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What he’d give to track his way back to her now. His fingers stung, and not unpleasantly. Actually, they prickled and tingled in a way that urged him to backtrack, find the woman, and connect with her skin again—a touch, a simple caress, something that might quench the burn beneath his skin. No degree of tension he applied in an attempt to rub away the sensation seemed to work.

It flared to life when he stopped her stumble in the wind.

She’d have knocked right into him had he not caught her, and in that brief and unexpected encounter, he wanted to pull her close.

So strange, all things considered.

Shaking his head, hoping the brewing fantasies in his head would subside—he may be a thing of lore, but he sure wasn’t a believer in Fate and all that mumbo jumbo—he rolled out his shoulders and put a little spunk in his step.

The ocean released another brutal gust, one that swept his hair back from his face, made his eyes squint, and a smile peel across his mouth. Brine, that sea-sweet flavor, spread over his tongue and settled in his lungs, a familiar infusion he lusted for every morning when he woke.

He had two more nights until the peak of the full moon. Two more nights to endure before he could set himself free in the dark ebb and flow of the midnight tide.

But in Cat’s Paw Cove, two nights could equal two decades, if he crossed the wrong person or stumbled across a “misplaced” portal.

Every month, that seemed to be what happened, and it always occurred at the mischievous paws of the Sherwood cats.