by Elsa Jade
The drive stretched on in the same way, every mile a tease and torture. Lana barely uttered a sound, and he was tempted to start up his own commentary, just to see how she reacted.
Lana, he’d say, see those hills? Behind them is where we’re headed. She’d lean so close he might even feel her sweet breath in his ear. That’s the ranch. A little rough around the edges, but the most beautiful place on earth.
He wanted to hear her coo in wonder and squint for a better view. Wanted her to know what the place meant to him. Why, he didn’t know.
Or maybe he’d say, Lana, you should see it in spring, when the desert’s in bloom. Then maybe she’d turn her head from left to right, glowing in wonder in spite of herself, just like he used to do when he was little.
He wanted to throw an arm across the back of his seat, twist around to glance at her—right at her—and say, Lana, you remind me of someone, only I don’t know who.
He got as far as releasing his death grip on the wheel with one hand and opening his mouth. Lana leaned forward on cue, her eyes following his lips in the rear view mirror, her head tilting to catch his unspoken words. An instant later, she caught her blunder and threw herself back into her seat, crossing her arms over her chest in self-defense.
He sighed. Like he’d even manage a full sentence around her. Not with his pulse spiking just watching her. Not with her studying everything in the desert but him.
Ruth gestured out the windows at the last of Phoenix’s outlying suburbs. “I can’t believe how the city has grown,” she said. “Remember it, Lana?”
He was all ears. What was there for her to remember?
Lana murmured vaguely. Had she been there before? His mind went into a digging spree, throwing dirt everywhere without managing to find any trace of her. Then Ruth shifted to another topic, and his chance to ask was gone. Probably the old woman was simply mixed up. He would have remembered if Lana had been in Arizona before. He would definitely remember.
Every animal instinct in him was stirring, wanting to touch and taste her. To pull her out of this truck and over to some private place where he could study her up close and personal. And not just her body. The rest, too. What was going on in her mind? Her heart? Her soul?
It was a feeling he hadn’t had in…how long? Of course there were other women who’d managed to get him going, but that feeling was pretty much limited to his cock. This woman called to something much deeper. He didn’t so much want to lay her as to…what? What did he want?
To get to know her. To figure her out. That’s what he wanted.
Okay, okay, and to lay her, too.
Who was she? How dare she have such an effect on him? Because no one did this to him. No one! Not since the phantom—and she didn’t exist.
Chapter Two
‡
Twenty miles into the drive, Lana was still trying to reconcile the boy Jean had led her to expect, versus the man in the car. The very real, very grown-up man.
Gangly, my ass.
She had watched him lean over a bag and hoist it up as if it were feather light. Nice, tight buns filled his jeans, and his biceps bulged under the cuffs of his white T-shirt. No tan lines around the edges, either, making it all too easy to picture him shirtless, letting the sun bronze his skin. But then he’d taken the next bag right out of her hand, and her vision had gone red.
Alphas. They had the people skills of Neanderthals. As the daughter of one and sister to three others, she should know. Alpha males were all the same.
Except this one was the finest thing she had ever seen. Deeply tanned with brown-black hair, the man was downright delicious, like dark chocolate ice cream with molten fudge on top. What she wouldn’t give to dip right in. His face wasn’t so much handsome as it was enticing, but his lips were pursed, his brow creased. His thick shoulders were squared as if he was about to challenge an adversary. Was he always so tense?
And did he always smell so good? He’d showered with something very, very masculine. It smelled like the desert: edgy and brutally honest. Or maybe that wasn’t soap, but just him.
A scowl crossed her face, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the local girls had some kind of lottery system for who got to share his bed. Or did he stick with just one? She doubted it. You could tell a mated wolf from a mile away; peace and satisfaction sloughed off him in waves. Ty was too restless, too brooding for that.
She sniffed again. A man like him ought to carry the scent of half a dozen recent conquests, like a magic potion of virility that only served to attract more. His partners would probably make damn sure they rubbed him close and hard to leave their mark for the world to witness. She pictured a wall of graffiti, sprayed all over. Cyndi was here, it would say, and that would overlap with Ty + Lucy, written inside a heart, or maybe Kerri loves Ty, with part of the Kerri gouged out by some jealous soul. She sniffed again and was surprised to find no trace of a recent female scent intertwined with his. If anything, the man smelled like duty and responsibility. An alpha, through and through.
She gave her head an inner shake and tried to pry her senses away. But this man sucked her in like no man ever before. She suddenly understood what birds must feel when they flew south. She was being pulled, like Mother Nature was pointing and uttering urgently: Him! Him!
But whenever she worked up the nerve to throw a covert glance his way, he seemed to retreat further into his invisible armor, curling tighter and tighter until his emotions were as safely guarded as an armadillo in a ball.
She forced herself back in her seat, as far as she could. The guy was way too intense. Too…too everything. Wasn’t her mother always warning her about alphas?
The Wagoneer left city congestion behind, heading north into open desert. She had resolved to resist the call of the landscape, but since it now seemed the lesser of two temptations, she peered out the window. Prickly pears blurred past, and a scattering of saguaro cacti gave way to scrappy bush as the highway climbed. Every plant clung to its patch of scorched earth, struggling to survive. Yet there was something here that whispered to her, as it had on her first visit. The realization both thrilled and frightened her.
As did Ty. Her senses couldn’t resist throwing themselves at him—not just peeking but measuring, studying, imprinting the details in her mind like the last days of summer.
A good thing it was cooler up here at higher altitude than in the city. The Jeep struggled with a steep incline that she vaguely remembered from her first trip. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an incongruous flash of red in the arid landscape. A sports car was pulling alongside the Jeep, so close and so loud the bass notes of its stereo thumped in her bones. Lana checked Ty’s expression in the rear view mirror, but his mouth remained straight, unrevealing.
With a boastful rev, the sports car sped ahead. Any one of Lana’s brothers would have hurled a comment after it, but Ty’s only reaction, if it was one, was a quick scratch of his ear. Then his hand was back on the wheel, knuckles clenched white.
An hour passed; it seemed an eternity. She wondered how was she going to last a week around him.
“Not far now,” Jean said.
Lana closed her eyes. Already way too close.
Ty turned off the highway and onto an unmarked dirt road. Like all wolf packs, Ty’s kept their presence discrete. No sense in calling human attention to themselves.
It was in the turn that she noticed the flaring of Ty’s nostrils. She could feel it, too. Something was wrong. Ty’s jawline tightened ever so slightly, though he didn’t show a nervous twitch or rub an imaginary beard. The tension was there though: she could see it in the pinch of his shoulders, the tight grip of his fingers on the wheel—and there—another scratch at his right ear.
Incredible. The man was so bottled up that his only outlet was scratching an ear. His eyes slid left, eying a spot high in the hills, and though she followed his gaze, she saw nothing. What was up there that he wanted to escape to?
She glanced around the vehicle. Did no
one else pick up on it? The older women seemed oblivious. Was it always like that? Ty hid his feelings so well, it was almost as if they didn’t exist. But she saw. He was a man, not a machine, caged in by the heavy weight of responsibility. A feeling she could relate to all too well.
The Jeep crossed over a low bridge that spanned the cracked remnants of a creek then slowed to pass under a timber gateway. The ranch brand hung overhead: two circles, side by side, overlapping by one-third. By the looks of things, Twin Moon Ranch hadn’t changed a bit. The same cottonwoods shaded two rows of buildings on either side of a central square. Take away the trucks and it would pass for a movie set, but she knew this was the real thing. The Wild West come true.
The five men who were huddled on the porch of the first building on the right turned toward the car in anticipation. Judging by the barbed look on their faces, there was serious pack business to discuss.
Ty did it again, one quick scratch, and she was seized with the urge to take that ear and lick it smooth, to blow the worries away. She knew a thing or two about alphas, like her father, the head of the Berkshires pack. Her brothers were the same, too. Alphas ruled at the top, but they stood alone. While victories were shared, the specter of defeat loomed over the individual. Ty had the same brooding aura.
Most alphas found release through the support of siblings or a mate, not to mention the occasional brawl. But this man was the type to build a bigger and bigger dam, trying to hold everything inside. She wanted to reach over the seat, knead his shoulders, and whisper something reassuring in his ear. But how could she? He was a stranger, after all, and she was just passing through.
Ty rolled to a near stop as one of the men approached, and they seemed to communicate volumes in the brief nods they exchanged.
Jean called out a chipper greeting. “Hello, Cody, sweetheart!”
The blond man broke into a winning smile and waved. He looked out of place among the others. A bit too young and jolly for this setting. He belonged out in the surf on a Californian beach, not on a ranch. She would bet that women lined up for him in droves, but she only had eyes for Ty. This feeling of being fully awake and alive hadn’t coursed through her blood in years. No surfer dude could do that.
Ty concluded his private exchange and continued to a T, then turned left, cruising past several houses and barns. Everything about the place was as she remembered it: a tidy community of lawns and winding irrigation ditches that faded into paddocks and open land. In a deeply troubled world, Twin Moon Ranch seemed like a shady little pocket of paradise. How much of that was a mirage?
Ty unloaded the two older women and luggage at Jean’s duplex, then nodded her back to the car. “You’re in the guest house,” he said. His tone supplied the rest: Let’s go. I have things to do.
“I can find it,” she insisted.
“I’ll take you.” Get in the car.
She crossed her arms and she stood scowling. One of the first things he’d said to her, and it was an order. But then again, what did she expect?
It was only the memory of the group of men waiting for Ty that made her slide into the front seat and clamp down on her tongue. In two minutes, Ty had the truck parked in the central square. The men looked over expectantly, but Ty ignored them. He grabbed her bag before she could protest and pointed her toward a narrow path between two buildings. Ahead of them, thick shrubbery shaded a tiny adobe dwelling with a slanted roof and a stone chimney that clung to one wall like a determined vine. She took two quick steps over the creaky wooden porch, then stopped in front of the door, breathing in the hot spice of the chili peppers strung there.
The floorboards squeaked behind her as Ty came near. She could feel the heat of him. So close.
She turned instinctively and took him in, that mountain of a man. His hair looked just long enough for her fingers to skim through for a short ride. She imagined how close she’d have to be to do that. Close enough to feel the scrape of his stubble. To taste those lips. Close enough to nuzzle him until the edge had gone out of his taut body. Close enough to let their bodies brush, mesh, intertwine—
“It’s open.” His voice was gruff.
She forced herself to pull it together. God, her wolf was out of control today. The screen door gave a rusty squeal as she stepped inside and forced her attention there. The heavy beams overhead smelled of wood oil and time. The walls were white, the ceiling high. A painting of a rose hung over the bed, whispering of reckless possibility.
Ty set down her bag, and when their eyes locked as he straightened, the whisper became a roar. She got lost in his deep, dark gaze as the chiseled line of his jaw pulsed with unspoken words. She was frozen, yet burning up at the same time. The moment stretched to infinity as the air throbbed and hummed in her ears. Was her heart barely pulsing or was it thumping like a rabbit’s? There was some secret communication between them—a question asked and answered—though her mind couldn’t register what that might be. They were mere puppets, bystanders to some greater reckoning.
Then Ty’s eyes dropped to the floor and the earth stilled. Her mind took a moment to catch up, and by the time it did, the screen door had slammed. He was gone.
She slumped to the bed, her heart hammering, her ears vaguely registering the bang of the screen door. A bead of sweat dropped in slow motion from her brow. She’d survived a brush with a tornado and was still reeling, wondering how close it had come to whirling her away.
For the first time in a long while, she wanted to believe in the wolfpack myths. That there was love at first sight. That she would find her destined mate and the air would shimmer and rush. That her heat would reach out and intertwine with his and they’d slam together in a living storm of passion and never ever part.
But this man might as well have barbed wire coiled around his torso and a danger sign around his neck. Warning! Death by hundreds of thousands of volts. She wondered if Ty had rigged the defense system himself or some outside force had done it for him.
Her breathing slowly settled as her mind jerked on the reins. Maybe Ty had that effect on everyone. A powerful alpha could do that—melt everyone and everything in his path. Either you’d self-incinerate or he’d kill you the slow way: death by broken heart.
Best to avoid him. The man was bossy, busy, and seriously wounded. A man like that needed a lot of fixing—and hell, she was no mechanic.
And anyway, a myth was a myth. There was no such thing as a destined mate, not these days anyway. Shifters who found mates did it the clumsy human way: trial by error. Guessing, trying, compromising. And even that took time, patience, and hope—three things she just didn’t possess. This crazy stirring inside her soul was just her wolf hearing the call of the desert, and that could be explained by the half of her DNA that came from her Arizona-born mother.
Either way, it didn’t matter. She could damn well control her urges. A woman had to have some pride, after all. She shook the image of Ty out of her brain and promised herself she’d concentrate on what she came for, then get the hell out of Arizona.
And never come back.
Chapter Three
‡
Ty strode away from the adobe cabin, sucking in the breath he’d forgotten to draw back there. He’d only barely broken away and his wolf was still scratching madly to escape.
Take her, it growled. You know you want her.
He did. Badly. And she felt the same way. One touch and she’d be his. He could feel it.
Take her now!
He wanted—needed—her like a drunk needed a drink. She could set him free. Maybe set them both free.
Take her!
Jesus, his hands were shaking. Not from proximity to danger or a foe, but from her. Only one other woman had ever had this effect on him.
The phantom.
It happened years ago, after he’d been away from the ranch on business. The minute he got back, it hit like a heat wave in the height of summer. A scent. A female scent carried on the wind touched him—no, kneed him right in t
he gut—then vanished. Overcome by the need to claim, he’d roamed all over the desert. He spent weeks searching, every keen wolf sense tuned in to tracking the source. But she was gone—or she never existed, except as a hint on the wind that teased him to ruin. He’d never love, never want anyone again.
The itch, the longing never really faded. It came and went in unpredictable waves, like seasons gone wrong.
Now Lana’s scent was calling to him in exactly the same way. He had been on the verge of reaching for her in the guest house and only barely managed to stop himself. Men like him—like his father—were dangerous. Their intensity drained anyone they let too near. If he took Lana as his mate, he would suck the life out of her, bit by bit. Like his father had done to all his women. One after another, they had all wilted under that intensity. Ty’s mother was stronger than the others, and she’d left before it was too late, abandoning her kids for Aunt Jean to raise. Whenever he dropped one bedmate, his father would move on to a new woman, and then another one. Shifters could live two to three hundred years but pureblooded weres had a notoriously hard time conceiving. Which was good, in a way; Ty figured he might have had dozens of half-siblings if that weren’t the case. His father never found the one woman who could balance him and make him whole.
They said the more powerful the alpha, the harder it was to find a mate, and he believed it. If Lana wasn’t his destined mate—and how could she be, if she wasn’t the phantom?—she’d eventually wilt away, too. Oh, she would put up a good fight. She had met his eyes and actually held his gaze. Very few people could do that. His own siblings had trouble looking at him when he was fired up. Everyone else stared at some point on his forehead or shoulder, or simply looked away.
Power was a curse. He’d always stand alone.
But what if? A tantalizing array of images flitted through his mind. What if Lana could withstand that force? She would give him a life outside of work and duty. A life worth living.
