by Tamara Hogan
Lorin had shed the soft fleece jacket she’d been wearing earlier and was stripped down to a duo of tank tops. Although it was barely sixty degrees outside, her skin glistened with perspiration.
When did sweaty women start turning him on?
“Gabe,” Lorin called. “You might as well come over and meet Paige.”
Gabe approached the two women. This was his ace geology and metallurgy grad? Her tiny hands didn’t look capable of picking up a pickax, much less wielding one.
“Gabe, this is Paige Scott, here for her third season. Paige, this is Gabe Lupinsky, who’ll be… working with us this summer.”
“Hello,” he said, extending his hand to the smaller woman. They hadn’t talked about a cover story yet, but Lorin’s vague introduction would probably work well enough for now. When Paige lifted her gaze to his, his smile froze, just for a second. Her irises, snapping with intelligence and bravado, were a distinct pinkish-red. “Ms. Scott, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Please call me Paige,” she said, squeezing the hell out of his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Lupinsky. I’m familiar with your work.”
“And I’m familiar with yours,” he replied, retrieving his hand. The faerie’s pink canvas high tops were adorned with tiny black skulls. Gabe was relieved to see some outward sign of edge, even if it was cosmetic. Standing next to Lorin, Paige Scott looked like she’d float away with a puff of the breeze. “Nice job on the assays and maps.”
“Thank you. Topography’s not my specialty, but I did what I could.” Paige stepped back, encompassing Gabe and Lorin with a single look. “So.”
“Hmm?”
Gabe sighed. The faux-innocent expression on Lorin’s face wouldn’t fool a toddler, much less a curve-breaker like Paige Scott.
Paige snagged a piece of her fluffy hair, twirling the lock around her forefinger as she considered them. “The assays are unremarkable. Our most significant find last season was a fire pit and some deer and rabbit bones. So, what’s up? What is Dr. Gabriel Lupinsky from Sebastiani Labs doing here?”
A look of panic chased across Lorin’s face. “Well, you know my mother is on sabbatical—”
“Lorin.” Gabe rested his hand on her forearm. Lorin stiffened but didn’t move away.
Paige’s gaze ping-ponged between them. “Ah.”
“What?” Lorin nearly squeaked, yanking her arm back.
“You’re lovers,” Paige said.
It could work, Gabe thought. It could work very well. A relationship between them was a perfectly logical conclusion for someone to draw. Why not use the obvious sexual tension between them for a useful purpose?
You want to touch her, his libido taunted.
What the hell are you doing? his common sense warned.
Gabe disregarded common sense and slid his arm around Lorin’s waist, resting his hand familiarly on her hip. “Busted,” he said with a smile, digging his fingers into her resilient flesh as she tried to tug away. “It’s new yet,” he explained to Paige as he wrapped his other arm around Lorin, dropping a kiss onto the tip of her nose for good measure. “I wanted to learn more about where Lorin worked. It’s been ages since I worked a dig, so I volunteered.”
Lorin’s right thigh visibly twitched. Probably fighting the urge to knee him in the crotch. She yanked out of his arms with a growl.
Paige rolled her eyes at her reaction. “Lorin, chill. What’s the biggie? It’s not like you’ll be the only people knocking boots here this summer.”
The sound of tires against gravel got their attention, when a faded black Explorer emerged from the tunnel of trees.
“Crap,” Paige muttered.
“He’s seen you,” Lorin said. “You’d better hurry.”
“Yeah,” Paige quickly agreed. “Catch you later. Nice to meet you, Dr. Lupinsky.” Before Gabe could reply, Paige picked up her bag and took off at a run, carrying the duffel containing a summer’s worth of gear like it weighed nothing.
The linebacker-sized guy wedged behind the wheel of the truck didn’t look happy. He skidded the truck to a stop with an impressive spray of rocks, opened the driver’s door, snagged a pillow off the passenger seat, and hit the ground running, leaving the truck idling.
“Too much ground to make up, Mike,” Lorin hooted. “She’s got you.”
Mike grunted a response as he blew past them, carrying the pillow like a football. They both watched as the big redhead bolted into the bunkhouse.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Gabe said. “What’s that about?”
“Remember that big bed in the bunkhouse?”
He nodded. Lorin had looked absolutely spectacular bent over it, snapping clean sheets onto the corners.
“The crewmember who puts a personal item on the bed first gets it for the season.” When voices exploded from the bunkhouse’s open door, Lorin smiled like the Cheshire Cat. “Sounds like she held him off.”
Sure enough, Mike poked his head from the bunkhouse door. “Lorin, c’mon, help me out here. I’m bigger than she is. I need the room.”
Paige appeared beside him, grinning as she rubbed her shoulder.
Had the guy actually tackled her? He was well over double her body weight. Gabe shot a glance at Lorin, but she didn’t look outraged on Paige’s behalf, or even particularly concerned.
“Nothing I can do, Mike,” Lorin called back. “You know the rules.”
“You snooze, you lose,” Paige crowed. “And I’m going to be snoozing in a double bed all summer long.” As she turned on her heel, she murmured something to Mike, too soft for them to hear. Mike narrowed his eyes and slowly followed her into the bunkhouse.
Lorin watched them with a pensive expression on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s had a crush on him for ages, but he treats her like a little sister.” Lorin sighed. “Well, they’ll have to work it out. And speaking of which.” Her voice took on a muscularity it hadn’t had just a few seconds ago.
He was obviously tetched in the head, because suddenly he was really turned on.
He planted his feet and faced her. What was coming? A slap to the face? A fist to the gut? An epic cockpunch?
He probably owed her a free shot.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she hissed. Her hands didn’t move, other than to clench into white-knuckled fists at her side. “We’re lovers? Who’s going to believe that?” Before he could defend the idea, she was off and running. “City boy, let’s get something straight right now. I might temporarily report to you, but in all the ways that matter, I’m in charge.” She shot him a look that sliced. “Yeah, I made a mistake opening the box, and your presence here is my metaphorical spanking. I get it. But this is my mother’s dig. My dig. Not yours. Never yours.”
His thoughts were snagged back on “spanking,” but he yanked them to heel. He had to set a couple of things straight, right now. “You’re right. I’m sorry. And I’m also sorry about the meeting earlier today. I know I should have—”
“—talked to me first?” she spat out. “Had the courtesy to discuss ‘our plan’ with me before presenting it to everyone else as a done deal?”
“Yes.” His prompt agreement startled her into silence, so he took advantage of the lull. “Last night, after the sauna, I was… wired. I couldn’t sleep. You were in your cabin for the night, the lights off. My brain wouldn’t shut down, so I… worked, like I frequently do. You were gone when I woke up this morning, and you didn’t return to the compound until just before the meeting started. I considered rescheduling the meeting, but you know as well as I do how tough it is to find an opening on Elliott’s calendar.” He shrugged. “I should have discussed it with you first, and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
Lorin scowled at him, and then nodded. “Thank you. And for what it’s worth, it’s a decent plan.” She paused, seeming to consider her words. “When you first got here, you said we needed to present a united front. You’re right, but it goes both ways. Please reme
mber that Schlessingers have run this dig—without you—for decades. We’ll run it after you’re gone.”
It was his turn to nod and extend a conciliatory hand. “Okay. Truce?”
“Ooh, not yet, bucko,” she snapped. “What the hell were you thinking, kissing me like that in front of Paige?”
A jolt raced down his spine as he parsed her words. Might she be open to him kissing her in private? “You left the meeting before we could talk about a cover story. When Paige jumped to the conclusion she did, I… went with it.” He managed a shrug. “If she believed it, the others probably will.”
Her incredulous expression made his stomach clench. Of course it wasn’t believable. Lorin Schlessinger slept with the pick of the litter, not mutts who were legally blind without their glasses. “Let the crew think you’re slumming for the summer,” he said with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel.
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Last night I practically threw myself at you, and you let me know in no uncertain terms you just weren’t interested.”
His jaw dropped. “Not interested? Are you really that dense?”
“It’s okay, really,” she interrupted with a remote smile. “It really is. It’s entirely your choice, and you said ‘no’ in every way that mattered. But given that you did, why is pretending to be my lover a solution you’re comfortable with?”
Were all Valkyries so oblivious? Screw his scruples. Spearing one hand into her sweat-dampened hair and clamping the other on her ass, he yanked her body against his. Lorin’s widened eyes made it clear that, if she missed it last night, she certainly noticed his erection now. “Make no mistake about it, Lorin,” he nearly growled. “I want to eat you alive.”
“Same goes.” She eyed his mouth. “So what’s the problem?”
When her hips snuggled against his, he choked back a groan. Their nearly equal heights aligned their bodies perfectly. “You report to me.”
“A technicality. I turned the job down before it was offered to you.”
Okay, rumor confirmed.
“Come on, Gabe. Your management style is so hands-off it isn’t even funny. Mom’s been on sabbatical nearly a month already and I’ve barely heard from you.”
He’d been too busy dealing with his eyes and climbing the steep learning curve on his new responsibilities, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “Hands off?” He flexed his fingers against her firm hips, so muscular, yet so quintessentially female. Now that his hands were on her—and her hands were on him—all the reasons he’d denied himself last night simply floated away. When her fingers twined in the belt loop at the back of his jeans, he felt the subtle, diabolical tug all the way down to his balls. Concentrate. “Your mother and I communicate rather frequently. We need to do the same.”
“I’m not my mother,” she said, trailing her finger over his ass.
“No shit.” He’d never felt the need to strip Alka Schlessinger bare.
Lorin’s snort of laughter made clear her thoughts had traveled down the same sick track.
He steeled himself against the shivers caused by her clever, clever finger. “We’re in an odd situation here, Lorin. You and I haven’t had a chance to hammer out our new working relationship yet, and here we are, practically living in each other’s back pockets, working on what could be the biggest find in our people’s history. This situation is complicated enough without us—”
“Sleeping together?” She shrugged. “What’s so complicated about it? You want me, I want you.”
She wanted him. She’d said it out loud. A sudden energy swirled through his system, tense and invigorating, like he was about to dive off a cliff without having checked the waters below. “We have students to supervise.”
Her mossy green eyes lit with amusement. “You act like they’re in kindergarten, Gabe. They’re adults who work independently for long stretches of time, and who—believe it or not—have sex lives of their own.” Stepping closer, Lorin pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. Licked him. “We could disappear a half-dozen times a day and no one would even notice.”
A half-dozen times a day? Gabe nearly groaned aloud, but his mouth was too busy chasing her agile tongue. He didn’t know whether to be thrilled or intimidated by the prospect of satisfying this woman. Lukas had suggested that Lorin was in a sex drought of her own. How long had it been since she and Rafe had—
No. Thinking about the pleasures Lorin had experienced in the sex demon’s bed was a one-way ticket to performance anxiety. He might not be as smooth as the other man, but he had some skills of his own.
Impatient with the chase, he slammed his mouth over hers and speared his tongue into the dark, damp cavern. Her strong fingers clenched his ass with bruising strength, pressing his erection more firmly into the humid notch between her legs. A growl rumbled out of his chest. He grabbed back with shaking hands.
He’d never wanted a woman so much in his life.
“Damn it,” Lorin breathed against his lips as a caravan of vehicles crunched into the parking lot. “They might be adults, but they don’t need to watch us go at it in the parking lot, either.” She reluctantly drew away, raking his frame with an avaricious gaze that felt like the stroke of a hand. “Later?”
Ah, hell. He was going to do this. Was already doing this. “Yes.”
“When?” she asked. “Where?”
A car backfired. “Where should I park, Lorin?” a dark-haired, sharp-featured guy called from the driver’s window of an old Skylark. “I’m leaking oil.”
“Damn,” Lorin muttered. “Park over to the far side of the lot, Nathan.” She pointed to where she wanted him to go. “Hi, Ellenore,” she called to a gamine redhead with a centerfold body who’d just stepped from a red Miata.
Didn’t Lorin hire any ugly people?
Over in the parking lot, crewmembers gathered around Nathan’s now-smoking car. “Go take care of business,” he said. “I’m going to—”
“Take care of business?” she said with a grin, staring at the front of his pants.
“You’re evil.”
“You can handle it,” she said as she walked backwards toward the parking lot. “Later.”
Were her words a threat, a promise, or both? Suddenly Gabe couldn’t wait to find out.
***
“You’re making a mess.” Nathan held out his hand as yet another hamburger fell apart on the grill under Lorin’s hand. “Let me.”
Across the room, Gabe’s laughter rang out again. “Fine.” She slapped the spatula into his hand.
Gabe and Paige sat across from each other at the end of one of the picnic tables in the cookhouse dining room, and if the laughter they shared was any indication, they were hitting it off very well indeed. As Lorin watched, Paige licked at the ketchup dripping off a loaded hamburger while Gabe scrawled in the open notebook sitting next to his silverware.
Instead of crawling up the walls like she was, Gabe was working. And laughing. With someone other than her.
Another Tinker Bell giggle from Paige. There was a sparkle in her eyes, a confidence and flirtatiousness in her body language, that another woman could recognize a mile off.
Damn.
“What’s left to cook, Lorin?” Nathan asked.
Lorin steeled herself and looked down at the list. Whether she was annoyed or not, people needed to eat. “One steak, medium, for Ellenore. Two steaks, extra rare, for Mike. And a veggie burger for Gretchen.”
Nathan rolled his eyes. “Like those two are interested in eating.”
“Hmm?”
Nathan gestured with his head. “Look.”
Mike, her bone guy, and Gretchen, a first-year crewmember who’d be their primary artifact cataloguer, sat across from each other, their heads nearly touching as they talked. Their feet tangled together under the table.
“Okay, that didn’t take long.” She darted a look at Paige. The young faerie’s excessive vivaciousness had a cause—and, thankfully, it wasn’t Gabe.
Nathan shook
his head as he slapped raw steaks onto the grill. “Vamp and siren. This ought to be interesting.”
Lorin didn’t respond. Hookups weren’t unusual when healthy and hormonal young people lived together in such close proximity for months at a time. Factor in the idiosyncrasies of their species—shifting werewolves, vamps who could glamour others into compliance with a look, incubi and succubi who absorbed emotional energy for sustenance and emitted luscious pheromones in response, sirens who amplified emotional responses with their voices, and faeries with their off-the-charts empathic abilities? Hookup city.
She was the only Valkyrie on the crew this year, which left her no one to spar with. She and Mike had tried last summer, but the experiment had been an utter failure. Mike hadn’t been able to tackle a woman—even one as strong as she was.
“Okay, here you go.” Nathan transferred the steaks and the lonely veggie burger onto a platter and handed it to her. “I’m King of the Grill,” he crowed, holding the spatula like a scepter. “I like this gig.”
“I’ll remember that.” Lorin tried to assign crewmembers to work they liked to perform. If only the crew had a neat freak who loved washing dishes and cleaning outhouses. So far, no luck.
Tonight was Paige’s night to do dishes.
Lorin delivered people’s food, circulating around the dining room, making sure she talked to everyone, especially Gretchen. Lorin laughed at her good-natured grumbling about the outhouse and black hole–sized drop-offs in cell phone coverage.
Finally there was no one else to talk to. After reminding Gretchen about the safety and procedures session tomorrow morning, she walked over to Gabe and Paige. Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” floated through her head as she approached their table. Gabe laughed indulgently as Paige told a joke that had been as old as the proverbial hills back when Valerian was in short pants.
“Oh, hi, Lorin,” Paige said, looking up with a smile. She stood up, picking up her tray and indicating her now-open seat. “He’s all yours. Alas, it’s my night for dishes. I hate doing dishes.”
“I do too,” Lorin commiserated, taking Paige’s seat. “You’ll have them knocked off in no time.”