“You’re Eden.” It wasn’t a question. The brunette pulled her to her feet. “Can you walk?”
“I don’t know.” She took one tentative step and hissed as her ankle buckled. She pitched against the side of the SUV with a groan. “I need to find Jay. I didn’t warn him, and I should have. I need to warn him.”
“Shh.” The woman tilted her head, then wrapped Eden’s arm around her shoulders. “Come on, this way.”
The world went gray with every step. Eden couldn’t feel her fingers anymore, couldn’t feel much of her hand at all on her bitten arm.
A bite. “Oh crap, the wolf bit me. Is that bad?”
Before the woman could answer, Jay ran out of the trees, barefoot with his shirt hanging open. “Jesus Christ. Eden?”
She stared at his chest. Beautiful light-brown skin and dark hair, muscles and strength, and if he’d been undressed, unarmed, he couldn’t be human. “You’re a wolf.”
“You’re bleeding.” His gaze dropped to her arm, and he stepped forward to hold her up.
He hadn’t denied it. He hadn’t even blinked. “You’re a wolf,” she said again, more quietly this time. “I got bitten. Does that mean anything?”
He blanched. “Eden—”
The brunette cried out, a wordless noise of relief and worry tangled together. She jerked away and ran toward the trees, where Zack had walked out of the shadows, and threw her arms around his neck.
That it was Zack, Eden had no doubt. The eighteen-year-old hero she remembered was there, buried under blood and stress and numerous tattoos that circled his arms, crept up his shoulders and across his chest. He looked as if he’d only aged ten of the last twenty-two years, but pain had carved its mark in his eyes.
They held little recognition as they studied her, but that made sense. She’d been only ten years old the day he’d finally fled his father’s temper.
She wet her dry lips. “Hi, Zack.”
“Eden. Are you all right?” His gaze snapped to Jay, and something dangerous stirred in his eyes.
She didn’t know how to answer.
“She’s been bitten,” Jay said evenly. “I need to take her to the hospital.”
Finally, a normal suggestion. She clung to it with both hands, fighting back the feeling that the ground had turned to shifting sand beneath her. “Soon? I’m not doing so well.”
“Scott’s friend got to her,” the brunette blurted in a desperate rush. “I know you told us to stay inside, but I had to stop him, Zack. I had to try.”
Zack smoothed his hands over the girl’s hair without taking his eyes off Jay and Eden. “Take her. We’ll deal with the bodies.”
Jay peeled back the edge of the makeshift flannel bandage and grimaced. “Let’s go, honey. You’ll do fine ’til we get there, but you’ll need stitches.” He lifted Eden off her feet and carried her to the battered SUV.
Holding back pained whimpers kept her distracted while he settled her on the front seat and buckled her in. By the time she’d gotten her breath, Jay was pulling down the driveway.
“You don’t have a door,” she protested belatedly.
He glanced at her, his jaw tight. “What are they going to do, arrest me?”
She couldn’t help it. Whether it was pain or shock or the series of emotional blows she couldn’t say, but it was too much. A hysterical, gasping laugh rasped out of her. “God, none of them would dare.”
“I hope not.” He pulled onto the main road and reached over to pat her leg. “You’re going to be fine, Eden. The bleeding isn’t severe. They’ll be able to fix you right up.”
Eden caught his hand and clung to it, scared that her good fingers had started to tingle. “Even though I was attacked by something they think doesn’t exist?”
He hesitated. “As far as anyone at the ER will be able to tell, a dog bit you, okay?”
Still avoiding. She squeezed his hand. “Are you a werewolf, Jay?”
“I am.” He slowed for a turn toward the highway. “So’s your cousin, I guess. And the dangerous people after him?”
Swallowing hard, Eden closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. I don’t—I don’t know much about werewolves, or what Zack’s tangled up in. He tries to keep me and Dad out of it.”
“I get it. You told me as much as you could without sounding crazy.”
The tingling spread to her entire hand. If it hadn’t been so intense, she might have suspected it was nothing more than her body’s pleasure in touching Jay. Handsome, intelligent, wonderful Jay.
The werewolf.
“You didn’t answer me,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Neither did the girl. I got bitten by a werewolf. Am I—” No, those words weren’t going to come out sounding serene, no matter what she did.
He drew to a stop at a red light and sighed. “Eden, I don’t know. It’s not that simple. I’ve seen people with bites turn out to be completely unaffected. It doesn’t mean you’re going to turn into a werewolf.”
“But I could.”
“You could,” he acknowledged.
Her toes started to itch. The pins-and-needles sensation from her arm jumped to her spine, rippling down her body in a liquid rush that made her gasp and arch. “Jay—”
He caught her by the shoulders and turned her to look at him. “What’s happening, Eden?”
It should have been agony. His fingers brushed the flannel wrapped around her upper arm, and she whimpered. Not pain. Prickling. Wild sensitivity so severe she wrenched away and tore the makeshift bandage free.
Her fingers encountered sticky blood and unbroken skin.
Jay pulled her arm toward him and ran his fingers over her flesh. “This isn’t possible.”
She could feel the individual ridges of his fingerprints. Time seemed frozen, his stroking touch overwhelming. “Jay—Jay I don’t feel okay. I don’t feel real.”
His fingertips settled over the pulse in her wrist. Then he drew away with a curse and whirled the vehicle in a tight U-turn. “We’re going to my place.”
Her heart was racing. She couldn’t just feel it, she could hear it. Muscle constricting, blood rushing, the air rasping in and out of her lungs. The roar could have originated inside her, or it could have been the wind whipping by the missing door of the SUV.
The streetlights wobbled and danced, so she squeezed her eyes shut and groped for the seat and the door. Splaying her hands against something solid made it seem less like she was spinning. “What’s happening to me?”
He cursed again. “Something that shouldn’t be. Not yet, damn it.”
Oh God. She was turning into a werewolf.
“Make it stop.” When she clenched her fingers, her nails scraped over the seat so loudly her head throbbed. “Please. Please, Jay, I don’t want to be a werewolf. I’m not strong enough.”
“Yes, you are,” he argued. The firm words brooked no argument, so certain she could feel them in her gut. The pinpricks up and down her spine eased as something warmer took their place. It melted the tension in her shoulders and trickled down, light and teasing enough to raise goose bumps.
Her ni**les tightened. Arousal kindled, embarrassingly abrupt, and she pressed her thighs together. Jay was touching her everywhere and nowhere, stroking along her skin and inside her mind with an intimacy that made her squirm.
Not touch. Not sight or smell or taste, and definitely not a sound. She couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the wind and her pounding pulse. But she could sense him, and she wanted to roll in him. Drown in him.
Then he did touch her, strong hands sliding over her back, under her legs. “Come on.”
She jerked away, disoriented that he was reaching for her from the right. The seat beside her was empty and the SUV was parked. “Where are we?”
“My house.” He lifted her in his arms and kicked the passenger door shut. “We’ve got to get you inside.”
The world dipped again, and color exploded behind her eyes. Dazzling greens and vivid golds twisted and danced as she hid her face against his throat with a not very human whimper.
Jay pressed his lips to her temple and another wave of heat washed over her.
Stroking. Coaxing. He was surrounding her, pushing in from all sides, and some foreign part of her pushed back. The forces collided at her skin and sparked lightning. She cried out and struggled in his arms, driven by the sudden urge to fight, to flee, to run.
Another door slammed, and Eden felt cool wood under her hands. Jay was still whispering, only this time his fingers moved busily, tugging open the buttons on her shirt.
Good. Her shirt was claustrophobic. Clutching, clinging fabric, trapping her in her body. Her fingers felt too clumsy, but his glided over the buttons, freeing one after another with a gentle rasp of fabric over plastic.
Patient. She had to be patient. But when he slipped his hands under the fabric to guide it down her arms, he leaned close enough to put the vulnerable expanse of his throat at risk.
Clumsy, arrogant male. Snarling, she lunged for him, intent on setting her teeth in his skin.
He stopped her short with a firm hand wound in her hair. “Bite me and I’ll spank you.”
She panted, sucking in short, sharp breaths that only served to drag his scent into her lungs. She’d never noticed it before, not really. Not enough to pick apart the clean smell of soap from the sharp undertones of his aftershave. And she’d never imagined the lower notes, the earth, the rain—like the wind when it ripped through town ahead of a bad storm. Wild nature, unchecked.
Seductive. She strained against his grip on her hair, yearning toward his throat with a different purpose now. To bury her face in the crook of his neck and wallow in that wildness, to rub her cheek against his skin so the intoxicating memory of it would linger after he was gone.
Instead of loosening his hold on her hair, he tugged her head back, baring the line of her throat. A brush of lips, almost like a kiss—and then he bit her.