Seduced by the Moon

“Does the approach of a full moon make animals restless? I think I hear them at night,” Skylar said.

Now she was pushing things. She was an idiot.

Gavin came closer than she should have allowed and faced her squarely. He smiled, but with an expression of sadness. Heartbreaking sadness.

Why?

Whatever she had expected, it hadn’t been that.

As he slowly moved toward her, she felt every inch he traveled as if the air between them had been compressed. When he stopped, they were nearly chest to chest, and she had to look up to see his face.

Liquid lava coursed through her veins. She was hot enough to be combustible and was breathing hard … all these reactions serving to confirm that she hadn’t been wrong about one thing. Something was going on between them on a crazy personal level. Their chemistry had been instantaneous and impossible to ignore.

Animal magnetism taken to extremes.

Lust at first sight.

Dreams trespassing into the realm of reality.

LINDA THOMAS-SUNDSTROM writes contemporary and paranormal romance novels for Mills & Boon^® Desire™ and Mills & Boon^® Nocturne™. A teacher by day and a writer by night, Linda lives in the West, juggling teaching, writing, family and caring for a big stretch of land. She swears she has a resident Muse who sings so loudly, she often wears earplugs in order to get anything else done. But she has big plans to eventually get to all those ideas. Visit Linda at lindathomas-sundstrom.com or on Facebook.

Seduced

by the Moon

Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To my family, those here and those gone, who always believed I had a story to tell.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

Skylar Donovan was being haunted by the same dream.

Four nights in a row.

An erotic, half awake, half asleep nightmare from which she awoke in tangled sheets, body slick with sweat, with her hand between her thighs.

Looked like nothing had changed tonight, either.

The minute Skylar closed her eyes, the dream returned. Moonlight lit the mountains. Shadows edged that light. And through the dark came the echo of a man’s voice: a mesmerizing wordless whisper that was the equivalent of a highly charged sexual invitation.

Her dream guy was there again. Hell, it was impossible to tune him out. The remote Colorado cabin she bunked in had no TV for white noise, and she’d left her headphones behind.

He called to her, and she responded to the raw sensuality in his voice. Though his words weren’t clear, his provocative tone left her ready to do something about the effect he had on her, whether he was real or not.

These damn dreams would have topped the charts as the best wet dreams ever...if it were an actual man she lusted for instead of a hallucination. Something her mind had created as a distraction from recent painful events. Everyone knew that fantasy was a notoriously viable way of coping with loss.

Problem was, this nighttime lustfest wouldn’t stop. Neither would the questions she didn’t dare acknowledge out loud.

Who was he?

What was he?

What would this creature’s skin feel like against her? How about his mouth? With a voice so totally seductive, surely the rest of him would be sublime.

Although Skylar knew the difference between dreams and reality, there were no clear-cut definitions here. With her eyes closed, she fell under his spell. His image stuck to her with supernatural glue.

Wide shoulders above a broad muscular chest. Thick torso. Narrow waist and hips. Dark hair worn long. His stance was determined, his face sometimes raised to the star-filled sky. And over everything was an aura of wildness that catapulted things into nightmare territory. Because there wasn’t the slightest chance of mistaking her nocturnal seducer for a normal human being. He was, in fact, anything but normal.

He was a magnetic combination of man and beast with a ridiculous twist on the DNA sequencing of two species that couldn’t share the same physical space in reality. A unique being with its own name.

Werewolf.

Hell. Yes. Werewolf.

With a presence powerful enough to sift through REM.

Of course these were just dreams. She got that. She wasn’t an idiot.

Well, maybe she was. Because...

She was so very hot for the creature that stood on that hilltop and looked like a man at times, though that outline was deceptive. She felt vulnerable when he was around, and slightly out of control. But maybe she was only an eavesdropper, and he waited for someone else. Something else.

Was the moon his mistress? Wasn’t that how things worked for werewolves?

Why, then, was he yanking her chain?

A sudden spike in her heart rate, far beyond the usual range, jolted Skylar’s eyes open. Anxious, she rolled over on the mattress and sat up, sweat trickling between her breasts, heart pounding too damn fast.

Tonight was different somehow. This time the voice had seemed closer and very, very real. It left an echo in the room.

Not dreaming now?

To prove that, Skylar slipped from the bed and padded to the window. She moved the curtain, expecting to catch sight of her velvety tormentor, wondering again why she allowed a figment of her imagination to continue to interrupt what should have been a good night’s sleep.

She saw nothing out there, but God, had she actually expected to?

Resisting the urge to laugh at herself, Skylar rested her forehead on the cool window glass. Probably she had allowed her mind to supercharge some poor nocturnal creature’s cry into something it wasn’t. That’s all those sounds were.

Not a voice.

She wasn’t nuts, just tired, worn out and sleep deprived. She also supposed that these nighttime escapades could be tied to the power of suggestion, caused by the discovery of her dad’s cache of items in the attic. That old trunk and the things she found inside it.

Her dad, it seemed, kept dirty little secrets to himself here in Colorado, so far away from his family. And it had taken coming to this remote cabin to go through his things for Skylar to realize she hadn’t really known David Donovan at all.

One more glance outside, at the night, and she turned back to the bed. Curling up on the mattress with her knees to her chest, she used her usual abundance of common sense to reason things out.

Maybe dreaming about a supernatural lover merely showcased a healthy need to get past the termination of her relationship with Danny, her ex-fiancé. She had left him a couple of months ago, before actually getting to the altar, and everybody needed time to adapt.

It wouldn’t take a professional opinion to point out that the sexy dreams she seemed committed to having could be her mind’s way of filling the void made by that kind of change, especially since it was followed fairly closely by her father’s untimely death...

The father who, as a famous psychiatrist dealing in other peoples’ problems, had, it turned out, sometimes dabbled in his own world of make-believe.

Werewolves were his idea, after all.

Not only had her dad believed those creatures existed, he must have thought they roamed the mountains of Colorado, right outside this cabin’s door—which was likely the reason he often retreated here under the premise of needing alone time.

Beasts, for God’s sake.

Like the one in my dreams.

So maybe fantasies were contagious and could be inherited, and stumbling on her father’s secrets had spawned her own nocturnal reveries.

Skylar pulled the blanket up to her neck. Seconds later, she flipped onto her back, staring at the ceiling of the small rustic bedroom.

“Screw the pity party,” she murmured. Because truthfully one thing, at least, was clear. She felt liberated by the empty spot on her ring finger.

Seeking comfort in the lavender-scented feather pillow, Skylar vowed to stick to her plan: finish going through and packing up her father’s things and then return to her apartment in Miami, where her wedding dress still hung on a hanger. The dress would have to be returned eventually. If she ran into Danny, she’d just have to deal.

She could do that.

In truth, her life sucked sometimes. No mother, no father and no fiancé...but what the heck? She had three loving sisters and the deed to this cabin.

“Bring it on, sexy nightmare!”

Plumping up the pillow, Skylar blew out a breath and dared to close her eyes. Refusing to behave, her heart spiked again.

Swear to God, she was sure the man in her dreams was out there now, waiting for her. Whispering to her. Compelling her to listen.

And why the hell shouldn’t she?

* * *

Gavin Harris turned his face to the night wind, catching a whiff of a fragrance completely foreign to the rest of the forest smells surrounding him. It was a sudden sensory bombardment that didn’t belong here and was, even as he breathed it in, a detour from his agenda.

Eyes shut, he wrapped his senses around the uniqueness of the rich, sweet scent, separating each component with his fine-tuned wolf senses.

Female, he concluded. Young, supple flesh. Musky pheromones. Traces of soap and denim. Tantalizing feminine scents that weren’t in any way related to the more monstrous odors he sought tonight, but were oh so compelling.

He shook his head hard to ward off the distraction, and muttered, “Forget it.” Investigating the source of these new smells would mean detouring from his objective, which had to remain his greatest priority. He was on watch, hunting his own version of big game.

That objective was an important one. Vital.

But damn...

The rosy feminine perfume floating to him from the cabin in the clearing below him caused a visceral physical reaction similar to being shocked by a cattle prod. All the little hairs on his arms stood up. Tingling nerves made his muscles twitch.

He smelled the woman in that cabin as easily as if she stood in front of him, in person.

And she was alone.

Stepping forward brought the cabin into view through a gap in the trees. Gavin leveled his gaze on the dark windows and inhaled deeply, concluding that the woman down there was the only human in the area at the moment. She occupied a cabin that had been originally been built by old Tom Jeevers, making it smell a whole hell of a lot better than its line of former occupants had.

Something else?

The agitated, tinnier scent of anxiousness wafted to him, adding a second, spicier layer to the woman’s floral bouquet. Either she was anticipating something, or was in some kind of trouble. A fight with a companion, lover or husband, maybe, that caused a ruffle in the atmosphere? The long-anticipated arrival of a lover who was late?

“Lucky bastard,” Gavin muttered. If she had a husband, that guy would get to smell her every damn day.

With a quick glance up at the sky, Gavin widened his stance, knowing he shouldn’t linger too long in the moonlight. Though the moon wasn’t completely full tonight, that bugger was close enough to that phase to affect him in adverse ways. All the enhanced senses were just a start.

A quick glance down the length of his body found it not actually foreign, but increasingly unfamiliar as each lunar phase progressed. The extra muscle that he hadn’t worked out in a gym to maintain helped to add bulk. His height had stretched a good inch or two above his normal six-one.

His jeans were tighter. Shirts now strained at the seams. The only measurements remaining the same were his feet, slammed into his boots.

Then there was his hair. The tangle of chin-length waves were darker and much longer than he was used to, tickling his ears, making him wonder how long he’d been patrolling this section of the mountain ignoring most of the perks of civilization.

Could it have been two years?

Damn if everything hadn’t changed in the span of those years. Out of necessity, he’d pretty much become a loner. And though he patrolled this area of the Rockies regularly, during those past two years four people had died. One of them was the last man to occupy the cabin now emitting a woman’s enticing pheromones.

Oh, yes. And within those two years he, Gavin Harris, Colorado Forest Ranger, had regrettably, unforgettably, become a beast tethered by a silver chain to the devilish disk in the sky. Moon. As absurd as that seemed.

He closed his eyes again, shook his head. Having a woman down there, so very close, and smelling like heaven, served to highlight his shitload of personal issues.

People who abused the clichéd phrase no crying over spilt milk had never experienced their skin turning inside out or their muscles expanding to nearly twice their size in the span of sixty seconds. They’d never felt the pain of fingers splitting open to spring a full set of razor-sharp claws, and a jaw disconnecting bone by bone.

After taking another deep breath, Gavin dropped to a crouch. The sultry smells floating upward from the cabin were disturbing to him for so many reasons. One major problem was that they could easily mask the other, more feral odor he’d been out here searching for.

The woman’s presence was trouble, any way he looked at it, and also a reminder he didn’t need about the better times in his past. And the woman in that cabin might be in danger out here from bigger, badder things than him.

Who are you? he wondered. Hasn’t anyone warned you about this place? Told you that four deaths in and around the area are four too many, and that a woman by herself might be asking for trouble?

Determined to let this go, Gavin straightened and half turned. That woman wasn’t his problem. He had more serious things to worry about. There was a damn good possibility he wasn’t the only monster nearby, and if that theory proved true, odds were less than good that he’d ever see another sunrise.

“Leave her alone. Get out of here. Let her be,” Gavin warned himself.

Not so fast...

An additional beam of light drew his gaze.

He turned back.

The cabin’s door opened, throwing a narrow strip of yellow across the boards of the covered porch. A figure emerged to stand in that beam, and although the features were shadowy from this distance, Gavin’s heart exploded in a flurry of racing beats.

The woman stood in the open doorway as if his thoughts had drawn her out. As if she knew he was there, watching her, and felt his presence.

Seeing her jolted the beast inside him.

He’d been right about this woman. Anxiousness rode the breeze. She was tense, uptight and high-strung, like an animal about to spring.

But she was also small, blonde, and only half-dressed.

Gavin stared at the half-dressed part, and the long, lean, very bare legs that melted into delicate ankles and shoeless feet.

His inner wolf gave a soft, muted whine that scattered when he cleared his throat.

Christ, temptation was a bitch.

So was being a goddamn werewolf.

As for you, woman...

His attention snapped to identify another smell.

Metal.

The woman on the porch had a gun?

Gavin realized with a sudden flash of intuition that the icy chill now ripping through him wasn’t due only to the alluring sight of the woman, or the scent of her weapon, but to the thing closing in on them from the mountain.

He must have gauged the strange lure of this area correctly if the prodigal beast he sought returned two days early. Forty-eight hours shy of that next full moon.

“Ah, hell...”

With renewed wariness, he glanced again at the cabin and the beauty on the porch whose white T-shirt highlighted her slender torso, and whose face was hidden by a cloud of fair hair. He already felt protective of her. Felt as though he knew her somehow.

She might have courage enough to try to protect herself, but no gun he knew of would save her if the thing he chased turned its attention her way. He whirled, his boots digging up clumps of dirt. No time to waste. If the visitor heading this way was what he hoped it might be, he needed to lead that abomination away from the cabin.

With a final look over his shoulder, Gavin took off at a jog because his gut told him he needed to stop this killer before it claimed another poor soul.

Chapter 2

Although no one showed up to confront her as she stood on the porch, Skylar knew she was no longer alone, and that she wasn’t dreaming this time. Not a chance in hell.

Her father’s gun felt heavy and cold in her hands. It was loaded, and she knew how to fire, just as all the Donovan girls did. Their father had been diligent about his daughters’ self-defense.

That didn’t stop the shaking, though. She had to hold the gun with both hands as she faced the unknown. Someone was out there. This was real. And at this time of night, that felt like bad news.

Of course, it could be a lost hiker. Maybe it was her father’s crusty caretaker coming by to check on the property, or out for a late-night stroll. But the persistent flush of internal heat told her that those possibilities were false and that someone else was here.

Instead of retreating inside and locking the door behind her, Skylar stood her ground, scanning the night beyond the meager pool of porch light where evidence of a visitor lay in the sudden silence of insects.

Biting her lip hard enough to taste blood, she ventured a call. “Where are you? Who are you?”

The silence was unnerving. She worked at drawing a breath.

“Not going to show yourself? I’m here, waiting.” She pointed the revolver at the trees on the hillside, upped her volume. “And I’m not happy about it.”

The taunt produced no results, but she couldn’t give up. Someone was there, somewhere. What if it wasn’t some innocent hiker? Suppose her father’s killer had returned?

She had to consider that possibility. She refused to believe that her diligent, first-rate climber dad might have fallen to his death. The conclusion she’d come to, independent of her sisters’ opinions, was that if David Donovan had fallen, someone must have pushed him.

“So who are you? Have you come for me?” she said to the quiet night, getting nothing back. No response at all.

“No time for hide and seek,” she called out in a last-ditch effort to make contact as she backed up slowly, crossing the threshold in a shuffle of bare feet.

A change in the air made her pause. Moving the gun, she refocused her aim on a point just south of the path up the hillside.

“Best to stay inside,” a man’s voice advised from somewhere near the closest trees. “And lock the door. It might also be a good idea to leave here tomorrow.”

Skylar’s heart skidded over one too many beats, leaving her breathless. “Who are you?” she called out.

“Ranger, patrolling the area. There’s been some trouble around here.”

She waved the gun. “I know that, and I know how to use this.”

“Better to move on before you have to use it,” he said. “A woman alone is far too tempting as a target.”

“How do you know I’m alone?”

“It’s my business to know who’s in the area.”

“You’ve been watching the cabin?”

“As much as I can, but right now I’m needed elsewhere.”

“Where’s your car, or whatever rangers use to get around in?”

“Over the hill behind me.”

“You run around on foot in the dark?”

“There aren’t too many paths worthy of a vehicle around here, beyond the main road.”

“I don’t need you to stand guard,” Skylar said. “Thanks, but you can get on with your business.”

“Fine. Just offering a friendly warning. Can’t be too careful this far out of town.”

Skylar waved the gun again. “I’m well aware of that.”

“Well, good night, then,” the invisible ranger, if that’s what he really was, said.

“Good night,” Skylar echoed.

The night air changed again, rearranging itself as though something heavy had been removed and the darkness filled in the vacuum left behind. The result was a powerful charge that left Skylar swaying on her feet.

This could have been her imagination, she supposed as she shrugged off a new round of chills. But one thing was clear. She had no doubt whatsoever that this ranger’s voice was the voice from her dreams.

The same damn one.

She’d bet her life on that.

* * *

“You’re too far out there,” Trish said over the phone the next day in the authoritative tone reserved for bossy older sisters.

“It’s temporary, so I don’t mind.” Skylar rubbed her bloodshot eyes. Ten minutes of sleep while sitting by the window all night, gun in hand, wasn’t nearly enough for a clear head.

“I need to get this cabin boxed,” she added, like she did every time she spoke with Trish, which was every day. Sometimes twice.

“I’ll come and help,” Trish said.

“No, you won’t.”

“Then Lark can visit. She can ask for time off.”

“I’d rather choke.”

Trish’s voice deepened. “Do you know any of the neighbors?”

Like most lawyers, Trish didn’t like being crossed or argued with for any reason. As the oldest Donovan sister, Trish would lay out her argument logically and plan on wearing her down with repetition.

Skylar didn’t want to go home and didn’t want company while she explored the circumstances surrounding her father’s death. Unless hell froze over, she wasn’t going to share that objective with her sisters and get them all riled up.

Besides, the good Lord only knew what would happen if she were to utter the word werewolf, or mention being harassed by someone who hadn’t really shown themselves last night. If Trish knew any of that, half of Colorado would be on their way over before the phone disconnected.

Which might not have been such a bad idea, actually, if Skylar’s stubborn streak would have allowed it.

“The caretaker for this place lives a couple of miles down the road, Trish. I have his phone number right here.”

Trish snorted her disapproval. “Miles? Like that’s comforting?”

“I have a gun.”

Skylar’s announcement preceded a beat of silence over the line.

“You what?” Trish eventually said.

“It was Dad’s. I took it from the trunk.”

“What trunk would that be?” Trish asked. Demanded, really, in her best cross-examination style.

“The one I found in the attic here. It’s loaded and I know how to use it. We all do.”

Trish sighed unhappily. Trisha Lilith Donovan saw far too many weapons in her job as a prosecuting attorney to be comfortable with any of them. And Trish, as the eldest sibling and the only Donovan kid not named after a bird, felt responsible for the rest of the motherless girls.

“I suppose being engaged to the cop for twelve months also had its perks in the weapons department?” Trish suggested.

Skylar lowered the phone to take a deep breath so that Trish wouldn’t hear it. Trish had said “the cop,” avoiding the use of Danny’s name.

Skylar raised the receiver when she heard Trish calling her name.

“Skye? Skylar?”

“Sorry. I have something cooking on the stove. Can we talk later?”

“You’re putting me off. We haven’t discussed—”

“Good. Thanks,” Skylar interrupted. “I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

“Skye, wait. I’m sorry I brought up the cop. Really sorry.”

“No sweat. I’ve moved on, that’s all.”

“I know, but...”

“It’s all right. I haven’t been a baby for twenty-three years now. Nor have I ever needed help in making up my mind about something.”

“I know that, too. But you will always be my baby sister. You can confide in me.”

“I’m all right, I swear. My fiancé was a bastard, and it took me too long to figure that out. I’m off the hook now. That’s how I look at the breakup. Possibly it was an act of divine intervention in my favor. I feel relief, if you want the truth. We’ll talk again tomorrow. Okay?”

“Oh, all right.”

“Bye, Trish.”

Skylar signed off before the arguments could start up again, and with them the apologies about things not working out with Detective Danny Parker, who had gotten her close enough to matrimony to actually buy the dress.

But it had never been a match made in heaven, and she’d known that, deep down inside. She’d merely been going through the motions.

Worse, in terms of regrets, was realizing she’d gone along with Danny’s little mental abuses, and had been swept up in them, rather than openly exerting her true rebellious personality. That hadn’t been like her at all, really. And she hadn’t been lying to Trish about the relief.

Palming her cell phone, Skylar checked the screen for calls, half expecting Trish to call back. Then she set the phone on the table. Service was spotty in the mountains, and only seemed to like this small area in the front room of the cabin—a fact that wasn’t exactly comforting, she supposed, though Trish didn’t need to know that, either.

“And if you knew what else I found in that trunk of Dad’s, Trish, you’d send in the tanks,” she muttered.

Not only had she found the gun in that trunk, well-oiled and ready to go, it was loaded with unusual ammunition that had to have helped shape her dreams. She was sure that silver bullets weren’t the norm for anyone, outside of people chasing their own form of madness.

Glancing up at the ceiling as if she could see through the rough wooden beams, she said, “Neither are they standard in a psychiatrist’s medicine bag.”

In the past, she would have called Danny to talk about this, but she was on her own now—which left her imagination wide-open. Because shiny silver ammunition, unless merely something a collector might covet, was de rigueur for hunting...

“Werewolves.”

Skylar turned toward the window, attuned to the drop in temperature that signaled another day’s end. Nightfall wasn’t far off.

“Damn it, Trish. I need to find out what our father was up to, and why it might have killed him.”

Solving the mystery of her father’s frequent disappearances was paramount, as was finding out why he needed so much time away from everyone he supposedly loved.

But hell, Dad. Silver bullets?

In all truth, she had to admit, being in this cabin for a few days by herself, with her dad’s things, had caused her more discomfort than seeing Danny’s face when she told him the engagement was off.

The men in her life were gone, and she was far too intelligent to imagine that velvet-voiced rangers could have stepped out of her dreams.

As for monsters...

The moon would be completely full in another twenty-four hours, a big deal in werewolf lore, at least in the movies. If the approaching moon was some kind of supernatural stimulant, all werewolves would be affected. If there were such things as man-wolf creatures, her dream lover would be affected, too. And with her dad’s gun under her pillow, she’d be ready for anything that dream had to offer.