She said, “Maybe I should have taken a closer look at that badge on your shirt.”
He pulled the badge off and tossed it to her as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Be my guest.”
Without a doubt, this guy could be infuriating. But what he had tossed her felt like a real badge. She’d seen a few in her time, so this probably meant Harris was one of the good guys.
Skylar closed her fingers over the metal as if it were a talisman to wield against things that went bump in the night.
“Anything you need we can pick up at the store,” he said. “I have an account there.”
“Does this store have alcohol?”
Harris turned the key and started the engine. “I’m sure it does.” After a pause, he added, “We don’t have to talk about what happened tonight if you’d prefer that.”
“You mean about what chased us, or what nearly took place in my bedroom?”
“Should I apologize for acting on that last one?”
“No.” Skylar closed her eyes briefly, listening to the familiar nuances in his voice that fanned her inner heat. “It wasn’t your fault.”
The car kicked up a spray of gravel as it moved. Skylar felt Harris’s attention on her.
“I needed a diversion,” she explained.
“From what?”
“The rest of my life.”
“Losing your father?”
“That’s the most recent blow.”
“Then I’m sorry we were interrupted, though it was probably for the best.” Harris sounded earnest.
“Yes. For the best,” Skylar agreed, leaning sideways as the car made a sharp left turn around a stand of pine trees. “It wasn’t really a wolf that made you run out on me, was it?”
Harris glanced in her direction without comment.
They rode in silence after that, which made the bumpy ride more uncomfortable. Eventually it became clear that the man beside her wasn’t going to offer anything resembling a decent explanation for what had happened in or around the cabin tonight. Then again, neither could she.
“You might want to pack your father’s things during the day and stay in town at night,” he suggested some time later.
“Being in town most of the time would be inconvenient.”
Again, Skylar felt the intensity of his silent appraisal.
“As a favor to me, then,” he said.
“Do I owe you one?”
“If not, you might humor me as the local law enforcement.”
Skylar winced. Because of Danny, the words law enforcement had a sour ring to them. In essence, she’d gone from one kind of cop to another without thinking. This was far better than the werewolf dream, though.
“Well, I can’t jump out of a moving car, so I guess tonight’s a done deal,” she said.
“Good.”
As they rounded another dark curve in the road, the soft glitter of distant lights appeared. Skylar supposed her safety would be assured down there among the masses, if safety was really an issue.
It was that rebel part of her—the part that had sent her traipsing up a mountain path after dark and had given her an appreciation for sensuous dreams, gorgeous werewolves and strangers with seductive voices—that told her to ignore this ranger’s plan after tonight and instead find out what the hell was going on.
Her dad had kept secrets, and that hadn’t ended well. The man beside her kept things to himself. She had to know who or what was out there, and whether being followed tonight had anything to do with her father’s death, less than two weeks ago. She had a hunch that it did.
With good old Donovan perseverance and a dash of stubborn determination, she vowed get to the heart of these mysteries if it was the last thing she ever did.
With or without the man next to her…in her bed.
Chapter 7
Gavin read Skylar Donovan easily and checked his concerns. She was only his business up to a point. After that, his feelings for her couldn’t interfere with a task that was too weighty for distractions.
He’d seen the demon. Facing it again, he had survived. And that was one hell of a mystery.
The thing hadn’t attacked. If it had scented him and identified him as a Were—one it had created in a bloody mess of poisoned flesh—surely Skylar Donovan’s presence should also have piqued its interest. All that succulent ivory skin and her sweet, sweet perfume that right now made him want to look at her instead of the road.
The beast couldn’t have missed that.
No beast could have missed it.
Case in point was his own inexplicable longing for her. More than anything, he wanted to stop the car and show her he could maintain some control if he was allowed to have her.
It wasn’t only his vow to protect the public that made him want to see to Skylar’s safety. It was sheer, unadulterated greed. He wanted to save Skylar Donovan for himself.
She was the sum total of everything he’d lost when that beast attacked him, and so much more. She was lace and perfume, defiance and mystery in a slick feminine casing that escalated his need for those things. He’d be damned if he’d allow the monster to harm one hair on her beautiful head.
Despite this newfound possessiveness, he realized that Skylar really wasn’t his to keep. She was human, and he wasn’t. Oil and water didn’t mix. Neither should wolf and human DNA.
He’d kissed Skylar and wanted his mouth on hers now. Her plush lips were all he thought about when they weren’t confronting giant rabid werewolves that by all rights shouldn’t exist.
I shouldn’t exist, either, as I am now. You deserve better, Skylar.
But maybe she’d been sent here from the heavens as the kind of distraction that would keep him sane and grounded?
Don’t look for excuses.
He might be torn apart by the depth of his longing for her, but he had to let this woman go, keep his distance, harness his thoughts and get away from her as soon as possible because his resolve was already weakening where she was concerned, and his energy was needed elsewhere.
The beast had returned. He’d seen it. Instead of taking it down, he’d been seriously unprepared, due in part to Skylar.
“No more kissing.”
Though he muttered this softly and to himself, she heard it.
“Is that a promise?” she said.
Grimacing, rubbing his forehead, Gavin felt conflicted. By being here with Skylar he was allowing the monster to get away. By allowing it to get away, he was helping Skylar Donovan avoid the ugly fate that had befallen him.
“Nothing personal,” he said to her.
“If you say so.”
Lights appeared around them too quickly. Gavin drove the car into the motel parking lot at the edge of town and switched off the engine. They got out of the car without speaking.
She slammed the door.
“Just give them my name.” He pointed to the office.
“Ranger Harris has carte blanche here?”
“It’ll do unless you run up a tab.”
She tilted her head. “You actually have a tab in this place?”
Gavin nodded. “I sometimes need to crash before the long drive home.”
“Then you don’t live close by.”
“Close enough when I haven’t been up for several nights in a row. Way too far away otherwise.”
Skylar Donovan walked around the car and right up to where he stood. “You’re going back out there, aren’t you?”
“I’m on duty for another hour or so.”
He worked hard to keep his hands to himself, unsure of why he was so attracted to Skylar that he’d want to push the limits of his self-control, or delay his highly charged personal vendetta.
This leggy blonde was just so blessed tempting, the choice seemed tough. It was as if she’d gotten under his skin and nestled there alongside the wolf.
“Does that mean you have to be alone?” she asked.
“Tonight it does.”
“Why? Why would you take that c
hance and go back out there when you know we were followed?”
“It’s what I do, Skylar. It’s something I have to face and take care of without risking harm to others.”
Skylar. He liked her unusual name and liked saying it. Outside of her evident ornery streak, he liked everything about Skylar Donovan that he’d seen so far. Maybe he even liked that stubborn streak.
She might be small, yet she was no shy flower. She was too courageous for her own good, though. She had walked up that mountain alone tonight without being sure of finding him.
Somehow, at that moment, she seemed a lot more than just temptation in tight blue jeans. The delicious scent that had lured him to her in the first place wafted around her like a corona. Golden hair caressed her shoulders in uncombed waves highlighted by shafts of moonlight escaping the cloud cover. The same moonlight that made his forehead dampen with the strain of withholding his wild side.
“So you admit we were followed and have no idea who it might have been?” she asked.
He shrugged to hide the evidence of another unruly spike in his heart rate that pulsed upward and into his jaw. Hell, he wanted to get under her skin, seize the moment and take some long-overdue R&R while he could. Surely that was fair after what he’d been through?
When she’d left the cabin, after what had almost taken place in her bedroom, Skylar had tugged on her shirt—the same shirt he’d removed in a fit of passion—without properly stretching it into place. Narrow sections of bare skin showed above the waistband of her jeans—smooth, pale and terribly seductive.
No way.
Can’t have you.
I’ve got to go back out there.
All true warnings, but Gavin’s body argued adamantly against them, and against reason. Having sampled her, tasted her, felt her beneath his hands, his body repeatedly returned to those sensations as though she’d been imprinted on him. After looking into her big green eyes and finding a shared connection, Skylar Donovan truly did feel like part of his future.
This wasn’t right, of course, or normal. She was just a woman he had stumbled upon who’d ended up striking his fancy. Her open-mindedness in terms of sex and lust and freely meeting her own needs had sealed the deal. That was all. He hadn’t met anyone like her in a long time.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” She ran her hands over the warm hood of the Jeep the way he imagined her running them over him, and his body responded with a ripple of lustful tension.
With his pulse erratic and a new pressure in his chest, Gavin said, “In the morning I’ll be back to take you home.”
“Okay. Until then.”
When she turned from him, Gavin briefly shut his eyes to block the sight, attempting to keep his distance, keep himself from pulling her back and making a complete fool of himself.
He watched her walk away. Her hips swayed in the fitted jeans he hadn’t been lucky enough to get off her. The taut, slender back that had arched passionately during their kiss emphasized a small waist he’d like to encircle with his hands.
Rebuking himself for staring at her like this, Gavin didn’t stop looking. He’d sent her away, and she’d obliged. Her allure might be strong, but he couldn’t let it rival the moon’s—the moon at that same moment sending out signals that he intercepted as clearly as if the giant orb contained a telepathic intelligence.
Tomorrow night he’d change into something that would scare Skylar to death. All thoughts of closeness and intimacy would be a thing of the past if she were to witness his transformation.
In this new reality, however, Skylar had become as potentially dangerous to him as the moon that ruled his shape. She’d become both a distraction and a necessity in no time flat. He had to let her go and didn’t want to.
Really didn’t want to.
“Definitely no kissing,” Gavin said aloud to bolster his willpower.
Over her shoulder, Skylar Donovan smiled. “Don’t be too sure about that, Harris. I’m here for a few more days.”
Gavin took two steps backward, and then two more, his heart beating out a protest about getting into the car. His fingers curled against his palms. His muscles rippled and twitched. As absurd as it seemed given that he had known this woman for only one day…leaving Skylar Donovan was just about the hardest thing he had ever done.
*
Skylar heard the car drive out of the parking lot, and her determination to remain independent faltered. In spite of everything she’d been through, she felt forlorn and alone.
Still, she had to admit that Harris’s behavior bordered on chivalrous. He was willing to foot the bill tonight at this motel in order to see to her safety, which meant he did believe there might be trouble out there in the dark.
“A civilized ending to a strange night?”
Resigned to her current fate, Skylar gave the motel a wary once-over. It was a standard two-story, U-shaped design from the fifties. The building wrapped around the parking lot on three sides, with all the rooms and doors front-facing, and two sets of stairs leading to the second-floor balcony. Most of the windows were dark. A small blue neon sign pointed to the reception area.
Skylar went inside.
A middle-aged woman with short blond hair, wearing a red fleece vest, greeted her from behind a counter and raised an eyebrow when Skylar mentioned Harris’s name. Gratefully, that woman kept what she might have been thinking about a woman showing up in this place on his dime, to herself.
Handing over a key, this receptionist said, “Room twenty-one. That’s his favorite,” as if being in his favorite room mattered. She then produced an ice bucket and a glass, and looked past Skylar for the missing luggage.
“Will you need anything else?”
“A toothbrush would be nice.”
Skylar smiled as though nothing were out of the ordinary about not having a purse or a toothbrush, omitting the explanation of not being able to stop at the cabin for some of life’s conveniences because a madman might show up there.
Or a wolf that knew how to open a door.
“Emergency amenities are on the bathroom counter,” the woman said, returning the smile with less enthusiasm and leaving Skylar to assume that Ranger Harris had more than one female fan in the area. “The room is on the second floor.”
“Thanks.”
Skylar climbed the stairs and waited for several minutes before attempting to go inside room twenty-one, which, like the rest of the rooms, overlooked the mostly empty parking lot. Summer was over, so tourists would be scarce. Since no lights were on, she guessed she might have this floor to herself, and dreaded that.
She wished the ice bucket came with a bottle of wine. Suddenly ravenous, she wanted a salad and a steak. This wasn’t the kind of motel with room service, though, and since she had no wallet, dinner wasn’t in the cards. Her growling stomach would just have to suck it up and deal.
Staring out at the lot, and up at the nearly full moon emerging from the clouds, she felt lost and slightly out of sorts. The cozy cabin stuffed with her father’s things made her feel more at home and part of something. Here, in a strange motel without her credit cards or her cell phone, she was cut off and isolated.
“You shouldn’t have brought me here, Harris. I’ve never really been good on my own. Too much time to think.”
Her gaze rose from the card key in her hand to the parking lot. “You really shouldn’t have left me.”
She added wistfully, “Come back.”
Her heart kicked out a thump when the Jeep reappeared. Hopping part of the curb, it halted as far away from the building as possible and sat there idling as if the engine were trying to make up its mind about something.
The man inside it sat there, too. Skylar wanted to call out to him. Over the ether, or however such things worked, had he heard her plea? Did he know she was in need of company and felt like screaming?
“Stay,” she said, willing Harris to hear her when it was absurd to imagine that he could. “Stay for a while.”
The Jeep’s
engine died. Skylar’s heart thundered when the door opened and Harris got out. From across the parking lot he stared up at her over that car door.
She didn’t move, just stared back and said softly, “Damn you. Don’t make me beg.”
The car’s door closed silently and the man she knew only by his last name began to walk in her direction, each step renewing Skylar’s insatiable longing for company. Harris carried something in his hand. A white paper bag. Skylar smiled, unable to pinpoint what she hungered for most—the food that bag might contain, or the man who’d been thoughtful enough to bring it to her.
No. There really was no question about which thing she wanted most. Her body buzzed with pent-up need for everything Harris had to offer. Without being near to that hillside now, she’d have his full attention if she were lucky.
He didn’t return her smile when he reached her. Hoisting the paper bag, he said, “Dinner.” But he was quick to catch her expression and what that expression might mean. His hand lowered. His next remark died on his lips.
“Well, damn,” he said seconds later.
In a silence filled with racing heartbeats and a rush of adrenaline coursing through her, their eyes met, held. Then he took the key from her and opened the door.
The sound of the paper bag hitting the floor echoed faintly as his body crushed hers to the wall inside the room before the door had fully closed behind them.
Chapter 8
It was a mindless, drowning kiss…deep, passionate, carnal, endless. Eyes closed, and with her fingers wrapped in Harris’s thick, silky hair, Skylar breathed him in, absorbed him, became one with the sensations flooding her as his mouth transported her to a place where unadulterated greed reigned and consequences didn’t matter.
They went at each other like fiends.
Through some kind of miracle, he’d heard her and returned to help fill the emptiness inside her with companionship, strength and matching ardor. Her prayers had been answered.
She kissed him fiercely in the dark, rewarding him for listening to the words he couldn’t have heard. Taunting him with her tongue and teeth, she sucked his lower lip between hers, cupped the back of his neck with shaky hands, only briefly wondering if he did this often, in this room, with other women.
Seduced by the Moon Page 6