TO CATCH A WOLF By Susan Krinard

“So that she can forget?”

Niall set down the mug so sharply that it cracked, and a last drop of dark liquid leaked onto the table. “Yes.”

“And what if Morgan isn’t dead?”

Her words cut through his calm facade. “What?”

“He is not an ordinary man. Did you make quite sure that you’d killed him?”

The thought struck him hard between the eyes. “He was dead. I shot him twice.”

“He once told me that his kind heal very fast. Didn’t you ever notice that about your sister? The way she was able to walk so quickly after she began to try again?”

He had noticed. But he had chosen to ignore what Athena’s rapid progress might mean. If Caitlin was correct…

Tears flooded his eyes. It was a shameful thing for a man to weep, worse still when he did not comprehend the reasons: anger and frustration that he might not have succeeded. Relief that he had not become a murderer himself. And fear—that worst of all.

He prayed that Caitlin hadn’t seen his weakness. “You should not have suggested that possibility,” he said harshly. “Now I will have to find him and make certain.”

“You’re crazy!” She limped forward, forcing him to avert his face. “I refuse to believe that you would hunt him down again, when you have a chance to atone for your mistake!”

“By giving my sister to him? You have no right to ask that of me. No right.”

“But I do.” Her silence compelled him to look up. She had stopped a few feet away, skin flushed and eyes very bright. “You gave me that right. Damn you, Niall Munroe, is it that you cannot see what love is?” She lifted one small, graceful hand. “Or can it be that you don’t believe yourself worthy of love and forgiveness?”

“I ask no forgiveness.”

“But you want it, just the same.” She came closer, lips parted. “Maybe my forgiveness doesn’t matter much, but I forgive you, Niall. You have not lost all your chances. You can choose to let Athena make her own life. You can change yours.”

He laughed bitterly. “For the sake of love?”

“I have faith in you. You wanted me once, as your mistress. If you still do… it is not too late for us.”

His legs had become paralyzed with more than cold and weariness. They kept him still as she put her roughened fingertips to his face, holding him prisoner with eyes incapable of deception.

“I will go with you, Niall—wherever and however you wish.” She lifted her face to his and kissed him.

Need surged within him, scattering every other thought. He lifted her supple weight in his arms and returned the kiss with interest, devouring that full, tender mouth with all the violence of unrequited lust. She did not recoil. In her little body was a whirlwind of passion every bit a match for his. She leaned into him, small breasts tucked into the hollow of his shoulders. Her warmth dissipated the last of the cold, a source of heat more effective than any fire could have been.

Heat, and desire. His body hungered for her the way a man near death hungered for life. She was life. If he took what she offered, he would choose a path he had never considered before, one that led to beginnings and not endings. He would not be weak, but strong—everything a man was meant to be.

A few steps up the stairs and they’d be at his bedchamber. Already the wiry muscles in her thighs clasped him about the hips, inviting him inside. He knew he could take her again and again and never be satisfied. She’d buck and writhe beneath him, astride him, in every imaginable way a woman could accept a man. Her eyes told him that no pleasure, no erotic wish, was to be denied.

Breathing hard, he clasped her to him and carried her to his bed. Already she was undoing the hooks and buttons of her bodice, baring the light chemise that was her only concession to modesty. He could not shed the layers of his clothing swiftly enough. In frenzied impatience she helped him, tearing at fastenings and pulling sleeves.

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