“Charlotte. Honey?” He growled, breaking her no-touching rule to still her movements. “I’m really, really close right now.”
Swatting his arm away, she ignored the endearment, tightened her grip with one hand, and placed the other on his stomach, digging her nails into his taut abs. “Close isn’t what I’m after.”
*
Alex leaned against his cluttered kitchen counter and ran a hand through his hair, keeping one eye on Charlotte’s sleeping form while his phone continued to buzz in his hand.
Bo had been calling relentlessly for twenty minutes, yanking him out of a deep post-orgasmic sleep and hurling him straight into his messed-up reality.
Every day he spent with her, he was falling harder.
And after last night, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to examine just how deep that fall had taken him.
They were slipping into an accidental relationship easier than either of them wanted to admit out loud, and he wasn’t anywhere near ready to put the brakes on.
A text pinged in.
“Answer, you hideous fuckwad.”
With a final check that Charlotte was still out cold, he eased the front door open, sat on the metal step of his trailer, and tapped Bo’s number. “What’s the plan?”
“About fucking time,” Bo grumbled, his voice rough and words slurred. “Get your couch ready, brother. I’m on my way.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and closed his eyes. “Why don’t you call me in the morning and I’ll see if I can hook you up with a room around here,” he suggested. “This place is too small for both of us.”
“Fuck that.” Bo snorted. “I’m tying up a few ends here and I’ll be bussing in.” A loud clatter echoed through the speaker, followed by muffled swearing. “Goddammit. I just replaced the glass on this thing last month.”
“Bus?” he asked, sitting up. “Where’s your truck?”
Another thunk. Another curse. “Impounded. I’ll text you when I’m getting close, probably Tuesday.”
“Why not drive down with Ryan?” he asked, caught between relief knowing his brothers were closing in and a strange pressure in his chest at the thought of what that meant for Charlotte.
“I’m not spending hours locked in a vehicle with him. I’ll kill him.” Bo laughed. “Holy shit, Lex. He just doesn’t fucking ease up, does he? See you on the flip, numbnuts.”
A cold emptiness settled into his limbs despite the intense heat of the desert night. He took a deep breath as the line went dead and rose to his feet, slipping back into the trailer and checking on Charlotte before he turned his phone off and slid into bed beside her.
Bo.
Charlotte.
Even without Ryan’s presence, Bo’s arrival would put a definitive stop to everything he wanted to have with her.
At max, he had thirty-six hours left.
Knowing sleep would evade him, he rolled onto his side, wrapped his arm around her, and pulled her tight against him while he still could.
Chapter Sixteen
Charlotte schooled her face as she marched into Tom’s Tavern, her phone in hand. She spotted Alex immediately in the crowded lounge, his hulking form towering over the crowd as he made his way back to the bar. Setting her cell on the counter, she pushed it toward him and crossed her arms. “And what exactly is this?”
He smirked, glancing down at the open messages that had whizzed through her phone once she had hit the highway after work. “That would be me providing you with the details necessary for you to make an informed decision regarding your calling of the shots.”
“This,” she said, leaning forward to give him a view of her cleavage, “is borderline pornographic.”
“That,” he countered, his eyes drifting toward her intended target, “is all I’ve been able to concentrate on all day.”
She pulled up a stool and sat, slipping her phone into her back pocket. “You made a few valid points. How long until you’re off?”
“Forty-five minutes.”
She glanced around the full bar. “If you start the caffeine drip on me, I’ll wait for you.”
He poured her a coffee, lifting her hand to his lips before he turned his attention to the customers swarming the bar. She pulled out her phone and began absently flipping through celebrity gossip until a hand tapped her back.
“This seat taken?”
“Nope,” she replied, eyes on her cell and coffee in her fist. “Go ahead.”
The guy pulled up uncomfortably tight to her, his leg resting against her bare thigh. She glanced at the offending appendage for a moment before she angled her body farther away and tucked her skirt tighter underneath her.
“Could I buy you a drink?”
Keeping her phone in her hand, she gave the guy a tight smile. “No thanks.” She lifted her mug in his direction. “I’m on the caffeine tonight.”
The man tipped his beer bottle at her. “A shot then. Your choice.”
Realizing she wasn’t going to easily shake him, she crossed her legs away from the guy and hunched forward. “I’m good, but no thanks. I’m waiting for someone.”
“One of your little girlfriends?”
An arm draped across her back, sending a cold chill through her. She shrugged it off roughly, her polite smile replaced by a look of pure annoyance. “The bartender.” She turned her back to him completely, scanning the crowded room for Alex and running her best angles of takedown should the guy push her further.
The man stayed beside her for a few moments, taking a long swig of his beer before he rose to his feet and strode in front of her, his chest puffed up and face contorted. “Just going to ignore me, bitch?” he snarled. “Fucking slu—”
His feet left the ground before he could finish his insult, Alex’s long arms yanking the guy back from her and pinning him against the counter. The guy sputtered, cursing in enraged surprise.
Alex’s face was stoic as he bent the man’s arms behind his back and marched him toward the exit. “Next time you walk in here, I’ll remove both kneecaps with a bat. We clear?” Several patrons cleared a path, one young guy holding the door open for Alex as he hefted the man out into the parking lot. With a quick roll of his shoulders, he scooped up the man’s discarded beer bottle and stalked back to the bar, his stoicism morphing into concern. “You okay?”
She side-eyed the curious crowd until they turned away from them. “Been called worse.” She let out a breath. “I was handling it, you know.”
He cocked a brow. “I’ve had issues with that asshole before. I didn’t do anything more than I would have done if he’d behaved that way to any other woman in here.” He paused. “Except maybe the threat. And I might have given him a little nudge onto the cement out front.”
She grunted, partially appeased that he hadn’t gone full caveman. “I could’ve kicked his ass myself.”
“And I saved you from an assault charge.” He grinned tersely, pulling a stool behind the bar. “I’m doing last call now. Sit here and stay out of trouble for thirty more minutes.” When her eyes narrowed, he reached over and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m really trying to keep the whole jealous boyfriend thing under wraps, but I’m about ten seconds from tracking that fucker down and beating the shit outta him. Just let me pretend I can protect you, okay?”
*
Alex waved at the last of his customers as they hooted and hollered their way out the tavern door, slamming it shut behind them. He sprayed down their abandoned table, wiping it clean with the last of his fresh towels before he sauntered over to Charlotte and set his chin onto her head. “Ten more minutes and we can go.”
He returned to the lounge floor and attempted to cool his temper with the monotonous task of straightening chairs.
It wasn’t working.
The moment his back was to her, the image of that guy towering over her flashed into the forefront of his thoughts, his stance an unmistakable display of intimidation.
He glanced at the beer bottle t
ucked right against the till.
He could track the bastard in hound form.
Corner him.
Take him down.
Transform in front of the prick before he bleeds out so he would see my face during his final seconds on earth.
“How do I turn this up?”
Snapped from his increasingly violent thoughts, he looked over to Charlotte as she bent over the tavern’s sound system. “The dial on the bottom right.” When the bar filled with a grinding bass beat, he rolled his eyes. “What is it with women and this song?”
“It makes us feel sexy.”
“Whatever,” he called out, tucking the last of the stools against the back wall. “You’re always sexy.” He turned toward the bar, freezing in spot when he caught sight of her, her hips swaying to the beat as she ran her hands up her body, lifting her shirt over her head.
She trailed the red fabric across her chest and tossed it at his feet. “Maybe to you, but sometimes I actually feel it.” With a slow spin, she turned her back to him and reached behind her, unhooking her bra. “Like when this song is on.”
Fuck. Me.
Please.
She dropped her bra beside her and looked over her shoulder at him, a smug smirk on her lips when he loped across the bar, stopping just short of tackling her to the filthy bar floor. She backed up against him, the rhythmic movement of her hips providing a torturous friction that had his brain firing on way more cylinders than he could handle at the end of a long day. He ran his hands up her ribs and cupped her breasts as she reached back to wrap her arms around his neck. “Behave,” she warned, grinding against his erection. “I really like this song.”
He nuzzled the back of her head, inhaling the scent of her shampoo. “Trust me, baby, this is me behaving right now.”
He tracked the crescendo of the music, counting down the beats until the final note rang out before he spun her around and kissed her hard, his arms pulling her as tight to him as he could without crushing her. He walked backward without breaking the kiss, leading her slowly to the padded booths lining the side wall and stopping when his thighs hit a table. She tugged roughly on his shirt, leaning back just enough to allow him to yank it off before she kissed him again, her fingers working on the button of his jeans.
“I was thinking,” she panted as he ran his tongue down her neck and wormed his hands under her skirt to cup her ass. “We kind of screwed up the booty call thing by not actually following through on the booty part of the call, right?”
“Right,” he muttered, running his thumbs along the band of her panties and easing them down, waiting for any sign from her that he’d crossed a line. When she stepped out of them and pushed his own jeans off his hips, he tossed his wallet on the bench within reach, spun her around, and lifted her onto the table, shuddering when her small hand gripped him through his boxers.
“And you did make a few good points in those texts,” she murmured, her head dropping back as he tentatively reached between her thighs and ran his fingers through her slick folds. She whimpered when his touch whispered over her sensitive nub, her nails digging into his shoulder. “I…you…I—”
“Just a few?” he breathed, circling a dark pink nipple with his tongue and grunting when she tangled her fingers in his hair.
He slipped one finger inside her, his dick twitching in anticipation when she ground against his hand and she kissed him roughly. As her body began to tighten, he eased another finger into her and increased the speed of his thumb on her nub, the soft chanting of his name on her lips testing his control while he released his erection from his boxers. He led Charlotte’s hand to it, clenching his teeth when she pumped him. Grabbing his wallet, he fumbled a condom from the packed leather and ripped the package with his teeth before he reached between them and slid it on, grimacing at the tightness. “Yes?” he asked, dropping his head into the crook of her neck as her wet center touched the tip.
“Lex…oh, god…I…yeah…yes…Lex…”
With the first fluttering of her core around his fingers, he pushed into her, the combined slickness and heat almost doing him in instantly. As the first wave of her orgasm hit her, her back arched off the table, her legs wrapping around his hips and holding him still inside her. He tore his eyes off her flushed skin while her body gripped him, his determination to last more than fifteen seconds deteriorating with every moan coming from the woman beneath him. The vise grip her legs had on his hips lessened and he grabbed her thighs to anchor her as he rocked inside her, the gentle ghosting of her fingertips on his chest sending his senses into overdrive.
Longer than two minutes. Just make it longer than two minutes.
He braced the edge of the table, caught between the primal urge to plow into her like an animal and his desire to slow his movements to hold on to the sensation as long as he could.
She breathed out his name again, effectively removing the decision from him as he dropped to his elbow, his building release well past the point of no return. Her legs crossed behind him, her heels digging into his ass rhythmically to spur him on.
“Holy fuck!” He grunted, losing his tempo and slamming into her as he came hard, his knees almost giving out on him. He vaguely registered her fingers trailing up and down his spine, her breathing slowing while he struggled to hold most of his weight off her. The fog finally clearing, he pushed himself up, tucked his hair behind his ear, and glanced around the empty bar. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
She smiled up at him lazily. “Neither was I. But then you went all caveman-alpha and it may have been kind of hot. In a small, case-specific dose.”
Dropping his head into the crook of her neck, he waited for the post-orgasmic high to shift, propelling his feet out of the building with a halfhearted promise to call, just as it had been for centuries.
But it wasn’t the urge to leave that settled into his mind.
Chapter Seventeen
Alex looked over at Charlotte as he wound through the dark streets. Her hair still held that freshly fucked look he had been aching to see since the first day he’d seen her on the trails. He drew in a deep breath, the words sour on his tongue. “So, we have a problem. I have a problem.”
She had seemed to take on an unspoken commitment to avoid all discussion of his other job, which suited him just fine. As long as she didn’t bring it up, he could avoid the figurative elephant between them and continue to hide from the impending reality of his situation. Aside from calling him “killer” or “hunter” when she was in one of her more playful moods, she had avoided all talk of his secondary job, treating it as a forgotten minor inconvenience.
Of course, he had left out the whole hellhound thing.
And Hades.
Maybe omitted the entire section about returning to hell once the last of the line was tracked and eliminated.
“You’re zoning out on me again.” She nudged, her hand finding its way to his thigh. “Spill it.”
“Bo’s on his way here,” he muttered. “Tomorrow. Ryan’s wrapping up some work with a few clients, so I’ll be babysitting Bo’s sorry ass on my own for a few days.”
Her fingers clenched on his leg a fraction. “Ah. So that means…”
“Yeah.” He sighed, pulling into the parking lot of her apartment block. “I found him.”
She unbuckled her seat belt and turned to him, her face showing nothing more than mild interest. “And Bo is?”
“Twin.”
“Nice.”
He elbowed her. “Stop that. This is kind of a problem.”
She unlocked her door and pushed it open, swinging her legs out of the SUV. “A problem that isn’t happening tonight,” she stated, standing up and leaning into the open door. “I assume tracking down and taking out bad guys takes a few days at least. A little planning, maybe a map or two. And unless you’re going to vanish the moment the guy is dealt with, I figure there’s at least a week or two before we actually have to deal with anything. Besides, if I think about it, I’ll cr
y, and I’m not ruining our night with that mess.”
She leaned over to give him a toe-curling kiss, disappearing into the entrance of her building without another glance his way. He watched her windows until the lights of her apartment came on.
It took another twenty minutes before the tightness in his throat cleared enough for him to drive away.
*
Charlotte peered through the corner of her curtains as the SUV’s lights finally pulled out of the parking lot, her towel wrapped tight around her body and her hair dripping down her back.
I found him.
She slumped onto her bed, running her hands over her face.
There had been a morality battle warring in her head since Alex exposed the real reason he was in the valley. Part of her was appalled that guys like him existed, working under the radar and outside the laws she was bound to uphold.
The other part of her had been glad to have a built-in reason they would never be more than what they were. Because as long as they could never be more, she could continue to rationalize away the attachment that crept into her thoughts more and more frequently.
Their time was limited, and she was a little more than a blip on his radar until he moved away, resettling in another city or country while he moved on to the next target.
It was a harmless fling, her first experiment in a growing hookup culture.
He was a pretty package. The fact that he was intelligent and funny and compassionate was merely a bonus to his hotness during those times they weren’t locking lips.
And now the countdown was on.
She was prepared.
Mentally, at least.
Her heart was struggling to understand the concept.
*
Alex ran his hand through his hair before he crossed his arms and leaned back against his SUV, his sunglasses hiding his eyes as he scanned the lot for Bo. His phone buzzed and he glanced down at it, smiling while he read over Charlotte’s rambling text about who would be at the Washout that evening, who Alex was supposed to bite his tongue around, and who he could pull alpha on.
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