Wolf Slayer

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  “It’s probably time we introduced ourselves,” he said. “My name is Jonas.”

  The fact that he had a name made things fifty times more personal. Her head was against his shoulder in a wicked rendition of a damsel being rescued by the big bad wolf. The problem was that she couldn’t have pulled away from the incredibly strong arms supporting her if she had wanted to. Her legs were weak, and his hold was like being squeezed in a vise.

  A brief glance to the side showed her that the needle was on the table where she had left it. Her forearms were free of the two thin wires that looked like jumper cables for a car battery—a good analogy for what those cables did to her body. She must have pulled them off before hitting the floor.

  Setting the electricity too high had been a mistake, in hindsight, and the jolts had been too hot for her to take all at once. The procedure had sent shockwaves through her system before on a few occasions but had never knocked her out.

  “Where can I take you?” her unwelcome companion asked.

  His broad chest rumbled when he spoke, sending more vibrations charging through Tess’s body in a way that was startlingly similar to the recent hit of voltage. Although she had stopped shaking on the outside, her insides were picking up a distant drumbeat that felt absurdly sexual in nature.

  “Bedroom?” he asked. “Is it nearby?”

  Tess closed her eyes to seal off an acknowledgement of that infernal rising beat. This guy could not be allowed to pick up on her hidden absurdities and couldn’t be allowed anywhere near her bedroom.

  “All right,” he said when she didn’t answer his questions. “Someplace for you to lie down without broken glass shouldn’t be hard to find. Can you walk?”

  “Yes.”

  There was no way she could walk. Her brain might have made a comeback, but her body hadn’t fully recovered from the high dosage of silver and the electricity that sealed it inside her body. With the Were here now, she wasn’t just vulnerable, she was as good as dead.

  He didn’t lift her up this time. Possibly he recalled the night before when she’d held a knife to his neck. Instead, he slid an arm around her waist and turned her toward the doorway. All Tess could think about right then was how her mother and father would have disowned her if they saw this. They’d be rolling over in their graves.

  Determined to walk, Tess took a few steps on legs that felt like rubber and stumbled when she tried to free herself from the arm supporting her. The Were whose name was Jonas didn’t appear to be in any hurry to let her go.

  Jonas.

  Named like he was one hundred percent human.

  “I think it might be this way,” he said, and Tess knew he was scenting her trail through the cabin. Among his kind, scent was the richest form of identification.

  She had to say something. At least protest.

  Tess glanced up at him without meeting his eyes. “What are you?”

  “Lycan,” he replied.

  “And the white wolf?”

  “None of your concern.”

  They were standing in the doorway to her bedroom in full daylight. The way this Were was observing her was causing Tess’s internal drumbeat to become louder and much more significant.

  Jonas.

  His eyes were large and clear. Nothing of the wolf he carried around danced within them, but there was a gleam she didn’t immediately recognize. Was it the gleam of lust she was seeing? Hunger?

  His sober expression of concern left her feeling feminine and desirable when those things shouldn’t have mattered to her. Yet somehow, and in some way, what she saw in his eyes served to deepen the ridiculous bond with him that she had felt snap into place the first time their eyes had met.

  Was this trial by fire, and therefore a big test for a wolf hunter? Survival of the fittest?

  Like the trick that hunter’s used to match the rhythm of their prey’s heartbeat, her pulse jumped to keep time with his, mimicking the smoothness of each stroke. The difference was that she was the one now who was hardly breathing.

  The concept of danger didn’t begin to describe the situation. Her closeness to this guy was unacceptable and death-defying. Tess fought that warning even while realizing that fighting him was not only hopeless, it was a lost cause. The fact that he was large and muscled wasn’t the worst of it. The abnormal attraction they were experiencing was.

  Her bed was less than ten feet away and Tess would rather have died than reach it. Walls were closing in. Floorboards undulated. The dose of silver in her veins that was meant to save her from the Were world was pushing her toward it instead of holding her back.

  There were stories about the kind of union she was fighting, and dire warnings against them. Weres and werewolf hunters had been created to remain on opposing sides of supernatural teams, though every now and then the sheer magnitude of their knowledge of each other drove them together. Forbidden liaisons like that were shunned by her community and never turned out well.

  But the Were beside her was warm and helpful. And she no longer had a knife with which to defend herself...from herself. If they reached that bed, it would be over. There would be no going back.

  “Uneven playing field,” he remarked in a gravelly voice that made Tess believe he had heard every thought her treacherous mind had kicked up. Was nothing sacred or too personal with these guys?

  “I’ll just help you, and then I’ll be gone,” he announced, as if he truly believed that statement, and without mentioning why he had come here in the first place.

  Terrible thoughts kept coming to her when Tess needed to staunch them. Thoughts about what sex with a guy like this would be like, and the thrill that would come from having this gorgeous Lycan between her naked thighs. Words like forbidden had taken on the rhythm of an ongoing echo.

  As he guided her to a first step into the room beyond the threshold, Tess felt the last vestiges of her training begin to wither. For only the second time in her life, she wanted to cry.

  * * *

  Jonas knew he didn’t belong here, and that fact wasn’t lost on him. He could just set her down somewhere. Leave now and minimize the damage.

  Her room was exactly what he would have expected—small and neat, other than the unmade bed in the middle. Personal effects had been kept to a minimum. A few photos in frames sat on a bedside table. Piles of paperback books took up space near a small lamp.

  In any other visit to any other woman’s bedroom, unless passion had taken him over, he would have paused for a look at those photos and to check out the titles of the books. No time had been left here for curiosity, however. Although they didn’t have to be sworn enemies, Tess wouldn’t allow them to friends.

  Or lovers.

  So Jonas made a vow not to prove to Tess Owens how much of an animal he could be at times, in spite of the fact that the mattress was like a black hole for him that beckoned, and that her room’s faint fragrance of lavender and lilacs was a kind of exotic aphrodisiac that he hadn’t expected. Touching Tess in any way produced pangs of possessiveness in him that were as unexpected as they were unjustified.

  Tess would hate him even more than she already did for this transgression, and that was okay. Once she came to her senses, Tess would again be after him, but hopefully not too soon.

  Jonas helped her to sit down on the edge of the bed, and then he backed away as soon as he could with his hands raised in surrender. See? It’s all good. No bad stuff is going to happen.

  She was staring at him and regaining her strength minute by minute, and yet Jonas didn’t understand what had happened to strip that strength from her. If she was ill, that illness had to have set in quickly after he’d seen her at the store in town.

  She did look ill.

  Her skin was bloodless. Her eyes were bloodshot. He saw the red welts of burn marks on her bare arms, visible beneath the hems of her short sleeves.

>   What the hell have you done, Tess?

  He could have kissed those marks to help them heal. One bite with this teeth or scratch of his claws on Tess’s smooth skin and she could become a diluted version of something like him—enough to make them more compatible anyway. And that would end her reason to exist and annihilate the vows and promises she had made to her own kind.

  “I’ll leave you now,” he said to make his intentions clear to her, though his body wanted anything but that.

  She said nothing.

  “I’d like to make sure you aren’t hurt before I go.”

  “Why?” she replied.

  “Maybe for no other reason than I’m a nice guy sometimes.”

  “You broke my window.”

  “I’ll have it fixed.”

  “You weren’t invited here.”

  “And yet some folks might agree that it was a good thing I came by.”

  “We can’t be close,” she said, getting to the heart of the unsaid stuff swirling between them. “It doesn’t work that way and you know it.”

  “I’m sure we both get that,” Jonas agreed.

  “You don’t get a free pass for being a nice guy sometimes.”

  “I didn’t really expect one.”

  “Then why are you here?” she demanded.

  That question bothered Jonas because he wasn’t sure why he had turned the car this way. He’d like to believe it was to speak to her in the daylight, away from any possible public scrutiny. With just the two of them in a place where Tess would feel safe, he had hoped she’d at least listen to his proposal for a truce.

  Or maybe he had tuned into Tess’s darker emotions and had been worried about her present state of mind.

  Now she looked like a fair-haired angel on that bed, when angel wasn’t anywhere near the term that described Tess Owens. Early on, she had been tuned into the alternate frequencies of the world around her and expected to heed them.

  Her role models had been fighting machines. What it took for a human to give up so much was unimaginable, and yet Tess had done just that. However, he hadn’t missed the cables or the needle in that other room. God only knew what those burn marks on her arms were from.

  “You were leaving,” she reminded him. She hadn’t moved from the edge of the bed.

  “Yes. I did say that, didn’t I?” Jonas returned.

  “One foot in front of the other will do, and you might want to use a door this time.”

  Jonas had to smile in relief when he heard the cynicism in her tone.

  “Don’t come back,” she warned. But Jonas heard the wobble that backed Tess’s tone and recognized what it meant.

  Heat streaked in from nowhere to engulf him. Alerted to a newly emerging wave of emotion, Jonas’s inner beast quivered. His skin rippled as Tess’s bloodshot eyes found his with a challenge in them that overrode her arguments.

  Contrary to everything she had said, Tess was waiting for him to do the wrong thing. The bad thing. The incident they might never live down or live to tell about.

  Tess Owens was experiencing the same kind of heat he was and fighting her own inner battles about believing him to be a good guy.

  Tess wasn’t used to civility between their species. Actually, she was part animal herself. A being apart from the norm. A fighter with a one-track mind.

  But her eyes told another story that Jonas chose not to ignore...

  So it took him just three steps to reach her.

  Chapter 13

  When the Were leaned down to look into her eyes, Tess pushed him back, holding her breath, head and heart pounding. In the back of her mind and in the split second it took for him to press her onto her back on the bed, she knew it was impossible to stop this and couldn’t understand why.

  The silver in her system now seemed useless and more like a magnet calling to the silver particles swimming inside her. The veins carrying the silver solution felt molten. The rest of her was feverish. And Jonas, her Lycan nemesis, was volcanic.

  Up close, he was a nightmare of golden skin, sky-colored eyes and chiseled perfection. No scars. No hint of past battles or having just won one here without having to lift a finger.

  “Are you trying to kill yourself?” he asked with his attention on the marks on her arms.

  Each word he spoke was a puff of warm air on her bloodless face that made Tess despise him for his ability to make her feel anything at all.

  “Haven’t you gotten the memo? I’ve been trying to kill you,” she replied sharply.

  “And yet you haven’t,” he reminded her, leaning over her with his hands on the mattress in a way that turned the dry afternoon air sultry.

  “A slipup I won’t make again,” Tess promised.

  “After today, you mean.”

  “Starting right now.”

  He smiled. The bastard was having fun at her expense.

  “As soon as I recover,” she added.

  “How much time do I have until that happens, Tess?”

  “About five seconds.”

  She was already reaching for the knife hidden under her pillow, put there for nightmares and emergencies.

  His hand stopped her.

  “I take it one of the beasts you attribute to being of my kind did this?” His fingers traced the ridges on the wrist he held with a touch that felt extremely intimate.

  Tess caught her breath. “He got the worst end of the deal,” she said, damning this creature for taking unnatural liberties with a temporarily sidelined opponent.

  “Then you do believe me.” His observation intensified. “You believe I’m not like those other guys.”

  “I can’t afford to believe you. That’s a fact.”

  “Tell me this, Tess. Are you attracted to all of the werewolves you hunt?”

  “Stupid question.” And far too insightful, Tess added to herself.

  “Then it’s just me? I’m the only Were you’ve given the benefit of the doubt to? I’m the only one who has come here looking for answers, rather than a fight?”

  Tess shook her head. “When we meet again, you’ll know how much I appreciate the fact that you stopped by.”

  His smile remained fixed. A real smile. Nothing fake about it. The corners of his eyes crinkled becomingly. There was a mischievous sparkle in his eyes that didn’t bode well for her current position. If he hadn’t been a monster, she would have given that smile an award.

  “Get out,” she said.

  “All right.”

  He didn’t move.

  Her strength was slowly returning now that the silver had spread, and thanks to the electrodes that enhanced its effects. Tess raised a knee to gut this Were and found his reflexes faster. He stopped her with a raised thigh that served to pin her to the mattress in a compromising position. Like a cat on its back with its legs in the air, she was far too exposed.

  More heat flooded Tess’s neck and face. Breathing was a chore. How many ways could this guy trip her up and point to her repeatedly inept performance? Why him? Why was this werewolf so special?

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I want you to listen to what I’ve been saying.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all.”

  “You’re lying,” she said.

  “Not lying. But if I added anything more, you might forget the other more important stuff, when that’s the reason I’m here.”

  Tess met his blue-eyed gaze with defiance, even as her insides swirled.

  “I came to this area because you were here,” he said. “And because other Weres wouldn’t be here after knowing about you. I came hoping to cheat Death, rather than inspire you to seek me out for a similar result. Only it wouldn’t be a similar result, Tess. Taking a silver blade to the chest would be infinitely easier than what I will eventuall
y face, if not here, then somewhere else in the near future.”

  Tess heard herself ask, “What could be worse?”

  The smile he offered her this time was a faded version of the earlier one, but no less intriguing.

  “There are other things in this world besides humans and Weres,” he said.

  “And you’ve come here to avoid one of those other things?”

  “Yes.”

  “You need me off your back in order to do that?”

  “I do.”

  “Then you’ll leave?”

  “If I’m alive, yes, I will leave you in peace.”

  That last bit was a stretch for Tess, due to the fact that she was sure the concept of peace would elude her from now on. In letting a Lycan go, a new precedent would be set. After meeting this guy, was she going to have to take the time to pose questions to all of the werewolves crossing her path, giving them the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not they were good guys in disguise?

  Nothing was going to be the same after this.

  Nothing at all.

  “You knew I wasn’t one of those creatures,” he said, as if reading her mind was an ongoing skill that he had perfected. “Somehow you knew it.”

  She chose not to address that remark since it was true.

  “We can speak to each other in a way reserved for Weres,” he continued. “How do you suppose that’s possible?”

  There was no way Tess was going to mention that the silver was supposed to enhance performance in dealing with werewolves, while also bringing hunters closer to wolves in ways no one understood.

  Each dose of silver was like ingesting some of the same moonlight that affected wolves, Weres and Lycans. It gave hunters a leg-up on the Were species by helping to equalize their powers.

  And here now in her bedroom, Tess had nearly forgotten every damn thing she had learned that might have gotten her out of this mess. She was torn. Confused.

  Right then, all she wanted was for this incredibly chiseled wolf to stop looking at her in that particular way he had of making her seem like prey. His eyes on her sparked internal vibrations that made Tess consider crossing another boundary that would condemn her to werewolf hunter hell for even thinking of it.