Desert Heart (The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch Book 4) (13 page)

“Beautiful,” she murmured when they paused at the edge of the mesa. Together, they looked over a thousand square miles of home, a mile-high sky of clean desert air.

Rick closed his eyes, drinking it all in. Just the two of them and the horses and the dog that trotted in and out of sight. Not another soul as far as he could see.

Then Blue nickered and Star whinnied.
Time to get moving, boss.

“That way.” He pointed to the track that wound into a grove of cottonwood.

“That way?” Tina’s eyes grew wide, because she knew just where he meant.

“Spring Hollow.” He nodded. Grand as the view up here was, he needed someplace smaller, lusher…more intimate to share with her.

“Spring Hollow,” she echoed, biting her lip.

He let Blue lead the way and thanked every saint in heaven when the sound of Star’s hooves followed, because it meant that Tina wasn’t galloping away from the past, but heading back in to explore it with him.

Spring Hollow. The most beautiful corner of the ranch. Well, sort of a corner of the ranch, because Lucy Seymour had deeded it to the state when she died. One of her crazier last wishes, like naming him manager of the ranch. It was a peaceful little pocket of land where a fresh spring bounced and gurgled, feeding a hundred shady trees. A place that didn’t belong to the ranch or the state or anyone else. More like it belonged to God or Mother Nature or some powerful force a guy like him couldn’t begin to comprehend. All he knew was how perfect it was.

“Rick…”

He turned and looked at Tina, praying she wouldn’t protest.

“It’s…it’s…” She fumbled with words.

Home? Beautiful? Ours for tonight?

“It’s just like I remember.”

Yeah, just like he remembered, too. The rustle of leaves, the babbling stream—sounds, smells, sights you didn’t get in the open desert. Just in a secret hideaway like this.

Blue whisked his tail and descended the overgrown trail with Star right on his heels. Trees arched overhead, forming a cathedral of the woods: a hushed, almost spiritual place. Rick dismounted, led his horse to drink, then tied the reins to a branch and looked at Tina.

An all-or-nothing moment, because she was still two stories up on Star, chewing her lip. She could turn her tail and hammer away into the sunset, or she could slide out of the saddle and let him lead her to their special place. The spot on the boulders where they’d first kissed, first touched, first made love, all those years ago.

Tina looked at him, and he could feel the ache in her as clearly as he felt in himself.

Please,
he wanted to whisper.
Please, Tina. Trust me. Trust yourself.

Her eyes flashed, telling him she knew perfectly well he wasn’t leading her into the past so much as leading her into a future.

She waited so long, he was tempted to hang his head and let her go, except he couldn’t, because he’d never, ever give up on Tina. Maybe he’d have to give her an extra twenty days to decide. Maybe he’d wait forever. Maybe all he had to do was—

Tina shifted, stood in her stirrups, and threw a leg over Star. Slid to the ground in one easy glide and, without another second’s hesitation, stepped right over to him.

She was shaking her head like she was sure she was crazy, but she kissed him all the same. Kissed him with dry, craving lips that opened and closed as if she was whispering at the same time. Praying maybe. Telling him how crazy
he
was.

She didn’t make a sound, though. Just kissed. Kissed and kissed without a breath in between, one hand still gripping Star’s reins like it’d be safer not to let go, and the other hand hugging him close. He threaded his fingers through her hair and hung on as emotions cascaded through those quietly whispering lips. Fear. Doubt. Hope. Desire. Each one slowly melting into the next until there was only one left.

Love.

“I love you, Rick.” He could swear he heard her think it—twice, in fact—before she said it, though by then it didn’t matter any more because she really had said it out loud. “I love you. I missed you. I want you.”

He kept waiting for the
but
. Kept holding his breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She didn’t say it, though he could feel it hanging in the air along with the rising moon. Her starved kisses continued until she paused long enough to lead him over to the flat red rocks by the stream. She lunged into a kiss then settled on his lap and started working down the buttons of his shirt.

“Why?” He managed to get out. His hands swept over her back, cupped her rear, pulled her closer. “Why did we ever part?”

A rhetorical question, really, although Tina hid her face in his shoulder and mumbled a reply. “I always wanted you. I only wanted you.”

“Then why?”

She shook her head. “Rick, I just want to think about now. I just want tonight.”

A little voice inside started screaming,
No! No! No!
“I want more.”
I want everything.

Her lower lip wavered between a kiss and a word. Then she blinked and looked at him with those dark, tragic eyes. “I want more, too. I want it more than anything. I just…”

There was no
just
. There couldn’t be.

She shook her head hopelessly, and he could see the war in her eyes.

Just when he thought he’d lost, her eyes darkened. Sparked a little and then glowed. It must have been the reflection from the moon and the sunset, filtering through the trees, but damn, her eyes really seemed to glow. And just like that, she was wild for him. Kissing, wet and deep and hard. Raking her nails over his back and straddling him, pushing him back on the rock at the same time. Her fingers tugged his shirt from where it had been tucked into his jeans. It was as if a wild thing had jumped out of a caged part of her soul and taken over the controls. A wild thing that lit every last one of his nerves so that he was on fire, too.

She growled into the next kiss, and the points of her teeth nipped his lips.
I want you. No more talking. I want us.

Now he was imagining her voice in his head.

She worked his zipper down, then his jeans, and yanked off his shirt. He stripped her, layer by layer, holding his breath the whole time. Tina was that beautiful, that perfect. His. When she slid down over him, she tilted her head back and moaned. Then she started rocking, and all he could do was grip her hips and pump and marvel at the woman doing this to him. Maybe even growl a little on the side, because there was a feral edge to this he’d never experienced before. His bare ass was cold on the rock, but Tina was an inferno, all friction and hunger and sheer feminine power. Her cries joined the steady hum of cicadas, the whisper of the brook, and it all roared in his ears. Like the brook wasn’t a brook but a gushing river. Like the hollow was a concert hall with a string orchestra playing full blast. Everything swelled beyond real-life proportions. Beyond pleasure, right up to the razor’s edge of a blissful kind of pain.

Mine! Mine! Mine!
Her body screamed the word with every tiny gesture, every heavy moan.

Mine.
If Tina allowed herself to think it, damn it, so could he.
Mine.
She was his, all his.

His whole body shuddered when he came, and Tina cried out at exactly the same time. She grabbed his shoulders, convulsing, and murmured incomprehensible sounds. Then she slumped over him, and all he could think about was holding her. Holding her forever and never, ever letting go.

She spent a long time panting into his shoulder before slowly pulling herself together. The sun was over the horizon, and night had set in, but when she looked up, the glow was still in her eyes.

He pressed his lips to her collarbone. There was nothing he could say to capture what he felt. Nothing either of them could do to make this more perfect.

“Rick,” she whispered, nuzzling him the way only she could. Scrubbing her chin against his skin like she wanted part of him to rub off on her. “Rick…”

Perfect. Absolutely perfect. A dream.

Until a split second later, when her whole body went stiff and her head popped up. He could swear her ears flicked.

“What—?” He’d barely started when an ear-splitting howl cut into the night. A hellish cry of a tortured creature bent on revenge.

Rick could have pulled a plug on the soundtrack of the hollow, it went quiet that fast. Then it roared back to life with crazed whinnies from the horses and the puff of Tina’s panicked breath.

Aaaaaarrroooo…
The creature howled from somewhere far away, but still much, much too close.

Not a coyote. Not even a wolf like the ones Rick had heard as a kid. Something canine and dangerous but somehow different.

Blue reared up and clawed against empty air, whinnying in alarm.

Tina sprang off his lap. “Hell. How—” Whatever she was saying, it was urgent. Alarmed.

Every hair on his neck stood straight up, every muscle tensed. He had no idea what creature made a sound like that. The frightening thing was that Tina seemed to know exactly what it was, and she was scared stiff.

“Quick, quick!” She tossed his jeans at him and rushed to pull on her clothes in record time. She hissed at the horses, and they went silent instantly, though their hooves tore at the ground. Their nostrils were huge, their eyes panicked. Whatever evil was afoot had them ready to flee.

Now. Fast. Far.
The urgent message coursed through his veins.

“Go!” Tina urged as she untied Star and leaped into the saddle. “Go!”

Rick barely had a foot in the stirrup when Blue shot off, and it was all he could do was throw a leg over the saddle and hang on, ducking low over Blue’s mane as branches thwacked him from all sides. God, what was going on? The whole desert was on red alert, and him, too.

A wild minute of bushwhacking later, they shot out into the open and thundered across the desert, heading home. Blue didn’t need any urging; more like he needed to be held back before he stumbled and broke a leg. He galloped at a pace no aging horse should attempt, straining for another gear.

“Easy, boy.” Rick tried calming the horse, but his voice was uneven, unconvincing. Whatever was out there was evil. He could feel it in his bones.

Three lengths ahead, Tina leaned so low over Star’s neck that she was practically part of the horse. Her dark hair streamed back and whipped wildly with the mare’s pale mane, the very picture of a goddess of the wind or the sky. Or maybe even a goddess of battle, because when Tina glanced back, her face was fierce, her eyes flashing as if she were planning to rally the troops and go hunt down whatever it was that pumped terror into the desert that night.

The howls continued. From the direction of Dead Horse Bluff, maybe? He couldn’t tell, not at full gallop and with the desert screeching full-on panic in his ears.

They thundered over a rise until the ranch came into view, and the only thought in his mind was to race for the barn and bolt every door. To grab Tina, carry her into the loft, and stand two steps in front of her on guard. Maybe even grab a shotgun along the way, or a pitchfork, or whatever he could grab, and fight to the death if it meant she’d survive.

One howl oughtn’t do that to a man who’d walked some mean city streets, but it did. That howl was ghostly. Evil. Devilish, even.

They thundered down the hill, past the outer paddocks, past the empty house and right through the open barn door, ducking to clear their heads. The horses scrambled to a halt, trembling. Their nostrils flared and they skittered in place, hooves clawing the dirt, while he and Tina leaped to the ground and rushed for the door. He had it nearly all the way shut when Tina stopped and slid halfway out.

“What—?”

“I have to go.”

“Go?” With that thing out there? Was she nuts?

But Tina wasn’t nuts. She was the goddess of the wind, or something very close. “I have to go.”

“Tina, you can’t—”

She put a hand on his arm, and for a split second, everything calmed down. The roaring in his ears, the sense of urgency, the fear. Everything but the instinct to protect.

“Trust me, I have to go.”

Any other woman, he’d have pulled back into the barn because it was crazy, absolutely crazy to drive out into that haunted night. His father had had just enough pagan in him to believe in ghosts and demons, and Rick believed, too. He couldn’t not believe, hearing the otherworldliness in the howl that had split the night.

A howl that had gone quiet by now, but who knew when it might pipe up again, or where?

Tex, the dog, came hurtling in a minute behind the horses, tail tucked so far between his legs it was a wonder the animal didn’t trip. He shot right into his crate in a corner and huddled there, panting and wild-eyed.

“I have to go.” Tina’s voice cracked. If her mind was made up, her heart sure didn’t agree. He could see duty wrestle with desire in there. But she had the look of a warrior committed to battle, and it was pointless to stop her.

So he didn’t try. He just grabbed his keys and followed her into the night.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

“I’m going with you.”

“Rick, no—”

He figured she’d protest, but if she was having her way, he was having his. “I’ll follow you in my truck until you’re safe at home.”

“How will I know you get safely home?” she protested.

Something in him twinged. His Amazon thought she had to protect him when it was the other way around.

“I will get home safely. I’ll be waiting for you. Tomorrow.”
I’ll wait for you forever,
he nearly added.

If he could freeze the look on her face… That
I love you, you idiot
look he’d be happy to catch glimpses of for the next fifty or sixty years.

I love you, my princess.
He formed the words in his mind and pushed them into the night, maybe hoping she’d catch a whisper of them in the wind.

Tina didn’t move. Didn’t blink. But her nostrils flared just a tiny bit. Enough to make him wonder if maybe—

“Let’s go,” she murmured, turning on her heel.

And just like that, they headed back into the night. Tina drove her little hatchback the way she’d ridden Star: hard and fast, with Rick hot on her tail in his truck, working all eight cylinders mercilessly. He followed her eight miles, all the way to the gate of Twin Moon Ranch, where they rolled to a stop.