Saddle Up(26)

She whispered back, “If we’re making confessions, I like how you feel.”

“Is that so?” He rolled her onto her back so that his body lay on top of hers. His mouth stretched into a slow smile. “Is there a particular part of me you like?”

Her face heated. If she’d had any doubt his desire was real, the proof was palpable through two layers of thick denim. “Um…maybe that didn’t come out quite right. I meant that you make me feel safe.”

“Safe?” His thumb skirted softly over her lips. “Maybe you aren’t as safe as you think.” He added in a tone that made her shiver with anticipation, “I think perhaps Goldilocks is about to discover that the old woman is really a big bad wolf.”

“You’re mixing up the stories, Keith. Goldilocks was with the three bears. Little Red Riding Hood was with the wolf.”

“You make films your way, and let me tell the stories,” he said. “Storytelling is in my blood, after all.”

“All right, then. Have it your way. Tell me this story about Goldilocks and the Big Bad Wolf.”

He flashed a big, bad lupine grin. “My version begins much the same as what you have heard before, but when Goldilocks enters her grandmother’s tepee, she exclaims, ‘Huttsi, what large hands you have!’

‘All the better to touch you with, my child,’ the wolf replies.

‘Huttsi, what a big mouth you have!’

‘All the better to kiss you with, my dear!’

‘Huttsi, what a long tongue you have!’

‘All the better to lick every inch of you, my sweet.’”

His eyes gleamed mischievously. Miranda suspected she knew what was coming next.

“‘But, Huttsi, what an enormous—’”

“Don’t say it!” She covered his mouth. His chuckle warmed both her hand and her ears.

“Don’t you want to know how it ends?” he asked.

“I’m not certain I do.”

“I’ll tell you anyway. He devours her bite by delectable bite.” He flashed another very wolfish smile. “You see?” His smile disappeared. “You are never safe with a wolf.”

His lips were soft, smooth, and so very knowing as his mouth melded with hers with slow, toe-curling deliberation. There was nothing hurried or clumsy, none of the typical hesitancy, nose bumping, or teeth clashing of a first kiss. Taking her face in his hands, he deepened the kiss by tiny degrees, increasing pressure, adding licks and nips, teasing and torturing her until his hot tongue breached her mouth. Their tongues met, sliding and tangling—both a prelude and promise of so much more. She’d never been kissed by a man who knew how to give her everything she wanted, but Keith did.

Shutting her eyes, she recalled a night spent in another desert when she’d driven down to Baja California for a project in time-lapse videography. After hours of scouting, she’d located a small growth of thin, inconspicuous, dead-looking branches hidden among a patch of scrub—a night-blooming cereus. After setting up cameras, she’d spent the night vigilantly watching for the desert queen to unfurl for its single night of glory. When the flower finally opened, it had perfumed the air with a sweet and delicate scent. She sat watching the flower until it had wilted and withered away with the first light of dawn. Watching that bloom come to life had been one her most memorable experiences.

Keith made her feel very much like that desert flower waiting to bloom. She yearned to be touched…to be loved…and her resistance to him was fading fast. The kiss intensified, blinding her with blissful sensation. Nothing compared to the taste of his mouth, of his musky scent, of the feel of his warm hands on her skin. It was everything she’d hoped for and more. Any lingering doubts vaporized like a puff of breath in the cold night air.

Her hands crept up to his chest, the heat of his skin permeating through the cotton of his shirt into her fingertips. She swallowed hard. A low growl broke the quiet of the night. Miranda froze. “What was that?”

He tensed. “What was what?”

“That sound.”

Another growl was echoed by bloodcurdling shrieks from the two horses. Keith was instantly on his feet and shouldering his rifle. He took off running toward the horses while Miranda fumbled in the dark for the flashlight. She arrived at the scene just as a great shadow leaped through the air. She drew in a breath to scream but, paralyzed with terror, no sound emerged. The panic-stricken horses frantically kicked, reared, and hauled back on the picket line in their urgency to flee. The line snapped. The lamp crashed to the ground, casting the scene into darkness.

“I can’t see anything!” Keith hissed. “Shine the light out there.”

The narrow beam of her flashlight pierced the darkness, but not enough to help.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Shit!” Keith fired a shot into the air, cocked the rifle again, and fired another.

Miranda then shone the light on the ground beneath the picket line, where puddles of blood soaked the earth, trailing into the blackness beyond. She covered her mouth in horror. “Oh my God! What was it?”

“A mountain lion,” he answered grimly. “With the way it leapt, it couldn’t be anything else.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“Nothing. He’s already made the kill.”