by Kate Rudolph
Her breathing evened as her laughter faded. “I’ve never been to California,” she said with a hint of sadness. “I’ve barely ever been out of the state.”
They made it to the interstate and Dom made the decision to head south. He hadn’t known where they were going when they started out, but now he had an idea. “What keeps you in town?” he asked. He’d been transferred to Blue Valley when the detective position opened up after receiving a slew of commendations at his old post. He’d liked the idea of the forests and nature so close. It was a change of pace from Denver, where he’d grown up.
“My aunt. My shop. My friends. My whole life is here. And it’s a nice place. You don’t like it?” Her whole attention was focused on him, eyes bright and smile giddy. Dom wished he could do more than steal a glance every few moments, but with her in the car, he wouldn’t risk it. He wouldn’t risk her.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t suck. And I like the people.” They drove on in silence for several minutes before Dom asked, “What about your parents? Do they live somewhere else?”
Cam sighed. “No, they died when I was two. Car accident.”
He tightened his hold on her hand. He told himself the spear of sadness was for her loss. After all, he’d lost his own mother at the same age. But a part of him had been hoping that she didn’t have a father, that she didn’t know who he was. He hadn’t realized just how much he wanted her to be special, to not be completely human. If she didn’t know her father, then it was possible that the angel had sired her, had made her a One True Mate. And if that were the case, she might have been his.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “It bums me out, but it was twenty-three years ago. I promise, I’m okay now.”
Dom snapped out of it. “Look out your window,” he said.
She gave him a strange look, but turned her head. It was like the sun went down. But then she broke out into a huge grin and her fingers tightened around his own. “California!”
It was only an hour’s drive from Blue Valley. If Dom could give her one thing, it was this. He pulled to the side of the two lane highway and parked the car. “Let’s commemorate it,” he said. “Come on.”
Cam was out of the car like a shot. Dom came around the front of the vehicle and found her posing in front of the blue sign that proclaimed WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA. He took out his camera and snapped a shot before she realized what he was doing. And once she saw he had the camera, she placed her hands on her hips and gave a huge and super fake smile.
“Come on,” he said. “Make it real.”
“This is real,” she protested.
“That’s a customer service smile. Give me something better than that.”
She frowned. “You’re not even one of my customers. I don’t know if you deserve a smile at all.”
Dom laughed. He closed the distance between them and slung an arm over her shoulder, holding the camera out and getting them both in the same shot. He moved fast and Cam didn’t expect it. She tripped into him and latched tight, laughing as she fell and clinging close. She didn’t let go when Dom took the camera down and they examined the pictures together.
“What do you think?” he asked. It was getting dark and his front facing camera didn’t have a flash, but he could make them out just fine.
“I wish I was wearing a shirt from the bakery. This would be great for my Facebook page.”
“Next time we’ll go all the way to the coast and you can bring a picnic basket. We’ll do a whole shoot.” Thoughts of getting her out of his system had long fled and now he was searching for any excuse to keep her close. Dom’s heart kicked up, and for a second he felt like a nervous schoolboy asking a girl out for the first time. But the girls had always flocked to him back then and he’d never really cared. Not until Cam.
“Do you remember me?” She blushed and her eyes widened as she realized what she’d said. “Never mind. That was stupid. It was nothing. We should get back in the car.” She tried to extricate herself from his embrace, but Dom didn’t let go.
“It was three years ago at High Street Bar. We danced to some incredibly horrible country song and you never told me your name.” Now that he wasn’t driving, he could look as much as he wanted. She was beautiful in the night, her blonde hair catching the last hints of sunlight and making her look like a pagan goddess. “I went back to the bar every night for a week hoping to find you, but you didn’t come back.” Until just now, he’d forgotten that part. She’d faded from his memory but never fled.
“I took over the bakery right after. I didn’t go back to High Street for at least six months.”
They stared at each other as the darkness grew out from the trees around them. The road was deserted, an old highway that saw most of its traffic during the day. Dom cupped her cheek, the skin there soft under his fingers. Her lips parted and her tongue darted out to wet them. He had fantasies about that tongue and about just what she could do with it. If she used it right, he’d be her slave.
He leaned down and let his other arm crawl around her waist, his grip sure, but not tight. She could pull away, she could stop this. But he saw the same want in her eyes that lived in his own. Her hands went to his waist and gripped his shirt. She stepped up to him, closing the last bit of distance, and their lips met.
A storm broke inside of him, but he tamed it for her, keeping the kiss gentle when all he wanted to do was lift her up, place her across the hood of his vehicle, and thrust hard, bringing them both to the end of this dance. But more important than his need, than his lust, was her. And Dom kept the beast caged, taking his time and tasting her gently, reveling in the sensation of her in his arms.
She was hesitant at first, her lips yielding under his and her tongue tentative to his invasion. But her inexperience soon turned to a thirst for knowledge, and she deepened the kiss, opening wider, pulling him closer and devouring him with the tidal wave of intensity that he was trying to stave off.
Dom’s mind whirled under her conquest. Her scent covered him, invaded him, became a part of him, melding with his cells until there was no her without a hint of him. His wolf howled joyously, in complete concert with the man. Mate or not, this was the woman for him. His hands slid down and cupped the soft flesh of her ass, kneading at her when she moaned against his mouth.
They were on the side of the road. Anyone could see them and Dom didn’t give a shit. Not so long as Cam was here. He hiked her up and slid his leg in between hers, supporting her and groaning against her as she pressed herself close and hard, riding him as sensuously as if they were naked and in his bed. But once he had her there, he was never letting her out.
Her fingers found their way to his hair and she dug in, taking control of his head, and he savored the way she clutched at him, her nails gently scraping his neck as she held on. He needed more of her, needed her naked and panting and wet. He found the back of her shirt and hiked it up, exposing her stomach and back to the cool night air. Gooseflesh pimpled under his skin and she shivered as he touched her, but she didn’t move away. And there was nothing that would make her stop kissing him.
Every breath was filled with her and Dom didn’t know how he’d go back to normal oxygen.
A car sped by and the horn blared as headlights illuminated their tryst. Cam stiffened in his arms and Dom made himself step back, made himself let go of her. She was panting a little and her eyes shone. He was breathing heavy himself and his cock was hard as a rock. Thankfully, her eyes didn’t leave his. If she’d looked at him, touched him, he’d take her to the backseat and fuck her like they were horny teenagers hiding from their parents.
“It’s getting late,” she said, voice husky and lust roughened.
Dom thought he couldn’t get any harder. He was wrong. He bit back a groan and nodded. “We should go back.”
They stared at each other for several more moments until he gathered the strength to walk back to the car. He could have used a quick douse with ice water, but he wouldn’t trade the next hour with he
r for the world.
Chapter Seven
On Tuesday morning, there wasn’t any evidence of the vandalism from the day before. The brand new window had been installed in record time since Mr. Dyer, the glazier, was good friends with Aunt Grace. But the customers had heard all about it. In fact, the entire town seemed to know the story, and Blue Valley wasn’t that small. But they’d had more people through the door by ten AM then they’d had in months, and Cam wasn’t about to turn away business.
Both she and June were sweating and running all over the place, putting in new batches of sweets and seeing to customers who claimed that the Thorny Rose was their favorite place in town… despite the fact that Cam had never seen half of them before. She took a secret pleasure in the fact that the coffee shop on the other side of town had to be hurting for business this morning, but she hoped that the craziness didn’t last long. By noon they were running dangerously low on supplies, and Cam made the call to close up shop an hour early, at one PM instead of two.
After the last customer left, she and June sat on the floor in the hallway outside the kitchen and caught their breath. “You’d think someone died here from the way people were watching,” June said.
“Please, let’s not give the universe any ideas.” Cam could only imagine the trouble that would bring in. Plus, she didn’t want anyone to die. That was bad too.
They got their strength back and tidied up before making the preparations for Wednesday. Cam bid June goodbye at three and went back in the shop to review a few things on her computer before leaving.
Before she even opened her email, the security recording icon caught her eye. She’d given the cops a copy of the video, but it still lived on her computer, saved especially so that the program wouldn’t erase it on the normal schedule. After getting so much done yesterday, she’d sort of forgotten about the video and hadn’t bothered to look it over. And then the wolf found her and then Dom found her and well, she hadn’t been thinking too much about the store after all that.
She was doubly thankful for the rush today. If no one had come in, she might have been forced to moon over the sexy detective who kissed like the devil. She might have been forced to confide the whole encounter to June and beg for advice on what to do next. When he’d dropped her off last night, he hadn’t kissed her again and he hadn’t asked for another date. He hadn’t even texted her the pictures that he’d taken.
But it was only a day later and she had to give the man time to breathe. They needed that, right? Girls who got too attached too soon annoyed them. Or something. She really had no idea what to do with men.
“Stop it.” Speaking it out loud helped. “Watch the tape, put him out of your mind. You’re an adult. Act like it.” With June gone, there was no one to hear her affirmations, thankfully. Cam clicked on the security icon and waited for the video to load. Since her computer was almost old enough to get a driver’s license, it took several minutes for the video to pop up. But once it loaded, the play through was smooth. She found the right time stamp and watched, eyes open, ready for anything.
And then blinked.
The window was smashed. She hadn’t seen it happen, even on the video. It was just: one second, window okay; point four seconds later, window smashed. The street was deserted and the grainy black and white video dashed her hopes. The cops wouldn’t be able to get anything off this thing. She slowed down the play back, but still the window smashed in a blink of an eye, with little more than a blur of motion in front of the store. Whoever did it must have done something to the camera. Maybe they had some weird trick that caused it to slow down the frame rate? That was a thing, she thought. Slow frame rate meant that there would be less footage.
But how fast would a person have to run so that they appeared as little more than a blur on a video that was slowed down sixteen times its normal speed? Was it even possible? Well, there was one way to find out.
Cam stopped the video and closed out of the program. She could run pretty fast. She might look like a fool doing it, but this was in the name of science and she’d deal with the stares if anyone saw her.
Out of habit, she locked the door to the bakery behind her, even though she planned to go right back in. She would start at the north end of the block, heading in the same direction that her blur had headed in. She wondered if she should toss anything at the window, but didn’t want to risk it. Even as she took a deep breath at the top of the block, her mind whispered seven point three seconds and she knew that running it would be redundant.
But Cam needed to move. With one final breath, she was off, covering the ground in front of her shop in long strides. The seconds ticked by as afterthoughts in her mind, and when she stopped in front of the law office two doors down from her, her brain whispered seven point three seconds, just as she’d known it would. Her heart beat hard and her breath puffed out, even from the short run, but after a moment it evened as the adrenaline leveled off.
She glanced back and saw the camera on the front of the store, blinking steadily as it did when it was engaged and recording. Good, it had seen her. But had she been a blur? She doubted it. A person would have to move like a cheetah, maybe even faster, to get that kind of speed.
Before going back inside, Cam walked to the front of the store and studied the camera. It was too high for her to get a good look, and the ladder she’d need to reach it was heavy and in the basement. It would be a pain in the ass to lug up the stairs. If the cops had suspicions about her camera they’d come look at it themselves. She tried to convince herself of that, but so far the Blue Valley PD didn’t seem to think one broken window was the crime of the century that it felt like to her.
She sank down and sat on the concrete stairs, and looked out at the street through the black wrought iron railing that she thought gave the Thorny Rose a nice French feel. She loved the railing, and the shop, and even at times this little town that seemed to want to chew her up and spit her out or dash her to pieces and leave her broken.
If she hadn’t been looking out of the fence, she wouldn’t have seen the black car parked across the street. Two days ago she wouldn’t have thought twice about a person sitting in a car on the main street. But now she knew who the vehicle belonged to. She reached into her pocket to check her phone to see if he’d called, but her pocket was empty and she realized that she’d left it inside on her desk.
No big deal.
She could go back in and pretend she hadn’t seen him. After all, it was possible that he wasn’t here because of her. Or, at least, he wasn’t here because of her romantically. Maybe he was staking the place out on police business. Maybe the cops had a suspect. Was it her? No, she dismissed that entirely. He wouldn’t have taken her out, kissed her, devoured her if she were a suspect. He had more honor than that. He was a good man. She could feel it deep in her bones.
So why hadn’t he called?
Seized by something crazy, Cam pushed up from the concrete and prowled over to his car. Something possessed her—that was the only explanation she had for the sway of her hips and the way her heart beat strong enough for anyone to hear. She felt it the moment he spotted her—a connection flashed, heat sizzling with every step. Cam didn’t know who this crazy woman was. But she was walking towards her man and she was going to make him realize that. Whatever it took.
***
She walked like a seductress. Hips swayed from side to side and her eyes focused with laser precision, finding him inside his vehicle and staring him down, despite the tinted windows. She took control of the entire street around them and though she didn’t look either way while she crossed, Dom knew that no car would dare touch her, not when she was walking like that.
He expected her to come to his window, so when she opened the passenger door and slid into the seat beside him, he couldn’t help but grin. Her scent filled the car, reinvigorating what had already begun to fade after a day away from her. “Passengers tend to ride in the back of these cars, you know?” he said. He reached out and
touched her without thought. When it came to her, Dom was nothing but instinct and desire. His hand rested on her arm and her muscles tensed, but she didn’t pull away.
“Are you going to cuff me and make me sit back there?” She wore a Cheshire cat grin and was delightfully flushed from her run.
Dom had almost leapt out of the car to catch whoever chased her, but when she stopped abruptly and looked back at her own shop he realized she was doing something else entirely. He still wasn’t sure what. And the thought of her in his back seat clouded his thoughts further, and all he could imagine was her back there, naked and wet with want, begging for him to take her.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not I can come back there with you.”
She sucked in a breath and looked at him, eyes lidded and dark as the ocean at night. When she licked her lips, he thought that he would die. “You didn’t text,” she said. “I thought you would.”
“You didn’t either.” Not that he’d been waiting by his phone or anything. And he certainly hadn’t gone years deep into her Facebook posts, looking for a hint of a boyfriend or anyone who would stand in his way.
“I don’t have your number.” She stared at him, want plain in her eyes and a question he couldn’t quite decipher lurking behind her irises.
Why her? What was so special about this one woman that his entire being reacted to her like she was some sort of lightning rod and he was drawn to strike with no thought, nothing but pure attraction.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “My cell is on the back. Call it anytime.”
“If I have questions about the vandalism?” she asked hesitantly, holding the card by its edges as if it would crumble into dust if she handled it too roughly.
“For anything.”
They did that staring thing again, like they were daring each other to look until they forgot how to blink. He’d been with her less than twenty-four hours ago, kissed her senseless, and wrapped himself in her scent. How could he already miss her? Dom had never missed a woman before, and now every moment that he wasn’t near this one he felt empty and on the verge of some unfathomable darkness.
