CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There was fur in Lance’s face. With his eyes closed tight, he racked his brain and tried to remember if the pack had been out for another run that ended in a doggy heap, but that didn’t seem right. It seemed even less right after he inhaled deeply. Coyotes didn’t tend to smell like vanilla.

And canine fur wasn’t that soft.

Oh.

He let out the breath and lifted a hand to Lily’s hair. He looped the curls through his fingers and brought them to his nose. Then he shifted a bit beneath her so his bits were less squashed.

Good girl.

She hadn’t moved an inch. He liked it when his lovers could stay where he put them, assuming he bothered with that whole spending-the-night mess.

But Lily wasn’t his lover, he remembered. She was his wife, and she was lying there because he talked in his sleep.

He knew he did. Kenny kept dogging him about it. Kenny had suggested therapy but Lance didn’t see the point. He already knew what was wrong with him. His awareness of his mother’s numerous miscarriages had started when he was thirteen. The older he got, the more he remembered about the ones she’d had before then. Every time he’d thought his parents had given up on expanding the family and Lance’s anxieties had tapered off, it’d happen again. He could never really recover, and he couldn’t see how his mother did, either. When he’d found out it’d happened to Lily, he’d wondered if he was cursed.

Maybe he was a bad luck omen or had hostile energy or something.

That was ridiculous, of course, but all the same, he wasn’t interested in ever seeing a woman go through what his mother had. Not Lily. Not anyone.

Nothing could fix what had screwed him up except, maybe, a time machine.

Time. Shit. What time is it?

He lifted one eyelid begrudgingly, then the other. The sun was out, but he couldn’t guess the time. All the blinds were closed.

Lily had her cheek pressed against his chest and hands shoved beneath his pillow. Looking for warmth, probably.

“Could have just put them in my shorts,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

Having his bits diddled while he attempted sleep was one of the most relaxing ways he could drowse off. Not everything had to be about sex.

He snorted and crushed Lily’s hair in his fist for a deeper sniff. “Yeah, that’s a lie.” He spent half his waking hours in a state of turgor when she was around. Generally, he had a little more self-control than that and could talk his body into standing down. Apparently, not so with her. She was so soft and warm and very…

He chuckled softly as he snaked his fingers just inside the elastic of her pajama pants.

She snapped up onto her hands and glowered at him.

Laughter came out of his body sounding like a cross between a bark and a chuckle. Her eyes were bleary and unfocused, plump lips turned down into an angry scowl, and her cheek was red and creased from sleep.

“Come back down here.” He patted his chest where her face had been. “Otherwise, the indention you made will plump up and you’ll have to do the hard work of getting comfortable again.”

She looked at him like she had no fucking idea who he was.

“Go back to sleep for a few minutes, shortcake. You can try that waking up thing again.”

The line between her eyes creased deeply. “You had your hands in my pants.”

“All I did was flick the elastic.”

“Still counts.”

“That was just my fingertips. I’ve had far more interesting things in your danger zone before.”

She blinked a few beats, then groaned and rolled her eyes. She let herself back down, though, and yanked the covers over her head, which put them right at the bottom of his chin.

“This reminds me of a very interesting game of Marco Polo I once played,” he said, patting her head through all that fabric.

“Do I want to know?”

He shrugged. “I thought it was silly at the time, but maybe I needed silly that day. The hands-off part made the game a little more challenging.”

“I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this.”

“No, shortcake, the point was to have lips wrapped around my head.”

If there was a textbook physical response to an offense, Lily demonstrated it perfectly. He felt when her breathing stopped—likely right after she grasped the deeper meaning of his statement. Her muscles tightened. Two seconds later, she pushed up onto her hands again and gave him a death glare.

He shrugged again. “I’ve had experiences. I’m forty years old.”

“And not a monk, right? Is that going to be your next line?”

“Well, yeah. Are you going to tell me you’ve been pious as a nun?”

“I never insinuated that.”

“You’re looking mighty indignant right now.”

“Yes, because you’ve just told me the fun and creative schemes women will devise to suck your cock.”

He grinned. “That sounds fun to you?”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened her mouth to yell at him, probably.

He laughed again. She was so cute when she was mean.

“Come back down here,” he said. “I was starting to get used to sweating to death.”

“Seems to me like you’re doing everything possible to get me to go away on my own.”

“Shortcake, if I wanted you to go away, I’d tell you to leave.”

She opened her eyes. A little bloodshot around the tawny irises, but at least she was looking at him like she knew him. Maybe she was looking at him like she knew him a little too well.

He shrugged yet again. “Just being honest. I’m not such a generous person that I’d tell you to do something when I really wanted you to do the opposite.”

She swallowed, obviously uncertain. He could understand her confusion. He wasn’t the kind of guy who invited closeness. Unlike most shifters, he simply wasn’t needy for it.

Usually.

It just seemed a waste of good body heat for her to leave the bed. That was all.

“You’re cold,” he goaded. “You may as well come back.”

She sniffed in that uptight way she always did. “I’m not cold.”

“Are you sure? Your twin peaks are telling me otherwise.”

Agape, Lily looked down at her chest and then slapped her forearm across it.

He tutted his disapproval. “Why so modest, dancer lady? I’ve bet you’ve worn skin-tight spandex that left absolutely nothing up to the imagination on stage, and yet you’re worried about the tease of nipple?”

She continued to hold herself in that one-armed plank position, glowering at him. She wasn’t showing any signs of muscle fatigue yet, but she had to know that in a battle of endurance, he was going to win. He’d never get tired of running his mouth.

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Come on down so we can equalize body temperatures.”

“I’m not going to waste an entire morning bickering with you about what my body parts are doing. We’ve got a divorce to sort out. Remember? I know that with everything that’s been going on, the subject has become something of a low priority.”

“We can multitask. Come back down here and we’ll chew on it together.”

“With your hands in my pants, right?”

He exhaled a spectacular sigh even drama queen Diana would have been proud of. “Yeah. Seems only fair. Just consider it a concentration aide for me.”

“You have problems concentrating?” She was still holding herself up on that one arm. The lady must have had abs of Vibranium.

“Oh, I can concentrate just fine, though not necessarily on what you’d have me thinking about. Being a Coyote, my thoughts always tend to gravitate toward making money and sex.”

“And you think shoving your hands into my pants is going to help you focus on things that aren’t those?”

“Yes,” he answered slowly.

“You’re full of shit.”

“Don’t believe me? See for yourself. I guarantee you, I will be laser focused.”

“I know better than to take that bet.”

He grinned. “I won’t tell anyone. It’s okay if you want to. You smell like you want to.”

“I really, really hate you.”

“Your body likes me, though. For a Coyote, that’s the same thing as true love.”

“Then I feel sorry for you.” There wasn’t a hint of humor in her voice, and that flat delivery chased away the levity they’d established.

Just when he started to think that hostile didn’t have to be their status quo.

“Don’t,” he said, grin gone. “I don’t need the pity. You and I both know that we wouldn’t be here in this mess right now if we weren’t attracted to each other. And, yeah, I have certain advantages when it comes to gauging how receptive a partner is. Don’t pretend you don’t know that or expect that I’m not going to use whatever tools I have at my disposal. So, we’re getting a divorce. Big fucking deal. Let’s not confuse one thing with another. We can touch each other without it meaning anything. Don’t lie to me. Do you want to touch me?”

“I shouldn’t,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a Coyote. And because my father would probably disown me.”

“I shouldn’t touch you, either,” he countered, “because you’re human, and because your cousins own a shitload of property and it’d be way too easy for them to make a body disappear.”

“And yet you want to risk that.”

“Coyotes take risks. It’s what we do best.”

For a minute or two, she didn’t say anything. She looked at him as though she were studying his face to find the hints of his lies in the same way he was breathing her in and trying to decide from her scent if she was angry or just scared.

Scared, he thought.

Most women didn’t smell like that around him unless they were prey. Women who wanted to have sex with him generally didn’t consider themselves prey.

He didn’t have any more words for her. Nothing else to say in his defense, because deep down he knew he was indefensible. He was every bad thing she thought he was.

She finally set down that hand and lowered herself onto his waiting body.

He was surprised that she did.

There you go, he thought, carefully arranging her hair away from his mouth.

“It’s good that you’re short,” he teased as he hooked his thumbs beneath the elastic of her pajama pants. “You fit into all of my grooves.”

“I’m average height for a Mexican woman.”

“You only have one Mexican parent, and the best I could tell from a distance, your dad is like six feet tall. How short is your mother?”

He supposed the hostile clearing of her throat was meant to be a warning.

“I’m not teasing you,” he insisted.

“You wouldn’t be the first. I’m a dancer. I’ve heard every possible critique of my body imaginable. It is what it is.”

“Who said anything about critiques? I happen to like how you’re put together. Especially here.” He slid his hands farther into her pants and palmed her defiant curves.

“Oh?” she murmured against his chest. “I’ve been described as bottom-heavy.”

“Pretty sure Queen wrote a song about that.”

“Yeah. They were singing about fat asses, but I don’t think thunder thighs factored into the equation.”

“What’s wrong with thunder thighs?”

“Not a damn thing. They keep me upright on my horse.”

He seemed to recall them having one other practical use. Fragmented memories about him needing to pull out before he embarrassed himself came streaming back. She’d been gripping him too tight for him to get off of her…and he hadn’t put up much of a fight.

The mescal might have lied to him about that, though. The only thing he knew for sure was that no protection had been in play. That was something he’d never forgotten before. He must have been truly out of his head.

He worked his hands up the satin ridge of her spine, feeling the muscles twitch beneath his fingertips. Smiling at the spasms of her belly against him with every tickle.

Her hand found his beard and fondled, but she didn’t seem all that interested. She moved on. Found a longish hank of hair in the middle of his head and twirled her fingers around it.

Not the direction he’d expected. Hands usually went lower—to more urgently satisfiable places.

She inhaled deeply, let out the breath, and moved her fingertips next to the shell of his ear. “There’s a nick here,” she mused at the top.

“Yeah. Coyote fight.” No one had noticed that notch in his cartilage before.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said.

“Why, because I’m a savage?”

“So you admit that you are?”

“I only lie for profit.”

“Does it pay well?”

“Depends on the circumstances. Pretty sure this trailer got paid for thanks to a couple of well-shaped lies.”

“Oh.” She pushed herself up onto her forearms and looked down at him, expression soft. “Tell me a lie.”

“What?”

“Go on. Make up a lie to tell me. See if I buy it.”

“And if you do, what do I get?”

She tapped the tip of her index finger against her chin and gazed at the bottom of the bunk. “Promising you anything would probably be a bad deal for me, no matter what.”

“True, but you’re going to do it anyway.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you’re curious.”

“My curiosity has limits. I’m not a cat. I’m only related to a bunch.”

The Cats… Huh.

He gritted his teeth. He could think of a good lie concerning the Cougars. They were ripe for fable creation.

“You want to hear it,” he said. “You want to see if it’s plausible. You want to hear me flub it so you have something to hold over my head.”

“As though I need anything new.”

“So what are you going to give me?” he pressed, sliding his hands back into her pants. She was warm there. He didn’t need heating, but most smart dogs would still prefer to be near the fire. With as hot as he was, the two of them could probably become a fire if they got the friction just right.

“Hmm.” She pressed her lips together, turning the plump flesh white before the pink reclaimed its glory. “What do you want?”

“You shouldn’t give me carte blanche.”

“But I have no way of knowing what to offer to a man who has…” She snickered and gestured to the interior of the trailer. “Everything.”

“I do have a house other than the one I rent in Maria.”

It was in Sparks. Since he was persona non grata in Sparks and had no intention of returning for any significant period of time, the house was on the market. She didn’t need to know that, though.

“I don’t even know where your house in Maria is.”

“Out by the airport.”

“Of course.”

“It’s an okay place. Private. I don’t have to worry about getting spotted when I get the itch to run around in my fur.”

“Interesting.” She pressed her lips again and let her gaze fall naturally forward onto him.

He lifted an eyebrow in an I’m waiting gesture.

“Just tell me what you want. I doubt you’ll come up with a convincing enough lie, anyway.”

“Or one that you’ll actually admit to believing?”

“I’m as honest as the day is long.”

“Well, we’ll see about that. If you find my lie to be believable, you have to help me remember everything that happened that night at Blue’s.”

She held herself back from him, forehead creased again with reservation.

“You remember some, I’m sure,” he said calmly, “and maybe I remember a little more. We can put the pieces together.”

“Why?”

“Because people are bound to repeat their mistakes if they can’t remember what they are.”

“So, I’m just a mistake?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m saying that we made mistakes. Both of us.”

“And now we’re fixing them.”

He didn’t know if “fix” was the right verb. Even the wild animal part of his consciousness found that laughable, and that little voice rarely got hung up over language. The dog part of him was treating the situation as ridiculous, though not necessarily something that needed urgent fixing. That seemed strange.

Through clenched teeth, he said, “We’re not fixing. We’re…regaining equilibrium.”

Lily seemed to accept that logic. At the very least, anger stopped radiating off her.

He couldn’t offend her in the same way he could offend most women he knew. The usual boorish shit didn’t upset her. The personal stuff did. They were strangers who knew far too much about each other. Enemies who, for one night, hadn’t been able to resist each other.

“How do you plan on reconstructing the event?” she asked him.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“So, I should just trust you?”

The dog part of him had been about to blurt that she should always trust him, but he realized right on time that one of her knees was far too near to his family jewels. Coyotes felt pain there just like everybody else.

“On this, yes,” he hedged.

She worried at a bit of skin on her bottom lip with her teeth and stared at him in search of the lie again. She wouldn’t find it. There were probably only three people on the planet who could tell when he was lying, and they were all back in Maria.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll play your little game. Tell me a lie.”

“If you insist.” He slid his hands free from her pants. He laced his fingers together behind his head. It wouldn’t do for her to notice him performing some kind of involuntary twitch, making his fabrication blatantly obvious. “So, you know that a turned Cougar’s power is limited to approximately how much power the person who turned them had, right?”

She nodded slowly.

As far as Lance knew, there weren’t many turned Cougars in Maria, but her cousin was married to one. Lily should have had a general idea of how it worked.

“With Coyotes, it’s different. Turned or born, whatever magic and dominance we have comes from association.”

“What?”

“Who we’re around. It’s why all the Coyotes I’m close to are dominant Coyotes. Our natural gifts build on each other’s. If a Coyote has even the smallest spark of potential, alphas will try to keep him or her away from others who may also become a threat.” He grinned. “Parents, on the other hand, do the opposite. They want to keep those kids together.”

A lie, but plausible, judging by the way her expression creased with conflict. She knew enough about Coyotes to be dangerous, but not enough to understand how their magic worked.

“But…you and Kenny… You said you were going to tell me a lie.”

“So, you don’t believe it is one?”

“I…” She rolled her eyes at herself. “You said you were good at it. I see how now.”

“Because I know how to exploit what people already know and twist it a little bit at a time.”

“What’s the truth?”

“Dominance tends to be genetic, just like in Cougars, but their heredity tilts toward what the Y chromosome contributes. With Cougars, the strongest females tend to be the ones who have alphas or could-be alphas as fathers or grandfathers.”

“And with Coyotes?

“With Coyotes, it doesn’t really matter. Me and Ken, we get it from our mothers. They have cleaner Coyote lines than our fathers. Our magic actually tends to get stronger the further down the family tree you go. Natural selection, I guess.”

“What would happen if you were to turn someone? Would they be like you?”

“No. Turned Coyotes are almost always weak links. On the rare occasion that they have some potential, it’s probably because they’ve got some other magic mixed up in their lineage.”

“So, I’d be a weak link?” Her lips twitched at the corners, and he so badly wanted to tell her another lie, but the game was over and she expected truth from him.

He swallowed. Dragged his tongue across his lips. Croaked, “Yeah. Probably.”

She scoffed playfully, evidently taking it all in stride. “I guess it’s a good thing I never intend to become a Coyote.”

“But you’d become a Cougar?” he asked, suddenly annoyed and for no damn good reason. He could think of a bad reason, though—that the dog in him had already marked her as his. The beast was going to be shit out of luck.

She shrugged. “If I had to be one or the other, I’d certainly be that.”

“Or you could just stay the way you are.”

“I’ll take your suggestion under advisement if I ever find myself trapped between offers from both sides.”

“So, you do have someone from the other side making offers?”

She laughed and rolled off him. “Of course I do. Do you know how many single Cougar men there are in Maria?”

“No,” he spat.

She shuffled to the coffeemaker and lifted the lid. “Lots. Some even work at the ranch.”

Lance cracked his knuckles behind his head and tried to keep his expression neutral. It was hard. Lying was easy. Being vulnerable, not so much. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, she’d abraded him and made him raw. He couldn’t hide his frustration from her because it was of her making.

“How many have come on to you since the wedding?” he asked.

“How many condoms from your trailer stash have you used since?” she returned without missing a beat.

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No?” She calmly scooped coffee into the basket, face serene. “Well, maybe not. One of those things is within our control. The other, we can’t do a damn thing about.” She glanced his way and fluttered her eyelashes. “People flirt. I don’t have to flirt back.”

“You don’t have to, but do you?”

“You didn’t answer my question. That makes you suspicious.”

“I’m not answering it because I think you’re going to believe what you want no matter what I say.”

“Tell me anyway.” She stabbed the power button on the machine then plopped her fists onto her hips. The sight should have been comical—her untamed curls sticking up every which way, the flying pigs on her pajama pants, that Double B Ranch T-shirt with the picture of the bucking bronco that seemed to be missing its tail. The sight wasn’t funny, though. It was actually a little frightening in how…domestic, perhaps, and normal it was.

He wasn’t used to normal. He wasn’t used to having women in his space in their pajamas.

She wanted an answer, and he wasn’t going to lie. He didn’t need to, anyway.

“You’re the only woman I’ve slept with in the past six months. Happy?”

She was too busy gaping to respond.

He rooted his phone out from the tangle of covers and got to his feet. Seven AM. He could catch a little sunrise or just get outside and breathe some fresh air. He didn’t like feeling so pent up. It wasn’t the walls making him feel that way, but the conversation.

He was starting to understand why most Coyote couples simply didn’t talk.