunters kept an eye on the werewolves, and the werewolves kept an eye on the hunters.

If it got more complex than that, the world would be in serious trouble.

Tonight, however, this shapely hunter, who had been on his mind and in his dreams, wasn’t thinking clearly, he was sorry to note. She showed no signs of realizing the danger she faced by staking out that particular alley a second time. Alone.

She’d been there last month. Same place. Obviously, she hadn’t planned on remaining on that unholy pack’s radar. What kind of handler wouldn’t have taught her about retaliation in lesson one? Werewolves were humanlike most of the time—twenty-eight days out of thirty, give or take a few hours. Even when fully morphed and furry, human minds drove the beasts.

Perhaps this hunter harbors one flaw too many in that luscious body of hers for her to last long at this job…

Possibly she has a tendency toward revenge and a need to pick up the pieces. Would those traits get her killed tonight?

The pack she stalked was nasty and a bane to other Weres, as well, which was the reason he’d returned here, himself, beyond his desire to see her again.

There were werewolves and then there were werewolves. As with any population, a mixture of good and bad. More bad lately, admittedly, which was why he had been roaming the streets every single full-mooned night, keeping both the hunter and the hunted in his sights.

Things had taken a downturn as the Were numbers in Miami continually swelled. He knew that ten hunters couldn’t keep up with what was going on, and that the presence of his own species couldn’t go unnoticed for much longer, given the way things were going. Too many crimes were being committed by wolves who were powerful enough to get away with those crimes and crafty enough to vanish afterward.

This hunter had found a hole, the entrance to an illegal pack’s urban den. The werewolves in there, created from bites and scratches from a surrogate alpha, rather than from being genetically cursed—or gifted, depending on how you looked at it—would make sure this woman wasn’t around long enough to pass on information of their whereabouts.

Rogues had no conscience. A pestilence is what they were. A blight on civilization. Eventually he’d get the go-ahead to clean them out, in order to keep both the peace and the secrets.

“Where is your backup?” Jonathan whispered to the leather-clad hunter as he considered warning her in spite of being forbidden to interfere in any way with a tag.

Tranquilizing these bad guys so they could be injected with a tracer chip was the first stage in tracking them. Or should have been. The difficulty here was that the hole the hunter had ID’d had been founded by a psychopathic alpha who had created minions by biting innocent people all over town. Rumor had it that this alpha killed each of his own creations unfortunate enough to get tagged.

Jonathan could feel them in there—the bad guys. Their presence riffled up and down the skin covering his arms. The street smelled of sweaty, fetid fur and bad moods.

His attention veered past the hunter, to where wrongness tinted the silvery moonlit air with a reddish haze. A murmur of acknowledgment rose up from deep inside his chest. Two werewolves hovered there in the alley, standing guard. Those two would have pinpointed the presence of a hunter as easily as she had pinpointed them. The game worked both ways.

Hell, he could scent her from where he stood, half a block away. Everything about this hunter disturbed the air, and none too subtly. He tasted on his tongue the gaminess of the leather she covered herself with. He tasted the electric fire of her nerves, as well as the musky sweetness of her anticipation. For her, this dangerous job was akin to forbidden sex, and that startled him, though it shouldn’t have.

There had always been stories about hunters and how they ferreted out their prey by means of a strong, almost feline sexual attraction to them. Their bodies, more refined than the normal, everyday humans they believed themselves to be, got all gummed up with excitement as they took up a chase, he’d heard it said, and urgently needed sexual release after coming into contact with their Were counterparts.

And okay, the thought of that got a rise out of him.

“Another oddity in a long list,” he muttered, because weren’t love and hate said to sometimes reside on the same plane of emotion? Hunter and hunted? Man and woman, of whatever species? It was a fact that opposites attract, so why shouldn’t he have dreams about this particular woman? This hunter?

Jonathan cleared his head of forbidden thoughts because now was not the time to indulge. She wasn’t supposed to know of his existence or his organization’s. It was best to keep the vow he’d taken to remain in the periphery as far as the hunters were concerned.

He beefed up his concentration.

The beat of Miami’s all-consuming, after-hours partying lay in the distance like someone else’s audible heartbeat being broadcast on a citywide public-address system. On this silent stretch of deserted street, he heard his own heartbeat and imagined he heard the hunter draw a breath. Then the silence was broken by a sudden popping sound—the familiar ping of his own vertebrae starting to realign.

Surprise!

Heat flashed across his skin. The same sort of electrical heat he’d tasted from the hunter. Stick your finger in a socket kind of stuff that happened every time he shifted, and yes, also every time he laid eyes on this particular female.

He had inched forward, out from beneath the awning’s flimsy cover, without realizing he’d done so—led by his stiffened male body parts, he supposed—to find himself standing on the curb.

He looked down, saw his shadow and sighed.

In one gigantic supernatural heave, fueled by the flood of falling moonlight, Jonathan rearranged his outline, taking him from human to beast in the time it took him to turn his head. Changing him from a thirty-two-year-old strapping man to a large, imposing creature, half man and half wolflike entity.

Two shapes, human and wolf, meeting in the middle.

All the better to eat you up, leather-girl.

Tilting his wolfish head, Jonathan felt the closeness of those two other wolves. He perceived their anger. Inhaling again the sticky-sweet fragrance of defiance marring the scene, he then loped in her direction for a closer look, despite the rules.

That sexy young woman planted smack-dab in the thick of danger might be a hunter and all business, but she was also the one. For him.

Every one of his instincts told him this—whether or not hell might freeze over before she ever found out.

CHAPTER TWO

That sudden sting of razor-sharp claws was a shocking development. Nikki knew she had been hurt decently, but her anger over being attacked knocked the pain to the background.

The freak had come at her fast. Now he was stumbling. She’d hit him with enough tranquilizer in that dart to take down an elephant, which meant she only had to deal with the remaining monster, wherever he was.

“One down.”

The burn of her anger felt like being dunked in a volcano. Liquid fire replaced the blood in her veins as she tensed. Her lips went numb.

Vocalizing the oath stuck on her tongue was impossible. She’d already hesitated a few seconds too long. She whirled as the second monster propelled itself forward, slashing wildly at her with its hands and teeth. She dropped to a crouch in time to avoid further injury. The monster roared his defiance over her show of agility with its mouth wide-open.

Opportunity knocked.

Raising the gun, she sprang to her feet and jammed the heavy metal into the advancing werewolf’s mouth, breaking several of his front teeth. Ducking out of the way while he registered that blow, she hit the brick with one shoulder, bounced back and rammed the shocked Were hard with her body.

But he was a quick sucker, and so much bigger.

His gigantic arms were around Nikki before she knew what was happening. His feral face, hairy, stretched, strange, was against hers and smelling like garbage. Trying not to inhale the ghastly odor, Nikki had to breathe when what was left of the monster’s teeth chomped down on her right shoulder.

An instantaneous moment of panic ensued as she registered the pinch of her skin. Struggling to free herself, Nikki rallied enough to punch the beast in the face with her balled left fist.

Enraged, the werewolf picked her up and threw her, his strength as massive as his girth. Nikki heard the thud of her body hitting the wall, registered the burst of pain accompanying the impact, and let out a howl of her own, human-style.

“Freaking monster!”

With its bloody, injured mouth agape, the beast came back for more. Of course it would, Nikki reasoned. The beast was an abomination, and knew it. He carried no moon marks on his appendages that would have proven his status as a genetic Were, or of having been initiated into the Were clan by a genetic werewolf. No whitish-silver circle of scar tissue marred his pelt.

This guy was a bastard, a freak, a changeling. A sick, mentally deficient wolf whose diluted, mutated blood kept him half-crazed. If captured now, after an attack on a human, he would be put down for the safety of everybody who had never considered the word werewolf a part of their reality.

Nikki’s right arm dangled uselessly as she scraped herself off the wall to hurl herself at the beast a second time. She rammed him again with her body curled up, succeeding in beating the air from his lungs. At the same time, though, the monster shoved her a good one, right back into the brick wall.

Feeling the pain of her shoulder separating from the socket, stars floated through Nikki’s vision. She vowed to remain upright, but couldn’t.

Her legs wobbled, buckled. She started to slide. She heard the roar of the rogue wolf, thought perhaps now was a good time for her to get up, run, regroup, and watched, as if in slowed motion, as that werewolf suddenly crumpled to its knees.

She caught a whiff of a newcomer, sensed a presence. With a hand on the wall, Nikki tried to raise herself. She stopped, looked up, saw him.

Not a wolf, she noted at first with relief.

It was a man who stood beside her in the shadows. A half-naked one, shirtless, shoeless, with sandy-brown hair and a rugged outline.

His hands held the dart gun he’d used on the big sucker falling on his face beside her. The same gun that this man now slowly raised to aim at her.

“For your own good,” she heard him say in a deep, rich tone before her good shoulder exploded in flames and her world went black.

A flagrant breach of contract, Jonathan told himself as he stared down at the source of his recent illicit dreams.

In the human shape he’d assumed in order to handle the dart gun, he kneeled down beside the hunter, searched her face for signs that she might have been given something to keep her immune from the same tranquilizer she doled out.

He decided she was out cold.

“Better this way. Really,” he mumbled, knowing he had to get her, and himself, out of there, and that there was no time to lose.

He took his wadded-up shirt from the waistband where he’d stuffed it, tore off a sleeve as if it were paper and tied it around her bloody arm as a makeshift bandage. Swiftly, easily, he lifted the hunter up off the sidewalk and into his arms. She might have been tall, but she was light. And she was too inexperienced to be in this area of the city alone.

“You should have known better,” he chastised, stepping into the moonlight, sputtering as his second shape-shift that night began. “So should I.”

Fully morphed and immensely strong, he careened around a dark corner, watching his step with regard to the possibility of people using the street as their own personal lover’s lane. His steps faltered when a beat patrol cop appeared in the distance, in a most untimely fashion, pushing the scent of ironed uniform and aftershave Jonathan’s way.

Nothing to do but improvise.

He set the hunter on her feet, pressed her up against a wall well beneath an overhanging art-deco-meets-colonial-Virginia roofline, and held her upright with his buzzing body tight up against hers.

Lover’s lane, it is.

And what an odd couple they were, he added to himself, beginning the equally painful reverse shift back to his human form with the muted sounds of his ligaments, bones and sinew straining to suck themselves in and then back together. Her in black leather. Himself, shift completed in the nick of time to leave him panting from the effort of changing shape so many times in a short period—and thanking God, for once, for Miami’s anything goes attitude.

Thing was, though, he was now tucked up close to his dream woman at last. Way too close. Her lightly floral, slightly musky scent filled every breath he took. Heady, sexy stuff.

Heck with oath-breaking and interfering with her tag, this was a major mistake by comparison.

“The mother of all mistakes.”

Cop close by or not, this hunter’s presence sent a thrill through him. The tight leather vest she wore reined in breasts that were round, high and sort of soft against his bare chest. Her hips—the ones he’d ground himself to for that nosy cop’s benefit—were sharp boned in front, yet deliciously rounded on the sides.

Jonathan wanted to cup her derriere with his hands so that he could see for sure about those curves, and didn’t dare. He was already breathing with difficulty. For reasons other than his last transformation, his heart was racing.

He was hard in all the wrong places.

To make matters worse, this hunter had indeed been given an antidote to the tranquilizer for just such emergencies as this one, and was already starting to come around. Her eyes sluggishly opened. Foggy at first, those eyes rapidly cleared to a bright, piercing, aquamarine blue.

Her lips, full and way too succulent, parted. Her pink tongue stroked their dryness, riveting his gaze there, before disappearing as she tried to speak past the realization of her present mishap.

“What the—” she began rhetorically in a voice that was just as sexy as he had imagined. Like the rustle and sigh of an expensive party dress slipping from the shoulders of a woman in need.

He, on the other hand, was speechless, and would have laughed if his mind hadn’t already been shouting for him to get away from her, pronto. She was affecting him way too much. The situation was extreme in scope.

Plus, he couldn’t afford to let her speak. If she screamed, shouted, raised her voice at all, the meandering cop would be on them like bugs on pastry.

“Don’t,” he whispered to her with the force of a command. “Cop at eleven o’clock. Stay still.”

Her face, oval, smooth-skinned, tightened. She didn’t take orders well.

“You shot me,” she charged.

“For your—” he began.

“Bullshit,” she said, cutting him off. “If there’s a cop, he’ll help me.”

“I thought I just helped you,” Jonathan countered.

She squirmed, got nowhere. Hunters were stronger than normal humans and had a lot more nerve, but this one he leaned up against had been injured, drugged and surprised. He was willing to bet that surprise was the problem upsetting her the most.

“If I hadn’t dropped that big guy back there,” he said, “you’d be in shreds.”

“What do you know about…” She paused without finishing that sentence, tilted her head, said, “Shit. You’re one of them.”

Her blue eyes widened, now seeming to take up most of the upper portion of her face, but they showed no fear.

“No,” he corrected, fisting his hands so that they absolutely would not roam over her anatomy. “Not one of them.”

“Liar!”

He raised an eyebrow and let that one alone.

“Those two tags will be registered and picked up any second,” she said, turning her head to check out the cop’s presence. Then her eyes narrowed, found Jonathan’s. “Unless that’s what you’re attempting to keep me from.”

“I don’t think finding drugged werewolves lying curbside would be good for anybody. Especially true for that cop.”

“Great. A monster and a traitor to his own kind has some sense. How unique,” she snapped. Still, her eyes held to his in a way that shuddered through Jonathan, keeping him hard and hungering for what he at last had within his grasp. The fact that he thought he’d seen a flash of recognition in those eyes of hers was only his imagination working overtime.

The woman he held on to was placing blame, uncertain of what was happening to her. Chances were she had never been found out, confronted or pressed up against one of those same creatures she sought. Creatures she obviously didn’t consider humanlike. When a similar shudder rippled through her, forcing her hips tighter against his, she gasped in frustration. Her mouth remained open, as if she’d shout after all, though she did no such thing.

Just in case she might change her mind, Jonathan took hold of her right arm above the elbow and yanked hard. There was a terrible noise as her dislocated shoulder snapped back into place. The hunter stifled a groan, closed her eyes. Beads of moisture appeared on her forehead, but she didn’t cry out.

Admiring her for that, Jonathan waited for her eyes to reopen. When they did, she tore her gaze from his, breaking the strangely intense connection that neither of them could ignore completely, one that Jonathan experienced as a jolt of physical pain much like the aftermath of a bad shape-shift.

Immediately, he wanted her attention back. He wanted those beautiful blue eyes of hers on him. Was this craving of his a symptom of the off-kilter relationship between hunters and Weres? he wondered. Should he devour her just for the heck of it, as he wanted so badly to do, and face the consequences later?

What were those consequences, anyway? He was a man most of the time. Out of the moonlight, their body parts would match up perfectly.

The cop was closer now. A good excuse for an excuse.

“Kiss me,” Jonathan said.

The hunter looked stunned by the request, said, “Bite yourself.”

“Miami’s finest is right on top of us.”

“I’d rather kiss him.”

“Then what? Show him the wolves and have him hold your hand until your team arrives?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“What would you know? You’re a monster.”

“You’re a little more than human, yourself, I might point out.”

Jonathan could taste the cop’s nearness. The hunter probably could, too. She grimaced, hissed, “Go to hell, fur ball.”

“Sorry,” he said, brushing her tight mouth with his own, fending off the overwhelming desire for more that came with the act. “The hell thing? Been there.”

He kissed her before she had a chance to voice the retort that parted her lips. He kissed her, touching the so-called enemy with his mouth, and his plan to let her go went spiraling into the distance, forgotten.

Longing streaked through him with g-force, leaving him feverish, unbalanced, desirous of more of the same. The hunter’s mouth was warm, moist. She tasted slightly of the chemicals in that dart gun and a little bit like champagne. Her body was rigid against his, yet when his tongue met with hers, urging hers to dance along, a groan vibrated up through her throat and into him.

Frustration and anger rode that groan, and also something rebellious, and for Jonathan, totally addicting. In discovering that, the hell they had so loosely been tossing around came down to strike them both.

Jonathan felt the strike sear through him, heard its sizzle, and knew that she did, as well. After that, the kiss changed. Inexplicably, the hunter’s mouth softened, became malleable, then demanding. She sucked his lips between hers, nipped at him, met his ardor—allowing him in, taking an equal part in this forbidden act.

Her body strained against his, taunting, teasing, as only a woman’s body knew how to do.

Not only a hunter, but a temptress.

Jonathan’s own body, keyed up and feverish from a self-imposed, monklike recent chapter in his life, responded willingly to her unexpected show of passion. He knew he should distance himself from her for all sorts of good reasons. Important reasons. But being near her blurred the lines. Kissing her felt special, unique, right.

The word devour came back to haunt him. The reddish haze he’d felt earlier floated in and around them as if it were a red flag being waved in front of a bull.

Jonathan slid his mouth off her mouth, ran his lips along her cheek, then down her jaw, angling toward the hollow of her throat. He breathed in her scent, closed his eyes, then went suddenly still.

“Hey, you two. Move along,” a voice suggested none-too-politely. “This isn’t a red-light district!”

The cop was right beside them. For a second, Jonathan thought seriously about scaring the pants off the guy so that he could further explore what he’d found in this woman. However, the downed rogue wolves were lying on the pavement not too far away. A black van would arrive in seconds to scoop them up and take his hunter back.

Duty calls, damn it.

Still—Would his hunter fall if he were to let her go now? he wondered. She might not be strong enough, with her injuries and the effects of the dart, to stand on her own two feet.

She also might be melting into her after-a-tag bliss, and anybody, werewolf notwithstanding, would have done it for her in a bit of mouth-to-mouth exploration.

But he had gotten something from this closeness that she didn’t know about. Not yet, at any rate. Something a genetically enhanced wolf like himself could not possibly have missed.

Standing there, and knowing this hunter probably didn’t have too many vulnerable bones in her body in order to be what she was, Jonathan experienced the tug of an overwhelming desire to protect her, all the same. Although Fate might have lent him a hand, in this case, he wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t want to see her hurting. In spite of the crazy twists and turns in their respective stories, he wanted to help her, gain her trust. The first step in that direction was to keep her secrets from the cop.

Keeping the vibrating growl that resonated deep inside of his chest to himself, Jonathan broke off the heady contact to face the cop invading his space. He pasted on what had to be a really bad semblance of a grin.

“All right, Officer. We were just going,” he said.

“Yeah, looks that way,” the cop replied smartly. “With you shirtless, and all.”

“Just came from a ball game. Needed to air out and get in some downtime.”

“Not on my beat. I’ll tell you that right now.”

The cop stuck his head over Jonathan’s broad shoulder, looked the hunter in the face. “You hear me, miss?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied, the light in her eyes brightening now that she was able to take a breath.

Jonathan acknowledged the sarcasm in her tone and the way she had once again stiffened for a fight. The cop, however, was another breed altogether. Turning toward the boulevard he ambled away, leaving the hunter trapped in the circle of Jonathan’s arms for about ten more seconds. Then, injured or not, she pushed him away with strong, if shaky, arms. “You’ll pay for this,” she said.

The pain of her separation manifested in Jonathan in the form of a sting that left him breathless. Leaving her threat to echo, the hunter ducked from beneath his grasp, winced as she tried to swing her right arm, and cradling that arm with her other hand, took off at a run.

Jonathan’s grin dissolved as soon as she had turned her back. It seemed she hadn’t been kidding about him paying for the interference.

Not all of the pain he’d experienced in being torn from her had been the result of some sort of disconnected soulful bond, after all.

She’d given him a hand job. On their first date.

He glanced down to see the tail end of the dart she’d jammed into him protruding from his right hip.

CHAPTER THREE

“Nice catch. We’ll stake out the alley again tomorrow and every other night those bastards will be prowling. Now, let’s have a look at that arm,” one of her partners said as Nikki hopped into the waiting van.

“It’s nothing,” she told him irritably.

“You’re bleeding.”

Nikki looked the man in the face and repeated soberly, “It’s nothing.”

To her relief, he backed off, moving to tend to the two drugged werewolves, now in restraints. His compliance was appreciated, since she was actually messed up pretty badly and needed time to assimilate what had just happened.

Fact was, she was afraid of just how badly this might go down for her. Her arm and shoulder hurt beyond belief. She’d been sliced open good, and the Lycan virus, if it could be transmitted by claws, had plenty of time to reach her bloodstream.

Supposedly it took a savage bite to pass on that virus. But the wolf’s claws had dug in, creating gouges that had to be more than two inches deep. She’d have to look beneath the bandage.

With a brief glance, she saw that the badly blood-soaked bandage was actually a piece of a white shirt. Soft, ruined, silky white cotton.

Chewing on her lower lip, Nikki mumbled her favorite cussword and fought off an onslaught of chills. If there was a way to land in Wolf City without a bite, this bloody wound would be it. And wouldn’t that be swell? A hunter gone over to the nasty-bastard dark side? Ironic, even?

In the hospital surgery E.R., she had to be careful about protecting herself from contracting the AIDS virus. Now she had to worry about this?

To make matters worse, she noted with a flutter in her stomach, there was a tear in her vest from the monster’s blunted teeth. Probing that spot with her fingers, she discovered he’d broken the skin. Not a deep puncture, thankfully.

Feeling light-headed, Nikki leaned back. She should have been high as a kite by now and needing a private orgy to free her system of all its excess energy. But she didn’t feel like that, so something was wrong. Very wrong.

The others were talking, riding the high of pheromones in celebration of the victory, but Nikki felt ill. She also felt a strong sideways pull on her insides, accompanied by a creeping numbness settling over her soul.

He had done this to her. Distracted her. Messed with her. Now the handsome freak with the broad chest and the gravelly voice, who was actually a player in the most secretive part of her assignment, one these other hunters knew nothing about, was pulling her back toward the street. His actions in helping her, in fixing her shoulder and tying up her injured arm, weren’t in any way usual werewolf behavior, or part of the plan. She hadn’t expected kindness from him. Why had he done those things?

Now, besides being gouged, she was going to be sorry she hadn’t acted according to her instructions with regards to him. She’d be sorry she hadn’t gotten what she’d needed, and that she had left that green-eyed werewolf standing.

As for the numbness creeping over her? No doubt it was due to the fact that this Were, with his disconcerting gaze, his responsive body parts and expensive, silky shirts, had been right. She could very easily have been killed. Killed outright, instead of having to fear what might or might not come next.

He’d had his hands on her, gotten close, dared to kiss her—and instead of doing her job, she had allowed it—an act that now rendered her useless in the field and a danger to the other hunters. A liability. One of them had gotten to her.

How could she tell her handlers what really went on out there? What would they do if they knew she’d been bitten by the wrong wolf, and that all of her training had been wasted?

Worse than anything, she realized with horror, was that in her numbness, hiding behind it, trembling within it, lay the further torment that she had kissed this werewolf back. Heaven forgive her, she had enjoyed it.

She’d have to go back. Fix this. There was no other way to accomplish her task, now that she had probably been infected by a rogue Were. The future of the hunters depended on her next move.

Inhaling the van’s sour air, ignoring the pulse of pain in her wounded limb, Nikki picked up an extra dart gun with her left hand, tapped on the wall of the van and glanced out of the rear window.

Jonathan staggered several steps before noticing the intensifying wolf scent. The deserted street virtually reeked of the presence of unwashed, hyped-up rogues. It reeked of crazed, misplaced energy being channeled in a specific direction. Revenge. Over all of that remained the faint feminine scent of that hunter. As well as the thing that lay beneath it.

He spun back, hurled himself against the wall and waited for his senses to clear. That hunter wasn’t the only one who took precautions against dart guns. He’d been at this game much longer, not to mention his nearly miraculous healing powers.

“Little heathen,” he whispered, rubbing his hip.

Although his heart was racing, he was already coming around. His inner beast, angry with the hunter and at the same time hungering for her, pushed claws outward through his fingernails as if readying for another tussle.

Jonathan craned his neck to see past the alley entrance, aided by another Lycan perk of having twenty-twenty vision in the dark. The hair at the nape of his neck bristled, a signal that something was decidedly off. That red haze in the air lingered, somehow tied to her scent.

His beast pummeled at his insides, urging him to run. “No,” he said adamantly. “Not yet.”

The black van had screeched to a halt. He had watched the doors open and the hunters grab the downed rogues. He had waited until the woman he had touched had climbed inside, figuring at first that she’d be safe there, among her own kind.

She hadn’t sent her companions after him.

But then, he had a brain that wasn’t so hyped that he couldn’t connect the dots. The blood in his veins carried an ancient form of the Lycan virus, pure and untainted. That blood allowed him all sorts of insights. And the fact was…

He knew a werewolf when he kissed one.

“Ah, hell!” he said with a hand to the wall. Either she had already been infected, or—

He didn’t want to reason that far. There were still rogues in this alley without a brain cell to share between them. That’s what initiation to the wolf clan by means of a bite sometimes did—turned weak-minded men into weak-minded monsters.

The hunters had been right in seeking this pack, the remnants of a psychotic Cuban alpha’s group. The hunter, his hunter, would have no idea that her objective in getting to that pack was shared by not only Jonathan himself, but every other Were in Miami with concern for their own well-being. The ultimate plan was to rid the city of the lunatics threatening to expose the presence of a culture within a culture that had been around since before biblical times, some of that culture strong enough, intelligent enough and keen enough to try to fit in with the fully human population.

There were too few hunters to make a dent—which was the reason his organization, with the loosely accommodating acronym of W.O.L.F. had jumped in anonymously to help fill in the gaps. Weres Overseeing Lycan Forces. Just another attempt at keeping the human and law-abiding Were populations safe—from each other.

So, had his hunter been infected by one of the bad guys bent on creating more monsters like itself?

“Not so far apart as you might imagine,” he said aloud to her, his soft-lipped hunter, with double meaning, as he skirted the moonlight, heading for the taillights of the idling black van.

What would her own team do to her when they figured out what she was to become? How long did she have until it became clear?

When it did, her own side would be after her. She’d be squeezed between two opposing forces. A sitting duck, in everybody’s sights.

He could feel her inside of that shiny metal cocoon, just as he was able to sense the rogues burrowed somewhere underground and now heading toward the alley.

He knew that she was directing her thoughts his way. It was as if by kissing her, parts of each of them had been transferred to the other, in the manner of a strange contagion.

Of course, it was a contagion. The Lycan virus in all its ball-busting glory.

He should have been glad, greedy bastard that he was, for what was to come. This hunter—so like a shot of pure oxygen to someone struggling for a breath; like a sparkling rainbow, with the promise of a pot of gold between those long, lanky legs—would need his help. Soon.

How badly he had wanted to slide a finger into the damp space between those legs of hers to discover the wet, waiting, gold. How incessantly he had dreamed of peeling that leather off of her, once piece at a time, and rubbing himself against all that soft, smooth human skin.

“Now what? What do I do with this?” he shouted, realizing as the sound boomeranged back to him that sex was only a small part of his desire for her, now that she’d become vulnerable.

As her van pulled away from the curb, Jonathan readied himself to step into the light, preparing to keep the rogues from emerging, preparing for what might happen inside of that van when they threw his hunter out. As if he was, what? Her wolf in shining armor?

Anxiously, he watched the van move off down the street, allowing himself to feel some relief for about two short breaths before his mind registered that someone was standing on the curb in the van’s vacated space.

Hellfire and damnation. It was her.

Was she nuts?

His hunter stood there, head lifted, legs apart, her body almost blending with the night beyond the reach of the far-off streetlamp. With her bandaged arm hanging at her side and her eyes wide, she looked like Catwoman from the comics and, admittedly, pretty darned impressive.

But her face was parchment-white. Her ponytail had been loosened, thanks to his own antics, so that a few shoulder-length tendrils, the color of a starless night, fell across the contours of her face. Those loose strands, coupled with her colorlessness, made her seem even more vulnerable somehow, despite that sly move of jabbing him with the dart.

Jonathan’s gaze traveled downward, taken there by a piece of precognition, to find that another dart gun dangled from her fingers. He wondered if she was as good left-handed, since she usually fought with her right.

She faced him, full-on, alone. As if she had expected him to wait. As if she had read his thoughts.

He silently applauded her guts.

“Truly,” he said to her, “you are not going by the book.”

“Oh,” she replied, her eyes blazing, “I think I’m way beyond that now, don’t you?”

Actually, he was thinking that very same thing.

“Why would you return when the danger has tripled?” he asked her. “You have your sample of who’s in this alley and can bring your friends back later to try to deal with it.”

“Try?” She highlighted that word.

“It might be worse than you think,” Jonathan warned. Again with the double meaning.

“How much worse?” she asked.

“Have you heard the name Chavez?”

She winced, her expression telling him she had.

“These guys are part of that pack. You need to get out of here,” he warned.

She seemed steady enough, despite her pallor. The red haze he’d noticed was draped around her shoulders like a supernatural shawl. A mantle of Otherness.

The virus was already flooding her cells.

“You need to get away now,” he added soberly.

“Can’t,” she said.

“Don’t be an idiot. Call the van back.”

She shook her head.

“Why?” he asked, perplexed.

“I’ve come for you.”

Jonathan experienced another jolt as he warily checked out the dart gun in her hand, still pointed down at the pavement.

“You want to take me, too? My, aren’t we greedy.”

“It’s too late to be greedy,” she said, then added in a lowered tone, “Why are you still here? Why did you stay?”

“I’m just a concerned citizen,” Jonathan replied.

“Like hell. Who do you think you are?”

“Someone who knows what you are, what you do, and considers it a good thing.”

He hated all those hidden meanings. Surely she must know by now what was swimming in her veins.

“You’re a werewolf. I can smell you from here,” she said.

“Is that a compliment?”

Her gun inched upward, but only slightly. Not a fan of cynicism, then, eh? Jonathan thought. God, this was tough. It was impossible for him to come right out and hand her a life sentence if she couldn’t recognize it herself.

“I can’t go with you, if that’s what you hope to accomplish,” he said, alluding to the vanished van. “Sorry.”

“Why is that?” Her voice sounded noticeably shakier.

“Job to do,” Jonathan replied.

“What would that job be? Making sure people like me can’t do our work, take care of business?”

“By ‘people like you,’ you mean hunters. And I believe you just found a hole and bagged two of the mindless wolves in a malicious pack. What other business did you have in mind?”

The words going unsaid lay heavy on the humid, breezeless air, but Jonathan upheld his end of the weighty silence.

She wasn’t telling him something important.

“You aren’t part of that pack,” she charged. “Neither are you innocent.”

“Now,” he said, “I’m insulted. And after helping you out of a jam.” He hated his tone, yet was unable to change it. He wasn’t being greedy at all, at the moment. What he felt for this woman bordered on empathy, in part, though the other feelings—lust, interest, the desire for closeness and to see her naked—were all there, lined up and waiting for whatever her next move might be.

“Which brings up the question of why you helped me,” she said, her words stumbling.

“Maybe I just appreciate your suit, and the way you look in it.”

Okay, that wasn’t at all what he’d wanted to say, but he couldn’t really tell her his own secrets or let on about the organization he worked for when he had been sworn to secrecy.

“And maybe your attempt at being a wolf of another sort doesn’t suit you,” she tossed back, seemingly undaunted, on the surface. Nevertheless, Jonathan could read her. She was upset, hurting, and covering all that with anger. Fact was, she’d been shaken to her core.

“Perhaps,” she continued, “you’re stalling so your buddies can gang up and take a hunter down. What a coup for a pack of freaks.” There was more. “Maybe that’s why you touched me.”

Jonathan lifted both of his hands in the air in a gesture of peace. “Nope. I’m fairly sure my plan was to do the exact opposite, and in the meantime save your leather-clad behind.”

He was pushing the limits here of decency, he knew, but if anger replaced her hurt, she might regain her slipping equilibrium in a place too dangerous to be without it.

Wincing on the inside, he added, “I didn’t expect a thank-you, but the gun is going a little overboard.”

She blanched visibly, swayed on her feet. “You kissed me!” she snapped.

“Couldn’t be helped. I had to get you away from this alley so the monsters beneath it couldn’t scent you here. By getting close to you, my own scent would cover some of yours. So, are you going to shoot me for that? Get even for the kiss? What?”

“Make one move in my direction and I will do just that,” she promised.

More than likely, she meant what she said, Jonathan decided. But time was wasting. She was standing in the street, in the moonlight. Liquid silver melted over her contours like wax over a mold, darkening half of her ashen face with shadows.

He fended off a growl, wanting to go to her, hold her, whisper things to ease her mind. And that was impossible. If she started her change, here, now—an event that could easily happen—she’d despise him for being part of it.

He didn’t see any way to win this.

“We can’t just stand here waiting for the rest of those maniacs to come out,” he logically pointed out. “I’ll consider the kiss thanks enough for my help.” He glanced down the street. “Your van truly can’t have gotten far.”

Her face was just too serious. Too smooth. Too sober. She was white enough now to be ghostly. Studying her, a blast of sudden insight hit Jonathan like a stray bolt of lightning. He got it, got her, and what she was planning to do.

Holy hell! A shiver rocked him with that realization.

She had returned either to take him down for compromising her status as a hunter, or, barring her ability to do that, to be distracted by him until that ugly pack of rogues arrived.

The dart gun was, if not for him, for herself. If she couldn’t take him down, she would use the gun on herself to numb the pain of being torn apart by savage teeth. A savaging she would welcome, for screwing up.

She knew what had happened to her. Either that, or she was stalling to await further enlightenment.

Both options sucked.

A few minutes ago, it was to have been him or her. Things had changed. She was out of options and knew it. Maybe she had seen this in his expression, comprehended his play on words.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he told her, taking a step, hoping to keep her together. “I won’t be responsible for anything except that kiss, a kiss no one needs to know about and that will remain our secret.”

She smiled sadly. “Yeah,” she said. “Trust a werewolf. The lessons did mention plenty about that.”

“Did those lessons also note that some of us—a lot of us, actually—are on your side?”

“What side would that be?”

“Keeping Miami safe.”

“Not that I recall.”

“Pity you hunters don’t have all the facts, then,” Jonathan said with a second step toward her. “However, if it’s either to be taking me or destroying yourself and all you stand for, then by all means take me. You don’t even have to waste a dart because I’ll surrender.”

A third step meant being bathed in moonlight. Jonathan took that step, needing to shift to manage the wolves approaching, no matter what she might make of it.

Lowering his arms, he continued to hold her gaze—that brilliant blue gaze that mirrored the moon’s directness. He would show her there was nothing to fear, except the strangeness of the term Other.

The sound of his ligaments rolling over bone followed the cracking of those bones as they formed new alignments. His flesh began to stretch like rubber. A moment of dead silence followed as his heart temporarily stopped. The man lost the beat, while the beast gained his.

Jonathan roared. Standing tall in his new outline, he flexed his massive shoulders, felt the pressure of jeans that were now constricting blood flow but necessary within city limits, and stared down his long, brown, fur-covered muzzle.

With a great paw edged with five gleaming claws, he swiped at his chest, drawing a faint trace of blood. Then he moved forward slowly, waiting for the sting of the dart she’d try to use to take him down.

He willed her to shoot if it would save her from her shame and make her trust him. Neither shame nor blame belonged to this situation or pinned to her.

He continued to think along those terms as she raised the gun.

CHAPTER FOUR

Nikki had never heard of a werewolf sacrificing himself for the greater good. Werewolves, on the whole, were wild, moon-crazed creatures in need of culling. She certainly had never encountered anyone, werewolf or otherwise, willing to do something like this for her. Give himself up.

She did not fire the gun. She stayed frozen, watching the first transformation from man to wolf she’d ever seen take place.

The shift was fascinating. A grotesque miracle. She felt sick to her stomach, wondering if this is what she’d have to look forward to if the monsters didn’t get her first.

The man, so handsome before, she had to admit now since she was being honest with herself, had grown taller, wider. His face had lengthened to resemble something of a wolf’s muzzle, while clearly not going for exact. His flesh went from tan to red to black with nearly subliminal speed before settling on brown, the same color as his long, swinging hair.

Fur quickly sprouted from his pores, though not from all of them. His bare arms were covered, as was his chest and throat. Some fur covered his chilling-featured face, though not much more than a bearded man with pretty dense follicles. His previously ear-length brown hair now brushed his shoulders, not coarse, but smooth, shiny and looking almost as silky as his shirt, still tied to her arm.

She felt absurdly turned on. Wanting to touch that hair, feeling as though she’d gone over the deep end of sanity, Nikki closed her eyes, swallowed.

“I had no idea,” she whispered, waiting for him to strike.

Nothing happened. The Were didn’t attack or knock her to the ground. He didn’t touch her in any threatening way. Not in any way at all. She opened her eyes to find them separated by several inches. She had to look up to find his eyes, which were very like a human’s and still studying her intently. She could have sworn she saw that same gleam of intelligence in those eyes that had captured her attention earlier.

“All right.” She tripped over the words. “Thank you for helping.”

The beast nodded in understanding. Did he smile, too, as he waved a hand toward the streetlight, then immediately put more urgency into the gesture?

“I can feel them in there,” she said, looking to the alley. “They’re angry and assembled at last.”

The brown werewolf repeated his gesture, a universal signal of approaching danger and the direction to get out of the area, quickly.

“Am I to believe you were telling the truth about differences and goals?” she asked him, uncertainly.

A great hand closed around her own. She felt the sharpness of his claws on her bare wrist. But the van reappeared in that instant, heading toward them, causing her wolf to stall.

He’d been trying to help her again. Suddenly, Nikki wasn’t sure about anything, especially her special task, the one for which she had been born, and for which she had been chosen. If this wolf fought the dregs of his own kind, he had to remain at large. The other hunters wouldn’t fathom how important that was.

Looking from the van to the alley to the brown wolf beside her, she said to him, “Go. Go now.”

When his eyes found hers, her stomach looped uncomfortably. The strange attraction to him nearly swallowed her up.

“I didn’t call them back,” she said. “I didn’t plan this. It’s in their blood to question.”

She shoved the big wolf away from the streetlight with all her might, breathless with the effort. “It’s in their blood the same way the virus is in yours.”

The damned werewolf didn’t budge.

“You want to help me,” she said in exasperation. “Well, do what I’m asking. Save yourself. If your objectives are the same as mine, and that’s a remnant of Chavez’s pack in there, we need all the help we can get, from whatever direction it comes.”

He nodded reluctantly. Nikki nearly collapsed with relief when he took off. Again, she raised the gun. As the van swung to the curb beside her, Nikki got off a shot. Purposefully wide, and to the right.

“Damn!” she shouted as two other hunters leaped from the van’s open door. “I’m decent left-handed, but not good enough to tag a runner. There are more wolves coming. We’ll need to plug up the hole in this alley.”

Nikki joined the other hunters to form a dangerous semicircle crowning the edge of the alley. When the first of the five stinking, frothy-mouthed monsters arrived, she hit two of them dead-on between their massive collarbones with a rapid fire and reload, despite her injuries and previous excuses.

“Least I can do,” she told herself, aloud. “Before…”

Before all hell breaks loose.

Jonathan skidded to a stop just past that same green-and-white awning, whirled and took in the scene. Calculating the odds—three hunters versus five mad Weres in beast form, with two of those werewolves already down—he figured his hunter might be okay for the time being. But she didn’t have long.

He kept his sights on her, wondered what she’d do after this sweep had been taken care of, and if she’d make it. If she started the changes now, would she follow up with her plan to do harm to herself for allowing a werewolf to touch her? Would she do herself in for allowing herself to get a dose of the same virus she fought against?

Something tickled Jonathan’s mind.

Two of the hunters, the males, were engaged in dealing with the remaining three rogues. His hunter, however, had turned to face him. From deep inside of her, what seemed like an answering call came. Not a growl or howl. Nothing so overt. Her answer was in the form of a cry of anger against the Fates.

“Damned, f-ing monsters!” she shouted, dropping her gun.

Sure that her comrades were taking care of business and out of danger, she tossed one more lengthy, almost desperate glance in Jonathan’s direction, then backed away until she blended into the night.

She knew, all right. She’d jumped species, and must be sensing the first signs of infection. She knew she’d been Turned, and that she carried a terrible strain of the Lycan virus.

Normally, an unwilling inductee into the wolf clan wouldn’t have known about the infection until the next month’s full moon. But this hunter’s bad luck had seen her infected during a full moon phase. What this amounted to was a catheter of virus straight to her heart.

There would be no reprieve for this hunter, who already knew the score. She’d process her body’s invasion early, quickly. Tonight.

That’s what he had scented, and was the source of the red haze surrounding her like an aura. It was a damned aura. With no month’s reprieve, she would be hit doubly hard, possibly minutes from now. If she started those changes near the other hunters, odds were that she wouldn’t make it out of the dark.

The hunter was about to become something she despised. Would she have the skill set to deal with that, if she survived?

Feeling for her, lusting for the thing she’d become if those same damned Fates were kind enough to see her through the ordeal, Jonathan started after her before the sound of her gun hitting the ground had stopped clattering.

His hunter was fast, but the fire of his muscles proved superior. Jonathan caught up with her a block later.

Maintaining no illusions that she would accept his help, he growled loudly to her from several paces behind, and was surprised when she stopped.

“I have to get to the hospital,” she said over one rigid shoulder. “I’ll get a transfusion. I’m a nurse. I can set it up myself, so that no one knows. Tell me this will help.”

Jonathan couldn’t tell her that, even if he could have spoken. The Lycan virus was already saturating her. She was losing her human scent, and shaking badly. Her insides had to be roiling, the wolf parts beginning their takeover.

“Oh, I forgot,” she said in his silence, her tone sharp with anger. “You can’t talk. How bloody inconvenient.”

A second growl bubbled up, which Jonathan stifled. He searched the area for cover—another awning, another alley, any place he could shift back.

“Is it too late?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do to dilute the virus further, until I have time to think?”

Surprised by the question, Jonathan shook his head. No. He watched her clench her fists. She was trembling so hard, she could barely stand. Her body would be feverish at this point, and attempting to cool itself down with wave after wave of chills.

“You’re a genetic Were,” she said. “You have the mark.”

Jonathan turned his furred upper arm to show her the quarter-sized round indentation of shiny scar tissue that was, for werewolves, a badge of honor. The mark of werewolf royalty.

“Are you truly so different from those who don’t have the mark that you’d want to see them destroyed?”

Yes. He nodded. Different.

“I didn’t know I’d be—” she began but didn’t finish her sentence, her voice completely bereft of its edge. “Or that you would—” She coughed, as though her words had stuck in her throat, then tried again. “The hospital is three blocks away. As I see it, that’s the only option I have to gain the time to set things straight. To put my affairs in order.”

She had to know she was currently being confronted with the fight of her life, then. She was a nurse as well as a hunter, and would realize the necessary trauma of a body going through its first shape-shift, and also that ninety percent of Weres never made it past that first attempt. The so-called Blackout. A torturous survival of the fittest agenda originally designed to insure against pollution of the species. Termed Blackout because so much pain accompanied the body’s rewiring from human to wolf, that the person lost consciousness. Most often for good.

But the diluted strains of the virus in the heathens running rampant in the city were proof that something else had changed. A diluting of the blood obviously also meant a perversion of the rewiring phase. A kind of reverse evolution. In the old days, those bastard hybrids in the alley never would have seen the light of the moon.

And in this hunter’s favor, working in a surgery E.R., she’ll be familiar with pain.

With the dose of blood she received, it was anything goes. He had to get her out of the moonlight in order to slow the spread of the virus. He needed lag time to prepare her. He couldn’t take her to the wolf sanctuary for help. There wasn’t time, and she was, after all, a hunter. It truly was too damn late for that useless transfusion.

Only one chance remained, as Jonathan saw it. If that thing worked, she might survive, thrive. While he probably would be ousted from his organization.

He had to bite her.

He had to sink his teeth into her with hopes that his blood—strong, pure and as old as the ages—would overthrow the pollution and help her retain her balance.

And if she did make it through, what reason would he use again to justify the action? What would he tell her when she looked into his eyes with those big, bright blues?

Oh, yeah. It was for her own good.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Let me be.” Nikki faced the wolf, unsure of what she saw in his gaze. Recognition, maybe, of the secret mission she’d tried so diligently to hide from him? “Haven’t you done enough? You and your kind?”

Her shaking intensified. She had to grit her teeth to keep them from chattering. The buildup of pain had been expected, but not from polluted blood. If she had gotten to the actual part of the plan where the werewolf across from her had provided the bite, and she’d been infected with the purest form of the virus, she would have been right on target and back at headquarters, her mission accomplished. Instead, she’d been mauled by one of the psychopaths in that damned alley.

The result of her ineptness was that the elder hunters who had devised this mission would have to kill her when they found out she’d been tainted by the wrong blood, and therefore of no further use to their cause.

She’d screwed up, big-time.

Won’t make it to the hospital. Too late to get rid of or dull down the bad stuff.

Feel it…

Something else disturbed her as much as the kindling of internal fires. She wished that this unusual man-wolf would comfort her. The wolf whose blood she had wanted all along, from the bite she’d been expected to receive.

How could she possibly have known she wouldn’t want to hurt him when this night was over? That the apes in the alley would get the better of her? How could she possibly have foreseen that this glorious werewolf would be kind, and maybe her only salvation in a different way than had been planned? How could she have foreseen that her life would be in his hands?

Her body was shaking uncontrollably. She was aware of a gnawing need to run, chase, howl, and couple with this big, beautiful brown wolf—the same wolf she’d been sent to use.

Quite madly, her treacherous body leaned toward him, as if he might help her somehow.

She thought of her mission. How this wolf’s blood would have helped the hunters by giving them new strength. This beautiful wolf with the keen green eyes, whose pure blood would have, when mixed with the hunters’ in infinitesimal amounts, fine-tuned their senses. A blood transfer of this kind, between the species, was needed every hundred years to insure that hunters continued as a force.

Somewhere inside of her, all these years, those minute particles of wolf blood inherited from the hunter who’d had such a bite a hundred years ago, had fueled her own strengths. And also, Nikki supposed, instigated the attraction between hunters and their wolf prey. Wolf calling to wolf on some ridiculously far-off cellular level.

Ironic.

She’d been chosen as the receptacle for the transfer.

She was to have gotten this wolf to bite her. That’s what this entire night had been about. That was the plan. Damn it.

Not only had her blood been polluted, her mind had been, as well. She was attracted to this wolf. In truth, she had appreciated his beauty all along, in the months she’d been waiting for him.

Across from her, he scraped his chest again with a claw, then made another disturbing sound. Nikki’s stinging eyes roamed over the glossy brown pelt and the streamlined muscle rippling beneath. She noted how his eyes glinted.

What are you waiting for? What do you want from me now?

Would he take her down, since she’d been infected with virus from the wrong side of the tracks?

Philosophically, and too late, she wondered if all people hated and mistrusted those different from themselves. Wasn’t that the way of the world?

“Do you want to hurt me?” she asked him.

His reply was a quick, clipped growl.

“I can feel it spreading,” she said, her limbs little more than wobbling sticks.

“I taste iron,” she added. Reminiscent of sucking on a silver chain. The same chain that bound the Weres to the moon?

She felt the pull of the sky, like a tug on her hair. Felt lightning buzz across her skin. Felt sick to her stomach over being chosen for this task in the first place, though it had been her destiny.

And hell, she was talking to a werewolf. One whose gaze, when it met hers, brought on visions of straddling him in the street. Of letting herself go, stopping the fight, giving in to the inevitable. Of getting on with whatever the outcome was to be.

The question was whether this wolf across from her would help her now by finishing the deal and killing her; because if he didn’t, she’d have to do it herself.

“How long do I have?” she asked, pointing upward, noticing the twitch of her forearms. “No. There’s no need for an answer. I already know. Shit.”

Minutes.

She knew that her gaze softened and was at a loss to prevent it. “Well, it’s been fun,” she muttered drily. “The best man won.”

When the big wolf stepped forward, Nikki felt an unexpected stab of uncertainty that this was it. Her time was up.

She wasn’t ready.

Lust after the wolf, her training had taught her, so that you might see into his soul and predict his next move, but never, never span the species. Except, of course, once every hundred years, when it was expected of you, personally.

As if to distance herself from the thoughts, Nikki closed her eyes and felt her legs give out.

Jonathan rushed forward with a blurring speed to catch his hunter when she fell.

His tattered white shirtsleeve, applied to her injured arm as a bandage, stood out against the darkness like a white flag of truce. Though she wouldn’t see the metaphor.

He admired her. Both his brain and his groin ached as he held his hunter in the moonlight, knowing she had already began her slip from humanity, as she knew it.

She was in his arms. He held her tenderly, possessively. Then, they were back to the safety of the overshadowing buildings.

Her bare arms fell limply from his hold. Her head rested against his chest. Her breath came in great gasps and sputters as her body convulsed. Through the rattle of an incomplete breath, his bundle uttered words that were a play on the sarcastic chant of youth, and also a possible key to her continued future on this planet.

“Bite me,” she said.

Meaning it in a whole new way this time around.

Jonathan would have laughed at some distant time, but not this one. He was concentrating too hard to remain in the moonlight that fed his bulky form, and to keep his passion for this hunter from taking over. The things he wanted to do to her bunched his muscles—all those things he’d fantasized about.

She smelled like a wolf.

Hunter, woman and wolf. All at once.

And she had just suggested the very thing that had been on his own mind as the only option left to save her.

For lack of a better place, he took his hunter to the abandoned building his organization owned, and ducked inside. As the darkness enveloped him, Jonathan revised his shape, slowly this time, since his beast was as reluctant to set the hunter down as he was.

She felt so very good in his arms.

He laid her on a couch he’d hauled there for comfort when he watched the same alley she had staked out that night. Her eyes were closed. Pain etched her features.

“Rhetorical, or request? Biting you?” he said to her, not trusting his voice. His beast was excited, circling his insides as if he’d swallowed that entity whole.

Amazingly enough, she nodded. “I’ll be like them if you were telling the truth.”

“You’ll be like them anyway, in a manner of speaking. A bite from me won’t alter that.”

“Not like…them.” She threw his earlier words back in his face. “Like you.”

Jonathan nodded. There was a chance he could help her. A chance his own blood would overpower the diluted rogue virus.

“There would be pain,” he warned.

“What else is new?” The hunter opened her eyes. Traces of red shot through the whites. Her pupils were black. She was tiptoeing on the precipice, about to tumble over.

“You will want to fight me,” Jonathan told her. “In spite of knowing I’m trying to help.”

“Then hit me first,” she managed. “Knock me out.”

“It doesn’t work that way. You have to take part.”

“No wonder you’re savages. All this pain,” she whispered, her voice all but gone.

“It’s what you want?”

“Yes.”

“Then look into my eyes,” Jonathan directed.

She did as she was told this time, her expression cold, though her insides would be frying.

He kissed her trembling lips to still them, or so he told himself. Lightly at first, he then added more pressure, more emotion. He felt the moment she gave in to the pain and uncertainty. She was trusting him, devoid of other choices.

The connection between them was there, all right, and waiting.

In a replay of their moment against the brick wall, Jonathan dragged his mouth over her face until he reached her throat, leaving a trail of kisses as he worked his way down to her shredded upper arm. He held her down with one hand and untied her bandage with his other.

Without looking at her, he said, “Are you ready, my love?”

“Yes. Damn everything to hell and back, yes! Hurry!”

With a heave, Jonathan lifted her up again, off the couch. Ten rapid steps later, he was back out of the door.

The moon rode the sky overhead, shining with the intensity of a searchlight, throwing noirish gray shadows everywhere. Jonathan felt the familiar wetness of the moon’s allure.

Laying his hunter on the concrete steps, he stroked her hair back from her face so that the moon would have full access to every plane and angle of her fine features.

Darting his tongue along the edge of the raw groove of open flesh marring her upper arm, Jonathan hesitated at the spot that would from this night on mark her as having been turned by a genetic Were. If this worked, that is.

With bared teeth, he drew his lips back with the taste of her still clinging to them.

“See you on the other side,” he whispered to her as he began his own shift, loath to leave her as a man, yet needing this transformation in order to help her.

Fully morphed, he forcefully bit down on her arm, absorbing the fierceness of her sudden struggle—so futile against a werewolf of his size and stature—as he widened her wound.

With his pointed canines, he next tore a chunk of flesh from his own hand and held that hand over her injury. Four drops of his blood dripped into her, four little crimson splashes against the whiteness of her pallor.

The hunter screamed. Her arm gave off a hissing sound when confronted with the foreign invasion. A scent of blood filled the night, acrid, like the odor of crushed aluminum.

Then she went still.

Jonathan had seconds to think about what he’d done. His oath to his kind and his organization expressly forbade the creation of another werewolf, an act that was tantamount to playing God. But he wasn’t creating a wolf, he reminded himself; he was merely rectifying a wrong by someone else who had. He was saving a woman from the madness of that nasty pack’s unevolved gene pool.

His hunter moved again in a single convulsion so violent that her head flew backward. Jonathan tugged her close.

Against his chest, her convulsions continued, one after the other. Maybe the viruses were dueling it out inside of her, each vying for dominance. Jonathan prayed for his side to win, and that he hadn’t been too late.

She cried out as whatever was happening at her at a microscopic level fought on. Jonathan held her closer, near to the point of suffocation, his anxious arms around her, his face near hers as he waited for the biggest event to strike.

Conflicted, he howled again, the sound trapped by the closeness of the walls on the empty street around them. As if she’d been connected to that cry, and as if the sound had stolen what was left of her breath, his hunter’s chest stopped rising and falling.

No!

Jonathan loosened his hold enough to search her bleached face. He gave her a shake, not willing to face the fact that she might not have made it, in spite of his efforts.

Hunter, he sent to her demandingly. Open your eyes. Make your heart beat!

Not knowing what else to do, he bent his head, lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. He willed life back into her, his lips demanding that she respond.

The tiniest noise followed his sending, reminiscent of the creak of a swollen door swinging on rusty hinges. Another sound followed, deep in her throat, causing her lips to move.

It was a growl.

Her shoulders moved—fluidly. The crack of bones leaving their sockets followed, then came the swish of ligaments stretching. Sounds Jonathan was on intimate terms with.

He loved all that leather, but she’d be kept from assuming her new shape by the tightness of her clothes. Man! Had all of his dreams about removing them from her, layer by later, been about this?

But, he thought, staring down at her wonderingly, certainly this hadn’t been the Blackout phase. A few shakes? A convulsion or two?

The hunter in his arms was showing all the signs of having skipped over that most dreaded part of a species exchange, and that just wasn’t possible. Was it?

Her eyes opened, stared back at him, clear, blue and only mildly disturbed by pain. Jonathan knew he must have looked as stunned as he felt, and as he gazed into those eyes, a ravenous, uncontrollable hunger for this she-wolf overtook him.

He had her back in the building before she had taken a deeper breath. Out of the light. Away from the moon’s influence.

Immediately, and as if he’d thrown a switch, the hunter’s physical straining ceased. She hadn’t gotten far enough along to avoid an uneasy return. And as Jonathan saw it—and with what he had seen mirrored in her eyes out there—they had some unfinished business to attend to. Business that needed, for this one night, their man-woman forms—so she would know exactly how he felt about her and what was going to happen between them. So that he could tell her all the things he wanted to say.

Like: They would walk the planet in those humanlike, smooth-skinned forms most days of each month. Many things would remain the same, since werewolves resembled humans in so many ways, not only on the physical plane, but emotionally, as well. Once a werewolf connected, imprinted with another, that bond was for life.

He might have said this anyway, had she remained human. If she’d been completely human in the first place.

Because the word human didn’t begin to describe a being who could beat the reach of the Blackout as if nothing much had happened, and keep on breathing.

Those old legends about hunters must have left out a major detail. Possibly it was this detail that had, all along and through the centuries, connected the hunters to their prey so strongly, so sexually.

Just maybe, Jonathan reasoned with a sudden bolt of cognition, the people chosen to be hunters had been a variation on werewolves all along. They weren’t wiped out by their body’s rewiring process because they had always carried a piece of the virus within them.

Hellfire, could that be true?

Not quite human, after all?

Not as susceptible to the Blackout, as even genetic Weres were?

In that case…

Jonathan grinned warily as he pulled this hunter, this woman, this wolf, closer, and said, “Some explaining needs to be done. But I do believe that talking is sometimes highly overrated.”

♥ Uploaded by Coral ♥

CHAPTER SIX

Rolling heat lapped at Nikki as the man beside her brushed her cheek with his own. He’d taken that bite and she was alive. She had made it. Done it. Accomplished her task in a roundabout way. No thanks to herself.

New strength was already flooding her limbs, limbs she reached out to the wolf with, responding to the light in his eyes.

She would share this new blood with the other nine hunters and they would prosper because of it. Because of him, they’d be infused with a minuscule portion of a drop of pure wolf blood; enough to sharpen their senses, but not enough to turn them.

This wolf in his man’s skin gave off electric charges. The puff of his breath against her cheek smelled of night, moonlight and desire. She sensed all those things.

She heard his thoughts.

Laughing with a mixture of panic, elation and ravenous hunger, Nikki ran her hands over his shoulders—the man who wasn’t a wolf now, save in his needs.

She parted her lips for him, willed him to take the hint and closed her eyes, testing each new sensation. A touch here, then gone. A kiss on the bridge of her nose that made her dance along the outskirts of an orgasm.

Could he hear her, as well? Was he doing to her what she wanted him to do?

Now, she sent to him in the shape of an idea, without speaking the word. We’ve shared danger and blood. It’s time for the rest.

His soft chuckle filled her with unending joy as she glided her palms downward, across his chest, possessively. His mouth came close to hers, she knew, without having to look.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You used me,” he charged, his mouth as hot and humid as the air outside, his voice fluctuating as her hands dipped lower, heading for those forbidden places.

“For your own good,” she mocked.

His lips moved against hers. “You know my name.”

“Jonathan.” Even saying his name fanned her flames.

“You knew who I was, all along.”

A nip at her lower lip nearly derailed her answer.

“Yes.”

“Yet you imagine I don’t know everything?” He rested his mouth on hers, touching the corners of her lips with the tip of his tongue. “What you are and what you’ve done?”

What Nikki did know, clearly, was that this werewolf beside her was living up to his reputation of being as smart as he was good-looking. A lethal combination for a male of any species.

“Water under the bridge,” she said. “I’m like you now.”

“Are you sure?” he countered.

Quite sure, she confirmed, closing her fingers over the bulge in his jeans, hearing his sigh of pleasure.

“Then you know what comes next,” he whispered to her.

“Let me guess. Leather? Peeled off layer by layer?”

Her wolfman laughed out loud.

He’d been right about her breasts, her tautness and the extent of her physical beauty, Jonathan discovered as he kissed his way down her rib cage.

And peeling the leather off her had been every bit as tantalizing as he’d dreamed.

He had been right about something else, he knew, after shedding the rest of his clothes to stretch out on top of her. His hunter was as hot, wet and willing, as had been rumored.

He also knew a thing or two about she-wolves, things her teachers couldn’t have passed along. Like where to place his fingers, just so…

Or hell, maybe she was directing that?

Laughing, he sent to her, As I said…I know something about she-wolves.

He entered her wetness, simultaneously pressing her for a deeper kiss. A drowning kiss, all heat, tongue and surrogate sex.

A growl caught in her throat. She was as excited as he was. Her body moved beneath him sensuously, luxuriantly.

He found it hard to hold back.

How many times has she ended a hunt like this? he thought jealously as he drew himself out, pulsing, energy flashing with the need to get back inside of her blistering heat.

“Never!” she whispered into his mouth. Not like this.

Well, all right. The rest was up to him.

And she was now stronger than a woman, and much stronger than a hunter.

He plunged into her, soaked up her cry and plunged again. She rose to meet each thrust, wrapped her legs around him and called his name as she began to shake, way down deep inside.

Too quick.

He hesitated, his body shuddering, until her fingers moved like liquid fire across his back. Until her nails dug in.

Make that claws. Her claws dug in.

The knowledge of that sent Jonathan toward a new light. Not toward moon, lamp or candle, but the exquisite light radiating from the face beneath his. A face that seemed to glow from within with secret promise.

Oh yes, she was dangerous, all right. More so that he’d thought.

A throb rocked him, driving him deeper into her folds. Her sleekness massaged him, hugged him, opened for him, and Jonathan gave her everything. Every last bit of himself.

Only round one, he promised.

They cried out together, locked in a stunned embrace.

Neither of them moved for a time.

Then his temptress laughed huskily, enticingly, kicking off another round of pure, unadulterated, time-spanning bliss. Or two. Well, okay, maybe it was three. Jonathan lost count as the hours fled by, but werewolves were nothing, if not up to the task.

When the pink of a Miami dawn threw slashes of light across their worn, spent bodies, Jonathan moved at last.

His hunter stretched. She got to her feet unsteadily, and laughed again, almost proudly, he thought, listening to her inner chatter. She had finally sealed the deal. She’d had sex after a chase and…victory?

Jonathan saw it all then, all those details in her mind now open to him. Her secret, her status as the chosen one, the bite she had needed from him and the reason for that bite.

He grinned, in spite of himself, watching her don the sexy leather he’d so carefully removed.

“All you really had to do was ask,” he told her. “Nicely.”

Her fingers hesitated on her vest’s zipper.

He added, “Must you go?”

“Job to do,” she replied. “It’s important. They’ll be waiting.”

He could let her go, he decided. The imprinting process had sealed them together. Neither of them would want another as long as they both lived. She was his hunter. His woman. His wolf. Just as he was hers.

“So, he said, walking her to the door as if they were any normal couple starting a mundane workday, pulling her close for a final kiss that threatened to take them both back inside, to the floor. “Same time tomorrow?”

His hunter gave him a wide, blue-eyed, swollen-lipped, slightly crooked smile as she felt for the silky scar tissue already forming on her upper right arm.

Then she left him standing on the concrete steps. Only fifteen hours to go, she sent to him.

With everything she had to face, and all the work they both had to do to clean up the streets and the city in the ongoing war between the species…

With all the explaining he’d have to do to his organization about making a hunter not only a werewolf, but his mate…

Jonathan got hard just knowing that she was already counting the minutes until they’d meet again.

In February 2010, don’t miss RED WOLF by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom, a paranormal romance which starts her WOLF MOONS series. Then, in March 2010, the series continues with WOLF TRAP by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom. Both books have a bonus story added in—the first in-print version of Linda’s initial Nocturne Bite stories. Don’t miss these Silhouette Nocturne books!

If you liked this story by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom, discover more great werewolf romances in her Wolf Moons series, always available in eBook from Silhouette Nocturne Bites:

BLACKOUT

WOLF BAIT

Plus, look for these titles from Silhouette Nocturne in both print and eBook format:

RED WOLF (also contains BLACKOUT) – February 2010

WOLF TRAP (also contains WOLF BAIT) – March 2010

Plus, don’t miss the other spooky and sensual NOCTURNE BITES, available at www.ebooks.eharlequin.com and wherever eBooks are sold. Titles include:

Lured by Lori Devoti

His Magic Touch by Cynthia Cooke

The Bewitching Hour by Vivi Anna

The Vampire’s Desire by Alexis Morgan

Moon Shadow by Jenna Kernan

The Secret Vampire Society by Lisa Childs

Taken by the South Wind by Anna Hackett

Wind Kissed, Fire Bound by Anna Hackett

After the Kiss by Michele Hauf

Darkness of the Wolf by Bonnie Vanak

Wild, Tethered, Bound by Stephanie Draven

Time Raiders: The Seduction by Cindy Dees

Savage Dragon by Anna Hackett

Looking for more paranormal romance? The sizzling and spine-chilling books of Silhouette Nocturne are available at www.eHarlequin.com or your local bookstore.

Interested in writing for Nocturne Bites? Send your submission to NocturneBites@Harlequin.ca

ISBN: 978-1-4268-4696-0

Moon Marked

Copyright © 2010 by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

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