She laughed softly, and when he reached the swing, he leaned over her, placing a hot, delicious kiss against her mouth, making her melt as easily as he always did.
They spent the last minutes of twilight cuddling there on the swing, content just to be in each other’s arms. As the sun finally dipped beneath the horizon, Brody pressed his mouth to hers, and whispered, “I love you so much, Michaela. All I want is to spend the rest of my life with you, making you happy, giving you everything your heart desires, making all your dreams come true.”
With the soft, lavender twilight surrounding them, Michaela curled her arms around his shoulders with soul-deep pleasure, gave him an impish smile, and said, “Speaking of dreams, I’ve been wanting to tell you about this one I had on the night you first kissed me. There was this field, filled with flowers, and you and I were playing with a beautiful baby girl…”
* * * * *
If you loved this novel, you’ll enjoy these other stories from Rhyannon Byrd’s Bloodrunners:
LAST WOLF STANDING
LAST WOLF HUNTING
LAST WOLF WATCHING
DARK WOLF RISING
DARK WOLF RUNNING
DARK WOLF RETURNING
BLOOD WOLF DAWNING
Available now from Harlequin Nocturne!
And continue reading for a special excerpt from DARK WOLF RISING
SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM
Read on for a special excerpt from
DARK WOLF RISING,
Part of Rhyannon Byrd’s reader favorite series
BLOODRUNNERS
Eric Drake, a powerful Dark Wolf, has never trusted himself around human females—preferring to mate only within his pack. That is, until he encounters Chelsea Smart.
As Eric approached the driver-side door, the woman shifted slightly, giving him his first clear view of her face, and his muscles tightened with a jolting, slam-him-into-the-ground kind of surprise. For some reason, probably because of how Hendricks and Franks were acting, he hadn’t expected the woman to be so...well, soft-looking. Even attractive. But she was. She had the kind of beauty that crept up on a guy, making him want to keep staring...searching, noting new discoveries as he mapped out the finely sculpted contours, one by one. The full lower lip was only part of a lush, pink mouth that begged for the carnal aggression of a kiss...among other things. Things he had no business thinking about doing with a perfect stranger, not to mention a human one.
So get your bloody mind out of the gutter and stay focused! his conscience muttered.
Determined to continue his appraisal with a more critical eye, Eric searched for her first flaw, but failed to find one. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but she was pretty, in a wholesome, appealing way. Her face was somewhat round, with a small nose and sweeping brows that arched over big blue eyes. Instead of making her look childish, the delicate features gave her an air of womanly innocence that would catch any man’s attention. That made him want to be the one to corrupt her...to open those bright blue eyes to things that were warm and wet and undeniably wicked. To the harder, more primal angles of pleasure.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, wondering what was wrong with him. He hated to admit it, but she was affecting him in a way that made him want to turn around and get the hell out of there. It was more than just the dangerous, unwanted sexual attraction building inside him. Though that was bad enough. But for some inexplicable reason, he almost felt as if the human posed some kind of threat to him, which was ridiculous. He was the monster in this scenario, the thing to be feared in the silence of the night—not her. And yet, his chest felt too tight, his muscles coiled, ready to burst into movement, and he shoved his hands in his front pockets, his jaw so tight it made his teeth ache. Sweat broke out over his forehead and collected in the small of his back as he indicated with his chin that he wanted her to roll down the window, more determined than ever to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.
In response, she lifted one of those beautifully shaped brows and glared at him. Without so much as the flicker of a lash, Eric glared right back, letting her know he wouldn’t be as easily cowed as the scouts. When she didn’t budge, he made his tone as non-threatening as possible, knowing his size could be intimidating to a lot of women, and said, “I’m not going to hurt you, lady. I just want to talk.”
She leaned a little closer to the window and ran her gaze over his tall form, working from his scarred hiking boots up to his short hair, then shook her head and raised her chin a notch higher. Eric choked back a low groan, thinking why me? Why couldn’t his friend Jeremy have been stuck with this tonight?
The second the window cracked open, he pulled in a deep breath, his razor-sharp senses searching...seeking. With her strange behavior, he’d half expected her to reek of alcohol or drugs, but he couldn’t pick up a trace of either. Instead, she smelled...like a puzzle. Fresh and clean and delicious, but almost painfully complicated. Like something he needed if he wanted to figure out an answer, even though he didn’t have a clue what the question was.
And it sure as hell isn’t anything to do with me.
For a split second, Eric was almost disappointed by that particular truth. By the fact that his wolf didn’t recognize that warm, mouthwatering scent as something that belonged to them. Something they were meant to own and claim and possess. But that was nothing short of insane. He lowered his arms and backed up a step from the bus, determined to put some distance between them. As well as knock some sense into his wayward libido.
That scent made him want to... No. He gave his head a hard shake, ignoring a bad idea that would only lead to an even worse situation.
She was the kind of trouble he didn’t need. Or want. And once she drove out of his life, he’d forget her as easily as he forgot every other woman who’d ever stirred his interest. It was a given. A fact. He just had to convince her crazy little ass to get off the pack’s private property, and that would be that.
Should be easy enough, considering how his species resided at the top of the food chain, and hers didn’t. Even though she didn’t know he was different, she would sense the predator in him. Would know this wasn’t a safe situation for her to be in, the same way she’d naturally avoid a dark alley or a snarling, snapping animal. It was instinct. Simple self-preservation.
But as Eric stared down into narrowed eyes that burned like a heat-glazed summer sky, he knew, with his own gut feeling, that it wouldn’t be that cut-and-dry. Knew she was going to be a pain in the ass, which should have bothered the hell out of him. But it didn’t.
No, what bothered him was how much he and his wolf were suddenly looking forward to the challenge.
Don’t miss
DARK WOLF RISING by Rhyannon Byrd
available wherever Harlequin Nocturne ebooks are sold.
www.Harlequin.com
Copyright © 2014 by Tabitha Bird
ISBN: 9781460393604
Last Wolf Watching
Copyright © 2008 by Tabitha Bird
First published by Silhouette Books, 2008
This edition published by Harlequin Nocturne, 2015
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and
™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
*Bloodrunners
Last Wolf Watching Page 25