by Anne Marsh
Rules matter, as I know better than anyone.
I have no idea why I look up or where the sensual prickle of awareness comes from, a shiver sweeping across my skin that has nothing whatsoever to do with my ice throne.
He leans against the ice wall, staring at me. He’s gorgeous in a raw, brutal way. Not a pretty boy like so many of the men knocking back drinks around me, but rough around the edges in the same way his faded blue jeans are white at the seams on his thighs. He wears black motorcycle boots and a dark T-shirt beneath a black leather jacket. A fantasy of him riding through the desert hits me like a visceral punch in the gut. He radiates caged energy, and I’m suddenly desperate to run my hands over all that sun-bronzed skin.
I don’t do bad boys. Ever. And this man, with his dark hair and darker eyes, takes bad boy to a whole new level. He watches me, hands loose on his thighs, and I stare back. I bet he has strong hands to go with the rest of his delicious package, although finding out firsthand for myself would be crazy. He doesn’t fit in my new life, a life I swore I’d do nothing to risk. No moment of fun is worth that risk. A shiver works itself up from somewhere near my toes, tightening my nipples. And not from the cold.
Nope. I’m not cold at all when I’m looking at Mr. Tall, Dark, and Bad Idea.
The surge of arousal has me squirming on my barstool. Which is stupid. It’s ridiculous to be aroused by a stranger who can’t even be bothered to come over and say hello.
“Someone’s looking at you.” The bride-to-be nudges me.
I take the new drink the bartender offers with a smile of thanks and then pull my borrowed wrap closer. The faux fur rubs against my skin, teasing nerve endings awake. What would the real thing feel like? Not dead and made into a coat, but on the living, breathing animal? An image of a wolf flashes through my head.
I tear my gaze away from the man holding up the wall and his hard-eyed gaze. Jesus. He could at least smile. Smiling is in the dating rulebook somewhere. I might be wandering the dating desert myself right now, but I’m positive of that much.
“He could be looking at you,” I suggest.
Mary Ellen snorts and waves her ring hand in the air. “I’m off the market. You’re not—and you’re definitely the woman he’s watching.”
“Creepy.” Don’t look. Don’t—but it’s like the connection between us is tangible. I sneak a second glance (real sophisticated) and he’s still there. Heat follows arousal until I’m goddamned melting. At my age, menopause is supposed to be at least twenty years in my future, and this is an ice bar. With furs.
Mr. Tall, Dark, and Bad Idea shoves off the wall.
“He’s making a move,” my friend singsongs in my ear.
“And I’m out of here. Consider my eighty-hour workweek officially caught up with me. I’m going to bed.” I toss bills on the bar, slide off my stool, and beeline for the door.
“Honey—he looks like a hunter. Just don’t run too fast.” Happy laughter follows me. I wave and walk faster. I don’t see my watcher when I step outside the ice bar, but I can feel him on my skin. A delicious sense of anticipation sweeps through me, a sense that I’m playing a game I don’t know the rules to.
But he does.
LUC
Oui. I stop and look.
Stare.
There’s no dressing up my reaction. I’d been headed past the bar—some kind of froufrou place where people pay good money to freeze and do a fancy imitation of Siberia—when a feminine scent tugs at my senses. Heat crawls through me, followed by arousal. Possession. I almost check the night sky for a goddamned blue moon, the sensation’s that intense, but I’m inside and the only sky overhead is artificial.
Ice princess sits at the bar, wrapped in furs and a slinky black cocktail dress that hugs her breasts and her waist. Her shoes sport a heel, pretty as sin, and I’d enjoy every minute of her digging those wicked spikes into my back—just as soon as I catch her. It’s damned certain she can’t run fast, not in those shoes.
So I watch for a bit while she pretends she hasn’t noticed me and her friends tease her some. Eventually she leaves the ice bar, shedding her faux fur wrap at the door. The human bar scene doesn’t do it for me, not the way Vegas serves it up. I like a whiskey, like to kick back with my boys, but the frenetic energy here doesn’t appeal to me any more than the humans wrapped up in fake animal skins do, so unaware that the real deal is impossibly close to them.
Despite the incessant din of people talking, music blaring, and the never-ending sound of the slot machines, I easily make out the tap-tap-tap of her heels hitting the casino floor. Falling in behind her is the work of a minute. Now that I have her scent, I won’t, can’t, lose her. I have no idea why she matters so goddamned much to me, but for her I’ll make the time and I’ll follow.
Hunt.
As if she senses me on her heels, she whips through the too-loud, too-bright casino floor. Ducks behind first one blaring bank of machines and then another, weaving in and out of the crowds. Maybe she really believes she can lose me? It’s downright cute how human she is.
Eventually she slips outside into the faux Italian gardens of the casino. Although it’s summertime in the desert, the evenings are cool. Heat soaks into me from the sun-warmed pavement. Everywhere I look, there are fountains and more lights, but not as many as inside. I came to Vegas because I had investment business to take care of, but tonight is personal.
She darts through the hedges, giggling. She knows I’m there, knows I’m coming for her. The wolf yips happily. She’s playing with us. I prowl after her, closing in but careful not to end the chase too soon. Fuck, the wolf loves this game. The man sure as hell doesn’t mind either.
Not at all. I’ll chase her. Catch her. Take her. Oui. I’m no gentleman—but I’m also more than my wolf. I make a brief detour to score a bottle of champagne, vintage stuff from Tuileries. I lived in France when the vintner laid down the original bottles.
I’ll just enjoy her and move on. Vegas is a quick pit stop in my life, not a turning point. That’s the plan but when I look up, Fate has her own laugh at my expense. Fuck, but I should listen to my instincts. Vegas bling lights up the night sky, but the moon shines blue. The pretty rays light my female up, centuries of living as a werewolf paying off in one cosmic here-she-is moment. None of my pack has found a blue moon mate in centuries of looking, and my being the first is all kinds of wrong. Wrong time, wrong place.
Right woman.
My dick is iron hard, the zipper biting into my flesh. Oui. My brothers will give me shit. Her husky laugh rings out from somewhere nearby, and what others think no longer matters.
She runs, picking a path that takes us nearer the animal enclosures where the casino keeps exotic wildlife, and I follow. When I catch up, she’s leaning against a marble statue of some Greek god to catch her breath. Her breasts push against the front of her dress, spilling over the top. My world narrows to the possibility of touching her. Moving swiftly, I eat up the distance between us, setting a hand on her hip and tugging her forward until we’re sealed together.
“Caught you,” I growl against her throat.
“That’s a new one.” Laughter fills her voice, but she doesn’t pull away. She’s too tipsy, too giddy from her flight and my pursuit. Mine. Christ, I shouldn’t do this, but I’ve been so alone for so long. How can I resist?
“Have a drink with me.” I make it a statement and not a question. Truly I’m crap at human dating rituals. The wolf scents her readiness, her sweet, wet heat, and aches to ease the hem of her cocktail dress up and her panties down.
“Sure.” She leans back into the god’s embrace and grins at me. “You got a name?”
“Luc.” I press the chilled bottle against the heated skin of her throat, draw it down the bare slope of her breasts. Her breath catches.
“You’re wicked,” she breathes, but her words aren’t a complaint. Maybe, with me, she’d be happy to be bad.
A quick scan of my surroundings turns up no humans. Only be
asts—lions. A tiger. The casino sells tickets, inviting people to queue up and parade past the glass enclosures. Forcing back the surge of anger at seeing my kind locked up and caged for entertainment, I work the lock—because a man learns how to do these things in hundreds of years—and get her inside. The zoo is closed, leaving us alone. Animals pace up and down the length of their cages, brushing against the glass walls that separate their small spaces from the greater freedom of Vegas.
“They’re beautiful.” She presses her fingers against the glass, tracing patterns I can’t see. “But…”
While she figures out the other half to her sentence, I open the champagne and offer it to. She accepts, pulling her fingers away from the glass to wrap them around the bottle’s slender neck.
“They’re sad, aren’t they? All alone.”
“They need to run,” I agree. She’s sensitive. She understands instinctively how the casino’s caged beasts feel… Will she understand me as well? I step closer and kiss her. Okay, I fucking devour her. I slant my mouth over hers, desperate for the taste of her, slicking my tongue over the closed seam of her lips. She opens with a husky moan and I thrust inside. She’s wet and hot and she drives me crazy. I feed her champagne between more kisses, pressing the mouth of the bottle against her lips.
“This dress go in a washin’ machine, shug?”
She laughs, a low, husky sound that does positively illegal things to my dick. Downright heavenly things too, depending on how my night ends. “You’d do better to ask me if I care. You do whatever you want to this dress as long as I’m still decent to walk across the casino floor.”
That sounds like permission to me. Pressing her back against the cool glass, I upend the champagne, pouring the pale liquid down her body, over those pretty breasts, and her stomach. Lower.
“Hold the bottle,” I demand roughly.
“Luc.” My name is part shiver, part moan, but she does what I ask. Her fingers close around the bottle, and I go to work, tugging her hem up.
“Keep your dress up.”
She hesitates, but then she does it, and hell… she’s got the prettiest panties I’ve ever seen, a teeny-tiny scrap of something silky with rows of soft ruffles over her center. I reach up and guide her hand, upending the bottle so the champagne hits her right where she burns for me if I’m a lucky man.
To make sure, I lean in and kiss her clit through the damp silk. She muffles her shriek with the back of her hand, but I don’t want her holding back. Not with me. Not ever.
“Cold,” she sighs.
“Not for long.” Not if I do this right. I want to mark her in ways both human and beast, want to line up with her in front of a preacher, and give her all the words I’ve never dreamed of speaking. Mine. Blue moon or no blue moon, she’d be mine then—and I’d be hers. Part of me recognizes that she isn’t Fate’s party favor. I have to earn her, not take.
Although taking is pure temptation right now.
“Marry me,” she whispers, like she’s read my mind. “And you can have whatever you wan’ from me.”
I think about it, so tempted to let her sweep me off to one of the twenty-four-hour wedding chapels dotting Vegas. Instead, I carry her back to her hotel suite, and we… have sex. Holy. Jesus. I strip her down to her skin. Lay her out on the bed, my mouth finishing her while I fuck her good with my fingers. Flip her over, bare her neck, and bite, the erotic sting sending her over the edge as I take her from behind. A shared shower heats her right back up again…
And afterward, much later, I slip out of her bed and go back to the bayou, because that way she’s free to go about her own life.
And if now I wonder how she’s filled up the past ten years because those same years have been an empty hole for me, that’s my problem. Not hers. I’m an animal at heart, and she deserved better.
Ten years is plenty of water under the bridge. I walked. She ran. And now… I’m not sure how to get our relationship back on track or if she’ll even consider it. Despite her encounter with the wolf pack, Gianna doesn’t seem overly shaken. She slides her heels off right by the front door, like stepping on the clean floor with her outdoor wear is sacrosanct. Naturally that makes me give my own shitkickers a once-over. I should probably do the same thing. My rubber soles and black leather aren’t the pretty bits Gianna sports, but it’s not like I’m housebroken either, so I leave them on. Since it’s hard to be the big, scary Alpha in sock feet, she’ll have to deal with dirty floors.
She doesn’t seem to notice though, picking up her heels like they’re her babies, turning them over, and inspecting them. I have no idea for what. Dirt? Blood? Wolf parts?
Clearly she sees me looking, because she sets the shoes on a chair. “They’re Manolo Blahniks,” she says, like that explains everything.
Color me clueless, because my brothers and I don’t name our shoes. “Call them whatever you want.”
She makes a face. “That’s a brand.”
More proof she’s too good for me. I’m outdoor camping with an outhouse while she’s Four Seasons material.
While she babies her shoes and turns on a light, I prowl around her place. The living room is an explosion of white, pink, and gold, with honest-to-God floor-to-ceiling windows and a fancy sofa parked in front of a fireplace decorated with curlicues and white vases. Definitely the kind of place magazines like to photograph. Apparently people do live in them. Not everything is perfect, however, because stacks of books and magazines bristling with Post-it notes cover every table surface. Her lair. Her scent touches every piece in the house.
Gianna’s place smells like lemon furniture polish, artificial apples, and cinnamon. It’s nice enough, but nothing like the gritty scents of the bayou. My camp there is no Macy’s perfume counter.
Shit. Say something civilized. “You have a nice place.”
Understatement. Before I came to the bayou, I wasted decades navigating the French court. I visited palatial country palaces and spent quality time in the decadent homes of Paris. I never think about those lost years, but Gianna’s home reminds me of those long-ago palaces. She’s classy. Gorgeous.
Oui. I’m definitely out of my league with her. I’ve never been on board with the whole blue-moon-fated-mate gig, although clearly Fate has been more than kind to my brothers. Their mates are fine women and females of worth, and I’d proudly lay down my life for each one of them. Looking at Gianna, remembering what she tasted like, felt like, coming apart beneath my touch, I know I’ll go even further for her.
“I like nice things.” She shrugs like it’s no big deal and wanders over to the window to stare at the slice of garden outside. Small spotlights light up a collection of those formal topiary things surrounded by a boatload of roses and white flowers. I’ve never understood why people settle for a night garden instead of being home during the daylight hours. She pushes the window open, flooding the room with the scent of night-blooming jasmine.
She wore a perfume that smelled like jasmine ten years ago, and now I get hard just breathing in those flowers in her garden. It’s ridiculous. Mating with her was the finest sexual experience of my life. I’ll admit that much—and it has to be the only reason why I crave a second taste now, right?
When she turns to look at me, I wonder if she feels the same at all.
“We’re not married,” she says, sounding relieved.
Nope. She’s on a completely different page from me when it comes to our relationship. In fact, she’s done with the book and ready to put it back on the shelf while I’m just getting ready to start… reading.
Mine. No way I let go of her now. I hung on to the possibility she represented when I let her leave me behind in Vegas. Dropping regular deposits into her checking account was one more way of satisfying the wolf’s need to provide and the man’s desire to hang on it. She’d looked for me—the private investigators on my trail are proof enough—and I’d evaded. Marital chase me, catch me. Or pure stubbornness on my part.
I don’t want to let her
go. Worse, I want her to want to hang onto me and the chances of that happening are about one in a million.
“Your offer isn’t still good?” Stall for time. Find out what she really wants. “You propose to me and then chase me for years to tell me to fuck off?”
She takes a step back, putting critical distance between us, and faces me down like I’m a hostile witness in her goddamned courtroom. Two can play at that game. I drop deliberately onto her fancy white sofa, enjoying the irritated flicker of her eyes that betrays her dislike of my move. She wants me gone. Gone from her house. Gone from her life. Instead, here I am, ass parked on her furniture and staying put.
She purses her lips. “That’s one way to put it.”
“You got another?” I cross one booted foot over another. I draw the line at using her fancy little table as a footrest. I don’t want to mark it up none—just make sure she understands who’s in charge here.
“It’s time for me to move on with my life. Date. Get married.”
My wolf growls, not liking the thought of our female hooking up with another male. My more human side, however, is stupidly pleased that she’s waited for me. For the wrong reasons, sure, but no one else has been touching her and that’s good.
“You saved yourself for me.”
She inhales sharply, her fingers tightening on the window frame. Oui. She doesn’t like that mental image, but too bad.
“I wasn’t waiting for you,” she counters, like she’s talking about the garbage man or the contractor who fixes her plumbing. “There was every chance that I’d gotten married in a drunken fit. That means I play by the rules. That’s how it works.”
“No cheatin’.”
“Absolutely not.”
I admire her sense of honor, but we see the world differently. I’ve touched other females, although only fleetingly and only as part of the pack. How would she react to that if I fronted with her and told her the truth? They’d been fine women, giving women, but they hadn’t been Gianna. Truth is, only Gianna is Gianna.