“Tiffany?” Jimmy asked, lifting his eyes slowly. “She’s not exactly—”
“I don’t care what she is. I want her.”
“But—”
A low, dangerous growl rumbled out of Marcus’ throat and Jimmy immediately dropped his eyes. He knew what happened to those who questioned the dominant wolf. He had seen it, right after he had been changed. He knew, all right. And while it had amused the hell out of him to watch it, he had no intention of seeing it done to him.
“I understand,” Jimmy said slowly, bitterly. He had looked forward to feeling that hot little pussy. Probably virgin. Definitely an innocent—he could tell, just by her scent. He could smell her uncertainty, her fear, her young lust. It was amazing, the things he could read now.
Marcus smiled. “Good. And maybe I can even be generous enough to share,” he responded.
Jimmy nodded, and forced a smile. After all, seconds was better than nothing.
Marcus watched, with a smile on his face, as she followed Jimmy into the house. His pale gray eyes glittered as he shifted against the railing upstairs, resting his chin on his fist, listening to her soft murmur. Her voice was as clear as day.
“Such a pretty house, Jimmy. It’s so big,” she mused, amazed. She had big eyes. Soft skin. The pulse in her neck called to him like a siren’s song.
As Jimmy stood aside to let her pass, he slid a look upstairs and caught the older wolf’s eyes. And smiled.
The entire left side of her face burned as if it were on fire. Her lower lip throbbed, oozing blood that trickled down her chin and neck to stain the silk blouse she’d been so proud of. Now, her only conscious thought was to burn it, if she made it out of this damn house alive.
Her rapid breathing sounded impossibly loud as she made her way down the back steps, listening for any sound that they might have found her. From somewhere inside the house, she heard Jimmy bellow out her name as she took the last step and rounded the corner into the kitchen. And freedom, just a few feet away, if she could only make it to the back door in time.
Time’s up.
His heavy footsteps sounded down the hall, heading her way. She flew through the room, hands closing around the doorknob just as he entered the kitchen.
“Stupid bitch,” he panted, wiping the blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand as he came for her.
Jerking frantically on the doorknob, she sobbed in frustration as it refused to open.
When it finally did, she tore through it with a relieved sob, moving fast, too fast. But it wasn’t Jimmy she had to worry about. The other man was there. Waiting for her. His eyes… Oh, God, she prayed, desperately. Help me. His eyes were glowing.
Backing away from him, she edged her way around him. But Jimmy was at her back and he grabbed her arms and laughed, his voice deeper, rougher. And the way he laughed…the bastard was amused. He loved every second of her fear. She knew it, could feel it. Somehow, she could feel it.
Tiffany struggled and smashed her head back into his, the back of her head crashing into his nose—she heard it crunch, felt the hot wash of his blood as he screamed.
“Stupid bitch!” he screamed in a garbled voice. “You broke my nose!”
“One soft, practically human female doing such damage?” the other man asked, laughing as Jimmy shoved her away. “She’s not even one of us, really. She has the scent, but just barely. She’s more mortal than wolf. How can you let her hurt you?”
“She’s a strong little bitch, go see for yourself.”
He was so strong—Tiffany thought, catching herself just in time to keep from falling. Both men looked surprised that she was still on her feet and she lunged around Jimmy’s kneeling body, back into the house, slamming the door behind her and locking it.
A weapon.
A fist came crashing through the door. How in the hell? It was solid wood. She yelped, then bit back the sound before it could turn into a scream as a hand came through the hole in the door and unlocked it. The door swung open and the other man stood there, watching her.
He stepped toward her, laughing softly. She plunged her hand into the sink and her fingers closed around the smooth wooden hilt of a kitchen knife. A heavy one. Whipping it out, she sidestepped the stranger and thrust it in front of her. “Get away from me,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
Jimmy moved into the room, blood and mucus streaming down his face as he glared at her with angry, evil eyes that gleamed in the harsh kitchen light. Why did they look red?
“Take the knife away, pup,” the stranger said softly, leaning against the counter and folding his arms. “I’d like to see her naked.”
“Come near me and I’ll gut you,” she warned.
“Bad, stupid little bitch,” Jimmy said, ignoring her. Wagging a finger at her, he said, “I’m gonna hurt you now.”
She jabbed at him and cried out when he hit the side of her wrist, shooting a jolt of pain up her arm, knocking her weapon away. Then he lunged for her, taking her down to the cold tile floor, grinding his pelvis against her.
“Go ahead and cry,” he whispered as he leaned down and bit her neck. Wrenching both hands over her head, he said, “It only makes it better for us. We love fear.”
Whimpering, she turned her face away as he used his free hand to rip aside her blood-stained blouse. “Too damn little of you,” he muttered. “But you got enough fight to make this fun.”
Humiliated, frightened, and angry, she jerked again on her hands, sweat making them slippery enough to almost slide away. At the same time, she brought her knee up as he was shifting to straddle her thighs. His howl of pain echoed in her ears as she scrambled away from him, sliding on her butt as she clambered to gain her feet. One hand locked around her ankle and he brought her back.
“I’m not gonna hurt you now,” he rasped. White-faced, pupils dilated, he hissed, “I’m gonna kill you.”
His face…oh, hell, his face… The bones were lengthening, stretching, the skin pulling tight over it, darkening, and his teeth as he struck—not at her neck, but at the fleshy mound of her right breast—the white-hot pain ripped through her as he tore the flesh.
And then he was gone, flying through the air and crashing into a wall.
“Pup, she is mine, not yours.” And the other man was there, his eyes hot and burning, hungry. Some deeply buried instinct whispered, Run. You have to run…the smell of blood…the fight has stirred his lust.
One hand reached out, striking him in the face, his neck, anything to keep her from being pinned again. Her other hand frantically searched the floor as he jerked her skirt up. As he ripped her panties away, her fingers closed once more around the smooth wooden hilt.
“No,” she whispered when he reached down to free himself from his well-pressed khakis. He never paid any attention to her hands, not the one shoving at his face, and not the one holding the knife that she shoved into his ribs, parting the flesh like butter.
Scalding waves of blood poured over her as she took the knife out and struck home a second, and then a third time. By then, blood was bubbling out from his lips as he stared down at her with wide, shocked eyes. Angry eyes, as he whispered, “You’re going to regret that, little wolf.”
With a strength born of panic, she pushed him away and cowered against the counter as he shoved to his feet and staggered to the wall, pressing his hands against his numerous wounds, wheezing gasps of air filling the room. “Jimmy… Make her pay,” he rasped, staring at her with a nasty light in his eyes.
Jimmy lunged at her and took her down. Tiffany fell, screaming, feeling her head strike the floor. She clutched the knife and drove it upwards as hard as she could, twisting, shoving it higher and higher, feeling bile rise in her throat as her hand entered his body… His heart, if you don’t destroy it, he won’t die. Something was burning in her hand, something hot, like fire and as she screamed, it exploded outward from her hand.
A gray puff of smoke drifted out of Jimmy’s mouth, then a froth of blood. His
eyes went dim, that angry, swirling, glowing light gone. And he fell lifeless on top of her.
She turned her head just in time to see the other man fall to his knees and groan as a wolf seemed to leap out of his skin. And then she passed out.
Chapter One
Tiffany awoke with the scream trapped in her throat, sweat covering her body. For a moment, she thought it was the blood that had flowed out of Jimmy’s body after she had damn near gutted him.
The light from the corridor poured in through the tiny window of her cell door.
Her eyes instinctively sought the clock on the wall, marking away the time as she had for the past six years. After midnight. The anniversary, she thought with a ragged laugh as she sat up, dangling her skinny legs over the side of her cot. Her feet rested on the cold floor.
Six years to the day since she had killed Jimmy Duncan, a man guilty of raping more than seven young women in the tiny rural town of Buxley, in southern Mississippi. That particular fact had not come out until his picture had been flashed in so many papers that one, then another, and another of those girls had slowly stepped out of hiding. Coming forward only because their attacker was dead and couldn’t make good on his threat to kill them.
A man who was the grandson of a state Senator, the only son of the town mayor, and the heir to the Duncan millions.
His body had been missing. The attorneys had gone at her, and hard…who is your partner? Who were you working with? What did they do with the body…
But she didn’t know where Jimmy’s body was. And she didn’t know where the second man was. The one who’d run away in the form of a wolf.
Werewolf…
“Damn it. I’m going crazy,” she muttered.
You’re going to regret that, little wolf. His deep, gruff voice rose out of her memories to torment her. Little wolf? What the hell…
It was a question she was still asking herself, years later. One of many. How had he turned into a wolf…had he turned into a wolf…was she crazy? Where was Jimmy’s body? Was he even dead?
If the state cop who had found her hadn’t been relatively new to the area, and unaware of the hold the Duncans had on southern Mississippi, she probably would have been serving out a life sentence, or sitting on death row. But Beth Starkey hadn’t been aware that she’d stumbled into the house of the local golden boy. And if she had been aware, it was unlikely she would have cared. All she had seen was the battered, beaten little thing who lay unconscious on the floor, her clothes ripped off her body, bruises forming everywhere, blood all over her, too much blood. They hadn’t been able to run DNA tests on it because they claimed the blood was screwed up…contaminated or something.
More work of her so-called partner.
Besides her battered body, the knife, and Tiffany, the only other evidence had been a pile of bloody clothes lay off to the side. Clothes that had been torn apart, at the seams. But the second attacker hadn’t been found.
If it had been any other of the state cops, or any of the locals, the scene wouldn’t have been meticulously recorded. She wouldn’t have been hand-delivered to a sympathetic young resident who didn’t give a damn about the Duncan dynasty.
Instead, thanks to a cop with an unbendable code of honor and a medical resident with kind eyes; she was being released in three days, after serving her time for manslaughter.
Of course, if it had been anybody other than a Duncan, she would never have served any time. Though she only recalled bits and pieces of the final minutes right before Jimmy Duncan died, she knew he had tried to rape her, knew there had been another man in the house who had been a willing participant in the game. The judge and jury had known it—she had seen it in their eyes.
With a scowl of disgust, she forced the self-pity aside. Tiffany had no time to feel sorry for herself. Easing her body up from the cot, she rolled her neck and shoulders and went to the small desk with a stack of books.
Three days. Three days, and she was free.
Free? That thought made her pause.
Free to do what? Live out the rest of her life as a convicted felon. So what that she had earned her college degree? Who cared that she was fast on her way to becoming one of the bestselling horror writers in the country, thanks to her own nightmares about Jimmy and the unknown stranger?
She flipped open a book on local ghosts and sighed. Get to work, Tiffany. Just get to work.
* * *
Tiffany Morgan.
No. Her real name is Shadoe. Shadoe Wallace.
“Tiffany,” he told himself. She had been Tiffany for more than twenty years. He didn’t expect his appearance in her life to change that. Hell, she probably didn’t want anything to do with her heritage, not after what the monsters had done to her.
His dark golden-brown eyes locked on the woman who walked slowly down the street, looking around as if unsure of what to do with herself. She had her arms wrapped nervously around her body and she jumped at every little sound.
And her heartbeat… He could hear it as it jumped and quickened every time somebody walked too close.
So full of fear.
If she had consented to see him five years ago, they could have started to work on that. He had been trying to talk to her from the beginning but she had never once allowed it.
And damn it, if he’d found her just a little sooner, he could have saved her from all of this. But until the bizarre story about her attack had emerged in the papers, he hadn’t even known where to look. Not that such a thing had stopped him. He’d look…a lot. All over the place.
By the time he’d found her, she’d been in jail.
But now, she was on the outside. And she couldn’t run far enough. Her soft brown hair blew gently around her sweet, heart-shaped face as she slowed to a stop in front of a bookstore, smiling absently. He could see what she was staring at, even though she was a good hundred feet away.
A display of Lorelei Dubois books. Have No Mercy. He knew who she was, knew exactly how long she had been writing for the small electronic press, how she’d managed to catch the interest of a bigger publisher. He knew each book, each story almost by heart. And he had no doubt where the nightmares behind the books came from. If he had gotten to Marcus just a little sooner—
His breath slowed as she stretched, almost absently, like a lazy little cat. The motion thrust her pert, rounded breasts against the cotton of her shirt, the crowns of her nipples peaking against it, and Ben’s throat went dry. She started back down the street and his eyes focused on the round, firm ass so nicely displayed by her jeans. His body went on red alert. Her scent drifted to him on the wind, warm, ripe female and his cock started to throb.
Damn it.
This could be a problem.
He was here to protect her, to warn her, to teach her. And considering she had been living with her head in the sand for more than twenty years, that wasn’t going to be an easy task. Being attracted to her was going to make it even more difficult—but if he felt the wolf inside him, felt the call of hers…
There was no if.
She was an Inherent born, if not yet changed. Inherents didn’t have to shift, and those early changes had to be coaxed out. She had no idea what she was, and there had been nobody there to help coax the wolf out of her. She might even be one of the few that couldn’t shift.
She had the blood, though.
Ben was a powerful Inherent, a Hunter to the Council, and one of the few who had a touch of witchery through his mother’s side of the family. His magic was adept enough, and that was how he had found her, but he suspected what he had in his veins was nothing compared to what lay untapped inside the woman in front of him.
Tiffany had more than a touch.
Her mother had gifted her with such powerful witchcraft that it was amazing the earth didn’t tremble as she walked. It was nothing short of a miracle one of the darker magic workers out there hadn’t found her.
Amazing that he had found her first.
Why was he thinking
that their powers and magics wouldn’t call to the other?
There was no if.
Stop it, Ben. We don’t even know if she has the abilities, he told himself, shaking his head. He could smell something other than human on her, but that didn’t mean she was an Inherent like her father had been. And the magic he smelled on her didn’t mean she was a witch like her mother had been. She had gone more than a decade past the time when she should have first shifted. And no witch could ignore the call of magic for more than twenty years.
Hell, if she was a witch, an Inherent, she would have changed when that werewolf attacked her years ago. If she had…and if she had still been sentenced to jail…
Shaking his head, he muttered, “Stop creating trouble where there is none. Wait and see what happens. See if she truly is gifted before you start planning.”
He was also trying to fool himself.
Oh, she was a witch all right.
And an Inherent.
But somehow, she had kept herself from changing.
Somehow she had suppressed her magic.
Or somebody had done it for her. From beyond the grave, perhaps?
For years.
She was the daughter of Carrick Wallace, one of Declan O’Reilly’s father’s right-hand men. He and Adrienne had been murdered and their young daughter had gone missing twenty-three years ago. After Declan had walked away so many years before, the pack had reformed, restructured, and had executed the rogues.
They had searched high and low for Shadoe Wallace, the young babe mourned by so many.
And that child was Tiffany, the woman who had fought off two rogue shape-shifters, a werewolf and an Inherent, and killed one of them.
She had done time in jail for protecting herself when she should have been coddled and praised, loved, adored, worshipped—shit, it made him furious just thinking of it. If he had found her just a little sooner, none of it would have happened.
Hell, maybe he was wrong. Maybe she wasn’t an Inherent in truth. How could she have resisted the call of the moon, the call of the hunt, the magic of feeling the Wolf’s call for more than a decade?
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