Natural Evil (Elder Races #4.5)(26)

After a week, her possessions had gradually taken over the trailer until evidence of her stay was everywhere. Not that she was untidy; she was very neat. But there were books, movies she borrowed from Jackson’s collection, her suitcase, the laptop, phone and charger, the Tarot deck.

Until now. Everything was packed, and she had cleaned. The laptop was stored in its case, and an open canvas bag held her paperbacks and phone, and the Tarot deck sat neatly on top.

Man, she was slamming that wall into place again with a vengeance.

Emotion roared through him, a gigantic, silent outcry that gnawed at his bones like acid. Oh, no you don’t, he said to the emptiness.

No, you don’t.

Claudia stepped into the trailer, carrying three Styrofoam containers and a paper bag full of the requisite dinner rolls, and it was her turn to stop dead just inside the door.

Violence lounged on the end of the sofa, and it looked a lot like Luis. He was playing with the Tarot deck, his big, brown hands dexterous as he handled the cards.

She took in his set expression and blazing eyes. Yeah, she wasn’t going to go anywhere near that. She stepped away, into the miniscule kitchen area. “Where’s Dan?”

“Vet emergency.”

She set the dinners on the counter, listening to him shuffle the deck. Snap. Snap. Snap. She looked at the table. He was snapping each card as he laid them down in what looked like a basic spread, but he clearly wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.

She said, “You knew Dan was out on the emergency before, didn’t you?”

His sensual mouth drew tight. “Yep.”

Dinner lost its appeal. She turned and leaned back against the kitchen sink. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

“I got that when I came inside and found your bags packed.” He slapped the rest of the deck down, stood and walked toward her. He still hadn’t found time to get his hair cut, and the ends of it flopped in his eyes. The angry heat in his expression blinded her to everything else.

“Don’t crowd me,” she said as he came close. He didn’t listen but he also didn’t touch her. It was a damn fine line between what was too close and what was too much, and he walked that line well. He braced his hands on the overhead cabinets on either side of her, the heavy muscles of his triceps bunching as he leaned his weight on his arms and looked at her.

She could control her actions but she couldn’t control her reaction to him. He pulled it from her, until she felt it flaring from her skin like a fever.

He said softly, “We have a topic of conversation we shelved a while back.”

“We don’t have anything to talk about,” she said. She forced herself to breathe evenly. “I’m a forty-year-old human woman, and you’re what—a twenty-five-year-old Wyr?”

“Twenty-seven.”

Her eyebrows quirked, mocking the difference. “Twenty-seven,” she said. “You have your whole life ahead of you, and it’s going to be a hell of a lot longer than a human one. While I am not ever going to be any better than what I am right now, and what I am right now isn’t going to last very long. You’re starting your career. I just ended one. We are perfectly mismatched.”

“Then why do we fit so well?” he whispered.

“We don’t.” She glared, suddenly as angry with him as she had ever been with anyone. She would never have children. She might have twenty more years left, or she might have forty, and all of those years would be spent aging. She would be dead before she saw any similar signs of aging in a Wyr of his years. “And I do not go for younger men.”

“Try convincing your body of that,” he said. He leaned forward and kissed her.

And kissed her. And he was too goddamn clever for his own good, because if he had been diffident and had pulled back, she could have regained some ground. As it was, all the blood in her body was pounding so loudly she couldn’t think, she could only feel that generous, sensual, optimistic mouth of his moving on hers with a kind of pleading hunger he had not let himself verbalize.

He kissed her like he was starving. He kissed her like she was the first woman he had ever kissed, and heh, well, she knew that couldn’t be true, but it was a fine, fine fairy tale, and good Christ, it was irresistibly seductive. Before she could stop herself, her mouth was moving in response to his.

Angry. She was angry at him. At something. Falling in love with this incredible man hurt like a heart attack. She grabbed his thick, too-long hair and yanked it. His hands came down from the cupboard. He snatched her against him, and the pleading hunger that his gorgeous, sensitive lips communicated so eloquently became a ravening need. A sound came out of him when his tongue stroked along hers, something between a groan and a whine, and his big body started to shake.

He said her name against her lips then he pulled back just far enough so that she could see how the passion darkened his skin and brought a breakable expression into his eyes.

Suddenly her own hurt vanished, and she realized the extent of her own foolishness. The only and forever, and falling in love—that was all in her mind. He didn’t need to know the full story of what she felt. She was robbing herself of a rare, wonderful opportunity tonight if she denied this, and him.

“It’s okay, Luis,” she whispered. She put her arms around his neck and held him tight. “It’s all right.”

He was burning up. He ran his huge, flattened hands down the gentle curve of her back, and he gripped her hips. She was surprised when he pulled away. Then realization lanced into her as he knelt, lifted the hem of her t-shirt and teased open the fastening of her jeans.