After he clattered away, she snatched up the little figurine, holding it carefully in her talons, and winged swiftly homeward. In her bedroom, she’d shifted to human form and held the small wolf to her heart, stroking the carved fur, warming the wood with her fingers, before tucking the figure beneath her pillow. She slept with one hand curled around the carving, and dreamed of him often.
He left the cabin on a monthly basis. She never followed him, but returned to her own house, built into a tree in the woods on the edge of the town. She did not know—did not want to know—what he did when he went into Shady Heart. She knew the town and suspected. But she blocked those unwanted thoughts from her mind.
Over the years, as the town’s animosity toward other shifters—particularly wolves, especially the wolves of the Black Hills Pack—grew, she feared for him also. But she told herself the cats would leave him alone as long as he minded his own business—something Brick excelled at—and spent his money in Shady Heart. And besides…he seemed to have no affiliation with Los Lobos or the Black Hills Pack anymore. He couldn’t pose any kind of threat to her Uncle Cal’s plans.
One night, when the moon glowed full, Brick had come out of the cabin and howled up at the glittering orb, his voice hoarse, harsh, ragged. Caught in the grip of a compulsion he clearly could no longer fight. His clothes had seemed to choke him and he stripped them off down to his skin. Standing naked, face tilted to the light, he’d let the glow bathe him in silver.
That may have been the moment. The moment when everything inside her shattered, became still, reformed, truly recognized the male before her. When her heart, already lent to him on a part-time basis, became his. Completely. Irrevocably.
The considerable muscles he’d built up over the years took on added bulk as he dropped to his hands and knees, the air shimmering around him. His face twisted, his grimace somewhere between agony and orgasm, as his head grew, elongated, his nose lengthening and broadening into a muzzle, his mouth, his lips widening, stretching to accommodate fangs. His hair, oh. So sleek, so dense. So like the wolf he’d carved for her. His fur looked soft, lighter than his human hair, rich and tawny as butterscotch or melted caramel.
Something happened to her the first time she watched him shift. Something raw. Something metaphysical. Something eternal. And undeniably hot.
He’d bounded out of his yard and torn into the woods, racing below the moon. Athletic, graceful. Predatory and dangerous. She loved watching him shift, watching him running in his wolf form. Born into a clan of nocturnal cats, familiar and comfortable with the night, she soared into the skies above him, keeping pace, between him and the mother moon.
Whenever he ran, she flew with him.
Did he know?
Of course, he knew. Except for those first few weeks of the healing process, when he’d seemed soul-dead and oblivious to the world, nothing escaped him. He possessed a wolf’s acute and finely honed predatory senses, his innate skills so far beyond a mere human’s ability to see, to scent, to hear.
At dawn after that first full moon, he’d lain spread-eagled on the sweet, dewy grass, on his back in a fragrant wild-flower strewn meadow some distance from the cabin, his broad shoulders and huge chest heaving, sweat drying on his human skin, on the ridged muscles rippling from his slick pecs, down his flat abdomen, detouring to the chiseled ropes bracketing his carved hips. A dark ribbon of hair began below his navel, pointing the way, like a neon arrow, down his sin trail of delight. Jackpot.
Her mind had blanked and she lost control, shifting so abruptly into human form she’d nearly toppled out of her tree. Heat poured over her, through her, as if she’d been tossed into a boiling cauldron. She’d never really thought about sex before. Suddenly it was all she could think about.
Her breathing had hitched, her mouth hanging open. She took in shallow breaths, huffing them out. Panting. By the spirit of the Great Hawk. Panting. And her respiratory difficulty had nothing to do with the exertion of her flight, with their race in the moonlight. And everything to do with the potent, raw male strength displayed before her. Good thing the abundant summer foliage had kept her out of sight.
She hadn’t been able to tear her gaze from him. Her vocabulary failed her after spectacular. Magnificent. Powerful. Someone smarter than she needed to invent new words for this male.
He’d blinked one eye open and stared up at the lightening heavens, searched the leafy boughs of the massive sycamore that hid her.
Or did it?
“A good run, wasn’t it, Annabel Lee?”
His arms and legs spoked out from his sides.
An enormous erection jutted skyward.
He made no effort to hide it.
Chapter Two