Mating Instinct: A Moon Shifter Novel Read Free

perfumes, booze, and other body odors, her sweet rose aroma tickled his nose and wrapped around him. Embracing him like a gentle caress.
    “Would you like to be seated in our dining area or would you prefer to find a seat at the bar?” A bubbly blond female wearing black pants and a black T-shirt held a menu in her hand as she looked at him.
    “Bar’s fine,” he said, brushing past her.
    A burst of annoyance rolled off the human, but right now all he cared about was tracking Kat down. After a quick lap around the place, he followed her trail out a side exit door.
    Once he was outside in the crisp night air, the strong scent of roses enveloped him. She was close. Frowning, he looked around the area behind the restaurant. A Dumpster was to his left, which gave him cover as he scanned the small gravel parking lot, where a few cars were parked. Employee vehicles, he guessed.
    And that was when he spotted Kat.
    She was leaning against the passenger side of an extended-cab truck with her back to him. Tall, lean, drop-dead gorgeous. Her long dark hair was pulled up into a ponytail that hung halfway down her back. She wore formfitting jeans and a skintight long-sleeved black T-shirt. If she’d still been human, she’d have needed a coat, but thanks to her transformation from human to shifter, she had a higher body temperature now.
    Sticking to the shadows, he moved behind the Dumpster and slid along the wall of the restaurant until he was at the edge of the building, twenty yards from where Kat stood talking to a human male.
    A growl rose inside him, but he tamped it down and listened to their conversation. As the human talked about heading back to his place to “party,” Jayce nearly lost control of his beast. His inner wolf clawed at him with razor-sharp aggression, tearing and stripping away his insides, begging for freedom.
    When the human opened the passenger door for Kat and she actually got inside, Jayce’s claws extended and dug into his palms. The tearing of his flesh jerked him back to reality. Ducking behind the Dumpster, he somehow managed to keep himself under control as the vehicle pulled out of the parking lot.
    Just barely.
    As the truck drove past the left side of the restaurant, Jayce raced around the right side and headed for his bike in the front.
    Whatever Kat thought she was doing with that guy tonight, she’d better think again.
    * * *
    Kat glanced over at the dark-haired man with the buzz cut next to her. He shot her a quick look and winked as he steered his truck out of the parking lot of Kelly’s Bar and Grill. She wasn’t sure what she was doing with him and was tempted to tell him to stop, but something held her back.
    He was one of the bartenders at Kelly’s and had been getting off work just as she’d walked in. The moment she sat down, he’d started flirting with her and buying her drinks. Too bad the alcohol couldn’t numb the pain inside her.
    Nothing could do that. For the past month it had festered inside her, growing like an out-of-control vine. It twisted and expanded with no regard for anything in its path, least of all her heart or emotions. If she dwelled on the ways she’d been tortured a month ago, she tensed up and her inner wolf wanted out.
    Aiden, her friend and the wolf who’d changed her into a shifter, had explained that it was a protective thing. Her inner wolf didn’t want her to suffer, so it tried to take over whether she wanted it to or not. Some kind of coping mechanism.
    Taking a deep breath, she forced those thoughts from her mind. Tonight she was taking control of her life again. Maybe sleeping with a stranger wasn’t the smartest way to go about it, but she needed to be in charge of
something
. It wasn’t as if the guy next to her could hurt her. He was human, and sure, he had a sexy edge to him, but she was still a hundred times stronger. He couldn’t hurt her physically or sexually.
    That was something she kept reminding herself of.
She
was the one in