by Anne Marsh
And they should talk, if only so she could give him a piece of her mind.
“If those animals weren’t just wolves, what were they?”
“Shug, you know what I am.”
“A pain in my ass,” she grumbled. Her key missed the lock. Not because her hands were shaking, but because he made her hyperaware of her body. His scent filled the air around her, sage and smoky, smelling a thousand times better than the expensive men’s colognes that surrounded her at work. She’d bet Luc didn’t use anything but soap, which meant the scent was one hundred percent him. Heat from his body radiated outwards, crowding her. Something else he’d done on purpose, because Luc was always, always aware of where he was. He’d wanted her to feel him in her space.
“Back off,” she snapped. She stabbed at the keyhole again, finally getting the key in the little ornamental lock, and twisted.
“We already established you don’ get to give the orders in this relationship.”
His thighs slammed up against the back of hers, leaving her with six foot-plus of hot, aroused male literally riding her ass. Because, damn it, she could feel his erection pressing into her butt. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he still got underneath her skin, still got her wet ten years later.
“You still don’ believe in werewolves?”
2
Las Vegas, Ten years ago…
Real life didn’t come with movie moments. Still, Vegas at night was damned exciting and she had a good imagination. Almost good enough to create the perfect Tinsel Town scenario from her girls’ night out on the Strip. She’d stayed in touch with these four women after graduating from law school, although they hadn’t seen each other much in those two years. They all had careers to jumpstart, judges to clerk for, senior partners to appease. Still, when Mary Ellen had announced her surprise engagement, they’d gone all out, booking a penthouse suite in Vegas and planning two nights of bachelorette fun to commemorate the occasion. If their lives had been a movie, this was the moment where things would have taken a funny turn or they’d have uncovered a terrorist plot that required their efforts to foil or…something.
Instead, they were tying one on and vying to see who had the worst senior law partner horror story.
They’d arranged to meet at one of the Strip’s hottest new it spots, an ice bar. Gianna wasn’t sure what the appeal was of sitting around on blocks of ice, but she’d agreed because it wasn’t her weekend. If Mary Ellen wanted to celebrate in an igloo, then that’s what they’d do.
When Gianna rolled through the entrance of the bar, Trish had already copped a prime spot at the bar itself, saving Gianna the barstool on the end closest to the door. Wrapped up in a borrowed synthetic fur, she nursed her vodka in an ice-cold flute while the girls compared notes about their runs on the slot machines and club plans for what remained of the night. Her drink was the good shit, which made the alcohol both tasteless and dangerous. Each swallow went down easy, hit her stomach and fired up her blood.
Her girlfriends giggled beside her, banging back their shots. Trish’s bridesmaid tiara was askew. Drinking and dancing was a fine way to celebrate Mary Ellen’s last week of bachelorette-dom (was that even a word?) and Gianna was glad she’d let them talk her into coming. Never mind that she’d just finished an eighty-hour workweek before hopping the midnight flight to Vegas. She was here. Her black cocktail dress was Macy’s finest, from the designer department, and she had a pair of Manolos to kill for. Eighty hours of lawyering for an L.A. firm was finally paying off.
She banged her empty glass back onto the bar, which appeared to be an enormous block of ice. Each breath she took puffed out in a little cloud of white, making the fur coat loaner a nice touch. She ran her fingers through the fur, letting the silky strands trickle over her palm. Imagined lying on that coat, naked…
Yeah. She was also in danger of fucking drifting off at the bar, but that could have been the vodka and tonics. Or not enough sleep. Three years of law school followed by a year of clerking. She hadn’t slept more than six hours a night in years.
Vegas was full of people. Although according to her phone they’d reached the wee hours of the morning, the party was just getting started. Thousands of people crisscrossed the casino floor, lining up for the nightclubs and bars, plugging their paychecks into the slot machines. The scene was cheerful and sad at the same time. She might be sitting next to her girlfriends, but they were already moving on. Getting married and settling down and she…was working. She wanted the career, the security of a regular paycheck and knowing she was making a contribution. She’d heard the lawyer jokes, but the law was what kept everything—including this Vegas ice bar—working. People needed to know what they could and couldn’t do. What was off-limits and what crossed the line.
Rules mattered and she knew that better than anyone.
She had no idea why she looked up or where the sensual prickle of awareness came from, a shiver sweeping across her skin that had nothing whatsoever to do with her ice throne.
He leaned against the ice wall, staring at her. He was gorgeous in a raw, brutal way. Not a pretty boy like so many of the men knocking back drinks all around her, but rough around the edges in the same way his faded blue jeans were white at the seams on his thighs. He wore black motorcycle boots and a dark T-shirt beneath a black leather jacket. A fantasy of him riding through the desert hit her like a visceral punch in the gut. He radiated caged energy and she was suddenly desperate to run her hands over all that sun-bronzed skin.
She didn’t do bad boys. Ever. And this man, with his dark hair and darker eyes, took bad boy to a whole new level. He watched her, hands loose on his thighs, and she stared back. She’d bet he had strong hands to go with the rest of his delicious package and finding out firsthand for herself would be crazy. He didn’t fit in her new life, a life she’d sworn she’d never do anything to risk. No moment of fun was worth that risk. A shiver worked itself up from somewhere near her toes, tightening her nipples. And not from the cold.
Nope. She wasn’t cold at all, not looking at Mr. Tall, Dark and Bad Idea.
The surge of arousal had her squirming on her barstool. Which was stupid. It was ridiculous to be aroused by a stranger who couldn’t even be bothered to come over and say hello.
“Someone’s looking at you.” The bride-to-be nudged her.
Gianna took the new drink the bartender offered with a smile of thanks and then pulled her borrowed wrap a little closer. The faux fur rubbed against her skin, teasing nerve endings awake. What would the real thing feel like? Not dead and made into a coat, but on the living, breathing animal? An image of a wolf flashed through her head.
She tore her gaze away from the man holding up the wall and his hard-eyed gazed. Jesus. He could at least smile. Smiling was in the dating rulebook somewhere. She might be in a dating desert herself right now, but she was positive of that much.
“He could be looking at you.”
Mary Ellen snorted and waved her ring hand in the air. “I’m off the market. You’re not—and you’re definitely the woman he’s watching.”
“Creepy.” Don’t look. Don’t—but it was like the connection between them was something tangible. She snuck a second glance (real sophisticated) and he was still there. Heat followed arousal until she was goddamned melting. At twenty-two, menopause was supposed to be at least twenty years in her future and this was an ice bar. With furs.
Mr. Tall, Dark and Bad Idea shoved off the wall.
“He’s making a move,” her friend singsonged in her ear.
“And I’m out of here. Consider my eighty-hour workweek officially caught up with me. I’m going to bed.” She tossed some bills on the bar, slid off her stool and bee-lined for the door.
“Honey—he looks like a hunter. Just don’t run too fast.” Happy laughter followed her. She waved and walked faster. She didn’t see her watcher when she stepped outside of the ice bar, but she could feel him on her skin. A delicious sense of anticipation swept
through her, of playing a game she didn’t know the rules to.
But he did.
***
Oui. He’d stopped and looked.
Stared.
There was no dressing up his reaction and Luc had never dressed things up, not to himself. He’d been headed past the bar—some kind of froufrou place where people paid good money to freeze and do a fancy imitation of Siberia—when a feminine scent had tugged at his senses. Heat crawled through him. Arousal. Possession. He almost checked the night sky for a goddamned blue moon, but he was inside and the only sky here was artificial.
Ice princess sat at the bar, wrapped up in furs and a slinky black cocktail dress that hugged her breasts and her waist. Her shoes had a wicked heel, pretty as sin, and he’d enjoy every minute of her digging those wicked spikes into his back—just as soon as he caught her. It was damned certain she couldn’t run fast, not in those shoes.
So he watched for a bit, while she pretended she hadn’t noticed him, and her friends teased her some. Eventually, she left the ice bar, shedding her faux fur wrap at the door. The human bar scene didn’t do it for him, not the way Vegas served it up. He liked a whiskey, liked to kick back with his boys, but the frenetic energy here didn’t appeal to him any more than the humans wrapped up in fake animal skins did, so unaware that the real deal was impossibly close to them.
Despite the incessant din of people talking, music blaring, and the never-ending sound of the slot machines, he easily made out the tap-tap-tap of her heels hitting the casino floor. Falling in behind her was the work of a minute. Now that he had her scent, he wouldn’t, couldn’t, lose her. He had no idea why she mattered so goddamned much to him, but for her he’d make the time and he’d follow.
Hunt.
As if she sensed him on her heels, she whipped through the too loud, too bright casino floor. Ducked behind first one blaring bank of machines and then another, weaving in and out of the crowds.
Eventually, she slipped outside into the faux Italian gardens of the casino. Although it was summertime in the desert, the evenings were cool. Heat soaked into him from the sun-warmed pavement. Everywhere he looked, there were fountains and more lights, but not as many as inside. He’d come to Vegas because he had investment business to take care of, but this was personal.
She darted through the shrubberies and this time he knew he heard a giggle. She knew he was there, knew he was coming for her. The wolf yipped happily. She was playing with them. He prowled after her, closing in but careful not to end the chase too soon. Fuck, the wolf loved this game. The man sure as hell didn’t mind either.
Not at all. He’d chase her. Catch her. Take her. Oui. He was no gentleman—but he was also more than his wolf. He made a brief detour to score a bottle of champagne, vintage stuff from Tuileries. He’d been in France when the vintner had laid down these original bottles.
What he wanted was to enjoy her and then move on. Vegas was a quick pit stop in his life, not a turning point. When he looked up, however, Fate had her own laugh at his expense. Fuck, but he should have listened to his instincts. The night sky was all lit up with Vegas bling, but the moon shone blue. The pretty blue rays lit his female up, centuries of living as a werewolf paying off in one cosmic here-she-is moment. None of his Pack had found Blue Moon mates in centuries of looking and his being the first was all kinds of wrong. Wrong time, wrong place.
Right woman.
His dick was iron-hard, his zipper biting into his flesh. Oui. His brothers would give him shit. Her husky laugh rang out from somewhere nearby and what others thought no longer mattered.
She ran, picking a path that took them nearer the animal enclosures where the casino kept exotic wildlife, and he followed, until she was breathless, leaning against a marble statue of some Greek god to catch her breath. Her breasts pushed against the front of her dress, spilling over the top. His world narrowed to the possibility of touching her. Moving swiftly, he ate up the distance between them, setting a hand on her hip and tugging her forward until they were sealed together.
“Caught you,” he growled against her throat.
“That’s a new one.” Laughter filled her voice, but she didn’t pull away. She was too tipsy, too giddy from her flight and his pursuit. His. Christ, he shouldn’t do this, but he’d been so alone for so long. How could he resist?
“Have a drink with me.” A statement and not a question. He was crap at these dating rituals. The wolf scented her readiness, her sweet, wet heat, and ached to ease the hem of her cocktail up and her panties down.
“Sure.” She leaned back into the god’s embrace and grinned at him. “You got a name?”
“Luc.” He pressed the chilled bottle against heated skin of her throat, drew it down the bare slope of her breasts. Her breath caught.
“You’re wicked,” she breathed, but her words weren’t a complaint. Maybe, with Luc, she’d be happy to be bad.
A quick scan of his surroundings turned up no humans. Only beasts—lions. A tiger. His kind. The casino sold tickets, inviting people to queue up to parade past the glass enclosures. Forcing back the surge of anger at seeing his kind locked up, caged for entertainment, he worked the lock—because a man learned how to do these things in hundreds of years—and got her inside. The zoo was closed, leaving them alone. Animals paced up and down the length of their cages, brushing against the glass walls that separated their small spaces from the greater freedom of Vegas.
“They’re beautiful.” She pressed her fingers pressed against the glass, tracing patterns he couldn’t see. “But…”
While she figured out the other half to her sentence, he opened the champagne and offered her the bottle. She took it, pulling her fingers away from the glass to wrap them around the slender glass neck.
“They’re sad, aren’t they? All alone.”
“They need to run,” he agreed. She was sensitive. She understood instinctively how the casino’s caged beasts felt…would she understand him as well? He stepped in and then he kissed her. Okay, he fucking devoured her. He slanted his mouth over hers, desperate for the taste of her, pushing his tongue against the closed seam of her lips. She opened with a husky moan and he thrust inside. She was wet and hot and she drove him crazy. He fed her champagne in between kisses, pressing the mouth of the bottle against her lips.
“This dress go in a washin’ machine, shug?”
She laughed, a low, husky sound that did things to his dick that were positively illegal. Or downright heavenly, depending on how his night ended. “You’d do better to ask me if I care. You do whatever you want to this dress as long as I’m still decent to walk across the casino floor.”
That sounded like permission to him. Pressing her back against the cool glass, he upended the champagne, pouring the pale liquid down her body, over those pretty breasts and her stomach. Lower.
“Hold the bottle,” he demanded roughly.
“Luc.” His name was part shiver, part moan, but she did what he asked. Her fingers closed around the bottle and he got to work, tugging her hem up.
“Keep your dress up.”
She hesitated, but then she did it and hell…those were the prettiest panties he’d ever seen. A teeny-tiny scrap of something silky with rows of soft ruffles over her center. He reached up and guided her hand, upending the bottle so the champagne hit her right where she burned.
He leaned in and kissed her on her clit through the damp silk. She muffled her shriek with the back of her hand, but he didn’t want her holding back. Not with him.
“Cold,” she sighed.
“Not for long.” Not if he did this right. He wanted to mark her in ways both human and beast, wanted to line up with her in front of a preacher and give her all the words he’d never dreamed of speaking. His. Blue moon or no blue moon, she’d be his—and he’d be hers. Part of him recognized that she wasn’t Fate’s party favor. He had to earn her, not take.
“Marry me,” she said, like she’d read his mind. “And you can have whatever you wan�
� from me.”
And he’d thought about it, been so tempted to let her sweep him off to one of the many twenty-four hour chapels dotting Vegas. Instead, he’d carried her back to her hotel suite and they’d…had sex. Holy. Jesus. The way he’d stripped her down to her skin and laid her out on the bed. His mouth finishing her while he fucked her with his fingers. Strong hands flipping her over, baring her neck and biting, the erotic sting sending her over the edge again as he took her from behind. A shared shower that had heated her right back up again…
Then he’d slipped out of her bed and gone back to the bayou, because that way she was free to go about her own life. And if he’d wondered how she could have filled up the last ten years, if those years had been an empty hole for him, that was his problem. Not hers. He was an animal at heart and, even then, he’d known she deserved better.
***
Ten years was plenty of water under the bridge. He’d walked. She’d run. And now…he wasn’t sure how to get their relationship back on track or if she’d even consider it. Despite her encounter with the wolf pack, Gianna didn’t seem overly shaken. She slid her heels off right by the front door, like stepping on the clean floor with her outdoor wear was sacrosanct. Naturally, that had Luc looking down at his own shitkickers. Hell, he should probably do the same thing. His rubber soles and black leather weren’t the pretty bits Gianna had been sporting, but it wasn’t like he was housebroken, so he left them on. Since it was hard to be the big, scary Alpha in sock feet, she’d have to deal with dirty floors.
She didn’t seem to notice, though, picking up her heels like they were her babies, turning them over and inspecting them. He had no idea for what. Dirt? Blood? Wolf parts?
