Free Lure of the Blood by Doris O'Connor Page A

howling at any given moment.
    Ion’s barely controlled animal masculinity was
kind of exciting.  Get real, girl… exciting?   That was hardly the right
word for the way she felt around him. When she awoke earlier, safely ensconced
in the incredible warmth of his body, it had felt like the most natural thing
in the world. She was so screwed. First, wild sex with a vampire, and now she
didn’t even blink, waking up in nothing but her underwear next to a half-naked
werewolf. No, not werewolf, she remembered Lucas’ warning all too clearly; but
what did you call a man like Ion? Was he even a man?  How much did his wolf
control him, or was it the other way round? She was so clueless, but really,
who’d have thought shifters and vampires and goodness knows what else really
did exist?
    Turning slowly in his arms, a quick glance at
the tight-fitting jeans he’d still been wearing told her in no uncertain terms
that he was definitely a man, and raring to go, if that huge bulge was anything
to go by. Marnie swallowed nervously, expecting him to wake up as she propped
herself up on one elbow, all the better to study him. But Ion slept the sleep
of the just, as her mum used to call it. Thoughts of the one woman she could
always rely on brought tears to her eyes and she furiously blinked them away,
stuffing her fist in her mouth to stop the sobs escaping. It had been over five
years since that dreadful accident and sometimes, like right now, the guilt
over her death was all-consuming and too raw for Marnie to deal with. It had
been her fault, just like she now had the death of that would-be rapist on her
conscience. They had all been right, she was toxic. She’d thought moving away
from the small village she grew up in and making a fresh start in London would
mean she could bury the past. She could avenge her mother and appease her guilt
by getting her law degree and nailing the bastards of this world.
    Or at least, that had been the plan before
finances forced her into Ion’s club, and the world, as she understood it, had
changed forever. She had no blinking clue what she was going to do now and her
growing awareness of Ion was so not helping. Marnie smiled in self
-deprecation, which seemingly gave Leah’s mother encouragement to launch into a
new speech. Marnie did her best to smile in the right places and feign interest
in the baby’s family tree and the best way to get fur balls out of the carpet – seriously, fur balls? Marnie so did not want to know this…but
her mind was still upstairs in the bedroom, letting her hands wander over Ion’s
naked chest.
    He’d been so warm and hard, his skin as soft as
silk under her fingers, the well-defined muscles in his chest covered by a
light dusting of hair, leading down to the waistband of his jeans and his obvious
erection. She never would have dared to explore him so openly had he been
awake, too wary of what his inner wolf may do. Even in his sleep she heard the
wolf’s deep rumble, when she had leaned in closer, drawn in by Ion’s spicy
scent. It had sounded suspiciously like purring, which did the strangest things
to her. Did he give off some sort of pheromone that she couldn’t help but
respond to? She simply had to sniff his neck, in much the same way as he always
did to her. That purring sound got louder, the arm around her waist tightening
for an instant, before relaxing back in sleep. Marnie’s hands wandered up to
his face, the ever-present stubble making her wonder whether he ever shaved, or
even if he needed to. Her fingers traced those impressive cheekbones, the nose
that looked as though it had been broken a few times too many, and the
just-visible scar, disappearing into his hairline. When Ion’s eyes flew open
for an instant, her hands froze, not focusing on anything, before he fell back
into deep sleep with a sigh. The breath of air skittered across her sensitive
skin, arousing every female nerve ending and settling deep in her core with a
rush of