And it didn’t matter what poor old Tom had done or not done. Marchant had been hired as caretaker after his time and he was completely responsible for repairs. The first thing he should have done when he was hired was to bring the place up to an acceptable condition.
The sheriff’s lips were tight with anger by the time she’d finished telling him about Marchant.
“I’ll check in to it, you may be sure, Ms. Hood,” he said grimly. Getting up, he set his glass in the kitchen sink and thanked her.
“Stella,” she corrected him, following him to the door. “Do you think he could be charged with something?”
He shook his head slightly in disgust. “Yes. It ain’t likely to help you recover what he defrauded you and your family out of, unfortunately, but he can be charged.” He shrugged. “And fined and maybe you’ll see a little bit of your money recovered.”
“But probably not,” Stella said glumly. “Well … thanks for at least listening, Sheriff. You’re a very good listener.”
“Rafe,” he corrected her, studying her face for a long, long moment, something in his gaze that made her abruptly as jittery as a cat on a hot tin roof. “No problem.”
Stella felt her heart trip over itself. “I’m sorry. I guess I …. I didn’t mean to talk your ear off and bore you to death,” she said a little breathlessly.
The truth was, she wasn’t used to being alone as much as she had been since she’d arrived at the cottage. She was hungry for someone to talk to.
And beyond that she talked—a lot—when she was nervous and this man made her very nervous.
She really, really hoped she hadn’t cured him of any interest in her!
His gaze moved over her face. “I wasn’t bored, Cher. The truth is I’d like nothing better than to spend all day listening … and other things.” He moved closer, tucked a thick digit beneath her chin and tilted her face up. “The truth is, I’ve got designs on you, Stella Hood, and if you stick around in my neck of the woods long, I’m going to be delving very deeply into you. So fly away home, Little Red, if you know what’s good for you. Otherwise—if you stay—I’m going to figure you’re as interested in getting to know me better as I am you.”
Chapter Three
Whatever he said was lost in translation. Heat exploded inside of her, surged into her brain, and from there to her loins. Her brains dissolved into a sparking puddle of misfiring synapses, leaving nothing intact but the primitive part of the brain. She’d been ripe for him since their first encounter, instantly felt a magnetic pull that seemed to form an invisible tether.
There was just something about him that made her feel—primal—so needy she lost her mind and had to rely entirely on the instincts that were screaming in her head—hump him! Hump him! Crawl all over this deliciously hot male while you’ve got the chance, Stella, or you’ll never forgive yourself!
She still thought she might have hung on to a little self-control if he hadn’t decided to move in closer, hadn’t brushed the heated surface of his lips across hers, released a heavy sigh that enveloped her in his heady scent.
She didn’t really know what happened after that. One moment she was holding her breath, waiting for his next move, and the next the two of them were on the floor tearing at one another’s clothes like both of them were on fire and dedicated to removing flammables as quickly as possible.
They both seemed to reach the same conclusion at the same time—removal was just too complicated at the moment and the little flesh they’d unveiled was sufficient.
Rafe who’d been kneeling over her, straddling her thighs, discarded his now button-less shirt and dove for her breasts. For several moments, she couldn’t decided whether she was more pained or enthralled when he scoured her from neck to breastbone with his whiskers, but the moment he managed to unearth one entire breast and clamped onto the nipple she was totally won over.
An electric current zigzagged through her from the nipple he was gnawing on down through her belly and set her genitals on fire. Heated liquid flooded the region and overflowed into the panties she was still wearing. Her lungs went limp, lost all their starch so that she had to struggle to fill them. She huffed and she puffed and her head swam until she was thoroughly disoriented.
Then he started on the other nipple.
She realized at that moment that she’d been raking her nails over his head and across his shoulders and back. He shuddered when she stopped raking and dug the nails in, directing her attention to the nails and explaining why her fingertips were throbbing.
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Sorry. Sorry!”
He paused in his feeding frenzy and lifted his head, stared at her blankly for a moment and dove toward her throat.
The ‘love bite’ he placed along the column of her neck stung enough to jolt her into making an aborted attempt to rise—aborted because he was planted firmly on top of her and there was no budging him.
Not that she wanted to.
He soothed the sting with his tongue and lips and moved to her mouth.
She wanted that kiss.
She desperately wanted to feel his lips against hers, to taste him as he invaded the sensitive cavern with his tongue.
But the muscles along her channel were convulsing so hard in search of six inches of meat that her belly was cramping.
Penetration goddamn it!
She kissed him back as he kissed her deeply, satisfyingly, stroked her hands over him in encouragement and then in search of the piece of meat she needed.
If he hadn’t been hunched over her she didn’t think she would’ve been able to get her hands on it. She did manage to grab the head through his trousers, however, and that instantly got his undivided attention.
He broke the kiss and reared upward, stared down at her for a split second and then unsheathed the thing—the monster—she had by the head.
She gaped at it, too stunned to react while he tore at the zipper of her pants and yanked both jeans and panties down to her knees.
She’d just sucked in a breath to voice her doubts when he dove over her again, brushed her hand away and tucked the head between her clenched thighs.
Well, bound. He hadn’t pushed her pants down far enough to release her. He seemed to realize that about the same time she did and reared upward again to yank her jeans and panties down to her ankles.
Her knees folded outward like a lotus blossom.
Her feet were still tethered and while she was focused on fighting free, Rafe was focused on stuffing his anaconda into her jade gate.
She felt the pull of sensitive skin as her body struggled to accommodate something that badly needed lubrication even to attempt a breach—a lot of lubrication! But whereas she’d been hydroplaning across the floor on the fluids her body had wept for him only moments earlier, one look at the job ahead was sufficient to dry her up like the Mohave desert.
Rafe seemed inclined to rear upward again to study the problem, but she forestalled him by curling her arms and legs around him and tugging until he dove for her mouth again.
A kiss was all it took to stir everything up again. He kissed and pumped his hips until he had the head firmly planted and then broke the kiss for a gulp of air, gripped her hips to keep from shoving her into the kitchen and stabbed her with a man stick that felt like a javelin.
It was deeply gratifying to feel her flesh engulfing his, though. The weeping walls of her channel rippled with delight at the friction of his flesh as he pushed through her channel and hit bottom and then withdrew. Tension stirred within her with the first pass. As he set a frantic rhythm that delightful tension built swiftly, climbing so high so fast that the explosion when she hit her peak sucked the wind from her lungs, left her gasping hoarsely for many moments. For an endless time, she was encased in the pulsing bubble of rapture, cut off from everything. And then awareness of her partner created a fresh riptide of ecstasy as she felt his body convulse in pleasure.
It was oddly gratifying, thrilling in an indescr
ibable way to feel his release, to feel the heat as his body expelled his seed and it washed her womb.
Until it abruptly occurred to her that she shouldn’t be feeling his seed. There should’ve been an overcoat.
Oh fuck!
Her mind was just so much mush after what she’d just experienced, though. She had no idea what day it was let alone the last time she’d thought to take her damned pill!
It was a struggle in that moment even to care. Somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, she knew it was damned important, but she just couldn’t summon the energy to get too excited about it.
He nuzzled his face against her neck, sucking lightly at the place where he’d nicked her with his teeth. It sent tingling warmth through her, stirred dead meat to life.
“Just so you know … You’re my woman now,” he growled, lifting his head to give her a stern look.
How damned archaic! Stella blinked at him, felt her jaw go slack.
What an absolutely delightful, archaic man!
He leaned down and placed a smacking kiss on her lips and then bounded up in some sort of karate/gymnastic move that brought him to his feet.
He stared down at her possessively while he straightened his clothing.
Feeling strangely put out, uncomfortable and embarrassed, Stella sat up and looked around a little vaguely for the clothing he’d pulled off of her.
There was a lot of moisture in her crouch area—rapidly cooling—and she did not want to pull her pants up. Only one foot was still tangled in the fabric, though, and she simply shoved it off.
He helped her to her feet when he saw she was struggling to get up.
She stared at him uncertainly.
He frowned but pulled her close. “Don’t over think it, cher. It ain’t that complicated,” he said gruffly.
She was still trying to decide what the hell he meant by that when he strode out of her cabin and shut the door firmly behind him.
Chapter Four
Uneasiness from the expression he’d seen on Stella’s face was already beginning to churn in Rafe’s gut as he left.
Was he moving too fast?
Or was it something else?
He did his best to dismiss it, but it nagged at him as he retraced his steps from her cabin to his patrol car.
It had been good, he told himself, way better than just good, actually. It had been beyond anything he’d expected and he’d known that there would be fireworks when he couldn’t get within sniffing distance of her without getting an erection hard enough to drive nails with.
And he was in no doubt that he had the same effect on her.
True, she seemed to have gone out of her way to avoid him since that first time, but he knew she was just as keenly aware of him because she went out of her way to avoid him.
He also knew it wasn’t because she was repulsed by him.
He could smell her response to his pheromones any time she was in his vicinity.
So why had she looked … panicky? Upset?
Try though he might he couldn’t recall anything about the encounter to explain that.
She’d responded to him beyond his wildest dreams.
His back and shoulders were still stinging from the rake of her nails when he got dressed.
But that had been passion inspired, he was certain.
He would have smelled fear if she’d felt any and he hadn’t.
So … if he hadn’t frightened her with his enthusiasm, what was up with that look? And did it spell disaster regarding his plans of making her Mrs. Big Bad Wolf?
A niggling of uncertainty wormed its way into his thoughts.
What if the look had nothing to do with what had happened between them and everything to do with something he was going to be really unhappy about?
He turned that over a few times and finally discarded it.
His nose had told the story.
The place had been a beehive of activity and drugs were the soup of the day, but the scents were all stale, old—at least a week and possibly more. The smells pre-dated Stella’s arrival.
Of course that didn’t rule out the possibility that she was the head honcho—running things from a distance—but he thought her anger over the condition of the place had been completely genuine.
He hadn’t seen any sign that she was keeping secrets and he trusted his instincts even though he knew damn well that he’d only listened with half a mind … because the rest had been focused on speculation about the figure under those clothes and wondering how long it was going to take him to get her in his bed ….
Not that they’d made it to the bed ….
He frowned. Maybe that was it? Maybe she was pissed off because she’d gotten rug burn? Or maybe she thought she hadn’t put up enough resistance? Women were weird about that. He supposed they thought it was a virtue to hold a guy off to convince him they were hard to get or something like that and maybe she was worried she’d given him the wrong impression?
Well, he supposed if he wasn’t wolfen he might have questioned her motives and or her ethics, but he was wolfen and he was the sheriff besides that. There wasn’t anything he didn’t know about her. His instincts had told him instantly that she was the one. His research into her background had just confirmed what he’d already known.
Sheer perfection.
But that look—that didn’t bode well. He was certain of it.
Well, he didn’t mind convincing her.
He thought he would enjoy courting her.
But there was the little problem of the drug operation that had to be taken care of before he could focus on his personal business.
* * * *
Mentally, Stella kicked herself all the way to the bathroom to clean up.
The lack of a condom-birth control was a nagging worry, but she realized even as she cleaned up that it wasn’t at the top of her list of anxieties even though it probably should have been.
Most of her dismay was due to the fact that she felt like she had royally screwed up her chances with Rafe.
Or at least the chance of anything meaningful—which she discovered was so important to her that she felt like crying.
There was no point in arguing with herself over the absurdity of falling hook, line and sinker for a guy she’d barely set eyes on a handful of times. It was chemical attraction at its most potent and she’d been lost from the moment she got close enough to get blown away by the powerful magnetism he exuded like strong cologne.
She’d tried to find a reason to question judgment based solely on primal instincts, but not one person she’d pumped for information had had anything bad to say about the man—or even lukewarm. He appeared to be, in point of fact, a local hero—admired almost to the point of worship.
So if her instincts about him were wrong, everyone else’s was, too.
Not that it mattered. She was pretty sure she’d lost all her marbles at that first encounter and no one would’ve been able to make her see reason if they’d tried. The fact that no one had was a very good thing for her, but she didn’t think it had changed a thing.
If being drawn to him meant self-destruction, she was already on a collision course and couldn’t find the will to resist.
Which, she supposed wryly, was why she’d made a complete moron out of herself and no doubt convinced him she was just a slut waiting to get laid.
Damn it to hell!
She wanted this man! More than she had ever wanted the bastard who’d dumped her for another woman and made her feel like her life was over because she’d devoted her productive years to the son-of-a-bitch and was now single and childless at a point in her life when it seemed unlikely that she would get another chance at a husband and family.
She’d come to the little house in the woods to lick her wounds and try to convince herself there was still a chance for a happily ever after for her.
Maybe that was why she’d zeroed in on the sheriff and fallen head over heels, but she didn’t believe that for a minute.
She’d had plenty of time to get over her ex. This wasn’t a rebound. And she also didn’t think she’d instantly become desperate because of her circumstances.
What she’d thought was that fortune had finally favored her, put her in the path of a man that was everything she’d ever wanted and never expected to have.
And then she’d screwed the whole fucking thing up by jumping his bones the minute he smiled at her and flirted!
She felt like weeping! She felt like cursing! She felt like breaking something!
She glanced around the bathroom.
Nothing but plastic as far as the eye could see.
“Figures!” she muttered. “Goddamn it to hell! Stupid!”
It occurred to her that she didn’t have to destroy anything to work out her anger, grief, and frustration. There was plenty around the place that needed to be torn out and replaced!
Struggling to put all of it from her mind until a later time when she might have enough sense to figure out how she could fix this major fuck up, she dressed and left the bathroom.
She had just reached the main living area when she heard the gunshot. It brought her to a dead stop in the middle of the room when her brain went completely haywire trying to figure out what the significance of the gunshot might be.
“Snake! Oh my god! He’s gotten on a snake!” she gasped abruptly surging into motion and racing for the door.
When she snatched it open there was a man standing on the threshold.
It wasn’t Rafe.
Pete Marchant.
She stared at him, stupefied and completely unable to figure out what the hell he was doing there when she’d been sure it must be Rafe.
And where was Rafe?
What had happened to him?
That question crossed her mind and froze the blood in her veins when she realized that the expression on Pete Marchant’s face was a sign that she was in deep doodoo.
Chapter Five
Rafe had left his patrol vehicle a short walk through the woods from Stella’s place. It was a force of habit he didn’t regret at the moment. It had given him time to assess the situation and come to a decision.
Big Bad Wolf Page 2
