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I try to slow the racing pace of my thoughts.
I’ve just met this man.
He could be anything and anyone.
“Are you in the habit of inviting strange men into your house?” Markus asks a moment later as if reading my thoughts.
“No,” I say at once. “But you saved Lava. I guess that means you’re one of the good guys, right?”
He watches me a moment longer. I think I see his lips twitch into a half-smile or a smirk, but then it’s gone and he’s just staring flatly again.
“You were in the SEALs?” I ask.
He nods shortly. “For twenty-one years.”
“Well, do you like cocoa?”
I’m vaguely aware that I sound like a complete overexcited idiot, but the sight of this tall giant handsome alpha standing right there has got me all kinds of messed up. I’m using my waitress’s voice, artificially high and bouncy, as though that will hide my nerves.
He glances around at the darkness with a sigh. “You really shouldn’t invite people you don’t know into your house, ma’am,” he says gruffly. “As long as the dog’s safe, I think I’ll be on my way. You have a nice evening now.”
I swallow a lump of embarrassment – and something else – as he turns and strides toward his car. Just as when he approached the house, he moves with a calm military authority, as though nothing could faze him.
Jerk, I try to tell myself as he casually waves to me and climbs back into his car.
But it’s a lie.
I don’t think he’s a jerk at all.
I just wish he’d leap out of that car and run up to the house, wrap me up in his arms, and growl into my ear with that gruff-as-hell voice.
He drives away and then it’s just me and the wind.
And Lava, who is sitting at the door waiting for me, head tilted as though he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“I know, boy,” I mutter, tickling him under the chin. “Never gonna happen.”Chapter ThreeMarkusI pace up and down the motel room, which looks like it’s ready for someone else to move right in apart from a sparse few belongings dotted here and there.
There’s Blood Meridian on the bedside table and my boots sitting neatly beside the door. My bag with all my clothes inside is under the bed. The bathroom has a few of my toiletries but that’s it.
I could be up and out of here in two minutes flat, and that’s giving myself an extra ninety seconds.
Leave, then, I try to tell myself, pacing like a caged beast.
I try to tell myself that she’s not having this effect on me, that it’s impossible a short conversation with her has awoken this crazy sparking something inside of me.
The sensation is so new I don’t even know how to label it.
It just is.
Looking up at her on the porch, standing there in a waitress’s uniform with a heavy jacket over the top, I felt as though the world had stopped spinning because of us. Her beauty hammering me over the head with a primordial fist.
Take her, some deep part of me rumbled. Far away, a private place, a savage place, take her and kiss every inch of her curvy skin until she’s tingling and shivering and begging for a release, and then take her, take her hard and long, and blow your hot load deep inside her so that it kisses her womb and makes a life there.
I can’t help but close my eyes and picture her, her body achingly curvaceous despite the heaviness of her winter jacket. I could see the lines of her thighs and then her hips, those fucking childbearing hips, and the shape of her breasts beneath the fabric.
Her long dark hair, falling down to her shoulders in waves, as though she’d just freed it after a long day at work. Tights clinging to her legs and shoes with a slight heel, shaping those meaty calves, the sort of legs I could spend hours kissing and biting and teasing.
No, not the sort of legs.
Those were the legs.
The only legs.
“She’s mine,” I whisper now, into the semidarkness of the motel room. “Jesus fucking Christ, she’s mine. If another man touches her…”
I’m almost glad when my cellphone buzzes, pulling me from my reverie.
As usual, it’s Uncle Johnny.
“Yep?” I say, picking up.
“Hello to you, too, motherfucker,” Johnny laughs.
I smirk, sitting on the edge of the bed, unable to stop the image of Millie – Millie, what a beautiful name – from rising in my mind … or taking shape in the shadows of the room, or dancing in the moonlight that seeps in through the half-pulled curtains.
Got to get her out of my head.
But I can’t.
“Markus?” Johnny says.
“Yeah?”
“I said you moved outta what’s-it-called, Pebble Dock yet?”
“Stone Harbor,” I murmur. “And no. Why do you ask?”
He laughs grimly. “Because it’s been about a month. By my count, you’re late.”
