Finn didn’t say anything in response, but then he released her. She groaned as if wishing she hadn’t asked. He pulled away from her, reached over to the bedside table, and grabbed his cell phone. After pushing the autodial for Anna’s number, he let out his breath, curbing the urge to pace across the floor while he waited for Anna to answer the blasted phone. It didn’t matter that everyone who had any sense should be sleeping.

After what seemed like an eternity, Anna answered, asking, “Finn, what’s wrong?” Her voice was half asleep but anxious.

He could hear her getting dressed in the background, drawers slamming, her breath ragged. Not wanting her to think they were in trouble, he quickly asked, “Did Bjornolf kiss you?”

A brief pause followed before she growled, “You called to wake me up for this? I thought you were dealing with another assassin. Hell, Finn, what’s going on?”

“Forget it.” He’d be the laughingstock if she told the rest of the gang why he’d called her in the middle of the night like this. And despite desperately wanting to know the answer to his question, he wished he hadn’t phoned her.

He was about to hang up when she hollered, “Wait!” Then her tone softened. “What’s this about, Finn?”

“Nothing.”

He could hear the mattress creak in her hotel room and assumed she was lying back down.

“No, he didn’t kiss me.” Anna let out her breath. “But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?”

“’Night, Anna.”

“You’d better let Hunter know what’s going on.”

“Nothing is going on.”

Anna snorted. “Right. Don’t tell me you’re not hooked on her, Finn. I know you better than that.”

“Later. Get some sleep.” He shook his head and terminated the call. Then he set the phone back on the bedside table, turned, and pulled Meara back into his arms. “He didn’t kiss Anna.”

Meara didn’t say anything, and for a moment, he thought she’d fallen asleep. But then he figured she couldn’t have. She would have fought sleeping to hear if Bjornolf had also kissed Anna.

“So why did he kiss you?” Finn asked quietly.

“Because he wanted to see what it would be like?” Meara stiffened. “How would I know? I’m not Bjornolf, and I didn’t encourage him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“He did it to see if you would kiss him back.” At least if Finn had been interested in a woman like Meara, that’s the reason he would have done so.

“Well, I didn’t kiss him back. And I wouldn’t have, even if I hadn’t been so stunned. Not only that, if I hadn’t been so shocked, I would have hit him or something.”

Somewhat mollified that she hadn’t kissed him back, Finn grunted. “Why did you call Hunter instead of me when Bjornolf approached you? Hunter was in Hawaii. What was he supposed to have done?”

“I would have gone to Anna’s room to make sure you both were all right, but I didn’t know her room number. As for calling you, I didn’t have your cell number.”

“I had already added it to your address book.”

Wide eyed, she turned to look at him. “You did? Where?”

“Where you couldn’t fail to miss it.”

She grumpily rose from the bed, retrieved her phone from her jeans, and looked at her address book.

The name SEAL snagged her attention. When Bjornolf had shaken her up, she’d just punched the number one for Hunter’s number, not even reading who else was listed in the name field. She harrumphed. “SEAL,” she said, and climbed back into bed.

Finn pulled her back tight against his chest and moved his hand over her tank-top-covered breast, the cotton fabric sliding over the protruding nipple that was already sensitive to his touch. “Once a SEAL, always a SEAL,” he whispered against her ear. “We specialize in deep undercover operations.”

“Is that a promise or a threat?” she asked just as quietly. The way he was touching her was making her hot with desire. She was glad he seemed to have given up on being angry about Bjornolf kissing her. God, what a mistake it was to have let that slip.

“It depends entirely on what you want,” he said.

She smiled and reached back to touch his crotch and stroked his rigid length covered in the cotton boxers.

He ground out, “You are seriously asking for trouble.”

She laughed and turned around to get a better grip. But as soon as she smoothed her hand over the length of him, he ran his hands up her bare thighs, his thumbs dangerously close to the center of her, gliding over her skin and setting it afire. His eyes were smoky with lust, and his mouth curved up decadently. Here she was planning on seducing him, but the male wolf was already making her wet for him.

She only thought to have sex with him to get him out of her system so they could sleep the rest of the night without any further interruption—no emotional commitment, just pure physical sex. But she couldn’t with Finn. Not with the way he caressed her skin so tenderly, the way he pulled her down for a kiss. His mouth was gently pressing hers, questing for a response, and when she gave it to him, when she moved her mouth over his, intending the same gentle caress, he plundered her mouth roughly, belying his true feelings as if he had been holding back the storm, keeping himself in abeyance. Until she responded. Once she showed she was willing, that she wanted this as much as he did, he pulled out all the stops.

His hands slid up her waist underneath her top, cupping her breasts as he tongued her mouth, his thumbs rasping over her nipples, her core aching as she perched over his erection. She was torn between wanting him inside her and wishing consummated sex didn’t mean a mating between the werewolf kind. Although she wondered what being mated to him would be like.

She ran her hand over his hair, telling herself there was no likelihood of that, so she’d just better damn well get that notion out of her head and enjoy him like he was enjoying her. And hope that someday some alpha male would be as good at pleasuring her as Finn was. Hell, all he had to do was look askance, raise a brow a little, and give her one of his devilish grins, and she was ready to roll onto her back and beg him to ravish her.

As if he knew just what she’d been thinking, he lifted her by the waist and set her aside, at first making her think he’d had second thoughts. But he quickly pulled off her top and slid her shorts off, making her feel vulnerable. A whole lot naked. And a little wary. Worried he might be thinking of taking it too far.

But he only smiled in that arrogant way of his and then pressed himself against her, kissing and rubbing his length against her thigh, his hands deftly feeling her breasts, his mouth nuzzling her throat, and she arched her hips in response. God, how she wanted him inside!

He grumbled something about how hard she was making him. He slipped his fingers into her tight sheath, smiled when he discovered just how wet she was, and began to stroke her until she was ready to burst into flames with pleasure and only feeling slightly guilty that she’d forgotten about pleasuring him. Until he made a final thrust against her hip and she felt his shorts wet against her skin. She smiled as he thrust a couple more times, and then he made a slightly disgruntled sound.

“We’ll have to do a wash pretty soon,” she said, cupping his buttocks through the boxers.

He grunted, then kissed her forehead and slid off her, finally heading down the hall to the bathroom. She sighed, then grabbed her pajama short set and headed for the master bedroom and bath to wash up.

Finn’s assignment to watch over her was going to kill her desire for anyone else, if they didn’t quit letting the situation get out of control.

After she washed up and pulled on her shorts set, she turned and nearly had a heart attack. Finn was standing in the entryway wearing a fresh set of boxers, brows raised and arms folded across his muscular chest, and watching her grimly. “Ready to sleep?”

Something about his posture made her think he believed she was leaving him to sleep in the master bedroom because they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. But she’d thought maybe this was beginning to mean something to him, and he wanted her with him in bed—not just so he could watch her and keep her safe from assassins and the like.

She stalked past him and cast over her shoulder, “I wasn’t intending to sleep in the master bedroom, you know.”

“Good, because I wasn’t planning on letting you.” But his eyes and expression were darker than usual.

This time she grunted back at him. And he laughed!

Chapter 12

Meara wasn’t sure what woke her in the middle of the night while she slept with Finn in the guest bedroom, but she somehow managed to extricate herself from his arms without waking him—worn-out wolf—and got up to check out the house. She slipped her rifle out from under the bed and left the room. The house was dark and quiet except for the wind ruffling the tree branches and the waves striking the rocks and beach as her bare feet padded along the carpeted floor.

Yet something had woken—her phone. In the bathroom. She’d been so tired that she must have left her clothes in there when she’d taken her shower earlier. Her phone was in her jeans pocket underneath the rest of her things, lying on one corner of the bathroom counter.

She hurried to answer before whoever it was hung up. Just as she reached into her jeans pocket, the phone jingle quit. Typical. But when she pulled the phone out, she found the missed call was from Chris, the pack sub-leader. She worried something had gone wrong with Rourke, since Chris was tasked with baby-sitting him and would have to let her know if that was the case.

She pushed the button to redial Chris’s number. As soon as he answered, she asked, “Chris, is Rourke all right?”

For a moment, Chris didn’t say anything, and she was afraid something else was wrong and her question had thrown him.

“No,” he said in a grouchy way, reminding her how much he didn’t like Hunter having given him the baby-sitting job, even though it showed how much he trusted Chris.