Wolf Hunter. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
of the bar’s occupants were regulars, by the looks of things, and quite at home in the well-worn ambiance of the place. He, on the other hand, was a carefully managed mass of nerves.
Each of the men in his party were on their fourth or fifth raised glasses in honor of a fallen comrade named Stegman, the victim of the ongoing war between law enforcement and raunchy street gangs on the south side. That’s what they thought, anyway.
All of them had patted the shoulder of the man who had been responsible for taking their comrade’s killers down. Cameron’s shoulder. The shoulder aching to be free of shirts and praise and small indoor spaces because something far more primitive than the almost-constant hunt for bad guys existed outside the bar’s walls. Moonlight.
Madame Moon was full tonight and whispering to him like a lover. She taunted him mercilessly with the call of the wild, and he had to maintain a calm outward appearance at the moment, despite his growing anxiety. But centered within the chaos of his life rose a spiraling vortex of insatiable longing for freedom and for the chill of silvery light on hot, bare skin. Hunger had become a ravenous beast in itself, unpredictable and always insatiable.
“Hey, Mitchell!”
A creased-faced, gray-haired officer who went by the name of T. Garrison gave Cameron a friendly punch to the left biceps. Cameron smiled and touched his arm as if the guy had a powerful swing.
“We owe you for what you did. Davidson told us the story of how you chased those guys.” Garrison gestured exuberantly. “Next drink is on me. So is the one after that.”
In their off-duty drinking, these guys were doing justice to multiple bottles of fine Irish whiskey. Cops took care of their own, seriously mourning their fallen brothers and realizing every day that they might be the ones never to make it home from work.
They cared. Cameron sure as hell had to give them that. But he didn’t feel like a hero and preferred not to be treated like one. He had done what he had to do to keep a lot of people safe, and had, with Davidson’s help, removed four messed-up thugs from the mix. The only good thing here was that Davidson hadn’t known what they really were.
Like most of these guys on the force, he did his job—just in a slightly different way, with extra hours and the added bonus of special senses. Still, he hadn’t been able to save the man they were toasting. He couldn’t tell anyone in this room what those gangbangers really stood for, and what they’d had in mind when they’d geared up for a fight.
And here, in the crowded bar, fewer than twenty-four hours later, Cameron felt claustrophobic.
“Barmaid,” Garrison shouted. “Another round for this man.”
Though Cameron smiled his thanks, he hardly heard the offer. A fresh scent rode the breeze by the door, causing his surroundings to blur, taking Garrison’s friendly face out of focus. When added to the blistering heat of the summer night and the fall of light crossing the threshold, the fragrance came across as being something important to identify, something familiar and heady.
Roses. Also another scent that stirred Cameron’s baser instincts as he inhaled deeply and looked around the room for the source—a search that stopped near the long length of gleaming mahogany wood across from him.
Cameron’s heart gave a thump that he felt all the way to his boots. His wolf gave a whine that twisted his gut. Not quite sure if he could be imagining this, or if one beer had been one too many, he blinked and took a second look, his insides roaring, adrenaline surging.
Female pheromones, light as dandelion fuzz and seductively alluring, rode the room’s darker male buzz. Those pheromones came from the female standing behind the bar. Not just any female, either. Oh no.
A riot of mixed emotions hit him all at once, as did an instantaneous pulse of interest. Blinking slowly, Cameron choked back a growl of surprise.
Of all the bars in the world... Hell, he had walked into hers.
* * *
What are you doing here?
Get out.
Go away.
Abby had noticed him the minute he’d entered the building, and reacted with a grunt of stunned surprise.
Among the crowd of cops and detectives jammed into every corner of floor space, she perceived the big Were as intensely as if he was still inside her, on their hands and knees in the grass.
Swearing out loud, she doubled over to recuperate, repeating unladylike oaths several times more. This had to be a dream. Her worst nightmare. The Were whose name everyone here chanted couldn’t possibly forget the sight or scent of the woman he’d called his little wolf in a moment of shared passion. She hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind for one single minute.
Above the heads of the others, his height stood out. His unnaturally good looks caused her heart to stutter, as those looks had the first time she’d set eyes on him. This second sighting didn’t lessen the impact. Her thighs quivered uncontrollably. The space between those thighs thrummed as if interior body parts were warming up for a repeat of their mutual sexual assault.
He was there, ten feet away.
The big bad wolf had found her.
Unsure of what to do, Abby feared that any move might give her anxiousness away. But she couldn’t tear her gaze from him.
“Damn. You’re a cop?”
His hair, too long for a cop’s usual tidy look, kept her from viewing his face clearly—that incredibly, inhumanly beautiful face that had been like a sucker punch to her solar plexus.
And the body.
God, that body.
His taut bareness had been tight up against hers, hard, willing, and slick with sweat from the exertion of their mindless coupling.
“You can’t be here. Not now.”
He wore black and white tonight, another bit of irony that paralleled his hybrid state. A crisp white long-sleeved shirt hugged his chest. Black jeans perfectly defined his incredible physique. Again, his shirtsleeves were casually rolled up over his forearms, showing off some of the corded strength she had tested firsthand.
She saw no evidence of the blood that had marked him the night before, or signs of cuts and bruises signifying the fight he must have been headed for after pushing her away. Yet tonight he soaked up accolades for having been part of something big that had happened after she left him.
A Were and a cop.
How could that happen?
She felt dizzy with the realization that he stood under the same roof. As she continued to stare, the passing moments seemed suspended from time.
Cameron Mitchell. She mouthed the name, remembering the taste of his wolfish Otherness and the exquisite talent of his mouth and body. His job might have explained his presence in the park, but how about his willingness to take her on there? Sex in a public place wasn’t a usual cop routine, she was fairly sure, and could, in fact, get him sacked.
So, had the chances he’d taken been instigated by a simple slip of morals, or by the wolf curled up inside him? Without a full moon over their heads, had Cameron Mitchell’s animal side required him to let off steam in a sexual way?
What about her part in that?
Abby finally managed to look around at the rest of the sea of faces. She recognized a few. Though the Miami PD often frequented this bar, he had never been here, and shouldn’t have been there tonight for reasons beyond her own embarrassment. Her father mingled with the regulars, three stalwart hunters among them. The back room held guns and rounds of ammunition that no wolf pack could withstand.
If Sam and his hunters somehow knew about the Were in their midst...if her father saw her reaction to him, or something she did gave this Were away, the game