Authors: Gigi Moore
Desiree shuddered at the thought of how the test for rabies was performed. She’d heard they had to euthanize the offending animal and remove its head—poor thing. She wasn’t the nature and animal lover that her sister was, but the idea of cutting off Pepé Le Pew’s head didn’t sit too well with her.
The flashlight didn’t come anywhere close to the protection of a rifle, but Desiree clutched it tighter just in case.
She heard another rustle, and this time she didn’t think twice, she just turned and ran.
Breath hitching and chest beginning to burn, she panicked when she didn’t reach the tree line as fast as she thought she should.
Had she come that far into the woods, or had she gotten turned around that quickly?
She took a chance to glance over her shoulder to see who was following her—or more likely what—and slammed face-first into a hard wall of muscles when she faced forward.
Desiree screamed.
The flashlight clattered to the ground, but it lit up the area enough for her to see who she had crashed into.
“What the hell are you doing running around out here all by yourself?” Carson caught her around the biceps to steady her, and Desiree cringed.
He wasn’t hurting her, but she was just waiting for him to call her an idiot again.
Chapter 8
Desiree lifted her chin. “I didn’t know I needed a chaperone to walk the grounds.”
“You’re not exactly on the grounds now, are you?” It took everything in Carson not to bend his head and kiss that proud, defiant expression right off her face, especially when he knew the girl was scared to death but endeavoring to hide her fear. She couldn’t hide that shudder, though, the one he felt riding her body as she tried to break his hold.
Shit, he was hard and getting harder by the minute. The longer he held onto her the more her vanilla musk affected him. The fragrance was like an erotic smoke signal wafting around his head.
He’d scented her as soon as she’d entered the woods, not far behind him and Sam.
Sam had already shifted and Carson had been about to do the same when he’d sensed her behind them. He told Sam to go ahead to the stream and that he’d catch up. Sam had gone, but reluctantly.
How much had Desiree seen before she went crashing toward the clearing and into him? How much had she heard? Would she be as calm in his grasp right now had she witnessed Sam’s change? “You didn’t answer my question, woman.”
“I didn’t know you were the keeper of the woods.”
Carson gritted his teeth. “Desiree—”
“I was just taking a walk,
man
. Now let me go!”
Carson released her at the same instant she jerked away from him, and Desiree stumbled against a nearby tree. He started toward her and she put up her palm facing him in a stop sign.
“I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”
“What were you thinking, coming out here alone?”
“You’re out here alone.”
“I know my way around.”
“I’m so glad you said that, and not that you’re a man.”
“That was next.” Carson tried not to smirk, but when he saw the fire lighting Desiree’s whiskey eyes, he couldn’t help one corner of his mouth twitching.
“You bastard.” She swung out those small fists, and damn did they pack a wallop when they found their target smack in the middle of his chest. He was lucky she didn’t still have the flashlight in her hand.
Carson caught her wrists, pulled her against him, and Desiree buried her face against his shirtfront. When her shoulders started to shake, Carson panicked, almost felt like cutting and running. He didn’t do well with tears, hated to hear or see a woman cry. It remained the reason he was in trouble now and his family on the run. He’d take a bloody battle to the death against another shifter over seeing a woman cry.
When Desiree pulled her face away from his chest, though, she was smiling, and he realized she wasn’t crying angry or crying sad, but crying laughing.
“Inside joke?”
“I’m an idiot, okay? There. Figure I’d beat you to the punch.”
“You’re not an idiot. A little misguided, maybe…”
“Same difference. Look it up in any thesaurus.”
Carson chuckled, put a finger under her chin, and lifted her face to meet his. When he got a look at those wide, innocent eyes it made him wonder at her age. He knew she was older than him by a few years, but she struck him as so inexperienced and sheltered. Maybe it was the image of an inexperienced city slicker losing her way in the unfamiliar wild. To someone used to the bright lights of a big city that never slept, a Colorado ranch could be something of a culture shock and enough to unravel sensibilities.
He’d like to think
he
was enough to unravel
her
sensibilities.
Carson leaned forward and paused right before he made contact with her lips. “I want you,” he murmured and continued his descent, not giving her a chance to agree or debate. He just dove into the sweetness of her full lips, lightly licking then nipping the lower, slightly fuller, one, coaxing, seducing. When she finally opened her mouth to him, he swooped in, thrusting his tongue to taste her fully. He stroked inside her mouth, sliding his tongue against hers in a daring, sensual quest for control, and Desiree gave it up.
She lifted and coiled one leg around his thigh, arching her hips, rubbing her cunt against him as she moaned deep in her throat.
Carson pressed her back against the tree, grinding his shaft into the heat of her jeans, putting pressure right on the spot where he estimated her tight, swollen clit to be.
“Oh, God…Carson!” She shuddered against him as if in the throes of an orgasm. “Too much. It’s too much!”
He slid a hand between their bodies and found her crotch. He massaged her pussy with his fingers, itching to slide them into her wet heat, needing to feel her inner muscles closing around him when he fucked her.
“Please, please…”
His cock throbbed in his jeans as he laid her down in the dirt and went to work on the button and zipper of her jeans. When he jerked them down, panties and all, something must have snapped in the woman as surely as it had snapped in him.
“Don’t, Carson, no!”
Her voice was urgent, shaky, and he jerked up his head from what he was doing to look at her panic-stricken face.
Damn, he could almost taste her cream, her arousal a pungent, sweet aroma filling his lungs. What now?
“Please stop,” she whispered.
He looked at her, her eyes closed tight, her hands fisted against her chest as if to keep something or someone out.
Who had hurt her?
Who?
“C’mere,” he growled and pulled her to sit on his lap as he folded his legs and sat back against the tree.
“Don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not.” He pushed her soft bangs away from her face with an unsteady hand before pulling her against him. The maneuver proved a big mistake because it only made him hard again, not that he’d had a chance to get soft, not around Desiree.
Down, boy, down! Not now.
Sam burst through the trees and skidded to a stop in front of them. “What the hell?”
“She’s okay.”
“I heard her scream.”
He hoped no one else had. They’d think the same thing Sam probably had, that Desiree had been attacked. He, Sam, and their mother all had enough trouble in their lives already without bringing more unwanted, negative attention like that to them all.
Carson glanced up and caught Sam’s questioning look and shrugged as he stood with Desiree in his arms. He held her against him for a while. Her arms draped around his neck felt so right he didn’t want to put her down, but he knew he had to.
Carson let her slide down his body until her feet touched the ground. He had the sweetest flashback to when he’d held her against him after she fell off his horse. He, unfortunately, had to breach the illusion or risk falling further under her spell. He pushed her toward his brother and Desiree immediately buried her face in Sam’s chest. “Take her home.”
“What happened?”
“Just do it.”
Sam caught her by the shoulders and put her away from him a bit. “Are you okay?”
“I told you she was.”
“I want to hear it from her.”
“You think I hurt her?”
Sam pointedly looked at her tearstained face and then down at the snug jeans hanging half off her ass. He looked at his brother as he tugged her jeans and panties back up on her hips before zipping and buttoning them up.
Carson raked a hand through his hair and released a string of patois curses before he pointed a finger at Sam, stabbing the air like a knife with each word that flew out of his mouth. “You know me better than that, Samson!” He stomped off toward the woods and after several steps turned back and glared at his brother one more time. “Goddammit, after what happened…you damn well
know
me.”
* * * *
“It’s not his fault, Sam. He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t do anything. He just…I’m just…Can you take me home now, please?”
“Anything,” he said, meaning it. Sam took her hand, gave it a gentle squeeze as he led her back toward the clearing.
She didn’t say anything more as they walked, and Sam didn’t know what to say to ease the tension. He knew that he had royally fucked up things with his brother and that he would have to go about making things right with Carson eventually. Now, though, Desiree was his primary concern, getting her home safe and making her comfortable, especially in his company.
When he thought of all the things that she could have encountered out here instead of him and Carson, it scared the crap out of him. Didn’t she know about all the varmints—large and small—that could have gotten her? They’d had a particular problem with raccoons and skunks in the area lately. When he and Carson weren’t busy playing and fighting at the stream, they prowled the grounds on their own personal mission of animal control. He didn’t even want to mention to Desiree all the things that roamed around out here and scare the girl worse than he knew she already was.
“I hadn’t realized I’d gone this far in,” she murmured beside him, almost as if she’d heard his thoughts as they finally neared the tree line.
“It’s easy to get turned around in here if you don’t know where you’re going.”
“I should have dropped some breadcrumbs behind me, huh?”
“Or brought a compass.”
“Never been too good at reading those. I wasn’t the best Brownie.”
Sam chuckled. “I wasn’t a Boy Scout, either.”
She paused then and squeezed his hand. “Really?”
“Not in the slightest.” He grinned and thought he could have added he wasn’t a Boy Scout now, nowhere near. A Boy Scout wouldn’t be thinking about throwing her down in the dirt and plundering her pussy right here until she screamed his name. A Boy Scout wouldn’t be as hard in his jeans as Sam was, just staring at her lips and wondering how they’d taste or feel wrapped around his cock. A Boy Scout certainly wouldn’t be wondering what her
cocotte
tasted like, how it would feel tightening around his shaft when she came.
“I think I’ll be okay from here.”