What She Wants. Lucinda Betts

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СКАЧАТЬ the jagged thorns, she crouched into the thicket. Her breasts ached for a rough caress. Her clit longed for a hot tongue, skilled fingers—and her hands and feet gave way to hooves. She channeled breath-stealing lust into power, shunting the desire throbbing in her core into muscle tissue, storing away the excess energy until she needed it, until she could use it.

      Waves crashed on the shore, and her thighs morphed into gaskins and stifles. Toenails and fingernails gave way to coronet bands. The scent of crushed roses filled her equine nostrils, mingling with the odor of blood in a way not possible in her human form to detect. Her equine hindquarters formed, and her tail sprouted. Her neck elongated and her mane tangled in the thorny branches—but she didn’t care. Daniel wouldn’t hurt her. He couldn’t. And she’d see to it that he’d never hurt anyone again.

      Another yellow dart flew past her with a cracking explosion. It missed her.

      Her ex-lover might know where she was, but he didn’t know what she was, not for certain. By the end of the week, the man would be locked in a padded cell and labeled insane.

      “Ann!” Daniel called. She heard him reload the pistol, knew he had plenty of Telazol darts. “You can’t hide from me,” he called.

      Hiding wasn’t what she had in mind. Concentrating her strength into her haunches, she sprang from the thicket, her mane and tail flying, her ears pinned back.

      “Dear God, it’s true,” Daniel gasped. She heard him pull the trigger as she blasted toward him, and she felt the loaded dart fly past her neck. “We’re going to be famous!”

      Fucking bastard.

      She galloped a long distance past him, not because she was afraid—she wasn’t—but because she needed speed for her plan to work.

      Damp sand sprayed over the beach as she slid to a stop and spun around. Pouring the excess energy she’d collected into her legs and pulling more from the earth as she caught her bearings, she focused on Daniel—and then barreled toward him.

      As her nostrils dilated, salty air filled her lungs and oxygenated every one of her cells with an efficiency Secretariat would’ve envied. She ran faster than any racehorse, and her hooves slammed into the sand, channeling more energy to her veins.

      She’d smash Daniel into the sand.

      But even as her head bobbed in tandem with the pounding of her hooves, even as the wind whipped her mane flat against her neck, she saw him adjust his aim.

      He trained his pistol right on her chest, and Ann realized her white coat must shine in the full light of the moon.

      “Ann,” he called across the beach as she closed the distance between them. “Just hold still. I won’t hurt yo—”

      She didn’t let him finish. Within two heartbeats she slammed her withers into his chest, and he hit the ground with a thud.

      6

      Ann considered her options as Daniel Hallock lay in the sand, gasping for breath like a netted fish. If she could’ve questioned him, she would have. Who had a bounty on her and why did he think—no, know—she could heal? God, she’d love to ask what he knew about the predators.

      She’d have to find some other way. Right now she needed to neutralize the threat he presented—and she didn’t mean that in an FBI way. The bastard needed a head injury. Not something life threatening, tempting as that was, but something no one could ignore. Something that would make listeners doubt every word that came from his mouth from this day forward.

      When he started talking about shape changing, she wanted people to ask him about fairies and dragons. And aliens. And yetis.

      “Ann.” His voice came out like a frog’s croak as he lay on the ground and stared blindly into the sky. With audible effort, he inhaled. “I love you.” He gasped again. “I love…everything about you.”

      She snorted through equine nostrils. She couldn’t believe she’d let this bastard go down on her just an hour ago. What had she been thinking?

      “You can…” He inhaled with a disgusting, snotty noise. “Trust me.”

      Bullshit. His wife thought she could trust him too, no doubt, and look what that got her. Anger roiled through Ann’s veins, pounding more heavily than the Pacific surf on the beach sand.

      “Ann.” He held his hands above his head, and she saw his breath was coming easier now. She didn’t have much time. “I knew you were magic the first time I saw you. I…knew it.”

      She snorted again and pawed the sand.

      “Don’t hurt me.” He lifted his head to plead with her. “Please. You can trust me. Together we can knock science on its ass. You’re real! We’ll get our names—both our names—in Science and Nature. We can rewrite all the rules of biology and evolution.”

      Ann had a different kind of history she wanted to rewrite. Slowly she walked toward him, her ears pinned flat against her head. She concentrated her fury into her legs and neck, into her chest. She didn’t need magic for this.

      “Don’t hurt me,” he said again. His features wrinkled as he tried to gather his arms behind him and sit. “Please, don’t hurt me.” His hand crept toward the pistol at his side. He was going to shoot at her again.

      She stepped back and snapped her forefoot. Her hoof hit his skull with a disgusting thud, and he passed out cold. Blood poured into the sand from the gash.

      Killing him would be so easy. Another lash of her forefoot, a slam of her back feet. She could grab his neck between her teeth and crush his trachea. She could shake him, break his neck. Or hell, she could drag him to the water and let him drown.

      Still, death wasn’t hers to give. Her ears flicked toward him, and she listened to his heart pounding solidly in his chest. The breeze whipped through the tall palm trees.

      She had a choice at this point: she could heal Daniel’s wife, or she could find Daniel’s phone and call 911. This woman—who’d done nothing but confront her husband’s lies—lay smashed at her feet. Under the care of the best American doctors, she would endure years of reconstructive surgery, and she’d still be scarred from that smashed cheekbone.

      No real choice existed.

      Ann turned toward the woman, and her hooves churned the damp sand. Swiveling her ears in all directions, she listened for intruders. Nothing.

      Standing on the beach where the sea pounded the sand, Ann noticed something she’d only registered in the back of her mind earlier: the earth’s power in this spot was stronger here than in most places where she had worked her magic. More power coursed through her veins here than in the Sierra Nevadas. Perhaps the energy released as the water slammed against the beach gave her something additional to harness?

      She didn’t have time to care. Taking a deep breath, she focused on the earth’s strength, letting it connect to her hooves and pour into her veins. She locked that air in her lungs for several heartbeats, letting the earth’s might infuse each and every one of her cells, into each mitochondria and into each ribosome.

      Another huge wave crashed on the shore, and her magic coiled around her heart, through her veins. She controlled the lust that accumulated СКАЧАТЬ