BLURB:
Being the tag-along on a camping trip with Heather and Graham is not what Cassandra has in mind for her long weekend. When a tall, dark stranger with staggering green eyes shows up to lend a hand with her tent assembly from Hell, however, she has to rethink her predicament. Despite the mixture of excitement and apprehension he incites with his soul-startling stare, the possibility that she’s just found her brawny Tarzan in the depths of Redwood National Park suddenly doesn’t seem so absurd.
Cray feels an equally potent draw to the fiery redhead with the soft hazel eyes, attractive features, and tempting shape. Despite his resolve, she provokes a primordial calling he’s long sought to contain. He wants this female, he can’t deny, but he knows giving in to such unabashed urges can lead to disaster, and he refuses to sentence this woman to his own horrid fate.
But just as powerful as Cray’s attraction is his unexpected surge of protectiveness. There’s something about Cassandra’s male friend that needles his suspicion. Graham invokes Cray’s predatory sense of dominance, and that doesn’t bode well. If his instincts are correct, Cray knows Graham is more than he appears and Cassandra’s life is in danger...
EXCERPT:
She wasn’t too sure how far back Heather might be, but surely she couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards or so. The scream had sounded close. “Where are you?” she repeated, then stopped, fearing her pounding feet might mask a response.
A whimpering to her left caught her ear. “Heather?” Her voice shook as she recognized a growing sense of fear.
Trying to quell her panic at the realization of her own peril, she took a deep breath and stepped off the trail into the brush. Carefully spreading branches apart with the end of her knife to afford her deeper passage, she disappeared into the undergrowth. A tearing sound caused her to pause.
What the heck was that? It almost sounded like ripping fabric.
Or…flesh, she concluded, feeling a chill grip her innards as alarm hit her full force.
Instinct suggested her life was in danger. She couldn’t help Heather if she were dead herself. Perhaps finding some help was a better course of action.
She started to retrace her steps. Another spine-straightening suggestion of ripping followed by a moan of pain broke the dark stillness around her. A moist gurgle pursued its wake.
Cassandra froze. Heather would be dead before she returned. What if it wasn’t a mountain lion. What if it was a werewolf? She couldn’t just leave her.
“Please…” Heather’s voice murmured through the stillness.
Oh, for God’s sake, you’ve been listening to Graham’s ridiculous chatter for too long.
Cassandra started forward once again, disregarding the noise she made as she picked her way through the thick brush. Cray had said to yell and be aggressive. If it were a cougar, perhaps the clatter would scare it away.
Besides, there’s no such thing as—
Catching her foot on an exposed tree root, she tumbled forward, bursting through the other side of the bush in a clamorous rustle of leaves and snapping branches to land painfully on her hands and knees on the outskirts of a small clearing. Stunned by the fall, she leaned back on her haunches and wiped the remnants of dirt and twigs from her palms.
Her flashlight rolled away, coming to rest several feet beyond her reach. Despite a hard knock on the ground, it remained lit, though its beam was dull. And her knife had disappeared somewhere within a mound of leaves on her left.
When she finally glanced around her dim surroundings, she realized that she’d just happened onto the scene of something akin to a horror film. Cassandra opened her mouth to scream, but terror choked the sound from her throat. All her psychological profiling of lycanthropes fizzled away like water subjected to flame, for the shadowed creature before her—a strange mix of man and dog—couldn’t be anything human.
Werewolves…
***
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Shannon Leigh
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