Sometimes, Sienna felt exactly that, but that day, she’d given in to Nicki and gone wild. Kit had whistled the first time he’d seen her in the jeans, while Cory had fallen to his knees, hand over his heart. Sienna hadn’t yet worn them around the wolves . . . around Hawke, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to sit in her room while he put those strong hands all over another woman.
Her own hands fisted.
He wasn’t hers, had made it clear in a hundred different ways that he didn’t want to be hers.
Jeans on, she clipped on a red satin bra edged with white lace—one that plumped up her chest in a way that had had her arguing with Nicki in the dressing room. “I can’t wear this. It’s like I’m advertising!”
“Sweetie, if I had ta-tas like that, I’d advertise, too.” Nicki had looked down at her own smaller breasts with a mournful sigh.
“Jase seems to like yours fine.”
A peach-colored blush. “Now, tops. Come on.”
Sienna pulled out one of the resulting purchases and slipped it on. A black shirt with long sleeves, it fit snug to her body and made it unmistakable that she had curves. The buttons were snaps of pounded metal, the only other decoration two tiny black pockets with the same type of buttons above her breasts. While she didn’t usually wear things that followed her shape with such caressing closeness, she had to admit she liked the way the shirt made her feel.
Sexy.
Then there were the boots. Slick and black, they encased her legs to the knees, the heels wickedly spiked.
Her cell phone beeped as she was zipping up the second boot. “Hello.”
“Sin, it’s Evie. You ready?”
“Almost.” She paused. “We are getting dressed up, right?”
“Of course! I’m wearing my silver dress.”
Evie’s enthusiasm had Sienna setting her jaw, determination arcing through her veins. “That dress will get you arrested.”
Her best friend laughed. “You know you’d bail me out. See you in ten!”
Hanging up, Sienna quickly put in her special contacts, hiding the night-sky gaze that betrayed her identity, then pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail. She’d spoken to Indigo and her own family about her hair, and everyone had agreed the unusual color was no longer an issue, it had changed so much since she’d joined the den. Added to the fact that her friends had taken to calling her “Sin,” plus the contacts, it turned her into someone Ming LeBon wouldn’t even consider worthy of his attention.
That done, she pulled out the cosmetics case Judd’s mate, Brenna, had given her, making up her eyes in a “smoky” way she’d learned from Indigo. Nicki had liked the effect so much, she’d asked Sienna to teach her. That had felt good—being able to share such an innocent thing with a friend. It had made her feel young, not the old woman she’d been since the day she first understood why Ming LeBon wanted her by his side, his own personal monster on a psychic leash.
“Stop,” she ordered the brown-eyed woman in the mirror. “Not tonight. Be young and carefree tonight. Dance, drink, and laugh.” With that, she slicked on poppy red lip color, grabbed a small purse, and stepped out.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, thank you God.”
Startled by the masculine exclamation, she looked up to find herself facing Riordan, a novice soldier a year older than her. “Are you coming out with us?” she asked, closing her door.
“If I wasn’t, I damn well would be now.” He offered her his arm, bare below the short sleeves of a stone gray shirt that looked good on his muscular frame. “Paint yourself to my side, Sin. Real close. I think I feel a chill coming on.”
Shaking her head, she began to walk down the hall, her heels clicking on the floor. A few seconds later, she realized he was trailing behind her. “What’s the holdup?” Glancing back, she caught him red-handed. “Are you staring at my butt?”
Riordan didn’t bother to pretend innocence, his deep brown eyes full of wicked appreciation. “Hey, it’s a nice butt. And those jeans, oh, mama.”
It was exactly the confidence boost she needed. If Hawke refused to acknowledge the pulse of attraction between them—though she’d waited years to grow old enough for him, years where she’d blocked her ears to the gossip about who he was with and when—then she wasn’t going to take it lying down. “Pick your tongue up off the floor, and let’s go. Evie, Tai, and Cadence are probably already in the garage.”
She was proven right. But they weren’t the only ones. Maria was there, too, along with her boyfriend, Lake.
“Hey,” the other woman said, a tentative smile on her face. “I wanted to say sorry. It sucks that you got a worse punishment than me.”
Sienna shrugged. “My own fault.” It would be the last time she let her near-painful response to Hawke get in the way of how she lived her life. “No hard feelings.”
“Could we just . . .” Maria angled her head.
Nodding, Sienna stepped a little distance away from the others so she and Maria could talk in private. “I understand,” she said once they were out of hearing range. “We fought because your wolf wanted to establish dominance.”
“Yeah, well, that didn’t go so great.” A self-deprecating grin. “But what I said about you being cold-blooded —”
“It’s fine.” On edge and angry with herself for being unable to forget Hawke, she’d been feeling raw, vulnerable, had struck out at Maria’s jibe without stopping to consider the fact that the very state of her emotions made the accusation patently untrue.
“No.” Maria put a hand on her arm. “It’s not fine and we both know it’s not true. I was talking any bullshit I could to goad you into a fight. My only excuse is that wolves my age tend to be dickheads.”
Sienna’s lips twitched. “Difficult since you don’t possess that particular body part, either on your head or elsewhere.”
Maria snorted. “I dunno—I did a pretty good job of acting it.” Tucking her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, she rocked back on her heels. “I was meant to be your partner and I fucked with you.” No smile now, dark eyes solemn. “It’ll never happen again. I want you to know I’d have you at my back anytime.”
“Same,” Sienna said without hesitation. In the PsyNet, she’d have looked for the betrayal hidden behind the contrition, but she’d been in SnowDancer long enough to see Maria’s words for what they were—a declaration of both loyalty and friendship. “And it wasn’t all you, you know. I was looking for a fight.” Maria had just provided a handy excuse.
“You sure have a mean kick,” the other soldier said as they headed back.
“Judd makes me train with him.”
“I don’t know whether to be jealous or offer commiseration.”
They were both laughing when they reached the rest of the group.
“Now that that’s sorted”—Evie wrapped her arms around their waists, her personality evident in the radiance of her smile—“are we ready to dance?”
Not only was Sienna ready to dance, but if a man made a move on her tonight . . . well, she might just let him. She was through with waiting.
ALONE in the apartment but for the sleeping children, Walker found himself looking at the sat phone he’d recently been issued courtesy of his position as “Head Wrangler” for the ten-to-thirteen-year- olds.
The phone came preloaded with contact information for the other senior members of SnowDancer. Flicking through the directory, he stopped at Lara’s name. The healer would be a good sounding board when it came to his concerns about Sienna’s emotional state—Lara was one of the most sensitive people in the pack.
His thumb hesitated over the Call button, the sensual echo of that kiss the night of the party causing every one of his muscles to go taut in a waiting kind of expectation. Unlike the changelings, he wasn’t a man driven by the
