She pressed her mouth into a hard line, hesitant to bend to his will, but she saw no other choice.
“I’ll stop seeing him,” she confirmed.
“Will you?” he pressed.
“God! Yes! Just don’t drop me off at that horrible motel!”
He believed her and eased off onto the shoulder of the highway, using both his rearview and side mirrors to gauge when he might be able to safely pull a U-turn and head back the way they’d come.
As he did, Elizabeth sank into herself and immediately began plotting. She knew what this was really all about. Simple jealousy. Shocking stubbornness. Well, two could play at that game, couldn’t they?
As they drove in silence, she let out a sultry sigh and leaned her elbow on the console between them, oozing onto his side of the cab.
He furrowed his brow at her. Good, he’d taken notice. She shifted her delicate shoulders, lowering the one nearest him until the thin spaghetti strap of her dress slipped down her arm. She felt Dean’s eyes slide in her direction. He was registering her fallen dress, how the red material across her chest barely covered the supple shape of her breast beneath. She sighed again and pulled her hair tie out, letting her flowing blonde hair tumble down. She shook her hair out, fully aware that Dean was glancing her way every chance he got.
When he came to a four-way stop just shy of Main Street in the heart of the Fist, she crossed her legs in such a way that the long slit of her red dress fell open, exposing both of her long legs.
“Stop that,” he complained.
“Stop what?” she asked innocently.
He frowned and didn’t push his complaint further as they drove slowly along Main Street.
She gave it a rest, but only until they’d cleared the short stretch that comprised the heart of town, then she rested her head back, giving her neck a little stretch, and began musing:
“It’s been too long…”
Annoyed that she hadn’t elaborated on her vague comment, he asked, “What’s been too long?”
“Oh, nothing,” she breathed.
She was reeling him in and it was working. He furrowed his brow, cut his eyes to her, and said, “You’re coming out of your dress.”
“Pardon me,” she said without correcting her dress strap or covering her legs. “I was hoping tonight would be my night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said again, thoroughly inciting him. She had to press her red lips into a line to keep from grinning. He was too easy.
“Then stop talking.”
“It’s just that…” she trailed off, glancing his way and holding her stare until he met her gaze. “Oh, nothing.”
“Are you trying to irritate me into an early grave?” he confronted.
“Yes, Dean, everything is about you.”
As they reached his cabin and he pulled to a stop, she murmured to herself, “I haven’t been touched in ages.”
Dean stiffened behind the wheel. It was as though his hand forgot what it was doing, pulling the key from the ignition.
“I don’t know how I’ll sleep tonight,” she breathed as she popped her own door open. Before sliding out into the cool night, she added, “Maybe I had one too many glasses of wine…”
“Drink some water then,” he suggested as he climbed out, slammed his door, and headed straight for the cabin.
She smiled as she stepped out of the truck as well and shut the door.
He had the good manners to hold the cabin door open for her, but she knew what that was really about. Dean was standing in the doorway, leaving only a narrow breath of space for her to squeeze through. When she did, she was sure to face him so that the silky length of her would brush against the firm wall of his hard body. She flicked her dramatic eyes up at him as she passed and felt the interest and arousal wash over him.
When she reached the bedroom, she didn’t close the door. She could hear his boots trail through the living room and she was vaguely aware of him pulling the couch out into a bed. Feeling his eyes on her as he made grumbling work of making his bed, she slipped the spaghetti straps of her red dress off her shoulders and let the silky garment flutter to the wooden floor where it pooled around her black stiletto heels, her long, nude back to Dean, the doorway of the bedroom open for him to see.
She wasn’t wearing a stitch of undergarments. His boots stopped moving across the floor. She glanced at him over her nude shoulder and their eyes locked.
He looked hungry and confident. He didn’t cut his eyes away, but rather stared at her. It felt like a challenge, like those dark eyes of his were asking her what she planned on doing about it, like a game of chicken she was intent on winning.
Tempting him, she felt her heart pounding and pulse rate quicken to dizzying levels, as she slowly pivoted, coming to fully face him, her shoulders back, breasts rising and falling with her heaving breaths, stomach taut and toned yet fluttering deep inside.
She felt a strong surge of arousal blossom warm between her legs as she watched Dean drink in the sight of her nudity. His dark eyes traveled down the length of her and all the way back up again. Their eyes locked, but he didn’t near her and she didn’t start towards him.
The air between them felt electric. She studied his muscular body as well, tracing the lines and mounds of his sculpted arms and chest, seeing through his tee shirt and tight jeans.
Then, slowly and confidently, he took one step towards her then another. Her heart leapt up her throat and she felt her cheeks blush, the tips of her ears getting hot.
When he reached the doorway, only five or six feet between them, a slight grin crept across his face and his gaze settled over her supple chest for a long moment before lowering to the nudity of her sex below.
Her mind started racing. What could she say to tempt him further? What could she tell him to provoke him into her bedroom? The anticipation was overwhelming, but she focused on keeping her breathing steady and expression neutral.
Finally, he spoke, his voice sounding deep and gruff with lust.
“You look good.”
If this was a game of chicken, their cars flying straight for one another, a head-on collision pressing in, then Dean had just jerked the wheel. He had flinched, and shown her he wasn’t willing to die in order to win.
But she was.
She confidently stepped out of her pooled, red dress on the wooden floor, and nudged the garment away from her.
“I dropped my dress,” she told him coolly, knowing that if she phrased the fact as a problem, he would have to solve it.
He did.
Dean closed the gap between them, coming to the dress on the floor.
“Do you mind?” she breathed, flicking her green gaze down at the dress then locking eyes with him again.
He grinned, but it was dark and hungry. He knew what to do, however. Without taking his eyes off of her, he stooped, picked up her red dress, and after standing back up, he took another step towards her and offered her the balled dress.
He growled out, “Haven’t been touched in ages, huh?”
She nodded and gave him a sad, sultry look. “Wearing heels all the time hurts my back,” she mentioned, feeling confident that he would solve this new problem for her like he had the last.
She hooked her fingers under the straps of the dress and let it hang down, then clicked her way over to his closet, swaying her hips. After hanging the dress, she faced him and ran her fingers through her flowing, blonde hair, being sure to arch her back for him, helping her breasts to swell.
“I could use a massage,” she pushed. “My shoulders are really tight.”
His dark eyes were smoldering now and the grin on his face was growing, though it was obvious to her that he was trying to suppress it.
She made slow work of oozing herself onto the bed and was even slower about crossing her legs so that her black stiletto heels were spilling off the foot of the bed.
“Would you help me get these off?” she breathe
d with a little smile.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, his tone low and smooth.
She felt like she was on fire as she watched him nearing her. She liked looking up at him, liked seeing him take in the full sight of her nudity as he stood gazing down at her.
Before he could lower down to reach her high heels, Elizabeth laid back and lifted both of her heels straight up into the air for him, her long, nude legs only inches from the hard length of his sexy body.
He inched in until she felt him against the back of her legs. God, he was turning her on. She felt hot and aching in-between her legs, but it was nothing compared to the scorching swells of arousal that came over her when he placed his large hand around her thigh.
She let out a little sighing moan at his touch, and watched his dark eyes flare as though he liked the sound she just made.
Grazing his warm hand up her long leg, he found her right foot and slipped her high heel off, letting it fall to the floor. In the same fashion, he ran his other hand up the length of her leg and removed the other heel, then helped her legs to spread apart for him.
She sucked in another moaning breath, feeling the strength of his large hands move her as he maneuvered her ankles onto his muscular shoulders.
Locking eyes with her, he began caressing those large, warm hands of his up and down her shins and thighs as far as he could reach.
“You’re a bad girl, aren’t you?” he growled out as he stole a glance at her moist sex and ran his smoldering eyes over her nude stomach and chest.
“I can be a very good girl,” she breathed, “if you’re nice to me.”
His eyebrows floated up to his hairline, interested in her logic and how he might be rewarded for understanding it.
He reached down, slid his large hands under her round ass, and gave her a firm squeeze that was her undoing, as he groaned, “I doubt that.”
If she ached for him any harder, she would burst.
As he slid his hands out from under her, trailing his fingertips across her hot skin on his way to her lower abdomen, she let out a quivering breath.
She sensed he was hot to explore her stomach, trace his fingertips further down her body, maybe touch her in-between her legs, so she rolled onto her stomach as gracefully as she could and crawled up the bed, then laid out and glanced at him over her shoulder with a smile.
The grin on his face felt like foreplay. She touched her lower back and said, “This is where I’m sore.”
“Alright, Elizabeth,” he allowed as he climbed onto the bed, coming over her.
Straddling her upper thighs, he placed his incredible hands on her lower back and began massaging exactly where she had shown him it hurt.
She moaned and breathed deeply, feeling his hands on her body, the sensual massage he was delivering.
Her skin broke out in a hot wave of tingles, as he teased and tested how much of her ass she might like him to massage.
Soon those large hands of his were stroking the full length of her long back, working out all the knots and giving ample attention to the shape of her firm rear end.
She felt like she was melting with his every stroke, growing more and more turned on. Would he think to massage her deeper? Would he dare help her legs to spread apart and graze his fingers along her slippery sex? She was dying for him to tip the scales and turn this sensual massage into raw, hungry sex.
Before long, it seemed he was itching to do just that. She felt his hands smoothing over her ass, his thumbs inching closer and closer into her upper thighs. She moaned and sighed out all the tension that had been building between them.
But the next thing she knew, he was angling over her, his mouth coming against her ear. She could feel his muscular weight, the length of his hard body pressing over her, and the heated swells of arousal that had been blooming deep in her core fired up to titillating heights.
“Do you want to feel my skin against yours?” he growled out in her ear.
Hearing the possibility sent another huge wave of arousal through her and she breathed, “Yes.”
But when he lifted up onto his knees over her, he didn’t pull his tee shirt off like she expected.
Instead, he climbed off the bed and the moment she glanced up at him over her shoulder he said, “Too bad. Go to sleep,” and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
What?!
She flopped on the bed in a defeated groan that she hoped he couldn’t hear.
Bastard, she thought to herself, but she was smiling.
He might have won this one, but she would get him next time.
Though she resolved to do just that, it was a very long time before Elizabeth was actually able to fall asleep.
Chapter Seven
DEAN
Sleeping on the pull-out couch in his living room was brutal and Dean could hardly define what he was doing as sleep. It was more like tossing and turning, and though he would’ve liked to blame it on the entire pot of coffee he had drunk before driving Elizabeth into the Fist for her date with Dante Alighieri, he knew that the caffeine he had consumed was not to blame.
He felt like his skin was on fire. He’d opened every window in the living room and kitchen, hoping to get a cross breeze going, but he could barely feel it. He didn’t even have a sheet over him anymore. He was lying with the sheet bunched up beside him. Wearing only his boxer-briefs hadn’t helped either, and he felt like he was in a state of torture knowing that Elizabeth Halsey was lying nude in the next room.
Damn, she had looked good. He couldn’t get the image of her out of his mind. Those long legs of hers, the lines and curves of her perfect body, that porcelain skin and the warmth of her long back. He had never been tempted like that in his life. Driving him crazy was the memory of how confident she had been. She’d been cool and calculating. Seductive. And he had played right into her pretty, little hand.
It had taken every shred of willpower he possessed to keep himself from rolling her onto her back on that bed, stripping out of his own clothes, and overpowering her in the exact manner in which he was pretty damn sure she had wanted.
He kept telling himself she must be evil. Sure, it was the best kind of evil, the kind he wanted to feed into and thrust into and tame, but it had been evil nonetheless, hadn’t it?
Honest to God, Dean didn’t know what to think. Was she really his one true mate? Had she really gone out on a date with Dante? Was she really interested in seducing Dean? He felt all tangled up inside, overcome with irreconcilable knots of resentment and arousal, of anger and lust, of wanting to be with her and also needing to stop the game she had been playing. It made his blood boil to know that she had spent hours with Dante Alighieri, his nemesis, the worst thing that had happened to Devil’s Fist ever.
But the fact of the matter was that she hadn’t gone home with him. She’d come home with Dean, instead. Had she been fantasizing about her little strip tease the whole time she’d been out at Angel’s Food and Libations? Had she plotted every sultry move she’d made? Or was she the type of woman to try tempting a man for no greater reason than to beat boredom and entertain herself?
He had no way of knowing. All he knew was that he had nearly lost control of himself. He’d barely been able to keep his head on straight. And even now, all he wanted to do was charge into her bedroom, spread her legs apart like he had, and thrust the hard shape of his lust deep inside of her to see how she would like it.
Dean angrily tossed from his left side onto his right, flipped his pillow and punched it into a better shape, and pinched his eyes closed, but none of it relaxed the hard shaft of his lingering interest in Elizabeth.
He couldn’t believe she was the one for him. The idea both elated and infuriated him. She didn’t know a damn thing about him, either. She thought she was messing with a blue-collar man? She had no clue as to what she was dealing with. How would she react if she ever learned the truth? How would she respond if she found out he was really a werewolf? It was inevitable, right? Maybe
he should tell her, or show her. That would get her to cool off and stop messing around, wouldn’t it? Or would it drive her faster into Dante’s arms?
It seemed that bridging the huge gap of honesty was a million miles away. And yet, he had to reason that the longer she stayed in Devil’s Fist, the more rumors she would catch on to. Soon she would learn that werewolves had swept through this small, Wyoming town. And the fact of the matter was that if Elizabeth didn’t heed his warning about Dante and actually—fully—obey Dean, she would be in for a very rude awakening. There was no worse werewolf in all of the Fist than Dante Alighieri, and Elizabeth had had the audacity to flirt with serious danger.
Knowing Dante, it would only be a matter of time before he turned her, if Dean didn’t do something about it. Dean didn’t trust Elizabeth, not by a long shot. She had said what needed to be said so that he wouldn’t deposit her at that motel she despised so much. He doubted she would stop seeing Dante.
Ugh, he didn’t want to be thinking about any of this. He just wanted to fall asleep, and the only thing that relaxed him enough to give him a shot at that was promising himself that somehow, someway, and very soon he would tell Elizabeth that Dante Alighieri was a werewolf and if she didn’t stay away from him, she would become one too.
Dean stole some semblance of sleep, but woke up as soon as dawn cracked the horizon, brightening the living room in a soft glow. With all of the windows open, the birds were making quite a racket, so instead of trying to fall back asleep, he instead groaned his way out of bed, padded barefoot into the kitchen without bothering to throw his shirt on, and filled the coffeemaker with dark grounds.
As he waited for it to percolate and fill the pot, he stared through the living room at Elizabeth’s closed bedroom door. He didn’t know what was stopping him from bursting in on her and taking her in all the very graphic ways he had spent nearly all night imagining.
Had she tossed and turned as well? Had she wrestling with lustful thoughts about mounting him? If the sexual tension between them rose any higher, he wasn’t sure what he would be capable of. Maybe he wouldn’t have to do a thing. Maybe Elizabeth, having lost whatever game she was playing with him last night, would parade through his cabin naked as the day she was born all over again.
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