by Rebecca York
He woke from the nightmare, drenched with sweat, feeling blood pounding in his ears like the thrumming of a primitive drum.
His body braced for an attack, he lay on the tangled sheets in darkness, struggling to draw in a full breath. But it was impossible to fill his lungs. The air around him was too hot and thick.
He had dreamed of Crawford. And before that? The first part was hazy in his mind. He remembered only the lust for blood. Remembered his vow five years ago—that the intoxicating pleasure of the manhunt and the kill were too dangerous to repeat.
It took several moments for him to comprehend that he was in his own bed. He felt the raw pain in his thigh and remembered the bullet.
Retribution, he thought. If he died from this wound, it would be justice coming full circle.
He had ripped out Crawford's throat. And Arnott had shot him.
Part of him welcomed the pain. He deserved the punishment. Yet in the end, he couldn't let the killer win. He had to stop him, and he had to do it through the rules of law, not the rules of the jungle. Because if he sank to that animal level, he would lose what humanity he could still claim.
A sound outside the bedroom made his throat tighten with tension. Then a light snapped on in the hallway, and every muscle of his body went rigid as he prepared to spring from the bed. His mind mixing reality with nightmare, he imagined Crawford or Arnott walking through the door. Namhaid. The enemy.
He needed his gun. He would fight with the weapons of a man. Not teeth and claws.
Where was his gun? he wondered as he felt frantically over the sheets.
Then he saw the figure in the doorway and recognized the woman. The woman who had come to take care of him, her hands moving over his body with a familiarity that he should never have permitted.
He knew the consequences of her touch.
As he stared at her, another part of the dream leaped back into his mind, and he felt a pulse jump in his belly.
He wanted to call to her, reach for her, pull her down to the bed with him. But he kept his hands locked at his sides.
In the dream she had been naked, moonlight washing over her skin. Now she was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. The knit clothing clung to her shape, molded her breasts as though forcing his attention to center there.
Desperately his mind struggled to separate reality from fantasy. She had been in his house. Ministered to him. Spoken to him. And he thought he had ordered her to leave. Apparently she hadn't followed directions.
The light from the hall illuminated her shoulder-length blond hair. Her delicate features were hidden from his view, but he remembered them with vivid clarity. The wide-set blue eyes, the dainty nose, the full, sensual lower lip. Even in his man shape he caught the delicate scent that clung to her. Lemon and soap and woman. And a thousand dreams he had never dared to bring into the light.
Her nighttime voice was soft and seductive. "You're awake."
"What are you doing here?"
"It's time for your medicine."
He summoned strength he didn't know he possessed. "I told you to go."
"You're sick. You need me."
Part of him knew it was already too late. "Don't you know that a wolf mates for life?" he asked, wondering if he meant the words as a warning or an invitation. A warning, surely.
She cocked her head to one side as though considering the pronouncement, and he cursed himself for saying what had leaped into his mind.
Bending over him, she set a glass of water on the bedside table, then pressed her hand against his forehead. "You're still feverish."
"I think you woke me out of a nightmare."
"About wolves?"
"Yes," he answered, hoping that neither one of them would remember this encounter in the morning.
At least she took him at his word. Then she asked, "Can you sit up?"
Pride wouldn't allow him to say no. Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself erect, and she shook a caplet into his hand. When he'd put it in his mouth, the sharp taste made him shudder.
Seeing his reaction, she quickly offered him the glass of water. He remembered sloshing the cold liquid down his chest when he'd taken the medication earlier. Now he took care not to spill any as he gulped several swallows, washing down the medicine and moistening his dry mouth and throat.
When he finished, she took the glass, and he felt a small shock as her hand brushed his. He knew she felt it too by the way she snatched the glass away and set it down with a thunk on the nightstand.
"I need to check your wound," she said, her voice businesslike now.
Silently, he slid down against the pillows. Getting prone was easier than sitting up.
The mattress shifted as she lowered herself to the edge of the bed. "I'm going to turn on the light."
Appreciating the warning, he closed his eyes against the sudden flare of brightness, then watched through his lashes as she eased the sheet away from his leg, being careful to uncover only as much of his flesh as she needed to see.
As she removed the bandage, her fingers on his thigh, he struggled not to react to the pressure of her hands on his flesh. She worked quickly and efficiently, yet he sensed she was fighting the same pull as he—that the intimate touch was binding him to her in ways he couldn't explain on any conscious level. And binding her to him.
Years ago, his father had told him what it would be like to be drawn to a woman by powers beyond his control. The need of the werewolf to take a mate—to perpetuate his kind.
Vic Marshall's crude, mocking words came back to him now. "You think you're better than me. Well, the same thing that happened to me will happen to you. Around when you turn thirty, sonny. Whether you like it or not. You'll see her. You'll know she's the one you've got to fuck or die. And when you touch each other, you'll be a goner, and so will she. She'll give herself to you on every possible level. Sexual, mental, emotional."
Like the way his mother had given herself to his father, and now she was trapped with a man who used her as he wanted. A man who didn't know the meaning of love.
"No!"
"Ross, are you all right?"
He blinked, realized he'd spoken aloud.
If he could have heaved himself off the bed, he would have jerked away from her—away from the intimacy binding them together as closely as a vine twined around the trunk of a tree.
The image in his mind sharpened. The vine covering the tree, sucking the life from the living plant even as the tree gave it a refuge.
Or perhaps it was all in his imagination—blown out of proportion by his fever. Nothing serious had happened, and nothing would happen because he wouldn't allow it.
He'd always known women were attracted to him, that he could have almost any one he wanted if he put out a little effort. Maybe that was part of the werewolf aura. A scent that drew the opposite sex? A fortuitous combination of physical characteristics? It wasn't something he'd tried to analyze.
But it had made him cautious.
He'd never allowed a woman to work her way past the defenses he'd built up. Never allowed his own control to slip.
Tonight he felt as if all choices had been yanked away from him by some ancient cosmic jester who had been waiting for aeons to spring this trap.
Striving for detachment, he watched his beautiful blond doctor replace the gauze. "How is it?" he asked, hearing the thickness in his voice.
"A little better."
"Turn off the light."
She did as he asked, and he felt more comfortable in the darkness, where it was easier to hide. It had been a long time since he'd been in a bedroom with a woman. And never here. He had never brought a sexual partner to his lair.
Before he could stop himself he reached for her wrist, circling it with his thumb and index finger.
There was no strength in his grip. And he knew she could have pulled away. Instead she simply sucked in a sharp breath, her hand resting in his grasp.
He stroked a finger over her knuckles, testing the feminin
e skin, then pressed his thumb to the pulse point at her wrist, feeling her heart rate accelerate. And his. Hearing a sound like wind roaring in his ears, he closed his eyes, the only contact point his hand on her wrist. A slender connection, yet it sent blood pounding through his veins.
"Did you help yourself to some of my clothes?" he asked imagining one of his T-shirts covering the soft swell of her breasts like a lover's palm, his pants cupping her feminine bottom—before he stripped the clothing off her and pulled her naked body beneath his on the bed.
It was only a fantasy. He was too weak to make it reality. But the very weakness drew him further into the tantalizing reverie.
Maybe she was following the direction of his thoughts. "They're my gym clothes. I keep them in the trunk," she hastened to inform him, tripping over the words as if she were having trouble controlling her tongue and lips. Snatching her hand away, she was off the bed in seconds, out of the room before he could catch his breath.
Maybe now she would take his advice and leave. If it wasn't already too late.
DONALD Arnott was awake, restless and on edge. He needed a woman. But he couldn't take one. Not until he learned the identity of the man who was stalking him and got rid of the bastard.
Heaving his body out of bed, he stood naked in the darkness, feeling blood swelling his cock. Still naked, he strode to the back door of his house and stepped outside. The night air was cold on his fevered skin as he made his way down the familiar path to the ruined barn.
Shoving aside hay bales, he heaved open the trapdoor, then switched on the overhead light as he descended into the underground chamber.
He stood in the middle of the brightly lit room, his breath quickening as he stroked the stained wooden table, the leather restraining cuffs, feeling his erection grow harder. By the time he ran his fingers across the metal instruments neatly arranged in racks along the wall, he was aching.
The videotapes were on shelves along the opposite wall. He walked past the camera on its tripod and read the titles on the neatly labeled boxes. Penny Delano. Charlotte Lawrence. Cindy Hamilton. Brenda Eckhart. And half a dozen more.
He went back to Cindy. One of his old favorites. A plump girl with big breasts and a thatch of silky pubic hair he had shaved off with a dull razor.
Sliding the tape into the machine, he took the remote control and relaxed into the easy chair in front of the large-screen TV.
He skipped the first part of the tape where he was showing her his knives and got right to the good part, stroking his cock as he watched himself work her over, climaxing with a hot shudder of pleasure as she begged him to let her go.
The second climax wasn't quite as good. It never was, not when he was alone. When he had a woman down here, he could come over and over from the strength of his response to her pain and fear. Only part of what he needed came through on the tape. But the self-gratification calmed him so that he was actually whistling a jaunty tune as he made his way back to the house and started getting ready for work.
He was on the ten-to-six shift this week, at Westfield Shoppingtown Montgomery, although nobody ever called the place anything besides its former name, Montgomery Mall. He'd worked there as a security guard for the past year. Before that, he'd been living in Pennsylvania and working at King of Prussia Mall.
A mall was a good place to meet women—sort of like combining work and play. But he couldn't stay too long in any one location, because it was imperative that he not establish a pattern that the police could pick up.
The last thought made his features contort and his hands squeeze so hard that his nails dug into his palms. A man with a dog had picked up on what he was doing. And he was going to either obliterate the bastard—or obliterate all evidence of this room, sell the property, and move on.
CHAPTER SEVEN
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"WHEN KEN SAID he was going to retire, I told him I didn't care how he spent his days, just so he was out of the house from nine to five," Mildred Winston had told Jack when he'd called and asked to speak to her husband. "There's no phone in the workshop," she continued. "If you want to talk to him, you can come over, or wait until lunchtime."
Jack elected to drop by around ten. Following Mildred's directions, he parked in the driveway behind a Chevy Suburban, bypassed the house, and took the gravel path around to the small, shingled workshop at the back of the property.
The sound of a power saw sliced through the morning quiet as Jack stepped onto the porch, and he waited until the cut was finished before knocking on the door.
Ken Winston, gray-haired and potbellied, was holding up a small pine rectangle, inspecting the cut he'd made.
"Hey, Jack!" he said, setting down the piece of wood and switching off the power on the saw. "What brings you around?"
"I wanted to get some input on one of your old cases."
The retired detective wiped his hands on the sides of his blue overalls. "You want some coffee? Coke? I got all the comforts of home out here. I only have to go inside when I need to take a leak."
Jack opted for coffee—black. As Winston poured them both a mugful, Jack looked around the workshop. On the shelves lining the wall were fifteen or twenty precisely made, identical bird feeders.
"You going into the bird feeder business?" he asked.
"Nope. They're for the PTA fair at my grandson's school."
"Nice job."
Ken beamed. "Thanks. I like it. You can see what you're doing. Get the same results every time. I got the design and the measurements down pat now. So what case did you want to talk about?"
Jack took a sip of coffee. "Edward Crawford."
Winston thought for a moment. "The murder suspect who disappeared?"
"Um-hum. His body—well, his skeleton—turned up at Sugar Loaf Mountain."
"Cause of death?"
"Undetermined."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't too broken up when the guy evaporated. He probably abducted and murdered five or six women."
Jack set down his coffee mug on the worktable and slipped his hands into his pants pockets. "It says in the case file that you were working with a PI named Ross Marshall."
The older man's eyes narrowed. "That slippery bastard still around?"
"You didn't like him?"
Winston's jaw tightened. "He came to me with some cock-and-bull story about Crawford's hanging around across the street from the Damascus High School campus where that girl Cherry Phelps went to school. When I asked him where he got his information, he clammed up, wouldn't tell me a damn thing."
"Maybe he saw him there."
"How'd he know to look?" Winston demanded, obviously reliving his reaction at the time. "Nobody else saw anybody who fit Crawford's description."
"He could have been in disguise."
"Then how did Marshall figure out it was him? All I wanted was a simple answer to my questions about his investigative techniques, and he got this closed look on his face. Just acted superior, like he knew things I didn't."
Jack wouldn't have put it quite that way. Ross was secretive, but he didn't act superior. At least with him.
"The guy wanted me to feel like I wasn't doing my job. Then the next thing you know, Crawford vanishes," the older man was saying. "And you better believe I pushed Marshall on that. He was real hostile. Guilty acting. You know what I mean? But I couldn't prove he'd been anywhere near the guy."
Jack didn't point out that another victim had been taken between the time Ross had tried to give information to Ken and Crawford's disappearance. What was the point?
It was obvious that Ken Winston and Ross Marshall hadn't hit it off—on a professional or a private level. And it was obvious that Winston was unable to deal with tips that he couldn't verify by other means.
"Anyway," Jack said, "the mystery of what happened to Crawford is solved."
"But we don't know who did it." Winston raised his voice. "I still like that Marshall guy. Why don't you see how he reacts when you tell him you found the body?"
>
"I might do that."
Winston shoved his hands into his overalls pockets, as he studied Jack. "I heard you were working with him on some stuff."
"Where'd you hear that?"
"Around. You trust his information?"
"He's given me some good leads. Helped me clear some cases."
Winston nodded tightly. "And what about that violent streak of his?"
"What violent streak?"
"Don't tell me you can't see it below the surface. That guy is a pressure cooker. And maybe the lid blew off with Crawford."
Jack sucked in a breath, held it in his lungs before exhaling. "He doesn't have a rap sheet."
"Yeah. So he's been lucky."
Jack nodded without bothering to add that he'd checked out the father, Vic Marshall, and found that he'd been arrested and convicted of a number of minor offenses—disorderly conduct, simple assault, battery. If a guy was prone to violence, you'd expect that kind of thing on his record. But, unlike his old man, Ross was clean.
Jack shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Well, I appreciate the insights. It's always good to get the perspective of a guy with thirty years on the force."
Winston looked somewhat mollified. "Um. Right. But I should get back to work. The PTA is expecting me to deliver twenty-five of these feeders by the end of the month."
After an awkward exchange of good-byes, Jack left, knowing why Winston hadn't accepted any help from Ross Marshall. It had as much to do with his own prejudices as any vibes he'd picked up from Ross.
Still, Jack was thinking about violence as he climbed back in to his car. That hadn't been something he'd personally seen in Ross, and he considered himself pretty good at reading people. But there was the abusive background.
Had the man been different five years ago? Changed himself? Or was there really something below the surface ready to break out and strike again? Something dangerous that a police detective would be remiss if he ignored?
MEGAN stood with her shoulder propped against the doorjamb of the bedroom, looking at the sleeping man, studying his features—the slightly parted lips, the three days' growth of beard darkening the lower half of his face. She reached out a hand toward him, then let it fall back to her side, dropping her gaze to the steady rise and fall of his broad chest. The covers had slipped almost to his waist, exposing dark hair spread in a circular pattern around his flat nipples.