The Catalyst - By Zoe Winters Page 0,2

seemed a little weird. Her arm and side burned like fiery hell, but damn, he was pretty. So sleek and lithe, just like what he shifted into.

When her gaze made it up to his face, a boyish smirk graced his lips. There was a twinkle in his brown eyes. His dark hair was longish, but somehow still masculine. Oh yes, there wasn't an unmanly bone in his body.

"So," he drawled, moving closer by mere centimeters, "should we just get it on now?"

Her mouth dropped open. He couldn't have just said that.

A strange look crossed his face. "Sorry. Wild animal here. A little amped up. That was inappropriate." He extended a hand, attempting to move past the new awkwardness. "Let me look at you."

The pain in her arm and side flared fully to life as she processed everything that had just happened in her kitchen. When she didn't respond to his request, he pulled her to him and lifted her shirt to inspect her side.

He frowned. "Not as bad as it could have been. Nothing major harmed."

She was about to get angry and indignant about his flippant attitude, but then his eyes met hers, warm and honest.

"I'm very sorry about your injuries. I was afraid for the pup and sensed the magic on you. I thought you were one of the ones who tried to take him. I'm all he's got."

The pup, as if sensing he was being talked about, clomped through the debris to sit between them, his little wolf gaze going back and forth.

Fiona looked back at the man standing in front of her, so sincere and intense... and attractive, and then the waterworks started.

"Oh, no, don't cry," he said, almost in a panic.

It wasn't pain that had brought forth the tears; it was the fact that this was what it took to get near a hot guy for her: a near-death experience, and him breaking into her kitchen: the idea that he was going to take the pup and go on his merry way, and she'd have the memory of him emblazoned on her brain, but that would be all. Her close brush with maleness. Inches from her, but no dice.

It wasn't that she wanted to take him up on his carnal offer. He was a stranger. And, as he said, a wild animal. And she wished he'd cover himself with something, because judging from outward signs, he was all raring and ready to go. Like most therians, he was unaffected by his own nudity or arousal. It was something she wished humans shared in common with them, so she wouldn't feel so freaked out by his nearness... or so much longing for something she wasn't going to ever have since she couldn't make it past her own mailbox.

His smooth, deep voice interrupted her mental hysteria. "Do you have bandages?"

"Bathroom, down the hall," she croaked, feeling stupid for going all blubbery on him. Thank God he couldn't read her mind and know why she'd been crying. That would have been too mortifying for words. Better for him to think she was a big wimp who couldn't take surface abrasions than to know the truth.

***

Z ambled down the hallway, trying to remember how to act like a person. He wasn't good with people. He lived alone and hunted alone. It was how he liked it. Women were a complication he tried to stay away from, except when he had a quick roll in the hay - or cave, with another of his kind who was equally allergic to relationships. Occasionally, he had sexual liaisons with human women or other therian breeds, but on principle he tried to avoid those who wouldn't understand his solitary nature.

A confirmed bachelor, he had everything he wanted, exactly how he wanted it. Total freedom. That is, until he'd stumbled on the pup. Panthers didn't raise babies - their own or anybody else's - which was obvious from the mess he was making of it.

The little wolf had been sitting in the forest in the middle of Z's hunting ground, staring at a spot in the dirt where there had been a struggle. There was evidence a body of some sort had been dragged off, probably the mother.

Z had immediately known the pup was a werewolf, but there wasn't a pack in Golatha Falls, so how the little guy could have gotten there, he didn't know.

He should have just walked away, but he couldn't. After a lot of frustration, he'd managed to get the pup