Linda Thomas-Sundstrom – Wolf Slayer (страница 7)
Actually, he decided, a wolf would have been the better choice for someone like her, if the world turned on a different axis. If Gwen hadn’t been waiting for him, and if he hadn’t set himself up as his sister’s protector, he might have desired a lot more time with Tess Owens. As the only person in South Dakota who also knew about him, they might have been friends in some parallel universe. They might even have been lovers.
His body liked that idea. Both man and wolf sincerely appreciated the thought.
Tess’s lips moved again, keeping his attention there. He wasn’t allowing her much room to breathe, so either she was trying to take in air or a new protest had gotten lodged in her throat.
“What issues brought you here?” she eventually asked. “What are you escaping from?”
“That’s personal.”
“Maybe you just made it up to play on my sympathy,” she suggested.
Jonas liked the way her mouth moved. He liked the way Tess smelled. Again though—and a tough reminder here—they were, for all intents and purposes and according to Tess, enemies.
“Still waiting,” he said without easing up on the pressure that pinned her to the rock.
“If it’s a promise for me to turn my back, then you’ll wait a very long time,” she returned.
Jonas swore under his breath. Niceness wasn’t getting him anywhere.
“What you need,” he started to say, almost giving in to the impulse to tell her about Lycans and Miami and about his gig as a cop. But there was an interruption in the form of a sound that didn’t belong to the reasonably intimate moment he and Tess were sharing.
And Jonas knew without a doubt what that sound was, and who had made it.
* * *
Tess was screwed and hated to admit it.
She waited for death, knowing there was no one to mourn her and that not one soul would realize she’d been gone for some time.
This was not okay. It sucked. And yet here she was, pressed tightly to the body of a werewolf who had shown her both sides of himself in a matter of minutes and who had drawn the better hand in this game.
Not necessarily the winning hand, though.
She was a fighter, and not fully onboard with giving up. When the bare-chested werewolf, who was way too human at the moment, lifted his head and tore his attention away from her to tune in to a sound she barely heard, Tess stiffened in reaction. Without his eyes on her, she felt colder and even more alone.
Those reactions made no sense.
She saw that he was irritated by whatever he had heard in the distance. After tossing another glance over his shoulder at the moonlit field behind him, his attention returned to her.
His expression registered his disappointment over the timing of this potential interruption in their strange getting-to-know-each-other session. She, on the other hand, wanted to cheer and would have shouted to whoever was out there if the man pressed against her wasn’t a monster masquerading as a man.
When she felt the urge to speak, the wolf in human skin held up a warning finger. Then he did a strange thing. Leaning closer, he brushed his lips over her cheek—a surprising move that sent her insides skittering. One quick, light touch. The cunning bastard smelled like pine.
He didn’t bite her or break her neck. Nor did he shift to his scarier form. After that touch, he backed up and pulled her forward until she stood on her own. Then he nodded to her. His eyes never left hers. It seemed to Tess as though he was attempting to send her a message and willing her to keep her mouth shut.
What had he seen or heard out there?
Who was coming?
Why am I shaking?
Tess had to gather herself if she had any chance here. She closed her eyes and sent more of her senses outward, hoping to discover what had disturbed the Were because she couldn’t afford to be caught like this any more than he could. Hell, she was in possession of a bloody knife and a quiver of silver-tipped arrows. What kind of picture did that paint?
The Were turned. He took a few steps, daring to keep his back to her, leaving her the opening she had waited for. The knife was in her hand before her next big breath. She readied for the attack.
Before she could make that move, he said, “Trust me, Tess. Leave now. Go home. What’s out there isn’t something you’ll want to face tonight.”
And then he took off running.
Tess stared after the Were’s retreating form for a few ticks of her internal clock before following him. In the pit of her stomach, she knew he had been upset by whoever this intruder was and that whatever was out there presented another kind of threat.
Since she had detected nothing in the periphery, she had no idea what that might be. Nor could she imagine what could be more dangerous to her, more lethal, than a Lycan with a jump on the human hunting him.
He ran like the wind, covering ground as if he actually was a wolf with four legs, instead of two. Tess knew she couldn’t catch up. Nevertheless, she wasn’t ready to give up. Not after the strange encounter with this Were that had set the hunter’s rulebook on its ass.
The werewolf had let her go. Not only that, he had tried to reason with her. He had issued a warning, presumably in an attempt to save her some future grief over whatever that other thing out there turned out to be.
His thought had been to help. What kind of werewolf wanted to protect the hunters who came after them? This one had told her he wasn’t one of the bad guys, but again, weren’t they all bad? Every last one of them? Weren’t they, by definition, monsters, or was there something she didn’t know, proving that her education was indeed sorely lacking, as this wolf had warned?
No time to ponder that...
She was geared up and anxious to find out what had made that wolf turn his back to her and what had made him turn the tip of the damn knife in his direction. She could have used that knife. If she had, this would have been over. Instead, she was charging after the Were as if she was part of his tag team, bringing up the rear.
Confusion didn’t begin to describe what she felt. Tess couldn’t shake off the memory of the moment she had looked into his eyes, and the feelings that came with that connection. Absurd feelings. Impossible feelings about wayward longings that had made her pulse thunder.
To say she was interested in this guy would have been an understatement when what she actually felt was something else entirely.
“You have to know that I’ll keep coming,” she said as she ran, needing to get those words out and into the open, hoping they might somehow reinforce her need to believe them when she now had doubts.
When a new thought touched her mind—one that wasn’t of her making—Tess nearly tripped over her own feet.
“Please go home, Tess. Do as I ask. Trust me just this once.”
It was him. His thought. She recognized the tone, if not the voice. The damn Were was speaking to her telepathically.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered. “Can’t do that.”
Weres could only link minds telepathically with other Weres, so the stories went. Still, other than the werewolves themselves, no one could possibly know that for sure.
The wind seemed to come alive with this guy’s next utterance.
“Now isn’t the time. We will meet again, I promise.”
Speaking with a tight jaw, Tess shouted, “No way, Lycan. This is my turf!”
But suddenly, unbelievably and as if another creature had simply dropped from the sky, Tess saw two forms running near the base of the hillside. One of them she recognized, having been close to the big Were. The other animal was a real wolf, on all fours, with fur that glowed silver-white in the moonlight as it streaked through the woods at the Lycan’s side.
There had been no warning for her of another wolf in the area, Were or otherwise. She didn’t smell that other wolf now.
What the hell was going on?
Mesmerized by the sight of the pair running in the field, Tess pulled up...and stared.
* * *
The sadness Jonas had seen in Tess’s blue eyes had moved him. Being a werewolf meant keeping company with his own kind mostly, so what about her life? Tess’s life?
Was culling werewolves her only form of excitement? He supposed that doing her job might make up for whatever else she lacked in terms of family and friends sometimes.
Looking into her eyes had left him with a flood of strange sensations. Staring into her eyes had created ribbons of light in the dark recesses of his soul. He had connected to Tess on a level new to him and somehow had been able to tap into her emotions. The depth of that connection, as well as the speed with which it had occurred, was disturbing.
Were to Were was how those rapidly formed internal bonds usually happened. Imprinting was the term used for the union of two souls, a state that only happened between Were couples destined to be mated for life. This sudden bond with Tess felt like a similar version of that, though he hadn’t experienced it for himself before. And she wasn’t a Were, so this had to be something else.
He couldn’t dwell on that now. His attention was needed elsewhere. He was needed elsewhere.
Gwen hadn’t listened to his instructions. In a rare out-in-the-open appearance, she was beside him—this unusual creature in his life who was so special.