by Diana Seere
“I saw a bear this morning,” he said with a shudder. “Swear to God.”
She shoved her tray to him, thrilled. “Cool! Where?”
“Where do you mean, ‘where’? Outside.” He said it as if it were a disease.
“Where outside?”
He scowled deeper. “Near the spa. I went out there this morning. Won’t make that mistake again.” Eva had told the staff that they could enjoy all of the facilities when they weren’t on duty. A perk for which we could thank Mr. Stanton, she’d added, giving Lilah a glance that suggested she knew everything.
But Lilah wasn’t taking any chances about losing her job. At least at this reception, she was going to stay as far away from Gavin as she could. If she came within ten feet of him, the glow would show all over her face. Hell, her erect nipples would give her away.
Carl hadn’t said it outright, but he must’ve guessed. His eyes saw everything. She’d slept in her own bedroom last night, but only because she and Gavin had exhausted themselves for days leading up to the flight west. She shivered at the thought of joining him tonight in his private house here at the ranch, wherever it was. The property was immense.
“I heard the wolves, too,” Carl said. “Howling like animals.”
She laughed. “They are animals.”
He stared at her. “Yeah, well,” he said after a second, dropping a few ice cubes into a glass, “they make me nervous.”
A strangely awkward silence stretched between them, as if he’d said something inappropriate. But of course a bartender from Boston wouldn’t want to hang out with a pack of wolves in rural Montana. Who could blame him for that?
Leaning over the bar, she lowered her voice and said, “I’m more afraid of the wolves inside the house.” She gestured at the crowd across the huge room. “That guy Webb is here.”
Carl gave her a weird, unreadable look and opened his mouth as if to say something. His eyes glanced over her shoulder, and his lips snapped shut.
“What?” Lilah asked. How weird.
He shook his head slightly. “Yeah, I know. I tried to water down his bourbon, but he complained to Eva, who told me to give him what he wants, at least for now.” Carl set the drink on the bar. “That’s for him, by the way. I’ll give it to Nina.” Nina was one of the other waitresses with them at the ranch.
“Nina’s busy. I can do it.”
“No way.” Shaking his head, he lifted the drink out of her reach. “Nina’s not his type. You are. Besides, you’re doing the champagne. This crowd demands a constant supply of Krug.” He pushed a tray of bubbling flutes at her.
Tempted to argue about Nina dealing with Webb, she hesitated for a second before lifting the tray and returning to the crowd. It had grown while she was at the bar, and her tray was emptied in seconds. She hurried back to Carl, relieved to see two more waitresses had arrived, and began the dance of keeping the guests hydrated and happy.
When she was returning with her tenth empty tray, she almost ran into a man standing near the windows by himself, so still and quiet she hadn’t noticed him. Luckily, with the tray empty, the damage was minimal; she only crushed his toes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she gasped, stumbling against him.
Strong hands gripped her shoulders and righted her firmly on the floor. “My apologies. I was lurking.”
“You weren’t lurking, you were standing,” she said. “And I walked right into you.”
“Understandable when a person has the ill breeding to lurk about like a statue.”
The British accent reminded her of a certain sexy someone. She studied him with fresh interest, curiosity blooming. Could this be one of the Stanton “brood”? He didn’t look much like Gavin. He was about his height but looked broader, although that could be because of his loose sweatshirt. And his light-brown hair was windblown, flopping into his hazel eyes.
A surprisingly thick beard, just a little too long to be considered neat, covered the lower half of his face. Jess had called that a “lumbersexual” look, and it made Lilah wonder what Gavin would look like with a beard.
And how a beard would feel against her inner thighs.
“Is there a problem here?” Gavin appeared at her shoulder, scowling at the man who was still holding her upright, making her thighs tingle with the surprise.
“I’ve caused this young lady the distress of barreling into me.” The man released her, then put a large, calloused hand on his chest. “For which I’ve apologized, dear brother.”
Aha! Another brother!
“Lurking again, were you, Edward?” Gavin asked.
“Indeed I was.” Edward gave Lilah a sad smile. “I was trying to figure out how to cross the room without undue notice being paid to me. You have quite a soirée underway, I noticed.”
Gavin snorted. “All these years of fighting fires in the wilderness seem to have made you exceptionally observant.”
“Guilty again.” Edward was studying her more carefully now than he had been a moment earlier. “Will my brother be introducing us, I wonder?” he asked her.
“Like hell I will,” Gavin said.
Lilah bit her lip, stifling a laugh, not wanting to look too friendly with the host or his brother. “Hi Edward, I’m Lilah.” Rather than offer her hand, she showed him her empty tray. “I should get back to work. Sorry again about your foot.”
“Its distress was minimal, I assure you,” Edward said.
“Just wait.” Gavin’s voice was gravel.
Edward’s eyebrows went up. “I’m leaving, don’t worry. You know I hate parties.”
“There’s a door right behind you,” Gavin said.
The two men stared at each other. Finally, Edward smiled. “So there is.” With a nod of his head, which sent another wild strand of hair into his eyes, he walked away.
She stayed at Gavin’s side, unable to muster the strength to leave it. It had been over fifteen hours since he’d held her, kissed her, fucked her...
“It’s nice to meet your family,” she whispered.
Edward, over ten feet away under a beamed archway, stopped and turned. “And it was a pleasure to meet you, Lilah Murphy.”
Blushing, she said, “You too,” just before he disappeared around a corner.
Gavin must’ve told his family about her. Why else would Edward know her last name? She was just one of the waitresses. Except—and here her heart squeezed—here was proof she wasn’t. Not to Gavin, not to his family.
Her body ached for him. She had to put some distance between them and return to work before she embarrassed herself or the reputation of the Platinum Club. “I’ll let you return to your guests now, Mr. Stanton.”
“To hell with the guests.” He took a step closer, lowering his voice. “There’s been a change of plans.”
Heart skipping a beat, she licked her lips. “There has?”
Regarding her under lowered brows, he nodded. “I’ve just decided I’m going to make you come right there on the bar. You’ll sit up there, drinking champagne, spread open for me, your legs over my shoulders, that dress hitched up around your hips so I get at every inch of your luscious, delicious pussy.”
Her mouth went dry as all the moisture in her body pooled between her legs. “Oh,” she breathed, the bar and the guests and the champagne forgotten in a haze of lust.
“And when you come, you’ll beg for more. And if you’re very, very loud, and very, very good, I’ll give you what you need.”
She held her breath and nodded. The tray hung at her side, loose in her grasp.
“You’ve never sucked my cock, have you, darling?”
Ohgodohgod. There were several men in suits standing ten feet away, drinking but not talking. If Gavin raised his voice just a little, they’d hear him. That should’ve sobered her, but instead it aroused her more.
“No,” she whispered, swaying on her feet.
“You’ll look so beautiful with your lips encircling my cock, Lilah,” he continued. “You’ll have to pull back
that beautiful hair so I can see your face when I let you suck me.”
Whatever shred of control she had was turning to dust. She clenched her internal muscles, burning for him. “Whatever you like, Mr. Stanton.”
His eyes turned black. An infinitesimal smile curved one corner of his mouth. “And if I told you to walk over to the bar right now, climb on top, and spread your legs? You would obey me even with all these people here?”
She wasn’t going to lie. “Yes, Mr. Stanton.” She would. At that moment, she’d do anything for him.
“Oh, my darling,” he began, reaching for her.
But just then a woman’s arm in a blue silk blouse slid between them and caught Gavin’s shoulder, spinning him aside.
“There you are,” Eva said, hauling him another foot away from Lilah. “Your guests have been looking for you. Or rather, looking at you.”
The spell was broken. Lilah, suddenly aware of what she’d almost done, took an uneven step backward, lifted her drink tray to her chest like armor, and fled to the bar. Her legs wobbled, and for once, she regretted the elegant heels on her feet.
Come to my house, a low voice said in her mind.
She gripped the polished wood counter on the bar, trying to stay upright. Now?
Carl took the tray from her. “Shift’s over, Lilah,” he said. “Looks like you need a break.”
Now.
“I realize,” Eva said in a low, dulcet tone that was sugar and spice dipped in whisky and wrapped around an iron rod, “that you enjoy partaking in all of the services the club offers, but you’re being too obvious, Gavin.”
“Too—?” He heard her, but his eyes tracked Lilah’s ass as it begged for his attention, sashaying out of the room and heading off with Carl toward the commercial kitchen wing.
“Dear God, Gav, why don’t you just fuck her in front of the fireplace with hundreds of guests watching?” Eva hissed, yanking hard on his arm. Few women in his life had permission to treat him this way.
Eva was one of them.
Actually, Eva was the only one. A member of a family of shifters as old as his, their fathers had been in business together—his in oil, hers in railroads. The Nagy family wasn’t nearly as wealthy as the Stantons, but she wasn’t on the streets begging for spare change either.
And she didn’t need the job managing The Platinum Club any more than Gavin needed to go into biotech. With more than a century and a half of adulthood, though, one needed something as a life’s purpose.
“Do you think the crowd would mind?” he said in a faint voice, moving his leg as discretely as possible, hoping his cock wasn’t about to follow Lilah like a panting little lap dog.
Tongue hanging out and all.
Eva smacked his bicep. “You really are hopeless.”
He cleared his head, shaking it slightly. When his eyes landed on her they telescoped, focused again. “I’m hopeless because I just handed your club a contract worth more than you clear in a month of serving drunk celebrities and pseudo-celebrities, or I’m hopeless because—”
“Because you look like you have a baseball bat in your pants, Gavin,” said an angry male voice he recognized all too well. Of course.
Of course Asher would finally make an appearance at this exact moment.
“Only a baseball bat?” Gavin asked the air behind him, not giving Asher the respect of a direct look.
“I’d say at least the size of a bear paw,” Derry said under his breath as he passed by, an intact bottle of Champagne clutched in one hand, the other snaked around the waist of a woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to Taylor Swift.
Asher pulled Gavin away from Eva and Derry and tried to frog-march him into his office, but Gavin was having none of it. With legs quite accustomed to digging in, he made himself immobile.
Until a waiter passed by with his private label lager.
Gavin took the entire tray from the man, gave him a wink, and strode without comment into Asher’s office. As the unofficial patriarch of the Stantons, Asher lived and worked out of the main building at the ranch. By the time they were shut inside, Gavin was on his second beer.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Asher roared at him.
Gavin responded with a belch that would have made Derry proud.
Asher’s long, slow inhale through the nose made him look more wolfish. Gavin finished beer number two as Asher opened his mouth to berate him.
Just then, someone knocked on the door.
“Come in!” bellowed Asher. He turned to Gavin and muttered, “No more business parties here at the compound.”
Lilah walked in, carrying a manila envelope and a bucket filled with ice and sparkling water. “Excuse me, Mr. Stanton—”
Gavin laughed, overjoyed at the sight of her. “Call me Gavin.”
She gave him a skeptical, though friendly look. “I wasn’t referring to you.”
“I am Mr. Stanton, though,” Gavin objected. Another roaring belch came out of his mouth.
“With an emphasis on the mister,” Asher said dryly.
“Pardon me,” Gavin said formally, reaching for a third beer. Something in him had loosened. He felt unmoored. A significant part of him reveled in the freedom of being treated like a misbehaving child. He was a grown man, independent and free, and he was finally making choices that centered on his happiness.
His pleasure.
His woman.
Lilah laughed. “I’ve worked in enough bars to wave that one off.” She rolled her eyes in jest. “Try working at a fraternity party at UMass and you’ll hear some—”
“Thank you, Ms. Murphy. I’m certain you are an expert in the belching techniques of the North American college male. One can only aspire to attain such professional expertise.”
Those three beers weakened Gavin’s impulse control, but it was the humiliation that flashed in Lilah’s eyes that removed whatever remained of his thin layer of politeness.
“Fuck off, Asher. Don’t you have women of your own you can shame out there? I’m sure you can find a hardworking single mother with two jobs to make fun of, or a disabled vet you can berate.” Gavin moved to Lilah, ready to offer his arm in support, but she stiffened and squared her shoulders.
Body language never lied.
He put his arm back down. She needed to do this without him.
She studied Asher, taking in his brother’s appearance, tilting her head to one side as if cataloguing a work of art. Time ticked by, second by second, and she continued, letting her eyes comb over him, ankles to forehead. Gavin felt the air change between the three of them as time passed and Lilah had no reaction. Just her eyes, moving.
Observing.
Noting.
Asher couldn’t stand it. His tension radiated off him, until finally he broke. “Ms. Murphy, I—”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, interrupting him, eyes filed with unshed tears. “Both losses.”
Asher jerked as if smashed in the face by a rock. Gavin was struck dumb. How did she know about Claire and the baby? He’d never said a word.
And with that, Lilah backed out of the room, turning only at the door, and left quietly.
The only sound in the room was their breathing.
Until Gavin belched again.
“Get. Out. Now.” Asher spoke in a deadly voice.
While Gavin hadn’t played the part of little brother in more than half a century, some very old sliver of him reacted emotionally, leaving without so much as a glance backward.
Chapter 13
Fifteen minutes later, Lilah had changed into jeans and a clingy sweater she knew showed off every curve and strode out the back door of the main building into the evening. The sun was sinking toward the mountains in the west, casting long shadows across the lake. His house was out there in the forest somewhere. She could feel it. Touching the ache at her temple, she paused and let the sensation wash over her.
If she didn’t fight the headache, if she somehow gave herself ov
er to it, she found that it seemed to answer her. To tell her what she needed to know.
She’d never considered herself a flaky, woo-woo kind of person, but she’d always believed there was more to the world than what she could see with her eyes. Since meeting Gavin, that belief had solidified. She could hear his silent speech in her mind and feel his body’s needs as if they were her own.
This moment, as she walked down a gravel path into the forest, she could hear him calling to her, see him waiting for her, and knew she was getting closer. Every cell in her body was directing her closer to him. She’d never felt so...inhuman. Part of the earth, the sky, the moon. The animals and the trees. As if she would blend into it. Become part of it.
The darkening Montana sky arched overhead, emphasizing the vastness of the universe, hinting at everything she was too small to understand.
She hugged her arms over her chest, feeling tendrils of cool air creep out from between the shadowed trees. Just now in that office, she’d seen into Gavin’s brother’s mind, too. Like a movie trailer, she’d seen fragments of Asher’s past: a woman laughing, Asher with her, then the shock of pain, and finally, the cold, angry hand of grief.
The vision had been so real that she’d begun to cry. As if she’d been there.
She tripped over a stone on the path. This was no ordinary family, and her bond to them was not normal.
Without thinking, she let her feet take her on a left fork of the path through a meadow and back into the forest again. Now she was hiking uphill, and her breath began to labor. Sweat forming under her breasts, pulse accelerating, she inhaled the cool, delicious air and knew she was closing the distance between them. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew.
The path became rocky, and after a moment she heard the faint sound of water and saw thin tendrils of steam clinging to the stones about twenty feet away. A hot spring. She looked up the path, knowing he waited but suddenly reluctant to jump unthinkingly into his bed just yet.
Asher wasn’t ever going to accept her. He’d made that very clear. Unfortunately, he seemed to be the most powerful person in Gavin’s life. She’d seen—she’d felt—the way Gavin had bowed to his older brother. Even rudely drunk and antagonistic, Gavin had deferred to him. Asher’s rejection of her would hurt him. Lasting happiness might be impossible.