by Zoe Chant
The lantern had fallen over, as had Lydia’s ginger ale, soaking the blanket. “Good thing that wasn’t an old fashioned oil lantern,” Lydia said, setting it upright. “Even if that would have been more romantic.”
“Lydia,” Wrench said, as she started to gather their picnic back into the basket.
“My heart’s still racing,” she laughed lightly. “What an eye opener!”
“Lydia,” Wrench tried again.
“I don’t suppose that was part of your date plan?” she said, with a sly sideways look. “Got my blood to rise, certainly.”
Wrench finally caught her arm and pulled her up close. “Lydia,” he said, and this time she looked back at him, her eyes bright in the darkness.
“I ain’t Warren,” Wrench said seriously. “I ain’t this picnic. I ain’t the kind of guy who’s going to write you poetry or sing you love songs. Believe me when I say you wouldn’t want me to. I’m just Wrench.”
“War—Wrench,” Lydia said softly.
“Lemme say this,” Wrench said desperately.
Lydia was silent, but her hands crept up his arms and gave him courage.
“I love you, Lydia,” he said in a rush.
She didn’t say anything and Wrench scrambled to fill the silence. “I’m just Wrench, and I ain’t got fancy learning, and I’ve done a lot I ain’t proud of, but I’ll do my best for you.”
Just as Wrench feared he’d have to come up with more to say, Lydia rose up on her toes and kissed him.
Kissing Lydia was like fighting—all adrenaline and excitement. And at the same time, it was like floating in a pool, and a shot of whiskey, and that moment you wake up before you remember that you have to get out of a comfortable bed and stop dreaming.
She tasted like pie: spice and molasses.
And her tongue was alive in Wrench’s mouth.
He picked her up into their kiss, one hand cupping her sweet ass and the other arm across her back. She slipped her arms up around his neck and held on, kissing him back.
“My room?” she said when she had breath for it.
Wrench shuddered as Lydia slid herself along his body, catching on the erection that was bulging through his shorts.
“Got a better offer,” he told her, kissing down her jaw and tangling his fingers in her loose hair.
The rest of the picnic was stuffed back into the basket willy nilly; the blanket had no chance of fitting back in and Lydia gathered it up in her arms as Wrench took the basket and led them back towards the resort, then stopped at the high privacy hedge. “Cottage two?” he asked Lydia, and she took point, leading him by the hand to the second path up from the sand.
Cottage two proved to be one of the fancier rentals, with its own covered hot tub on a porch, and steps up to big sliding doors—one of them still missing glass and boarded up from the storm that had recently passed through. The doors opened onto a well-appointed living area between two luxurious bedrooms. The larger of these bedrooms had a trail of rose petals, but there was no champagne this time, and the condoms were down to one.
Wrench was almost offended. Did they think he and Lydia would be slowing down? he wondered, amused.
Breck’s fine advice matched his panther’s plan perfectly, and Lydia was clearly done with the talking part of it—she was stripping off her clothing wherever Wrench wasn’t touching her. It was challenging to keep his hands off of her long enough to get his own clothing off, but she tugged at it insistently, running clever fingers up under his shirt and down into the waistband of his shorts.
“Wrench,” she sighed, as he wriggled short pants down over her hips.
The name sounded right from her lips.
Almost as right as she felt under his hands.
She was strong and curvy and her breasts filled his hands perfectly.
Her hair was silky and loose, like a dark curtain to her shoulders, and it whispered over him when she pushed him over on the bed and straddled him like a goddess.
Wrench felt like a starving man at a buffet, not sure where to look or what to touch, because everything felt like the fulfillment of a wish he’d never known he made.
And Lydia rose to every touch, shivering and gasping when he found the place where waist met hip with both hands, closing her eyes and moaning when he put a hand at the back of her neck under her hair, crying out when he explored the inside of her thigh, keeping his touch careful and light.
She was wet on his fingers, and she pressed herself around them when Wrench hesitated. He stroked her gently, drinking up her delighted reaction as he deepened the touch and brought her higher and higher.
He was harder than he’d ever known was possible, and every time she writhed, his cock rubbed against the velvet skin of her thigh, driving him mad with desire.
Then she was drawing off his fingers, and before Wrench could decide what to do, she was impaling herself, and he made a roar of triumph before he could stop himself.
“Yes, oh, yes,” she said, as he arched up and drove deeper into her, holding her on by her glorious hips.
He worried briefly that he might hurt her—he could not hold her on himself as hard as he wished, then she was rolling, and pulling him over on her across the broad bed.
Crushed rose petals scented the air and he found that he could press into her harder this way, fingers clenched into the coverlet with one hand and wrapped around her shoulders with the other.
“Yes, please, yes” she cried, polite even in the throes of the orgasm that Wrench could see in the way her muscles all tightened, leaving only her gorgeous breasts to move freely.
“Fuck yes,” Wrench replied with less civility but no less sincerity.
As she cried out in release, he came as well, any hope he’d held onto of prolonging their act washed away in the way her orgasm dragged him into his own.
“Yes,” she repeated, laughing as she fell from the heights, still arching into his last strokes. “Fuck, yes.”
Chapter 20
Lydia had enough of her mind left when Wrench had finished unmaking and rebuilding her world to set the alarm on her phone, so morning didn’t catch her by surprise this time.
It was still very challenging to untangle herself from his big arms and rise in the dark.
She had never wanted so badly to stay under the covers; usually when she woke, she found no point in remaining in bed and didn’t really understand the more usual impulse to pursue sleep longer.
But listening to Wrench’s breath near her ear, feeling the steady thrum of his heart through his chest—there was nowhere Lydia wanted to be more.
She felt safe here, and with sudden clarity realized that this mattered to her far more than any of the romance and courtship that she’d once imagined.
She was safe.
She was filled with trust and contentment.
There was an erection, thick and demanding, pressing against the small of her back.
For the fun of it, Lydia pressed back, and was rewarded by Wrench’s hands tightening against her and muttering as he woke.
She wanted him again, as badly as she had when she’d first seen him, standing in his courtyard.
It was hard to remember why she’d been so disappointed when she realized who he was. So he wasn’t a doctor or a lawyer—he was a hundred times more. He was thoughtful, gentle, caring. The way he’d reacted to his sister’s danger and his niece’s need betrayed a heart that didn’t match his gruff exterior.
And damn, he looked great in a suit.
It was with great reluctance that she pulled away. Wrench rolled out of the bed after her, despite her murmured reassurance that he could sleep longer if he wanted.
“No point in staying in bed alone,” he said, giving her a look that suggested she could easily change the conditions.
His unclothed body was like a dream; his big body rippled with muscles.
“You’re going to have to tell me about those tattoos someday,” Lydia said, pulling on her clothing. She had just en
ough time to scamper up to her room for a quick shower before her sunrise class.
Wrench shrugged. “Not a lot to do in jail. One of the guys was a good artist. Short story.”
Lydia had to chuckle. “And that scar?”
Wrench looked cagey.
“What?” Lydia asked, pulling her hair back into a quick ponytail.
“Tex said not to talk about how I got scars,” Wrench confessed.
“You’ve been talking a lot with those guys in The Den,” Lydia said suspiciously. “What else did they tell you?”
“Give you compliments,” Wrench said. “Don’t talk about work or how I got scars. Learn to dance.” He said the last with absolute dread in his voice.
“War—Wrench!” Lydia stopped gathering up herself. “You don’t have to do any of those things!”
He glowered at her in disbelief.
“You don’t have anything to prove to me,” Lydia said firmly, wishing she’d said so sooner. “You don’t have to be something you aren’t. You are everything I need, everything I never knew I wanted. If I ever gave you the impression that I wanted more, I was wrong.”
She remembered his face in the moonlight when he’d told her he loved her. He had been ashamed that he wasn’t the poetry and picnic.
“When I said we should get married—“
“I don’t want to be something you have to do,” Lydia cautioned. “Not ever.”
“You’re not,” Wrench said simply. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”
Lydia could not resist looking at his erection, which had not so much as stuttered in intensity while they talked. She could not doubt that he wanted her, and he was refreshingly unabashed about it. She had no idea whether he was still talking about matrimony, but she stripped her shirt back off.
She could rinse off in the shower here and still be to class on time.
Wrench was reaching for her as swiftly as she was reaching for him.
And then Lydia didn’t even care if she made it to class at all.
Chapter 21
“Got a load of roofing supplies coming on the next charter,” Travis said loudly with a smile at Wrench that lacked both secrecy and subtlety. “I’ll need your help getting it up here, Wrench.”
Wrench gave a deliberately slow glance in Scarlet’s direction, but the red-haired resort owner was frowning over her phone, oblivious to their conversation. They were gathered at the back of the bar, where outgoing guests were getting their last drinks and Wrench was carrying their luggage up to the courtesy van.
“Fine,” Wrench said gruffly, putting down the giant rolling bag he’d carried up from one of the lower cottages. He knew that neither his expression nor his tone would betray his own nervousness; this was the flight that Jenny would be returning on, his niece Ally in tow.
He hadn’t seen either Ally or his sister in months, and probably Ally’s last memory of him was promising to pay for dance classes that he’d never been able to deliver. She was eight now, so grown up compared to the adoring little niece he remembered bouncing on his knee and carrying on his shoulders.
What if she hated him? What if she blamed him for her mother being put in witness protection?
Wrench certainly blamed himself.
“It’ll be in about eleven,” Travis continued loudly as Scarlet tucked her phone away and returned her attention to her staff. “I’ll bring a load of guests and luggage up, then I’ll need your help for a second load.”
Wrench was just wondering how much more suspicious things could look when Tex came to the rescue. “Get you a drink, Scarlet?”
“I might need one,” she said unexpectedly—Wrench had never seen her with anything stronger than a glass of water. “That ass Benedict Beehag has the nerve to tell me he’s showing up tomorrow afternoon in a helicopter with some new interested buyers that his lawyer found for him.” Beehag was the owner of the island, and he had been threatening to sell it out from under Scarlet for several months now.
Tex winced. “In the middle of the new guest rush?”
Scarlet’s face was as angry as Wrench had ever seen it, and Wrench thought he could hear her teeth grinding. She turned to Travis. “Tell me Jenny made her connecting flight.” Her voice dared him to have a different answer.
Travis replied cheerfully, “She did! She’ll be coming up with the second load in the van. With the roof supplies. That I need Wrench to help carry—ow!”
“Sorry,” Wrench said insincerely as Travis stepped back to nurse his trod-upon toe. Had the man never lied about anything in his life?
This plan to hide Ally was looking more and more unlikely.
On the other hand, if there were already unwanted visitors coming, that was the kind of chaos that would do an excellent job of masking one small girl’s secret occupancy.
“I am going to fight this with every legal advantage we can get,” Scarlet said fiercely. “Jenny said she’d found some language in the contract that we might use to block a sale, and at least stop these unscheduled visits.”
“Surely they aren’t all going to end in a hostage situation,” Tex said lightly.
“They might,” Scarlet said savagely. “Each set of buyers seems worse than the last. I can’t imagine where Benedict’s lawyer is even finding these monsters.”
“Surely ‘monsters’ is a little harsh,” Tex said peacefully.
“I’m not sure it is,” Scarlet said suspiciously. “These buyers are the dregs of bad people. Not just self-centered rich jerks, but… drug dealers and slavers.” She looked over at Travis thoughtfully. “What’s up with you?”
Wrench swallowed hard, watching sweat bead on Travis’ forehead.
“Up? With me?” the lynx shifter asked, brown eyes wide with desperate innocence.
“Why aren’t you getting the last batch of guests to the airstrip?”
Wrench gathered up an armload of luggage. “Off we go,” he rumbled, pushing Travis in front of him before he could open his mouth again.
“Off we go!” Travis echoed obediently, taking a load of his own luggage. Guests downed their last drinks and straggled out after them as they headed for the tiny parking lot at the peak of the resort.
“Whew,” Travis said, as Wrench helped him stash the luggage in the back of the courtesy van. “That woman, I swear. She just looks right through you sometimes.”
Wrench refrained from pointing out that Travis’ performance might have been a tad suspicious. It had worked for the moment, now he just had to wait.
And he knew just how to fill the hours he had to kill now.
Chapter 22
Lydia frowned, surveying her spa.
“Someone left a jar of honey treatment open overnight,” Laura told her, looking a little wild around the eyes.
“Let me guess,” Lydia said with a sigh. “Ants.”
“Ants,” Laura agreed.
Two of the assistants were clustered by the door, refusing to step any closer to the stream of wriggling invaders.
“Go get a mop and bucket,” she told them, striding into the room. Their little island off the coast of Costa Rica had absolutely wonderful weather, perfect humidity, and any rain was short-lived and warm, but it was a jungle, and a jungle that came with bugs. The resort rule about food in private cottages was strict for a reason.
The sugar ants, though tiny, made the cosmetics shelf look like it was alive in their relentless march for food.
“We’re going to need to clean them off of all the product bottles,” Lydia said, surveying the scene. “And wipe up their trail all the way out the door. Use the spray bottle in the cabinet that is marked 50% alcohol.”
As they went to work, Laura elbowed her. “Made the earth move, did you two?”
Lydia smirked sideways back. “We didn’t move the earth until after the earthquake, thank you,” she sai, mock-primly.
The infestation was small, at least, both in tiny species and in total number, and Lydia and Laura were able to seal up the object of their in
terest and kill them in swaths. Lydia’s distaste for causing pain had made her choose to switch to vegetarianism years ago, and she found that ants were not entirely beneath her regret, even if she did accept their deaths as necessary.
Was this how Wrench felt? she wondered, then had to laugh at herself for comparing pest control with Wrench’s checkered past of freelance thug work.
She heard the quiet beep-beep of the courtesy van as it arrived with the next wave of guests just as she was shaking the last interlopers from the cushions.
“Go let the check-in station know that the spa is open again,” she said to Laura. Across from the bar was a bulletin board that had sign-up lists for all the classes and events for the week, as well as major status updates. The staff had their own version of this board by the mechanical room where they could list housekeeping problems and negotiate shifts.
Ally would be on this charter plane, Lydia suddenly remembered, but she guessed that Travis and Wrench would have to make a special trip to get her and smuggle her in. She didn’t have to even concentrate to sense Wrench passing close by, using the outside entrance around the outside of the spa to head for the van. He had been back by her room, probably making sure it was ready for Ally, and undoubtedly worrying.
Though the big man was good at shuttering his expressions, Lydia was coming to realize that this didn’t indicate that he wasn’t feeling things.
Quite the opposite. She had caught him checking his phone frequently, hoping for an update from his sister, and when he spoke of her, it was gently. And when he thought she wasn’t looking, his expression softened. Lydia had some hope that she might even make him laugh someday, and she looked forward to that.
She was giving her third pedicure, laughing and chatting with a new guest when Wrench returned and she sensed him slipping back to her private courtyard.
She bit her lip, not wanting to rush her job. “A polish?” she offered, hoping for a negative.
Not unexpectedly, the guest accepted a coat, waffling an agonizing time between two similar shades of pink.
