He grinned. “Anytime.”
“Will I always feel that level of hunger and blood lust as a wolf?”
“No. You’ll get used to it and learn to control it. In fact, I think you already did. At the end of the battle, you were able to focus your aggression on the Fangs just when it mattered.”
She was relieved that she wouldn’t have to worry about hurting Gavin ever again.
Taking a deep breath, she stared into Lucien’s warm eyes. “I need to tell you something.”
“It’s okay.” He shook his head, shaggy brown hair flying in all directions. “I know how you feel. I’ve always known.”
She took his hands. “Always?”
“Even before you did.”
“But I need to say it and I need you to hear me.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“You may not have forgiven me for going to Lord Enterprises yesterday and getting Dany hurt and Gavin kidnapped, and I understand. You’re right to be mad at me. I wouldn’t even blame you for hating me.”
“Ryenne, I could never hate you. I was only mad because—”
“Lucien, please, let me get this out.”
He nodded and waited for her to continue.
“Lucien Malraux, I love you. I have loved you for a while now but couldn’t admit it to myself. I was scared and stupid and... did I say scared? So, I couldn’t say it before and I couldn’t say it when you were mad at me, but I can now. I love you.”
Lucien stared at her with a silly grin. “Can I talk yet?”
She shook her head. “Kiss me now,” she whispered.
Lucien’s lips brushed hers and she grabbed both sides of his head and returned the kiss, stronger and harder than he’d begun. God, she’d missed his lips. And his arms tight around her.
She broke away and caressed his stubbled cheeks. She never wanted to let go of him again.
“I know all that,” he said. “And I love you, too, which is why I was so mad yesterday. But you risked your own life for my family, yesterday and today, and I will always be grateful.”
“Ahem.” Dany, both arms wrapped around Guy, who wore clothing that didn’t fasten around his girth, stood smiling at them. “I get it. I really do. And I’m so happy you guys have made up, but we need to get out of here before the Saint-Germain-en-Laye police show up and question us. Better if they think the Fangs did all of this to themselves.”
“Right, of course.” Ryenne nodded and turned away from Lucien.
As they left the Grieux house, Ryenne took Dany’s arm and leaned in close. “Got a bit of a glimpse of your man after the battle. Nice.”
Dany laughed and gestured to Pascal and Emma already cuddled up together in the car. “I think tonight will be a good night for the Malraux siblings. Poor Maman, all alone.”
They turned to Françoise, standing off to the side with Côtard, her dainty hand in his. “I don’t know about that,” Ryenne said. “Looks like all kinds of secrets are out.”
“Maman and Côtard?” Lucien asked from behind Ryenne. “How did we not see that one coming?” He slid into the backseat of the car with Ryenne and snuggled against her.
“How will we all fit in here?” she asked.
He gestured out the window to where Dany and Guy ran toward the forest, shifting as they went. Martin melted into the woods, too, still in his human form.
Movement from the other side of the car caught her eye. Côtard ushered Axel and Gavin into the back of his unmarked police car.
“Wait, what’s going on?” she asked.
Françoise came to her side of the car. “Don’t worry. They need to give statements about being kidnapped. I’ll go with them.”
“No, it should be me,” Ryenne said, sliding closer to the door.
“Ryenne, you have helped us enough, and you must be so hungry and tired since the change,” Françoise said. “I promise I will take good care of your friend. He’s one of us now. I won’t let anything happen to him. And you and Lucien have some unfinished business.”
Ryenne turned to Lucien. His broad grin melted her heart, but Gavin was her best friend.
“Gavin?” she called out the car door. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No way, Ry. We’re fine. I’ll see you later.” Gavin started to close the car window then paused. “Have fun.” He waggled his eyebrows.
Ryenne groaned.
Lucien pulled her closer to him. “Tell me again about how you love me.”
“My pleasure.” She kissed him and clung to him during the entire drive back into Paris.
TWENTY-TWO
Ryenne and Lucien strolled hand in hand in the Bois de Boulogne. The sun was beginning to set and Ryenne’s body was itching for a run after she’d spent all day inside.
Gavin had been sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a hot bowl of coffee in the old-fashioned French way and talking with Françoise when Ryenne had come downstairs that morning. He’d given her a big smile and she’d run to embrace him.
“You’re okay!”
“I am. And you’re glowing. Being a wolf agrees with you, Ry.”
She slapped his shoulder playfully, settling in with a bowl of coffee from Françoise.
“That or the entire night with your French hottie.”
She snorted coffee, which sprayed across Françoise’s beautiful wooden table. Ryenne rushed to clean it up, full of apologies.
“It’s okay,” Françoise said. “I’m glad you and Lucien are happy.”
She was? Françoise had not been Ryenne’s biggest fan over the past week. What had changed?
Oh right. Ryenne had changed. “Because I’m a shifter now?”
Françoise’s mouth dropped open. “No, of course not. No matter my reservations, you have been good for my son. And I was wrong about you bringing the Fangs to our door. Apparently, I did it all on my own.”
While she appreciated Françoise taking responsibility, Ryenne now knew there was more to the Fangs’ interest, some kind of family interest. She wasn’t prepared to talk about it in front of Françoise until she knew more.
The rest of the day had been filled with plans to go home to New York while talking to all the Malraux to learn more about being a shifter.
So, the prospect of a run in the park with her French hottie was more than welcome.
Lucien swung their hands between them like children and Ryenne laughed.
“Excited?” he asked in a deep rumbling voice that made her tingle between her legs.
There were still too many people around, so they continued walking toward the thickly forested area where Lucien had run last week before they had found Renardin’s body. It felt like ages ago but was only a few days.
“What did Côtard have to say?” she asked. She and Gavin had been upstairs making their flight arrangements when the police inspector called and talked to Françoise and Lucien.
“The kidnapping would have been enough to put Jean and Patrick Grieux away as well as several of their henchmen,” Lucien said. “But then the Saint-Germain-en-Laye police found documentation of embezzlement, tax evasion, and coercion of government officials.”
Ryenne’s eyebrows rose. That was a lot of illegal activity.
“So, it’s the end of Lord Enterprises in France,” he said. “They’re done. Thanks to you pushing us to go after Grieux and convincing Chantal to tell us the truth, we cut off one of Lord’s arms.”
“It will probably grow back stronger somewhere else.”
He shrugged.
“Unless...” she said.
“Unless what?”
“Come to New York and help me hunt them down,” she said, stroking his muscular arm. “I told you what Grieux said about my parents. If my father is alive, he’s become a bad guy and he has put my mother in danger.”
“You don’t know any of that for sure.”
“No, I don’t. Because I lost control and killed my source.” The last three words came out through gritted teeth.
; Lucien rubbed her back. “It will take a little time to learn to control your wolf. Don’t keep beating yourself up about it.”
She’d love to ease up on herself, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw herself tearing out Grieux’s throat and it sickened her. She was a killer. There was no putting this genie back in the bottle. She had killed multiple people last night.
“They were all bad guys,” Lucien said. “And they were all attacking you or someone you care about.”
She took a deep breath as they reached the darkening forest. Lucien was right. She hadn’t killed innocents. And she would do anything possible to learn enough control to never hurt an innocent.
Under the relative privacy of the branches of the chestnut and elm trees, Ryenne and Lucien stripped out of their clothes. A memory hit her of the first time she’d seen Lucien naked. It had also been in a forest, among the dark green foliage of Kenya, and he had just shifted back to human and revealed his truth to her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That if I don’t run off these feelings and desires, I’m going to explode.”
He laughed. “Spoken like a true shifter. Let’s go.”
His body shook and shimmered and changed. Ryenne took another breath. She hadn’t shifted since the battle last night. Could she do it when the lives of people she loved didn’t depend on her?
There was only one way to find out. As she had last night, she concentrated on what she wanted her body to do. Soon, her body shook with a great vibration and changed. When expected, the pain was less intense and she could imagine getting used to it.
Within minutes, she stood on the forest floor as a wolf, nose to nose with the gray wolf who was her lover and possibly the love of her life. She took off running, stretching her limbs, pushing herself to learn her limits. Lucien kept pace with her and they fell into a rhythm.
Trees whipped past, the grass tickled her belly, and the wind rushed across her fur. Ryenne had never felt so free.
Eventually, Lucien led them back to their clothes, and Ryenne collapsed in a heap. Lucien sat next to her and nudged her. He licked her nose. It was a comforting gesture. He kept licking so she licked him, too. Tension grew between them and they both seemed to need more.
Lucien shifted into human and rubbed Ryenne’s fur.
Ryenne shifted, too, and snuggled closer to Lucien. They kissed and their hands explored each other’s naked bodies.
“By the way,” Lucien whispered, “I will come to New York with you.”
She sat up. “You will? You’ll help me hunt down Lord?”
“I just need a couple of days here to make sure Malraux Frères gets back on its feet and then I’m all yours.”
Ryenne squealed and tackled him. They rolled around on the ground, kissing and licking and nipping each other, surrounded by the dark night and the sounds of nocturnal insects and animals.
If being a shifter meant making love to Lucien in a forest paradise, she was in. She couldn’t wait to explore New York at night with him.
And she’d put down anyone or anything threatening her mother.
THE END
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Keep reading for an excerpt from the next book in the Shifter Hunters Ltd. series.
Lord of New York Excerpt
Tonight, eating dinner with Gavin was low on Ryenne’s priority list. As much as she loved her best friend, the wolf was itching to get out. She needed to punch someone, fuck someone, or run. She couldn’t do either of the first two with Gavin. Maybe he could help her figure out how to do the third somewhere in this huge, densely populated city.
The plane ride home from Paris had been uneventful except for the need to jump out of her skin. She had prowled the aisles as much as the flight attendants allowed.
Once home, she had exercised in the gym in her building. Running miles and miles on the treadmill and lifting weights had left her exhausted and sweating. Then she soaked in the tub to ease her muscles. But now, only a couple of hours later, the needs had returned.
“Wow, Ry, you are sending out amazing amounts of pheromones. It’s too bad they have no effect on me,” Gavin said.
She leaned closer to him over the restaurant table. She hadn’t wanted to come out at all, but he had convinced her that neither one of them was in a fit state to cook, and that she needed to eat and keep up her strength if she was going to learn to control her inner beast.
“It’s like this itch I can’t scratch,” she explained to him. “Like every man in this room is attracting me, even ones I wouldn’t normally be attracted to.” She looked up and locked eyes with a man at the bar. His dark skin was ebony in the shadowy corner, his bald head reflecting the only light near him, a wall sconce several feet away.
“Well, if I found lady bits the least enticing, and if you weren’t like a sister to me, I might help you out,” Gavin said with a smirk. “But lady bits? Ew.”
Ryenne knew she should laugh at that. She knew she would have a week ago. But now, her entire world had changed. She was a shifter and she would always be a shifter. There was nothing she could do about it except learn to control these urges. Lucien told her she would but right now it was hard to believe.
A man at the next table caught her eye. He had sandy brown hair flopping over one eye, a chiseled jawline, and his tight t-shirt showed off lots of muscles. But he was with a woman who was shooting daggers at Ryenne with her eyes.
Not only was Ryenne happily in love with Lucien, but she thought she shouldn’t give in to some of these urges or she’d never learn to control them.
The man quirked up one side of his mouth. There was cruelty in the lines of his face and in his icy blue eyes.
With an effort, Ryenne turned away from him and focused on her friend and her dinner. The rare steak was bleeding juices on her plate and the smell tantalized her. She dug into it with unusual exuberance.
“Have you heard from Lucien?” Gavin asked. “When is he coming?”
She swallowed a bite of steak. “Next week, sometime.”
“That’s not too long.”
She couldn’t wait for Lucien to arrive. Not just for the usual reasons that her heart and her body missed him. But he could help her get through this transition. And she could scratch all three of her overwhelming itches with him.
“Excuse me,” a voice said from above and slightly behind Ryenne.
She and Gavin glanced up and saw the guy from the next table. She looked over. The woman wasn’t there.
“Sorry to interrupt your meal but I couldn’t help noticing you,” he said. “My girlfriend and I have an open relationship. I was hoping you might let me borrow your girl.”
Ryenne’s eyebrows shot up. “His girl?”
A huge smile broke across Gavin’s face.
“This girl,” Ryenne said, “makes up her own mind. And this girl has no intention of doing anything with you, open relationship or not.”
“Come on, baby, you might like it,” the man said.
Ryenne gave Gavin a look that she hoped conveyed “Is this guy for real? What decade is this?”
The smile on Gavin’s face grew wider and he sat back in his chair as if ready to watch a show.
The guy put his hand on Ryenne’s shoulder and she smacked it away.
“You like to play hard to get?” he asked.
“I don’t play,” she said. “I am hard to get.”
A timid female voice asked, “What’s going on?”
“Your boyfriend here claims you have an open relationship,” Ryenne answered. “And he’s trying to get me to go home with him.”
The woman turned furious eyes on her boyfriend. “Jake?”
“What?” he said, all posturing male. If he’d had feathers, he would have puffed them out.
“I have needs. You know that. You don’t always fulfill them.”
The woman darted embarrassed glances around at the other restaurant patrons who had started to take notice.
“Then I suggest you take care of those needs all by yourself. Because you’re not getting this...girl,” Ryenne said.
“Baby,” he cooed, stroking a strand of hair off Ryenne’s forehead. “Don’t be like that.”
Ryenne got up in his face. “Call me baby one more time and I will break your arm.”
The man didn’t flinch away. “Come on...baby.” He put emphasis on the word.
Before the word had fully left his mouth, however, Ryenne had stomped on his instep and twisted his arm around to his back.
“Ow,” he whined.
“What are you doing?” the girlfriend said.
“I warned him,” Ryenne said in a reasonable tone of voice.
“Let go of me,” the guy ground out between his clenched teeth.
“Not until you apologize to me and to your girlfriend.”
“For what?” he spat.
“For disrespecting us.”
“I wasn’t disrespecting you. I was paying you a compliment.”
She twisted his arm up higher.
“Ow!” He started struggling and kicking behind him.
Ryenne felt her control slipping and her claws started to break through her fingers. “Apologize, I said.”
“No,” he said, continuing to struggle against her.
Gavin’s eyes grew wide. “Ry,” he said, his voice a warning.
The girlfriend had her phone out. “I’ll....I’ll call the police if you don’t let him go.”
With a huge effort, Ryenne let go of him, pushed him away, and retracted her claws. “You’re not worth it. Come on, Gavin. I’m not hungry anymore.” She stormed away from their table.
“Hey, I’m not done with you,” the guy said, hunched on the floor, cradling his arm. “You dislocated my shoulder, you bitch.”
“Oh yes, we’re done.” Ryenne continued striding out of the restaurant. Gavin threw some cash on the table and followed.
Wolves of Paris (Shifter Hunters Ltd. Book 2) Page 13