“I know.” He doesn’t apologize for showing up anyway. He’s standing at the base of the porch steps, looking up at me, and the parking lot light is behind him, and his face is in shadow except for his eyes. “I’ve been thinking about the swimming hole.”
“So have I.”
The admission escapes before I can weigh it. Too honest. Too fast. I feel the heat climb my throat.
“You pulled away,” he says. Not accusing. Observing. “And you haven’t been to town since.”
“I had things to do.” It’s a lie. I’ve been trying to get my head clear since that kiss.
“Willow.” He comes up the steps. Two of them. The porch is narrow—concrete slab, a railing on one side, my door on the other. There isn’t room for distance, and he isn’t looking for it. I can feel the warmth coming off his body when he stops directly in front of me. He smells like soap and the night air. Beneath it, there’s something that my wolf tracks with the single-mindedness of a hunting dog.
“Tell me to leave,” he says. “And I’ll leave.”
He would. I know that with absolute certainty. One word and he’d walk back to his truck and drive away, and the gentleman in him would hate himself for coming. But if he’s feeling what I’m feeling, the wolf would howl about it for days. He’s giving me the out. The clean exit. The respectful thing to do.
I don’t take it.
I reach for him.
The first kiss is soft. Testing. The swimming hole question, asked again. His hands find my waist, careful, as if I might bolt. I might. I should. But the moment his palms settle against my hips, something in me unravels: the tension I’ve been holding since I pulled away from him on the ledge, the discipline I’ve been using to keep my wolf contained, the careful wall between what I want and what I’m allowed to have.
It goes fast after that. His mouth on mine, harder now, and I’m pulling him toward me, and my back finds the motel door. His body presses against mine, solid and warm. I can feel the hard ridge of his cock. The knowledge that I’m not the only one who’sbeen aching for two days sends a pulse of heat through me that makes my hips roll forward against his.
His hand slides up my ribs. Finds the underside of my breast through my shirt and cups it, his thumb dragging across the peak, and the friction through cotton is enough to pull a sound from me that I don’t bother muting. There’s nobody to hear. Just us and the parking lot and the Hill Country night.
“Inside,” I say against his mouth. The word is reflex, not strategy, my body making demands my brain hasn’t authorized.
“Yeah.” His voice is rough.
I reach behind me for the door handle. My fingers close on the metal, and everything the operative knows flashes through me at once. All our operational gear is in there.
Shit.
I let go of the handle.
“Not inside.” I pull him sideways, off the porch, toward his truck. “Here.”
He doesn’t question it. His mouth is on my neck, and I’m walking backward. His hands are under my shirt now, palms hot against my bare skin, and I’m thinking about the truck bed or the back seat or any surface that isn’t inside a room full of evidence.
My back hits the side of the truck. He lifts me, and I wrap my legs around him. The angle presses him against me, hard through denim, and the friction is so good I grind against it and don’t care what it looks like.
“God… Willow…” His teeth graze my collarbone. I tip my head back and feel the night air on my throat, and his mouth moving lower. His hand finds the button of my jeans, and my hips tilt to give him access. I’m seconds away from letting this happen in a motel parking lot with a man whose pack—
His phone rings.
The sound is sharp. Insistent. The ringtone of a call he can’t ignore. I know because his whole body changes when he hears it. The man drops away. The enforcer surfaces.
“Fuck.” He pulls back. His breathing is ragged, his pupils blown wide, and for a second, he stands there with his hand still inside my shirt and his phone screaming from his pocket. The war on his face is so visible it hurts to watch. “I have to—”
“Take it.”
He steps back. Pulls the phone out. Checks the screen. Whatever he sees tightens his jaw.
“Yeah,” he says into the phone. His voice has shifted: rougher, but controlled. The enforcer’s voice. Not the voice that was just saying my name against my skin.
I can’t hear the other end. But I watch his face while he listens. The warmth draining out. The focus sharpening. His free hand drops to his side, and his posture straightens. The transformation is so complete it’s like watching a different person step into the same body.
“When?” he asks. Then: “How many?” Then: “I’ll be there at first light.”