by Faye Avalon
Reluctant to let those thoughts of long ago intrude on the present, she slid into the passenger seat. Tynan reached past her to the back, giving her a whiff of that tantalizing scent again, and seconds later, a car rug covered her lap.
He closed the door, and Naomi arranged the rug around her shivering frame. Watching him stride around to the driver’s side, she took the opportunity to peruse her white knight. One of the good guys, she thought wistfully. His unruly dark hair was a little shorter these days, his frame a trifle bulkier. Not surprising, she supposed, seeing how he spent most of his time behind a desk. She wondered how that must feel for him. To have had his birthright ripped from beneath his feet, his destiny as one of the first-born sons, whose job it was to protect the pack, torn from his grasp.
Her chest squeezed for both of them, for the cruel events fate had served that had effectively changed the course of both their lives. Events that had ultimately stripped them both of their purpose. Had he battled the same demons she had? Striven to make sense of his place in the pack and among their kind now that life was so fundamentally different?
Knowing Tynan, the answer was in the affirmative. It seemed they’d both carved out a new life for themselves. They’d made their adjustments.
And none of hers included letting Tynan Galloway back into her life.
She supposed none of his included her either.
Before her thoughts could continue their maudlin journey, Tynan hopped in the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. “It’ll warm up in a couple of minutes.”
He maneuvered the car out of the hotel driveway and onto the main road. The sleet formed a slippery shimmer across the tarmac, and, shivering, Naomi drew the rug up across her chest. They headed north, out of Truro, and soon blessed heat began pooling around her feet, creeping up her body and cocooning her in a fragile bubble of relief.
Tynan glanced across. “Better?”
She nodded.
Silence hung for a few beats. “Want to tell me what happened?”
“No.” She deflected what she knew would be more questions. “You didn’t say why you happened to be there.”
“Checking out some security issues for Seth,” he said, referring to the hotel’s owner and fellow member of their pack. “After which, I joined his poker game.”
“Did you win?”
“Let’s just say, my share of the pot rivaled my fee for the security assessment.” He threw her a grin. “And I don’t come cheap.”
Unwilling to be drawn into a pleasurable chat with a man she’d spent most of her life wanting but now could never have, Naomi focused her attention on the road ahead. She’d always loved being out at night. Had long remembered how amazing it felt to shift, to run. To pound across the moor, drag in the night scents, feel the air sliding over skin…flesh…fur…
“How have you been?”
Tynan’s question broke through her wistful imaginings. “Fine. You?”
“Heard you turned down a job in Plymouth. Fancy private hospital.”
She shrugged. “Not my scene. I prefer being at the heart of community medicine.”
Six months ago, she’d returned to Bodmin to take up post as a general practitioner at the medical center. That had been her intention throughout medical school. Like Tynan, she had been forced to carve out a way to serve her pack other than the one she had always anticipated. Not that she regretted her choice of profession. No way did she do that. She loved being a doctor, and now couldn’t imagine doing anything else with her life.
“Thanks to you and your quick thinking, Doug Connor’s son’s doing really well.”
Naomi pulled the rug tighter around her shoulders. “Stupid fool thought he could shift in the back of his car. Didn’t think to open the doors first. Couldn’t understand why panthers can’t negotiate locks.”
Tynan laughed. “Kid’s barely fifteen. Got an earlier transition than most of us. His brain hadn’t fully developed. When it does he’ll be able to shift quicker. Good job you were there to drive him out to the moor before anyone saw him. I’m betting he won’t do that again in a hurry.”
“Not sure he’s gotten over the trauma yet.” In fact, she’d had to prescribe mild tranquilizers to help him. “Don’t think he’ll be solo shifting again for a while.”
They traveled in silence for several minutes, during which Naomi dropped her head back against the seat. Grimacing, Tynan shifted awkwardly, and she turned to look at him. “How’s your back?”
He stiffened, his hands tightening around the wheel for an instant, then he relaxed. Shrugged. “Has its moments. Causes me more problems in human form. Go figure that.”
“It has to do with the nerve endings. The pressure is taken off when you’re on all fours.” She felt a surge of the familiar guilt that always accompanied thoughts of Tynan. “Have you seen anyone? A specialist?”
“Saw a guy on Harley Street a few years back. He had some success with a member of the Manchester pack who has a similar problem.”
“Was he able to help?”
Tynan shook his head but kept his gaze on the road.
“It might be worth seeing a specialist every year or so. Medical science moves forward at an astonishing rate.”
He shrugged again. “I don’t have it as bad as some. Can’t complain.”
No, you never would, Naomi thought. Tynan was an all-around good guy. She’d been squirreled away with her aunt in London when he’d been injured. The moment word had reached her, she knew who was to blame. It had been no accident. Not that she could ever prove it, especially not now. But she knew. And she hated her late father even more because of it.
As a first-born son, Tynan’s destiny was to protect both his pack and other shifters around the globe. For a man like him, with his strong sense of duty and honor, his accident would have been a profound blow. Robbed of full mobility, Tynan had been forced to find other ways to serve the pack. Naomi wasn’t entirely sure what he did. Officially, he was a technology specialist, but the frequency—and clandestine nature—of his numerous trips away suggested there was more to it.
“Heard you hooked up with Nathan.”
Naomi looked straight ahead. She hadn’t expected Tynan to mention it, but since the two men ran a security business together, maybe it was inevitable. Nathan was also one of Tynan’s best friends, which meant she wasn’t entirely sure how appropriate it was to discuss her fuck-buddy arrangement with the man.
“You seem intent on poking your nose into my business for some reason. Why is that?”
“Is it serious?”
“Nathan doesn’t do serious.” She waited a beat. “Nor do I.”
She hoped he took her meaning, although it likely wouldn’t concern him in the least.
“Is that why you headed to Truro tonight? For casual sex?”
“What if I did? I doubt you’d have the same look of disapproval on your face if it were Nathan, or Caleb, sitting here in the passenger seat.”
“Seeing as Caleb’s happily married, I doubt his screwing another woman is the sort of conversation we’d be having. But Nathan? He fucks anything in a skirt.”
That hurt, but she wouldn’t let it show. “And still I don’t see disapproval.”
“Nathan might fuck and leave, but he wouldn’t throw a female out into the night with her dress half undone.”
So they were back to that. “I wasn’t thrown out, I left. There’s a difference.”
“What I don’t get is why you pick men who won’t take it anywhere.”
“Because I don’t want it to go anywhere. Like I said, I don’t do serious.”
“You weren’t always like that.” He said it softly, almost a whisper. “Once, we had plans.”
Beneath her surprise that he would bring up the past they’d shared came the realization that he was right. They did have plans. But she chose
not to remember them. The pain was still too raw. She wondered if it would ever diminish. “Things changed. We changed.”
He reached across and laid his hand over where hers rested in her lap. She jolted at the contact. At the warm, steady, unexpected press of his large palm against her flesh, awareness shivered up her spine. While some things might change, others, it seemed, remained the same.
“You never gave me the chance to make things right.”
Enjoying the contact too much, she brushed his hand away. “We weren’t suited. No good flogging a dead horse.”
“It can be difficult for a female. The first time.”
As if she didn’t know. “Which is one of the reasons I like to be here, working in the community. That way I can counsel our girls who are making the transition. Arm them with information, with tips to make things easier.”
Heat deepened in her face. It was far too intimate here in the confines of his car, with his large body so close to hers. Those memories were still too raw. Memories that came to her in the dead of night and threatened her hard-won stability.
She shuffled in her seat, wanting to dislodge the edgy feeling that had settled in her core. “Anyway, why don’t we talk about your sex life? As it happens, you’re not the only one with receptive ears. I heard you went down on Lori Shelton at Caleb and Talia’s reception.”
“Shit.” He swung around, grimacing as the speedy movement caught his back. “Who the hell told you that?”
She stifled a grin. “Lori Shelton. Said you were excellent in the tongue stakes. Her words.”
“Shit,” he repeated and shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.
Naomi had to bite down hard on her lip to stop from laughing out loud. “Lori said she’d never known a man who could get his fingers inside a female so adeptly while holding a perfectly normal conversation with another couple across the table.” On a roll now, she ignored his low curse. “She said you all but dragged her into the cloakroom, where you proceeded to yank down her panties, drop to your knees and push your tongue inside her. She said she came before you even started moving.”
Hell. And now she was feeling hot. And bothered. Why was she doing this to herself? She’d meant to tease him, to take the focus off her. Well, that had misfired big-time, because her pulse throbbed, her pussy ached, and that edgy feeling was making her squirm.
Tynan bobbled the car a little but managed to pull it back to the tarmac before crashing off the side of the road. A few hundred yards down, he swung the wheel and pulled in. With the engine still running, he angled around. Before she knew it, his mouth crashed down on hers, his hand snaking around her neck and holding her tight to him.
His mouth was hot, insistent and so damn amazing that she had no option but to sink into his kiss. At least, that was what she told herself. She had no choice but to respond to the press of his lips, the probe of his tongue. His scent, that powerful mix of musk and man, surrounded her, swamped her. Oh God. Damn the man and his scent, whisking her back to the moor again, to that night a decade ago when they had taken their friendship to another level.
She’d wanted him so much. But she’d been green as grass, and her lack of experience and immaturity had blasted her dreams of Tynan being her first lover into oblivion. She’d thought she’d known what to expect, but the reality of it had turned her into a sniveling wreck. Okay, she’d come a long way since then, and had enjoyed her fair share of lovers, but some things were best left in the past.
Being with Tynan was one of them.
With a hand firmly pressed against his impressive chest, she pushed away. “Not sure what you think you’re doing, but I’m not up for grabs.”
His breathing seemed as erratic as her own, but he eased away, that sexy grin sliding into place. “You kissed me back, Doc.” He placed a hand on the steering wheel, the other shifting the car into gear. “And just so you know, that prissy look doesn’t cut it when thirty minutes ago, you ran half-naked from a hotel room in the middle of the night.”
She opened her mouth to give him stick, but closed it again when a suitably cutting retort eluded her. Replacing the throw over her shoulders, she faced stoically forward and remained silent for the rest of the journey.
While she might not have spoken, her mind spun around like a crazy woman. But at the center of it was one thought.
That Lori Shelton was right.
Tynan Galloway really was excellent in the tongue stakes.
Chapter Two
The run hadn’t done him much good.
In panther form, Tynan stood at the edge of a rocky crag, surrounded by standing stones and boulders, which provided camouflage against any curious onlooker who might have found their way to this remote part of the moor. His gaze swept over the open, gently curving terrain with its timeless desolate beauty. He loved this place. It was his home.
Every moment he spent away was anathema to his soul. He craved the space, the smell, the feel of the hallowed dusty ground beneath his paws. He didn’t know how the urban packs survived without some vast open terrain within spitting distance.
Basing himself in Bodmin had been a condition of his agreement to remain as an operative for the government. High-tech espionage could be fought as easily from his home office as it could from Whitehall, and being close to his pack meant he could serve it as well as his country.
A win-win.
Throwing his skills in with Nathan, and setting up their own security company had not only provided bona fide cover for his activities for the Agency, but had allowed them to take on both high-profile and covert projects for humans and shifters alike.
Yeah. Win-win. Everything was just damn great.
If he told himself that enough, maybe one of these fucking days he’d start to believe it.
Tynan pawed the ground, eyed the string of derelict farmhouses in the distance, and inhaled deeply. Today he’d push himself a little more. Maybe then his hind legs would stop aching, and his damn back would loosen the way it usually did during a run.
He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Courtesy of Naomi Flynn.
After he’d dropped her off, he’d parked up on the edge of the moor, shifted and run back to Truro, the keys to her vehicle in his mouth. In the depth of the night, he’d been able to avoid being spotted when he reverted back to human form in the hotel’s parking lot. Naked, he’d driven her car back to Bodmin.
Between his work and hers, their paths seldom crossed. On a professional level, Tynan rarely had need for a doctor. His general health was excellent. On a personal level…well, it hadn’t worked out so well.
Last night, when he’d seen her flying across the reception hall of Seth’s hotel as if the devil was on her tail, his only thought had been to protect her. To keep her safe. The same as he’d do for any woman in that situation.
But then she’d deliberately gotten him all heated up, and he hadn’t been able to resist kissing her. Fucking idiot that he was.
As something elemental moved through him, he pawed the ground again. It was like a dormant need rising in him once more. He didn’t care for it. Didn’t care for the sense of unease, disorientation. It had taken him years to find his footing, to make a new life for himself. He didn’t need some female cocking up everything.
Except Naomi wasn’t just some female. They’d been friends all their lives. He’d waited for her to reach her eighteenth birthday, had guided her through her first solo transition. That should have been the prerogative of her parents, but she had a selfish bully for a father and a feeble excuse for a mother, and neither had been inclined to school her in the rite of passage into adult shifter-hood.
That night they’d run for miles, and over the years he’d cursed himself for pushing her so hard. He’d later learned that it wasn’t good for a young female. But she’d been so excited, thrilled and awestruck by the experience that he’d lost all sense of time a
nd instead embraced the pleasure of being with her.
They’d shifted back and lay looking up at the sky, panting from exertion. What the fuck was he to do? With her lush brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, her golden flesh with its slight sheen, her breasts exactly the right size for his palms, and her pussy…
Shit. He was edgy enough right then without thinking back along those lines.
He inhaled deeply, knowing that he’d had enough and that however far he ran, it wouldn’t push the scent and taste of Naomi from his head. The heat fired through him, his jaw aching as his fangs retracted, limbs creaking as they shortened, flesh tingling as his fur disappeared.
Naked, he walked back to the circle of rocks where he’d parked. Reaching into the SUV, he pulled out his jeans and shirt. While he dressed, he wondered what the hell he was going to do about Naomi.
Because for damn sure, she was back in his system now. And he wasn’t going to get a damn bit of peace again until he laid the ghost of what might have been to rest once and for all.
* * * * *
Tynan strode into the bar and headed toward where Nathan, his friend and business partner, had grabbed a table at the rear.
Nathan looked up from his beer and frowned. “You okay? You look like hell.”
Tynan pulled out a chair. Right then he didn’t feel full of bonhomie. All he could think about was that Nathan had screwed Naomi. He’d been able to park the knowledge before last night, so that it didn’t make him want to land one on Nathan’s jaw every time he saw him. But now, having seen Naomi again, kissed her…
Shit.
His belly fired and his hands curled into fists, but he forced the anger away. None of his business. Nathan didn’t know about what had happened between him and Naomi a decade ago. It wasn’t his friend’s fault that she was still under Tynan’s skin.
“Feel like hell,” he admitted. “Didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“It was that bad?”
Yeah. That bad. But Tynan shook his head, knowing Nathan referred to the check he’d been doing at the hotel. “Evidence of an attempted breach. Amateur stuff.” He nodded to the waitress who set down the beer Nathan had obviously preordered for him. “No sign of any problems as a result.”
