by Holley Trent
“Ditto.”
“Call when you’re heading this way. I’ll run interference.”
“Thanks, Belle. Really.”
“No problem.” Belle disconnected.
Lily let out a breath and replaced it with a deep one.
Mate.
That was what Lola had been hinting at when she’d said his scent was in her—probably something she couldn’t say outright. She never interfered, and she certainly wouldn’t have wanted to become enmeshed in Coyote affairs.
“Too late for that, though.”
The word didn’t change anything as far as Lily was concerned. It just meant that they’d be attracted no matter what. That they’d drift together, no matter what. Mates couldn’t avoid each other, no matter how much they wanted to.
She didn’t want to avoid Lance. She wanted to drive him wild. It was the most fun she could have for free, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt he wouldn’t tease her for being the initiator. Good girls weren’t supposed to provoke men. She didn’t want to be good with him.
Lance spied Lily in the window and pointed with an alarming amount of animation to a dark scuff on the side of his trailer.
Lily squinted at it then clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter.
Not a scuff. Graffiti. There was no way of knowing when they’d picked up the bit of artwork, but the pearl-clutchers in Maria were going to have a field day if he didn’t get that buffed off. The sentiment was plain—a clearly projected middle finger in black marker—but the artist obviously lacked training. It was pretty cartoony.
“I wouldn’t take it personally,” she said when he entered the kitchen through the back door and scrubbed mud from his sneakers onto the mat.
“It doesn’t look fresh. There’s a sheen of dirt over it. Must have picked it up at the state park.”
“You don’t think the artwork is courtesy of a Jaguar, do you?”
Lance snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past them, but no, I don’t think so. I think they’d tell me to go fuck myself in a noisier way.” He shut the door and moved about the kitchen, opening heat vents, shaking dust off the blinds.
“So. Where do you sleep if not here?”
He shrugged and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “If Blue doesn’t need me, I’m either in the air or driving someplace for a few days.”
“For what?”
“Just to see. I like watching the countryside change. So different from ground level than up in the air.”
“Where all have you been?”
“That’s a long list.”
“Oh.” She fidgeted the tab of her zipper and toed a bit of cracked tile near the window. “You go alone?”
“Usually. Why?”
“Just wondering. I don’t like to travel alone, especially far. That’s the other reason I don’t see my mother as much as I’d like to. I’ve never been outside the country, except to Mexico. One day.”
“Where do you want to go?”
She scoffed and fetched from the refrigerator an apple that looked to be on approach to a geriatric state. She needed to do something with her hands. “Too many possibilities.”
“Know the feeling,” he murmured.
His water bottle was already empty. He fidgeted with the seal ring, eying her levelly as she chewed.
It was uncomfortable, knowing what she knew and not knowing how he felt.
For too long, they stood in that state, not quite staring, silence heavy in the air, and then they both spoke at once.
She asked, “So, what do you want to do about this mess?” at the same time he said, “Do you think Martha’s alone right now?”
His question jarred her so much that she could only make nonsense sounds in return. If he’d heard her question, he didn’t seem to be contemplating it at all. His expression was neutral, stance casual.
“Martha’s…well, I’m…I’m sure she’s fine? Right?” he asked.
She put down the water and the apple so she could grab his jacket lapels because it was important to her that the child was safe. “Why would you bring that up?”
“Can’t help but to think about it.”
“Are you trying to tilt me off my edge, knowing I’ll worry?”
“No,” he said softly. “I’m trying to see what you think because there’s no one else I can ask.” He shifted his weight and avoided her gaze. “Hard not to get attached when they’re so needy, huh?”
“Oh.” Mollified, she grasped his chin and gently turned his face toward hers. She wanted him to look her in the eyes again and see how she felt—not just smell the hormones she was putting off. She’d liked his answer a great deal. “I think about going back and just telling them to just let me hold onto her, and that she wouldn’t know the difference, but of course she would. And she needs to be with people like her.”
“Why?”
“So that she grows up knowing what the limits of her life will be, and so that…she doesn’t expect more,” Lily said, wringing her hands with frustration. “Why would Lola do that? Why would she just…a quarter life isn’t much of a life. If I were one of them, I’d probably be dead already, and I haven’t accomplished anything. I haven’t—”
“Stop.” He gripped her wrists and squeezed them as if to punctuate his command, but she’d never been one to do what she was told.
“I haven’t done anything. I haven’t really been anywhere or made anything important. The one thing I wanted to do in my life, I was too afraid of failing at because I would come home and hear, ‘Well, I told you so, Liliana,’ and—”
“Lily.” Lance gave Lily’s shoulders a little shake. “Stop.”
“But you don’t understand.”
“I do understand.” His hands chafed her arms, rough patches of his palms whirring over the fabric of her jacket. “You’ve got this target in your head, and at the very center of it is what a safe Lily looks like. She probably has a job behind a desk. Everyone in town knows her as the good girl who always does what she’s supposed to. They all know she’s good at some things, but in the end, she settled down and did the stable thing.”
“That Lily doesn’t disappoint people,” she whispered.
“Except herself.”
“It’s too late to do anything about that.”
“You’re not dead yet.”
He rubbed some more, thumbs skimming along the line of her open collar, gaze fixed on the goose-pimpled skin beneath the pads.
“No,” she said. “I’m not. But I can’t have what I want.”
“Why not?”
“Because what I want is so far outside that bullseye that no one would recognize me if I seized it.”
“I’ll recognize you.”
She laughed.
“I don’t matter, huh?”
“Oh, you matter.” She scraped her nail against the edge of the peeling screen-printed pattern of his shirt. It was so old, she couldn’t even make out what the picture had been. “Maybe things would be better if you didn’t.”
“Better or easier?”
She looked up at him, wondering what the right answer was. Wondering if he knew that the reason she was so far outside that paragon of perfection was because she wanted what her aunt had. If that made her wild and reckless, she didn’t care. She wanted someone to love her so much that she just didn’t care.
“Better,” she said finally. “What good is easy if the rewards aren’t satisfying? I want the rewards. I want to feel like every minute of my life is worth something. I want to feel like I matter, too.”
“How can I help?”
She laughed again. She couldn’t help it. When he asked her questions like that in his typical flat tone, her immediate instinct was to rebuff him for the sarcasm, but that was just Lance. The delivery of his words wasn’t what mattered, but his behavior.
She took his hand and squeezed it in hers. “We could…try this.”
“This?”
“You. Me. We could try and see why
it is we can’t stop poking at each other.”
She already knew the answer to that.
“We could try to figure out if we can actually cooperate without everything going sideways.”
Of course they could.
“Or we could just…do what we have to for the divorce and try to make a clean break as quickly as possible. Let’s not drag this out anymore. I don’t know if I could take it.”
The idea of that made stinging bile creep up her chest. It made her mouth dry and throat tighten.
She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to go back to the way things were, when they couldn’t talk, couldn’t touch, couldn’t be civil because everyone expected them not to be.
He tucked his knuckle under her chin and lifted it, but she couldn’t look at him. She wasn’t confident that what he would tell her would be what her heart wanted to hear. “You want a divorce?”
“No,” she whispered. She wanted to try. Wanted to hold on to something that she wanted for a change.
“How would you feel if I said I don’t want one either?”
She did look up then, if only to memorialize his expression in her brain. She searched for the joke in his features—the twitching of the corners of his lips, the slight narrowing of his eyes. Those signs weren’t there.
“I can’t bear the thought of you ending up with some human man who can’t appreciate who you are and what you can do.” He grazed her lips with the underside of his thumb, staring at her with wonder. “You just have a way of connecting with people, I guess. And beasts like me especially.”
“I treat you the same as everyone else. I just assume you’re a little more dangerous, is all. I brace myself accordingly.”
“You don’t have to brace yourself to deal with me. I’m nothing to be afraid of. I’m a guy who can’t sleep half the time because of nightmares I try not to remember, and who gets carsick at speeds over forty.”
“And a guy who terrifies ninety-eight percent of the Coyotes in Maria.”
“Do I terrify you, though?”
She wasn’t going to lie. He could probably smell the shift of her hormones.
She swallowed. Shrugged. “You do.”
He started to pull his hand away, but she pulled it back and squeezed it hard in both of hers.
“You do, but not for the reasons you think. You terrify me because you’re chasing me out of a place where everything is rote and makes sense to one where I have to trust my instincts.”
“And what are your instincts telling you?”
She expelled a little tuft of air and got moving backward, pulling him along with her, stare locked on his as she did.
He moved without resistance, even without knowing where she was taking him. No questioning. No scoffing.
Easing them into the hallway, she looked back over her shoulder. Four doors. “Which?”
His response came out choked and garbled, forcing him to clear his throat. “The open one.”
“Would this be easier with a bottle of mescal?” she teased.
“Maybe if I wanted to forget it.” He lifted her off her feet without so much as a grunt and closed the door with his foot, barely missing a step. “This time, I don’t plan on forgetting.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lance had never been more grateful for owning furniture. Housekeeping had never been a huge priority for him given his rolling stone tendencies, but there was something satisfying about dropping his woman onto a bed that only he’d slept in.
No shitty hotel room sheets. No thin RV mattresses. Top-of-the-line, all the way. As he worked off her boots, he wondered if she appreciated his efforts.
Her fingers were inching toward him, feeling and patting.
She couldn’t see him, he realized. Too dark.
Fine for him. He didn’t need the light, and he certainly didn’t mind being groped.
“I think this is what you’re looking for.” He guided her hands to his waistband, hooking the fingers beneath the elastic.
“You could turn on the light.”
“Or we could just keep going until morning. There’ll be plenty of light then. That window faces the east.”
She had the kind of laugh that cradled a guy’s psyche and make him feel like he was brave enough to do wild shit like cliff diving and shopping at big box stores on Black Friday.
Maybe he would, if she wanted him to.
“How do you even get these things on?” He was trying to tug her jeans over her angles but he could barely get his fingers under the hems.
“Gotta wriggle a little.” And she did, and he was glad she couldn’t see in the dark because the look on his face couldn’t have been proper or respectful. He didn’t know a single sexual being who could watch a woman on her back jiggle in all the delightful places women tended to and not feel beastly.
She got her waistband down her thighs, and he took over the rest of the way, turning the jeans inside out as he tugged them off and not really caring. He flung them somewhere behind him and pawed off her jacket, growling at the flannel shirt beneath. Plaid. He kept seeing that particular color pattern on Foyes.
She laughed again as she deftly loosened the tiny buttons. “Why the noise?”
“What’s with the plaid? I’ve seen your cousins in it.”
“It’s part of the branding of the companies, both the ranch and Woodworks. It’s the Baxter plaid.”
“Ah. Well, I’m sure that drives your grandparents nuts.”
“Actually, I don’t know if they know. Aunt Glenda’s been using it for years. The folks in Scotland don’t care as long as they keep getting those big boxes of Double B jerky at Christmas.”
“I’ve never been to Scotland.”
“Me neither.”
“We should go,” he said.
“When?”
“After.”
“After what?”
“Maybe after morning, since you’re concerned about the light.” Her bra unclasped at the front, and he couldn’t have been gladder, because, with his acute impatience, the little scrap of fabric wouldn’t have survived the encounter.
“We’ll go tomorrow then.” She laughed and scooted away from the bed’s edge right as he started to reach for her waist. There was still one more piece of fabric to deal with. “I’m sure Belle won’t mind if I extend my absence a while longer. Blue might miss you a bit, though.”
“He’ll be okay.” Lance doffed his jacket, sweats, and his socks. He tossed his shirt along after them and climbed up the bed toward her.
She sat with her back against the headboard, smiling softly. Utterly relaxed. Comfortable.
The softness of her expression matched the clues his nose was giving him. No agitation. No fear. No anxiety. Not even any restlessness. That was all on him. He wasn’t used to being the one at odds.
“You really think he won’t notice his trusted lieutenant is missing for a week or more?”
“He’d notice.” Lance yanked her down onto her back by the thighs and wasted a few seconds admiring the demure cut of cotton panties and the sweet little bow just beneath her navel. He traced the tip of the fabric there and watched her belly quiver. “He’d notice, but he’d adapt. Diana doesn’t like getting her hands dirty, but she’d fill in if she had to.”
Yeah, she’s going to have to.
Lance liked the idea of taking his wife somewhere far away from all the distractions in Maria. He could take her someplace where no one knew them, and where none of the shit back at home mattered. For a few days, they could just be with no one shouting “Liliana!” at her from down the fucking street.
And, preferably, no one attempting to jump him and tie him up in a van.
“I know a guy who can get me plane tickets cheap.” He inched her panties down her legs, pausing to kiss where her thighs touched because he couldn’t remember if he had the last time. Her thighs deserved worshiping, perhaps more in greater detail later. So much about her was distracting to the Coyote brain. Too many soft spots t
o set his teeth into. Too many alluring scents to investigate.
“Especially this one,” he murmured as his fingers slid between her legs.
“Especially what one?”
“Don’t mind me.” He leaned forward as he stroked down her slit, easing her thighs apart. “I’m just thinking out loud.”
“At least you’re thinking.”
“Be nice to me. Coyote self-esteem is extremely fragile.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe. Treat me like it’s the truth, anyway. Maybe I’ll like it.”
“You want to be coddled.”
“Yeah. Coddle me.”
“Come here, then.”
He could tell exactly what she wanted when she lifted her head and pursed her lips. In the past, kissing had been a waste of time for him. It was prescribed intimacy demanded by women he didn’t plan to keep, and who likely knew—deep down—that he wasn’t going to be able to give them what they wanted, anyway.
He hadn’t had it to give until Lily.
Her fingertips traced down his spine and palms kneaded into his shoulders as he nudged her lips apart with his.
“The beard tickles,” she whispered.
“You want me to shave it?” It didn’t mean anything to him. It was little more than a participation trophy for being born with Y chromosomes. He may have been recognizable for it, but it didn’t make or break him.
“Would I like to see what’s under it? Yes, of course, but it’s your face, Lance.” If she had any instructions beyond that, she didn’t speak them. He wished she would have. Sometimes, he needed to be told what to do.
Her tongue slid between his lips and one strong leg wrapped around his core. She pulled him down to her, locking his body tight against hers, twisting her fingers in his hair.
His hand skated down her side and between their bodies, and he made himself a little room to play as she drew his lip between her teeth and then nibbled along his jaw.
Her belly tautened as he slid his fingers in deep and worked the heel of his palm over the protruding bud.