To most people who know him, Nick Fontana is the owner of a prestigious advertising agency. To a select few, he’s known as Niko, a man who deals with very sensitive problems no one else can handle. As a result, Nick has never found a man to love -- because he won't allow it to happen. Then he meets flirtatious Greg Tyson while out running. He thinks nothing of it until Greg applies for a job at Nick's ad agency. Greg is exactly what Nick is looking for in an employee. Hiring him, however, might turn out to be the biggest mistake of Nick's life ... or the beginning of something new, if Nick is willing to open himself up and let Greg in. Doing so will require an amount of trust Nick isn’t certain he can give without endangering Greg's life -- and losing his love -- in the process.

Love Was Not an Option

Where have you gone to ground, because you must have? You need a lair. Somewhere safe to sleep. Niko was certain that was the case. It was finding it that was stymieing him.


Dawn was coming when he finally got lucky. He found some scat the shifter had left behind. Lifting his head, Niko took deep breaths of the slight breeze which had come up. If he’d been in his human form, he would have smiled when he caught a much stronger scent of his prey, coming from a ridge high above him.


He moved carefully, silently, through the trees. Even so, he managed to spook two deer that fled in panic. He hoped it didn’t alert Emmerich to his presence.


When he reached the top of the ridge, he saw the face of a low mountain, and a few cave entrances. Standing in one of them was a lone wolf—or shifter in point of fact. Emmerich.


It was obvious that Emmerich had picked up on the fact that Niko wasn’t just another wolf because he asked, in mind-speak, ::Who are you and why are you here?::


Chapter 14