A fight he’d been willing and eager to take on, and not just because the urge to claim McCoy’s niece as his own was fucking more potent than he could fathom.
Grayson and his pathetic pack were vile. They’d intended to do something even more vile. Dean would have thrown himself into a bloody brawl with them regardless of the woman they were terrorizing.
At the sight of McCoy’s niece, however, tormented by them, threatened by them, he lost the last of the control he had over his less human thought processes and attacked.
Now…with Grayson and his lot gone, and Cam and Lucy waiting for his instructions…
Christ, all he could think about was how much he wanted the gorgeous, feisty—albeit currently unconscious—blonde.
His desire for her overwhelmed the cold hunger to destroy the fucker Wedge Grayson.
He studied her face, taking in the long lashes made even thicker and darker by mascara, the full lips still a deep rose-red from her lipstick, the exquisite freckles smattering over her nose and cheeks.
That hot tension in his body stirred again, centralized in his groin.
Okay, he needed to get away from her. Now. Before his cock got hard.
There wasn’t anything wrong with shifters being sexually aroused by humans, but Dean was buck-naked with his beta—and his beta’s wife—beside him. The last thing Cam and Lucy would want to see was him with a raging boner.
And raging it would be. There was something about the woman on the ground…
But what? And why does it feel so right? So powerful?
Tearing his stare from her face once again, he looked at Cam. “Get the truck.”
You taking her to the Creek’s doc?
He ground his teeth at Lucy’s projected question.
He should take McCoy’s niece to the town’s only doctor. The woman may be a banshee but she truly was a doctor. When it came to the medical care of humans, Dr. Neill was legit.
Dean dragged in a slow breath. He would take the American to the doc. Or rather, get Cam and Lucy to do it. That was safer. But right now…
A few more minutes. While Cam and Luce get the truck. Just a few more minutes in her company before you never see her again. A few more minutes…
“Just get the truck,” he repeated.
They turned and ran for wherever they’d left Cam’s truck, paws silent, just two sandy-colored blurs in the night.
Teeth still clenched, Dean returned his gaze to McCoy’s niece. “What is it about you?” he whispered, touching his fingertips to her cheek. “If only…”
She opened her eyes. “Dean Singleton?”
Her voice, scratchy and husky, flayed his control.
He nodded, his body thrumming with elemental need.
She frowned, eyes fluttering closed. “You are the sexiest fucking man I’ve ever seen, Dean Singleton.”
He froze.
She looked up at him again, her eyelids heavy, barely opened. “I swear I saw you turn from a dingo to a man when I fell over, which means I must be dreaming or in a coma or something, so that means I can tell you how fucking sexy I think you are and not get embarrassed.”
Dean swallowed, his stare locked on her eyes. Fuck a duck, what did she just say? She saw him shift? Fuck. Fuck, that changed everything. Everything.
A soft, weak chuckle fell past her lips and she lifted her hand, brushing her fingers along his jaw. “And because I’m dreaming,” she went on, her voice getting softer and more husky with each word, “I can also tell you I want to kiss you more than anything.”
“That’s not—” he began.
She buried her hand in the hair at his nape, pulled his face down to hers, and captured his lips in a hungry kiss.
The second her tongue touched his, he was screwed. Screwed and lost and undone.
A growl tore from deep within his chest, his dingo reacting with a carnal urgency to her taste and touch. Wanting her. Craving her. Needing her.
He fisted a handful of her hair and met her kiss with a savagery he couldn’t restrain. He knew her words, her kiss, were the result of her fall, of most likely hitting her head. He knew she was delirious. He knew those things, but the moment she crushed his lips with hers, he was screwed.
The beast inside him craved release. Base lust and instinctual urges claimed him.
This woman, this human female whose name he didn’t even know, was his. And he would claim what was his. Now. Claim her. Take her. Under the ancient sky and its ancient stars. Mate with her the way his kind had done for millennia, even longer.
He lashed his tongue against hers, giving himself over to the sheer force of his hunger for her. She moaned into his mouth, dragging her hand from his hair to his shoulder to pull him down closer to her.
He went willingly, nudging her thighs apart with his knee before pressing their hips together.
She moaned again, clawing at his shoulders with her nails as she ground their groins together. The denim of her shorts rubbed against his naked cock, a wicked friction that ignited fresh hunger for her.
Inside her. He needed to be inside her. He needed to be surrounded by her heat, gripped by it, as he marked her with his mouth, his teeth. As he rendered her his sexual—
Dean jerked backward. Off her. Away from her.
Fuck. What was he doing? He’d almost lost it there. Almost surrendered control to his base lust and animalistic instincts and needs.
How could he let that happen? Who the fuck was this woman?
With a frustrated growl, he stared down into her face.
“I…what’s going on? This isn’t…I’m not…” She frowned, the faint moonlight barely illuminating her expression. His vision, even in human form, was preternaturally keen. He could see the uncertainty and confusion in her eyes. Like his sight, his other senses were hyper-keen. He could hear her heart thumping in her chest, could smell her arousal…
Another low growl rumbled deep in his chest and he ground his teeth.
The scent of her desire for him, the moisture of her kiss on his lips, drove him close to the brink. Why had he sent Cam and Lucy to get the truck? He should have gone himself. Staying here with her…Christ, he was asking for fucking trouble.
And yet he couldn’t go. Even now, when he should, he couldn’t.
“I don’t think I’m dreaming,” she whispered around her thumbnail. Confusion flickered over her face.
“How do you feel?” he asked, keeping his voice as calm as possible. “Did the wolves…I mean, Grayson and his dicks hurt you?”
Her heart quickened, its rapid beat sending a hot wave of lust into his groin. “N-no.” She shook her head, her stare fixed on him. “Why are you naked?”
Dean blinked. Because barely twenty minutes ago I was a dingo. Not really the answer he could give her.
She pushed herself more upright, her frown deepening even as her stare drilled into his face. “Where are your clothes? How did you know it was Wedge Grayson? How did you know where I was? Did you scare away the dingoes? There were…were dingoes.” She moved on the ground, her frown puzzled, and rubbed at the back of her head. “Oh man, my head hurts.”
So many questions. He didn’t answer any of them. Instead, he glared at her. “What kind of stupid woman travels out whoop-whoop in the middle of the night alone?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I’m looking for my uncle.”
“And you think McCoy is out here?” he snapped back. “At an abandoned shearing—”
He clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late.
“You know who my uncle is?” She scrambled onto her knees, searching his face with a scrutiny he felt all the way to his core. “Where is he?”
“Not out here,” he snarled. “And you shouldn’t be out here, either. Bloody hell, woman, what were you thinking? If I didn’t pick up your scent back in the Creek, if I didn’t track Grayson out here…” He ground his teeth. Damn it, he hadn’t meant to say that.
It had been too long since he’d talked to a human. He’
d forgotten how. Everyone living in the Creek, the entire town’s population…none of them were normal, none of them were strictly human.
“Pick up my scent?” McCoy’s niece narrowed her eyes. Her frown deepened. And then her mouth fell open. “Oh my God.”
The words fell from her in a tight whisper.
Dean sucked in a slow breath, unable to move.
“Oh my God,” she repeated, shaking her head. “It’s true. Uncle M isn’t crazy. It’s true. You…you…dingo…”
Right. Time to shut this down.
Dean balled his fists, holding her stare. “You hit your head when you fell. You didn’t see what you think you saw.”
Terror filled her eyes. Erupted in them. Panicked terror. She scrambled backward, shaking her head. “I saw it. I saw you. Change. Oh my God, it wasn’t a dream. I saw you change. I saw you. Everything that Uncle Martin said, everything he told me.”
A low growl tore at Dean’s chest before he could stop it. Fuck, this wasn’t going the way he’d wanted.
“It’s not—” he began, reaching out a hand. He needed to calm her down. Nip this in the bud right now.
She screamed. High. Scared. And flung herself away from him, sprinting—awkwardly at first, and then with frantic speed—into the night.
“Fuck.” He ran after her. In human form. He’d catch her faster in dingo form, but would freak her out even more if he did.
“Get away from me, you freak,” she screamed over her shoulder.
Freak? What the hell happened to him being fucking sexy?
Tapping into his dingo’s contained power, he ran her down. Took her down. Slammed into her just as she was about to reach the abandoned shearing shed in which her uncle had first witnessed Dean shift from man to dingo.
They hit the ground, teeth clicking.
She screamed, fury replacing her earlier fear. “Get the fuck off me, freak.” She thrashed and bucked as he snared her wrists and rammed them to the ground on either side of her head.
His groin mashed to the junction of her thighs, his cock—hard, for fuck’s sake—ground to her heat.
“Stop it,” he snarled, pinning her with his weight. “Stop it, I’m not going to hurt you.”
She continued to fight and buck. Christ, she was strong. And so exquisitely warm and lush beneath his—
“If you’ve hurt my uncle I will kill you!”
The rage and promise in her shout sheared through him. He tightened his grip on her wrists, holding her arms motionless. “I didn’t hurt your uncle,” he shouted, struggling to restrain his inner animal as much as he fought to restrain her. “But he sure as shit dealt with the truth better than you are.”
She froze. Her eyes widened, her lips parted, and she stared up at him. “Oh God, it really is true. I don’t…I don’t…”
Powerful lights swept over them, bleaching her face. Fury burned in her eyes.
Dean growled, the rumbling of Cam’s truck vibrating through his body.
He held the American’s wrists, glaring at her. “We’re not what you think we are,” he ground out. “Your uncle knew that.”
Silence filled the air as Cam killed the engine.
Dean stared down into her eyes. So blue. With chips of emerald green.
She sucked in a sharp breath, the action making her breasts brush against his bare chest.
His body reacted.
“Where is he?” she whispered. Dean’s heart twisted at the torment in her voice. The worry.
He swallowed, relaxing his grip on her a little. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.
“Singo?”
At Cam’s concerned shout, Dean released McCoy’s niece’s wrists. “I wish I did.”
He climbed off her and snatched the jeans Cam threw at him out of the air.
He didn’t need to turn to know she’d sprinted away from him the second he’d straightened to his feet.
Cam raised an eyebrow. “Want me to go get her?”
Dean shook his head. “No. I’ll do it.” He pulled on his jeans, yanked up the fly, and then turned to study the blackness beyond the beam of Cam’s truck’s lights.
“Where’s she running to?”
He shrugged. “Away from the monsters.”
“Monsters?” Lucy joined them. “Grayson and his pack?”
“Us.” He scowled. “Me.”
“She knows?”
Dean snorted at Cam’s shock. “Give us a sec. We’ll be back.”
He took off. And as much as he wanted to believe he was chasing McCoy’s niece to keep her safe, he knew that wasn’t the case.
He was chasing her because he wanted her. In every fucking way.
And he was going to claim her.
Human or not, he was going to claim her.
Make her his.
He followed her, increasing his speed as her scent filled his nose. He could hear her heart, thumping fast in her chest. Feel her feet thudding against the ground.
And then they weren’t. For a split second, all he could hear was her heart, and then he heard her moan. Then he heard her fall.
Hard.
Chapter 3
Okay, so this wasn’t her bed. Or her seat on the plane. Or the saggy mattress in her room at the Longyard Pub.
Scraping her hands through her hair and squinting at the bright light that seemed to be everywhere, Katy took in her surroundings.
A room. A bedroom. A big bedroom. With a sweeping floor-to-ceiling window overlooking what clearly couldn’t be any part of Kangaroo Creek: lush green grass, eucalyptus trees, and an in-ground swimming pool full of crystal-clear water.
What the hell? How did she get here? Wherever here was? The last thing she remembered was…
What? Dean Singleton. Dean Singleton being a dingo. Dean Singleton pinning her to the ground with his body. A carnal, overwhelming want in her body for him. Car lights. Dean’s worry for her uncle. Running into the night. Pain in her head. So much pain. And then…
Nothing.
“Great,” she muttered, dropping her face into her hands. “I passed out while running away. I’ve become the heroine in my own horror movie.”
And yet, even while you were running from Dean, you wanted him to chase you. To catch you. To tear your clothes off and do wicked things to you. Are you sure horror movie is the kind of film you’re actually thinking of?
Scowling, she climbed off the bed. Wherever she was, it wasn’t helping her find Uncle Martin. She needed to get out of here.
Her head swam for a dizzy moment as she straightened from the mattress, long enough for her to worry she was going to topple over.
“Keep it together,” she grumbled, eyes closed.
A dull throb at the back of her head reminded her she’d been injured fleeing Grayson.
Grayson. Singleton. Wolves. Dingoes. Maybe you hit your head harder than you thought and you’re currently in a coma somewhere? Does Kangaroo Creek even have a hospital?
Gritting her teeth, she opened her eyes and crossed to the massive window. The lush green lawn, sparkling pool, and sweeping cloudless blue sky beyond the glass mocked everything she’d been through last night. If it wasn’t for the fact she had no idea where she was, she could convince herself everything had been a dream.
“Still could be.” She scanned the world outside. “After all, you now seem to be totally okay with the fact Dean Singleton is some kind of shape-shifting dingo man. That’s not even close to…to—”
“Reality?”
She squealed at the deep male voice.
Spinning around, her heart smashed into her throat at the sight of Dean standing at the end of the bed.
Her stomach clenched. So did her girly bits. She stared at him, fear and lust warring for control of her brain and body. God, why was she so turned on by him?
“Where am I?” she asked. Great, did she have to sound so breathy?
An ambiguous glint danced in his amber eyes. “My place.”
“So that’s your
bed I woke up in?”
He dipped his head in a single nod, his gaze never leaving hers.
Katy’s tummy and pussy cramped with raw excitement at the thought. Oh boy, she needed to get a grip.
“Your bed?” She crossed her arms over her breasts, desperate for him not to see how hard her nipples had become.
“My bed. But that’s not really the question you want to ask, is it?”
Can we have wild, wicked sex right now?
The question popped into her head, disturbing in its force. Heat and tension flooded the pit of her stomach.
“How long have I been out for?” she blurted, pressing her thighs together. Damn it, she shouldn’t be turned on by a…a…shifty animal beast, let alone one who’d abducted her. “How did I get here? Are we still in Kangaroo Creek? What do you know about my uncle?”
Why do you make me so horny?
“You’ve been out for almost twelve hours, Katy-Lin.”
Her sex pulsed at the sound of her name uttered in his Australian accent.
So damn sexy. So damn arousing.
“How do you know my name?”
“It’s on your passport,” he answered, slowly walking towards her. A smile played with his lips, at once amused and arrogant. “Which is now in my safe. Along with your purse, and the keys to your rental.”
The closer he got to her, the quicker Katy’s heart beat. And the more her sex throbbed.
Scared. Be scared, Katy. Listen to what he’s saying. Be scared. And furious. Not horny, for Christ’s sake.
“I brought you here,” he went on, drawing closer. “Yes, we are technically still in the Creek, although I live roughly thirty minutes away from the town itself. And, I’m afraid, all I know about your uncle is he vanished without a trace almost a month ago. Now you’ve arrived, I’ve got my beta looking deeper into it. Hopefully I’ll have an answer for you soon.”
He stopped directly in front of her. So close. Close enough she breathed him in, a delicious combination of sandalwood soap, subtly spiced cologne, and an intoxicating scent that made her think of endless skies, fresh dirt, and rain.
Her body reacted, more powerfully than it had so far. Her breasts grew round and heavy, aching for him to touch them. Her nipples puckered into hardened tips. Her clit damn near throbbed with a desire beyond her.
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