More Wicked Alphas, Wilder Nights: Sizzling Collection of Paranormal Romance (Wicked Alphas, Wild Nights Book 5)
Anna Lowe & Elianne Adams & Vella Day & Cristina Rayne & Sloane Meyers & Amber Ella Monroe & D.D. Miers & Emma Alisyn & J.K. Harper & Jacqueline Sweet & Kallysten & Kayleigh Malcolm & Kim Faulks & Marie Mason & Olivia Arran
Hot Blooded Desert Night
A bonus scene to Desert Blood
Heather peeked out the curtains and onto the shadowy, deserted street. Her heart pounded with the usual thump of fear, but there was something else mixed in with that tonight.
Anticipation. Hope. Even arousal because, for the past few nights, her mystery man had been stopping by to chase away her loneliness and fear. To stay the night. Would he come again?
Cicadas chirped, and a tumbleweed hurried through the dim cone cast by the single streetlight. Her dusty VW was out by the curb with its out-of-place Pennsylvania plates. She’d parked it crookedly in her dash from the comforting confines of the vehicle to the relative safety of the house. The deceptive safety, because the thin walls and flimsy door of her rental bungalow wouldn’t hold a determined intruder back—like the one who’d occupied her nightmares ever since she fled the East Coast.
Somehow, though, she’d stumbled into a quiet oasis of safety here in Arizona. Better yet, she’d stumbled into the arms of a man who exuded safety and warmth. Would he visit again tonight? Would he chase away the awful memories and replace them with beautiful dreams instead?
She closed her eyes and imagined his soft knock at the door. His sunny smile, his lively eyes. Imagined a lot of things she shouldn’t allow herself to, like his gentle caress and the warm bulk of him slumbering beside her. She was a woman on the run, damn it! She’d have to leave soon, before the beast that hunted her caught up with her. Out of this bubble of safety and back into sheer survival mode.
She pinched her lips together. There was no way something this good could last. But hell, she’d allow herself to enjoy it for just a few more nights.
She peeked again, because she couldn’t resist. God, it was good to feel something other than fear. To feel a little normalcy again. Which was crazy, because there was nothing normal about the pull she felt toward Cody Hawthorne or the inexplicable feeling that this ridiculously remote place in the desert Southwest could be called home. And she didn’t mean this bungalow or this scrappy town. The place that felt like home was forty-five minutes away, where she worked. Twin Moon Ranch. The quietest, most unlikely place. A magical place she wished she could call home.
Never mind that here in town, rumors about the ranch and its inhabitants flew. Twin Moon Ranch harbored some kind of cult, people said. The way the ranch folk sequestered themselves, the way they kept outsiders at arm’s length. A cult, for sure. But Heather had been teaching at the ranch’s one-room schoolhouse for three weeks now, and she’d seen no sign of that. Just hard-working, honest folk with endearingly old-fashioned values of community. What was so wrong about that?
Still, there was an undercurrent of differentness there. She wasn’t sure what, only that there was nothing evil about it. She knew; she’d tasted evil back in Pennsylvania, and this was totally different. Her heart told her as much.
Of course, the question was, could a woman as messed up as she was really trust her heart?
A scrape over the roof startled her into looking up. Damn bats, hanging around the house again. Then a blue pickup hummed quietly up the deserted lane, and her heart skipped a few beats in a good way. She turned away in a hurry to tidy up. As if there were a lot of tidying to do in her two-room place. But she’d left school papers all over the table and her dinner plate in the sink. Cody never came early enough for dinner; that much of a pattern, she’d figured out. He was busy with some project that required long hours away—too long for her to wait at the old adobe schoolhouse for his return, because she wasn’t allowed on the ranch after dark. The dirt road was too dangerous, they said, so she always cleared out right after school. But he had come to her place in town every night for the past four, and that was enough, even if it seemed as if a lifetime with him wouldn’t be enough.
She jumped into speed-demon mode, scrubbing the empty chili pot, rinsing off her plate. Feeling hopelessly domestic, like a bird desperate to present a perfect nest to its prospective mate.
A knock sounded quietly on the door, then another, then another. Three little taps, just the way she tapped her fingers on his back when they parted. Did Cody know it was code for the words she didn’t dare speak?
I love you.