Bittersweet Return (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 6)

by Patricia Watters

  When she said nothing more, because she wanted a little participation from Marc, he said, "Okay, you've got my curiosity."

  "Wolf packs are made up of two parents and their offspring," Kit started in, "but in exceptional cases an unrelated wolf may be adopted into a pack." She glanced at him then, and when he eyed her with suspicion, she said, "You might get a hint where I'm going with this."

  "And I might start talking about muons again," Marc said, breaking eye contact, his way of letting her know he was about to shut the discussion down.

  "Or you might try listening and learning," Kit said, not giving him that chance. He was stuck with her for the better part of two hours, by his own choice, and she intended to take advantage of every minute. "You're a brilliant man, but you don't have a clue about yourself. So back to wolf packs. A dominance hierarchy exists in all packs, and in the Dancing Moon pack, your father and mother are the alpha pair who mate and produce the offspring and direct activities. Your father also reminded you yesterday that none of his pups better cross his mate."

  "Dad's territorial about Mom," Marc admitted. "He's always been that way."

  "And I said all his pups. That includes Adam."

  When Marc shrugged and said nothing, Kit knew she'd gotten at least part of her point across. "Then there is the beta pair who are subordinate to the alpha pair," she said, continuing her analogy, "which would be Adam and Emily, since they're the highest ranking pair among the mature subordinate wolves. And I'm talking about pairs now, not single wolves."

  Marc looked askance at her. "I question if Adam's subordinate."

  Kit returned the glance. "Is he running the ranch?"

  "He probably will one day," Marc said. "Even Ryan doesn't cross Adam."

  "Of course not. Ryan, Jeremy, Josh and Tyler are juveniles who haven't yet secured a position within the pack's hierarchy, and the jockeying around at the dinner table last night was the formation of a hierarchy among them. Ryan had his ears forward, his tail up, and was peeing all over his brothers to claim his position as alpha among the juveniles. He even bared his teeth by sending his brothers away to take care of their horses. It was almost comical."

  "You're missing one from the pack," Marc said.

  "I know, and that's where my analogy falls short," Kit admitted. "You're like an alpha and an omega combined. Omega wolves appear to be mistreated by the other members of the pack, even avoiding them and staying to themselves. They're also the ones who go out on their own to find a mate and breed and become an alpha wolf over their own offspring. But you're not a full omega wolf either, because you challenged Ryan when he was asserting his position at the top of the juveniles, and he backed down."

  "So, where do you fit into the pack?" Marc asked. "You're obviously included."

  Kit shrugged. "I'm the unattached female and it's mating season. Like you said, your brothers are all horny studs who want to get into my tent. Even I knew that. But you can't exclude yourself. You've been trying to get into my tent ever since we were in Belize."

  "I'm different than my brothers," Marc said. "I'm not a ball-busting cowboy with my brains between my legs."

  Kit eyed him with amusement. "Then you're missing something down there? I'd swear I noticed a bulge in your khakis a time or two."

  That got Marc's attention. There was no question his khakis bulged a lot whenever he was around Kit. Still were, but jeans hid it better. "My reasons for getting into your tent are more intellectual than my brothers'," he said. "Their horizons don't go beyond bouncing up and down on bulls."

  "In other words, while you'd be divesting me of my clothes, and breathing in my ear, and preparing me for the big climactic moment, I'd get a comparison between the color of my hair and a good-looking mummy's instead of hearing about how if I stayed for the eight-second ride, I'd be bucking and spinning around so fast it would take the bullfighter to cut me loose."

  Marc didn't know whether to laugh at Kit's humor, or take it to heart. She'd pretty much nailed all of them. Choosing a neutral position, he said, "I can be romantic."

  Kit threw her head back and laughed. "I know, you tried, but comparing me to a mummy didn't work. I tell you what. You studs get together and take measurements and let me know what the results are."

  Marc suspected this was another Kit trap, but decided to stick the tip of his paw in by saying, "I thought ball size didn't matter."

  "It doesn't," Kit replied, "but I'm not talking about the size of your balls."

  "Then length?" Marc wondered about that too. Wally was apparently four inches, so any one of them would beat that by a sizeable amount.

  "Get your brain out from between your legs," Kit said. "I'm talking about height."

  "My brothers are all over six-three," Marc groused. "I'm only six one."

  "Maybe that's my point," Kit said. "I'm not all that tall, and when I kiss a man, I don't want to have to put on toe shoes to reach him. So how far to the cabin?"

  Forty-five minutes later, when they crested the top of the mountain where the trail opened into a meadow, and a small log cabin sat against a backdrop of forest, Marc was still contemplating Kit's remark about wanting a man shorter than his brothers, because she all but told him she wanted to kiss him. Which made him fantasize for the rest of the ride, that maybe Kit was considering taking the relationship a step further—an ordinary one-on-one, male-female relationship that included a whole lot of sex without the complication of being involved. That way, when they finished the exploratory digs, there’d be nothing to prevent them from going their separate ways.

  "So, will we tie up here and walk around," Kit asked, "or ride further?"

  Mark pulled his horse to a halt. "We'll tie up and I'll show you the cabin first, then I'll show you the view. The cabin's nice, and sometimes guests rent it if they don't mind roughing it without electricity or an indoor toilet."

  While eyeing the cabin, Kit said, "With a whole pack of Hansen men and boys on the ranch, has the cabin by any chance been used for other reasons?"

  "With my brothers, that's a given," Marc replied. "As for me, I never dated in high school."

  Kit looked at him, curiously. "I find that surprising. Why not?"

  Marc let out a little short guffaw. "I actually wanted to please my father, and his rules discouraged high school dating. But Adam spent his high school years chasing after Emily, who was in a relationship with a guy who treated her like shit. And Adam was there to help put the pieces of Emily's life back every time she'd had enough, but after things were okay again, Emily always went back to Erik." He couldn't help smiling because Adam had actually been a pretty pathetic guy through it all.

  Kit glanced over at Marc. "That's exactly what I meant when I said you're jealous of Adam for no well-founded reason, and you resent your father because you think he favors Adam."

  "You can't make that claim just because I told you about Emily and Adam."

  "You smiled," Kit said. "It was a dead giveaway."

  "Well, Adam managed to get Emily away from Erik, so I guess he busted up the marriage, which tells you a little about committed relationships."

  "No. It sounds like Adam's a very committed man to have stayed by Emily through all she was going through," Kit said. "You might want to find out what really happened that ended her marriage to Erik and brought Adam and Emily together."

  Marc said nothing, because he couldn't help wondering if there had to be more to it, because Kit was right in one sense. Adam wasn't the kind of guy who'd split up a marriage.

  Kit dismounted. "Well, let's take a look inside the cabin, then you can show me the view."

  After tethering the horses to a pole railing in front of the cabin, Marc took Kit's arm mainly because it gave him a reason to touch her, and he walked her up the steps to the front porch and opened the door. The cabin was clean and neat, so it had been occupied recently, maybe by one of his brothers, but more likely by guests.

  "It's so cozy and cute," Kit exclaimed. "Maybe we could dig up th
e meadow instead of the Indian mound. This cabin still beats a tent in the woods."

  "We?" Marc asked. "Were you meaning to share the cabin?"

  "Not unless you want to sleep on the couch," Kit replied. "But I was thinking more in terms of you pitching your tent where you could see the view you were talking about, and me having this whole place to myself. There are advantages to being a lone wolf. I don't have to put up with growls at night. Wally snored, another little irritation,"

  "I don't snore," Marc said, then realized it sounded like he was trying to one-up Wally.

  Kit eyed him with amusement. "You just scored another point, Hansen. Let's see what the count is. We have, doesn't snore, which is one point, long hair that looks really hot when loose, which is maybe a two-pointer, big balls, which would not exclude you if they were small, but still counts for a little something extra, maybe three points each, and you passed the stripped-to-the-waist test, which is also a three-pointer, but when combined with big balls raises the score to ten. Any tattoos in unusual places?"

  Marc couldn't help glancing down.

  Kit looked at his crotch, then back at him, and said, "Please don't tell me you have a tattoo there. I might have to subtract a couple of points depending on how it’s positioned."

  "It's a small pterodactyl," Marc said. "The tattoo artist was a woman. She talked me into it. But it's not there. It's higher. It only took one needle prick to convince me it wouldn't work where she suggested."

  "Interesting," Kit said. "I'm sorry you backed out. I would like to have seen the finished product in its original spot. If we're talking about a pterodactyl with its wings wrapped around it like it was holding on that would have gotten you a whole lot of points, but a pterodactyl standing on a hairy nest would be kinda cute too."

  "Okay, Korban, I'll give you two choices right now," Marc said. "Either we go in the bedroom and I'll show you where the pterodactyl's supposed to have been and put it where I want it to be, or we'll get out of here and go look at the view."

  "That's kind of a difficult choice," Kit said. "I've always been fascinated by pterodactyls."

  "Fine then." Marc took her by the arm and started toward the bedroom, testing. There was no question he was more than ready to finish the job she'd started.

  Kit stopped and tugged on her arm. "I'm thinking you can show me another time," she said, "Let's go see the view."

  "You're all talk, aren’t you?" Marc said, as they headed across the meadow to where the mountain top crested and dropped away.

  "That's because I like to get a rise out of you," Kit replied.

  "You did," Marc said.

  "That's not the kind of rise I was talking about. I'm trying to get you to understand yourself, and it isn't about where you have tattoos or any of the other things I just pointed out about you. Those are all superficial. And when you get down to it, everything combined only added up to thirteen." Stepping in front of him, so he had to stop, Kit placed her hand over his heart and said, "I'm talking about what's in here, like when you held little Marc and told him about dinosaurs."

  Marc tried to follow her reasoning, but her hand on his chest and her big blue eyes looking up at him as she was saying something about little Marc, scrambled his thoughts. "I don't know what you're getting at," he said, his focus moving to her mouth. Again, her bottom lip caught his attention. He'd tried to ignore it ever since they'd gotten together after they left Belize, but it definitely held his attention now. And there was the tongue, coming out to pass between her lips and leave her mouth shining.

  Kit slipped her arms around his neck, looked up at him and said, "You're a very attractive and interesting man, far more interesting than your brothers, and you memorized a poem for some reason I still haven't figured out but has me wondering a lot of the time, and you held a little boy who was named after you because you're special, yet you left your family because you don't think you belong, and you stayed to yourself through the entire dig in Belize, and I'm trying to find out why."

  Marc put his hands on her waist, and leaning toward her, he said, "Maybe you could put on your toe shoes and make yourself a little taller for starters." He pulled her to him and kissed her long and hard, and she responded by opening her mouth and allowing him access, which he accepted while entangling his tongue with hers and pulling her tighter to him. But as the kiss deepened Kit threaded her fingers in his hair, popping the rubber band, and his hair sprang loose. Letting out a little soft squeal, Kit shoved her fingers into it and bunched it in her fists, then released it and curved her hands tighter around his neck. Then the kiss seemed to move to another level, like she couldn't get enough of him, so Marc opened his mouth wider, and she responded by thrusting her tongue inside and exploring deeper. But when Marc's palm came up to cup her breast, she placed her hand on his arm and pushed against it to move his hand away.

  Raising dewy eyes to meet his gaze, she said, "Sorry, but anything below the neck is reserved for commitment, but that was the best kiss I've had in years, and it just raised your score to twenty."

  "I get the rules," Marc said. Returning his hands to her waist, he bent down and kissed her, and again, she kissed him back, another long, open-mouth kiss that had him curling his hands into fists against her back to keep from reaching around and covering her breasts with them.

  Before he had to fight that almost irresistible urge, Kit broke the kiss and said, in a breathless voice, "I think we've had enough oral exploration for the moment, so show me the view, then we'll need to get back and start mapping things out. I like the idea of being in control of a project."

  Marc knew Kit was talking about the dig, but a small voice inside made him wonder if she might be referring to him too.

  What is it about men with personal baggage that attracts me?

  Not such a small voice, he realized. Kit had been very open about it. Now she was open to kissing him long and hard, and frequently, as long as things stopped at the neck.

  Show me the trail to the spring. I want to take a nice long bath...

  Alone...?

  For now...

  There was no question about her sultry smile that followed. Definitely a promise of something yet to come.

  Deciding to test things while the kiss was still fresh, he said, "What about a temporary committed relationship? If things go right it could lead to something more permanent."

  "Like in, you move into my tent for some really hot sex at the end of the day, and again in the morning to get us started on the job with a lot of energy, and I'll tell your brothers to bug off because I have a mate—well a temporary one, which is where my wolf analogy falls short because wolves mate for life—then after the dig here is over, you'll appraise the situation, and if a temporary committed relationship's not what it's cut out to be you'll head for the jungles of Belize and I'll vow, again, not to get involved with a man with personal baggage."

  "I've never been in a committed relationship," Marc said, in all honesty.

  "I know," Kit replied. "It's kind of scary, isn't it?"

  Marc said nothing because Kit was right.

  Kit pulled the rubber band from her hair, allowing it to flow free, and handed it to Marc, saying, "You'd better band up again or everyone will wonder what happened on our ride."

  Dragging his own hair back, Marc caught it up in the rubber band then combed his fingers into Kit's hair, and said, in a serious voice, "Why is kissing okay? Isn't that kind of a semi-commitment?"

  "It's a preliminary," Kit admitted, "but eventually you run out of breath. It's when the body mapping starts that things wheel out of control, which is why I stopped you before you could get started. You're still in sex mode and I'm into long term and permanent. It's called marriage, which is even scarier than unmarried commitment. So, now that I've laid things out, you should be ready to start digging."

  While dragging Kit's hair back from her face, Marc said, "You need to pull your hair back too. It's distracting when it's like this."

  "I could say
the same for you," Kit said. "When your hair's loose you look pretty primal. It stirs up my basic instincts, like it was when people lived in caves and life was all about having sex, sharing a mastodon bone, and having more sex."

  Marc knew Kit was kidding, but he also suspected there was some truth to what she said, like she was testing to see his reaction. But right now he had only one thing on his mind, and sitting alone in a hot springs pool wasn't likely to fix it. Deciding to test the limits of whatever there was between them, he took her hand and closed his fingers around it, and said, as they started across the meadow to see the view, "Is holding hands allowed?"

  Kit glanced down at their clasped hands, and replied, "I guess it falls within the parameters of what we have going, even though technically, hands are below necks since they're at the ends of arms, which come out of shoulders, which are also below necks."

  Marc looked at Kit in amusement. "What about playing footsie?" he asked, mainly to hear what she would come up with. She was full of surprises, which had him coming back for more.

  "Footsie's fine, but only if you're wearing jeans," Kit said.

  "Okay, I'll bite. Why only jeans?"

  "It's simple," Kit said. "Khakis are loose around the ankles and if we were reclined, and you happen to be kissing me at the same time we're playing footsie, I could get carried away and slide my foot right up your leg and end up playing footsie with a pterodactyl."

  The image of her naked foot sliding up his naked thigh and her toes making contact anywhere in the vicinity of his tattoo definitely activated things more, and even though he knew Kit was teasing, she was also making him want things that took him away from his goal of remaining completely unattached.

  Redirecting his thoughts, he said, "So, what do you think of the view?"

  Kit released his hand and stood at the edge of the rise. While gazing out over the mountains, a slight breeze caught her hair and flipped it around her face. She raised her hand and dragged it away, then glanced over her shoulder at him and said, "The view reminds me of a song."

  Marc walked up and stood behind her. Putting his hands on her shoulders, and looking over the top of her head, he said, "What song?"