CHAPTER TWENTY

Lance had never been more grateful for owning furniture. Housekeeping had never been a huge priority for him given his rolling stone tendencies, but there was something satisfying about dropping his woman onto a bed that only he’d slept in.

No shitty hotel room sheets. No thin RV mattresses. Top-of-the-line, all the way. As he worked off her boots, he wondered if she appreciated his efforts.

Her fingers were inching toward him, feeling and patting.

She couldn’t see him, he realized. Too dark.

Fine for him. He didn’t need the light, and he certainly didn’t mind being groped.

“I think this is what you’re looking for.” He guided her hands to his waistband, hooking the fingers beneath the elastic.

“You could turn on the light.”

“Or we could just keep going until morning. There’ll be plenty of light then. That window faces the east.”

She had the kind of laugh that cradled a guy’s psyche and make him feel like he was brave enough to do wild shit like cliff diving and shopping at big box stores on Black Friday.

Maybe he would, if she wanted him to.

“How do you even get these things on?” He was trying to tug her jeans over her angles but he could barely get his fingers under the hems.

“Gotta wriggle a little.” And she did, and he was glad she couldn’t see in the dark because the look on his face couldn’t have been proper or respectful. He didn’t know a single sexual being who could watch a woman on her back jiggle in all the delightful places women tended to and not feel beastly.

She got her waistband down her thighs, and he took over the rest of the way, turning the jeans inside out as he tugged them off and not really caring. He flung them somewhere behind him and pawed off her jacket, growling at the flannel shirt beneath. Plaid. He kept seeing that particular color pattern on Foyes.

She laughed again as she deftly loosened the tiny buttons. “Why the noise?”

“What’s with the plaid? I’ve seen your cousins in it.”

“It’s part of the branding of the companies, both the ranch and Woodworks. It’s the Baxter plaid.”

“Ah. Well, I’m sure that drives your grandparents nuts.”

“Actually, I don’t know if they know. Aunt Glenda’s been using it for years. The folks in Scotland don’t care as long as they keep getting those big boxes of Double B jerky at Christmas.”

“I’ve never been to Scotland.”

“Me neither.”

“We should go,” he said.

“When?”

“After.”

“After what?”

“Maybe after morning, since you’re concerned about the light.” Her bra unclasped at the front, and he couldn’t have been gladder, because, with his acute impatience, the little scrap of fabric wouldn’t have survived the encounter.

“We’ll go tomorrow then.” She laughed and scooted away from the bed’s edge right as he started to reach for her waist. There was still one more piece of fabric to deal with. “I’m sure Belle won’t mind if I extend my absence a while longer. Blue might miss you a bit, though.”

“He’ll be okay.” Lance doffed his jacket, sweats, and his socks. He tossed his shirt along after them and climbed up the bed toward her.

She sat with her back against the headboard, smiling softly. Utterly relaxed. Comfortable.

The softness of her expression matched the clues his nose was giving him. No agitation. No fear. No anxiety. Not even any restlessness. That was all on him. He wasn’t used to being the one at odds.

“You really think he won’t notice his trusted lieutenant is missing for a week or more?”

“He’d notice.” Lance yanked her down onto her back by the thighs and wasted a few seconds admiring the demure cut of cotton panties and the sweet little bow just beneath her navel. He traced the tip of the fabric there and watched her belly quiver. “He’d notice, but he’d adapt. Diana doesn’t like getting her hands dirty, but she’d fill in if she had to.”

Yeah, she’s going to have to.

Lance liked the idea of taking his wife somewhere far away from all the distractions in Maria. He could take her someplace where no one knew them, and where none of the shit back at home mattered. For a few days, they could just be with no one shouting “Liliana!” at her from down the fucking street.

And, preferably, no one attempting to jump him and tie him up in a van.

“I know a guy who can get me plane tickets cheap.” He inched her panties down her legs, pausing to kiss where her thighs touched because he couldn’t remember if he had the last time. Her thighs deserved worshiping, perhaps more in greater detail later. So much about her was distracting to the Coyote brain. Too many soft spots to set his teeth into. Too many alluring scents to investigate.

“Especially this one,” he murmured as his fingers slid between her legs.

“Especially what one?”

“Don’t mind me.” He leaned forward as he stroked down her slit, easing her thighs apart. “I’m just thinking out loud.”

“At least you’re thinking.”

“Be nice to me. Coyote self-esteem is extremely fragile.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe. Treat me like it’s the truth, anyway. Maybe I’ll like it.”

“You want to be coddled.”

“Yeah. Coddle me.”

“Come here, then.”

He could tell exactly what she wanted when she lifted her head and pursed her lips. In the past, kissing had been a waste of time for him. It was prescribed intimacy demanded by women he didn’t plan to keep, and who likely knew—deep down—that he wasn’t going to be able to give them what they wanted, anyway.

He hadn’t had it to give until Lily.

Her fingertips traced down his spine and palms kneaded into his shoulders as he nudged her lips apart with his.

“The beard tickles,” she whispered.

“You want me to shave it?” It didn’t mean anything to him. It was little more than a participation trophy for being born with Y chromosomes. He may have been recognizable for it, but it didn’t make or break him.

“Would I like to see what’s under it? Yes, of course, but it’s your face, Lance.” If she had any instructions beyond that, she didn’t speak them. He wished she would have. Sometimes, he needed to be told what to do.

Her tongue slid between his lips and one strong leg wrapped around his core. She pulled him down to her, locking his body tight against hers, twisting her fingers in his hair.

His hand skated down her side and between their bodies, and he made himself a little room to play as she drew his lip between her teeth and then nibbled along his jaw.

Her belly tautened as he slid his fingers in deep and worked the heel of his palm over the protruding bud.

The little noises she made into his mouth echoed a memory from months in the past, breathless encouragements that’d had him flicking his tongue into her faster, delving his fingers into her deeper. The mescal had him convinced that he was doing it because he’d needed to bring her down a peg or two, but that wasn’t true. He’d been licking her because he’d simply wanted a taste, and the sample had made him even hungrier.

“Right there,” she whispered, and tilted her hips forward, urging his touch. He hadn’t noticed she’d relinquished her grip on his hair and that her hands were between them, cupping him, teasing his nuts tight and making his shaft throb. “Cat’s already out of the bag,” she said. “May as well make the most of it.”

“Meaning?”

“Come inside, Lance.”

Oh.

He was in motion before his brain had even finished processing the command. From the nightstand, he snatched a condom and lube and equipped himself before she could torture him with any more of that merciless teasing.

He couldn’t remember how she liked it—all in at once or for him to ease in slowly. He opted for caution.

She did not.

Those thighs.

She pulled him in deep and pinned him tight. Her faltering breath against his ear warmed, tickled, and then enticed when it turned into words. “I bite.”

“Sometimes, I do, too.”

She nodded. Swallowed. Urged him on with a squeeze of her highs against his ribs.

She knew the rules. His bites couldn’t hurt her when he was in that shape. If he’d been on four legs, a bite from him would have meant that within a month or two, Blue would have a new Coyote in his pack. Probably, nobody wanted that. Not Blue. Not the Foyes. Not Lily.

Not Lance, either.

For whatever reason, it seemed critical that Lily stay exactly as she was. She was already plenty strong without being changed. Their children wouldn’t care one way or another.

Children?

He didn’t know where that thought had come from, but try as he might to chase it away, the imagery lingered in his mind. The scene was only half congealed because he’d never let his imagination go there before. But there Lily was in every scene, the perfect, doting mother who was there to scoop up the mess left behind after every Coyote shenanigan. And he was happy because she was smiling at him for what he’d given her and not faking it for a change.

Of course he wanted that. He wanted to come home every night to that family in his imagination. His own little pack of howlers.

“You want to swap?” he asked her. He was aware of his weight, and hers.

“If you think I’m going to just lie here and suffer in silence, you’ve forgotten who you’re with.” She gave him another of those unmistakable nudges to get him moving. There probably wasn’t a bronco alive that wouldn’t be broken by the time she was done with him.

Having nothing left to say, he let his focus go to the place where they were joined—a mistake, probably. Even with the latex between them, he was too sensitive. Too strung out, maybe. The sounds Lily made weren’t helping his endurance any. With each thrust, she whispered something he couldn’t quite catch. Maybe it wasn’t English, but he didn’t need to understand, anyway. He caught the gist in the way her belly spasmed and how she clenched around him. And in the way her teeth scored along the corded slope of his neck.

He wanted to roll over, anyway. Wanted her on top having her way, so he wouldn’t feel like he was breaking her. But it didn’t seem to matter. She had a way of moving beneath him, shifting subtly, opening her hip flexors more, pulling him flatter to her, taking him in deeper.

“You’re…trying to kill me,” he rasped.

He wanted to claw at the parts of him that were already tossing in the towel. That ominous throbbing, that aggressive tightening low down.

That “you’re done” warning.

“Not trying to kill you,” she whispered even as she writhed beneath him and sliced into his back with her nails. “I’m trying to…enjoy you. Trying to love you.”

If he’d been able to move at all without falling apart, he would have pulled back enough for her to see his face. She’d misspoken. Used the wrong word in her supposed enjoyment of him. He wanted her to know, but she had a way of distracting.

“Yes, right there!”

The look of determination on her face—teeth set into her lower lip, eyes closed, brow deeply creased—was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. At least, not while sober.

He didn’t move, but it didn’t matter. She had him exactly where she wanted him, somehow riding him upside down, and he was fine with that. Fine with her knowing how to find what she wanted and taking what she needed.

He was easy.

He just put his forehead down beside hers, gritted his teeth, and tried to hold his body together in spite of his lower region’s insistence that he was done. In spite of the fact that the pain of the blades of her teeth in his shoulder was somehow making him hard enough to shatter.

He was practically vibrating from the throbbing, the urgency, her torturing grinds and the bold swiveling of her hips.

Couldn’t take it. Couldn’t last.

Fortunately, she was done. She dug in her heels but loosened her bite as her pleasure erupted in an exhalation.

He muttered his relief and gripped her hips tight as he came, worried she was truly going to kill him if she moved any more.

She might kill him anyway, but it wasn’t going to be that day if he had any say in the matter.

“You’re a fucking praying mantis,” he said when he could speak again.

She lay limp beneath him, giggling.

“Or a black widow. That’s not funny.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of that before.”

“I don’t particularly want to think that anyone has had a chance to make that accusation.”

“They wouldn’t have. You’re special. I can’t break you.”

The statement was so outlandish that he laughed. And he kept laughing until she shimmied out from under him and clapped a hand over his mouth. “Are you critiquing my performance?” she asked him, low.

Sensitive shortcake.

He lifted the hand and somehow managed to squelch the laughter impulse. Her expression was murderous, which was somehow cute. “Not critiquing your performance,” he said. “Perform on me whenever you want. Just assure me you’ll leave enough of me behind that my family can identify my body.”

“Shut up.”

“’Kay.”

He was fine with that.

Fine with her getting him cleaned up, tucking him in, and handing him the remote, too. Not that he could concentrate on the television. Hard to manage when the picture on the screen wasn’t as pretty as the one beside him.