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

It was light
and tinged with the scent of spring freesias. It had been a long time since
she’d gathered fresh flowers into a bouquet. When a teen, and she’d lived in the
US with her family, she’d fancied going into the Weber family’s greenhouse
business. That was until she’d dated a guy who’d served in Iraq for three
deployments. She’d been impressed with his patriotism and utter drive, and had
realized it mirrored her own.
    After they’d broken it off she’d enlisted. She’d served a
deployment in Afghanistan, and had been thinking to sign on for redeployment six
months ago when she’d stumbled into Slater in the Exsanguine nightclub while on
a trip to Paris. He’d seduced her, lured her to his lair, and hadn’t flashed
fangs until she’d been lying beneath him, blissfully satisfied. He’d transformed
her against her will. Only months later had she pieced together that Slater had
been on the hunt for someone like her. Tough, skilled in military training, and
alone in the city, away from her family.
    The tribe had set her up in this apartment, given her spending
money, and generally left her to live and learn. Yet tribe Zmaj did expect her
to do their bidding—at the threat of her brother’s life.
    If she could return to the teenaged Danni and turn her head
away from the lure of the military, and the one night in Paris she’d gone out to
have drinks and scam on all the sexy men, and instead pick up a pot of soil and
fertilizer, she would in a heartbeat. She’d wanted the world once. Now she only
wanted her soul.
    She hadn’t lost her soul after becoming vampire, only, it had
been irreversibly damaged and altered beyond recognition. Danni still existed
inside this body somewhere. But some days she felt she was losing grasp on the
mortal she had once been. She now used other mortals to survive. How wrong was
that?
    A knock at the door startled her from wiping the kitchen
counter. She’d spent the afternoon baking and the kitchen smelled sweet and
chocolaty. Tossing the wash towel into the sink, she pulled her hair forward
over a shoulder and checked her clothes. A dusting of flour whitened the hem of
her dress, and she frantically wiped it away as she walked to the door. Yes, a
slim, fitted jersey dress because she’d wanted to look feminine tonight.
Because, hope upon hope, she’d expected company. And hell, she could do the
girlie look when she wanted to. Though she was barefoot, high heels were not her
thing.
    A froth of yellow daisies greeted her in the open doorway, and
above that bouquet, Hart’s smiling gray-blue eyes.
    Danni’s heart skipped a beat at sight of the flowers. No guy
had ever... Sudden memories of her family’s red-and-white painted greenhouse,
lush with flowers and shared laughter, threatened to bring an impossible tear to
her eye.
    Hart sniffed the air. “Is that...?”
    “Brownies, fresh from the oven. Want one?”
    “Want one?” He dropped his lower jaw. “Uh, yeah?”
    “Come sit down and let me treat you. The flowers are
pretty.”
    “I picked them up at a cart by the river on the way here. I
don’t think I’ve ever brought a woman flowers before,” he said thoughtfully.
“These seemed to call out your name. Just silly daisies.”
    “They are not silly.” She took the bouquet and, realizing she
didn’t have a vase, put them in a glass water pitcher and filled it with cool
water. “Thank you. This is the nicest thing a guy has ever given me.”
    “Can’t be true. You must receive gifts from guys all the
time.”
    “Nope,” she said abruptly, and pulled out a knife from the
drawer. “Guess I’m not worth the effort.”
    “You’re worth my effort.” He slid onto the barstool and watched
her carve up the pan of brownies.
    “And why is that? First you save me from a watery hell, and now
flowers. What next?”
    He shrugged. “Diamonds?”
    Danni tilted her head expectantly.
    “I don’t know why I said that. Sorry. Diamonds are out of my
price