Chapter 2
After her initial survey of the bar, Shadow had paused, re-examining the composition of the crowd.
More men than women.
That could definitely work in my favor.
Mixed-race group—but a disproportionate number of the men seemed somehow related, or at least linked. At first glance, she couldn’t have articulated why, exactly, she had come to that conclusion. That they were all young, fit, black males who made similar fashion choices—mostly jeans and plain T-shirts—wasn’t enough for that assumption. A college bar in a college town was enough explanation for those similarities.
Closer scrutiny suggested that she was right, though. That particular set of men primarily spoke to one another, or to women they were hitting on.
Or to the one particularly muscular man who was making his way across the room, touching base with every one of the guys Shadow had pegged as being connected to one another. She watched him lean in to whisper to another man—instructions, from the way the other man nodded understanding.
Alpha male.
The thought flitted through her mind as her gaze flicked back to his face and they made eye contact.
At the impact of his stare, her breath hitched in her chest.
Damn, he’s hot.
The muscular man slid around the edges of the bar, stopping to speak to several other men along the way, but always moving toward Shadow, his liquid-brown eyes flickering toward her every thirty seconds or so.
Yeah, he was every bit as interested in her as she was in him.
Smiling to herself, Shadow sidled up to the bar and ordered a drink. Something cold and strong was definitely in order. Even a cold shower after the hunt hadn’t entirely cured her sense of being permanently bathed in a slight sheen of sweat. Savannah, Georgia was not the sort of place she would want to have to live—or hunt—permanently.
Lucky for her, settling down wasn’t an option—in Savannah or anywhere else.
We go where the monsters are.
I prefer it that way.
That’s what she told herself, anyway.
She took a long sip of the drink the bartender handed her, letting the icy fizz of the tonic rest on the back of her tongue long enough for the bite of the gin to kick in, then closed her eyes and sighed in appreciation.
“What are you having? Would I like it so much?”
Shadow opened her eyes and smiled, unsurprised to see the owner of the voice was the man who had been stalking her around the room. His voice was low and deep, his accent almost musical.
Tilting her head back, she regarded him. He stood about two inches too close for someone she didn’t know. Close enough to be flirtatious, not so near as to make a lone woman anxious. His dark brown eyes absorbed the light, reflecting nothing but liquid color back at her. A dimple flashed in only one cheek when he grinned at her. “Well? Do you plan to tell me?”
Tilting her head to one side, Shadow glanced up at him from under her lashes. He didn’t tower over her. Oddly, she had expected him to—something about him made him seem bigger than he actually was, up close. “Gin and tonic,” she said. “Nothing special.”
“Not special? I do not believe it. All that you touch must become special.” A half step closer allowed him to lean one elbow on the bar. Muscles in his arm bunched and flowed along his arm and up under the sleeve of his gray T-shirt. Shadow had to stop herself from reaching out to slide one finger along the smooth skin of his bicep.
At the mere thought of touching him, heat pooled low in her belly.
Oh, yes. This one would do nicely.
Waving one finger in a lazy circle to encompass all his associates in the room, she asked, “You guys on some sort of team?”
That single dimple flashed again. “Something like that.”
“I like your accent. Where are you from?”
“Most of us are originally from Botswana, in Africa, though many of us live here in the United States now.”
“Soccer?” Taking another long sip through the straw, she watched him watching her.
“You mean football?”
With a shrug, she let the glass clink to the bar and hooked a barstool with one ankle to pull it closer to her. Hitching herself up onto it, she leaned forward enough to let the cleavage of her shirt fall open a tiny bit. Letting her voice go throaty, she asked, “Does it matter what we call it, as long as we agree on the rules?”
“No. I do not think it matters at all,” he breathed, stepping fully into her personal space, closing the distance between them.
* * *
Jeremiah pulled up short of actually touching the beautiful woman in front of him, though she had all but invited him to do so every time she looked at him. Even though he had immediately established that she was human, he inhaled her scent a second time—her individual perfume of a lightly floral scented soap overlaying the smells of night air, something like rain on fresh-turned earth, and clean sweat over something that was pure woman igniting a heat inside him like nothing else he had experienced before.
I should at least learn her name.
Even if every inch of him strained toward her, urging him to clasp her to him now. His cock had hardened instantly at the way she dropped her voice when she mentioned playing by the rules. From the way she leaned toward him now, one hand reaching out to rest on the center of his chest, she felt the same way.
What he wanted to do was shift his hand enough to bring out his claws and shred her clothes until they were no longer in his way. Then he would pick her up, wrap her delicate legs around his waist, and drive into her with every ounce of power he had.
He wanted to lose himself in her.
But he knew better.
Humans couldn’t take a shifter’s full strength—even if he could come up with some excuse for suddenly growing panty-shredding claws at the end of his hands.
Jeremiah stifled a grin at the thought.
No. He would maintain control, even if everything about her called out to him to let go of his carefully cultivated restraint. Drawing in yet another deep breath, this one designed to help hold back his inner beast, he gently curled one white-blond lock of hair around his index finger. “What are you called?”
“Shadow.” Her voice came out in a rasp.
The artificial light of the bar glinted off the golden highlights wrapped around his fingertip. “Such a dark name for someone so fair.” He trailed his other hand down the side of her face, watching the play of light on the dark skin of his hand contrasted against her pale, soft cheek. She tilted her head to give him access to her neck, as well.
“And yours?” Her wolf-bright eyes regarded him through half-closed lids.
“Jeremiah.”
“Such a formal name. Biblical, right?”
He nodded. “A prophet who warned that King Nebuchadnezzar was coming to destroy the land of Judah.”
She smiled. “Sounds ...” the pause between her words drew out for a long moment, before she finally said, with a slow, sultry smile, “like we could come up with a better activity for the evening.”
With that, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face down to hers, stretching up on the barstool so that her breasts pressed against his chest. As her lips met his with an almost electric spark, he felt his inner hyena chuckle with a happiness he didn’t often feel—the two sides of his personality, beast and man, for once in perfect accord.
* * *
That first kiss in the bar had been almost intoxicating, even without the drinks. Shadow had intended to dive into him, to taste every part of Jeremiah that she could reach within the first few seconds. But the instant his mouth had touched hers, it had been like everything around her had slowed down. She could feel the warmth of his lips pressing against hers, the coolness of the air rushing into his mouth as he drew in a breath, the gentle pressure of his tongue flicking against the seam of her lips, urging her to open her mouth.
That pressure became more demanding within seconds, and when she relaxed her lips against his, Jeremiah’s tongue all but dove into her mouth as he swept her up into his arms to hold her body against his.
Shadow hadn’t considered soccer a sport to particularly build up one’s strength, but his arms banded around her more intensely than she had anticipated, wrapping her to him like silk-covered iron. His chest, too, pressed against her with a pressure and a force she hadn’t anticipated—but she welcomed it.
It had been a long time since she had found anyone who could match her in bed; most of the men she picked up after a hunt were either inherently too soft, or unwilling to engage in the kinds of sex-games that allowed them to play rough.
Invariably, the ones who wanted to play the kinds of games she did wanted to take it too far—they wanted to believe that they could control her.
That would never happen.
All too often, she ended up hurting the man she picked up, either inadvertently or because she needed to put him back in his place.
With this man, though, she suspected she might have found a match. Pressing her entire body against his, she pulled her lips away from his enough to say against his mouth, “Do you have somewhere we can go?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, I do,” he rasped out in that sing-song accent of his.
“Then let’s get out of here.”
* * *
Outside, the air was thick and warm—autumn in the Deep South didn’t cool things down much.
For once, Shadow was glad of it.
She kissed up and down Jeremiah’s neck, hanging from him as they left the bar. “You have someplace nearby?” she murmured into his ear, licking along the shell of it in between words.
“On the river,” he replied, pointing at the hotel district less than a block away.
Moments later, she let out a low whistle as they entered the lobby of the Hyatt and she caught sight of the glass elevators sweeping people up to the tiers of floors above. “College soccer must be more lucrative than I thought,” she said, raising an eyebrow as she glanced at Jeremiah.
Erik would have told her to hold her tongue, to practice fitting in with those around her. “A Scyld,” he was fond of saying, “is all but invisible, in the world but not of it.”
Tonight, though, Shadow was not a Scyld—or, if she was (“be always vigilant,” Erik would have scolded), she was a Scyld without a mission, at least for one night.
Without a killing mission, anyway, she corrected herself. She definitely had a mission—and it was to get this hot man up to his room as soon as possible and throw herself at him.
Her companion didn’t seem to mind her gawking at the hotel lobby. He simply laughed, a funny whooping sound that was also bright and happy, and wrapped one arm around her waist to tug her toward the elevators.
Apparently, he had a mission, too.
In the elevator, Jeremiah pressed Shadow against the glass, grasping her hands in his and sliding them up the wall behind her. His kiss was deep and hard, and she could feel every inch of him pushing her back flat. If she had been either shy or afraid of heights, she might have disliked the move.
As it was, it added even more intensity to his touch.
When the elevator doors opened behind him, he swept her up into his arms, and Shadow wrapped her legs around his hips.
Damn, he’s strong.
She hooked her ankles together behind his back and claimed his mouth for another kiss as he carried her down the hall. At the door to his room, he propped her against the doorframe, and she kissed up and down his neck as he reached into his wallet for the card-key.
When the door opened, he threw both the key and the wallet onto the nearest flat surface and beelined for the bed.
Once there, she unhooked her ankles and slid down his body, allowing his cock, hard underneath his jeans, to catch the edge of her skirt and pull it up as she slid her satin panties down along its fabric-covered length. The contact sent a tremor through her, and she could feel herself grow damp enough to begin to soak through the satin.
His hands skimmed up her outer thighs to her hips, helping the skirt ride up farther. He stepped closer, pushing one leg between her thighs and angling to move her onto the bed, but she ducked out of his grasp and spun around behind him, holding on to one hand and turning him to face her. He echoed her laugh as she pushed against his chest, backing him up until the bed bumped against the underside of his knees.
Time to see if he really could keep up.
Shadow gave another shove—not hard, but not exactly gentle, either—and he sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Good boy,” she murmured. “Aren’t you the obedient one?”
His laughter this time was full-throated, and she found she liked the sound. “You have no idea,” he said.
“Then maybe I should find out.”
“Oh, yes.” His voice grew gravelly with desire. “Please, please do.”