Chapter 4
As her hair cascaded down around her shoulders in a gloriously scented waterfall of sweetness and spice—like strawberries and cinnamon—Mac didn’t even realize what was happening until she broke off the kiss to babble, “I’m so sorry!”
Then he noticed the pain.
It was a minor thing. He’d taken much worse from the cholla cactuses and desert scorpions he encountered on the regular at work. Still, the note of panic in Brandy’s voice made him pull back.
Scarlet streaked down the meaty side of his fist. He angled his hand away to avoid dripping on her pretty dress. The pink flowers didn’t need blood drops for decoration, although her heaving breasts did something very nice for the neckline.
“So, so sorry,” she kept saying. Her frantic tone softened the hard bulge in his jeans more than the pain did.
“It’s okay,” he soothed. “Hardly worse than a bee sting.” He gave the hairpin a mistrustful glance. “Although you shouldn’t have that thing in your hair. You could’ve given yourself a lobotomy.”
She grimaced. “That would explain why I’m so stupid—”
“Hey.” He put his other hand under her chin and tipped her mouth closed. “Don’t. It’s nothing. I’m fine. See?”
When he showed her the little prick—which was already closing, thanks to his toughness—she used the silky red flower on the non-pointy end of the pin to wipe away the blood.
“Oh,” she murmured. “I thought I stuck you much harder.”
He pulled his hand away. No good her thinking there was anything odd about his physiology. At least there was nothing unusual about a guy’s single-minded lust.
Especially not with a girl like her. She still looked flustered, which only made him want to cuddle her closer, show her he wasn’t hurt at all, and that no matter what she did to him, he could take it.
After everything that had happened to the clan and as hard as he’d pushed himself to make things better, nothing she could do would be worse.
He brushed the silky waves of her hair back over her shoulder, letting his knuckles brush the satiny smoothness of her bare shoulders. Maybe he’d try going for that top button again…
And then he realized she was talking.
“…sorry again.”
He focused on her words, not pawing her. “What?”
“I should get going,” she repeated. That note of babbling was back in her voice. “I’m sorry—”
He scowled. “Stop saying that.”
Her jaw jutted. “Look, I really do have to go—”
“Fine. But stop saying sorry. If you don’t want to be here, that’s fine.” He took a long step back, spreading his hands to the sides. The meat of his palm panged, and he wondered if she’d pierced something important. Whatever, he’d heal.
Maybe for a minute he thought he’d get a break from the grind—get a chance to grind again on somebody who’d let him forget, just for a little while, that the fate of the clan was in his grubby hands.
And now he was one-handed.
He clenched the wounded one into a fist, letting the ache remind him that he had responsibilities that wouldn’t walk away after an afternoon’s fun. “I’ll take you back to your aunt’s house.”
“I don’t need you to do that.”
He bit back a growl. “You want to try to walk those heels up the sandy slope alone?”
She swiveled her lips from one side to the other, and he could almost hear the hemming and hawing in her head.
Finally, she gave him a nod that would’ve looked far more regal if her red-gold hair had still been piled up on her head instead of tumbled around her shoulders in riotous abandon as if they’d been—
He cut off that thought and the half-chub that returned to his jeans at the irresistible mental blow-by-blow. They wouldn’t be doing that, not now, not ever again.
Though his skin felt too hot and tight—as if he were on the verge of an accidental shift—he held out his elbow to her. Keeping his steps short while everything in him longed to get away from the scene of his humiliation, he guided her back to his truck. Aw hell, it’d taken him months to forget how she’d looked through his windshield when he’d pulled up behind her and she’d turned to smile at him. Like that one time he’d seen a shooting star blaze across the night on a lonely cross-country drive: bright, startling, lovely.
And gone so damn fast.
She didn’t say a word as he opened the cab door for her, and his neck flushed with dull heat as he had to scramble to move a crate of decorative stone that was sitting on the bench seat.
That’s what he was: dumb as a box of rocks.
He yanked the crate out of the cab and stomped around to the bed. By the time he climbed into the drivers seat, she was already settled and neatly seatbelted, her pink-flowered skirt tucked around her like a shroud.
She was holding that wicked sharp hairpin clenched in her hand. The red silk disguised the bloodstain, but the metallic scent pinged in his sensitive nose. Probably he should be grateful the prick had halted their ill-advised trip down memory lane. If he was going to show the shifters of Angels Rest how trustworthy and dependable the clan was, he couldn’t just go falling into bed with every passerby.
A whisper of thought, even deeper than his beast, reminded him the only one he’d ever fallen for had been Brandy.
Despite his best effort, the growl remained in his voice when he asked, “Is your aunt still on Fifth?”
She gave him a tight little nod. “But you can just drop me off on Main and I’ll walk.”
He didn’t even answer that and drove the five extra damn blocks.
Maybe she heard the growling he wasn’t letting out and decided not to argue. But he hadn’t even come to a complete stop in front of the old Victorian—he’d remembered the house because the style stood out from the rest of the town’s post-war ranches and Cape Cods—when she popped open the door.
“Dammit…” He stomped on the brakes. Obviously she couldn’t wait to get away from him, but really?
She whisked out of the cab, “I’m sorry” trailing over her shoulder, souring the strawberry-cinnamon scent lingering behind her.
The puncture in his hand ached when he gripped the steering wheel and watched her flee up the cobblestone walk. If the walkway hadn’t been perfectly straight, he would’ve lost sight of her in the overgrown thicket of the front yard. The two-and-a-half-story home barely peeped over the ash, oak, and alder trees, its top window like a single suspicious eye. Even if the older lady didn’t mind bushwhacking, the landscape could use good trim. XXX
Mac scowled to himself. The lamp hanging above the front door lighted her way…and provided a silhouette of her hurrying legs through the thin skirt. Legs that could’ve been wrapped around him… But nope, nothing doing.
He’d probably never see Brandy Wick again.