TO CATCH A WOLF By Susan Krinard

“I know about your rules.” He shifted, and her eyes flew to track his motion. “You and your friends waste too much time worrying about what isn’t important.”

“What do you mean by that?” She scooted higher on the pillows, forgetting to adjust her blanket upward. “What do you know of my friends, or any of the niceties of life?”

He dropped his chin onto his folded arms. Now was as good a time as any. He could tell her what he had overheard in the Windsor’s restaurant. It might be a kindness to set her free from her illusions.

But he looked at her face and knew that the truth would destroy her. She was not strong enough. Perhaps she would never be. And when the circus left Denver—tomorrow, in a week, in a month—none of it would matter to him.

It shouldn’t matter now. It shouldn’t matter that her brother had her on a short leash and she chose not to see, or that she’d given up half of herself out of fear of losing what little she had.

What little she had. She would laugh at him if he said that, surrounded as she was with luxury and everything money could buy. All the things his family had done without, that his father had been so hungry for.

“You were right about my upbringing, Miss Munroe,” he said. “We didn’t have much. We lived in a small cabin in the mountains. One bed and a cot. Only the fire and candles for light. My parents—my ma hunted, and we fished and sold furs in town. We had books, but no schooling.” Memories thick with the dust of years emerged from then-hidden places, raising a fog in his mind. “We didn’t need anything else, until Pa—”

Stop. He drove the memories back into oblivion and got to his feet. Where in hell had that come from? Why here, with her? She was no part of his past, or his future. And his future stretched no further than the next moment.

“Your parents,” Athena said, her voice suddenly gentle. “You said that you hadn’t seen your family since you were a boy. To lose them at so young an age… I am sorry that I spoke as I did.”

He forced himself to look at her. Her face had resumed that gracious, almost saintly expression, raising in him a desire to snap and snarl until she lost it again. Deliberately he raked his gaze from her eyes to her chin and lower, where the high collar of her nightdress hugged the graceful arc of her neck.

Despite the lace and frills, the sheer fabric of the garment left little to the imagination. The pink tones of her skin gave the white lawn a rosy tint, and where her breasts lifted the cloth he could see the brown circles of her nipples. Each one formed a small, intriguing peak that grew more pronounced as she noticed his stare.

Humans—or werewolves in human form—were much like animals. Their bodies responded to instinct and desires that had nothing to do with intellect. Morgan’s body was very much aware of Athena’s.

He had not been oblivious to her during their previous encounters. He had been conscious of her sex and tolerated a certain attraction, even before he learned of her true nature. But the attraction had been only that, and easily set aside.

No longer. Something had changed. It wasn’t only his respect for her courage in challenging the limitations of her body and spirit, or that he had unwillingly shared her emotions. It wasn’t that he stood in her bedchamber, a room humans regarded as the proper place for sex. Nor was it that she wore a diaphanous nightdress instead of the armor of corsets and layered skirts. He had seen many women clothed in less, and regarded them as merely the means to ease his body’s needs.

Athena was not like those women. He understood the difference between females raised as she had been, and the worldly inhabitants of the circus or saloon. She had no experience, of that he was certain, and no skill. Her allure was completely unintentional.

She regarded mating as a wanton beast that could tear her precious reputation to shreds, or worse—an enemy capable of making her remember what she had lost.

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