“I’m not as good as my grandmother. She’s a bruja,” he said. At her blank expression, he added, “A witch. She lives in New Mexico. I learned what I know from her, since she raised me.” Talk about nature’s prodigious gifts. He hadn’t even grown up poor. A competent bruja made good money, and his grandmother lived in a stylish three-bedroom ranch in a suburb of Albuquerque. She’d paid all of his college tuition and even indulged his serious obsession with snowboarding.
Claudia set aside the cards, ran her fingers through her sleek, pale hair and massaged the back of her head in a tired-looking gesture. “So what are you doing getting shot and beat up in Nevada, Precious?”
Arousal pulsed again as he watched her, and his unruly penis stiffened further. He wanted to push her hands away and take over the massage, to soothe away that tiredness until she turned to him with as much desire as he felt. He wanted any damn excuse to put his hands on her again. Fuck. He pivoted and stalked down the miniscule hall toward the bed alcove until he was out of her sight.
“I’m a Peacekeeper with the Elder tribunal,” he said. He snapped the sheet from around his waist, wadded it and threw it hard at the bed.
“You’re with the Elder tribunal police force? That’s an elite posting.”
For crying out loud, his cock jumped just at the sound of her voice. “I’m not a senior officer. This was supposed to be a minor assignment.”
“Involving the mine.”
He palmed his erection, thought of her sitting just a few steps away, and his hand might have slipped a little so that he stroked himself once or three times.
Yeah, he was pretty sure that masturbating as he talked with her while she was unaware of it was sixteen ways to wrong. Which also had abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with the greater issues at hand. As it were. He turned and let his body fall forward until his forehead hit the wall with an audible thunk.
Claudia said, “You all right?”
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I need to splash off some of this antiseptic smell. I’ll be just a sec.”
He sidled into the Lilliputian-sized bathroom, flipped on the cold water and stepped into the shower. The shock of frigid spray was like a slap in the gut, and just what he needed. After ninety seconds and a swipe or two with the soap, he stepped out, toweled off and yanked on the sweatpants. They were tight all over, stretching across his thighs and buttocks, and they were extremely snug across his pelvis, but at least they provided a minimal kind of covering.
This time when he strode back into the living area, Claudia’s gaze fell lower than his bare chest. For the briefest moment she looked stricken again. He could have sworn a touch of color washed over her cheeks.
Do not, he said sternly to his cock.
For a wonder, this time his cock listened to him.
She bent her head and rubbed the back of her neck. Then she looked at him from underneath her brows, and her gaze was steady and level. Damn, this woman had emotional ballast. Was he going to find everything about her a crazy kind of hot?
“Luis, we need to talk about the invisible elephant in the trailer, because there isn’t room for it here,” she said.
That sounded like it might be a prologue to a brush-off. He wasn’t sure, since he hadn’t ever been on the receiving end of a brush-off before. He decided he wasn’t going to be on the receiving end of one this time either, and he went on the offensive.
“I know,” he said. “I’m insanely attracted to you, but we don’t have time and it isn’t appropriate right now.”
He had surprised her. Her sleek eyebrows rose. “No, it isn’t.”
“Since we have more important things to think about, we should shelve this as a topic of conversation.” Unable to resist touching her again, he laid a hand on her shoulder. She turned her head and looked at his hand, then up at him. As her gaze came up, his head swooped down, and he kissed that clever, strong woman. As he did so, he poured every ounce of his hunger into it. His mouth did a quick recon as he learned the touch and shape of her lips. He could feel the shock of his touch jolt through her body. Her lips moved under his, either to cuss him out or kiss him back, and walking that line was so damned hot. He pulled back a fraction, breathing hard, and said huskily, “So we’ll talk about this later.”
Dusky color darkened her fine-grained skin. “Luis,” she said, very low, in a warning he would be all too pleased to ignore, and wouldn’t it be a fine thing if she turned out to be more than he could handle, if she could make him stretch and reach farther than he had ever reached before.
“Now to get back to the subject at hand,” he said.
There was that hand again. Seriously, someone should hit him hard.
But even though all of his instincts were driving him forward, he forced himself to straighten and pull back.
Because he didn’t actually believe they had until dawn.