Tess had been right. Poker was definitely not Abby Baker’s game.
Rule saw the intent to move in her eyes before her muscles got the signal. When she shot out of her chair, he leaped in front of her, and when she bolted for the door, he got ahold of her arm before she could so much as twitch in that direction. Judging by the frantic strength she put into fighting his grip—obviously augmented by Lou’s presence inside her, because, Rule figured, her left hook didn’t usually threaten to crack ribs—it was a good thing he’d been paying attention or she’d have been hell on wheels to catch.
No pun intended.
“Let go of me!”
Cursing under his breath, Rule grabbed her by both arms and spun her around to press her back against his chest until his arms crossed in front of her like a straitjacket. The hold immobilized her upper body, but that didn’t stop her from using her heels to try to dislocate his kneecaps. It was a good thing she was so bloody tiny or she’d probably have broken his nose with a vicious head butt.
Face set, he caught Rafe’s gaze over the top of her tangled hair and jerked his chin toward the door. “I’ve got her. Take everybody else out. She may be feeling a little outnumbered just now.”
“Outnumbered?! I’ll show you outnumbered, you slime-sucking son of a syphilitic goat!”
Rafe nodded. “If you need backup, you know where to find us.”
If this had been a movie set, Abby’s eyes would have been glowing with red-orange flames. As it was, smoke was nearly pouring out of her ears.
Tess winced and ducked as Abby’s increasingly loud tirade became increasingly moist as well. “Um, I think that’s our cue to exit, baby. Come on. Getting Gabriel into his bath and pajamas will seem like a cakewalk tonight.”
A moment later, the library door clicked shut, leaving Rule alone with the Tasmanian devil-woman in his arms.
His biggest problem, he realized as a particularly violent motion sent her undulating against him like a belly dancer, wasn’t that the human female seemed in no hurry to calm down; it was that his attention had fixed more firmly on the warm, soft weight of her in his arms than on the fact of her determination to do him great bodily harm.
She felt amazing. Her soft curves and silky skin had obviously been designed for loving, not fighting, and the incongruous strength she currently possessed only drew more attention to the plush welcome lying in wait beneath her snarling attack. The exertion had begun to speed her heart rate, dampen her skin, and make her breathing fast and ragged just like it would be if he had her beneath him, bare and begging….
Shit.
Gritting his teeth and banishing the image from his mind, Rule moved quickly to separate their bodies. He had more important things to think about right now than his sudden and obsessive interest in a human woman who never should have made him look twice. From a distance, she looked like a mouse. Maybe if she’d stayed that way when he got closer, his libido would have been easier to control.
“Calm down,” he hissed into her ear, thinking about what good advice that was. For both of them. He saw his breath stir the baby-fine ash-brown hair at her ear and tried not to picture what the pale, plump lobe might taste like.
What the hell was wrong with him?
“I said, calm down,” he repeated in a growl. “No one is going to hurt you. I swear it.”
“No one is going to hurt me? What the hell is wrong with you? This is kidnapping! You think this is my idea of a good time?”
“I think nothing of the sort, but unfortunately, none of us have a choice in the matter just now.”
“Oh, that’s rich! No choice. Because, you know, you’re under some kind of divine compulsion to grab me off the street, take me to your secret hideout, and keep me prisoner against my will.”
The only compulsion Rule felt at the moment couldn’t have been further from divine in origin, but he had no intention of discussing that with her.
He grunted when she landed another solid kick to his left knee. “You know exactly where you are; therefore, the ‘hideout’ is hardly secret. And I believe it would be better for all of us if you took Tess’s suggestion and began to look at this as a form of protective custody. No one here means you any harm. In fact, it is quite the opposite.”
She turned her head until her blue eye pinned him with a look of icy rage. “If you want to help me out, you’ll let me go. I have friends and family to keep me safe.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” Rule shifted his grip on her. “If we let you leave here, you would be dead within the hour, along with your friends and family. I guarantee it.”
He saw her blink. It wasn’t much as far as weakening went, but he would take what he could get just then. If she didn’t calm down enough for him to let go of her soon, he was afraid he’d do something stupid. Like lick her. All over.
“And it is not only your life at stake,” he reminded her. “If you die, Louamides becomes an open target, and if Uzkiel finds him, any chance we have of defeating Uzkiel dies as well.”
Her compelling eyes narrowed. “Let me just tell you that reminding me of the thing that’s currently possessing me is not going to put me in a very cooperative mood right now!”
Rule met her gaze squarely. “What if I remind you that if Uzkiel finds you and retrieves the solus spell from Louamides, your vision of Armageddon will look like a summer picnic in contrast to the hell those fiends will loose on the earth.”
She heard that. He felt it in the way her struggles suddenly eased even as her muscles stiffened. He resisted the temptation to press the advantage and let the silence fill the space between them.
Rule slid his hands down to her wrists, ignoring the smooth glide of her skin beneath his hands. Gripping her wrists not tightly but securely, he turned her to face him.
Stars, but she was tiny. The top of her head didn’t quite reach his shoulder, and the body that had fought so hard against him a few minutes ago looked delicate enough to break with a harsh word. She wasn’t small or waiflike by any means, but she was so soft and so obviously human she may as well have been a baby bird.
“If you can remain calm for the next few moments, I will do my best to explain it all to you.”
He didn’t release his hold on her wrists. He used it to steer her the few steps to the sofa and urge her to take a seat. Settling beside her, he kept a wary eye on her. She might look like a baby bird, but she clearly had the temper of a rabid raptor.
Abby braced her elbows on her legs, burying her face in her hands. “This can’t be happening.”
He caught the mumble and wished for a way to reassure her. Hell, he wished for a way to reassure himself. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid that it is. It’s happening right now. And the only way I know to keep the situation from getting even worse is to keep Louamides safely out of Uzkiel’s sight until the rest of the Watch can locate him and bring him under control.”
Rule braced himself for more screaming, but it didn’t materialize. Instead, Abby turned her brown and blue eyes on him and studied him in silence for several minutes.
Her expressions might be easy to read, but her eyes were fathomless. He could see the doubt, the fear, the frustration, even the anger on her face, but in her eyes all he saw was a warm, deep calmness that made him want to crawl inside her. It was a separate instinct from the one that wanted to get inside her through an entirely different route. That one he understood, not so much its cause but at least its intent. This one confused him. This wasn’t lust but something…sweeter.
It made his scowl deepen.
Abby sighed. “Look, I’m trying—I’m really trying—to see your point. I promise. But maybe if you tried looking at this from my perspective instead of just trying to intimidate me into cooperating—”
“I am not trying to intimidate you.” Forcing the tension from his expression, Rule leaned back to try to give her as much space as possible while still staying close enough to grab her if she tried to bolt. “I’m just trying to explain to you
why I can’t let you wander around the city alone. Not while Louamides is still with you.”
She laughed, but he heard no amusement in the sound. “So, what? I’m supposed to just nod and smile and take up knitting until you solve a problem you’ve clearly been fighting for a lot longer than I’ve been caught up in it?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what world you come from, but I’m from this one, and around here we have to do things like pay rent. And buy groceries. That requires that I ‘wander around the city,’ as you like to put it.”
He leaped on the opportunity to reassure her.
“We all realize that this is inconvenient for you. We would never put your livelihood in jeopardy,” he reassured her. “The Council will be more than happy to pay your rent and see to any other bills for as long as you are required to stay in hiding.”
She cast him a sour look. “Unless ‘the Council’ plans to keep paying my bills for the rest of my life, I have to go to work. If I don’t show up tomorrow, I’ll lose my job.”
“You cannot tell them you are ill? Do you not have vacation time?”
“Vacation is what you call a week spent lounging on the beach, or touring Napa Valley. Being locked in a nightclub with a bunch of inhuman strangers is not a vacation. Besides, if I want to take a vacation, I have to request the time in advance. I can’t just stop showing up and call it a vacation.”
“Who do you work for? I will speak to her.”
“It’s a he, and trust me, that scowl will work even less on him than it does on me.”
Rule cursed and rose, shoving a hand through his hair and prowling toward the fireplace on the other side of the room. “I am trying to make this easy on you, but there is only so much I can do. I cannot let Uzkiel find you, and I cannot protect you if you are not kept somewhere safe.”
He knew while his mouth was moving that he was asking for trouble. He glanced back at the sofa and saw Abby’s eyes narrow and knew she was about to give it to him.
“Well, forgive me for making your life difficult,” she said, pushing to her feet. “Here I am with my entire life turned upside down, my body invaded by something I didn’t believe in two months ago, and my freedom snatched away from me by a walking mountain with an attitude problem. What do I think gives me the right to get upset about any of it? I’m just behaving like an absolute crybaby!”
She stalked toward him with each step, her eyes blazing and the fear in her expression transmuted clearly into rage. She poked a finger at him in time with the cadence of her speech until she issued her last command with the tip digging into his chest and her gaze spitting fire at him.
Rule broke.
He couldn’t help it. He’d been fine while he sat next to her; he’d even been in control while he’d been touching her, trying to keep her from hurting someone, herself included. But the minute she touched him, the minute her fingertip came to rest on his chest and the warm, sweet scent of her breath rushed over his skin, the grip he had on his control shattered like cheap glass.
As he muttered a prayer and a curse in the same breath, his hands came up to sweep her arms away and drag her hard against him. He saw the look of shock and the quick shiver of fear before his last rein broke and his mouth slammed down over hers like an invading army.
And he knew his troops had hers hopelessly outnumbered.
Howl at the Moon
“Christine Warren knows how to write a winner!”
—Romance Junkies
Noah Baker never wanted to betray The Others. But if his military commanders want him to covertly investigate a Lupine scientist—whose extraordinary research on sensory perception in werewolves could be used to develop werewolf-sharp senses in human soldiers—Noah must oblige. Even if it means deceiving the woman he desires the most.
Samantha Carstairs is the personal assistant to the Alpha of the Silverback Clan, and as best friend to the Lupine community’s most brilliant scientist, she is privy to its most dangerous secret. Noah knows that Sam will never leak the scientific research…so he must find another way to get it, while keeping Sam close. But someone else is after Sam’s secret. Who is the other spy infiltrating The Others? If their genetic secrets get into the wrong hands, all hell could break loose. Now Noah’s true loyalty is put to the test as he fights to protect The Others—and his beloved Sam—and find the imposter…before it’s too late.
Sam eyed Graham with growing suspicion. He wore his most charming smile, the one that said he was about to convince you to invest your last dollar in a housing development in the middle of the Okefenokee Swamp.
Sam could already feel her feet getting wet. “Whenever you get that look—the one you’re wearing right now—it bodes ill for me. So stop stalling and lay it on me. I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
“We need to clear off some desk space in here,” he said. “We’re going to be having a visitor for a little while.”
“Oh, my goddess! We’re being audited?”
Graham shuddered. “Bite your tongue. No, nothing like that. I’ve agreed to let a select branch of the U.S. military have the opportunity to recruit pack members. Strictly as volunteers, of course. An army officer is going to be setting up a minioffice space with us for a few weeks.”
Sam’s glimmer of suspicion exploded in a siren-blaring and red flag–waving supernova of alarm. “Who?”
“Noah Baker.”
Yeah, that’s what she’d been afraid he would say.
On the surface, there was nothing wrong with Noah Baker. For a human, in fact, he’d made quite a few friends in the Other community since his sister had gotten mixed up with, and subsequently married to, a sun demon. Everybody seemed to like the man, from his demonic new brother-in-law, Rule, to Graham, to Rafe De Santos himself. Even Rafe’s wife, Tess, liked Noah, and she wasn’t one to suffer fools lightly, or even at all. But then, Noah Baker had proved to be no one’s fool. A major in the army’s highly selective and newly developed supernatural squadron, he had grit, training, and a cool head under pressure. Not to mention a talent for making large objects make even larger booms.
The only person Sam knew who didn’t see the human as an all-around swell guy was Sam herself.
Something about Noah just made Sam’s hackles rise every time he got within twenty feet of her, and it didn’t seem to matter what form she was in at the time. Human, wolf, or were, Sam’s teeth went on edge when Noah walked into a room and her hormones went haywire. She’d gotten to be friends with his sister, Abby, but with Noah, the best Sam could manage felt more like a tense ceasefire. And now Graham expected her to share office space with Noah?
Too much a Lupine to directly challenge her Alpha’s word, Sam took a more subtle approach. “So he’s going to be recruiting for his own unit? This ‘spook squad’ he’s on?”
Graham nodded. “His own unit and a couple of new ones. Apparently, the Pentagon has been pretty happy with the way the squad has handled a couple of recent incidents leading up to and resulting from the Unveiling.” The revelation of The Others’ existence had set a few backs up around the world. Riots, demonstrations, and protests had been the least of the trouble. “I think their successes have inspired the army to expand, put together a few new teams.”
“Do you really think many members of the pack will be interested? Playing well with humans is a new skill for a lot of us.”
“To tell you the truth, I think it’s a great opportunity. As loyal as our members are to the pack, it’s got to chafe a lot of them to know they’re not going to get ahead without challenging someone in a dominant position for a better place in line. That’s why we get into trouble from time to time with things like the Curtis incident.” Graham made euphemistic reference to the time his cousin Curtis had tried to rip his throat out and steal his mate, but Sam got his point. “This should give some of our Gammas a good chance to get out from under my paw, so to speak.”
“I’m sure no one has a problem with your paw, boss.” But even as Sam said it, she uttered a me
ntal curse. Graham made sense. Spending a lifetime in the middle of the pack didn’t suit everyone. Graham’s former Beta made a good example. Logan Hunter had chafed under the traditional pack system of hierarchy, and the only solution for him had been to leave Manhattan and take over as Alpha of the White Paw Clan in Connecticut.
Graham making sense, though, failed to make Sam feel any better. All she could think of was the impossibility of getting any work done while a pair of very human and disturbingly intense hazel eyes looked on.
The Alpha flashed her a grin. “You may be nearly as biased as Missy.”
Sam forced a smile of her own. “Not quite.” She drew in a deep breath. “Well, you’re the boss. When can we expect the troops to land?”
“How about now?”
Noah caught the flash of surprise and annoyance on Samantha’s face and stifled a grin. He knew he made the Lupine tense just by walking into the room, but then, she did the same to him. Unlike him, though, he suspected Sam had no idea why they disturbed each other so badly. She probably wrote it off as lousy chemistry.
Oh, it was chemistry, all right, but Noah couldn’t describe it as lousy. Not by a long shot.
Samantha Carstairs made Noah Baker feel about as predatory as her closest friends and relatives actually were. He might not get furry on full moons, but looking at the luscious female Lupine made him want to howl at one. It had been that way from the first time he’d set eyes on her, while he still thought she was a kidnapper holding his little sister captive. He’d taken one look at Samantha and felt his entire body go on alert. A few parts had even gone on high alert.
She had the body of an athlete, not as sinewy as a runner or as fine as a gymnast but covered in sleek, firm muscle and decorated with curves just generous enough to make a sane man look twice. Noah had looked more than that, taking stock from the top of her mane of wavy, richly brown hair to the tips of her feminine feet. Of course, by the end of their first meeting those feet had turned into paws and tried to pin him to the ground in the middle of the small park down the block, but even that hadn’t put him off. He’d dated women with bigger vices than occasionally shifting into timber wolves.
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