Each word he spoke in that mesmerizing tone served to spread the wildfires already kindling inside her. Only this guy, whoever he really was, could affect her like this. His powerful body, chiseled face and incredible eyes were a turn-on that made her want to jump his bones.
She felt like an animal.
If she could just wrap her arms around his broad shoulders, then lift her legs to encircle his strong thighs, the place inside her that was thrumming with a need for intimacy would perhaps be appeased. As inexplicable as it was, she was tethered to this sexy beast by an invisible chain. His breath had meant her survival. Part of him was already inside her.
Or had she made that up?
“Tell me your name,” she said.
“Michael.”
Michael. Like the archangel. She remembered hearing him tell her this before in a conversation that seemed to have taken place a long time ago.
“Two days old?” she said, remembering what he’d just said.
He shook his head. “Explanations later. For now, it’s enough that you’re alive and walking.”
More than alive, Kaitlin thought. And how could she think about later when Michael’s expression told her he shared her hunger and was fighting to keep from letting his hunger out? Weren’t people supposed to live in the now? Experience each moment as if it were their last?
Had she confronted that last moment recently?
“I want to feel,” she whispered hoarsely, afraid to think back. “I need to know everything life has to offer.”
“Yes, but for you tonight is merely a dream.”
“That’s why you’re here, Michael? I’ve dreamed you up?”
He took her hand in his and placed her open palm on his chest, making his remark about dreams seem ludicrous. This guy was solid sculpted male goodness through and through.
“Enjoy this while you can because if it’s all good, you’ll be back to reality tomorrow,” he said.
Another word floated through Kaitlin’s mind as if Michael had conjured it. College. Not a totally unfamiliar word, yet too distant to capture with a focus that already moved back to Michael’s taut body and the hardness below his waist that she knew was in her honor.
“You want me,” she whispered.
“Like I said, you know nothing.” Michael reached up to move a tangle of her hair back from her face, showing off arms corded with power and tension. No tats covered his biceps. His skin was actually sun-bronzed.
Waves of lust struck Kaitlin so strongly that she would have swayed if he hadn’t pinned her to the tree.
“I know this isn’t normal,” she said.
“Not for you,” he agreed. “Not yet. Your feelings are tied to what happened.”
Do not think back, her mind warned. You’ll be sorry if you do.
Kaitlin glanced sideways. “No one is around?”
“No one you can see.”
Michael’s remark triggered a memory she had just warned herself not to find. Things hid in the dark. Bad things.
Catching a whiff of some new scent, Kaitlin struggled to place it. She reached for her throat, found the rough surface of the bandage and pressed there. The sharp-edged pain beneath that touch caused the night to close in.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Michael’s hands tugged her fingers from her neck.
“What...” Nearly breathless, Kaitlin started over. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing we can’t deal with.” Michael’s voice deepened further as he glanced up at a patch of night sky visible through the branches.
Kaitlin followed his gaze. “Will I remember this dream?”
She ran her palm over his chest, outlining one scroll of the tattoos. Michael twitched, stopped her progress with a tight grip on her wrist and shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be fair for me to take you up on that,” he said.
Her eyes strayed. “What does it matter, if it’s a dream?”
“It matters,” he said. “And you will remember it all eventually.”
She pulled away from his grip and moved her hand to his shoulder, where moonlight helped to outline his exquisite muscular shape. He stopped her again with a firm hand and a nebulous whispered comment. “You don’t, as yet, know anything. It’s hard for me to...”
He backed up, stood tall, drenched in moonlight. The first pop Kaitlin heard after his little speech was a muted sound. There was no mistaking the second for anything benign. Or the third.
Like a series of pinging buttons on an overstretched shirt, the bones of Michael’s jaw began to unhinge. The beautiful, sharp-featured face in front of her began to stretch. Michael’s dark hair lengthened as if someone invisible had tugged at the roots. His muscles danced as though something alive under the skin wanted to get out.
As he dropped to a crouch, the scrolling tattoos on his chest began to spread, covering muscle, turning his skin dark. Then his legs furred up in fluid series of swishes and cracks.
One minute the man had been there, and the next minute, something else appeared that uttered a reverberating growl. When his head lifted, familiar green eyes looked out, but it was no longer Michael, the angel’s namesake, facing her. It was an animal, dark as the night, tall as her thighs. Sleek. Primal. Down on all fours.
Michael had turned into a wolf.
And he had been right about one thing.
She didn’t yet know anything about what was going on.
Kaitlin woke up screaming, her body prepared to fight. Fists curled, mouth open, she felt trapped and unable to flee the nightmare because something was holding her down.
She kicked out with her legs and opened her eyes. Expecting to see a big wolf leaning over her, she instead found another image. Trees.
Hell, yes. There were trees in her sightline, and not the living kind. She was looking at a picture, a poster of a forest, on the wall above a desk that held a retro lava lamp, a silver telephone and an open laptop computer.
Hesitating, consciously attempting to quiet her churning insides, Kaitlin’s mind filled in the gaps. These were her things. Familiar things. She wasn’t outside, running in a moonlit field. Nor was she pinned to a tree by a naked man.
This was her apartment.
But she wasn’t alone.
Fine hairs at the nape of Kaitlin’s neck prickled with leftover panic as she turned her head. No wolf waited there with its black fur gleaming. A woman, a stranger, sat on the edge of her bed.
“Kaitlin, is it?” her uninvited visitor asked.
Kaitlin sat up to find that she’d been trapped by nothing more than a tangle of sheets. Eyeing the stranger, she scooted backward against the headboard. Quivers of muscle soreness accompanied her movement. She looked down to find her arms covered in red scratches already starting to scab.
Instinctively, Kaitlin reached for her neck.
“That bandage won’t be necessary for long,” the woman said. “You’ll have a pretty little scar that I suppose you can consider your first war wound.”
The woman was