Page 4 of Moonlight's Mate
Books? Had he been out running even once in the time she’d been in New York? No wonder he was so slow—
With a roar, a large shape dropped to the path in front of her. She tried to dodge, but he clamped his teeth on the T-shirt. Since she refused to let go, her momentum whipped her around. Her paws left the ground and she was airborne. Which reminded her, she owed him for dunk-tanking her.
When she opened her jaws, she went flying. She landed in a poof of pine needles and lay still.Wait for it…
Beck’s presence loomed in her awareness, though her eyes were closed.Wait for it…
He whined softly, even more softly than the whisper of worn cotton as he dropped the T-shirt.
Instantly, she scrabbled up, seized the T-shirt and fled.
Through the trees—weaving, dodging, their twinned shadows dark as ravens skimming across the earth, silvery under the moon—up to the ridgeline, higher yet to where the trees thinned and the moonlight thickened and the town was just an old campfire of cool, yellowing embers below them.
In a small clearing, lush with early-summer grasses, she slowed. She expected him to pounce, but instead he kept pace just behind.
She trotted in a circle to face him, finally letting the prize fall between them.
Beck was magnificent, even for wolf-kind. He sacrificed none of his immense size to the change. If anything, his heavy ruff and luxurious tail tipped with silver made him seem even larger in the verita luna.
His eyes were the same molten gold though. Not exactly the same, of course. A wereling’s eyes always seemed brighter, as if some tarnish of the human flesh was scoured away in the Second Truth. Despite the flattening effects of the moonlight, the gold gleamed at her with a purity that made her shuffle her paws uncomfortably in the long grass.
She didn’t want to stare into his eyes. She hadn’t lured him all the way out here to deal in truths—first, second or any other number.
She tilted back her head to stare up at the moon and breathed out a long sigh as she shifted. Her bones ached and her skin felt seared by terrible sunburn as she made the change. She reared up onto her back legs—no, her only pair of legs now as she shifted back to her human flesh—so she could stand over him.
But when her vision cleared, Beck was standing too, big and naked.
Shocked, she took a faltering step back. Not because he was naked—she’d stolen his T-shirt, after all—but that he had shifted so close to her. The verita luna was a dangerous moment: when a wereling was vulnerable and exposed, the beast might attack, unconstrained by any even vaguely human command.
Again, she fleetingly wondered about his discipline. She swept him with a glance, wincing as she always did at the sight of the brutal swirl of scars and burns that wrapped the lower half of his torso. If he hadn’t had a wereling’s vigor, the IED would have meant his death, not merely his discharge. But except for that reminder of his time in the army, he seemed to be in satisfactory—okay,exemplary—shape. Certainly he would not have been able to achieve his present upright…um, very upright…state if he’d passed into il-luna.
He stood balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, as if he thought she might run again and he’d have to keep chasing her in this form.
His other balls were hard and tight, she could see from here. They knew she was done running.
She took a step toward him, the grass caressing her bare ankles, and he eased back to his heels.
“So you’re ready to be caught.” His tone was calm enough she wasn’t sure if he meant it as a question or an idle comment.
Or a warning.
She paused. “Consider it payment for the beer.”
“I said I was done playing.”
She lifted her chin, letting the night breeze finger the locks of hair around her face and tighten her nipples into almost painful peaks. Showing him what he was missing. “Since when do you give up so easily?”
“Since I realized you’re never going to let me farther in.”
Skimming her hands down her hips, she framed the tidy triangle of dark hair with her fingertips, resting her thumbs on the points of her hips. She bit back a triumphant smile as his gold eyes brightened, following the gesture. “Thishas always been far enough for you, hasn’t it?”
Slowly, as if with great difficulty, he lifted his gaze. “When I first got back from overseas, yes. Not anymore.”
A draught of doubt, colder than the night wind, iced her skin. Well, she’d gotten what she wanted from him anyway: some good beer, an itch scratched, a few insights into how a powerful male Alpha handled his pack.
“Fine.” She spun on her heel.
And finally he pounced.
