by Maddy Barone
Sky reached out to give him a comforting slap on the arm. “But you never know. Maybe her family is well off and they’re able to afford to pay to keep her single.”
They would have to be very rich to afford the yearly Single Status tax. She hadn’t been middle aged, but she didn’t look like a teenager, either. Sand didn’t know anything about rich women. Had she been wearing rich woman’s clothes? “Yeah, maybe.”
Snow dug in the saddlebag. “Before we get into Sand’s mate, here’s the letters from home.”
Sky took them and leafed through them until he came to the one with Rose’s handwriting on the outside. As far as Sand knew, this was the first letter Rose had written to Sky since she’d found out he was running a whorehouse in Omaha. Sky’s hand clenched on the envelope so tightly his knuckles shone white, and that invisible door over his face opened just enough to show the edge of raw emotion before it slammed shut again. “Thanks.” He set the letters casually on the desk behind him. “So tell me about your mate.”
“She’s beautiful,” Sand said immediately. “I know every man says that about his mate, but mine truly is. Her hair is long and brown and it shines in the sun. Her skin is very pale.” Words failed him when he remembered her soft, curved body. “She has a painting on her arm and her shoulder.”
“A tattoo,” Snow put in.
Sky nodded, using one finger to scratch his chin. “What was the tattoo of?”
Snow shrugged, looking at Sand. Sand shrugged too, helplessly. “I don’t know. It went from here,” he touched his biceps and drew his fingers up the outside of his arm, over his shoulder to his heart, “and went here. Do you know her, Sky?”
Sky looked at Paint. “Maybe,” he said at last. “I know of a few women who fit that description. We’ll find her, Sand. Not now; it’s late in the afternoon. But we’ll find her, I promise. Why don’t you get them settled in, Paint? I’m going to my room to read my letter. My letters,” he corrected himself.
Sand’s wolf didn’t want to wait even another minute to start the hunt for his mate, but Sand forced him down. His mate was here in Omaha. He would find her. Sky had his letters in his hand, running his thumb over and over the one with Rose’s handwriting on it. Sky must be anxious to read Rose’s words.
“Sure,” Paint said. “I’ll get them beds out back and then show ‘em around.”
Sky pushed away from the desk. “I’m glad you’re here,” he told Snow and Sand with fervent honesty. “I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll start the hunt for your mate.”
Sand watched him go out. “He’s not the same, is he?” he asked Paint in a low voice, knowing how good wolf hearing was.
“No,” Paint agreed. “Come on. I’ll show you the house. We need to keep our voices down. Mostly the ladies nap in the afternoon.”
Sand wanted to ask about the women, but decided to wait. The house was like nothing he’d ever seen before. The Clan mostly roamed all over the Plains in search of good hunting during summer, and lived in lodges. In the winter they lived in the Sacred Lands, some of them in small houses. Some of the Clan had chosen to live settled, staying in one place outside Kearney, Nebraska. Their den had once been a motel that the Pack had converted to their home. One or two wolves shared a room, but spent most of their time in the rec room or outdoors. The den was comfortable. This house, for all its fancy woodwork and furniture, didn’t feel comfortable.
He followed Paint and Snow through the kitchen into a short narrow hall that opened to a large room with a long narrow table in it. The dining room was connected to what Paint called a reception room. Apparently there were two large reception rooms divided by a staircase, and the next floor was open, with more of the fussy railing from the staircase to keep people from falling into the reception room below.
“The ladies’ rooms are on the second floor, and Sky’s suite is on the third floor.” Paint opened the door in a spacious entry area. “There are dorms for the workers in back. You’ll be in the men’s dorm, of course.”
Of course. After they walked around the house and past the stable, Sand saw three long single story buildings. “Three? How many men fit in one of those?”
“There are ten bedrooms in each, plus a lounge, kind of like the rec room back home.”
“Sky has thirty men working for him?”
“Nope.” Paint tossed a grin over his shoulder. “Fourteen, with you two here. We’re in the middle dorm. The other two are for the women workers.”
Snow stopped so suddenly that Sand bumped into him. “What? How many ladies does Sky have working in his house?”
Paint stopped and turned around. “There are eight who do the kind of work you’re thinking about. There’s another twenty who do other types of entertainment and do the laundry, cook the food, do the shopping, clean the house and all the rest of that. Do you know how many times the bed sheets have to be changed in one night? That’s a lot of laundry to do every day.”
“I thought all women in Omaha who didn’t get married had to work in a whorehouse,” Snow protested.
“Yep.” Paint started walking again. “No one said what sort of work they had to do. Here at The Limit no woman has to do work she doesn’t want to.”
A tension he hadn’t even been aware of eased up on Sand’s heart. His mate might not be a prostitute. Not, he hastily assured himself, that it mattered if she were. He would love her no matter what.
Chapter 2
Sand shrugged unhappily. “You want me to just stay out here in the hall and listen for a woman’s voice to say ‘monitor’?”
“Yes,” said Paint patiently. “That’s the word the ladies use when their appointment behaves in a way she doesn’t like. If you hear a woman call for a monitor, go right into the room and be sure the man isn’t hurting the lady.”
Sand hadn’t met any of the ladies yet, but already the knowledge that they were members of Sky’s Pack made his hackles rise at the thought of any harm coming to them. He nodded crisply. “I’ll kill him.”
“No! The lady will tell you whether the man should be escorted out or given a warning. OK? You don’t have to stand. You can sit here. The appointments will begin arriving in about fifteen minutes. Your shift is three hours long. I’ll relieve you then.”
Sand watched Paint go down the stairs. He looked around the hall with its doors at regular intervals. The second floor was built like an open rectangle. Doors were set at regular intervals along the outside wall, two on each side, with a bathroom in three corners and a linen closet in the fourth. He glanced over the ornate rail that hugged the open edge of the upstairs in a graceful curve and saw the reception rooms below. If necessary, he could easily leap over the rail and land without difficulty. If he needed to get to the opposite side of the upstairs area he could possibly leap it.
At the top of the stairs was a small alcove with two chairs on either side of a small table. He moved over to one of the chairs and gingerly sat. The next three hours were going to be the hardest of his life. He closed his eyes and called up his memory of his beautiful mate. Soon, he assured his prowling wolf, they would find her and claim her.
The door at the far end of the hall opened and Sand sat up straight as a scent came to him. There were a multitude of sickeningly sweet scents crowding his nose, but this one was clean and light. Deep inside, his wolf gave a mighty howl. Sand was so shocked by his wolf that he almost didn’t notice the woman stepping out of the door. She had walked right up to him before he wrestled his wolf into a semblance of submission.
Her hair, the glossy brown of polished walnut, was looped up and fastened in an intricate style that showed off her soft white throat. Sand’s gaze found the line of a tattoo under the sheer fabric of her robe and followed it up her arm to the neckline of her ruffled nightdress. Breath got tangled up with the thundering beat of his heart. His mate. His mate was here!
“Well, hello,” she said in a throaty purr, looking him up and down with obvious approval. “You’re the hall monitor for tonigh
t?”
He nodded dumbly, barely able to keep his wolf from screaming his victory, taking in her luscious curves with awed eyes. If he touched her, even a graze as light as air with his little finger, he would seize her and carry her off to ... to where? There was nowhere in this ugly city to take his mate. His fists curled as he fought with his wolf. The wolf didn’t see why they had to take her anywhere. Here was a perfectly good place to claim her.
“You must be one of Sky’s relatives?” she asked.
The seductive huskiness in her voice sent a shudder down his spine. He nodded again.
“I knew it. You’re all so buff and handsome. I’m Miss Amanda. You can call me Amanda.”
“Amanda,” he breathed, leaning a little closer to draw in a lungful of her scent. “I’m Sand.”
She almost knocked him off his feet when she ran the tip of one soft finger down his nose to tap his lower lip. “And you all have such fun names. You’re adorable! I would love to play with your hair sometime. In fact, on my next day off, I’ll give you a freebie.”
She turned to saunter back to her door. Sand’s gaze fixed on her lush, swinging hips, pretending his feet were glued to the floor so he wouldn’t leap on her and take her to the carpet. He wanted to feel her soft body under his so badly he shook. She paused and turned back.
“Oh, I forgot what I came out for. I was going to tell you that my first appointment tonight is Terry Askup. Last time he was here he was given a warning for being too rough. If it happens again, I’d like you to escort him out.”
Sand stared at her closed door with cold goo swimming in his guts. Miss Amanda was his mate. His mate was a business woman. In a few minutes she would be entertaining a man with a history of roughness, and she might ask him to escort her appointment out.
Escort him out? The man would be lucky if his wolf didn’t rip him to pieces.
This was not good.
*
Amanda glanced at the clock and stretched out on her side on the bed, allowing her robe to show a hint of her filmy nightdress in a demure but subtly sensual pose she knew Terry would like. It was her job to know what her appointments would like and provide it to them. Terry preferred his women to be submissive and present a façade of innocence even while they drove him wild in bed. Submissive and innocent wasn’t Amanda’s thing, but she took pride in her reputation as a woman worth every penny of her fee, so for Terry she’d be submissive and innocent.
How much longer should she continue in this life? She didn’t mind the sex; she liked sex. But it was getting old. What would sex be like with someone she cared for? Really cared for? She was fond of some of her regular appointments, and they seemed to be fond of her, but fondness wasn’t love. What she wanted was a husband who loved her completely. To give herself to one man alone would be nice.
Not that she hated being a businesswoman. The money was good. She had plenty put aside, far more than enough to pay the marriage fee if she found someone she wanted to marry. There had been men over the years who had asked her to be their wife, many men. None had tempted her to say yes. They had been successful men who would have treated her well. She would have had a fine house to live in, fine clothes to wear, and fine food to eat. But she knew that to them she would be only a trophy. She didn’t want to be a trophy to be shown off to her husband’s friends; she wanted to be the woman her husband couldn’t live without. If she could find a man like that she’d leave this house and go live in a shed with him. Finding such a man was the problem.
Footsteps paused outside her door. She adjusted the neck of her nightdress to show a hint of cleavage and looked at the door with wide eyes, trying for a surprised expression, as innocent as a schoolgirl and as provocative as Eve. It was exactly the expression that would get Terry turned on.
Surprise became real when Sand stepped in and slammed the door behind him. She jerked into a sitting position on the bed, thinking he was gorgeous. Out in the hall he had been cute, with that one imperfect tooth and tongue-tied stammer, but now, with his hip length black hair gleaming in the lamp light and black eyes fixed fiercely on her, he was a beautiful, deadly animal.
“Sand! What’s wrong?”
He was silent, staring at her like a wild animal who had cornered its prey. What a ridiculous thought! She shook it off with a twitch of her silk clad shoulder. “Sand? Where’s Terry?”
“Terry,” he snarled, his upper lip lifting. “He won’t be visiting you tonight. Or ever again.”
“What?” she began. “Why?”
Sand dragged her up off the bed and held her while he looked her over thoroughly. His gaze was hot enough to brand her. She couldn’t miss the bulge straining the front of his jeans, and an answering heat lit in her. That was strange. She didn’t usually become aroused so easily. Sand was amazingly compelling.
“What happened to Terry? Did you hurt him?”
“He’s alive.” His voice sounded more like a snarl than polite conversation. “He’s lucky to be alive.”
His hands weren’t hurting her, not quite, but they were tight around her arms. “Let me go, please.”
He shook his head slowly, sending all that long shiny hair gliding over his shoulders. “No. I want to kiss you.”
This she knew how to deal with. She feathered her fingers down his cheeks, to stroke through the black waterfall of hair streaming over his shoulders. It was like the most expensive raw silk, textured but sleek under her fingers. “Not tonight, but Saturday is all yours, handsome,” she promised in a whisper.
“Saturday is too far away. Tonight,” he corrected her hoarsely. “I’ve cancelled your appointments for tonight.”
He pushed her against the wall and leaned his weight into her. His body pressed deliciously against the place that burned for him. “Sand,” she gasped, sounding ridiculously like a virgin. “I don’t think—”
Then his lips smothered her words, turning her voice to a moan, and for a moment she forgot what she didn’t think. It was a long hot minute of dueling tongues before she managed to draw her mouth from his.
God, he was gorgeous. Amanda couldn’t look at him as sternly as she’d planned. “I don’t think you have the right to do that.” She tried for a kind smile while she wedged her hands against his chest to try to lever a little distance between their bodies. He didn’t move, not a millimeter. “Sand, step back.”
“No.” He pressed his nose to her throat and inhaled deeply. “You smell like heaven. Your scent is sweet and fresh. It doesn’t choke me like some of the odors here.”
By the end of the night she wouldn’t smell fresh, she reflected ironically. His breath was warm on her throat. The tongue he used to caress her pulse was hot and wet, like the place between her legs. Maybe she could re-schedule her appointments for Saturday night. She didn’t want to, not really. She’d been looking forward to having Saturday night off for weeks so she could go to the concert at the CLC.
Amanda wavered until Sand pulled two inches away, just enough to brush the edge of her robe open. She missed the warmth of his body, but the heat in his eyes warmed her nicely as they examined her. The flimsy cotton nightgown hid nothing. His face showed curiosity, and the curiosity turned to something like reverence. His hand was inconceivably gentle when he brushed his fingertips over cotton covering her nipple.
“Sand—”
He cut her off, in a tone so raw it made her shiver. “Will you deny me?”
“No.” She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She’d had perhaps a couple hundred different men in her bed in the last seven years, and none of them had ever looked at her with such an expression, as if she were infinitely wondrous, utterly precious. “Would you like to go to the Red Rockers concert with me on Saturday?”
“I’ll go anywhere with you,” he murmured.
He dipped his mouth to her collarbone, but she lifted his face to her with a hand under his chin. “Then I need to keep my appointments tonight so I can have Saturday off.”
The sweet expression on his
face froze into wrath. “No more appointments,” he snarled. “Never again. You said you wouldn’t deny me.”
Amanda jerked her robe closed and pulled the sash tight. “I’m not denying you,” she pointed out reasonably. “I’m giving you Saturday. Other men made appointments for tonight. I’m booked three weeks out, so they’ve been waiting. It’s not fair to cancel on them at the last minute.”
“No!” he howled. “No man comes before me. You are mine!”
Disbelief dropped her jaw. “Excuse me?”
“I saw you today on the street. I’ve known since that moment that you were mine.”
Amanda exhaled a breath. What a pity. Sand was so handsome, so masculine, and so damn stupid. “I don’t belong to you, Sand.” She jabbed a finger at the door. “Get out.”
He jerked her hard against him and backed her into the wall, trapping her. “No.”
Her mouth fell open. Was he crazy? All she had to do to get rid of him was call the monitor … Ice slid down her spine. He was the monitor. And right now he looked angry enough to alarm her.
Pain passed swiftly over his face. One finger at a time, he released her arms, and then stepped back. “You’re afraid of me?”
“No,” she lied. Well, it wasn’t a total lie. She was sure someone would come if she screamed.
“You are afraid of me.” Something close to shame was in his voice. “I would never hurt you.”
“Then leave me alone.”
“I can’t.” The words were simple and quiet. He turned his back to her, showing her all that long sleek black hair falling down his back. “You’re the only woman I can ever love.”
Amanda barely restrained an eye roll. Like she hadn’t heard that a thousand times before. “Please leave, Sand. We’ll talk about this tomorrow if you want to. My invitation for Saturday is still open. But if you don’t leave me alone now I’ll never speak to you again.”
An almost invisible shudder went down his spine. After a moment he walked to the door, opened it, and left. The latch fell into place with a quiet but distinct click.
