Raoul, the Peacekeeper Djinn, found a nine-hole golf course just west of town. The Djinn loved any kind of sport, and so did Luis. After work one evening, in an effort to blow off steam, he went with Raoul to thwack a golf ball around the course a couple of times. The layout of the holes was basic, and the course wasn’t very well maintained, so they soon lost interest and went drinking instead.
Claudia honored the “don’t go anywhere” admonition she’d been given. She spent a lot of time quietly reading and avoiding reporters. More often than not, she, Jackson and Luis ate dinner together, their conversations dominated by the latest discovery from the mine. Since they were all indifferent cooks, they took turns picking up takeout from the diner.
By the third day, Luis’d had it.
There was no drama, no explosion. He just got tired of waiting for things to change, so he went on the offensive. It felt good to finally follow his instincts, to stop throttling back, and, he had to be honest, it felt good to be challenged.
He started out small, stalking Claudia in subtle ways over the next few days. When they stood talking, he got a bit too close, invading her space. At the dinner table, when she passed the salt to him, he reached a little too far for it, closing his hand over hers. He slid his fingers down the length of her hand until he could grasp the shaker. Her bland expression didn’t change, but her pupils dilated, and sudden arousal thrummed low, rhythmic notes in her scent.
And there it was again, the connection.
He was clever enough not to show his triumph.
She liked to go running early. On the seventh morning, she emerged from the trailer, dressed in running clothes with her pale hair pulled back.
He was waiting for her in his Wyr form. She jerked to a halt when she saw him sitting in the yard, and this time she looked shaken. He didn’t wag his tail. He just waited for her to make up her mind.
She came slowly down the steps. “Oh, Precious,” she said. For some reason she sounded sad. For the first time in days she touched him voluntarily, laying a gentle hand on his head. Everything inside of him concentrated on the sensation of the warm, light weight of her palm resting on him. Deeper and more profound than pleasure, he felt comfort and recognition. She rubbed one of his ears before her hand fell away.
When he stood, his shoulders came up to her waist. She turned and started to run. He flowed along the ground beside her, his powerful body moving effortlessly, and for a while they shared perfect, seamless movement. The colors of the morning were so pure and new, they were downright righteous, and the air was biting cold. He could have run forever with her like that, but of course it had to end as the obligations of the day took over.
Later, when he let himself into Jackson’s house, around five, Luis found a note. Jackson had been called away on a vet emergency. They should eat dinner without him.
Luis thought about that. It was Claudia’s turn to get takeout. He went out the back, knocked on the trailer door and a moment later she opened it. The westering sun caught her full in the face, shining on her sleek, shoulder-length pale hair and turning her green eyes emerald. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and it was so goddamn erotic to see how that shirt molded to her tight, lean torso. His gaze fell down her length.
She was barefoot.
Suddenly he was rock hard with agonized hunger.
He looked up again and smiled. “Pick up meat loaf dinners for me and Jackson?”
“Sure,” she said. She glanced past him at the empty space where Jackson parked his truck. “I didn’t realize it had gotten so late. Where’s Dan?”
“He’ll be back,” Luis said.
She nodded. “Give me half an hour.”
“You bet.”
He went back to the house to take a quick shower, putting on jeans and a T-shirt too. Then he let himself into the trailer to wait for her. He stopped dead just inside the door.
After a week, her possessions had gradually taken over the trailer until evidence of her stay was everywhere. Not that she was untidy; she was very neat. But there were books, movies she borrowed from Jackson’s collection, her suitcase, the laptop, phone and charger, the Tarot deck.
Until now. Everything was packed, and she had cleaned. The laptop was stored in its case, and an open canvas bag held her paperbacks and phone, and the Tarot deck sat neatly on top.
Man, she was slamming that wall into place again with a vengeance.
Emotion roared through him, a gigantic, silent outcry that gnawed at his bones like acid.
Oh, no you don’t
, he said to the emptiness.
No, you don’t.
Claudia stepped into the trailer, carrying three Styrofoam containers and a paper bag full of the requisite dinner rolls, and it was her turn to stop dead just inside the door.
Violence lounged on the end of the sofa, and it looked a lot like Luis. He was playing with the Tarot deck, his big, brown hands dexterous as he handled the cards.
She took in his set expression and blazing eyes. Yeah, she wasn’t going to go anywhere near that. She stepped away, into the miniscule kitchen area. “Where’s Dan?”
“Vet emergency.”
She set the dinners on the counter, listening to him shuffle the deck.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
She looked at the table. He was snapping each card as he laid them down in what looked like a basic spread, but he clearly wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.
She said, “You knew Dan was out on the emergency before, didn’t you?”
His sensual mouth drew tight. “Yep.”
Dinner lost its appeal. She turned and leaned back against the kitchen sink. “I’m leaving in the morning.”
“I got that when I came inside and found your bags packed.” He slapped the rest of the deck down, stood and walked toward her. He still hadn’t found time to get his hair cut, and the ends of it flopped in his eyes. The angry heat in his expression blinded her to everything else.
“Don’t crowd me,” she said as he came close. He didn’t listen but he also didn’t touch her. It was a damn fine line between what was too close and what was too much, and he walked that line well. He braced his hands on the overhead cabinets on either side of her, the heavy muscles of his triceps bunching as he leaned his weight on his arms and looked at her.
She could control her actions but she couldn’t control her reaction to him. He pulled it from her, until she felt it flaring from her skin like a fever.
He said softly, “We have a topic of conversation we shelved a while back.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” she said. She forced herself to breathe evenly. “I’m a forty-year-old human woman, and you’re what—a twenty-five-year-old Wyr?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Her eyebrows quirked, mocking the difference. “Twenty-seven,” she said. “You have your whole life ahead of you, and it’s going to be a hell of a lot longer than a human one. While I am not ever going to be any better than what I am right now, and what I am right now isn’t going to last very long. You’re starting your career. I just ended one. We are perfectly mismatched.”
“Then why do we fit so well?” he whispered.
“We don’t.” She glared, suddenly as angry with him as she had ever been with anyone. She would never have children. She might have twenty more years left, or she might have forty, and all of those years would be spent aging. She would be dead before she saw any similar signs of aging in a Wyr of his years. “And I do not go for younger men.”
“Try convincing your body of that,” he said. He leaned forward and kissed her.
And kissed her. And he was too goddamn clever for his own good, because if he had been diffident and had pulled back, she could have regained some ground. As it was, all the blood in her body was pounding so loudly she couldn’t think, she could only feel that generous, sensual, optimistic mouth of his moving on hers with a kind of pleading hunger he had not let himself verbalize.
He kissed her like he was starving. He kissed her like she was the first woman he had ever kissed, and heh, well, she knew that couldn’t be true, but it was a fine, fine fairy tale, and good Christ, it was irresistibly seductive. Before she could stop herself, her mouth was moving in response to his.
Angry. She was angry at him. At something. Falling in love with this incredible man hurt like a heart attack. She grabbed his thick, too-long hair and yanked it. His hands came down from the cupboard. He snatched her against him, and the pleading hunger that his gorgeous, sensitive lips communicated so eloquently became a ravening need. A sound came out of him when his tongue stroked along hers, something between a groan and a whine, and his big body started to shake.
He said her name against her lips then he pulled back just far enough so that she could see how the passion darkened his skin and brought a breakable expression into his eyes.
Suddenly her own hurt vanished, and she realized the extent of her own foolishness. The
only
and
forever
, and
falling in love
—that was all in her mind. He didn’t need to know the full story of what she felt. She was robbing herself of a rare, wonderful opportunity tonight if she denied this, and him.
“It’s okay, Luis,” she whispered. She put her arms around his neck and held him tight. “It’s all right.”
He was burning up. He ran his huge, flattened hands down the gentle curve of her back, and he gripped her hips. She was surprised when he pulled away. Then realization lanced into her as he knelt, lifted the hem of her t-shirt and teased open the fastening of her jeans.
“Jesus,” she said as he kissed her flat, tight stomach.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for days. And days. And days.” His breath blasted the tiny hairs on her sensitive skin, and she listed drunkenly against the counter. He eased her shoes and socks off, then yanked her jeans down to her ankles, breathing hard. Then her underwear, until the pale, silken tangle of her pubic hair was bared. She had a scar on her hip, one of the times she got grazed by enemy fire. His trembling fingers traced the path of the mark on her skin. He breathed, “Hook your leg over my shoulder.”
She hissed a curse, because now he made her shake all over too. At his coaxing, she balanced her weight on one wobbly leg while he lifted the other leg and draped it over one broad shoulder. She watched him stare at the most private part of her that was hypersensitive with arousal, and then he looked up at her taut, incredulous face.
Then he heaved a sigh as heartfelt as if he was coming home. He leaned into her and gently, avidly took her clitoris in his mouth, and there was no playing the fiction that this was his first time for that, because he knew just what the fuck he was doing, and he did it superlatively.
“I’m dying here,” she groaned. He made a soothing sound at the back of his throat while he licked, nibbled and suckled. Raw jolts of pleasure rocked through her, and if she hadn’t been gripping the edge of the kitchen sink or clutching his hair, she would have fallen.
His fingers probed gently at the slick entrance to her vagina while his mouth worked her. She pushed her hips against him, sobbing for breath. She was dying, he was killing her, killing her. The sensations were too intense, too sharp. She had been partnerless for too long. She had grown too accustomed to bringing her own release. He was never going to get her to come.
But then he did. The climax seared through her nerve endings and tore a sound of delirious pleasure from her.
He pulled away slowly and leaned his forehead against the curve of her pubic bone, breathing as though he was at a full-out run. Unclenching her fist from his hair, she stroked the side of his face while he gripped her hips, calloused fingers rubbing along her skin.
She lifted the leg that had been draped along his back, put her bare foot to his collarbone, and kicked him back so that he sprawled on the floor. As he went down, she came on top of him, straddling his hips, and he opened his mouth, that fabulously sensual, wickedly clever mouth still slick with her pleasure, and before he could say anything, she dove down to kiss him hard.
He muttered something guttural and flexed his hips as he grabbed her by the back of the neck, and this time they didn’t kiss so much as eat at each other’s mouths, rough with an escalating urgency that spread like a wildfire. Time burned away. They both felt for the fastening of his jeans, trying to help each other and tangling their fingers. When the fastening finally came undone, he yanked the zipper down and she closed her fingers over his erection.
Hell’s bells, he was a big sonovabitch there too. He really was going to kill her. She eased up so that she could look down the rippling contours of his long, muscled torso. His penis was as beautiful as the rest of him, with a velvet-soft, broad head, and a thick, hard length.
“Ooh, Precious,” she said, looking up at him with a quick grin, and sudden laughter creased his face. Then his laughter vaporized as she stroked him, all the way down to his balls which had drawn up tight, and he shuddered all over.
She guided him to her entrance. He stopped her, hands shaking. “Condom?”
She shook her head and whispered, “No need.” She had used an IUD until her mid-thirties. Once she was sure she wasn’t cut out to parent a child, she’d settled the issue permanently with surgery.