Sitting on one of the couches, head lolled back against the top of the cushion, Ferdinand Massaro, her former informant, was staring lifelessly at the ceiling with cold black eyes. She barely breathed, felt her furry legs wobble beneath her, and sat before she collapsed.

Silver duct tape covering his mouth, and with his head tilted at an odd angle, Ferdinand looked as though his neck had been broken. She blinked away tears. The room was dark, no lights on in the recessed fixtures, yet she could see the man’s hefty size, over six feet tall and meaty, with matted black hair covering his chest, and hairy legs. He was naked. Had he raped her before he was murdered?

She didn’t think so. Her front leg still pained her where she’d been bitten, and she wondered if he’d… The notion was too unreal to believe, but what if he’d shape-shifted into a wolf, then bit her and, after that, shifted back into a human form? Then the men had come for him before he could do anything more to her.

Her mouth still agape, she felt chilled all over despite her warm wolf’s fur coat, her brain fuzzy from the knowledge she might have been infected with some weird virus, and the man who undoubtedly had done it to Ferdinand had been murdered. Then Ferdinand himself had met his fate.

I’m not about to live alone like this, Ferdinand had said. Like this, like some cursed being? She had to wake up from this nightmare. She wasn’t a wolf. She couldn’t be.

Trying to get her rapid breathing under control and attempting to banish the light-headedness she was experiencing so she could think more clearly, she finally realized she had to get out of here—now. The realization didn’t mesh well with the notion she was fighting that she was a wolf, consciously sitting in Ferdinand’s living room and staring at his dead body. Smelling his dead body.

What if someone called the cops or one of Ferdinand’s murderers returned to tidy up the place?

She had to get out of there.

Hours passed before Alicia finally managed to shift back to her human self and dress. She left Ferdinand’s townhouse and walked forever until she could call a taxi far from the townhouse where he had lived. Then after picking up her car near the townhouse where Mario had been meeting someone and where Ferdinand had grabbed her, she returned to her hotel on the outskirts of Denver. She intended to get some sleep and leave before dawn and get as far away from there as she possibly could. She couldn’t quit thinking of what she had become, of what that meant for her if she had the horrible urge to shape-shift again—especially if she wasn’t hidden from the eyes of the world if it happened once more.

Scared, exhausted, and unsure of what to do, she stripped off her clothes, showered, and pulled on a slinky black nightgown covered in pink and yellow flowers. She collapsed in the hotel-room bed, intending to push all the worries out of her brain until she could think more clearly in the morning. And make some sound decisions about what she would do next.

Lying in the hotel bed, Alicia finally closed her eyes, unsure whether she would wake again in the form of a wolf or as herself. She gave a soft snort of disbelief and halfway wondered if Ferdinand’s blows to her head twice in one night were making her loopy. Or if he might have drugged her with something that was making her imagine stuff. Something like LSD. That in the morning everything would again be clear and she would realize it had all been a really bizarre nightmare. A total figment of her imagination. Except that it had seemed so real.

One thing was certain: Ferdinand was dead.

With all those thoughts running through her tired mind, she finally succumbed to sleep and dreamed like she’d never dreamt before.

With the hotel curtains shut tight, the bed covered in an orange floral spread, and prints on the walls of floral bouquets, Alicia dressed in a satiny black nightgown touching her ankles, with a slit up the side and spaghetti straps that bared her shoulders as she headed from the bathroom to the bed. But her attention was drawn to the sitting room as a flicker of movement caught her eye.

She turned. To her astonishment, Jake Silver stalked toward her, naked, his lean muscled body gorgeous in the low light of the room, his eyes and lips smiling in a lustful, greedy way. She knew as soon as she saw him that he desired her as much as she craved being with him. But somewhere in the back of her mind she knew this was a big mistake. Yet she couldn’t remember why. Why was seeing him not a safe thing to do?

And she vaguely wondered why he was here. How he had found her. And why he had no clothes.

She didn’t care and stretched her arms up to take hold of him. To embrace him. To make love to him. She wanted him with a passion that she couldn’t quell.

His kiss on her mouth started a low, slow burn growing in the small of her belly, the heat spreading outward as his hands cupped her face, holding her just the way he wanted her. The pressure on her lips increased until she openly invited him in. And he leaped at the invitation, plunging his tongue into her mouth, his hands shifting to her shoulders, gripping her as if he’d lost her forever and had once again found her. He pulled her into his hard embrace, holding her tight as his mouth kissed the top of her head, his arms encircled her back as if they were two lovers reunited.

The familiarity felt phenomenal. As if they belonged together. As if they were bound to each other in some mysterious way.

Yet something was terribly amiss. She felt it in her bones. Something was wrong with her. She couldn’t… be with Jake. Because… because…

No matter how hard she tried to think, she couldn’t come up with the reason. His hands brushed down her naked back, his mouth sweeping across her jaw, lower, his tongue on her throat, and then his lips took in a nipple, licking and sucking, and she squeezed his broad back and moaned.

Hot, hot, she was burning up with heat. Delicious, sexy heat. And the realization dawned that he wasn’t upset with her for leaving him without a word.

All that seemed to matter to him was that they were together again. She cherished him for it, wanted to meld with him, be one with him, and never let go.

Forever, he touched her and kissed her, as if he couldn’t get enough of stroking her. Then he looked into her eyes, his gaze filled with the smoky haze of lust and something more—a yearning to be with her almost as if this wasn’t enough. And then he swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed and collapsed in it with her in a purely fun-hearted way.

The kisses began anew as he fondled her breasts, his mouth on hers, on her cheeks, on her eyes. She kissed him back rabidly, her fingers stroking his shoulders, his back, his waist, hips, and buttocks, wanting to feel every hard inch of him.

And then his fingers began stroking her, capturing her in a web of exultation, the feeling uplifting, tantalizing, wanting, until the world split in two.

***

Jake couldn’t wait a second longer when he felt Alicia shudder with climax, and he plunged deep between her spread thighs—into the woman of his dreams. He thought he’d lost her for good. The worry that had plagued him for days was thrust aside as he wrapped himself in her heat and loved her like no other woman he’d ever been with. He wanted her, body and soul. He swore this was only the beginning.

Jake jerked awake, stared at the empty mattress next to him and wondered what the hell had happened. She was real. Alicia Greiston had been with him, loving him as he’d loved her back.

He raked his hands through his tussled hair, staring into the dark. He had barely thought of anything but Alicia since he’d lost her—wondering if she’d planned her disappearance or if the men she’d been after had planned it for her. And he couldn’t quit berating himself for not having stayed with her.

But the dream had been so real, like she had truly been with him. He wasn’t a dreamer. Had never recalled anything that he dreamed. The experience left him longing for her touch, to know she was safe, and when she was gone, he felt bereft. He couldn’t quit thinking of her, sharing a kiss, a smile, heart pounding, bare bodies pressed together, breath intermingled, hands clutching each other, tongues touching, her lips parting for him, offering herself to him fully.

In that brief nocturnal moment, she was his. He prayed she was alive and well, that his dream of her was a manifestation of the real Alicia Greiston, and he wondered if it represented a need to make everything real between them again. He vowed to find her and keep her safe, no matter how long that took.

Tomorrow, he was searching for her again.

Chapter 8

For seven weeks, Jake had visited Alicia in her dreams while she was kept on the run, sure Mario’s men were searching for her. But her dreams were so real, as if Jake was coming to her in the middle of the night and overwhelming her with deeply pleasurable emotions as she ravished him back.

She couldn’t put it off any longer. Having remained human for a whole week without one inkling of an urge to shape-shift, the second time she’d had such a shift-free week, Alicia had made up her mind. She’d finally tracked down Mario Constantino and Danny Massaro once more, and foregoing her bounty hunter’s fee, she had called the police and told them where to find the bail-skippers. Tackling them alone would be too dangerous. And with the shape-shifting problems she was having, her situation was even more precarious.

With her life turned upside down by this strange being that she’d become, nothing mattered but trying to get her untenable condition under control. Although she thought maybe the condition had gone away since she hadn’t had another episode of changing into the wolf for a whole glorious week, twice now. She hoped that maybe it truly was some weird virus that had finally run its course. Still, the worry lurked in her bones that at any moment she might once again become a wolf through no choice of her own.

But she had to take care of one more thing before she disappeared for good.

She drove to Breckenridge, intending to go to the art gallery to see if anyone could give her information on where Jake lived or just send word to him to let him know she was all right. She couldn’t see him any further. Not now that she was whatever she was. She had to vanish from Colorado altogether. Yet the dreams wouldn’t allow her to let him go.

Nursing a cold cup of brewed tea that had been hot at first, she sat in the restaurant across the street from the art gallery, waiting until a tourist busload of visitors filed out of the gallery, her thoughts centered on Jake’s first kiss at this very table after he had rescued her from one of Mario’s men. Gentle and unassuming, his kiss had sparked a desire for him that she couldn’t have quashed even if she’d wanted to. She thought back on ice skating with him, making love with him in the woods. She’d never been so adventurous or uninhibited with a man. Nor enjoyed being with one as much as she had with him.