Chapter 3
As they stepped out onto the front porch that rambled the full length of the roadhouse, a breeze across the high desert plateau tugged at Brandy’s skirt like little fingers demanding attention. She slicked her hands down her thighs to hold the fabric in place. As much as she needed Mac’s attention, she didn’t want to flash all of Angels Rest. The wind held the lingering heat of the desert rocks, but it was edged with the descending chill of the vast, dark sky above, and she shivered.
Mac stopped. “Maybe it’s too cold out here for that dress. For you.”
“No,” she said quickly. “It feels good.”
“Still, let me grab a coat for you.” Without waiting for an answer, he strode down the porch steps and across the gravel parking lot.
She watched him go. She might not be telling him the truth, but she couldn’t lie to herself: No man in Manhattan filled out a suit the way worn denim fit Mac.
Sighing wistfully into the cocktail glass, she took a sip of the drink he’d ordered for her. The sweet vermouth and simple sugar lightened the brandy to a rosy hue—a classic Metropolitan, although a bit heavy on the bitters. Was he teasing her with the choice?
In the row of well-used pickups, his was one of the most used. Brandy recognized it, but it had more dings, more smudges, and a decal that hadn’t been there before.
“Sunday Landscaping?” She jerked her chin at the truck when he returned with a denim jacket slung over his shoulder.
His jaw tightened for just a second as his gaze dropped. “Yeah. I run an excavation crew for the Domingo family. Not as fancy as an office in New York City, but it’s honest work and pays the bills.”
She looked down too and couldn’t help but see the difference between his work boots and her impractical heels. “I didn’t mean…” She bit the inside of her cheek. She wasn’t here to reassure him about his choices.
She was here to fix her own mistakes.
He didn’t seem inclined to let her finish anyway. “I don’t want you to break that pretty ankle.” For a moment, she thought he was going to send her back inside, but then he held out his arm. “Here. Balance on me.”
He draped the jacket, still warm from being shut up in the cab of the truck, around her shoulders. The whiff of musk was stronger in the denim, and she imagined him sweaty from a day’s work, heading home as the sun went down, but stopping off at Gypsy’s to unwind.
What kind of home did he go to now? Still that basement apartment, dim and quiet? Or…oh no, did he maybe have a girlfriend? Certainly he wouldn’t be drinking with her if that were the case.
God, she was running as hot and cold as the indecisive breeze. And she couldn’t change her mind anyway.
Very deliberately, she threaded her hand through the crook of his elbow.
The bare skin of his forearm was warm under her palm, almost hot, and so hard, the corded muscles flexing to steady her. She shivered again at the memory of aaaall his hot, hard body pressed against hers.
“I forgot how bright the stars are out here,” she said, desperate to think of something—anything!—else.
He nodded as he guided her around the corner of the building. Out back, the scrubby lawn sloped down away from the roadhouse. “That hasn’t changed.”
There was an edge to his voice that would’ve given her pause. Except if she paused for even a second, her cute, come-get-me heels would sink into the earth, like quicksand. Did he mean that she had changed? Did he suspect something?
It didn’t matter if he was suspicious. Nothing was going to stop her from what she needed to do, not Rita’s disapproving tsking, not Gin with the wordless smirks. Definitely not Mac, despite all his rugged muscles and wary animal stares.
She tottered along beside him down the shallow hill. In the last fading light of sunset, the creek at the bottom glimmered with the purples of unknowable secrets. Where did the water come from in this high, dry land? Where did it go? Not that the secrets mattered; it had its course, just as she did.
The gazebo wasn’t one of the pretty white fancy ones that graced the central parks of the upscale neighborhoods where she’d aimed her sights back in the day. This one was cobbled together out of what looked like leftover lumber from the roadhouse, still rough with snags that were only partly buffed by many years of drunken visitors. Still, the boards gave her a more solid surface to stand on as Mac handed her up the three steps to the interior. From that slight elevation, they had a better view of the creek and the wild desert beyond.
“Sort of surprising that this place needs landscaping,” she mused. “It seems like it doesn’t want anything, as if it’s always been exactly like this.”
“That’s an illusion,” he said, his voice still holding that edge that wasn’t quite anger. “Fire, floods, the weight of snow all winter. Even the wild places get roughed up and need some tender, loving care.”
She turned, leaning her hip against the rail that ringed the gazebo. “And the work you do is about making things perfect, not leaving them to chance. Kind of like my work.” Like their first encounter had been just chance.
And this time was very much planned.
He shrugged, his gaze shuttling from the star-speckled horizon back to her. The lights from the roadhouse barely reached this far, but there was a shine in his eyes that wasn’t any artificial light at all.
“Why do I feel that this was meant to be?” he murmured.
Though every nerve in her body suggested she pull the denim jacket tight around her—the only shield she had—instead, she shrugged off the protective layer and faced him. She perched her butt on the rail and leaned outward a bit, just enough so the starlight could touch the skin of her revealed cleavage. Not enough light for a man to see much, of course, but a shifter was more than a man.
Sure enough, his gaze tracked her from her breasts to her hips angled toward him.
When his jaw clenched, she could almost feel his teeth closing gently at her throat.
His lashes dropped halfway, hiding the glitter in his eyes. “Did you not want it?”
Oh yeah, she’d wanted it. She just hadn’t expected as much as she got. She blinked. “Want what?”
“Did you not want that drink?”
She glanced sidelong at the cocktail she’d abandoned on the rail. In the shadows, the rosy hue of the drink looked darker. Like blood.
Swallowing hard, she admitted, “I guess I really just wanted to get you alone.”
His eyes flared open, as if he hadn’t expected her honesty. Boy, he had no idea…
“I thought about you after you left,” he said. The sharp edge to his voice finally seemed to crack away, exposing a new facet.
Too much honesty. But she owed him something, maybe. “I thought about you too. You were so nice to me.”
He exhaled a hard gust of air. “Nice.”
Her lips twitched. “In a very manly way.”
He didn’t return the smile. “You were a virgin, weren’t you?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Did it matter?”
“Did you see it stopping me?” he countered.
“Not much.” With another swallow, she reached out one finger to trace a short line down the center of his chest. The hard bulge of his pecs on either side heaved a little at the touch, not quite a shiver, but not quite not. “You were everything a girl could want.”
Just more than she’d planned.
He took a half step closer, pressing her closed knuckles against his sternum. “And what do you want now? Seems a little late for round two.”
She torqued her lips to one side in wry agreement. “I, uh, got a little busy.”
“You came to the right place for not busy.”
“I think there’s a lot more to Angels Rest than meets the eye,” she murmured.
When he tucked his chin, brow furrowing as if summoning up a question she didn’t want to answer, she opened her clenched fingers just far enough to tangle in the soft cotton of his T-shirt and dragged him the rest of the half step toward her.
His knees wedged between hers, and then she definitely didn’t need his jacket as the heat of his big body enveloped her.
Though only their knees touched, the contact sent a tiny earthquake up through her thighs to the low point of her belly. She wanted to clamp her legs tight. And she wanted to open them wider. All her muscles seemed to soften, tilting her toward him, and the bodice of her sundress felt too restrictive, as if her suddenly sensitized breasts were trying to bust through the open neckline to get to him.
It wasn’t fair that he could confuse her so much so easily even though he’d barely touched her. He’d already upended her life once; she couldn’t let him do it again.
Not when it wasn’t just her life at stake.
When she didn’t move, didn’t speak, he straightened, those big shoulders still looming over her but making a space that let the night air whisper between them. “If you’re having second thoughts about round two—”
“No!” She jolted forward off the rail which put her squarely between the wide stance of his boots. “I’m just…”
Her cute, impractical heels almost negated the difference in their height, but she was achingly aware of how much he outweighed her. The bulk of his torso was double hers, and the circumference of his biceps was probably greater than most of the runty trees on Mesa Diablo. Every part of him was threatening to overwhelm her need to stay focused.
Instead of just focusing on her need…
It had been so long since she gave herself up to the simple desires of her body. Maybe, just once more, she could indulge in this pleasure. Surely a shapeshifter would approve of these animal urges.
She took a slow, deep breath, letting the cool night air and the simmering heat of his body swirl inside her, braiding together with her determination. With the inhalation, her breasts brushed his chest, and hidden behind the pink roses, her nipples puckered with wanting.
Mac stared down at her, his lips barely parted on a rasping breath that sounded almost like a growl, as if he were dragging her scent over his tongue. His obvious hunger stoked her own, and the steady, insistent pulse between her legs quickened.
Rolling up to her tiptoes—giving herself another inch of height, rubbing her needy flesh against her panties—she spread her palms on those wide, strong shoulders and kissed him.
Just as she’d known, the stubble of his beard rasped deliciously on her skin, but his lips beyond that were shockingly soft. He parted them on another hot gust of breath at the smooth lock of their mouths.
No tongue. But as the air from him filled her, at the faint hint of mint, she realized he’d not taken a single swig from the beer bottle he’d been carrying around since she saw him. Oh no, he wasn’t even a little bit tipsy, and she was on her third shot of courage. How she wanted to just let that alcohol tide sweep her away.
Her lashes fluttered closed as he raised one hand between them to cup her cheek. The calluses on his palm and fingertips were rough against her jaw and cheekbone. Sparks of sensation jumped across her nerve endings like frayed wires, sending jolts all the way down her spine. With the barest twist of his wrist, he angled her head, rasping his thumb across the throbbing pout of her lower lip, opening her wider…
And the kiss exploded.
With a deep groan, he thrust his tongue into her mouth. And she met him willingly, wildly, awash in the cascade of feeling she’d forgotten since the last time she’d been with him.
Her first, her last. And right now, her only.
His other hand fisted at the small of her back, dragging her closer, as if he’d impale her on his tongue. The slick, hot caress of his mouth over hers brought back the memories of their day together, skin glossy from open-mouthed kisses and eager sweat, laughing when their teeth clicked together and their tangoing hips bonked as they found their shared rhythm.
They’d shared more than that.
That recollection shocked her out of the boozy, breezy, blissful moment faster than a dunk in Angel Creek.
She wasn’t here for her pleasure. She was here for her plan.
His hand at her cheek slid farther to cup the back of her head and tangle in the locks of hair that had come undone from her bun. She reached up to pull the silk poppy from her hair. The coil unraveled in a whisper, and she gripped the hairpin until her fingers ached.
And when he reached for the top button of her bodice, she held her breath and jabbed the sharp point of the pin into the side of his hand.