His presence kept her from drifting off. Kaitlin willed her body to hang on for a few more seconds, afraid he would leave, afraid that if she closed her eyes she’d never open them again and die alone.
Please stay with me.
Help me.
Did he hear her plea? He nodded as if he had.
When he put his arms around her, a strangled moan erupted from her throat—the pain was so very great. Her head hit his solid, soothingly bare chest as he lifted her into his arms, high off the ground.
An odd thought wafted through her mind that it would have been tough for an angel to manage the saggy mess of a twenty-three-year-old woman. Yet if this was an angel, who was going to argue? If he were to take her to heaven, she was in good hands.
Or so she thought until he shifted her weight and the pain came crashing down—crushing, pulverizing, boiling—as though she had imploded.
But it wasn’t over yet. He gripped her with care and whispered assurances. As he turned, cradling her against his body, Kaitlin’s soul-wrenching wail was finally freed. She screamed and screamed. Feral cries. Helpless noises.
The shouts didn’t frighten this man, this angel, this questionable soul who held her. Taking a deep breath, he placed his mouth on hers and blew a warm stream of air into her lungs that tasted of grass and meadows, not the bloody brutality of a savage monster.
His lips lingered on hers, forcing her to swallow past the pain, quieting the riot. She took in each breath he gave her. His long hair brushed her cheeks with a silkiness that was as light as day.
Who could have anticipated a kiss on death’s threshold? The intimacy of their mouths touching and their breaths mingling held a surreal beauty that continued until Kaitlin was able to breathe on her own. Soon after that, the mouth she had depended on left hers.
Wait, she wanted to cry. With his kiss, the pain had lessened. She’d felt as though she actually might survive.
The heat radiating off this stranger’s bare chest brought another level of awareness to her broken body. Her rescuer was muscled and extremely hot. Being held by him was like confronting a bonfire.
She parted her lips for speech that didn’t come. The hovering unconsciousness, temporarily held at bay by a pair of green eyes that continued to stare into hers as if urging her spirit to continue, floated on the sidelines.
“You have to be willing,” he said. “That’s the way this works.”
What did that mean? What did any of this mean?
“There’s no time to explain. But it’s the only way you’ll make it. Nod your head if you understand.”
In the end, it didn’t matter what he might be suggesting, since she’d do anything to stay alive. With great effort, Kaitlin lowered her chin.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. “Be brave. Hang tight and remember that I gave you a choice.”
His finger tracked a tear sliding down her cheek. Then he nestled his face into her neck, right above the attacker’s deadly wound.
Oh, God, she thought. Not this.
Taking her skin between his teeth lightly, he paused as if waiting for her to change her mind. After that, he bit down.
The sky collapsed in on itself. The earth rose to envelop her. And somewhere between the two, Kaitlin Davies became one with the dark.
* * *
What he was doing was a sin, and unforgivable. So why had he considered it? Why, on the spur of the moment, had Michael Hunter broken every rule governing Lycan behavior to try to save a human female he’d never met—when no human had ever done anything to help him, and in fact had left him with his greatest heartache to date?
His pulse was racing. He knew better than to cross the line.
And just couldn’t help himself.
The woman in his arms was slender, and small-boned to the point of being fragile. But she was no child. Behind the torn T-shirt, her shape was visible. Lean legs, lightly tanned, were shown off by a pair of shorts.
Blood spatter covered everything, and the scent of that blood had already been dispersed through the air. If he didn’t hurry, other bloodsuckers in the area—if they dared to show their fangs to a prowling werewolf—would come calling.
She was seconds from death. He recognized the signs. But death wasn’t the worst scenario here. The worst-case outcome would be hearing her last strangled breath, and then watching her morph into the same kind of monster that had savaged her.
Vampire saliva was highly toxic. The ultimate poison. All it took to kill and then resurrect a human being to the dark side were four or five drops dribbled in an open wound. Rogue vampires didn’t even wait around to see the rise of the night creatures they created. New vampires with no idea what had happened and nowhere to turn except to the raging thirst would be a threat to everyone.
There had been a rash of missing people near Clement College lately, and law enforcers were taking stock of those disappearances. Cops were nosing around. This didn’t bode well for the other secretive nonhuman species living alongside the so-called normal folks. Something had to be done about the recent influx of vamps. Fast.
Michael looked down at the woman in his arms.
Her face was oval-shaped and bloodless. She had long hair that was a unique combination of red and brown, and her skin was soft and lightly scented with the fragrance of flowers, despite all the damage the vampire’s fangs had done. Her tears tasted like sunlight.
After all these years, he still would have given anything for someone to have comforted his mother like this as she lay dying, and helped in any way they could.
This little human had sorely needed help.
Replacing the vamp’s saliva with Lycan blood had been of paramount importance in order to save her life. Wolf blood was volcanic, and immensely alive. If she was lucky, that blood might counteract and overpower the other chilling version of poison put into her by those fangs.
With the miraculous healing powers Lycans possessed, if this female survived the night, the gaping edges of her wound would draw together and mending would begin. On the outside, anyway.
Odds were less than fifty-fifty that she’d pull through no matter what he did or how timely his actions were. Yet purebred Lycan blood, strengthened over the centuries, was one of the strongest medicines on the planet, and he had just given her system a jolt.
Blasphemy?
Hell, yes.
As Alpha of his pack, his other pack-mates might argue with what he’d done. Then again, a couple of them had been on the wrong side of a bite or two, so maybe they’d feel sympathetic.
She was light as a feather. Her breath escaped as a sigh through quivering lips, though her eyes remained shut. Michael’s heart thudded with unanticipated empathy as he carefully scrutinized her expressionless face, deciding that she wasn’t beautiful, exactly. Striking was a better word. She was quite striking for a human so near to death.
“Breathe, little one,” he directed, knowing that humans didn’t take well to their DNA being rearranged. Human women were especially vulnerable to the sudden change in their body chemistry.
“There’s a chance, if what I’ve given you takes and you somehow manage your system’s rewiring, that you won’t thank me.”
Although she’d be alive, she might also be angry, and that was a concern. Telling someone about this rescue attempt, or letting the world in on the secretive presence of werewolves, would place his pack in the spotlight. Hunting season would begin again, as it had for so many past centuries after humans got a whiff of werewolf—in spite of how humanlike Lycans were most of the time. In spite of the fact