Haunted by Your Touch

Luc looked down, cocking his head and watching the female as she moved. He inhaled through flaring nostrils. Hunters always carried a certain stink to them, righteous zeal combined with the odor of stale blood from countless kills. He had never come across a female hunter. Not in Europe. Not in the States. He did not think they existed. He frowned, shaking his head.

Moonlight sifted through the latticework of branches. Her hair, glossy dark under the kiss of pearl beams, fluttered through the wind as she moved. His body leaned forward, eyes following the path she cut. He inhaled her scent again, her woman’s heat filling him. Earthy, musky dark and ready to mate. His cock grew heavy. Need pulled at the back of his skull.

He growled low in his throat. Time to finish this. Her. Before he surrendered to those urgent needs and fell victim to the curse he had spent lifetime after lifetime avoiding. Somehow, he’d clung to his soul through all these years. One tasty female would not break him now.

With an epithet burning the back of his throat, he dropped twenty feet, his large frame landing lightly before his prey.

Chapter Two

He dropped from the sky like a hawk, landing on the balls of his feet in a crouch, an animal ready to spring.

Swallowing down a scream, she spit out with forced bravado, “Nice trick.”

He would expect her to cower. To scream. To beg for her life. She would disappoint him.

He answered her with a low growl.

She could make out little beyond his enormous size and the flash of eyes homing in on her, a predator intent on the kill. Doubt clawed hot fingers through her. Something was… different. He was different. His eyes glowed down at her a yellowy-brown. Nothing at all like the pewter-colored gazes of the beasts that had attacked her outside the club. Baltic amber with white fire flaming in the center.

He flew forward then, slamming her down on the ground. Her teeth clacked together at the sudden collision with hard earth. He loomed over her, around her. Like the night, he was everywhere all at once. A massive wall of flesh, bone, and muscle… indestructible, yet she had to destroy him. She had to.

Her hand flew inside her jacket, the once stylish black suede her mother had bought her two Christmases ago now a shredded mess. The thought of her mother made her chest burn. She had to strike. Now.

Her fingers closed around the cold grip. She slid it from her jacket. Before she even had time to aim, he grasped the weapon and twisted it from her hand, turning it so that the cold barrel aligned with her throat, the mouth pressing directly beneath her chin, the gun’s cold lips a deadly kiss on her shivering flesh.

Shit. He’d disarmed her with pathetic ease.

The wall of man—beast—around her pressed closer.

“C’mon. A bullet isn’t really your style,” she choked, her skin simmering too hotly for her to care about the wisdom of provoking him. “Shouldn’t you be mauling me like a dog right about now?”

“You’re either very stupid or incredibly brave.”

How about desperate? And pissed? His kind had killed Maureen and infected her. If he was going to finish her off, she was going down spitting in his face.

The gun dug deeper beneath her chin, punishing.

Sucking in a breath, she waited for the pain. Waited for death. A moment passed and nothing happened.

Slowly, she focused on his face, all shadowed angles but undeniably human. Baltic-gold, deep-set eyes drilled into her beneath dark brows. Mesmerizing. But not a beast like from the club. He was nothing like the monsters that had attacked her and killed Maureen. The realization gave her a start.

Why had Curtis recruited her to kill him, then?

“Silver bullets, I take it?” He leaned in to sniff the gun before nodding. “You came prepared. Except you can never be prepared enough for me.” His face descended in a blurring rush of speed. She gasped. The warm tip of his nose brushed her cheek, moving over her skin until his lips grazed her ear. And damn her traitor body if she did not respond, did not arch against his chest—against the hard body of a faceless stranger holding a gun beneath her chin.

He inhaled deeply. “What are you?” His voice rippled heat through her body. Warm and guttural, like smoke curling in her veins. And foreign. The exact origin indecipherable.

As he leaned over her, she felt the thick bulge of him, hot and heavy against her belly. Dread filled her at her rising hunger. She throbbed at her core, and moistness rushed between her legs. She groaned, hating herself—the terrible thing she had become—and hating him but ready to have him. All of him, hard and thrusting inside her right here. Right now. Like two animals in the dirt. And she still couldn’t clearly see his face. She couldn’t live this way.

God. She shook her head and stopped, the slide of the gun’s mouth beneath her chin too real, too terrible.

“You’re trespassing.” He sniffed again, then exhaled, his breath a hot gust on her flesh. A dragon breathing against her cheek. Her heart clenched. His will alone stopped the killing fire from spewing forward. This she knew. Somehow. Intuitively. She knew a beast surrounded her despite his human appearance. Curtis must have been wrong when he’d explained the rules that governed lycans. Hope unfurled in her chest. Maybe that meant she wouldn’t be a slave to the moon and primitive urges, a slave to the insatiable need to kill, to feed on human flesh… to screw anything with a Y chromosome.

“But you know that.” A thread of laughter laced his voice. “Come to kill me, have you?” The hair near her temple feathered, and she realized his fingers touched there, rubbing her hair as if it were something to test between the pads of his fingers. The instinct to turn into his touch and purr like a cat seized her.

“You’re no hunter,” he announced. His nose buried in her hair then, breathing deeply. She shivered. She heard the frown in his voice as he demanded, “What are you? Why do you wear your own blood?”

“I—” She stopped, swallowing at the horrible croak of her voice. “I was attacked. Bitten.” She stopped again and bit her lip to keep from saying more. Saying the rest.

He pulled back, a tension that hadn’t been there before seizing him, washing over him—pouring into her. “When did this happen?”

“A few hours ago.”

“How did you get here?”

She opened her mouth, hesitating.

“How?” he barked.

“A hunter dropped me off. He said he was an agent from… some group.”

“NODEAL,” he muttered. “National Organization of Defense Against Ancient and Evolving Lycanthropes.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” She swallowed before adding, “He said this was your fault. That you’re some big pack leader. An alpha. That if I killed you…” Her voice faded.

“Ah. Did he now?” He smiled then, although no humor lurked in the shadowed bend of his mouth. “So you think I’m your alpha?”

She nodded her head against the ground.

“And,” he drew out the word, “he told you killing me would save you. Would break your curse.”

“Yes.” She surged forward with renewed strength, struggling, stopping at the cold press of the gun.

“Wrong.”

She blinked. Wrong? What did he mean, wrong? This was her life… and her mother’s. Killing this monster was her only chance.

“If I die, you’ll still be a lycan.”

“But you’re a—”