by Anna Lowe
She shook her head in a weak no, a last thread of resistance, but all it did was stoke the inner heat.
Mine, her wolf growled and clawed at the last strands of her self-control. Mate.
“Rick,” she whispered.
He shifted slightly, and then it wasn’t just his cheek against hers. It was his lips.
Mine, the human part of her mind echoed. Mate.
Chapter Thirteen
A smart man, Rick figured, would have pulled away and cleared his throat when he realized how close he’d gotten. Said sorry and thanks for the help and see you soon. Because you didn’t lure a woman into your office for perfectly innocent reasons and then start kissing her just out of the blue.
But it wasn’t in him to be that man, not right now. Not with this crazy force field sucking him in. And it wasn’t out of the blue, either. That kiss was years in the making. Years of wishing, wanting, dreaming.
That, and Tina’s ear begged for a kiss. It needed a kiss, the same way she needed to be held and touched and revered. She needed all that as badly as he wanted to provide it. Just like the first time she’d come over with her brother, pretending it was only business, when a man could practically see her soul crying inside.
He blinked and gave his head a little shake, but he still couldn’t see straight. The world was getting blurrier, but this time it wasn’t his eye. It was Tina, turning his world upside down with her magic touch. While everything was vague and distant, she was perfectly in focus. Each strand of her silky hair, the smooth skin of her cheek. The parallel curves of her ear, the bergamot scent that called to him like nectar to a bee.
Something outside was pulsing, too, like the whole house was cheering him on. Saying, This woman needs you. Wants you. Loves you.
Saying, This was meant to be.
He felt it deep in his bones, in his heart.
“Tina,” he whispered and kissed her ear.
Her eyes were closed. Her head tilted toward his, maybe formulating a secret wish.
Tell me, he wanted to say. Tell me your wish, and I will dig to the other end of the earth to fulfill it.
His lips moved right into another kiss, lower this time. Gently, carefully, but another minute of breathing her in and he’d have a hard time stepping on the brakes.
“Tina,” he whispered. “Tell me to stop. Tell me now.”
Her lips quivered, telling him she wanted this, too. To stop pretending and finally, finally dive into the pleasure on the other side of the invisible line they’d been toeing all afternoon.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she breathed, sliding her fingers up and down his arm. “I never wanted you to stop.”
Her eyes were squeezed tight, like maybe if she didn’t look, it would be all right. There it was again, that something holding her back.
And just like that, he was tired of that something, whatever it was. That something had no right coming between them.
He caught her ear between his lips and held it, reveling in her hopeful tremble. Ran his hand through the river of her hair, feeling the silky strands ripple and sway. Leaned deeper, so that his chest touched her shoulder, asking for more. He dipped closer, sliding his lips along her cheek. No way would he let something get in the way of what he wanted, not any more.
She let out a tiny whimper, then pivoted and crushed her mouth to his. Kissed hotter and harder than any woman ever had, grabbing his shirt with both hands. Her kisses were all firm, desperate lips and no tongue, because she wasn’t teasing or seducing or playing coy.
“Rick,” she gasped when she came up for air. “Please don’t let me tell you no. Please…” She looked so hungry, so vulnerable with her lips working helplessly in the air. “I want this. I want you.”
She rose out of the chair and pulled herself against his chest. He held her tightly, as if he were a split second away from tornado impact and had nothing to hang on to but her. Squeezed her against him and made a vow with every thump of his heart. I will never, ever let you go.
He could have held her like that all day, just to make up for lost time, but Tina was a woman possessed. She eased her weight onto the edge of the desk and wound her leg around his waist, shaking with need.
His tongue skimmed the perfect line of her teeth. His lips caught and released hers as a decade of unquenched need blazed high. If other women were water, Tina was champagne, and he could get drunk on her. Already was drunk on her. He nestled closer, pushing his erection along her thigh as she spread her legs wider, guiding him along. Drawing him closer, closer…home.
That’s just what it felt like. Home. He’d been on the ranch for a week, but this was the first time he had that sense of homecoming. Of throwing his bags down, looking around, and wondering why he ever left. Knowing he never wanted to leave again.
“Tina…” he started and immediately forgot what he was going to say.
She tightened her legs around his waist. Let her hands dive under his shirt. Followed the grooves of his ribs, reaching back then pulling forward again. Back and forth, back and forth, until back was all the way around to his backbone and forth breezed along the line of his abs. Her legs rode ever higher and her hands lower, coming tantalizingly close to the top button of his jeans. Everything in him was bulging for her, not just his cock. His chest puffed out, his breath came faster, the blood pulsed thicker in his veins.
“God, Tina,” he said, dipping his mouth to her neck. She tasted just as he remembered her, like cream and honeysuckle laced with the scent of wild bergamot. He nudged closer and she arched into him, hitting every on button in his body. Her skin was impossibly soft under his chin, and he had to scrape his jaw along it just for the exhilarating feel of rough against smooth. Man on woman. Hot against hot.
Her arms slid around his ribs and pulled him flush against her chest. Amazing how a woman who was all feminine lines and curves could turn on the muscle when the need arose.
The need for him.
“Tina.” He dragged himself away to look her square in the eye. “Be sure.”
His heart thumped as she looked up at him with eyes that were wide and dark. A little feral, even.
“I’m sure.” She said it so fiercely, it was almost a declaration. A dare. The lonely princess locked in a tower was gone; this was the powerful queen who would absolutely, positively, have her way.
A second later, she was back to princess again, and he was the knight who’d just broken into the tower. She plastered herself against him and whispered again and again, “I missed you so much. So much…”
Funny, he could have said the same thing.
Her fingers got to work on the buttons of his shirt, and his body screamed for more. A wild urge bowled into him—to sweep an arm over the desk, shove everything aside, and lay her back on it. To come down over her, shred the cotton of her top and bury himself inside her, again and again. An urge that could have jumped over to him from Tina, given the way she leaned back, pulling him with her.
His cock was all for it. He’d strip her, taste her, plunge inside. Howl with pleasure and listen to her moan his name. Give himself totally over to the primal need chanting inside. Take. Claim. Possess. He’d—
Whoa. Where the hell did that raging animal come from? He pulled on his inner reins. First of all, he was going to make love to his princess, not fuck her like a wild beast. Second, he was not going to take her here on Henry’s desk, much as the idea appealed. He’d been tiptoeing around the ghosts of the Seymours ever since he’d returned, and though something told him they’d approve of the idea of him and Tina together, he was pretty sure they’d be thinking more along the lines of holding hands on the porch swing, not screwing on Henry’s desk.
The porch swing scenario, he’d save for later. Much later. Right now, their bodies needed more. A hell of a lot more.
“Tina.” He tugged her up.
She blinked as he ran his thumbs along her jawline, keeping close. Making sure this wasn’t no, but wait.
“I want
this,” he said, so loud it echoed down the hall. “I want you. But here…isn’t right.”
She turned her hungry gaze from him to the black-and-white portraits hung along the walls. “Where, then?” The urgency in her voice sent a riptide through his bones.
He settled her on her feet, grabbed her hand, and led her out the door. “Follow me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Tina went without question, without doubt. She’d had enough denying herself. Enough uncertainty, at least for one day.
That, and her wolf was urging her on like a whole stadium of rabid fans cheering for a home run. With sounds like that filling her ears, she couldn’t think of anything but the here and now. The him.
Their footsteps echoed in the hallway, and there it was again, that emptiness, begging to be filled.
Rick didn’t take her to the guest bedroom or the living room with its shiny stand-up piano and comfy couch that would have served just fine for what she had in mind. He took her straight out the front door and made a beeline for the barn.
She dug her heels in. “Uh…Rick?”
He turned and it was there in his face: the desire. The urgency. The hunger. “Believe me, I am not taking you to the hayloft.” He grinned, and a little bit of the devil crept into his face. “Or the back seat of a car.”
And zing—another shot of lust bolted through her, because they had done it in the back seat of a car when they were teens. Just the memory of it was better than any of the sex she’d had with any other man in all the intervening years. She and Rick had also done it in the hayloft, and best of all, that time out in Spring Hollow, under the stars. He had a way of picking offbeat places to make love to her in, she had to give him that. But the barn?
He tugged her hand. “You’ll see.”
She wanted to see. See and touch and taste and feel him moving inside her.
His fingers tightened again, and they were off. Around the corner of the barn, up a set of exterior stairs, and in through a door at attic level. Through another door and—
She caught her breath as Rick pushed it open, revealing a gleaming white-walled apartment built under the eaves. An open-plan, studio apartment where earth-toned Mexican tiles and diamond-patterned Navajo rugs led to a huge bed with yellow sheets. The pitched roof of the barn peaked high in the middle and sloped down on the sides, framing a heart-stopping view of the desert between the A-shape of its rough-hewn beams.
“What…” She trailed off.
“The Seymours had the idea to make a little money on the side with a vacation place. You know, weekend ranch getaways for city types? But it never really took off.”
She couldn’t imagine why. Though, right now, she didn’t much care.
“It didn’t feel right to move in to the house, so…” He trailed off, looking around the room.
She followed his gaze. He’d personalized the space with a picture of his parents smiling over a tiny bundle that must have been baby Rick, once upon a time. That and a picture of him and his ever-smiling Dad overlooking the paddocks. Not a single baseball shot, not a framed uniform in sight.
She pulled him into another hard kiss. This man was the real thing. Pro baseball hadn’t taken the humble out of the farm boy. But man, was she glad he hadn’t moved back in to the bunkhouse his family used to share with Dale’s. This was much, much better.
He wrapped his arms around her, held her close, and nosed her ear, sending tingles up and down her spine.
Closer, her wolf hummed. Need him closer.
Damn beast. How close can this man come?
Inside, the wolf yowled. Deep, deep inside.
And there she went again, her inner temperature soaring off the charts.
“You don’t have a three-date rule, do you?” he chuckled, sliding a hand inside her shirt.
She laughed. A wolf with a three-date rule? “No.”
“Good.” He smiled, and she just about melted.
“Don’t stop, Rick.” She dipped her thumbs inside the front of his jeans, aching to dig deeper. “I want you to keep going.”
He raised one perfect eyebrow. Dark and dashing, that’s what he was, like a Spanish Don. A conquistador, all cleaned up and ready to live a quieter life. “Keep going until…?”
The tease. Well, two could play at that game.
“Until I beg,” she said, popping the button of his Levi’s.
“For what?” he murmured. His eyes were hooded, his chin set hard.
“For more. And more. And more.” She slid the zipper down slowly, stopping to punctuate every word. “I want you to touch me.” She slid her hands around his waist and snuck them in the back. “Taste me. Fill me.”
His eyes shone, his fingers flexed over her waist. The tease was gone, replaced by a very hungry cowboy. “Tina…”
She stepped backward toward the bed. “Just do it, cowboy.”
“It?”
“Me. Do me.”
He lowered her to the bed with a smile that could have stopped traffic in downtown Phoenix. Make that one of those freeways in LA that Californians spent half their lives commuting along. The minute she sank into the mattress, he went back to work on her neck. Kissing. Nipping. Driving her higher and higher.
She turned her ear to the bedding to give him better access to the left side of her neck, and just like a true wolf, he went right for the nook under her chin where her pulse beat, hard and thick. As if something instinctual drew him there.
Bite me. Take me. Make me yours, her soul sang.
He sucked in the hollow, then nipped the skin, and her whole body jerked in delight. Then he was back at her mouth with a kiss that was five levels hotter and harder than before, giving his passion free rein.
She found the hem of his shirt and worked it up his body, inch by luscious inch, enjoying the ride. Her fingers had to spread wider and wider as they slid upward, following the vee of his torso up and up and up. Pausing at his nipples, rubbing them with her thumbs. Tweaking the tiny nubs, tracing the flat expanse of his chest.
He sucked in a sharp breath and closed his eyes as she let her fingers wander over the fine topography of his chest. The wide fields of his pecs, the shallow valley in between. The layers of muscle stacked on each other like so many intersecting planes.
God, the boy next door had done a lot of growing since the last time they’d met.
“Nice,” she breathed. “Very nice. You been doing some cattle-lifting on the side?”
He flashed another panty-melting smile before ducking the rest of the way out of his shirt. “Just the usual workout. Keeps me sane.”
Sane. Right. He was driving her out of her mind.
She tossed the shirt aside. Their fingers tangoed briefly until she slid free to trace the taut curve of his rear. More muscle. More power. His erection was hard against her stomach, begging for release.
“Too many clothes,” she murmured, tugging at his jeans.
“Way too many,” he agreed, working the top button of her blouse.
He didn’t get far, though, before she slid a hand inside his jeans and made his whole body go stiff.
Stiffer, her wolf corrected. Very nicely stiff.
Gingerly, her fingers explored their prize, wiggling the jeans away. Rick went stone-still except for the ripple that went through his back.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” she teased.
His next breath was a heavy huff, his voice a groan. “Don’t tell me I have to explain.”
She pulled his boxers over the hard ridge then pushed them away and kicked them over the side of the bed. “I think I can figure this out.”
He laughed, but it was a choked, throaty sound. “I’m sure you can.”
“Remember our first time?” She ran both hands over his hard length.
He chuckled, and somehow, she’d never felt closer to him than right then. “Like I’d ever forget.”
She smiled, because she really had needed to figure it out, their very first time. A couple of br
eathless teens sneaking off, eager to go all the way. She’d had to figure out how tightly to hold him, how fast to slide. When to give and when to take.
This time around, she was guided by experience and abundant tactile clues. His thick, pulsing shaft. The moisture building at the cleft in the velvety tip. She laced her fingers together and cupped him that way, sliding until she reached the thatch of dark curls signaling the end of the ride, then gliding back up. Up, up, up over the length of him, until she was teasing the tip again, tugging the foreskin. He lay suspended over her with his biceps bulging, his eyes closed like a man listening to a faraway tune. Then his eyes popped open, showing sheer, primal need.
“Too many clothes,” he mumbled, eyeing her like a pirate who’d been away from shore for far too long.
He kissed her then pulled away, kneeling between her legs. His eyes grazed over her, spread out on the bed before him.
“Too many clothes,” he repeated in a voice gone low and gritty.
It was a quiet order, because he didn’t move. His eyes focused on the top button of her shirt.
Too many clothes.
Something in her purred. A man who knew what he wanted. A man with a soft touch but firm demands who knew just how to make her want to give, give, and give.
She slid her hands along her body, pretending they were his until she found the top button and watched his eyes flash with commands.
That one, his eyes said.
She slid the button through the slot and waited, barely breathing.
The next one.
She popped it open, revealing the top edge of her bra.
His eyes went darker. Next.
She almost wished she’d worn that calico dress she had, the one with a tight row of buttons. Dozens of them, side by side, just to prolong this pleasure.
One more.
An alpha, through and through. Too bad he wasn’t a wolf.
But right now, not even that mattered. Just the unbearable hunger that only this man could quench. She popped the button then wiggled down the mattress, just far enough along to reach his cock with her free hand.
