VAMP RISING (By Moonlight Book 1) Read Free Page B

nylon siding of the tent and walk clear around it, which was unnecessary. He already knew she wasn’t there.
                  “Beers at Riley’s?” His friend, Mark Houston called out from the tree line.
                  “Nah,” shouted Brandon. “Gotta check on something.”
                  “Someone’s camping out here this late in the year?” He asked, as he strode over out of curiosity.
                  “Just some lady,” Brandon offered, hoping he wouldn’t sound as interested as he was. “She ought to be back by now with the sun down and everything.”
                  “Ah, she’ll be fine,” said Mark before studying Brandon’s hesitation and getting a read on his friend’s unease. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”
                  “What do you think I’m thinking?” He challenged.
                  Mark considered the best way to put it, then quickly gave up and stated plainly, “Don’t get interested in some outsider. It won’t be worth it.”
                  “She was hiking Tucker’s earlier.”
                  “You followed her?”
                  “No, she kept coming in and out of my territories,” said Brandon, who realized as soon as the excuse flew out of his mouth that Mark would know he was lying. The trail through Tucker’s Ravine was barely on the outskirts of one of his assigned territories.
                  Mark must have been feeling kind, because he didn’t call Brandon out on it, only asked, “How hot is she? Is she like an eight? Or is she like a full blown ten?”
                  Brandon smirked. Mark was such an idiot, he couldn’t help it.
                  “Do your thing man,” Mark added, punctuating the blessing with a thwack to Brandon’s chest. “Then come to Riley’s. Thursday’s beer night. Don’t you go blowing off tradition.”
                  “Alright, man,” he said, as he watched Mark turn on his heel and start back across the campsite.
                  Knowing how bad it would look if the woman came back at this very moment, but not caring, Brandon unzipped her tent and entered. He knelt by her bed and lifted the comforter to his nose, taking a quick whiff. Lavender potpourri and baby powder was all he got from it. So he pulled a few articles of clothing out of an army-sized backpack that was sitting at the far side of the tent and sniffed those as well. Again, the same crap scents, manmade attempts to mask a woman’s natural odor. He tried again, this time smelling her pillow, Christ she’d brought enough comforts with her. Why bother camping at all? She had her whole bedroom here. But just then Brandon got the information he had been looking for: musk traces of her unique scent, as precise as a fingerprint.
                  He almost wished she’d barge in right now. She’d be terrified then furious. Maybe she’d smack him. For some reason the thought got him excited. He hadn’t had a woman in ages. He liked the feisty ones who would fearlessly put him in his place. But he was getting sidetracked. He placed her belongings back as best he could having virtually no recollection of how he’d found them, and left her tent, anxious to get to the trail where he’d last seen her.
                  It was dark and his eyesight was barely serving him. The moon overhead was full and though it shined brightly the canopy of trees overhead obscured what little light it provided. As he ran up the eastern trail along Tucker’s Ravine he knew his eyesight would be sharp, his sense of smell acute if he shifted, so in a flash he did, collapsing onto all fours into his wolf form and instantly sprinting at five times the speed his human legs had been carrying him.
                  When he reached the ridge,