Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven #1) by J.R. Ward

With those workman hands.

Daniel eased back and stroked her hair away from her face. “You’re a good kisser, you know that?”

“Am I?” She smiled like an idiot. “I could have sworn it was you.”

“I guess it’s us.” His eyes roamed her face. And then one side of his lips tilted up. “I’m going to go now.”

Lydia exhaled in surprise—but like she was going to sleep with him here on the mauve kitchen floor?

Not a bad idea, actually, she thought as she glanced down.

“Okay,” she said. “I understand. We do work together—”

“That’s not why I’m leaving.”

“So why are you?”

He traced her cheek. Then her jawline. “If I stay, I’m not going to let you get any sleep at all.” He stepped back. “You know where to find me, if you need me. And I’ll see you after we’re allowed to wake up at four-oh-one a.m.”

She nodded. “Good night, Daniel.”

Turning away, he lifted a hand over his shoulder. When he got to the door, he said, “Don’t forget to lock up.”

And then he was gone.

Putting her head in her hands, Lydia felt like she was under a heat lamp. Or that she’d swallowed one. And on that note, her clothes felt tight and irritating. And her lips tingled. And her body yearned.

Meanwhile, the solution to all of it was making his way across her lawn. In the dark. In the cold.

As she locked the dead bolt, the urge to call him back was nearly overwhelming.

To make sure she didn’t, she went out to the staircase and ascended to the second floor. As luck would have it, her room faced the backyard, and keeping the light off, she stretched out on her bed and curved onto her side. Tucking her arms into her chest and bringing her knees up, she stared out the window.

If it had been daylight, she could have seen him get into his tent—and she imagined him bending down, folding that big body into his flimsy quarters, stretching out on his sleeping bag. And on that horizontal note, she couldn’t stop thinking about where they would be if he hadn’t stepped away. Or if she had called him back.

The sexual need was painful. And it made all of the reasons not to sleep with him seem flimsy. Cowardly.

Reaching around to the back pocket of her jeans, she took her cell phone out and tucked it into her chest.

It was the closest she was going to get to Daniel Joseph tonight.

Maybe ever, depending on what was out in that forest with him—

The footsteps coming up the stairs were soft and she wrenched around. But then she caught the scent of handmade shaving soap.

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered. “And where have you been?”

The smell of her childhood deepened, and she waited as the stairs creaked and then the floorboards of the hall registered a slow progression down to her room.

All around her, the air temperature dropped about ten degrees, and as she shivered, she was aware she was clinically insane.

But then the ghost of her dead grandfather appeared between her doorjambs. As usual, there was little to be made of the face, or even his old-fashioned, formal clothes, yet the whip-lean form and that smell brought tears to her eyes.

It had been a long time since he’d visited her, the last appearance being when she’d been deciding whether or not to take the WSP job.

He came at crossroads, ever since he had passed.

“Isoisä,” she whispered. “Is he dangerous?”

As usual, there was no response from the apparition. And she was stuck once again not knowing whether he came to reassure her.

Or as a warning.

“Can you stay awhile,” she begged. “Please. And I haven’t forgotten the rules, I promise.”

He didn’t remain with her. He never did. Before her very eyes, the ghost disappeared, as if he had never been.

With a curse, she lay back down, the loneliness she lived with like a tangible weight on her. The apparition was just another reminder that there were two worlds for her, the internal and the external—and whereas that was true for everybody, on a night like tonight? With a man she wanted out on the lawn, and a stalker who could be anywhere?

It all seemed so irreconcilable.

Then again, maybe she’d fallen asleep already, and this, like so many other things, was just a bad dream.



As Daniel sauntered across the scruffy grass, he expected to hear his name called out at any second. He could practically hear the husky syllables, the need, the gut-clenching sexual frustration, in Lydia’s voice.

Kind of ironic, this satisfaction he took in getting her hot. Because it was also a cudgel for himself.

He couldn’t remember feeling this juiced over a woman. Ever. But that couldn’t be right. There must have been someone else, lurking in his past, another woman who got through to him like this, eating him alive with his own sex drive.

Pausing, he looked back at the house. The windows on the second floor were black. Was she up in her bed yet …

Jesus, why the hell had he left?

“Because you’re not a complete asshole, that’s why,” he said out loud.

There were things she didn’t know, things that would change the way she thought about him.

To keep from kicking himself, he took a little stroll around the traps he’d set up. Nothing was out of place, the balanced sticks and precisely arranged pieces of bark on the ground undisturbed.