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  Conner’s Wolf

  Jory Strong

  Book 6 in the Supernatural Bonds series.

  Homicide detective Conner Stern doesn’t know what Khemirra Reis is running from, only that he’s damn determined to find out. Right after he lays her bare beneath him and works the beautiful obsession out of his system.

  Sexual satisfaction first, revealing her secrets second—that’s the plan—except Khemirra is battling a fascination of her own. Her rational mind says stay far, far away from the gorgeous cop who doesn’t want anything to do with the supernatural. But after Conner catches up to her and shows her with heated kisses and carnal demands just how perfect they can be together, the wolf part of her nature is convinced he’s the right mate.

  Conner wants her trust. She needs his help. But Khemirra doesn’t know which of her secrets Conner will hate more—that she killed a man, or that she’s a werewolf. Unless love overrides all else, they’ll lose any chance of a future together.

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  www.ellorascave.com

  Conner’s Wolf

  ISBN 9781419934636

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Conner’s Wolf Copyright © 2011 Jory Strong

  Edited by Kelli Collins

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication May 2011

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Conner’s Wolf

  Jory Strong

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Dos Equis: Cerveceria Moctezuma, S.A.

  Ford-250: Ford Motor Company

  Jeep Wrangler: DaimlerChrysler Corporation

  Jockey: Jockey International, Inc.

  Chapter One

  He was pissed off. Royally. He considered himself a pretty reasonable guy and one hell of a detective. But at every turn, the delectable Khemirra Reis had skated on him, staying ahead of him by mere hours in some cases.

  Did she know he was on her trail? Or was he closing in just as whoever she was running from was doing the same?

  Conner didn’t know the answer, but son of bitch, this was getting old.

  He’d chewed up most of his vacation time. He’d called in favors, asking cops in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina to keep an eye out for her black Wrangler. And if he didn’t catch her soon, he’d be hunting up contacts in Virginia. Not to mention losing most of his ass in a serious chewing out if the captain found out he was working a CSI friend who was, in turn, working a friend to monitor calls going to voice mail on her cell phone—the one he’d figured out early on she’d ditched.

  Except for the friend in CSI, all the cops he worked with in Homicide thought he was kicking back at his parents’ cabin, holed up writing music and playing his instruments. Or maybe holed up with some badge bunny and making a different kind of music with an instrument big enough and hard enough to be confused with a flesh-colored police baton.

  The imagery made Conner laugh, unclenching his jaw in the process. Truth was he’d never invited a woman to the cabin. But the moment he’d seen Khemirra, the decision to do it had taken hold. Viscerally. As in with a cock that went rock hard every time he pictured her, as in with a hard-on that needed to be taken care of every morning because his nights were spent dreaming about her.

  Goddamn, he had it bad.

  He tightened his hands on the steering wheel as if squeezing it could stop the blood from rushing straight to his dick. Too late. He might be seeing the highway stretched out in front of him but mentally he was looking into the past, remembering what he’d felt the day he met her in the park while he and four other cops were working a case that had ended up with a connection between missing children and the murder of a couple of psychics.

  He’d assumed Khemirra would be like most reporters, quick to cite the First Amendment. Instead she’d been open with him, a contradiction that had heightened the attraction.

  She was a looker, some mix of races that had produced stunning results. She could have been a runway model with her exotic features and caramel skin, the midnight-black hair begging a man to spear his fingers through it and pull her to him, while the lithe, sleek body fueled fantasies of peeling off her clothing.

  His immediate instinct had been to push her to her hands and knees and mount her. Almost every instinct following that one was a variation on a theme involving sweat-slick bodies and carnal ecstasy, although somewhere along the way, the need to find and protect had gotten as strong as the lust.

  He took a hand off the steering wheel to adjust the front of his jeans. He was tempted to free himself but he ruthlessly suppressed the urge. His luck, some deer would decide to cross the highway in front of him and the EMTs would be pulling him out of his wrecked car with his hand wrapped around his dick like some perv.

  Not exactly the way he wanted to be remembered if he died. And if he survived, the jokes would make him almost wish he hadn’t. Cop humor was merciless.

  Despite his aggravation at Khemirra’s continued elusiveness, he laughed thinking about how he’d left things in Florida. Trace Dilessio, who felt the same way he did about all things supernatural, falling fast and hard for Aislinn, the owner of Inner Magick.

  He wondered how Trace’s partner Dylan was holding up. And his own, Miguel.

  Conner shook his head. Miguel was like a guy walking around carrying a ball and chain in his arms, desperate to engrave some woman’s name on it before attaching it to his ankle—or more accurately, his cock.

  Well, times were changing. He could see the writing on the wall. First guy to fall hard started a trend that would end the days of them hanging out together at bars in the company of badge bunnies and lead to barbequing poolside while the wives chatted it up and the kids swam.

  Hell, this chase after Khemirra was proof of it. It’s not like he didn’t have other stuff he should be doing. The guys he played with in a cop band were counting on him to come up with some new material. His parents were always up for a visit, so were a grandparent from each side of his family. Though without fail, right after hello came are you dating anyone seriously?

  He didn’t know about dating, but he was going to do some serious fucking when he caught up with Khemirra. He was going to do enough of it to either get her out of his system or move her into his place. And in the process he was going to find out who the hell she was running from and why.

  He rolled his shoulders, trying to get some of the stiffness out of them. It’d been another long day. Besides calling in favors from other cops, he’d been working the mag
azine and newspaper angle because she’d been calling in favors from folks she knew too, picking up income by freelancing along the way, selling off articles.

  Getting information out of editors and reporters was a study in frustration. His success rate was closing in on one percent, but his gut said he was getting close to her.

  A little farther and he was quitting for the night. There was a country western bar off the next freeway exit. Khemirra had written a piece about the place a couple of years back, and he’d stumbled onto it.

  Damn, he loved the web for making it easy to find that kind of stuff. Now if he could only catch up to the woman.

  She was in this neck of the woods, as the locals would say. She’d made a call from a pay phone at a gas station to check for messages a couple of hours back and, based on the trail of red Xs he’d marked on the map dedicated to his tracking efforts, he thought she’d keep going forward rather than double back.

  There was one major upside to her direction of travel. She was heading toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, where his parents’ cabin was located.

  He couldn’t find any record of her owning property there or having grown up in the mountains, but she’d done stories about people and places all through the Appalachians. And one thing he’d seen repeatedly in his years as a cop, when people ran, they almost always ran to the familiar.

  As far as he could tell, the Blue Ridge Mountains were where she’d first started making a name for herself with her writing. It’s where she’d come onto the radar screen as legally existing by getting a driver’s license and buying a car, a troubling discovery given she wasn’t in witness protection. If she had been, then his digging would have brought some Fed to his doorstep.

  His lips firmed and he forcefully silenced the internal voice questioning her origins. He’d get his answers when he caught up to her, though talking might have to take a backseat to fucking.

  He reached down, readjusting his cock while fighting the urge to free it. Who knew, maybe tonight he’d get lucky. Maybe instead of questioning the bartender and waitresses about her, he’d catch Khemirra herself. If he did, he wouldn’t let her out of his sight again until whatever trouble she was in had been dealt with and the attraction between them addressed.

  Khemirra felt edgy as hell. Part of it came from nearly a month of being on the run. But the greater part of it came from being a day away from the full moon. It felt like her skin was going to peel away any minute and let the wolf out to play.

  Not a good thing. Not out in public, and sure as hell not here, where any number of rednecks had already riled her temper by trying to feel her up whenever she left the barstool to line dance.

  She lifted the mug of beer to her lips and took a drink, trying to let the cool slide of it down her throat wash some of the tension out of her body. What she needed was a run in the woods wearing fur, a satisfying chase ending in a hot kill.

  A shudder went through her on the heels of that thought, coming with the remembered taste of human blood, human flesh. She took another swallow of beer in an attempt to wash it away, reminding herself as she’d done a thousand times since killing the mage that she hadn’t had any choice.

  She cupped both hands around the cold mug to keep herself from scrubbing them over her face like a kid rubbing away a nightmare. It came anyway, accompanied by remembered emotion.

  The absolute, incredible thrill of having gotten a personal call from Armand Scholes, a multiple-time bestselling author and a guy so reclusive he made Howard Hughes seem like a socialite. She hadn’t thought she had a chance in hell of being granted an interview request, and up until the moment she’d arrived at his compound and actually seen the gate slide open to admit her, she’d considered she might be the victim of a practical joke by person or persons unknown.

  Uncertainty, elation, disbelief—

  Lucky. She’d felt that way as she entered Scholes’ compound, already envisioning how many other doors might be opened for her once the piece on him was written and published.

  But in the end, her luck had taken a completely different form. And she had been lucky, so damn lucky.

  First, in that her car had been in the shop so she was driving a rental when she went to do the interview.

  Second, in that she and Armand Scholes were still just inside the slow-moving gate to his compound when the mage arrived.

  She’d smelled the dark magic on the mage and felt the first stirrings of fear, but he’d hardly glanced at her. All of his attention had been on Scholes, and laced in with the scent of magic was excitement, anticipation, greed.

  A step away from them, Scholes said, “Show me,” eagerness in his voice, but a wealth of doubt too; both, in the end, contributing to a lack of judgment making all the difference for her.

  The mage pulled a small, velvet-covered box from his pocket, something a ring would have left a jewelry shop in. He looked away from Scholes then, his focus on her as he opened it.

  Compulsion slammed into her in the presence of the wolf-shaped charm. It was as if pure moonlight had been trapped inside the pale crystal and there was no denying its call.

  She shifted without thought. Attacked without hesitation, canine teeth tearing through skin and muscle, ripping, her mouth filling with blood before intelligence intruded on instinct, urging her to take possession of the charm and run.

  Seconds later and the gate would have been fully closed, leaving her at the mercy of Scholes, who’d pulled a tranquilizer gun from beneath his clothing. Lucky again that in the frenzy of the attack and escape, he’d only managed to get off a single shot. It pinged against the metal of the gate an instant after she was beyond his reach.

  Closing her eyes, she lifted the mug and pressed it to her forehead in an effort to get some relief from the memories and never-ending tension. Running was taking its toll on her. But what choice did she have except to keep running, at least until she could come up with a better solution?

  Because of Scholes’ continued pursuit, she had the distinct feeling the charm she’d taken, and subsequently destroyed, couldn’t be easily duplicated. A logical conclusion since the mage wasn’t around to do it and those who practiced magic were generally fanatical and secretive when it came to the knowledge they possessed. She also guessed, hoped for the sake of other werewolves, that she was the only one Scholes knew existed, or suspected of being a Were, though she still didn’t understand exactly what she’d done to make him target her.

  If she could be absolutely certain Scholes wasn’t using supernatural means to hunt her, she could return to the pack. But that was a big if, and besides not wanting to put them at risk, it had taken a lot to escape the pack. Not in the physical sense; members were free to come and go, if—another big if—they could overcome their instinct not to leave.

  Males found it a lot easier than females. Even then, most only went to another small town in the middle of nowhere where the alpha who claimed the place allowed the newcomers in order to refresh the gene pool.

  She sighed and opened her eyes to look around the crowded bar. Beneath the smell of sweat, beer and peanuts, every breath she took contained the scent of sex, arousal and a heady dose of pheromones, all of which stirred the wolf’s urge to take a mate—and that was a huge reason for not returning to the pack.

  She might be able to blow off some steam by getting laid in her human form, but come the full moon in pack territory and she’d find herself covered by a male Were of her wolf’s choosing, his engorged cock working in and out of her until they tied in a mating that would follow her into her everyday life. Allow it to happen and she’d never be able to leave again, a major bummer, especially since she didn’t think the man for her was back home.

  The image of Conner Stern filled her mind, causing heat to roll through her. Under different circumstances she would have acted on the intense attraction between them. All she’d wanted to do when they first met was drag him behind the nearest wall of trees and get naked. He might be totally human, but he’
d managed to make her nipples go tight and her pussy weep with need in a way no man ever had.

  Blond, big—everywhere, as evidenced by the bulge at the front of his pants—he had alpha stamped all over him, even if he wasn’t Were. And the way he smelled… Hot, aroused male mixed with the scent of guns and coffee, determination and strength.

  Breathing him in had nearly made her lightheaded. Seeing the desire in his eyes had nearly made her start panting like a bitch in heat, literally. The wolf would be satisfied with him, even without his having a furred shape.

  She choked back a laugh that might just as easily have been a cry. Conner worked Homicide, making any hope for something with him a joke.

  He was all cop, a straight-up guy who was well respected by his peers. She’d researched him before agreeing to meet and talk to him after the psychic, Patrick Dean, was murdered.

  There were times when being a reporter and a werewolf was not a good combination. Specifically, when the supernatural intersected with the world the majority of the human population thought was the real world. In those times of intersection, the true supernaturals—the Were among them—all tried to keep a lower profile than usual, and that was saying a lot since no one wanted a coming-out.

  The urge to explore the world around her, to discover interesting stories and share them with others, seemed to run as thickly in her blood as the call to turn into a wolf during the full moon. Having that desire had given her the motivation and sense of purpose necessary to override instinct and leave the pack, but it had also led to the situation she found herself in.

  A man claimed the stool next to her. His smell had her lips pulling back in a get-lost snarl. Considering how on edge she felt, she was afraid she’d bite him if he dared lay his hand on her or uttered the pick-up line his scent told her was coming.