LAWMAN out today by Regina Carlysle, my buddy!

Yum Yum. Got to have some.

Out today at EC! Go get it.

Summary: In the deep of night she longs for him. Mate, lycan, lover. Her lawman. As Katalin Petrova struggles to control her wild and untamed “gift”, she yearns for the only man who can make her whole. His every touch burns her, searing her with unimaginable pleasure. Only her strong, protective lover can tame the wild yearnings of her body and help her claim the power of her ancestors.

While Gabriel Dunham, lycan lieutenant of the Wolf Creek Pack, watches over his intended mate, his patience to claim her nears an end as savage need burns his body. Consumed by unbridled lust for his mate, he claims her, takes her, hoping it will be enough to protect her from unseen forces determined to rip her from his arms.

And now you need a nibble, right?

Excerpt: (Copyright 2011 Regina Carlysle)

Though it was mid-afternoon weariness settled over Sheriff Gabriel Dunham like a shroud and he had only a serious lack of sleep to blame. Nights spent in his truck while watching over Katalin, his intended mate, had taken their toll on him. Every night, he stared toward her small, secluded house where a warm bed and a beautiful woman waited for him. But he was no fool. He didn’t dare go inside. Taking her now, making her his wasn’t an option at the moment.

She was too fragile, much too delicate and Gabe simply wasn’t strong enough to hold back from his determined need to stake his claim on her.

Kat needed more from him now than hot, frantic sex.

After all she’d been through, Katalin needed safety and he wasn’t quite sure that he could deliver considering the raw, savage need that clawed through his belly. It was like a prairie fire gone wild, alarming in its intensity.

Protecting others was in his nature and he’d face death rather than hurt her.

A lawman who’d lived more than two hundred years on this earth, he’d worked the docks in the great ports of St. Louis during American expansion to the west and then later, he’d followed covered wagons filled with hopeful adventurers. In those days, he’d been a lycan in search of a pack, a place and a people to call his own. He’d settled in rough, rowdy towns throughout the savage west selling his skills with a gun, sometimes in the name of law and order and sometimes not. Many had been the time Gabriel Dunham had accepted the job as “protector”, a bodyguard to the rich and powerful. That he was a giant of a man who stood well over six foot seven and appeared as intimidating as hell had kept him employed throughout the west during the many years of his life.

Gabe leaned back in the chair at his scarred desk and propped his booted feet atop it, crossing them at the ankle. His eyes burned like hellfire and he needed sleep in the worst way. Burning the candle at both ends wore at him.

As always, in quiet moments, he thought of Katalin Petrova.

Through the past centuries, he’d hoped and prayed for a mate, the woman destined to belong to him alone and he’d pretty much given up on ever finding her. But now, through an act of fate, she was here, a beautiful female who was too damn delicate to touch.

Breakable.

She’d just taken a job at the library at Cloverfield High School. The school year was brand new and suddenly the local streets were quiet since every teen lycan in town was currently parked at the school instead of dragging main or partying out by the lake as kids were known to do. He knew that after her ordeal over the summer she was making baby steps toward re-entering society. Dr. Santos, a lycan psychiatrist from Dallas, had suggested this job would be a good thing for her so Katalin had bravely forged ahead with things.

Was she thinking of him as he thought of her, a quiet obsession born of desperation burning just below the surface of her skin? Scrubbing his palms over his face, Gabe finally closed his eyes and let her image swim to the surface of his mind. Damn but his mate was a pretty woman. The ache of his need wasn’t a sudden thing but a perpetual burning in his gut, a need to claim her, fuck her, and make her his.

For life.

Sighing deeply, the sound of the air conditioner a low hum in the room, he let himself drift off as memories of his first moments with her sifted through his brain and sleep took him away.

“I’ve got you now, Katalin. You’re safe.” Sitting at the side of her bed as shadows surrounded them, Gabe reached out his hand to brush back a pale reddish curl from her forehead. Someone had once told him this particular color was strawberry blonde but it sure looked like a Texas sunset to him. Katalin Petrova’s exotically tilted blue eyes looked back vacantly but he sensed the current of emotion that raced through her veins. Letting his mind meld with hers, he absorbed her desolation into his pores. A huge vast emptiness, fear, rage, guilt.

Guilt?

What the fuck? Why?

That he felt her emotions, even buried as deeply as they were, was no surprise to him. This was the way of mated couples. Instant recognition had swept him from the first moment he’d clapped eyes on her. “You don’t have to worry about anything now. Not even talking, honey. I know you can’t right now but that’s all right. Do you hear me? You are going to be fine and nothing is gonna pry my ass from your side. Do you believe me?”

Katalin blinked.