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  Like finding a 6’4” Nordic Adonis smiling at her from across the street as Vanessa danced idly by herself in front of a guitarist jamming for tips. “Like sex and candy,” she muttered under her breath, immediately thinking of the eighties song. Eric Salo was both rolled into one. Vanessa laughed and shook her head at herself. “You’re talking to yourself, crazy girl.”

  If there was ever a man to go crazy for…with that broad Scandinavian face, handsome at first in a tough guy way but then softened by dimples when he smiled and a suggestion of a cleft in his chin…. Vanessa took it in stride when she imagined—hallucinated?—that she could smell him from so far away, amid the throng of so many other people. Delusion or not, she caught the stirring scent of mandarin and rosemary under a woodsy overtone that reminded her of summer vacations in the mountains and the fantasy of sex in the forest. It was probably that she just remembered the smell from encountering her dream man on almost a daily basis.

  Another heavy girl might have blushed furiously and turned her head away seeing the man gazing her direction with bright green eyes from over the top of his sunglasses, his shoulder-length blond hair stirring in the hot summer breeze. He wore a hint of a sensual smile on his lush lips as he stood there at ease in his strength. That was the thing—one of the things—that struck Vanessa about Eric Salo. He was one massive man, not just tall but hard and bulging with muscle, and yet he didn’t have that inhibition of movement that some bodybuilder types had. Salo moved with power but also sensual grace, like an animal in his prime, in his element.

  Vanessa took a deep breath when she realized her stomach had tensed and started to flutter at the sight of her lunchtime fantasy guy. That was who Eric Salo was to her, that gorgeous hunk who always went to the same café she did for lunch every day, who always sat a couple of stools over from her at the counter right up against the window by the sidewalk, and who always chuckled at the same things she did—at the characters who inhabited these streets and gave them life and color. Like the swarthy young guitarist who had just fallen to his knees in front of Vanessa to bid for her attention, to amuse the crowd, as he did his best to channel Carlos Santana.

  Vanessa laughed at the street musician’s antics but kept glancing past her shoulder toward her Viking Adonis. The woman tried not to shake her head at herself again, at the note of familiarity and even possessiveness—as well as hip-wriggling excitement—she felt around the blond stranger. She and Salo literally hadn’t said more than a couple of words to one another. It was an occasional, “Hi,” here and there or an, “Excuse me,” as one or the other got up to leave and had to brush close in the press of the lunchtime crowd. Beyond that… no more than sidelong glances and knowing smiles, and how much of that was Vanessa’s acutely vivid imagination? The only reason she even knew his name was because one of his business cards had fallen out of his wallet one day when he was paying his check.

  Eric Salo. Environmental Engineer. Ulmer Engineering Services. As it turned out, the walk from his office every day to the café took Salo right past Koller’s building, past Vanessa.

  But tonight... tonight Vanessa wasn’t sure she felt like being passed. Idly smoothing her long straight hair with one hand, hugging her cool drink to her chest with the other, she eyed the crowd around and between Salo and herself. The hulking blond was standing on the opposite curb with his thickly banded arms crossed over his t-shirt-straining chest. Vanessa tried to seem like she was just scanning the crowd and enjoying the sight as she wandered a couple of steps toward the man, right up to the edge of the curb on her side of the street. Was he really watching her? His gaze skipped over the streams of people in their swirls and eddies, flowing up and down the sidewalks and in the barricaded roadway, but his attention did appear to keep snagging on Vanessa.

  She sipped her mojito lemonade and wished distantly that it had been the real thing. Not because she needed any kind of liquid courage. If anything, Vanessa was always too bold for the people around her, like her overprotective brother and for people who thought fat girls ought to be (seldom) seen and not heard. But if she approached Eric Salo and he gave her that look, that ‘why would a chubby girl think I was watching her’ squint…. Or if he didn’t and actually had a full conversation with her that led to anything else, and Aubrey found out…. Well then, she could have blamed it on the alcohol. As it was, with virgin lemonade a weak justification, Vanessa was just going to have to admit that she was bad at keeping a low profile, at settling into the quiet little office jobs Aubrey wanted her to have instead of pursuing her public relations major, and at not talking to gorgeous blond strangers.

  That step down from the curb sent a vibration up through Vanessa, and not just because she was wearing three-inch heels on her otherwise office-like shoes. She felt the electrical jolt reverberating through her rounded thighs, through her core, up her spine. Hell, even in her sorely neglected clitoris. It had been too long since she had allowed herself the luxury of flirtation, though she thought about it a million times a day. Lately, all million of those romantic, naughty, fanciful thoughts centered on the fantasy man in front of her. The man she was walking toward right that minute with intoxicating, exhilarating, terrifying adrenaline gushing through her body. The man who was, she sensed, watching her from behind those dark sunglasses.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was nothing like hunting with his pack brothers, and that was exactly what Eric Salo was doing as he stood stock-still—stalk-still—on Neville Street and watched his curvy prey gingerly making her way across the road and right to him. A gleaming spill of long brown hair ran along one shoulder and down her back. Pale eyes shifted between light blue and moody ocean gray depending on the lighting. She was on the full-figured side, full-bodied, with the sort of hourglass width to her sexy curves that made the Odin’s Wolf in Eric want to indulge his appetites in all kinds of bad boy, bad wolf ways. Without exception, all the shifters Salo knew preferred their women and their mates soft and thick. Without exception included Eric himself.

  “Damn if he’s not doing it again,” Soren said from beside Salo. It wasn’t often Eric could forget someone as big as this particular pack brother, with two inches and probably thirty pounds of muscle mass on him when Salo was a hulk himself, but his focus was elsewhere. He didn’t even respond to his black-haired berserker wingman.

  “Every time,” Dustin chimed in, shaking his sandy head where he stood on the other side of Eric.

  At only 5’10, despite being totally cut, Dustin looked like a whole different kind of human next to his two friends. Things evened out a bit when the three went full shift, though even the biggest and oldest wolf shifter hardly approached bear shifter Soren for bulk. As the scout for the Madera Valley Pack, who carved out their territory in the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of central California, Dustin made more use of speed and keen timing than brute strength.

  Their lean friend continued to needle Eric. “Give ‘em the stare over the sunglasses and fold the arms across that chest. Flex a little. And they come right to him.”

  Eric snorted. “If I didn’t know you have Holly waiting for you at home, I’d think you were jealous.”

  Dustin grinned like the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, the look on his angular face both smug and slightly lascivious. “But I do.”

  There wasn’t a were in the pack who didn’t envy the scout for finding a mate in the gorgeous brunette Holly, who did bear a slight resemblance to the beauty currently making her way toward them now. That jealousy didn’t just come from the fact that the mating bond was the only way to stave off the wilding. Some wolf shifters feared the progression. Some consoled themselves that they wouldn’t live long enough to have to worry about it, being so much more likely to die from battle injuries or even from an Agency sniper’s bullet. Others either refused to dwell on it or worked themselves up into believing that eventually losing their humanity entirely and living permanently in wolf form was a good thing, the ultimate evolutionary step. But wh
atever the opinion on “the final shift”, no one looked at the obvious soul bond between a mated pair without a deep feeling of awe. And yearning. And desolation at never having that.

  Most never would.

  Eric took a breath and rolled his head slightly one side to the other, working out the stiffness and seriousness of his wandering thoughts. No point in brooding over something he couldn’t control, a lack he’d made peace with long ago in the pleasures he could find and share with the beautiful human women all around him. Like curvy little Vanessa right there in front of him.

  To his right, Salo heard Soren chuckling again, shaking that fifty-gallon barrel of a chest the bear shifter had. “This one has held your attention longer than most. Can’t take your eyes off her any time you see her. And you’re willing to put up with that crappy diner food just to have lunch with her all the time.”

  “Shut up, Soren. There’s nothing wrong with the food at the café. Just because everything you ever eat comes in racks and slabs….”

  Soren puffed out his chest and grinned. “I’m a growing bear.”

  From the other side, Dustin said, “It’s because he hasn’t hit that yet.”

  It was a comment that brought a sudden halt to the banter and a bad taste to Eric’s mouth. Love them and leave them was indeed Salo’s mode of operation, but it had nothing to do with getting bored or sowing his seed far and wide, as Dustin’s quip would have suggested. There just wasn’t much of a point in sticking around and getting attached when a man was a were, an Odin Wolf sworn to a war god and embroiled in constant hostilities with Fenris Wolves and a government that funded covert strike teams to hunt shifters and other supernaturals it didn’t want the average person to know lived next door or down the street. The Agency certainly didn’t want shifters breeding with humans and continuing the bloodlines.

  And therein lay the reason Eric Salo had never made his move or even so much as introduced himself to the temptingly voluptuous Vanessa, whose name he knew only because he’d heard the diner waitress use it. Vanessa with her rose petal lips and her breathy giggle. Vanessa with that amazing round ass he could imagine holding onto while he put her on top of him and slid her up and down on the cock already jutting high and hard against the restriction of his jeans at the thought. There was an instinct inside Eric that told him she was not a girl to play with, not a distraction. Maybe it was the wicked sense of humor that peeked through when they were people-watching at lunch or the compelling self-confidence in her style and in the way she carried herself, even while she tried to force a more demure manner over the top of her natural demeanor. She had substance to her. A man just didn’t play with that, not unless he wanted to get himself addicted, obsessed,… and probably hurt.

  Salo opened up his stance and swung his arms out to hit both Soren and Dustin in the shoulder. “Let’s get out of here before the crowd gets any worse. Sun’s almost down. We could hit that string of roadhouses south of town, on the way toward the Grapevine, and see if we can find any Fenris Wolves that need their tails docked.”

  If not sex, battle. And vice versa. That was practically an Odin Wolf creed.

  The night probably would have taken a very different turn if Eric and his pack brothers had just left the street festival right then. Ah, timing, timing, timing. A different kind of pack—a herd of hotties—swarmed the three weres, though. Salo was pretty sure he’d casually hooked up with at least two or three of them before, girls who worked up the street at a couple of boutiques and maybe one of the restaurants, if he remembered right. They were girls anyone would have expected a big guy like Eric to chase—tiny little things with hair extensions and bikini waxes and tans that were probably close to full-time jobs to maintain. The sudden stormy look on Vanessa’s face when she got about six feet from him and heard the girls all calling Eric by name, when she saw the familiar way they hugged on him and stroked his arms, stabbed through his gut. He knew what she was thinking, that he was that kind of guy, only into plastic and silicone, and that the only reason he’d have paid attention to a thick girl was out of curiosity or pity or on a dare.

  And more than Vanessa deserved being spared the waste of time of getting involved with Eric, she deserved to know she wasn’t the issue.

  “Excuse me,” Eric said, taking the willowy blond woman directly in front of him by the shoulders and physically moving her aside to walk past her. She gasped mid-sentence, trying to say something about the girls letting Salo and his handsome friends buying them drinks. From the corner of his eye as he turned, he caught a glimpse of her jaw dropping along with her stream of thought as she watched Eric weave his way agilely through the moving crowd to catch Vanessa gently by one elbow before the curvy girl could get away from him.

  Apparently surprised, Vanessa spun so quickly to face Salo that she flung some of her drink out in an arch that would have splashed him had he been a slower man. Had he been human. After a moment’s mortified hesitation, she tried to gush an embarrassed apology, but Eric cut her off.

  “Can you spin like that when you dance?”

  Vanessa blinked those luminous blue-gray eyes of hers at him. “What?” Such a light, musical voice, he noted with appreciation. He hadn’t heard it often enough.

  “When you dance,” he repeated. “Salsa? I know you dance. You were dancing just now to the guitar music.”

  She glanced back toward the street musician she’d been listening to when Eric had first picked her out of the crowd, as he had caught the familiar scent of jasmine and fresh cut grass that always lingered on Vanessa’s skin under the lightly fruity body wash she used. Goddamn if she didn’t smell like summer, like his wilder days before he’d hooked up with the Madera Valley Pack, when life was all sex and bar fights and no sleep. And occasional jail cells, too.

  Vanessa let out a breath with a note of laughter underneath it. “That wasn’t dancing. I was just listening to the music and swaying and not really thinking about….” She trailed off as her gaze finally really locked with Eric’s.

  Not really thinking about who was watching her, wanting her, and for what, Salo finished for her in his head. Maybe his summation wasn’t exactly like hers, but it had to have been close with the way she flushed pink from her full cheeks, down her tender throat, over her ample chest where her blouse gaped one too many buttons for true modesty. When Eric saw the telltale points of her nipples perking and pressing through her clothing, it took all his years of discipline under the mentoring of his pack alpha, Ron, to keep the wild boy in him from just throwing Vanessa over his shoulder. Worse, his wolf was licking its chops and planning to take her right there in the street.

  With a smile to cover the tension tightening every single muscle in his massive body, Eric leaned in close to ask, “So you’re going to show me what it looks like when you really dance?”

  Her response began with another breathy chuckle, and she started to shake her head no. He could tell from the way her hair swung in that silky stream with glints of gold and shadows of russet. But before Vanessa could deny him, the thin bleach blond who’d been flirting the most obviously with Eric just a minute before inserted herself into the conversation by wedging her head and shoulder between the curvy beauty and the were, facing him.

  “Hey, where are you going?” she asked Eric in a high voice, her joviality coming off forced, aggressive. “I thought we were going to get something to drink?”

  Salo was about to brush the girl off when, assuming far too much, she cast a victorious glare and a catty snicker over her shoulder at Vanessa…and that voluptuous body stiffened and straightened. Eric paused to read the brunette’s expression as she arched one dark brow and drew her own sturdy shoulders back and down into a posture that suggested a self-possessed strength and confidence that few women of any size or age held so absolutely. It was regal. It was sexy. And fucking inspiring. She didn’t need Eric to defend her just then, he realized. She had this.

  “Here,” Vanessa said, shoving her cup at the thinner woman an
d sloshing sticky yellow—and apparently very cold—liquid over the double D, surgically enhanced chest of her stunned competition. Who was no real competition to her at all. “You can hold mine while we dance.” And Vanessa grabbed Eric’s hand and led him away while the other woman stood hyperventilating from the ice down her shirt and the egg on her face.

  By the time Eric and Vanessa had reached the nearest bandstand, out of sight of his pack brothers and the gaggle of flirty girls he knew weren’t going to get much attention from Soren and Dustin, the lush brunette had calmed. She even seemed to be chastising herself, if the anxious and somewhat sheepish frown bowing her plump lips was any indication. Given the slightest encouragement, Eric would have licked and sucked and kissed that moody glower from her mouth. That was, if he hadn’t been keeping his distance, keeping it light and casual, keeping his wolf and his cock at bay.

  Her boldness well restrained, Vanessa finally stopped in the crowd, in the thick of the heart-pounding convergence of driving guitar rhythms and frenetic drum beats, and turned those pale eyes up Salo. One dance, he told himself. He was just going to twirl the little beauty around a bit, work out the tension in his muscles, enjoy the smell and warmth of her from a publicly appropriate distance. Just one little dance couldn’t hurt.

  Except it could. It could hurt like an ache emanating root-deep from his swelling erection, like that moment of torturous hesitation before his body let loose a back-breaking orgasm, when the hourglass princess in his arms started to swirl around his body like a wind off a hot desert. She took to his lead, took his direction like…jeez, like they were fucking mated, like she could sense the way he wanted her to move before he knew himself. Eric barely had to touch Vanessa to dance her through the steps of a salsa that started at a deceptively moderate pace only to race as out of control as his imagination. But he did touch her, or rather she touched him, brushing her arm against his, her round breasts against his chest, her plush hips against his groin. It was never a full court press, as the saying went, just agonizingly teasing tastes of what more there was to be had.