Cravings (29 page)

WARY of the car with its headlights off, the wolf backed farther into the
shadows, thinking it would be easy to make a wrong move.

Someone was interested in the murder scene. In him.

After ducking around the side of a house, the wolf considered his limited
options. He could race back to the place in the dunes where Grant Marshall had
left his clothing. But that wasn't such a great idea. If somebody managed to
follow him, he'd be too exposed on the beach. Better to hug the shadows near the
houses.

He wove through the residential district, keeping his profile low. Stopping
in the shadows, he realized several things almost simultaneously.

As far as he knew, he had lost the car. He was near Antonia's house. And all
the lights were off.

It was late, and she was probably sleeping. Which meant he could slip inside,
change back to human form, and wait a few hours before retrieving his clothing.

The wolf had learned to turn a doorknob with his teeth. Opening the back
door, he slipped inside.

As soon as he'd crossed the pantry and entered the kitchen, he stopped in his
tracks. He wasn't alone.

Antonia was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table. The sound of her
breathing mingled with his. The woman scent of her body reached out toward him.

He was caught in a snare of his own making, and he had time to wonder if he
had wanted to be trapped.

He heard the click of his claws on the wood floor as he backed away.

For an eternity, that was the only sound besides the beating of his own pulse
in his ears.

Then she spoke into the darkness, her voice carrying just the hint of
uncertainty. "Grant?"

The sound of his name startled him into absolute stillness. She must know an
animal had walked into the kitchen. Yet she called out to him.

Even if he'd wanted to speak, he couldn't do that now. Not as a wolf. And as
a wolf, he didn't dare approach her. Instead he made a wide circle around her
chair, blood roaring in his brain. She didn't move, didn't say anything more.

Without looking at her, he walked on past, then into the hall and up the
stairs. When he reached his room, he quietly closed the door. In his mind he
said the words that would reverse the process of transformation.

Once again, his limbs lengthened and contorted. Once again, animal fur
changed to human flesh, and his eyes lost some, but not all, of their keen night
vision. He stood naked in the darkness, breathing hard, his pulse still
pounding.

She had called his name
. How much did she understand? More than an
ordinary woman might.

 

ANTONIA sat in the darkness, longing to doubt her own senses, yet knowing
that she would only be fooling herself. Her hearing was quite good. The click of
claws had told her that a four-legged animal was crossing the kitchen floor,
staying as far as he could from her chair before reaching the hall.

An animal. A large dog. Or a wolf.

She might have gotten up and run screaming from her own house. But she was no
coward. And she was trained to interpret what she saw in the tarot cards. So she
stayed where she was, working her way patiently through layers of logic.

She could throw that logic aside. Or she could accept the evidence of her own
senses.

This evening, she had been trying to unravel the puzzle of Grant Marshall.
And she had sensed he was the human aspect of the wolf who had been invading the
cards for weeks.

Then the real wolf had somehow opened the back door and walked into the
kitchen like he belonged there.

There were two more possibilities, of course. She could be losing her
marbles, or she had made it all up out of her own needs and desires.

But she didn't think either one of those was true.

Which left her with Grant Marshall and the wolf.

Was he really some creature beyond normal human experience?

Falling back on old habits, she laid out the cards again. Her practiced
fingers could identify each one from the braille markings, but her mind was too
scattered to call up the pictures.

One thought drove everything else from her mind. She had heard a wolf in the
kitchen. And if she was right about that, and if she was sane, she should be
terrified of the man upstairs.

Yet he had awakened feelings inside her she had long suppressed. And now she
wondered if she had recognized his death wish because she was half dead herself
and hadn't wanted to admit it.

She didn't feel half dead now. Her heart was thumping inside her chest, and
her ears strained for some sound from the second floor. Standing, she walked to
the bottom of the stairs and clutched the newel post, her head raised toward the
second floor. She could hear him moving around. Was he going to cut and run?

She wanted to influence his decision. But the ball was in his court now. So
she turned and went into the lounge where she sat down in one of the comfortable
armchairs.

 

GRANT climbed into jeans and a tee shirt, then paced the room, wondering what
he was going to do next. Pack his bag and leave? Confront her?

Since Marcy's death, he had been afraid of nothing because nothing could
happen to him that was worse than what he'd already experienced.

He was afraid now. Afraid of facing the extraordinary woman who was waiting
for him to come downstairs.

Thinking he might as well get it over with, he pulled on socks and running
shoes, then opened the door again and descended the steps.

"I'm in here," she said from the shadows of the sitting room.

The quaver in her voice told him she was no steadier than he.

She was still in darkness. Maybe to make the confrontation easier for him. Or
maybe because light was the last thought that entered her mind when she was
nervous.

He stopped in the entrance to the room and cleared his throat to make sure
she knew he was between her and the door.

Now he could see her rigid shape in one of the chairs.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asked.

"Is that what you're planning?"

For months, there had been only two plans in his mind. Kill the monster and
end his own pain. Suddenly he could see a glimmer of light beyond the monster's
death.

He shoved his hands into his pocket. "How did you know that was me?"

He heard her drag in a breath and let it out in a rush. "For weeks, I've seen
the wolf."

"How?"

"In the cards. He invaded the pictures, like he had every right to be there.
He crept into the scenes where he shouldn't be. And I didn't know what it meant.
But I knew he was coming here."

"Were you frightened?"

Instead of addressing the question, she stood and came toward him, and he
felt his whole body vibrating with awareness of her.

"You should be afraid of… me," he answered for her.

"Well, you can call me too stupid for that. Or too reckless."

"I would never call you stupid."

"I was waiting for the wolf." With no hesitation, she reached out and took
him in her arms. The shock of that first contact knocked the breath from his
lungs.

He gulped in a strangled gasp of air as she lifted her arms and cupped them
around the back of his head, her fingers winnowing through his shaggy hair.

The pressure was gentle, not a command but a question. With his excellent
night vision, he looked down at her for a long moment. Then his eyes focused on
her lips.

As if she knew where his gaze had landed, her tongue flicked out, sweeping
across the fullness of her lower lip.

He would have pulled away from any other woman. But not this one. With a
sound low in his throat, he lowered his mouth to hers. The first touch of that
intimate contact was like a bolt of lightning, sizzling along his nerve endings.

And when she made a small exclamation, he was pretty sure that she felt it,
too.

He would never have reached for her on his own. Not in a thousand years. But
all at once he was too needy to stop himself from devouring her mouth with his
lips, his tongue, his teeth.

And she accepted what he offered and gave in return, her response frantic and
subtle and overwhelming by turns, making his head spin and his body come to
life.

Her controlled exterior had vanished. She was a creature of pure sexuality
now. He forgot where he was. Forgot time and space. There was only the woman in
his arms, giving to him and taking anything he was willing to give her.

When his embrace tightened around her, she made a small, needy sound.

Or had he been the one to voice that strangled exclamation?

Her hands stroked over his back, then under his tee shirt, her fingertips
sending shock waves over his hot skin as he angled his head, first one way and
then the other, greedy to experience her every way he could.

Kissing wasn't enough. He was ravenous for more. One hand slid down to her
hips, pulling her lower body against his aching cock, so that he wondered if he
was feeling pleasure or pain.

When she moved against him, he thought he might burst into flames.

With undisguised greed, he slipped his other hand between them and cupped one
breast, taking the weight of it in his hand, and he knew he had been wanting to
touch her like that since he had secretly watched her in the kitchen.

As he stroked his thumb over the hardened tip, she made a low, pleading
sound. Pulling up her shirt, he dragged her bra out of the way, then lowered his
head, circling her nipple with his tongue before sucking it into his mouth. The
taste, the texture of her made him drunk with need. And her little sob and the
way she arched into the caress told him how much she liked what he was doing.

He pictured himself pulling her down to the floor, striping off her clothing,
then stripping off his so that he could enjoy the feel of her naked skin before
he plunged into her. The anticipation of her sex clasping hot and tight around
his cock made him tremble.

Somehow, that erotically charged image brought him to his senses.

He had lost his wife—his life mate. And now he was in the arms of another
woman.

Stiffly, he thrust her away from himself. "This is wrong," he growled.

He heard her swallow, watched her blink as though she was trying to orient
herself again. Her cheeks were red, marked by the imprint his day's growth of
beard.

Swaying on her feet, she fumbled her clothing back into place, then reached
out a hand and steadied herself against the doorway. Slowly she raised her head
and stared straight in his direction. "You aren't betraying your wife. Do you
think she would want you to live with no hope of human contact?"

"She and I… made solemn vows." The words sounded hollow, after the way he'd
just been acting.

"And you kept them. Long after most men would have given up."

He wanted to shout that he wasn't most men. Instead he turned and left the
house. Left her standing in the darkened room. He ran down the sidewalk, then
across the street and toward the beach. But he couldn't outrun the honeyed taste
of her on his lips or the feel of her middle pressed to his erection.

A cold wind blew off the water as if trying to hold him back. He fought
against it, fought toward the sound of the waves crashing on the sand.

Beyond that, he barely paid attention to his environment. His mind was
focused on what had happened between himself and Antonia.

He had responded to her as he had never expected to respond to a woman again.
The way he had with Marcy, he thought as he clenched his fists in denial.

But he couldn't lie to himself. It had been sharp and fast and all-consuming.
When he'd touched Marcy, he had known he must have her or go insane.

And he had felt that sharp rush of desperate sensation once again.

Why? Because he had experienced it before? Because he couldn't live without
it? Well, he hadn't been prepared to live at all. He had been preparing for his
own death for months. And Antonia had yanked him back into the midst of life.

He resented that. Resented her power over him. Was that what had happened?
She had told him she had psychic powers. Was she using them on him?

She had said she had been waiting for him. What the hell did that mean?
Waiting for him tonight? Or had she drawn him to her?

Had she used otherworldly powers to enslave him? Bind him to her the way he
could be bound to no other woman besides his lost mate?

He wanted to clutch at that explanation. He wanted a reason why he had
betrayed his marriage vows—a reason that had nothing to do with his personal
failings.

He had been running toward the beach; he stopped short when the beam from a
flashlight suddenly stabbed him in the eyes.

"Hold it right there. Put your hands up where I can see them."