She and Finn had passed a gas grill situated on flagstones nearby, and she thought how much fun it would be to eat a romantic dinner ocean side, something she hadn’t done since she’d moved to Oregon. Not that Finn would be the one she wished to eat that kind of a dinner with. A dinner like that should be a purely romantic affair, reserved for someone who suited her as a mate.

Yet she enjoyed the old-fashioned, roughing-it fire pit. The heat from the flames and the way the ribbons of fire licked at the air in oranges and reds made her feel closer to nature than if they were cooking on a grill.

The dark waves rolled in, clashing with the rocks and sandy beach in a melodic roar while the sea breeze whipped her hair about. She pulled it back and wound it into a knot, although misbehaving tendrils escaped confinement and tickled her cheeks. She watched Finn roasting the first of the marshmallows, two on the skewer initially, and her stomach rumbled with delicious anticipation. She hadn’t had s’mores in several years, and they brought back memories of hikes in the woods and backpacking to forested areas inaccessible any other way.

Even though she loved to camp, she and her pack mates had usually stuck to fishing as wolves and had hunted for wild blackberries and currants on outings like this. Strictly nature’s provisions. Not graham crackers and marshmallows and chocolate. But one time her mother had sneaked the ingredients for s’mores into her pack, and Meara would never forget how much fun she’d had with the others when they’d fought over the last one.

She had to force herself to sit still on the bench and not lick her lips more than she’d already done, or to show just how interested she was in crunching down on that first mouthful of melted chocolate and marshmallow sandwiched between graham crackers.

Finn glanced over at her and smiled. “Won’t be much longer now.”

Did she look as eager as she felt? Or was he just guessing?

He slid the marshmallow onto the graham cracker and partially melted chocolate and handed it to her. “See what you think.”

While she eagerly ate hers, not feeling any remorse that she got to sample the decadent dessert first, he fixed her another.

“What about yours?” she asked, still savoring every bite of s’more. She was in heaven, which almost made her forget she would have been trying to learn more about a potential mate tonight, if not for Finn’s untimely arrival and news about an assassin. “Oh,” she moaned with ecstasy. “Forget I intimated anything about you having the next one. That one’s mine. You can have the next several.” She reached to take the next one he’d fixed for her while he roasted a couple of new marshmallows.

When she looked up from taking another delicious bite, she found him watching her and not his marshmallows skewered over the fire. He smiled, the flames glistening off his eyes and making them glow green like a wolf’s at night when light reflected off them. She’d never pictured him like this, cooking marshmallows over a campfire. Skinning and eating a snake, yes, as any survivalist might in a dire predicament. But s’mores? No.

She smiled.

“What?” he asked, sandwiching his own s’more, although he waved it at her in case she wanted another before he got one.

Admiring him for being so generous, she motioned for him to eat it. “You’ll think I’m a little piggy instead of a wolf.”

He laughed. “The way you’re eyeing the s’mores makes me think you’ve been deprived for way too long.”

“Hmm, I have been. I couldn’t see you making them, either.”

“What did you think I did at campouts? Strictly clambakes?”

“Grilled snake,” she said, trying to keep a straight face. He grinned, and she laughed and then shrugged. “I thought all SEALs were hard core. I never thought one would make s’mores during a dangerous mission.”

He sat next to her, leaned over, and licked her lips.

She sat stock still, staring at him in astonishment.

“No sense in letting the chocolate go to waste,” he said, winking. He was sitting so close to her on the bench that their legs touched.

Heat from the fire and from him touching her started a slow burn, warming her to the core. His actions might have been innocent enough, just leaning in close and licking the sweet chocolate off her mouth, but she sure as hell felt like something more was going on between them. Especially after he’d nearly made her come an hour or so earlier in his car when he was frisking her between her spread legs with the listening-device detector. And earlier still, when he’d thrown her to her bedroom floor when they thought they’d heard gunshots. He had protected her with his towel-covered body, but then lost the towel in the action-packed moment and then became hard as a steel rod as she squirmed to get free.

She thought again about what he’d told Hunter, that he saw her in a brotherly way. Right. Yet she didn’t move away from him, seeking a safe distance, either.

The chill in the night air made her shiver, and she instinctively inched closer to Finn, seeking both the heat from his body and his protection from the breeze. She’d thought she might be walking along the beach with Joe tonight, if he hadn’t said he’d known Hunter and turned out to be an imposter. But she’d never expected to be snuggling up to one of Hunter’s SEAL mates and devouring melted chocolate-marshmallow creations beside him.

She glanced up and saw that his lips had remnants of chocolate and a couple of specks of marshmallow. She wanted to lick the chocolate and marshmallow off his lips, but she resisted. He watched her, and she suspected he knew just what she’d thought of doing.

Before she did anything stupid, she motioned for him to get back to cooking her marshmallows. “Some more.”

He laughed in a deeply seductive way and then skewered another couple of marshmallows. “Hunter didn’t tell me you had a real sweet tooth.”

“Hmm, I’m sure Hunter didn’t tell you a whole lot about me.”

A smile lingered on Finn’s lips as he turned away to watch the marshmallows melting, browning over the fire, and almost ready to eat.

“Well, he didn’t, did he? I mean, maybe that I’m strong-willed.”

Finn took a deep breath. “He told us you saved a human girl once who had fallen into a swollen river. Nearly drowned yourself in the process. And another time, you took on a pack of hunters who were killing deer out of season. That you chased a purse snatcher, faced down the knife he was armed with, and still got the woman’s purse back intact without getting sliced to ribbons.”

“It was instinctive.” Meara didn’t care for the way Finn was looking at her, just like Hunter would when he thought she’d done something foolhardy. She was a werewolf, and that meant she reacted instinctively. Well, because she was an alpha werewolf. A beta probably wouldn’t have.

At least Hunter hadn’t known about most of the situations she’d gotten involved in because he was away on missions, either serving in the Navy or working on contracts after that. She just wasn’t the type of woman who could stand by and hope someone else would step in and save the day.

“I don’t want you doing that here. While I’m protecting you, no heroics.”

“Unless you’re the one who’s being heroic,” she said.

“That’s my job. I’m trained for it. So yeah, let me take care of the bad guys, if the time comes.”

She smiled. “Suit yourself.” But if Finn needed her help, she was not going to sit back and watch as if she was observing a gladiator fight and was strictly a spectator.

He looked like he didn’t believe her. “I mean it, Meara.”

If that didn’t sound just like Hunter! “I heard you the first time.”

“Yeah, but you have that intense look that says you’re not going to mind.”

She didn’t respond, watching the shape of his mouth as it closed over the last bite of his s’more.

This time when he finished it, she boldly reached up and licked the chocolate off his lips. She could be just as brash as he was.

Only she didn’t expect his next move. She ended up flat on her back in the sand as he maneuvered on top of her, devouring her lips, licking and kissing and gently biting as if he wanted to eat her all up. Ohmigod, she’d created a monster!

His hands slid up her silky blouse, the palms massaging her breasts with such finesse that she moaned against his mouth. His tongue entered her mouth, probing firmly, his fingers tweaking her nipples, her crotch wet with desire. This so wasn’t happening.

Yet it was. And damned if she hadn’t wanted it, too, from the first time she’d seen him leaving her bathroom, naked and towel-drying his hair.

Now, he was so aroused that his stiff penis poked at her waist, his body thrusting at her as if it had a will of its own. She knew if she was naked now, he’d be inside her in a flash. She had the insane desire to let him in, to open herself up to his primal urges, to tame the sexy beast.

But that meant a permanent mating, and no way in hell were they going there.

He groaned and collapsed onto her. “You’re not supposed to look or taste or feel this damned good,” he said, his mouth brushing her throat, his thumbs still working magic on her swollen nipples. “Or encourage me the way you do.” He shoved her blouse up, and then her bra, and nuzzled a nipple first with his mouth, then licked and kissed it. The cold breeze swept across it, making it tingle and ache with need even more as he licked and sucked on the other.

He was so incredibly hot as she ran her hands through his hair and savored the feel of his body thrusting against hers, making her come as he rubbed against her cleft. She hadn’t believed anyone could make her orgasm like this, fully clothed and lying on a bed of sand under the cloudy sky at night, with the sound of the surf serenading them.

Feeling the climax hit, she cried out, her words caught on the breeze and washed out to sea, the orgasm rippling through her like a gigantic wave of pleasure.

He suddenly stilled as Meara thought she heard a footstep on the wooden stairs to the beach. Her heart nearly gave out.