by Anne Marsh
“I’m a biologist. I’m researching the reintroduction of wolves to the Louisiana bayou.”
My new companion’s still staring at me.
Head up, chin out, right? I stare right back. This is one of those awkward moments when possessing an awesome super power like mental telepathy or mind control (I’m desperate enough to overlook any minor ethical issues) would be a welcome development. Unfortunately, I’m on my own, however, so I stare/glare into the sexiest pair of hazel eyes I’ve ever seen. God, his eyes are gorgeous, a melted chocolate brown with streaks of caramel. You know. If candy bars had teeth, a death wish, and a side of surly—because this guy does not look happy. I drop my gaze to the water.
My bag still hasn’t surfaced.
“No wolves in the bayou,” he says shortly.
“No, see,” I say way too eagerly, “I think there are. And I’ve got a grant to prove it.”
He mutters something both obscene and creative. Possibly anatomically impossible. I slide right, putting a little more space between us. I can only run so far before I’m back in the water, but he makes me nervous.
“And then what?” he demands.
“And then we take steps to protect the wolves. Make sure humans aren’t encroaching on their territory, that there’s no unauthorized hunting going on, that sort of thing. So your help right now is a big deal, and I really appreciate it.”
This guy doesn’t look like your average PETA member, but hope is the last strategy I’ve got at the moment. He glares at the water some more, and I count my blessings that he’s not looking at me.
“Fucking unbelievable,” he announces to the bayou.
At least I think he’s not talking to me.
I hope.
In any case, I shut up and mentally cross my fingers.
He turns until he’s looking down at me (which is ridiculously easy for him, seeing as how he’s built like a mountain and I’m more of a small curvy hill). He crosses his arms over his chest and transfers his glare from the water to me. Yikes.
“You find anything good last night?”
“Not a thing.” And that just makes it worse. I sat out here all night, swatting mosquitoes and trying to avoid a pee trip into the bushes, and I have nothing to show for it.
“You gonna try again?”
I give him the truth. “Until I run out of grant money.”
“So if I pull your shit out of the water, I could be singlehandedly saving the entire wolf population?”
Anything is possible, right? “Absolutely.”
“All right then.” He nods like we’ve just come to an agreement about something important, and then he starts stripping down.
What the hell? He removes his shirt, boots, vest, belt, and a small arsenal of weapons while I stare at him like some kind of hormone-struck idiot. The leather vest he folds up and sets on the seat has me asking questions, though. I’ve seen those before. It’s a biker vest and proof of his badassery.
“Member of the Breed MC,” he says. Guess he thinks I’m curious about the vest. I know who they are. Pretty much everyone does who lives and works in this part of Baton Rouge. It’s like knowing which neighborhoods you never, ever drive through—kind of a survival skill. I’ve seen the odd biker, but our paths have never crossed. They don’t seem to be big on hanging out at biology labs, and my personal life is sadly short on visits to biker bars. But this is the perfect opportunity to learn more, and he’s stopped glaring like he wants to kill everything in sight, so carpe diem.
“What’s it like, being a club member? Do you wear the vest and the patch all the time? Where do you keep your bike? How often do you ride? And why do you have a boat?”
Silence.
Somehow I don’t think he’s deciding which question to answer first. I’ve been in the bayou overnight, so he’s the first living, breathing person I’ve run into today. I have a lot of words stored up in me, and he’s the lucky recipient. Plus, questions are my catnip.
“Hey.” His thumb brushes over my mouth, and I jerk my head back. Why is he touching me? Why am I letting him? “I gotta get your stuff, oui?”
I’d like to say it doesn’t matter, that I could do this for myself, but the truth is? I can’t. So I just kind of stand around and watch as he vaults onto the railing and then dives in. I guess I thought he’d fish around with a boat hook or something because this hands-on approach is unexpected.
And more than a little worrisome.
Who does that? Isn’t he worried about creepy-crawlies or water snakes and alligators? Even a decent-sized snag could do him in, and there’s undoubtedly a million different kinds of bacteria swimming around down there and jonesing to move into a nice, warm human body.
He’s down a long time. Long enough that I start to worry. And then he pops up and effortlessly tosses my waterlogged pack into the bottom of his boat. I think I’d hate him if he didn’t scare me so much.
Gator
I’m supposed to scare Poppy the Scientist. Make her fear me, make her listen. Instead, I’m fetching and carrying for her. I close my eyes and count to ten. Doesn’t fucking help. She’s my prey and yet… she’s something else too. When I open my eyes, she’s all I see.
She wraps her arms around herself as if she’d like to take up the smallest amount of space possible. Her body language screams that she’s scared of me, but her mouth… her mouth has other ideas, and I have other ideas about her mouth. Her mouth is pretty and pink, so impossibly soft looking that I want to get right over there and run some experiments of my own. Drag my thumb over all that plump goodness, drive my tongue inside. And then my dick. Because oui, the urge to fuck her mouth is suddenly overwhelming. I can see her on her knees, my hands fisting her hair and holding her still for my next thrust.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I drop her pack onto the deck and debate whether there’s any getting the mud off me. Or if it matters.
Nope.
Not really.
There’s no way I’m picturing myself banging the scientist I almost killed. She grabs clumsily at the blanket, the folds sliding off her shoulders and down her arms. Her fingers shake, from cold or fear or both. I’ve fucking aced this assignment, but I’ve still got a problem. I can’t tell what her face looks like but the rest of her… my tongue might be hanging out of my mouth.
Her tits are spectacular.
She’s wearing a bright yellow tank top beneath some kind of gauzy shirt that was probably white before she rolled around on the bottom of the bayou courtesy of our run-in. The wet fabric does absolutely nothing, however, to cover up the teasing glimpses of curves I get as she adjusts the blanket around herself. Her cargo pants hug her ass and her legs, and thanks to a liberal helping of bayou mud and water, not one glorious inch is left to the imagination. She’s not the tallest thing, but she might be mostly legs and tits and fuck me but I’m staring. Or maybe that’s because the rest of her is so covered in mud that it’s ridiculous. Or maybe it’s the bright pink Doc Martens she’s sporting. It’s like a rainbow or maybe a box of Lucky Charms exploded underneath that hippy-dippy exterior of hers. Who decided to let her run around the bayou by herself where she could get hurt?
Her nervous gaze flicks over me again, and I know what she sees. Even if you could ignore the scars, I’m an ugly bastard. I’m tall and broad-shouldered, with more rough edges than a file. In short, I’d have to be the last guy in the world any girl would want to be stranded with in the bayou. She probably thinks I’m an ax murderer or a psychopath. I cross my arms over my chest and wait for the screaming or the cursing to start. Since her ride’s now on the bottom of the bayou, she’ll have to accept my help, but I bet she won’t want to.
“Do you mind?” She finally breaks our staring contest, her gaze dropping submissively as she points to the cushioned seat that runs along the length of the boat. I guess she’s worried about mud or dirt or something.
“Be my guest,” I tell her, and she plops down, dragging the blank
et tighter around her.
There’s a long, awkward silence. Awkward for her, that is. Not my fault if she prefers to fill up the silence with words. She bites down on her lower lip—definitely nervous—and my dick gets hard. It doesn’t care that we’re the big bad wolf or that we were one step away from blowing down that stupid, fragile blind she thought she could hide in.
The fear scent fades slightly, so she’s feeling better about me? Fuck if I know, and I need her scared. She moves hesitantly, her eyes constantly checking me out, like she needs to know where I am. What the hell is she thinking? Doesn’t she know that all that tentative motion just brings out the predator in me? She acts as if I’m about to pounce on her, bring her down, and do unspeakable things to her—and she’s not wrong.
She swallows, her gaze still firmly fastened on my deck. I follow the soft movement as her throat works. I could be across the deck and on her in seconds, my teeth, tongue, and fingers all over that sweet, anxious skin. Bet she’d taste fucking awesome. Bet…
Her eyes flash up and then dance away from mine. “What now?”
I bite back a predatory smile. She’s mine.
“I could take you back to wherever you docked.” She has to be cold and sitting around in wet cargoes sucks. She’ll bite. “But if you want to get that mud off you first, I have a place not too far from here.”
“Okay.” She swallows again.
I inhale, dragging her scent deep into my lungs. Taking that much of her. Beneath the ripe scent of the mud clinging to her skin, she smells good. Not like the orchids and roses and artificial flower shit that drench the skin of the women I’ve hired to fuck me, but something warmer and sweeter. I imagine what kind of flowers she’d like best. Something natural, I think. Not something that can’t survive in Louisiana outside of a hothouse. There’s a purple flower that grows almost exclusively in southern Louisiana. It’s pretty enough, five tiny violet-colored petals waving on a long, slim stalk, but it smells like sugar. Like something you’d lick just because it tastes good and you have to have more of it. And if you pick it, the leaves turn black because they bruise easily and you can’t ever be gentle enough to not break that flower.
“You okay?” It’s a stupid question. Of course she’s not. Her boat is gone, she’s covered in mud, and now I’ve all but kidnapped her. Her nominal consent doesn’t really count.
She uncurls just enough to rest her chin on her knees. Her wet, muddy hair is sticking up in back now in some kind of mutant cowlick. Her way-too-fuckable mouth opens, and I brace for an onslaught of complaints or explanations about her current fucking mental state or health.
“Sorry?” That’s it. That’s all she gives me—one word. She shuts up tighter than a marsh clam.
“Don’t be,” I growl.
Her eyes widen. Fuck. Now I’ve scared her worse. I open the boat up a little more. The faster we get to my place, the faster I can do… something. I drive hard through the waterways, taking the path almost no one knows about. There’s more than one way to approach my island, but most of them require a degree of skill and a knowledge of what lies beneath the surface of the bayou that most people lack. I take my eyes off the water for a moment to look at her because this stretch is easy and I know it like the back of my hand.
“Don’t ever be sorry with me,” I tell her. Somehow, this feels like an important point to make. Or maybe it’s just because the feisty, cursing, laughing woman who serenaded her sinking boat has been replaced with this timid shadow.
“Okay,” she says, too softly to be heard over the obnoxious roar of the engine. I see her mouth form the word, the sweet pucker of her lips like she’s on her knees, waiting for me to feed her my dick. I go straight back to my new favorite fantasy and imagine fisting her dirty, muddy hair and dragging her head back until all she can do is open up and up, giving everything to me.
The boat makes it hard to hear her, and I kinda want to. So I drive faster, concentrating on getting us to my island. It’s stupid, this desire I have to be alone with her. I do alone. Alone’s my thing. But dragging her into it, bringing her to my place? Oui, that’s fucking out of character. The boat’s not as much fun as my bike; she turns slower, flies a little less fast. Plus, you can take a bike pretty much anywhere. I’ve never liked sitting still. My earliest memories are of sitting a horse, tearing across a field. Skip ahead a few years, and I’m covering a battleground astride. You get in, you get out, and no one messes with you. Next year, I’m gonna learn to fly. It’ll be just me and a few fucking birds up there in the sky. No people and nothing but silence.
The island looms in front of us. It’s not that large—maybe fourteen, fifteen acres—and the elevation is practically non-existent. The bayou curls around every inch of ground. Some Southern aristocrat built himself a mansion out here more than two centuries ago, and the bayou’s been fighting to reclaim the land ever since. The house is two stories high with white columns across the whole front length, probably just to make an impression. It has one of those big verandahs on the front, and a balcony wrapped around the second floor. Might have been pink once upon a time, but now it’s the same ghostly white as a spider lily because the humidity and wet of the bayou have eaten away at it. And since my landscaping consists largely of gnarled trees, lots of Spanish moss, and the odd iris, it’s pretty fucking formidable.
“Is that your place?”
“Oui.” I kill the engine, bringing us in to the dock, as if a slow approach will make things easier for her. “Not breaking us into someone else’s.”
“You have a mansion.”
“Yeah.”
“On an island?”
Guess the island part may be a deal breaker for her because there’s a long pause while she starts looking around like she really needs to find the Exit sign and a way out. I take advantage of the silence to tie up.
“Private island.” I stand up. This is our stop, so it’s time to go.
Her arms tighten around her knees. Sure as fuck doesn’t look like she’s planning on getting up anytime soon, but she can’t spend the day out here. The sun’s already well up, and I don’t think she slept much at all last night. She’s got dark circles under her eyes and more than once I caught her head jerking violently backward as she fell asleep.
She looks at me. Cautiously, of course. “You own the entire island?”
I’ll give her two minutes to haul her cute little ass out of my boat and onto the dock, and then I’m doing it for her. I knew I shouldn’t have talked to her. I wish I’d stuck with the original plan and just scared her off. Set up our accident and then left her floating in the bayou. At least then she wouldn’t be staring at me with those brown eyes as if I’d just fucking shot Bambi and turned him into a nice venison patty. Jace keeps people away from me most days because my lack of interpersonal skills is legendary. Bloodbaths tend to happen when I enter a room.
“You’re giving me shit because my house is too big?”
She blinks rapidly. “I—”
Those brown eyes tear up, like maybe she’s trying not to break down and cry in front of me. My dick suggests that now would be the perfect moment to move in and offer a little TLC. As if she’d want that from me. Even by human standards, she’s a bit of a thing. She’d barely come up to my shoulder. No way having a mountain man wrap her up in his arms would be welcome.
Which she should have thought of before.
I scowl at her and she flinches.
“Sorry,” she says again.
I shake my head. “Babe, we’ve discussed this.”
Her head snaps up and she finds some spine. “No. A discussion involves two people having a conversation and some back and forth. That never happened.”
I only do one kind of back and forth, and that’s me shoving deep inside her pussy.
I vault out of the boat before I can pursue that thought too far, crouch down, and extend a hand to her. Christ, she’s a mess. She looks like a mud monster, so all I can tell is that she’s got a banging b
ody, she’d totally rock my two chicks in a mud pit fantasy to life, and she must have some shit luck to end up covered with that much crap.
Does she take it? Of course not.
Not sure how she plans on making it up onto my dock, though. The boat’s low in the water, the dock’s high, and accepting an assist is the only logical solution. She makes a small sound and stares at my hand like it’ll morph into a nice, sterile ladder or a fucking elevator if she waits long enough. Or maybe she’s holding out for an angel with wings. Fuck if I know. It’s my unscarred side, so it could be worse, but she doesn’t budge. I’ll go after her if I have to.
“Come on.” Patience has never been my strong suit. There must be some magic incantation that can fix this situation, but fuck me if I know what it is. Sitting around covered in mud can’t feel good, and right now all I want to do is help her. Sounds like a good deal, right?
She sighs and finally uncurls. “Would you say this qualifies for between the devil and the deep blue sea?”
Because she’s asking me, I bother looking at the bayou surrounding my island. One thing’s for sure. Nothing here looks like the Caribbean. There’s none of that crystal blue shit going on or palm trees or white sand. And while I could probably manufacture a cabana boy for her because Fang’s always up for a prank, I don’t import anyone to my island if I can avoid it.
“Not looking too balmy, babe.”
Guess she must be a fan of the truth because she nods and finally gets her cute little ass in gear. The irony isn’t lost on me—I prefer living alone, and yet here I am, practically begging her to invade my space.
When she starts to shuck the blanket, I get an idea. I don’t want her cold. My wolf thinks we should… protect her? Yeah. My wolf is fucking crazy.
“Keep it on,” I growl.
She starts, obediently clutching the plaid more tightly around her shoulders. My wolf, he really likes the way she takes instructions. I’m smarter, though—I know this state is only temporary. Eventually, she’ll find her spine and be back to wanting to eviscerate me. Good times, right?