She warmed as she contacted the smooth heat of his bare skin, the wiry curls that dusted his chest. She found his heartbeat, his heart drumming as rapidly as hers.

Maria slid her hand up to his neck, feeling the Collar around his throat, the raw skin it had burned. He’d been hurt, while he’d fought for Olaf, but he hadn’t stopped until Olaf was safe. She didn’t understand the whole story of what had happened inside the culvert, but she was too full of Ellison’s taste and warmth to break away and ask.

He laced his fingers through her hair, caressing her neck as he deepened the kiss. Heat, sunlight, everything that was good and warm—Ellison.

Ellison slid his hand down her neck to her back, the other still supporting him against the tree, the softness of his dangling shirt brushing her shoulder. Maria leaned into his embrace, the sweetness of his kiss unknotting her stomach. She flowed into comfort, into wanting.

A small growl sounded, then air whooshed by her. Ellison broke the kiss, his legs bending as the whirlwind of Olaf smacked the backs of his knees.

“Hey.” Ellison turned around, his big hand still steady against Maria. He’d never let her fall.

Olaf shook himself like a dog and rose up into the form of a small boy with white hair and dark eyes. “I’m hungry!”

Maria sucked in a breath, the taste of Ellison lingering and heady. “You already had breakfast, Olaf.”

“But I want pancakes. Can we go see Sean? Where’s Tiger?”

Olaf rarely spoke much—the poor kid had watched his parents be shot to death. To have three or four sentences in a row come out of his mouth was unusual.

“Tiger’s walking Broderick home,” Ellison said. He straightened up from the tree, but he didn’t take his arm from around Maria. “We’ll walk with Maria to Sean’s house and hit him up for pancakes. All right?”

“Yay!” Olaf grabbed Maria’s hand. “Were those men trying to kidnap me, Uncle Ellison?”

“Kidnap?” Maria’s eyes widened, some of the warmth evaporating. “What happened?”

“Some men tried to grab me. I smacked them.” Olaf danced back, swatting with his hands as he would his bear paws.

Ellison looked grim. “Guys in an expensive SUV,” he said. “Their tranq gun was top of the line too.”

Olaf had opened Maria’s bag and was pulling out his clothes. “Why were they trying to kidnap me?”

“I have some ideas,” Ellison said.

Maria bent down to help Olaf pull his shirt over his head. “We need to get him home.”

“But Ellison chased them off,” Olaf said, his rumpled head appearing through the shirt’s neckband. “He fought them with his wolf.” He growled again and punched the air, his shirtsleeves flailing. “And then Tiger came. It was awesome.”

Maria grabbed Olaf’s hands and thrust them inside the sleeves. “Home. Now.”

She tried to berate herself for stopping to kiss Ellison instead of taking Olaf to safety, but the imprint of Ellison’s lips remained on hers. The kiss had opened something inside her, as did the smile Ellison sent her now as he caught Olaf’s other hand.

What had started to open, Maria never wanted to close again.

***

“You got the license number, then?” Dylan Morrissey, who showed his nearly three hundred years of age only by the gray-flecked hair at his temples, gave Ellison his powerful alpha stare.

Dylan was no longer leader of Shiftertown, but he was still one of the strongest Shifters around. As Lupine, Ellison should go into intense defensive mode under Dylan’s questioning, but because the Morrisseys had accepted Ellison as friend long ago, and because Ellison worked for Liam as a tracker—bodyguard, investigator, enforcer—Dylan was going easy on him. Ellison pushed his instincts aside and answered.

“License plate number, make of the car, description of the guys. It’s all in here.” Ellison tapped his head. “Tiger saw them too, but he was in killer mode, so who knows what he remembers.”

“Tiger and Ellison kicked butt,” Olaf said.

Olaf remained at Dylan and Sean’s house. Maria, once she’d heard the full story, insisted that the cub shouldn’t go home until Ronan could be there to take care of him. Ronan, alerted by Ellison, was on his way, and he agreed Olaf should stay at Dylan’s, one of the safest houses in Shiftertown, until he arrived.

Maria played with snap-together blocks with Olaf, the kid building some kind of robot monster with it. From a movie, but Ellison didn’t know which one. The only movies Ellison watched were Westerns. The remake of 3:10 to Yuma was his current favorite, even though it wasn’t set in Texas.

Maria’s black braid was mussed from Ellison working his fingers through it. He could still feel the amazing heavy silk of her hair, that and the taste of her. Honey, sweetness, fire. Maria.

She was resilient, protective, defiant, and soft all at the same time. Like a rose—fragile but tough.

Maria helped Olaf build the robot with confident hands. She’d seen the movie, because Maria watched every movie and TV show she could, and read every book she could get her hands on. To learn English, she said. She already spoke better than some Shifters who’d come to America twenty years ago.

“Can Sean do his magic and find out who owns the car?” Ellison asked. He mimed typing on a keyboard. Sean could do amazing things with an old computer and dial-up modem.

“Not really,” Sean himself said, coming in from where he’d been cleaning up the kitchen. “I already tried it, and got nothing on the plate numbers. They might be fake. Finding out who owns a dark blue recent-model Escalade is playing needle in a haystack. If they drove a 1952 powder-blue Chevy Fleetline DeLuxe with a dent in the right fender, I might have more luck.”