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“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m damn lucky to have it.”
He took in the long lines of towering hotels perched along the beach. Lights glistened on the water. Colorful umbrellas dotted the scene during the day. His place was the only remaining small, privately owned building among those multistoried stucco behemoths. A holdout. His refuge. The manager liked having a cop around.
“How much is the rent?” his companion asked, making conversation, interrupting Rafe’s communion with the darkness and the breeze. At this point in the evening he should have been paying more attention to the green lingerie, but he frowned.
Some little thing nagged at his consciousness, served to him on that wind. A new scent arrived that was hard to define with Brandi so close. It wasn’t salty ocean waves or the usual array of smells wafting in from the restaurants down the street. This was something else.
What?
Rafe’s pulse accelerated slightly as he caught and held a breath, searching for a way to reconcile the new scent with the sudden burning sensation at the back of his throat. He set down his drink and peered at the ocean, hoping to attach a name to what he couldn’t quite capture, though his unusual talent for identifying and categorizing problems was what had made him the youngest decorated detective in the Miami PD.
Not perfume, he decided. The incoming scent wasn’t floral. It couldn’t be the warning signal of a wolfed-up Were, since the moon wasn’t full tonight, and anyway, he was intimately familiar with the scents of his kind.
The way his body had automatically tensed suggested he would have to find a polite way to send the woman beside him on her way and find the source of the mysterious smell that had taken precedence over her lilac perfume. There was the slightest suggestion of danger in the other scent, and his innate sense of justice demanded he focus on tracking it down.
Mysterious scents were almost never good. More often than not, they were attached to trouble. Still, he actually would be sorry to see Brandi go when the night had been so promising. What male, human or Were, wanted to pass up such an opportunity?
He just had a bad feeling about what might be out there...and he couldn’t let it go.
* * *
Cara Kirk-Killion stared out the window of the black SUV, feeling anxious and trapped. She didn’t often leave her family’s secluded estate. She liked the freedom of open spaces, wind, trees and being alone to commune with those things...and all of that was about to end for a while. The SUV had already entered the city, which meant that she had less than ten minutes of freedom left.
She hated the promise she had made to her father to behave. It was time, he had said, for her to see more of the world...in moderation, and in carefully controlled circumstances. It wouldn’t do to turn her loose in Miami without strict supervision, she had heard the Elders say, and she understood the need for such precautions. So she was to see more of the world under the protection of one of the largest and strongest werewolf packs in Miami. Her father’s people...though they weren’t really people. They howled each time a full moon came around.
Every instinct at the moment, however, told Cara to run in the opposite direction. Seeing more of the world wasn’t necessary when deep down inside her so many worlds already existed. She hadn’t actually begun to believe she might be a freak until a week ago, when some Were Elders showed up and the plan to take her away became a reality.
That’s when the dreams began. And the lectures.
Cities were dangerous places, her father had warned, which was likely the reason her parents had hidden her and themselves in the country. Cara also got the impression that the Kirk-Killions wouldn’t have fit in anywhere else. Her family was different, and Cara hadn’t needed anyone to point that out.
Colton Killion’s body was covered with scars that no one ever spoke about, probably because his Were blood should have healed them. Her father’s hair was as white as his skin. He liked to roam in his wolfed-up shape and seldom came into the house. A pure white wolf. Lean. Strong. Fierce. Ghostly.
Her mother was neither human nor entirely wolf. Though she had been born a pure-blooded Lycan, it turned out that Rosalind Kirk also shared her blood and DNA with other types of beings. Her mother’s hair was sometimes as black as the night and at other times white. Her features had a tendency to rearrange on occasion, and her deceptively delicate body reeked of old power.
Her mother liked to disappear for hours and shape-shift when the moon was full so that she could run with the white wolf she had lived with for years. The eerie sounds Cara’s mother often made—not howls or growls, but something much more powerful—had echoed through Cara’s mind from the time she was born.
It hadn’t taken Cara long to realize that she also possessed some of her mother’s special traits, and that the Kirk-Killions might seem scary to the humans beyond their gates. Because of all that, her parents weren’t accompanying her to Miami. There were two strangers in the front seat of the SUV, and they refused to meet her inquisitive gaze.
Werewolves. Both of them. Half-breeds, in that unlike her, they had been human once. Cara smelled the old bites that had sealed their fates and inducted them into the moon’s cult a long time ago. They’d probably been warned about her being a freak of nature, and it crossed her mind that maybe she should give them a demonstration. Show her fangs. Bring out her wolf. Give them a thrill and make them turn back so that she could again plead her case for staying home.
She wasn’t actually going to do any of that. At eighteen years old, she was no longer a child. She could remain calm and follow the plan that had been made for her. She would try to behave, if only because her dreams had also pointed her this way...to Miami and what she might find there. Whom she might find there. The male who had been haunting her dreams lately and had contributed to her current state of restlessness. The guy who had destroyed whatever kind of peace she had been able to find with her unusual little family for the past few weeks.
If she happened to find the guy, she would make him pay for bothering her and piquing her interest. Then she’d go home dream-free.
The city’s glittering lights surrounded the car, but Cara stared at the back of the seat in front of her. Through the open window she caught a whiff of a salty scent that could only have been the ocean she had heard so much about. It was a lovely scent, unique, and served to scramble her sense of duty.
Suddenly, behaving herself and allowing these guards to take her someplace she didn’t really want to go just didn’t suit her at all.
So when the car slowed for the next red traffic light, Cara opened the door.
Chapter 2 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)
Standing on the sidewalk, Rafe stared at the darkest stretch of beach with his senses wide-open. The wind had changed, taking the mysterious scent with it. He listened to the waves and muted music from one of the hotels. There were no police sirens tonight, and for the moment, no noisy tourists. It was just him and the beach.
Nevertheless, his pulse continued to race as if he was about to discover something. He hoped whatever that was justified his reluctantly giving Brandi the heave-ho. She hadn’t gone without a pouty fuss.
Rafe buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his jeans. He scanned the beach, looking pretty much like anyone else who might be out for a nighttime stroll, except for the badge pinned to his belt. He hadn’t taken the time to put on his shoes.
A half-moon overhead made the wave foam look silver and the sand appear as soft as velvet. Yet all was not so calm beneath the surface. The farther he had walked from those glittering hotel lights, the more his senses nagged about something being different tonight, something he had to pay attention to. If the strange scent had reached him on his balcony, its source couldn’t be far off.
When his cell phone buzzed with a text message, Rafe cursed the interruption. Still, the number that came up on his screen was an important one. This would have taken precedence over a call from his department anytime. It was his father asking him to come home. Judge Landau seldom made such a request.
“Okay,” Rafe muttered without immediately texting back. His attention was fixed on the water, where a solitary figure had emerged from the waves.
A woman.
She stood near the sand with the water swirling at her feet. He was pretty sure she was naked. Although the idea that occurred to him was insane, Rafe ran a hand over his eyes, imagining that he could be looking at a mermaid.
Of course, there was nothing strange about someone taking a nighttime swim, so he should just turn around and head home. But the feeling of stumbling onto the mystery that had called him here had gotten stronger, along with that unidentified scent.
Using the special abilities that allowed all Weres to see in the dark with more precision than their human counterparts, Rafe stared hard at the woman near the shore, even though his mind issued a warning about infringing upon her privacy.
The moonlight shone on the water behind her, presenting him with her slim silhouette. Her legs were slender. Long wet hair cascaded over bare shoulders.
Though Rafe couldn’t see the woman’s face in the dark, even with his considerable Were talents, he knew she was looking straight at him with the same kind of scrutiny. The intensity of her attention was electric.
“You all right?” he called out. “Are you alone? The tides can be quite treacherous for anyone swimming solo.”
The mermaid offered no response.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Rafe said. “Sorry if I interrupted whatever you were doing.”
Maybe she thought he was some kind of pervert for staring at her. Could he blame her? On the other hand, if she did turn out to be a mermaid...
He shook his head sharply, clearing away that ridiculous notion. Again, though, he got the funny feeling this woman was connected to what brought him out here tonight in the first place. Since there was no one else around, he had to consider that she could very well be ground zero for the sensations running through him.
He didn’t see a towel or a pile of clothes that might belong to her on the sand. She made no move to turn away or cover her bareness with her arms. Being naked all alone was one thing. Being naked on a public beach was another.
“Do you need something to wear? Maybe someone took your clothes while you enjoyed your swim?” he asked.
The woman didn’t speak. Her earthy, not quite identifiable exotic scent floated around her like a cloud.
“You can have this.” Rafe removed his shirt and held it out to her, then shook it as an enticement for her to take his offering.
“Fine.” He lowered his arm when she made no move toward him. “But you really can’t walk around like that. Not here.”
“Why?”
Her question rendered him speechless for a few beats. She had a deep, throaty voice unlike any he had heard lately. Sort of a whisper. Almost a purr. It moved the wolf buried deep inside him with the kind of physical response usually reserved for a full moon.
Rafe shook that off, too. “You might scare the tourists,” he managed to say. “Or receive a proposition or two that you find offensive.”
When the woman shook her head, her waist-length wet hair swirled. Though he wanted to see more of her, Rafe figured she already thought he was a perv.
“There are no strings attached. The shirt is a gift.”
“I don’t know you,” she said.
The sexiness of her tone produced a strange fluttering sensation in his chest, which Rafe also found absurd given the circumstances. Hell, he wasn’t going to arrest her for indecent exposure, because he was the only one out here at the moment, and honestly, what he could see of her was quite decent. What he had to do was to go away and leave her alone.
And yet her rapt attention kicked his pulse upward another notch, and the air between them seemed to be charged with ions like those preceding an oncoming storm system.
There was danger here, his instincts warned. He had to tread lightly if he hoped to understand what that danger was.
“I’m with the police,” he said to explain his continued presence.
“And you’re a werewolf,” she returned with way too much insight and confidence.
Rafe was stunned. “Werewolf, is it?”
She spoke again. “I’ve heard that Weres around here have to try to fit in. You look human.”
“Why would you think I’m anything other than human?” he asked.
“Practice.”
After waiting a few more heartbeats, Rafe said warily, “If I’m a werewolf, what does that make you for recognizing me as such?”
“I guess I’m harder to define.”
“Maybe you can try.”
“I’ve been cautioned not to do that,” she said.
“Who cautioned you?”
“One of you.”
“A werewolf, you mean, or a cop?” Rafe pressed.
Although a cloud passed over the moon, bringing a brief, temporary dullness to the night, Rafe saw her nod her head.
She said, “The ghost warned me.”
Another spike of surprise struck Rafe. Though he didn’t have the specific details about this woman, her reply made who this had to be extremely clear to him. The scent that had drawn him here and the prickly premonitions about the possibility of danger finally came to a head. Mystery solved. One part of it, anyway.
“You are Killion’s daughter,” he said.
This was the female his pack was expecting. She was supposed to be an extremely rare kind of shape-shifter hybrid. Hell, maybe she could have been a mermaid.
“Yes,” she said.
“What are you doing here, and without your companions?”
Rafe connected this shapely vision in front of him with the text message he’d received from his father moments before. Cara Kirk-Killion must have escaped from her transport and her guards. His pack would be looking for her.
“Those guys were responsible for your safe passage to the estate,” he continued.
“I don’t need guards. Maybe you’ve heard why?”
She didn’t give him time to reply. With a quick turn on her long legs, the female that everyone in their pack had been warned to avoid at all costs until proper introductions had been made...just walked back into the sea.
Leaving Rafe to stare after her.
* * *
Cara didn’t stop to consider the possibility that the Were on the beach would follow her until she felt the pressure of a hand on her arm.
The touch came as a shock. No one had dared to touch her in the past for fear of what kind of shape she would end up in and how far into their souls she could see. One touch was all it took for her to adapt her form to the shape of whatever kind of being had reached out. Sometimes all it took for her to shift her shape was closeness, eye contact or a connecting thought.
Once she had melded to their shape, she could read them easily and see into their souls. She could at times predict their futures and understand their needs.
This Were had broken with tradition. Possibly he didn’t know better than to get too close to a member of the Kirk-Killion clan. Yet if he knew about her guards and the estate, he had to belong to the Landau pack and be privy to their secrets.
“It isn’t safe out here,” he warned, letting his hand drop.
“It’s never safe,” Cara replied, longing to get back to the silence and buoyancy of deep water, dreading having to go to the Landau place, where more Weres like this one awaited her arrival and she would be fenced in.
“I mean that if you’re as special as everyone seems to believe you are, you’d be a hot commodity around here and possibly hunted for your many talents,” the Were said. “It’s not safe to be on your own in a strange city.”
Cara still felt the burning sensation of his hand as if his fingerprints had been stamped on her skin. Did he also feel the heat? Had the call already gone out about the necessity of finding her?
More time was what she needed. Time to herself. Time with the water, which had been lacking at her family’s inland estate. Time to experience a few more precious moments without the shackles of Were society.
“I’ll take you there,” the Were beside her said, skipping over all of the things they hadn’t yet mentioned about why she was in Miami and how she had gotten away from the guards. “To the house,” he added.
She had escaped one net only to be ensnared by another. The big Were next to her, with his moon-streaked brown hair, lean, muscular build, chiseled features and light eyes, looked capable enough of handling any surprises that were in store.
Because he was in human shape tonight, Cara maintained her human countenance. She also kept her voice. However, she sensed the wolf curled up inside this guy as if it were her own and knew that it was strong, like hers. Being near him messed with her delicate equilibrium. She was drawn to him without knowing why.
He looked at his hand suddenly, as if he also felt the burn caused by one brief, simple touch. Then he glanced back up at her.
“I don’t like being caged,” Cara said, watching him closely, observing how he fisted his hand and the way the wind played with strands of his hair. He was as good-looking as her father, with prominent cheekbones and wide-set eyes. He was tall, with broad shoulders and moonlight-dappled golden skin. All of those things reinforced the Were’s wolfish nature, and yet he wasn’t a full-blooded member of the species. Human blood also ran in his veins; she perceived the slightest hint of an altered fragrance. One of his parents had, at one time or another, been human.
“That’s what you believe will happen when you accept our hospitality?” he asked. “You’d be caged?”
His voice disturbed her with its low, cautious, controlled quality. The Were’s earthy, masculine vibe caused another new ruffle in her widening awareness of the world outside her family’s gates. This was her first time meeting a male Were who looked as if he might not be too much older than herself.
