Forever The World of Nightwalkers - By Jacquelyn Frank Page 0,26

off. He didn’t really know what it was, but it just was. Whether it was a cop’s gut instincts or the paranormal sense of the Bodywalker inside of him, his skin began to hum with the need to get them out of there.

Problem was, he was as naked as the day he was born and the entire police department and a good portion of the town lay less than a mile away to make me feel …umAP from them. Even now he could hear the distant disturbances in the trees and underbrush as clumsy men and women stomped all over the woods looking for a lost child.

The last thing he should be doing was wasting time toying with Marissa. But apparently he had zero self-control in the matter. Maybe it was because, in spite of all the damp pungent odors of the thick woods, he could smell her. Sweet and strong with an underlying streak of something undeniably sexual. It was how he had always imagined Marilyn Monroe must have smelled like. Living, breathing, oozing feminine lures. She was dazzlingly perfect, somehow having managed to keep herself from looking like she’d spent the past few hours tromping through the woods. It was one of the things that fascinated him. How did she manage to look and smell so temptingly perfect all throughout the entire day? And night.

And day.

He looked up at the lightening sky around them.

“Listen to me Marissa. I have to get indoors, away from the touch of the sun before it breaks fully above the horizon line. If I’m caught in the sun it will paralyze me.”

Her guffaw burst out in two paths, half by mouth and the other through her nose as she started to turn visibly pink along her skin.

“If you tell me you’re a fucking vampire I’m going to find a very big stick, aim for your heart, and make you prove it.”

“There’s no such thing as vampires,” he said with a wry little laugh of his own. “But you’ve already borne witness that there are more things in this world than the average human being is capable of understanding.”

“I’ve seen you in sunlight,” she scoffed at him.

“And yesterday was the very last day I could let myself go out in it. From this moment onward the touch of the sun is like poison to me.” He hesitated, and she leaned in toward him with unabashed curiosity. She knew there was something unexplainable about him, knew he was, indeed, different. Dangerously different. And still she leaned closer.

“Poison?” she echoed. “Like …” She narrowed her eyes on him suspiciously. “Like turning to a poof of ash?” She made a small explosive sound with her lips, her hands blossoming outward to illustrate a mushrooming blast.

“Nothing so dramatic,” he lied. As far as he was concerned, falling into a deathlike coma unable to move a single inch probably had its own moments of drama. Especially to an inexperienced onlooker. “I’d be happy to explain it after we find some kind of shelter. And”—he indicated his naked state—“I can’t exactly march out of here past the base of operations and not draw attention.”

She giggled at that, probably in an attempt to hide the scorching blush blooming over her cheekbones as she let his encompassing hand gesture invite her to yet another eyeful of all things Jackson, including that wickedly naughty tattoo just begging to be touched, stroked, inspected …

When he realized she was staring at him, openly contemplating him, it was all Jackson could do to keep himself from grinning. Or teasing. Either was bound to earn him a projectile shoe upside his head. He fiercely pushed away the awareness that threatened to crawl up inside him, along with a host of illicit thoughts.

Marissa nibbled nervously at the inside of her lower lip. She could just march off to safety, leaving him there vulnerable and butt-ass naked and make him entirely someone else’s problem. If she had an ounce of brains in her head that was exactly what she ought to do. But …

“You can leave me if you like,” he offered her quietly. “This really shouldn’t even be your problem.”

Okay, now that was creepy. How’d he know she was just contemplating that as a possible option for action?

“I can’t just leave you here,” she said, brushing flecks of bark off her skirt in a nervous gesture she didn’t usually allow herself to indulge in. Then she realized there was probably a whole hell of a lot of the