by Tamara Hogan
She shot him an annoyed look. “Gabe, I’m capable of sleeping alone if I choose. If I didn’t want you in my bed, you wouldn’t be there.”
“What about your adrenal condition?” he asked. “You need to leach off the excess hormones somehow.”
“There are other ways I can deal with it,” she replied, exasperated. “Run. Chop wood. Masturbate. Spar. Mike won’t spar with me, but nothing’s stopping me from driving south once a week and playing racquetball with Andi, or hitting the cage with Lukas, Jack, or Chico.”
His thoughts were still snagged on “masturbate,” but… “A cage?”
“Yeah. Have you ever watched mixed martial arts? There’s a sparring cage in the basement at Sebastiani Security.”
He thought back to the down-and-dirty fight Lorin and Chico Perez had been having when he first arrived at the dig. Her mud-soaked clothes had clung to her like a second skin. How barbaric—and how utterly, undeniably hot. “Is there mud in this cage?”
“No.” The toe stroking up his leg delivered a hard nudge, uncomfortably close to some sensitive flesh that had just woken up to join the party. “Sorry. No mud, no Jello, no chocolate pudding.”
“Pity.”
She picked up a plastic bottle of ketchup from the collection of condiments, adorning her meatloaf with a decorative squiggle. “Men have some very odd fantasies.”
Gabe didn’t waste energy denying it, but now he had one more thing to worry about. Lorin and Chico were pretty evenly matched. She and Jack probably were too; Jack was big but human. But the thought of Lorin fighting with Lukas—even as a workout—turned his stomach.
Those damn Sebastianis. Picking up his fork, he asked the question that had been picking at him for ages. “Is your relationship with Rafe Sebastiani over?”
Her hand stilled, holding the ketchup bottle momentarily suspended. “Of course.” She set it down carefully. “Gabe, my relationship with Rafe was a friends-with-benefits thing. Pleasurable, convenient, until it was time to move on.” She shrugged. “He wanted to move on.”
Rafe had ended it? “How could he not want you?” he blurted.
“Want wasn’t the issue, Gabe.”
The amusement in her voice made him visualize long hair and long limbs tangled together in artistically rumpled silk sheets. Hell. Rafe was an incubus—a frickin’ sex demon—with a reputation for hedonism even among his kind. How long would it be until Lorin felt the need to take advantage of her friend’s… benefits again?
Lorin put down her fork. “Gabe, Rafe and I are friends. You’re my… lover. The lover I choose. The lover I want.”
“For how long?” How could a half-blind werewolf with zero lineage and damaged genetics ever be enough for her? “I’ve gone and fallen in love with the Valkyrie Princess. Isn’t that a fucking laugh.”
She stilled. “You… love me?”
As Gabe dropped his head into his hands, the toddler next door shrieked again. Perfect timing, because he’d just dealt their fledgling relationship a deathblow.
“Gabe? Look at me. Please.”
Would she let him down easy, or chop him off at the knees? He’d almost prefer the chop. Surely some sort of obvious physical injury should accompany the pain that was already rising, ruthless as the tide.
Steeling himself, squaring his shoulders, he did as she asked—only to find her staring back at him with an expression he couldn’t read. At least she wasn’t laughing, or looking at him with the sympathy that signaled an “it’s not you, it’s me” kiss-off.
“I think about you when I should be thinking about other things. I look for you when you’re not with me. I can’t get enough of your body. You make me think. You make me feel. Damn it, Gabe. I don’t know what to do with this. With”—she gestured with a violent hand—“us. You scare the shit out of me.”
What? “I’d never hurt you, Lorin.”
She picked up her fork again, stabbing at her ketchup-coated meatloaf. “You… could. And that’s what scares me.”
Goose bumps sheeted over his body despite the room’s perfectly reasonable temperature. “Will you quit torturing that meatloaf and talk to me?”
She dropped her fork with a loud clank and glared at him. “I suck at this, Gabe. I suck at relationships. I don’t have the experience or the vocabulary.”
He swallowed down the laugh that pushed up in his throat. Damn, the woman could jerk him from sorrow to delight to feral need to inappropriate humor in seconds. My woman. His face and fingertips started to tingle, but he fought it back. Taking her hand, he kissed it, licked her inner wrist with an ownership that he couldn’t hide, stared at her, knowing that his need and his love shone, undisguised, in his eyes.
She stared back, her dilated pupils shoving the mossy green out of the way. Muttering a curse, she stood, the legs of her chair scraping loudly against the tile floor. “Can we leave? Now?”
Lorin, leaving a full plate of food behind? He wanted to howl in triumph. Reaching into his back pocket for his wallet, he dropped a random wad of bills on the table, then grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the building’s entrance.
“Do you know how many gravel side roads there are between here and Isabella?” she murmured. She wrapped a proprietary arm around his waist as they reached the door.
“No, but I’m glad you do.” He nuzzled the delicate skin where her shoulder met her neck. He nipped. Her gasp of response grabbed him by the balls. His body pulsed, his muscles pushing and shoving from the underside of his skin.
“Hey!” their waitress called from the door, waving bills. “You paid too much.”
Not slowing down, Gabe called back, “Keep it.”
Hand in hand, they nearly jogged to the nearly empty overflow parking lot. Standing at the truck’s passenger door, fingers on the handle, he scanned the area. Hinckley’s city streets trailed off to forest and fields pretty quickly. There was a decent motel adjacent to the parking lot.
No way would he make it even a mile down the highway.
Lorin pushed him back against the passenger door of the truck, slamming her mouth to his, clutching at his hair so hard it stung. Without thinking, he pivoted, flipping their positions so her body was pinned to the sun-warmed metal door. Plowing his fingers into her surfer-girl hair, he held her head in place and plunged his tongue back into her mouth.
Her taste. He couldn’t get enough. His eyelids drifted closed when her tongue slid alongside his and back into her own mouth, teasing, drawing him in. Their bodies clicked together like puzzle pieces, aligning soft to hard, concave to convex, give to take. But under the softness, she was strong—strong enough to take his full weight, strength, and outrageous demand. He pinned her against the metal from torso to knee, pressing so hard that her soft skin must surely bear the imprint of his shirt buttons.
His breath dragged in and out of a throat that suddenly felt too small for the job. Denim rasped against denim as her showgirl leg twined around his upper thigh. Thousands of tires hummed and sang from the nearby highway. Birds chirped, doors slammed, and her soft moans of excitement, of need, seemed plucked straight from his most fevered dreams.
She pushed him away momentarily and fumbled with the door handle, cursing when it took several tries to open it. Finally, he heard a metallic click, the door swung open, and he found himself falling, tugged on top of her long, lithe body as she lay back on the truck’s big bench seat.
A hungry growl rumbled from his throat. His hips gave an instinctive lurch as he landed between her upraised knees, in the cradle her body made for him. Her demanding groan nearly unmanned him. He could smell her arousal, almost taste it on his tongue.
He yearned. He burned. She hadn’t said the words, but his mate wanted him.
“Gabe,” she whispered against his lips. “Close the door.”
“Huh?” Fighting the lust pounding through his system, he tried to focus on her words.
“Get the door.”
Shit, his feet were hanging out of the car. Scr
ambling to a sitting position, he yanked the door closed. Being that Lorin had parked in the overflow lot, there were no other vehicles parked nearby. Her industrious hand was making very quick work of the button at his waistband, tugging down his zipper. Its opening whoosh sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet cocoon of the truck cab. Reaching into the V she’d created, she burrowed under the elastic waistband of his white cotton briefs, cupping his erection in hot, possessive hands.
“Are we really going to do this here?” he asked between gritted teeth.
“You can wait?” Tilting her head, she shot him a sideways glance that sent her hair drifting over his cock.
He gulped, staring at his mate’s strong, capable hands stroking him with a distinct aura of ownership. The civilized man inside told him to stop this now, to take her someplace more romantic, but damn it, there was nothing civilized about the frantic need rocketing through his body, coalescing in the hard, blunt flesh surging in her hands.
“Have you ever made love in a car, Gabe?” she murmured.
Her expression was positively riveting. Lust. Humor. A hot, edgy hunger—and a tenderness that shredded him. She’d said “made love”—again. Suddenly he felt ten feet tall, like she’d handed him the magic sword that would slay all of her dragons. He stared at his glorious mate, the woman he loved.
“Gabriel, I asked you a question.”
He gulped as her hot breath teased his violently aroused flesh. “No. I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”
A tiny, feline smile curved her lips. “You’re about to.” And she took him into the wild heat of her mouth.
***
For long minutes, Lorin lost herself in textures, tastes, scents, and sounds: iron-hard flesh under hot, silky skin, so soft and slippery in her mouth. Her own harsh breathing. The tip of her nose brushing against a tangle of hair with every downward stroke. Salt on her tongue. Musk, sultry and deep, mixed with the rain-clean scent of the fabric softener sheets he’d dried his clothes with.
Gabe clutched her head, his fingernails biting into her skull with a delicious sting. “You’re killing me,” he strangled out. With a growl she felt and heard, he tugged on her head, pulling her up and away from his lap. She released his cock with an audible, wet pop, and found herself bodily lifted, tipped, and laid flat on her back, her elbow bumping into the truck’s cracked plastic steering wheel. Gabe pulled her T-shirt up and off, and the front clasp of her bra dissolved under his touch. He peeled the cups back, stared at her bared flesh with hot eyes, and then possessively cupped her breasts with his hands.
Her groan of reaction blended with his. So warm, so strong. His fingertips plucked at her nipples. Before she could moan, before she could clutch at his broad shoulders, he tore at the button fly of her jeans. The jeans were old friends, flour-soft from too many washings, and the buttons easily slipped free. A frustrated growl. Tug, tug. She felt the slick vinyl truck seat against her bare ass.
Lifting her legs, Gabe yanked off her shoes and pants, dropping them carelessly to the passenger side floor.
Hmm. Her position opened up a lot of room on the truck seat—and created some intriguing possibilities. Leaving her legs upright, she slowly spread them, planting her feet against the ceiling of the truck cab, exposing her damp need.
He simply… stared. His fingers twitched, like he couldn’t wait to touch her—but for some reason, he held himself back.
What did he see with that hot, possessive gaze? Could he see how much she loved him? Reaching up, Lorin cupped his lust-flushed cheekbone in her palm.
Gabe shoved his jeans and underwear down around his hips, scrambled into place between her legs. But instead of plunging, he licked her jawbone, the tendons in her neck, the underside of her chin, her ears.
And her lips. Oh, he licked her lips like she was a decadent treat before slipping his tongue inside. His succulent kiss, his gentle touch, was positively maddening. His hot, blunt flesh teased the wet opening to her body.
“Lorin,” he whispered against her lips.
That’s all he said—her name—but something in his rumbly voice, something about the voluptuous pleasure etching his face, made her blink back tears.
Finally, he lifted his head and opened his eyes. After one final, hot stare, he lowered his head and carefully clamped his teeth against the sensitive juncture where her shoulder met her neck.
His teeth tightened. His cock plunged. And he rode them into sweet, frantic oblivion.
Chapter 17
As Beddoe strode through the dark and crowded gambling den, the clatter of credits clacking off on the machines barely registered. His breath dragged through pinched nostrils. His heels punished the floor with each step. His fangs were buried in his own inner lip, but even the taste of blood couldn’t temper the sting of failure clawing up from his stomach.
All the deprivation. All the secrecy. After all his careful plans, all the risks he’d taken, Lorcan had just waltzed in and—
“Captain Beddoe! Captain! Did you see? I won!”
Beddoe stopped and stared at the meaty hand resting on his forearm. He raised his head to gaze, expressionless, at the man’s sweaty, excited face.
The eagle-eyed employee accompanying the man to the Winner’s Circle shot him a wary look. “Come with me, Sirrah.”
“But—”
She tugged the man safely out of range with a too-bright smile. “Let’s go claim your winnings!”
He resumed walking again, his hard cadence at odds with the opulent surroundings. Delicate scents masked the pheromones and chemicals pumped into the air to reduce inhibitions and erode judgment. Scantily clad, galaxy-class beauties carried trays of food and drink to customers attired in glittering gowns, elegant formal wear, skinsuits, and jumpsuits. But it was a mirage. An illusion. Open the wrong door and you’d see the grime, hear the ominous clanks.
What else could possibly go wrong?
“Captain?” Ta’al had drawn alongside him, and he hadn’t noticed. Her hair was pulled back in a severe twist, throwing her cheekbones and jawline into sharp focus. The duty suit hugged her curves faithfully, lending the utilitarian uniform a sensuality that its designer likely hadn’t intended. She could easily work the entertainment floors if she wasn’t such a talented officer and pilot. How lucky he was to have her in his service.
“Yes, Ta’al.” He looked at his timepiece. Minchin should have come on duty over a cycle ago.
She handed him a commchip. “Urgent confidential communication from Lorcan Industries, Sirrah.”
My new assignment. With some fast thinking and even faster talking, he’d convinced Lorcan that a thorough territorial survey should be undertaken before Lorcan Industries considered making such a significant expenditure, buying himself more time to find the cryotube. Lorcan had agreed, stating that he’d have the most recent territorial survey materials sent to him at the TonTon.
He clicked the chip into his comm plant and quickly skimmed. The last survey, performed from far orbit over three hundred Earth years ago, described an agrarian society, population approximately 700 million humanoids, and a planet in pristine condition. A planned fact-finding expedition had never occurred, citing budgetary issues. Beddoe pursed his lips. Lorcan was, of course, most interested in water, but his scientists were excited about the opportunity to study a civilization on the cusp of technological breakthrough.
They’d missed observing the nascent event for themselves by mere decades, but the environmental damage that almost always accompanied the key cultural stepping-stone had already started. He’d exaggerate the damage when he filed his own report.
He honed in on the most recent update: “Smugglers’ network reports homing beacon, possible signature Pritchard/Arkapaedis. Investigate and report.”
There was his trump card, exposed and played.
This was what else could possibly go wrong.
***
“Andi, you have to help me out here.”
Lorin punched the speakerphone
button and hung up the cabin landline’s handset, leaving both hands free to repair the balky kerosene lamp. Andi must be psychic. Her call had come at just the right time—Gabe was stuck on a conference call, dialed in from the workroom—and right about now, talking to a wolf couldn’t hurt. After almost a week of hot days and even hotter nights—with Gabe fulfilling every sexual desire she’d ever had and some she hadn’t been aware she possessed—she still had a restless, edgy twitch she just couldn’t shake no matter how many miles she ran.
This was no mere adrenal system spike. These jitters were emotional in origin, and she didn’t have the first clue what to do about them.
She held a hand to her jumpy stomach. “Why do I feel this way?”
“You really don’t know?”
“No,” she nearly snarled. “Please enlighten me.” Andi’s merry giggles echoed from the phone’s speaker. “You are such a bitch.”
“Thank you,” Andi said. Her laughter gradually subsided. “Baby, you’re in love.”
“That’s what I was afraid you were going to say.” She gave the screwdriver a vicious twist. “Scattered, jumpy, half sick to my stomach. Why on earth do people yearn to feel this way?” She hadn’t gotten much work done in the last week. Her concentration was absolutely shot.
“You’re so spoiled.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You’ve dated and discarded so many extraordinary men, with every relationship entirely on your terms. No one’s ever asked you for more. No man’s ever pushed you to offer them more than your hot bod. To work at it. You’ve always been the one to set the terms, and to move on first.”
“I work plenty hard at it, and it wasn’t enough,” Lorin snapped. “Gabe’s already broken it off once.”
“It’s okay to be scared, baby—”
“And what about Rafe? He’s the one who called things off between us, not me.”
“Rafe doesn’t count,” Andi scoffed. “You were both between lovers, scratching a mutual itch. He’s safe. Gabe isn’t.”
