She's No Faerie Princess Read Free Page A

metropolis were about as deserted as hecould ever hope to see them. It was now or never.
    Taking a deep breath and immediately regretting itbecause of the crack the demon had left in his ribs, Walker bowed his head, clutched the woman tighteragainst his chest, and dived into the shadows. His long

    strides ate up the ground between the park and his neighborhood. At a dead run, a werewolf could move faster than a sprinting racehorse and might even give a cheetah a thing or two to think about. Luckily, Walker could maintain his speed for distances closer to those of the equine than the feline, because it was a good couple of miles to his apartment.
    He made it without incident, ducking into the alley behindhis street and breaking his speed, slowing to a walk forthe last hundred yards to his building. It took him asecond to catch his breath, but both he and the womanhad made it in one piece. And, he hoped, without being
    seen.
    Hitching the unconscious woman higher against hischest, Walker scanned the area before he rounded thecorner, balancing her carefully in one arm while hepaused outside his apartment door to retrieve his sparekey. He kept it hidden for just this sort of emergency. Inhis line of work he never did know when he'd be cominghome without pockets. The fact that his door was setdown half a flight of stairs as a basement entrance madethose times easier, too, by offering a bit of concealmentfrom the odd passerby.
    He let them inside and kicked the door shut behind them. Though the entrance to his apartment looked like it led toa basement, he actually occupied two floors of the narrowold building, and he used the bottom floor as a workroomand Spartan home gym. His living space was upstairs.
    He carried his guest up and directly to the sofa,depositing her on the soft cushions before hestraightened and shifted back to his human form.

    He felt the sting and then the easing as his genesreformed his body, knitting together the crack in his ribs,sealing the scratches he'd gotten wrestling around theforest. When the change was complete, his shouldersrolled in instinctive adjustment.
    The woman never moved, and he frowned down at her,crouching beside the sofa to examine her limp form. He'dfelt the steady beat of her heart and the rhythmic rise andfall of her breathing as he'd carried her home, so he knewperfectly well she wasn't dead. And that was what hadhim frowning. No human woman or witch should havesurvived the demon attack, which meant she must not behuman. He knew from her scent that she wasn't Lupineor any other sort of shifter, for that matter. There wasnothing earthy about her, nothing animal. She smelledtoo pure for that, and the fact that he could smell her atall meant she wasn't a vampire. Her skin felt too warmand smooth and elastic to belong to any other nonlivinglife-form, and she looked too much like a human for himto identify her origins by sight.
    He didn't like that his sense of smell had failed him here. One good sniff ought to give him all the information heneeded to place her species, but instead it only gave hima raging erection. He didn't know what the hell was thematter with him. Sure, just like any other male inexistence, a good brush with death tended to bring outthe horny in him, but this felt like more than that. He didn'tjust want sex; he wanted sex with her, with this woman—or whatever she was—and he wanted it now. In fact, heseemed to want it more with every breath full of her scentthat he inadvertently inhaled. He struggled to block thetantalizing aroma from his mind and pushed to his feet. If

he didn't get control of himself, she would end up getting
    a hell of an awakening. Maybe from the inside out.
    Gritting his teeth and taking slow, shallow breathsthrough his mouth, Walker braced himself against hisuncontrollable arousal and forced himself to take stock ofher wounds. Starting at her feet seemed safest, and theragged puncture marks in the leather of her high bootslooked