She started laughing so hard she lost her breath entirely. Which was all right, because at that moment his tongue darted inside her, and she wouldn't have been able to breathe anyway.

Her hips bucked against his mouth and he reached up, seized her waist, and shoved her back firmly against the mattress. All the while his mouth busily explored between her legs, his lips sucking and kissing and his tongue was probing. Moira heard herself scream.

He pulled back abruptly, leaving her teetering on the edge, and she screamed again, this time in frustration. She scrambled toward him, but he caught her elbows and flipped her. Her face hit the pillows as she was forced down on her stomach.

"God, you have the most luscious ass," he groaned, and she felt his hands on her, his fingers kneading her skin, hard.

Hard enough to mark my flesh, she thought with black excitement. Her blood was up so high she literally saw red; the room before her was cloaked in a red haze. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth.

She flipped back over, and grabbed him, and he laughed at her. But he quit laughing when she locked her ankles behind his back and forced his pelvis toward hers. Women had superior lower body strength anyway, and besides, she was probably twice as strong as he was, possibly three times.

He let her do it. In fact, he helped—put his hands between her thighs and gently held her apart, so that when she levered her back up off the mattress to meet him, his cock slid inside her without pause. Right up to the hilt.

They stared at each other for a long moment, then started rocking together. Her legs were still wrapped around him but now he was holding her, too, holding her and kissing her deeply while they thrust against each other, while the bed squeaked out their rhythm.

Now his mouth was on her neck and he was gently biting her throat, then greedily sucking her flesh. His mark, she thought again, and spun away into orgasm.

A moment later, so did he. Through a gaze slitted with pleasure, she watched his eyes roll back, felt him stiffen all over.

"Christ," he managed, right before collapsing on her.

"Yes, indeed," she replied. She started to push him off her, but he clung like a lamprey. "For heaven's sake, I need to get up and wash."

"No," he muttered sleepily. "Keep my smell on you. For a while."

A reasonable request. One she liked too much. She started to get up, but his arm tightened across her waist like a bar. She could have snapped it at the elbow, but didn't. Instead she nestled up next to him, and fell asleep.

Chapter Seven

Moira snapped awake in the dark. Where the hell was she?

"Don't. Don't. Don't."

Everything locked into place: she was in Jared's rented house. His stirring had awakened her. And what on earth was wrong with his voice? He sounded like a boy, not a man in his prime.

"Don't be dead. Oh, Jesus, don't . . . don't be. Dead. Dead. She's dead. My sister's dead! Somebody help me! "

She reached out a hand, too late. He sat up so abruptly the back of his head banged into the headboard, flung his arms out hard, belted her right below the eye. It didn't slow him down, or even bring him fully awake.

He lurched from the bed. She pressed a hand to her now-throbbing eye and forced her pupils to dilate.

Suddenly what had been dark became light, and she got a good look.

The big, badass werewolf hunter stumbled around the room, hoarse sobs locked in his throat, compulsively rubbing at his hands. "Everywhere." His voice broke. "There's blood and it's just . . . oh, it's everywhere. Renee, my poor Renee."

He collapsed to his knees and scrubbed at the imaginary blood. Moira watched, horrified. In his recall of the night he found his sister's body, Jared had made the scene all too real for her. She could almost smell the blood.

What are you staring at him for, fool?

She was out of the bed in a bound and actually found herself stepping around the imaginary pool of blood. She bent to him. "Jared, love, it's a dream."

"Renee. Poor Renee. She fought and he . . . he . . . and I was too late. If I'd gotten home just half an hour earlier . . ."

You'd be dead, too. "Renee's out of her pain, dearest. Come back to bed."

"I can't—bed?"

"You're dreaming, Jared. It's just an awful, awful dream. Renee knows you tried. Renee knows you loved her—love her still. You've given your life up for vengeance, isn't that so?"

"It's . . . yes." Sounding stronger now; the boy's voice was leaving. The man was coming back.

"Lie down with me." She pulled him easily to his feet, although he had twelve inches and fifty pounds on her. She brought him back to bed as she would have led a child. "It's all right."

"No," he said, already slipping back into sleep. "It's never going to be all right."

About that, you may be right.

"Watch out, Moira. They're werewolves. I know it sounds incredible." He yawned, snuggled against her shoulder. "But they're the monsters from the fairy tales. Wyndham and his dogs."

"I know," she said softly. Thinking: Oh, what will you do when I tell you I'm one of the monsters?

And why did she care?

***

She was awakened by a delicious tickling between her breasts, and cracked one eye open to see Jared, nibbling her cleavage. It was still dark out—not even five o'clock in the morning.

"Did your mother wean you a bit too early, Jared?"

He snorted, the sound muffled against her flesh. "Very funny. Let's take a shower. My mouth tastes like a dead rat shat in it."

"Thanks for the visual. You should write for Hallmark—yee-ouch! Well, you should. And why are we getting up?"

He wouldn't look at her. "Can't sleep," he muttered. "Every time I fall all the way under, I—I wake back up. C'mon."

A few minutes later, morning ablutions completed, he was soaping her all over while the scalding shower beat down on them. Moira groaned aloud from the sheer pleasure of it. Her motto had always been, if it doesn't turn your skin bright red, it's not a shower.

They weren't talking about his dream. She wasn't sure he even remembered stumbling around the room, washing his dead sister's blood off his hands. She decided not to bring it up.

"You're probably the smartest woman I've ever met," he informed her out of nowhere, rinsing her breasts off again, then lathering his hands and running them over her slippery flesh. "And definitely the prettiest."

"Where'd that come from? And thank you. You're probably right. About the smart thing, I mean."

"And so modest!"

She shrugged under the water. "My whole childhood, I was my mother's doll. Little, blonde, cute.

Something to be dressed up and fussed over. All she talked about was my looks. So it was all people talked to her about. I was a smart child, really smart. So I talk about that. My looks are boring."

"They're certainly not boring, cutie," he said, "but I can see how that would have been a major pain."

"Yes, it was. Sorry to digress into 'poor Moira's poor childhood' silliness." She shrugged, embarrassed.

"Also, I think my breasts are clean enough."

"They're filthy," he solemnly informed her. "Really. Yech. I won't rest until I can eat off them."

She felt her lips twitch. "Indeed." His hands felt marvelous on her skin. She enjoyed the sensation for a moment, then went back to his earlier, most interesting comment. "The smartest, huh?" The pack took her brains for granted, and men who didn't know her didn't care that she was smart. She found it refreshing and marvelous to run into someone who noticed her brains, commented, and thought she was just fine. "Really? I mean, you must have known a lot of women." Given your boudoir skills, I would guess thousands.

"Mm-hmm," he said carelessly. "You've probably got twenty, thirty I.Q. points on me, easy." He sounded as threatened as if he was telling her she had two, three cup sizes on him, easy.

Opening her eyes wide, she ignored the stinging spray. "And that doesn't bother you?"

"Hell, no." He shrugged, water bouncing off his broad shoulders. "Everybody's good at something."

"Well." She chose her words carefully. This was one of the most interesting conversations she'd had in a while. "I'm definitely book smart. You're more . . . tricky, like. In a lot of ways, that's better than having a head for numbers."

"I know," he said casually.

"Now who's being modest?" She goosed him and he slapped her hand away.

"Careful, I almost maimed you with my incredible reflexes."

"Oh, sure."

His smile faded, and suddenly he looked through her, not at her. Just like that, he was somewhere else.

"I was always good at fighting. Busting skulls, that stuff. I got in lots of fights as a kid—I mean, guys were always following my sister around, Renee, her name was . . ."

"I know."

He stopped talking. His hands stopped moving on her body. His eyes were narrow, blue slits. "How d'you know?"

"You dreamt about her last night. You were calling her name."

"Oh." She couldn't tell if it was the heat of the water or embarrassment at his vulnerability that made his face redden. "Okay. Say, I didn't hurt you, did I? Sometimes the nightmare . . . it makes me thrash about a bit. Sleepwalk, too."

"No," she lied. Of course she'd had a spectacular black eye during the night. And of course it had healed by morning.

"Oh. That's good." She pumped shampoo into her palm and started washing his hair, running her fingers through the long strands. He arched unconsciously beneath her touch for a moment, then continued.

"Anyway, I'd get into fights to keep the boys respectful, you know? And my dad, before he died he signed me up for all these martial arts classes, and boxing, that kind of stuff. To keep me out of trouble—he figured if I was punching people in a class after school, I'd be too tired to get into fights. By the time I graduated high school I could pretty much kick anybody's ass. The Marines really liked having me around."