Read NocC 027 - Michele Hauf - Wicked Games 07 - Claiming the Wolf - Harlequin 2012-11 for Free Online

Certainly not a werewolf in the
usual sense. He’d become something different. Changed. Not right. A creature his
pack would sneer at and walk around in a wide circle. The pack would oust him if
they ever learned about what he’d done.
    He needed the pack. They were family. An anchor to this realm
of mortals amongst whom his breed were forced to survive. Both his parents were
dead and he had no siblings. He’d been raised by the pack after Remy had found
him wandering the forest edging Bristol, a sixteen-year-old who’d been fearful
to go near the city lest he shift without warning. Remy had dreams of living in
the cosmopolitan city of Paris, so they’d packed up and headed east and started
what was now pack Levallois.
    He’d learned a lot since then, and though he’d never call Remy
a father figure, the man had been kind to him and taught him the ways of his
breed. Hart knew nothing else. If he were not surrounded by his kind he would
become lost, angry, rage amongst those who could not understand him. He’d return
to the forest, that sixteen-year-old boy, fearful and uncertain of what the
world would throw at him next.
    The elevator doors slid open, but Hart remained in place, and
pressed his forehead to the paneled wall. A tilt of his head spied her door,
painted red to match the odd spots of color in her white living room. Like blood
on skin?
    Why couldn’t he leave? It shouldn’t be so difficult to put
distance between he and a blood-sucking vampire.
    Yet something about Danni snagged his attention like a fish to
the hook. Something beyond the blood and fangs and the fact she had tried to
kill him. Something...soft and needy. Sexy. Strong. Wanting. She’d curled
herself against him more than a few times, as if seeking protection, a safe
place to be. It twanged at his heart, and tempted him to think about her, to
recall their lusty tangle in bed, the fervent sounds she’d made as she climaxed.
She’d been wild beneath him, yet had melded into his embrace, willing to let him
master her. Danni had abandoned her tough exterior to be soft for him.
    Hart shook his head. He needed to get out of here before he
talked himself back down the hallway.
    First, he needed to figure out if he was going to crave blood
again. He needed...something he felt course through his system as if one of
Danni’s sighs brushed over his skin. Connection? Touch?
    No, a good session with the punching bag
will knock some sense into you, bloke.
    When Danni’s door opened and she rushed down the hall, he
winced, wishing he’d gotten on the elevator when he’d the chance. And then he
did not.
    “You following me?” he asked.
    Standing there in her body-hugging shorts and top, she equally
embodied strength and weakness, and all Hart wanted to crush against his chest
and never let go.
    “Why can’t you leave?” she defied with a tilt of her head.
    And that was it, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t he leave?
    Turning, crossing his arms over his chest, Hart drew his eyes
over Danni’s body. Her nipples were as hard and tight as she held her jaw. Those
rigid abs would put an athlete to shame. And her hair had been dipped in candy,
yet was soft and fluid, capable of entwining about a man’s—no, he wouldn’t think
it.
    “Do you know why I rescued you?” he asked. “Why I worked so
hard to get you out of the vehicle when I could have left you at the bottom of
the river?”
    “Hell if I know. I tried to kill you. And worse, I bit
you.”
    “This.” He grabbed her wrist and turned it upward. There the
words tattooed on her skin read, come what will . “I
saw this while we were fighting, and remembered it when you were underwater.
Vampires don’t get tattoos because they heal too quickly, pushes the ink out
even as the tattooist is working. Yet this tattoo was clear, modern, and maybe
new. I knew you couldn’t have been vamp long. Am I right?”
    She shrugged, wrapping her free arm defensively across her
stomach. “So?”
    “So, in that