by Diana Seere
“Edward,” Lethbridge started again, “I believe you’re mistaken. The Stanton family’s most generous donation of—”
He cut her off. Impulse made him say the next sentence, a primitive reaction to the professor’s predatory nature.
“Allow me introduce my girlfriend, Molly.”
And with that, he bent down to plant a simple, social kiss on Molly’s lips. A basic performance designed to seal the deal. A joke he and Sophia would laugh about later and one he could undo with deep apologies to Molly, who seemed like the sort of woman who would find this all so amusing.
Charming.
Cute.
That is what was supposed to happen.
Edward, however, found entire worlds as the light brush of his lips against hers intensified, his hands spreading across her ass, her fingers at the nape of his neck as they pressed against each other, this unexpected kiss turning into its own universe.
The pulse in his body beat only for her, his blood rushing to the surface to seek out her own warmth, his tongue parting her lips with a possession that felt timeless. Their breathing synchronized, the hot push of air against his cheek as she deepened the kiss, nipping his lip, driving him wild.
She was sunshine and sugar, wildfire and rain, wide open prairies with infinite sky. Her breath quickened, and she clung to him, tasting him back, the sound of pleasure rising in her throat.
Until Sophia discreetly coughed.
And then he broke away, turned on his heel, and walked blindly toward the nearest exit, needing space.
For that kiss was anything but cute.
As Edward departed, Molly watched his back with shocked fascination. Fascinated shock. She wasn’t sure which emotion was stronger. She put her fingers over her lips, still tingling from the unexpected impact with Edward’s mouth.
Was he crazy? She hadn’t heard any weird stories about the youngest Stanton, other than his dislike of city life, which was incomprehensible to Molly but not necessarily crazy. He lived at the vast Stanton ranch out in Montana, where they’d all just been at Lilah and Gavin’s wedding. He’d been polite but aloof at the celebration.
She’d thought he was interesting, very handsome, but had dismissed him as unattainable. Out of state, out of her league. She’d put him completely out of her mind.
She couldn’t imagine ever forgetting him now. He had just blown her mind. Her knees were still trembling. She’d kissed a few guys in her twentysomething years—maybe more than a few—and she couldn’t remember any kiss that had blasted the thoughts out of her head the way that one had.
Her heart was beating as hard as the time when she’d stepped out in front of a Harvard shuttle bus and had almost been run over.
Tonight Edward had been the bus. And she hadn’t jumped to the curb in time. She could barely breathe. But why? It was just a little kiss. Nothing that should make her weak in the knees—except it had.
Maybe she’d just been shaken by the claim of being his girlfriend in front of his sister and that Lethbridge woman. Why had he done that? He barely knew her.
And she barely knew him. But now, with an urgency she didn’t understand, she wanted to.
She needed to.
That beard of his was hot. She cupped her cheek, savoring the memory of its feel against her skin. His face was long, with bones that seemed wise. Glittering green eyes and tawny hair, his body whipcord tight. Her hands couldn’t help themselves, touching him during the brief kiss. She wondered what he looked like naked. Was he wiry and rolling, all height and tight? Or was he thick with muscle, the kind of guy who looked better undressed?
She had to see him again before he left for Montana and never returned. This was her only chance. She was friends with Edward’s new sister-in-law, but Molly knew she was just a normal person with a regular job, unlike the billionaire Stanton clan, an obvious distinction that the Lethbridge woman had honed in on immediately. Go find a tray and make yourself useful.
If Edward hadn’t kissed her, Molly would still be fuming about that bitchy comment. Yes, she was an employee of the club, and the Stantons were members, but she wasn’t working tonight. She was at Derry’s gallery showing as a family friend. Nevertheless, Lethbridge didn’t care and probably would’ve gone on to say worse if Edward hadn’t introduced her as his girlfriend.
Could that be why he’d done it? A warm glow spread through her body. How sweet that would be.
All these thoughts spun through Molly’s mind in the time it took Edward to leave her side and disappear out a door at the back of the gallery. She realized with some embarrassment that both Sophia and Dr. Lethbridge were staring at her.
Avoiding Sophia’s amused gaze, Molly turned to Lethbridge with what she hoped was a worldly, sexually sophisticated shrug of her shoulder. “He does get carried away sometimes,” she said lightly. “The scamp.”
Sophia snorted, lifting her hand to her face just in time to cover her smile. “Excuse me,” she said, donning a serious expression as she lifted her glass. “My throat is dry. I need to fetch a refill.”
Before Lethbridge could suggest Edward’s surprising girlfriend should be the one to fetch it, Molly waved good-bye to them both and bolted for the door.
The same door as Edward.
He’d been a hero. And God knows she’d never had much success resisting temptation.
The door led to a dark corridor with a glowing exit sign at the far end, where another door had just slammed shut.
She grabbed handfuls of fabric around her thighs, lifting her long knit skirt to her shins, and booked after him, not intimidated by the challenge of jogging in three-inch heels. She was a fashion pro. Nobody could work a pair of sexy footwear the way she could. Her curves wouldn’t hold her back.
She had to push hard on the door to open it and stepped out into a narrow alley lit faintly by the sign of the trendy restaurant next door. Edward stood there with one hand braced on the brick wall, his head lowered, breathing heavily, looking as shaken as a man who’d just escaped a burning building.
“Edward?” Molly asked, her voice sounding small and girlish in the dark alley. “Are you OK?”
He spun around. His face was invisible in the shadows, but his posture was now fully upright and tense, like a predator ready to spring. “What are you doing here?” The steely edge under his words, though softly spoken, made her shiver.
She swallowed over her dry throat. “I followed you.” She took a step closer. “I wanted to… thank you.”
She couldn’t see him raise an eyebrow, but she imagined she could feel it. Another shiver went through her.
“Thank me,” he said. Not a question. He took a step back.
His retreat emboldened her. What was the matter with him? Did he think she was going to be angry? That she would make a scene, maybe slap him?
Under other circumstances, it would’ve been understandable. If she hadn’t decided he was trying to rescue her from Dr. Lethbridge, she might’ve kneed him in the nuts, no matter who his family was, after grabbing her like that.
But now, crushing his genitals wasn’t what she had in mind.
“That Lethbridge woman wasn’t very nice,” Molly said, keeping her voice warm and casual. He looked like he wanted to take another step back, but there was a dumpster blocking his escape.
“No. She was not.” He cleared his throat. “Forgive me for, ah, taking liberties.”
“Hey, it’s Boston!” she said with a laugh. “This is the place to take liberties. It’s practically patriotic.” But then she frowned, wondering if he thought of himself as an American. His British accent was lighter than his siblings but still distinct. Living in Montana hadn’t changed that. She wondered why not and wanted to ask.
“Nevertheless, I shouldn’t have done so. I was attempting to show the ingratiating professor that she should not make assumptions about people or their worth.”
“That’s what I thought,” Molly said.
“You did?”
“E
ither that or you were crazy,” she said, moving closer. “But I don’t think you’re crazy.”
With unexpected grace, he stepped quickly to one side, extracting himself from the dead end and moving around the dumpster. “I’m not so sure about that,” he muttered. Then, more loudly, “You’re terribly kind to allow me to explain in my own clumsy, inadequate way.”
She grinned at him. What a doll. “Want to get a drink together sometime?”
The whites of his eyes gleamed in the city lights. “Excuse me?”
“A drink.” Her courage wavered a little. She was close enough to his sister-in-law to be one of her bridesmaids, but she was just a lowly employee at his family’s elite club, as Lethbridge had sneered at.
But then she remembered the kiss. Something seriously hot had sparked between them. Surely he’d felt it.
She moved closer and brushed her fingertips along the lapel of his fawn sport coat. He didn’t look comfortable in it, although it felt like cashmere, lustrous and expensive. She had the impression he’d be happier in cotton flannel. A swift change in her heartbeat made her gulp, as if it recalibrated itself, matching his.
“You and me,” she said, dropping her voice to a friendly purr. “We can get to know each other a little. Have a glass of wine. Or a beer.” Belatedly, she pegged him more as a microbrew type. Bearded, muscular, outdoorsy men didn’t sip zinfandel.
He took a long step backward, then another. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “That would be impossible. I’m terribly sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. It’s entirely my fault. Please forgive me.”
And then he bowed. Bowed! Like a butler or something.
Her face burned hot with her embarrassment. Boy, she’d read that wrong. “Sure, of course. Don’t worry about it. No problem.” She gave him a huge, phony smile, knowing her dimples would be activated, distracting him from the misery in her eyes. She could never fake the feelings in her eyes, and God knows she’d tried.
His voice was dripping with pity. “I am so sorry. Please forgive—”
“No! Forget it!” She moved forward and patted him on the chest, mourning the fact she wouldn’t feel any more of it, then stumbled back a step, nearly losing her balance. So much for her grace in heels.
“Careful,” he gasped, reaching forward to rescue her—again—but she batted his hand away and began to hobble to the door. Then she decided the interior of the gallery, with more Stantons and their rich friends and Lethbridge, was the second last place she wanted to be and spun toward the sidewalk at the end of the alley.
“Ciao, Eddie.” She pitched her voice high, trying to sound light and cheerful, invincible, but it only made her sound a little hysterical. “Have a nice life.”
Oh God. Why’d she say that? She made it sound like they’d actually had a relationship. Like their parting now actually meant something.
Other people’s love affairs were going to her head. Lilah and Jess had fallen in love with Stantons, and vice versa, but it had nothing to do with her. She needed to go home and crawl into bed and forget she’d ever felt the brush of Edward’s rough beard against her cheek or the way his tongue had swept into her mouth as if it were coming home.
She risked a glance back. He stood there in the shadows, watching her.
She shivered.
The only home he had was in Montana, and she hoped he returned there as soon as possible.
Chapter 2
Six weeks later
Her chocolate curls hung down in waves, brushing against his bare chest as she rode him, his hips pumping up into the sweet, warm wetness of Molly. Flushed with the fever of unrestrained passion and unleashed need, her skin drew his hands to her, running from shoulder to full breast, his lips sucking hard on one nipple as he sat up and changed the angle, the hoarse cry from her throat like a victory shout.
“You,” he moaned as he pressed his lips between her breasts, moving their bodies so he gained leverage, thrusting up so sharply she lost her breath, her body going tight with climax, lips parting and chin tipping up. The hollow of her neck begged for a lick.
“Oh God. Oh, Edward,” she moaned, her thighs widening as his own orgasm grew too big to hold back, his hand finding her sweet spot between her thighs, the rhythm too much, her teeth grazing his shoulder as their mutual heat made a slickness between abs and bellies and breasts, the slide of skin against skin as he took her to new heights and she pulled him right with her making him groan her name in two languages, one human, one decidedly animal.
His cock shuddered within, pouring and pumping into her, the hot slick of her tightening until he could barely move, her hands scratching his back, her chest heaving with sounds and sighs, with groans and gasps, all made by him. By them.
By us.
She gazed at him with eyes the color of sapphire love, and he took her mouth with a violent sense of needing to taste, bruising her lips as he kissed her, tongue forcing her teeth apart until they tangled and twisted, nipped and sucked, the feeling of connection too sharp, too dull, too fused, too separate, too—
Too much.
“You are everything. Everything I need. Molly, I—”
As he spoke the words, he looked into her eyes, and she turned to a mystical angel, skin dissipating until all that was left was the sweaty scent of his own spunk in a quiet, lonely room in his cabin on the ranch, the sound of his own erratic, raspy breath breaking him out of the dream.
“DAMN IT!” he shouted, the cry desperate, his subconscious torturing him once more.
Every damn night. Every damn night since that kiss last month in the city, he’d had a wild, erotic dream about her.
Every. Fucking. Night.
Tonight was no different.
Shoving the twisted sheets aside with rage, he leapt out of bed, insatiable and frustrated, haunted by what ifs. Rubbing his face with both palms, he remembered the slight startle of her lips as they’d kissed, how she’d brought one hand up, the fingertips stroking his beard. She’d clearly liked it.
He’d liked it too. Far too much, for he’d begun to shift right there, in that festering city alley behind the art gallery, right under her watch. Skin rippling with the mad tingling of change, he’d cleared his throat and apologized to her, his voice filled with a deep abiding disruption.
And then she’d walked away, clearly upset, but he’d been helpless to stop her. Paralyzed by his body’s unquenchable pursuit of contact with Molly and the rising shift within, he’d found himself a walking paradox. It felt as if he were living in a body not his own, one that awakened with desire, a pulse of attraction to someone he barely knew.
He couldn’t follow her because he had no idea what to say. How to act. How to do anything but kiss her.
And propriety stopped him.
No. Not quite.
Inertia did.
Inertia and tradition and the honor of protecting his own kind. Revealing his true animal self to her had been impossible. Taboo. To do so would tear the fabric of order in the universe, and while he cared less and less about social convention, he would not put his family in jeopardy.
And yet—how could he begin to shift uncontrollably like that? Unable to stop himself, he’d darted out of view from Molly and, within seconds, had climbed into the waiting limo, grateful for the rescue.
For days after, he smelled her on his face, wanted more, wanted her sweet juices on him, embedded in his beard, his face, his tongue, his throat, his skin.
Was he hardening again? He’d think it impossible if it weren’t a familiar part of this strange, strange ritual.
“You’re going mad, Edward,” he mumbled to himself.
What if he’d reached for her in that alley, taken her against that wall, made her come and whimper into his mouth, given her the pleasure she so clearly sought night after night in his dreams?
She was a ghost. A mirage. A hauntingly seductive spirit who teased and taunted, never giving him satisfaction.
But that was his fault.
His own damn fault.
Being in Boston had been hard enough. So hard, his senses assaulted by memories he’d fought to repress for so many years, the grief choking out the merriment of celebrating his brother’s art exhibition. The last time he’d been in Boston, love had died.
His beloved had been murdered. The city tasted like pain. He couldn’t stand it.
Add the impulsive kiss and Molly’s pursuit of him, and he’d been so confused and overwhelmed that he’d left the gallery and gone straight to the jetport, calling the Stanton family pilot, Roger, to get him home right away. Even Sophia’s begging to stay and try the Plat, just once, had not been enough.
Escaping back home had been the sane thing to do.
Yet here he was, more than a month later, no more sane.
If only it were summer, when wildfires kept him busy. He’d be at work with other firefighters, lost in the simpler problems of water and fire, life and death.
He needed her. Wanted her. Tasted her in his dreams.
What did it all mean?
And why her?
As he had for the past month, he relaxed his shoulders, focusing on the change he could trigger at will, knowing it was the only way to find peace within. Thank goodness he slept naked and need not worry about destroying a set of clothing, though a servant would replace that. Minor detail.
Shifting would give him access to his true self, and as his leg bones elongated, he braced for the pain yet welcomed the relief of not thinking in words.
Pictures. He thought in pictures and motion, in scent and the press of dirt against paw, of fur brushing against twigs, of the hunt for space where he could run.
Where he could feel the wind of his own effort against his fur, pushing him to greater speeds until distance was his mistress, the moon his lover, the clouds the press of warm lips against his.
The thick cluster of Montana forest surrounding the ranch thinned out quickly to pasture and a low fence he easily catapulted, his hind legs thick with muscle, his body coiled with kinetic energy screaming to be released.