by Holley Trent
He took off his boots.
Gripping the knot holding her towel in place, she sat up and watched him stalk. She didn’t understand why everyone wasn’t so affected. His movements were always so effortless and mesmerizing. His “What will I do?” expressions so alluring.
She always seemed to stop breathing when he looked at her with so much longing and lust. Always wanted to float a little without care to whether or not anyone would catch her.
As he peeled off his shirt, her gaze fell to the dark markings on his forearm that hadn’t been there before. Her confusion loosened lust’s grip over her body, and she breathed again, then stared at his arm as he stalked closer with his fingers working at the fasteners of his pants.
She’d seen almost every inch of him, and that tattoo hadn’t been there before. “What is that?”
“Don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”
“But—”
Whatever protest she was going to make, he swallowed with his kiss. He held his tongue atop hers and kept his hands pressed to the sides of her face. His way of saying “No,” maybe.
She wasn’t going to let the subject drop, though. Wasn’t going to let him continue to keep her in the dark when she deserved to know all his truths.
Later.
She relaxed her tongue and let his farther into her mouth, and he tugged at the knot of her towel.
Before the covering fell completely away, she was nudged back onto the bed, his body atop hers, her skin prickling with anticipation.
Not magic.
Magic didn’t make her hook her big toes into his waistband and force his pants down. Magic didn’t have her kneading at his lower black and urging his body farther up hers. He was moving so slowly and holding himself too far away. Magic didn’t make her wriggle her panties off. It didn’t make her catch her ankles together behind his back and force him down and into her.
That was just lust and anger. She was tired of being made to wait for him. She wasn’t waiting anymore—for anything.
“Damn,” he whispered, holding himself very still inside her as he threaded his fingers through her hair.
She concentrated on breaths. Hers. His. On the tickle of his against her lips. On how short and erratic hers were. On how many there were.
Someone needed to move. Her. Him. Didn’t matter who controlled the intercourse, as long as someone did.
“This doesn’t work without friction,” she whispered as she rolled her hips upward and he tried to pull back. “Nuh-uh. You don’t get to pull away from me.”
He tightened his hold on her hair and let out a strained expulsion of air. “If I don’t, there’s not gonna be a whole lot of friction happening, Dee.”
“So you’ll find some other way to make me happy. Do this now.”
“Disappoint you now? Disappoint you in yet another way?”
She would have rolled her eyes if she’d thought he was joking. Instead, she skimmed her lips aver his, and then tugged the jutting one on the bottom between her teeth.
She pinned her inner knees to his hips and got him moving, though he tried to resist. He was heavier. Stronger.
But her will was greater.
She wedged her knee between their bodies and pried him back, and before he could open his mouth, she shoved him onto his back, only managing because he’d been a bit off-balance.
She straddled him and took him into her body before he could pull away—before he could speak any more excuses.
“Put your hands here.” Not waiting for his compliance, she pressed his palms to her breasts and made him squeeze. “You know what to do. Act like you do. You’ve done this before. What are you so afraid of?”
“Everything.”
Whatever that perfectly mysterious response was supposed to mean, she didn’t further query because he started flicking his thumbs across her nipples, and his expression melted into one of male satisfaction.
Good enough.
She pressed her hands to his chest, pressed her knees to his sides, and closed her eyes to concentrate on the ride. She didn’t generally volunteer to be on top. Wasn’t her thing, and Tito had always known how to satisfy her from whatever position they’d ended up in, but for a change, she didn’t want to be the one left to her partner’s mercy. If she’d learned anything in five years of encounters with men she hadn’t really wanted but who’d competently enough scratched her itches, she’d learned that she could find her pleasure at her own pace.
“Lucky for you,” she said on a gasp as the thick head of him skimmed past her inner erogenous zone. “I don’t need a lot of friction. Pressure can work just as well.”
She found that spot again and swore as he pushed up against it.
So he’s cooperating now?
“Like that?” He eased a hand down from her breast to her hip and his other hand found her ass.
He thrust up, and she dug her fingers deep into her chest.
Oh God.
He stirred himself inside her using her hips like handlebars, and her breath caught in her throat again.
“Right here?” he asked as he pistoned into her again and again, scraping his cock head repeatedly over her G-spot. “That the pressure you like?”
In her head, she clearly meant yes, but what came out of her mouth was a high-pitched squawk.
“Hmm. I don’t think you’ve ever made that sound before.”
She didn’t understand how he could be talking when she was almost certainly falling apart. In fact, his ability to do so made her a little angry.
She clamped down hard around him, meaning to punish him, but instead, triggering the start of her own undoing.
Crap.
He pulled her down against him, chest to chest, and found his friction.
She found a little more of her own by setting her teeth into shoulder, biting a bit harder with each increasingly forceful thrust, with each rasp of his pubic hair against her clit, with every tug of her sensitive nipples against his chest, with each bit of pain from his blunt fingertips on her backside.
“Fuck, Dee. You’re gonna … ”
Didn’t matter what she was going to do to him. She was more concerned about what her body was doing, and how she felt like she was falling again. Pleasure had exploded low down in her core, and it burned through her body like liquid fire.
It was in her fingertips, and in her toes that were curling against his legs. The fire was in her tingling lips and her tight throat.
She couldn’t scream. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything but shudder as he had his release inside her.
He seemed locked in a similar rapture. He didn’t move except to slowly press one hand to the back of her head. His fingers twined in her hair; his soft nudge guided her down to him.
She lay with her face pressed against his neck, mouth open wide, fearing taking a breath.
She feared making even the smallest movement away from him. Her insides were so warm, and her heart bursting with love and fear and too many other things that she wanted to just cling for a while. Wanted to just adore him in every way she could.
He squeezed her around the waist and nuzzled the top of her head with his face. “Stuck with me. I’m not gonna wanna let you leave.”
She closed her mouth to swallow, then dragged her tongue across her dry lips. “Just because of that? We’ve had sex before. Proof is down the hall and in her grandmother’s bed.”
But she knew better. What they’d done had been, somehow, different from all the times before. She felt different, and had treated him differently. She’d taken control.
She’d figured out that she’d had to.
“Tito?”
“You deserve better.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said. A lady like you deserves someone who has his shit together, not a demigod with training wheels.”
“What do you mean a lady like me?”
“You’re perfect.”
She snorted and finall
y allowed herself the roll of her eyes she’d formerly suppressed. “Okay, then.”
“I mean it.”
“Maybe being a demigod makes you delusional. I’m not perfect. I just pretend a lot. I’m just like everyone else.”
“No you’re not. There aren’t that many people who’d endure the shit you have. I don’t mean just with me, but all the chaos going on here. I represent trouble. That’s what you get with me.”
“Somebody has to be here, right?”
“What?”
“You have to have someone. Would you rather have someone else? Why not me?”
“You’d have a lot to endure.”
“I choose to endure.” And endure him.
“Why?”
“Because you’re worth it.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“Do you think I’m worth it?”
“Of course I do. That’s why I tried to leave you alone.”
“How do you know I’m worth the aggravation?”
“Because I just know.”
“Not good enough. That’s bullshit. Give me something real.”
He sighed and twirled a length of her hair around his fingers. She probably looked like a rough-dried mess, but she didn’t care. They’d needed to connect. She could always take another shower.
“Not sure how I can explain without sounding weird and mystical and shit, but I guess considering everything you’ve seen in the past few days, a few more sentences won’t hurt you.”
She kept quiet, not wanting to give him any excuse to hold back his words.
“So much of how I behave,” he said, “is driven by instinct. Just like I know I can change the way I look to make myself fatter or leaner, or shift between cougar and man, I know why I just can’t be with anyone else like this. When I met you, that drive to be with someone kinda clicked on like a coffeemaker that’d been programmed to start brewing at just the right time. I’d never felt anything like that before, not even with my wife, and I didn’t want to believe what that meant. I did eventually, though. That’s why I kept going back early on, and later why I had to make myself stop. You’re the only person I’ll ever be happy with.”
“And you thought the other way around wouldn’t be true, too?”
A blink didn’t make a very encouraging response, but that was all he gave her.
“Tito.” Sighing, she wriggled off the bed, clutching the towel to her chest and shaking her head. “I never thought I would have to fight so hard to get someone to believe that I love them. I’m starting to think you don’t know what that’s supposed to feel like. Or maybe you don’t recognize love when you do feel it.” She stepped into the bathroom to clean herself up again, worrying suddenly about the effectiveness of her new birth control. Apparently, the last had been no match against demigod sperm.
She made a mental note to consult a calendar as soon as she was dressed. As she reached for her discarded washcloth, he said, “People in my life have always had funny ways of showing love.”
He said the words so quietly she couldn’t even be sure he’d meant for her to hear, and the saddest part to her was that he was so earnest.
So broken.
She leaned against the edge of the sink and blew her hair out of her eyes. “What about your son?”
“What about him?”
“Did you know he loved you?”
“Well, yeah. That’s different, though.”
“Not so different, Tito. Love is love. Doesn’t matter what kind. I think sometimes you just don’t want to see what’s there because that’s easiest.”
No more words from him, but she didn’t really expect any.
She nudged the door closed with her foot and turned the water on over her washcloth.
She’d never been afraid of hard work, and Tito was almost certainly the hardest job she’d ever had. She was more convinced than ever before, though, that she had that job because she met every single qualification.
The demigod was slippery, but she was damn good at holding on.
chapter SIXTEEN
Tito sucked some air through his clenched teeth and wondered why he’d needed Ma to tell him that Hannah was pregnant. Her undertones had taken on the hue of Ma’s homemade green chili sauce and she kept performing the telltale flinch similar to someone trying to hold their liquor. Hannah usually didn’t have a problem holding her liquor, even if she did make a ditzy drunk.
He didn’t say anything, though. He just cut his gaze from her to the male Foyes who’d clumped in the reception area of their woodworking business and were all looking at Tito, waiting for him to say some shit.
There was a lot of shit he could say. Too much, maybe. Too much to make sense of at one time—all the knowledge Ma had been protecting him from. The history was there in his brain, but all the nuances and contexts hadn’t quite settled in. His relationship to the Cougars was different. He felt them differently, and maybe they felt him differently, too.
“Talk,” Mason said to Tito.
Ever the alpha.
The phone rang at the front desk. Mason picked up the handset and set it back down in the cradle without answering.
Hannah, sitting in one of the reception chairs, rubbed the bridge of her nose and muttered, “That was probably someone calling about ten-thousand-dollar job.”
Unforgiving stare still on Tito, Mason shrugged.
The phone rang again, and before Mason could touch the handset, December zipped past him and picked up the handset. “Foye Woodworks. I’m so sorry if you just called,” she said into it. “The phone slipped out of my hand. Could I possibly take down your number and call you back? The company is having a meeting.”
She jotted down whatever the person on the other end said, thanked them, promised a callback, and then hung up. Looking at Mason, she sighed. “I don’t know anything about woodwork, but that guy sounded important. Said a lumber mill is closing and asked if you wanted to take a look before they liquidate the odds and ends in the back stock. Said they’d been trying to call you for three days.”
Hannah dropped her hand from her face. “Which mill?”
“Uh.” December squinted at her note. “Morrow.”
Hannah flicked the dregs of her empty water bottle toward the Foyes. “They hoard premium wood. Go the hell up there and get it.”
Mason’s jaw twitched.
“Don’t start that with me. Not in the mood.”
“Obviously.”
Hannah scooted over to the desk and read the message. “And by tomorrow or they’re going to call the next on the list.”
“Can’t really go now, babe,” Sean said. “Kinda busy with stuff. You know, like, that guy Necalli, and Tito’s sudden magical weirdness.”
Tito closed his eyes, but not before seeing December squint at him.
“I don’t feel anything different,” Hannah said. “I’m still connected to all the same parties I was before, but I’m a made Cougar and not a born one. I wouldn’t care if Tito were a chupacabra. What I care about right now is discounted cedar and cherry, because when our household makes more money rather than less, my student loan statements don’t taunt me in my dreams. So, divide and conquer, just like we always do when things around here get intense.”
“That was easier to do,” Hank muttered, “before you and Miles went back to nursing work. We’re understaffed.”
Sean slung an arm around Hannah’s shoulders. “Remember the last time we were understaffed?”
“You mean right after you kidnapped me?”
“Mm-hmm. Business got better when Miles was answering the phone.”
“Pay is better in nursing.” She grimaced. “Or in pretty much anything.”
“Even waitressing?” December asked.
“You don’t want to work for the Foyes, Dee,” Tito said.
“Why wouldn’t she?” Mason asked flatly. He had to know damn well why, and he just wanted Tito articulate all the reasons for entertainment purposes.
“Yes, why wouldn’t I?” December asked. I mean, having someone working here who knows what you all are would make sense. Someone like that can’t be easy to find.”
“Exactly,” Sean said, smirking. “We could train her for the job. She’s used to dealing with assholes all day, anyway. Sure, the paranormal aspects might make the job somewhat hazardous compared to working in a bar in a college town, but at least we’re interesting.”
The “interesting” part was what Tito was worried about. The Foyes had a knack for finding trouble, and trouble had them on speed dial.
“You can’t shelter me, Tito,” she said.
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
“But I know your face and the things it does. When your upper lip starts twitching I know you’re thinking up excuses. Keep them to yourself.”
Sean whistled low. “Mate clap back. Feels like hell, doesn’t it?”
Tito stuffed his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat. Hell was a good word for that particular combination of submission and shame.
“So, anyway, Hannah,” Tito said. “Tell me what we’re dealing with. What did my uncle convey to you?”
“Nice subject change, but I’ll leave that to you and December to argue about later. What I remember was—” She furrowed her brow and looked to Sean. “Wait. I meant what I said. Go get the wood. If you need quick cash, swing by the bank and take a draw from my savings.”
Sean scoffed. “I’m not leaving you.”
“I’m not going anywhere else today. I’m off tonight. Not leaving the ranch.”
“Is that a promise?”
“I shouldn’t have to promise, Sean.”
“I think given the circumstances,” he said with atypical darkness, “I deserve a promise.”
She sucked some air through her teeth. “Sheesh. Okay. Fair. I promise.”
Whether he believed her or not, Sean dropped his hat onto his head, grabbed a pair of Woodworks truck keys off the rack, and plucked December’s message off the desk. “I’ll hook a ranch hand and get them to help load. Call me if shit goes sideways here. I’ll cut and run.”
“We’ll be fine,” Hank said.
“Better be.” Sean left, and everyone turned their attention back to Hannah. Everyone except December, anyway, who folded her arms over her chest, tapped her fingertips against her biceps, and stared at Tito.
