woman while he was waiting.
He swung around, intent on stalking across the brick and tile square to where his woman stood and claiming her in front of God and Corbin County.
He came to a stop before he took his first step, his eyes canvasing the square slowly, moving over the chatting groups, the laughter-filled guests and flirting couples.
She wasn’t there.
Where the hell had she gone?
“She took one look at your face and ran.” Crowe’s golden-brown eagle’s eyes were lit with laughter. “My best guess is the little bird just flew away home.”
Flew away home, did she?
Rafe rather doubted it. She knew he would follow her home. She knew there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to get off that damned easy tonight.
Two weeks.
He’d waited two fucking weeks for her, and he was tired of waiting.
He’d never waited for a woman in his life.
He’d never chased one down in his life, but he was doing it now.
Striding across the square, his gaze moving over the area, searching the shadows, knowing she was there, feeling her there, he became the hunter the military had taught him to be. The hunter pure primal lust was turning him into.
He slipped into the darkness, knowing how to blend into the edges of the party and how to canvas each section of the town square until he found her.
Did she really think she could show up here and get away without dealing with him?
She hadn’t called until last night and he’d been in a damned dead zone. She hadn’t driven by the ranch; she hadn’t indicated in any way, shape, or form that she even remembered a single moment they’d spent screwing each other’s brains out. Well, he was of a mind to remind her of it tonight. And tomorrow night. And the night after.
He’d seen her face, he’d seen her eyes, and he knew she was just as hungry as he was. She was having just as hard a time keeping her eyes off him as he was having keeping his eyes off her.
He moved slowly around the couples that had sought out the privacy of the shadows as well. He ignored the whispers in the shadowed little coves and private seating areas. Not private enough to engage in anything illicit, at least not until later, once everyone was a little freer due to drink. Just private enough to afford a bit of intimacy.
She was here.
He swore he could feel her, like a warmth, a comfort that went beyond the physical.
The physical was there, though.
His cock was so damned hard he swore he could pound nails with it. The head was engorged, flared and aching, throbbing in need.
The remembered feel of her pussy gripping it, milking it, was burning him alive. The need to feel it again was making him fucking crazy.
To sink inside her, inch by slow inch, as her pussy flexed and rippled around the sensitive crown.
He paused.
He’d moved farther into the shadows, closer to the parking lot, a soft mountain breeze playing through the trees when he caught a subtle, elusive scent.
“You’re hunting me,” she accused me. “I can feel you.”
He turned slowly, his gaze zeroing in on the small private seating area. This one was more private than the others, closer to the parking lot, more heavily shadowed by the unlit trees around it.
Turning, Rafe moved slowly through the night, moving into the unlit, sheltered area until he was standing in front of her, staring down at her as he lifted his hands and gripped her slender, rounded hips.
“Are you hidden well enough?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice calm, indulgent. “By all means, we can’t allow anyone here to see us together, can we?”
Her hands lifted to his chest, her fingers flattening against it, just beneath the edges of his jacket. He could feel the warmth of her palms through the thin cotton shirt he wore beneath the black evening jacket.
Like a stroke of sensual fire against his chest. Damn her, that tentative, shaky touch and the sound of her accelerated breathing had his balls tightening violently.
She stared up at him with those hungry eyes, her expression almost dazed as her lips parted to breathe.
“I don’t want anyone to see me like this,” she whispered. “To see me shaking and barely able to breathe because you’re too close to me.”
“Can I get too close to you, kitten?”
He jerked her fully against him, the height of the heels she wore lining up her sensitive little clit to the hard wedge of his cock through their clothing.
She breathed in roughly.
Her nails curled, rasping over the fabric of his shirt as her lashes fluttered almost closed.
“Yes, in public you can get too close to me,” she admitted. “And when you do, I lose my mind.”
She lost her mind and forgot her resolve. When he was anywhere close to her she forgot what she had promised herself and wanted nothing more than to touch him.
She’d seen him several times in the past two weeks and forced herself to run in the opposite direction. A few times literally.
“And losing your mind is such a bad thing, is it?”
The indulgent though subtly angry tone of his voice had a flinch jerking through her. “You ask so much of me,” she whispered, staring up at him as she fought to keep from laying her head against his chest. “I’ve watched for you every night, Rafer.” The words felt torn from her.
They
“It goes two ways, baby,” he assured her. “You have my number. You know where I live.”
She shook her head slowly, her lashes feeling sensually heavy as his fingers began to stroke her hips through the light velvet of her dress.
The nights were still a bit chilly in the higher elevations of the mountains. In this area, surrounded by the trees and snow-topped mountains, the nights were never hot and balmy, even in the summer.
The dress that had been perfectly comfortable before she saw Rafer was now too hot, too heavy. She wanted it off; she wanted his clothes off. She wanted to be as close to him as skin would allow.
“I called last night,” she whispered. “You didn’t answer.”
“Dead zone,” he said.
“What are you doing to me, Rafer?” she whispered. “Why are you doing this me?”
His hands tightened on her hips, lifting her, wedging his cock tighter against her lower stomach.
“Because I can’t get you out of my fantasies,” he growled as his head lowered, his lips at her ear, caressing the sensitive shell. “Because all I have to do is think of you and my dick is so hard I’ve sworn it was pure iron. Because I can’t get you out of my fucking system and I think I’m going to end up hating you because evidently you can get me out of yours.”
“Oh, can I?” she asked hoarsely, her breathing rough. “Is that why I’m not sleeping every night? Is that why I lay and watch my door, praying you’ll walk through it, or every time my phone rings at night feel my body sensitize and prepare for you and then see it’s not even you?”
She could hear the desperation in her voice even as she felt it in her body.
Her head tilted to the side as his lips moved over her ear, his tongue probing at the outer shell, his teeth nipping at the lobe as she fought back a moan.
She could feel the echo of the pleasure washing through the rest of her body, rasping over her nipples, sending fingers of agonizing pleasure raking over her clit.
Her womb clenched, an involuntary spasm shuddering through it as sensual hunger tore through her with fiery desperation as his lips moved to a violently sensitive area just below her ear.
His lips touched her, parted, delivered a stinging little kiss that had her hands sliding to his shoulders as she
