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“If you think this changes anything, you’re wrong,” she said. “We’re on opposite sides of the game, and in any game, there can only be one winner.”
She watched the alarmingly large Were shake his head as if he understood what she had said, as well as the promise in it. True to his word though, he didn’t make any move to harm her. This close to him, she couldn’t see his claws or imagine what he might gain by holding back on his end.
So she waited for his next move, already planning hers. She’d duck to the side, come up to his right and use the knife. She wouldn’t be facing him then, wouldn’t have to look into those sympathetic blue eyes.
Yes, that’s what she had seen in them after the flash of curiosity. Sympathy.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded in a voice that didn’t sound as strong or as confident as she meant it to be. “One of us has to do the honors. If that’s you, so be it. If it’s me, all the better. That’s how this works.”
When he failed to respond, Tess’s gaze went to the blood dappling his broad chest. Red blood. Half men, half beasts had red blood like the humans they emulated.
She continued to eye the tiny hole in the Were’s chest until he began to back away. Given some distance, Tess’s nerves fired up, white-hot. Her arms began to quake with the need to do something—show him who she was and what she could do. She’d just had an intimate tryst with death and was still standing.
The Were was a good three feet away now and facing her. Tess’s first real look at the whole package he presented, head to foot, was another nerve-jangling revelation.
In this incarnation, the Were actually did seem more man than beast. Well over six feet of undulating muscle and sinew made it appear that he was moving when he wasn’t.
He had chiseled cheekbones, sun-streaked brown hair and blue eyes. If there had been an image of the perfect specimen of a man-wolf in that wolf hunter rulebook, this guy could have been the model. The real deal. The epitome of an evolved enemy.
She was looking at a Lycan. Tess knew this now. This guy was a pure-blooded example of the species. Her first.
No longer able to manage the internal quakes shaking her, Tess widened her stance. Her pulse was skyrocketing. Her fingers were bloodless from her grip on the knife. Confusion caused this delayed reaction, she told herself. She needed to lunge.
Do it now.
End this.
“If you go now, I will find you,” she vowed. Encouraged by the strength in her tone, Tess added, “Why prolong the inevitable? Tonight has to be the night. We both know this. Wolf and wolf hunter is the way this goes down. Werewolf and hunter.”
The wolf blinked his big eyes and then he shook his head. Within seconds, his body was against hers and she was wedged between his considerable bulk and the shadow-covered rock face behind her.
It was over. She had lost with supernaturally unlucky werewolf number thirteen. It was inevitable that this minute would come someday.
Tess closed her eyes.
Without sight, all of her other senses became acute, serving to enlarge every small detail of these last few seconds she had left. Her opponent’s breath was heated and slightly sweet. With the Were’s chest tight up against hers, she felt the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and the way his muscles twitched. Was he eager to win? Holding back for what? The hope that she might plead for her life?
Never...
With the weight of his body squeezing hers into submission, Tess discovered how close to humans Weres could feel physically. All of the masculine stuff was there, in spades. With her eyes closed, she might never have known what this bastard was and the extent of the danger she found herself in. Even his musky masculine scent was pleasantly unique.
“Sorry, Dad, Mom,” she whispered, ready to draw that last breath.
The Were’s muscle rippled as the shocking sound of muscle pulling on bone made Tess look up to meet the blue eyes that would be the last thing she’d ever see...and found them looking back at her from an exceptionally handsome human face that was a lie, at best.
* * *
“I told you I mean no harm,” Jonas repeated in a hoarse voice that hadn’t fully recovered from the shift. “What more do I need to do to prove that to you? What part of my explanation didn’t you get?”
Tess was barely breathing, and staring at him.
Jonas tried again. “We’re not all bad guys. Most of us aren’t, in fact.”
She said, “You could have fooled me.”
He could see she was scared, though not as frightened as anyone else in her current position would have been. Tess Owens had faced more than one werewolf with grit and dedication, though it was clear that she had never met anyone like him.
She expected trouble. Clearly, she was awaiting her death by his hand. Her face had paled to transparency. In that milky whiteness, her scars took on a pale blue cast.
Jonas touched one of those scars with a finger no longer blessed by a claw. The scar he chose was the one nearest to her temple. In response, she drew back as if she’d been struck. Her head hit the rock with a thud. She swore out loud, which seemed to make her feel better if the light that appeared in her eyes meant anything.
“Do it,” she challenged. “What are you waiting for? There’s only one way to end this, because I’ll never stop hunting you.”
She was so damned determined to fix this situation, so stubborn and brainwashed on the werewolf issue that Jonas had to smile. The smile kicked up the flames of her anger.
“Promise me something,” he said. “If I let you go, you’ll need to honor that promise.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” she snapped.
He pushed more of his weight against her. “No?”
“I’d rather die right here than to owe you anything at all,” she said.
He shook his head. “We both know that’s not really true. You have a calling and I can’t stop that. I wouldn’t stop that. Bad guys are bad guys.”
“Wolves,” she corrected.
“But I’m not one of those bad guys. This, I solemnly swear.”
“What would the world be like if I believed that line from every werewolf that trespassed here?”
“Did you give any of those Weres the chance to prove it?” Jonas asked.
“I caught them in the act. Devilish stuff. Killing sheep. Killing horses. Stealing. Brutally attacking people in the dark. Were those things supposed to continue without intervention? Knowing what those creatures are, was I supposed to allow it to go on?”
He said, “If that was the case, it’s likely those creatures deserved what they got. I might have done the same things you did in order to keep the peace.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You mean in order to keep your species a secret, don’t you? You’d condone culling a few bad seeds in order to keep most of you safe from the world discovering your existence?”
She had more to say. Jonas waited.
“So why here? Why have you come here?” she asked again.
“I’m here to keep something very bad from happening.”
She struggled against him. Jonas held her firm as he continued.
“I have a life, Tess. But I needed to come here to take care of an issue that arose. When that’s done, I’ll go back to my life, get on with my life, hopefully having helped to save someone very dear to me.”
Chances were slim that she might believe him. Nevertheless, Tess stopped struggling.
“Promise me you’ll let me do what I need to do here without interference and that you’ll give me time to take care of the thing I came here to do,” Jonas said. “That’s all I ask.”
“You’re kidding, right? Turn my back? Let you have free rein?”
Her tone hadn’t softened and yet her body had lost some of its stiffness. Hints of a darker ivory color were slowly returning to her cheeks. Jonas hoped this meant he was making progress.
Although the situation remained tense, his mind wanted to focus on Tess the woman, rather than as his rival. He was a male after all was said and done, and Tess Owens was young, strong and interesting.
Her tight leather vest cinched in her breasts in a way that made her appear almost boyish with a first glance, and yet pressing against her gave Jonas a good impression of what lay beneath all that leather. Her hips were narrow, but feminine. Prominent hip bones accentuated her leanness. Her legs were shapely and firm.
In her current position, Tess didn’t offer up one good quake. This hunter was all about secrets and the art of camouflage. Wasn’t his life similar in those respects?
Jonas swept a slow glance over Tess’s face, noting that her expression was blank. Though her eyes were intent on him, she didn’t meet his gaze directly. Tess might never have been up close and personal with a werewolf in human form.
In any case, she didn’t cringe, cower or plead for mercy. If she had a plan for getting her edge back, she had seconds to consider how to accomplish it. Barring that, he could see that she’d accept the ramifications of a meeting gone bad with dignity.
Tess Owens hadn’t done her homework regarding Lycans and the abilities that set them apart from other Weres, and he had just offered her a fast track to enlightenment. What she did with that was up to her. After a few more moments of body-hugging closeness, he’d let her go if she promised to behave.
“Get off me,” she said curtly.
“You haven’t spoken the magic words.”
He was angering her further and wasn’t enjoying that, but shattering her old habits would take time he didn’t have. And when she looked up, when her eyes finally met his, what he saw in them shook him up slightly. He saw sadness.
His body reacted with a twitch of understanding that was visceral. Tess had tucked that sadness so deep inside of her, he was witnessing only its tip.
“Go to hell,” she said.
She tried to shove him back, but was trapped.
“Promise me what I’ve asked for, and I’ll let you go,” Jonas said.
“I can’t do that. Won’t.”
“Because you’re too proud to admit what happened here, or because you have a stubborn streak?”
Flashes of defiance raced through her blue eyes, but she unwaveringly held his gaze. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t untangle himself from the sensations rushing over him. Lust, greed and hunger were all there, piling up. But there was also something else nagging at his consciousness that was at the moment misty and ill-defined.
Jonas had to force himself to speak. “Time is what I need. Then I’ll be gone and out of your life.”
Her lips parted as though she was going to challenge that statement, but no words came out. Reluctant to lose the eye contact that made him so interested in what lay behind those eyes, Jonas finally dropped his gaze to her mouth.
What would Tess Owens, werewolf hunter, taste like? He wondered if anyone had tried to find out.
If she rarely showed up in town, what were the odds she’d have a lover? Given what she did for a living and the secrets she kept, what kind of normal man could handle her or her choices? This could be the cause of her sadness. Tess was lonely.
Actually, he decided, a wolf would have been the better choice for someone like her, if the world turned on a different axis. If Gwen hadn’t been waiting for him, and if he hadn’t set himself up as his sister’s protector, he might have desired a lot more time with Tess Owens. As the only person in South Dakota who also knew about him, they might have been friends in some parallel universe. They might even have been lovers.
His body liked that idea. Both man and wolf sincerely appreciated the thought.
Tess’s lips moved again, keeping his attention there. He wasn’t allowing her much room to breathe, so either she was trying to take in air or a new protest had gotten lodged in her throat.
“What issues brought you here?” she eventually asked. “What are you escaping from?”
“That’s personal.”
“Maybe you just made it up to play on my sympathy,” she suggested.
Jonas liked the way her mouth moved. He liked the way Tess smelled. Again though—and a tough reminder here—they were, for all intents and purposes and according to Tess, enemies.
“Still waiting,” he said without easing up on the pressure that pinned her to the rock.
“If it’s a promise for me to turn my back, then you’ll wait a very long time,” she returned.
Jonas swore under his breath. Niceness wasn’t getting him anywhere.
“What you need,” he started to say, almost giving in to the impulse to tell her about Lycans and Miami and about his gig as a cop. But there was an interruption in the form of a sound that didn’t belong to the reasonably intimate moment he and Tess were sharing.
And Jonas knew without a doubt what that sound was, and who had made it.
* * *
Tess was screwed and hated to admit it.
She waited for death, knowing there was no one to mourn her and that not one soul would realize she’d been gone for some time.
This was not okay. It sucked. And yet here she was, pressed tightly to the body of a werewolf who had shown her both sides of himself in a matter of minutes and who had drawn the better hand in this game.
Not necessarily the winning hand, though.
She was a fighter, and not fully onboard with giving up. When the bare-chested werewolf, who was way too human at the moment, lifted his head and tore his attention away from her to tune in to a sound she barely heard, Tess stiffened in reaction. Without his eyes on her, she felt colder and even more alone.
Those reactions made no sense.
She saw that he was irritated by whatever he had heard in the distance. After tossing another glance over his shoulder at the moonlit field behind him, his attention returned to her.
His expression registered his disappointment over the timing of this potential interruption in their strange getting-to-know-each-other session. She, on the other hand, wanted to cheer and would have shouted to whoever was out there if the man pressed against her wasn’t a monster masquerading as a man.
When she felt the urge to speak, the wolf in human skin held up a warning finger. Then he did a strange thing. Leaning closer, he brushed his lips over her cheek—a surprising move that sent her insides skittering. One quick, light touch. The cunning bastard smelled like pine.
He didn’t bite her or break her neck. Nor did he shift to his scarier form. After that touch, he backed up and pulled her forward until she stood on her own. Then he nodded to her. His eyes never left hers. It seemed to Tess as though he was attempting to send her a message and willing her to keep her mouth shut.
What had he seen or heard out there?
Who was coming?
Why am I shaking?
