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he staggered to the door, pounding it with his fists until they felt like two boneless hunks of flesh.
    His stomach tightened and twisted, its clawing pain refusing to let him forget his hunger. He hadnot eaten in days. His strength was low… along with his will. And now he had this to contend with.
Her
. Weeks had passed since Gunter announced his intention to starve him and force him into feeding. How much longer could he last?
    Turning, he did not move from the door. With his back pressed to the hard length, he watched as she rose to her knees, his gut tightening with her every motion. She lifted her head, staring at him from tangled strands of hair. She shoved the hair from her face and sent it rippling down her back. She watched him carefully, her pretty face guarded, bright splotches burning her cheeks at the sight of his nudity.
    â€œYou’re not one of them,” she declared, looking away.
    He drilled her with his gaze, finding her eyes through the murk… a deep brown, not quite as dark as her hair. Flecks of gold surrounded her irises. Shards of amber buried in dark earth. It’d be a shame to watch the life fade there. An even greater shame to be the one responsible for that loss of life.
    He registered her fear, felt it on the stagnant air, tasted it with a salivating mouth. Not so different from a wolf in the wild. Sniffing out their prey.
    Blood smeared her face, a dark brown stain beneath her nose, nudging her pretty lips. She pushed to her feet, wincing. Her hand brushed a bruised cheek as though movement gave her pain.
    â€œStay where you are,” he growled, his voice thick and garbled, warning him just how close he was to losing control. She smelled so sweet. Creamy vanilla. And looked even better. A feast for his eyes.
    Her mouth was almost too full, plump and moist, bringing on a surge of carnal images. Those luscious pink lips surrounding him, drawing him in deep. The image sent a bolt of need straight to his cock, waking that part of him that had betrayed him so many times over the last months. After the savage treatment Gunter’s bitches had dealt him, he wondered how he could even hunger for a woman again.
    A cruel smile twisted his lips. The first tasty bit of mortal to cross his path and his blood pumped hard. Just spoke to the resilience of his species. No one was forcing him to crave her now. Not the impending moonrise. Not even the hunger clawing his insides. It was simply his body’s natural response.
    She sucked in a sharp breath. The color in her cheeks deepened… almost as though she read his mind. Impossible. She was not him, or a lycan, capable of sensing things outside a human’s natural range of ability. More than likely it had to do with his raging erection.
    He inhaled her from across the room. If her clothes hadn’t already told him, her scent did. She was foreign to these parts. Hadn’t even been herelong enough to soak up any of the odors. She came from somewhere else. She smelled of ripe woman and earth and something else, something he had never come across before in all his years… clean and woodsy, warm wind-blown hills, whisky-sweet.
    He felt her stare land on his wrists and ankles. Even in the deepening dusk, she couldn’t make out the full extent of the damage… couldn’t see the exposed bone and shredded flesh. “Are you all right?”
    When she made a move toward him, his pulse spiked against his throat and he knew he was not all right. And she wasn’t either. Not if she kept coming toward him.
    â€œStop right there,” he barked.
    She froze. Her gaze traveled his shoulders and torso, skimming over the dried blood stark against his skin. “You’re hurt.” She made a move toward him again.
    He threw a hand up in the air. “No.” The word fell like a loud clap of thunder.
    She stilled, shaking her head.
    He closed his hand into a tight fist. “Keep away from me. Don’t come