Charlotte Boyett-Compo- Wyndsheer by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page B

day to start up the mountain. I’ll get my gear and meet you back here at dawn. If you aren’t ready to go then, I’ll leave your ass behind.” He brushed past Hobart and skirted the counter, leaving by the same rear door he’d entered.
    “You’d best tread carefully around him, Mister,” Elspeth told the government man. “They hurt him bad at Draeton and your partner has already brought out the mean pup in him. You really don’t want to get a look at the mad wolf.”
    Hobart acknowledged the old woman’s words with a slight nod.
    When she was the only one in her store, Elspeth reached under the counter and pulled out the rucksack. From it she took the second carving Jamie MacGivern had done and she stared intently at the rendering. It was of a man lying beside a woman, his knee crooked between her spread legs, a hand on her breast, his face buried in her neck, but it did not take a genius to realize the man was Mac and the old woman had no doubt the woman was the missing federal agent.
    “What have you done, Mac?” she asked, her arthritic fingers tracing the smooth leg of the reclining male. “What have you gone and done?”
    * * * *
    On his way back up the mountain, Jamie knew he was being trailed but paid no attention to the clumsy attempts of those following to keep him in sight. He would shake them when he needed to, for the man on his trail was as inept as they came. Besides, he had other things more pressing on his mind.
    His thoughts were on Mairi--or Allison as the fed had called her. He didn’t like that name and shook it aside. Mairi suited her better.
    He didn’t like the idea that there was another man in her life, though he had suspected there had to be. He hadn’t used his vast powers to question her but he would as soon as he got back to the cabin. He hadn’t wanted to know about her past, but upon learning she hadn’t been the prisoner he thought her to be, but rather the lawman he knew he had to discover all he could about her.
    And he had to know what her true connection to the bastard whose fear for her safety had transmitted itself so powerfully to the Lycant. He had intercepted deeply-hidden images rushing through the other man’s head and those images had made the hackles rise on Jamie MacGivern’s neck.
    “Lovers,” Jamie snarled under his breath, his fingernails digging into his palms as he walked. The government prick and Mairi had been lovers and that knowledge seared him. He had no idea how old or new that relationship was but he intended to find out.
    The man Wendt sent to trail MacGivern lost him so suddenly it was as though the earth had opened up to swallow the Lycant. One moment he was there and the next he simply vanished in a wisp of fog that skipped between the tracker and his quarry. Despite searching carefully for over an hour, not a trace could be found. As the sun began to set, the tracker made his way reluctantly back to the village.
    * * * *
    She was still asleep when Jamie entered the cabin. He knew she would be for he’d given her enough of the drug in her coffee before he left to keep her out while he’d gone down to Lamb’s Grove.
    Lying on her back with one arm beside her head--her wrist shackled to the headboard--she was smiling faintly and he could not resist leaning over to kiss her. She stirred and sighed in her sleep when he eased his hand into the neckline of one of his shirts he had given her to wear to gently cup her breast.
    It made no difference to him how many men she’d known before him, how many had laid between her thighs. That was all over and done with. He would be the last man to have the privilege of taking her.
    He kneaded her soft flesh and felt his cock begin to harden. It needed her. He needed her. Withdrawing his hand, he fished in his pocket for the key to the cuffs and unlocked them, sliding the steel bracelets back into the drawer.
    Shrugging off his coat, sitting in the rocker to tug off his boots, he pulled the shirt from his