the filthy blood drinkers hadn’t tackled this Lycan easily. He’d fought hard before succumbing to the sheer number of attackers. Burned into her mind was the image of the brown Were feverishly taking on the monsters.
“Brown or white, Were or ghost, you are the most beautiful, the most courageous being I have ever encountered,” she said.
And I have nearly caused your death.
“I’m to be taken away,” she repeated. “They will separate us, and it will hurt, when you’ve already been hurt so badly.”
Another growl came from him, noticeably stronger, and meaning for her to go on. Coming from this formidable creature who had looked Death in the eye, the sound seemed strangely exotic, and took her breath away.
“I come from the bayou country. I’m seldom allowed out from under my father’s strict supervision and rules. We have no modern forms of communication there. No computer, no television, no phones. Only a radio,” she said, pausing as the absurdity of these facts registered. “I learn about the world through that radio.”
They had, in fact, been living like they were deprived backwoods folk. Compared to the Landaus, they were decades behind the times. Backwoods cousins.
“This is the first occasion the Landaus have hosted us as guests, and I think this was due to an important meeting between Lycan elders. For me, it’s a quick visit here, and then back.”
They had so little time. She could hear it ticking away.
“Landau’s son and some of his pack aren’t here, though I’ve heard them talked about. I’ve seen no one my age, and only briefly have met Landau and his wife. I don’t think I’ll be allowed here again after this.”
She waited out a span of several shallow, rapid breaths before continuing, needing to get all this out in the open.
“There are other secrets hidden here. I don’t pretend to understand what’s really going on, only that some of those secrets pertain to me. I can sense being the focus of this meeting, and believe those secrets are why I’ve been kept away from other Weres, and ultimately why I’ll be kept from you. There is, I think, something wrong with me.”
Do you want me to go on?
The wulf continued to study her intently. He hadn’t moved.
“I understand the pain of loss.” Her voice was beseeching. “My mother was killed by hunters. Not vampires, but monsters in their own right.”
The white wulf blinked slowly, as if he was riding out a wave of pain.
“My father says that your fur has turned white due to the intensity of the injuries you have sustained. It might also be a physical manifestation of devastation and loss.”
She cleared her throat. “I wish I could take away the anguish of that.”
It had taken more than a dozen vampires to gain hold of him. This Were had fought like he was the right hand of Death, when even death, as vampires proved, didn’t have to be the end.
“I feel your pain. And I am so very sorry.”
She was hurting for herself, and for him. In sharing his heartache, she had to let him know how sorry she was that he’d been injured so badly. As much as she could bring herself to confess. When their imprinting was complete, he’d find out her secrets by easily reading her. They would eventually share thoughts.
“I didn’t help you enough out there,” she said, noting the alertness in this ghost’s eyes.
She couldn’t go on, was unable to utter the words that might have freed her from the terrible, plaguing guilt. If she spoke the truth in its entirety, if she confessed what she had or hadn’t done now, her white wulf wouldn’t want her. There was no way he’d come after her, find her, mate with her, when she wanted those things so desperately.
“I—” She paused when the green eyes across from her began to recede, and the white wulf shape-shifted in a slick, soundless, reversal.
“I couldn’t leave you to face them alone,” Rosalind whispered as the man from the park, who was now just as captivating with his white hair framing his wounded, angular face, reached for her.
* * *
Colton jumped to his feet. With both of his hands on Rosalind Kirk’s shoulders, he backed her into a corner so quickly that her breath escaped in a startled hiss of surprise.
He gave her no opportunity for further sound or protest. His mouth covered hers as if her breath alone could make him whole again. As if the beating of her heart against his bare chest could jump-start his, and prove finally, absolutely, that he was alive.
His need was all-consuming. His body was on fire.
He drank her in as if his survival counted on those things.
The fragrance of her breath seemed familiar.
Rosalind Kirk was a young, black-haired, oval-faced vision, and slight to the point of an ethereal thinness. Although her mouth was momentarily motionless beneath his, Colton sensed with every instinct he possessed how much she wanted to respond.
There was a possibility, he realized, that she didn’t know how.
Her lips were warm, supple, tender, sweet and not in the least bit rigid. In her stillness came a reminder of what she had told him. She had been kept from others. She’d been sheltered from actions like this by an overprotective Lycan father. She had no family or friends. This might, in fact, have been her first real kiss.
He wanted her in that moment as much as his beast had desired her in the park. Every inch of him yearned for her, now that he’d been awakened, and had captured her in his arms.
Had this slight, ebony-haired creature truly fought beside him, placing herself in jeopardy in order to help? Was she the one who had come to aid him in a time of trouble?
“You,” he whispered with his mouth on hers. “It really was you.”
Ignoring shaky limbs that refused to behave properly, and his heart’s offbeat rhythm, Colton leaned into her. Licking gingerly at her lips, nipping lightly at the corners of her mouth before again sealing his lips to hers, he took her breath into his lungs, and felt that breath warm him. One word resonated in his mind, on its own loop, playing over and over.
Mine.
He wasn’t dead. This moment was real. Where there was feeling, there was hope, and he desperately needed some.
He kissed her, and the kiss drew a gasp. The raspy sound of Rosalind’s breathlessness shuddered through him as the pleasure of being close to her far outweighed the nagging internal pain he harbored.
His captive wore a black shirt he hardly noticed, except that it felt cool and silky against his bare chest. His current impulse was to tear the shirt from her and get down to it, chest to chest, groin to groin. This was his animal side taking over. His beast voted for that.
Injuries be damned! This Were female had a name that rolled easily on his tongue. Rosalind. A name as creamy as the sexual act itself.
Her black hair, worn long and straight, spilled over her shoulders in a gleaming cascade. Her face, with its prominent, sharp-edged bones, would suit few people, but somehow suited him. She had a small, tapered nose. Perfectly arched eyebrows looked like dark smudges of paint on ivory skin decorated by huge, penetrating green eyes.
Her shoulders were narrow, her hip bones like blades. Lycan females never had overindulgent curves or ponderous shapes due to their super-revved metabolisms and the frequent nighttime sprints, and Rosalind didn’t break that mold.
Small, firm breasts, perfectly proportioned to the trimness of her body, pressed against him through her shirt, begging to be touched, licked, suckled, by someone who would understand what she needed in a mate.
She was no mere pretty young thing. This was