Chapter 2

“Did she give you a name?” he asked, noting how uneasy the scout seemed. Hendricks’s pale skin was flushed with color, his dark gaze repeatedly sliding from the ground to the sky, as if he was wary of looking directly at Razl’s face.

“No, sir,” Hendricks replied, slanting him a quick glance, and Razl struggled to keep his expression impassive.

“To be honest, she’s…well…”

“She’s what?” he prompted, fighting down his impatience.

“She’s not exactly what you’d expect from a human female. I could scent her fear when we found her, and yet, she absolutely refused to back down.” Hendricks swallowed, the nervous movement visible in his throat. “She even pulled out a gun, saying that she’d shoot off our, um, manly parts if we dared to lay a hand on her,” he admitted, his voice thick with embarrassment…and an unmistakable note of relief that he was still standing there, said manly parts intact.

Razl choked back a low bark of laughter, somehow managing to hide his smile behind his hand as he coughed.

But his humor faded as Franks came over to join them, the scout’s gaze swiftly focusing on something over his shoulder.

“Why don’t you wait over here and let me talk to her alone for a minute?” Razl suggested, wondering if he had food stuck in his teeth. Neither Hendricks nor Franks seemed capable of looking directly at him—but then, there weren’t many in the pack these days who were.

Still, he’d expected better from these two, and he ran his tongue over his teeth just to be sure he was in the clear.

“Be careful,” they replied in unison, looking relieved to be passing the situation to him.

The milky glow of the nearly full moon caught his eye as Razl made his way toward the vehicle, and his beast gave a lazy stretch beneath his skin, his senses quickening with a primal rush, eager…almost desperate to hunt. He’d been so busy lately he’d ignored his predatory hungers, which was never a smart move—especially for a bloodline as powerful as his. As a dark wolf, the product of two exceptionally pure Lycan bloodlines, Razl’s natural cravings ran deeper than most, making the need for control even greater. He clenched his jaw, forcing the prowling animal deeper into his psyche. At the moment, he needed the calm, cool reasoning of the man—not the animalistic aggression of his beast.

But being cool and calm didn’t seem to be on the agenda for the night.

As Razl approached the driver-side door, the woman shifted slightly, giving him his first clear view of her face and his muscles tightened with a jolting, slam-him-into the- ground kind of surprise. For some reason, probably because of how Hendricks and Franks were acting, he hadn’t expected the woman to be so…well, soft-looking.

Even attractive. But she was. She had the kind of beauty that crept up on a guy, making him want to keep staring… searching, noting new discoveries as he mapped out the finely sculpted contours, one by one. The full lower lip was only part of a lush, pink mouth that begged for the carnal aggression of a kiss…among other things. Things he had no business thinking about doing with a perfect stranger, not to mention a human one.

So get your bloody mind out of the gutter and stay focused! his conscience muttered.

Determined to continue his appraisal with a more critical eye, Razl searched for her first flaw, but failed to find one. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but she was pretty, in a wholesome, appealing way. Her face was somewhat round, with a small nose and sweeping brows that arched over big blue eyes. Instead of making her look childish, the delicate features gave her an air of womanly innocence that would catch any man’s attention. That made him want to be the one to corrupt her…to open those bright blue eyes to things that were warm and wet and undeniably wicked. To the harder, more primal angles of pleasure.

And there you go slumming around in the gutter again.

“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, wondering what was wrong with him. He hated to admit it, but she was affecting him in a way that made him want to turn around and get the hell out of there. It was more than just the dangerous, unwanted sexual attraction building inside him. Though that was bad enough. But for some inexplicable reason, he almost felt as if the human posed some kind of threat to him, which was ridiculous. He was the monster in this scenario, the thing to be feared in the silence of the night—not her. And yet, his chest felt too tight, his muscles coiled, ready to burst into movement, and he shoved his hands in his front pockets, his jaw so tight it made his teeth ache. Sweat broke out over his forehead and collected in the small of his back as he indicated with his chin that he wanted her to roll down the window, more determined than ever to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.

In response, she lifted one of those beautifully shaped brows and glared at him.

Taking a few steps away from his truck, Razl ran one hand back through his short scrub of hair, then over the scratchy surface of his jaw. What in the hell did she think she was doing? It wasn’t safe for a woman to camp out by herself in the mountains, even if she was sleeping in her car.

Was she really searching for someone? Or was it just a scam? Given the whimsical bus, she could be one of those environmentalists looking to commune with nature, or whatever they called it. They’d had to deal with the type before. Or was she actually some kind of reporter trying to sniff out a story? God, the last damn thing they needed was a curious human snooping around the area.