He drew closer, and his warmth seeped over her bare skin. To hell with her traitorous body. She was going to rip him to shreds, so he couldn’t get to her first. She would let him think she was going to cooperate, then catch him unaware. She shoved her shaking wrists behind her and concentrated on her breathing. She wasn’t going down without a fight.
Now.
She spun around and lunged for the hunter’s ankles. She threw him off guard by hitting lower than he expected as she speed shifted into wolf form. He crumpled to the ground. His elbow jabbed into her side as he fell. She yelped before she sank her canines into the muscled flesh of his forearm. He let out a guttural yell.
In a sudden reaction to the pain, his grip on his gun loosened, and the weapon fell from his hand. But Frankie didn’t care if he was temporarily disarmed, if he’d lost his advantage. The asshole deserved to be ripped to shreds for killing her kind, even if they were rogues.
Shaking her head from side to side, she continued to rip at the hunter’s arm. Without warning, he shifted onto his side and slashed his knife through the air. The blade hit her skin. She released his arm as another yelp ripped from her throat. Her fur bristled as adrenaline shot through her.
Scrambling across the pavement, she bolted down the alley. He grabbed his gun and sprinted after her. She needed to gain some distance, so she could turn and get a running start to lunge again, get her momentum going back in his direction. But shit, he was fast—too fast.
The hunter threw himself through the air, landing on her back. Her nails scraped the pavement as she tried to claw away from him.
In a moment of luck, she wriggled her way free. Turning on her attacker, she jumped for his throat. Her paws hit his chest, and he slammed into the ground from the weight of the blow. She growled and snapped at his neck, but he caught her by her scruff and tossed her aside as if she weighed no more than a child’s doll. She skidded across the pavement, her skin rubbed nearly raw. A shiver ran down her spine as her limbs and muscles contorted. Damn it, because of her estrus she couldn’t hold her shift, not with her emotions running the gamut, from anger to arousal. A loud howl escaped her lips as she slowly changed back into human form.
Before she could process what was happening, he climbed on top of her. His body was flush against hers, but she continued to fight. They rolled out of the alley and into the orange glow of the streetlights. With superior strength, the hunter pinned her to the ground and shoved the sharp blade of his knife against her throat.
* * *
JACE’S BREATH POURED from his lungs in one quick rush. Adrenaline rattled his senses, and he fought to ignore the searing pain piercing his arm. The damn she-wolf had bitten him before she’d shifted back into human form. He held his knife steady at her throat, waiting for her to respond. He had to make sure she was subdued. She lay beneath him, unmoving. With him on top of her and the knife at her throat, she wasn’t going anywhere. His nerves began to calm. He stared down at her face.
Gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. His cock stood at attention, throbbing and hard in a full-on salute. He salivated like a starving man as his eyes scanned over the silky, golden-brown skin of the beauty lying beneath him. What the fuck was wrong with him? A female werewolf had just tried to rip his ass to shreds, and now he was checking her out?
If that didn’t take this fiasco to a whole new level of clusterfuck, he didn’t know what did.
She was naked, every inch of her flesh bare. His eyes feasted on her body, and man, she was exquisite. As petite as she appeared, her legs stretched for miles, defined with strong yet feminine muscles. Her long ebony-black hair shone in the streetlights, barely covering a pair of high, full breasts, and he knew from his earlier view that she had a fine round ass just begging to be squeezed.
His dick twitched at the thought of those legs wrapped around his waist as he pounded into her, fisting her hair as she yelled his name with those perfectly full lips of hers. And man, did Princess have a set of eyes. But there was a look of pure fight underneath the chocolate-brown surface as she glared at him, the look of a female warrior.
A warrior who’d taken a nice big bite out of his arm with her canines and nearly escaped him twice. With his half-wolf blood, he healed pretty quickly, but given the strength of her teeth in wolf form, that bitch of a wound would take a lot longer than usual to heal.
He inhaled a deep breath. He needed to get hold of himself and clear his head, erase the burn pulsating through him. She was a werewolf, and he knew very well that whether she was an Alpha or an Omega female, she was nothing but trouble and seduction. The first female he’d encountered in all his years of hunting—his attraction to her shouldn’t have been a surprise, right? This must be how it had been for his father when he’d met the female werewolf who’d proven so irresistible that he’d left Jace’s human mother for her. It was meant to be.
The image of his mother’s tearstained face crossed his mind. She was sitting at the kitchen table of their shabby apartment, her head buried in her hands. He heard the boiling pot on the stove hiss as the contents overflowed. Potato soup. One of the only things they could afford after his dad walked out.
His father was weak, and there was no way in hell he would let himself follow suit.
Jace’s mind snapped to the present, and his gaze narrowed into a thin glare. “Don’t even think of trying to escape again.”
Slowly he eased off her, hand on his gun and knife still at the ready. Between the woman, the weapons and the prospect of her shifting into a wolf again, he seriously had his hands full.
“Get up,” he said. “Any sudden movement and a bullet is coming straight for you.”
She carefully rose to her feet, and the few shadows cast on her naked frame disappeared, revealing an even better view of her beauty. Jace kept the gun aimed as he stepped behind her.
With his knife held to her throat again, he holstered his gun, though his body screamed for him to caress her. He gripped her shoulder and drew her toward him.
Jace swore under his breath. His eyes had been treated to a prime-time view of her sweet behind, and his palm itched to touch her. He swallowed the large lump in his throat and tried to control himself. She was a damn werewolf. What was wrong with him?
He reached to his belt clip and pulled out a pair of silver cuffs. He always carried them, though he’d never needed them until now. “You know the drill. Hands behind your back, before I change my mind and kill you.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t rip your throat out, asshole.” She thrust her hands behind her, careful not to lean into his knife at her throat.
Despite her words, his dick jerked again as her smooth, feminine voice hit his ears like the call of a siren.
“This is ridiculous,” she growled.
No argument there. Ridiculous didn’t even begin to cover it. Fucked up beyond comprehension was more like it.
He slapped the cuffs on. She groaned in pain as the metal rubbed her skin. Jace’s heart panged at the sound of her agony, but his anger and frustration spiked, and self-loathing filled his mind. Aside from the fact that he didn’t hurt women, why was he being so merciful?
He shifted his dagger to his left hand. Stepping toward her, he lifted the blade to her throat and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her to him. But as his hand made contact with the skin of her stomach, every instinct in him fired. An electric charge surged up his arms and through his whole body.
Instinctively, he held her closer, and her fine ass pushed against him, nearly sending him over the edge. A low growl drummed in his throat. He tilted the knife farther, leaning her neck into him until he buried his face in her long hair. The smell of gardenias flooded his nose, and he couldn’t hold himself back from wanting her.
* * *
ROBERT LINGERED IN the shadows of the alley amidst the Dumpsters and the trash left behind by the resident lowlifes. He slipped through the darkness