Sonia’s eyes opened.
“Damn!” she snapped softly into the night.
Always, right before the good stuff happened, she’d wake up.
And always, when she woke up, she was hot and bothered.
Immensely so.
Frustratingly so.
Unless she did something about it, which she always did.
She turned to her nightstand, took out her toy, touched the button and slid it between her legs.
Her neck arched, her body tightened and not long later, her mind filled with visions of her handsome wolf, she made herself come.
It was nowhere near as good as her dream even as frustratingly short as her dream always was.
But it was all she was going to get.
Her “puppy” was dead and her “handsome wolf” didn’t exist in the real world (alas) so her toy was all she had.
For some reason that night this upset her more than it usually did.
She put her toy away, got out of bed and padded to her window seat to look out into the dark.
“I need a dog,” she told the window.
And she did. She’d always wanted one, even as a child. Her father had actually bought her one that last Christmas and he and her mother were on their way to pick it up when they got into the accident. But after they’d been killed, Gregor, not wanting the animal in his home, had given the dog away.
A dog wouldn’t think she was weird because she could see better, hear better, smell better and sense things. A dog wouldn’t care just as long as she fed it, pet it and threw a Frisbee for it.
“That’s it,” she told the window, “I’m getting a –”
She stopped, her body froze but her head jerked around to look toward the door.
Someone was in her house.
She jumped up and ran to the bedside table, yanking her phone from its cradle.
She’d pressed the nine and the one before they were on her.
This stunned her.
When she’d sensed them, they’d only just breached the door and her alarm didn’t go off. She knew no one who could move that fast and that silently while at the same time disabling an alarm.
One hand at her mouth and one arm around her waist, she was swung around, her legs flying wide and she dropped the phone.
Instinctively, her fingers formed a claw and she scratched the arm holding her waist. She felt her long, strong nails (she religiously took a cocktail of vitamins every morning and this gave her shining hair and fast-growing, strong nails, that, in that particular moment, she was deliriously happy for) digging in deep.
She heard his inhuman howl and she was tossed away with such force she flew across the room, literally right through the air, and slammed into the wall.
She fell to the floor and didn’t hesitate. She surged up already on the run.
She was tagged within seconds. Her wrist caught, she was whirled sharply, the tug at her arm causing her to feel an acute, intense pain up her arm and along her shoulder. She had no time to cry out, her arm was wrapped around her front, her other wrist caught and pulled forward as well. Her attacker, she noted distractedly, was huge and had enormous hands, holding both wrists tight at her front with little effort while his other hand went to cover her mouth.
His lips came to her ear.