THREE DAYS LATER…
THE SOFT LIGHT of day falls across my face. I slither out from underneath Titus’ giant tattooed arm and slip off the bed without waking him. His face is more relaxed than it’s been this whole week. Since the attempted massage, we’ve barely left bed, only leaving to visit a barbecue with Titus’ son Tank and their motorcycle club. For a biker, Titus is pretty uptight, but now he’s sleeping like the dead.
Good sex will do that to a man. I mentally buff my nails on my shirt. I did that.
I tiptoe to my bag, wincing as the bed creaks. It’s sagging on one side-broken. Oops. I slap a hand over my mouth before I giggle like a girl. Titus is uptight and controlling as they come, but when he lets loose? The bed isn’t the only thing feeling the force of his passion. I’m going to be sore for days, but I don’t mind. It was magnificent sex. Unbridled, wild, rough. I think Titus even scared himself with how badly he wanted me. How much he needed to claim me.
So hot.
But all good things must come to an end.
I pull out one of my hand-painted cards-a watercolor of Cathedral Rock up in Sedona-and flip it over. On the back I use a black calligraphy pen to write:
Titus,
Thank you for everything.
I gnaw on my lower lip, remembering the pain that crossed his face. A woman hurt Titus, and I might be a pacifist but I’d claw the bitch’s eyes out if I met her. But it’s not my fight.
I tap the pen against the card. What to write? Wish you were ready for a relationship? Call me when you figure your shit out?
Instead, I pen:
I hope we’ll meet again soon.
Love,
Sunny.
There. Short and sweet. It says everything I have to say to him. I creep out of the apartment the motorcycle club provided for me this past week and shut the door gently. I’ll ask my daughter to pick up my massage table and store it for me until I return to Tucson. She put down roots and found her soulmate here. She’s safe now, living with Titus’ son. Foxfire and Tank were meant to be.
Titus and me… that’s another story. I don’t know what our future holds, but leaving is the right thing to do.
Titus and I have chemistry-lots of it. But I’m way too much for the guy.
Story of my life.
Titus is like his spirit animal-the wolf. He’s meant to roam free. He’s a hunter, but once he caught me, he didn’t know what to do with me.
And I’ll be damned if I stick around where I’m just going to get hurt again.
If we’re meant to be, the Universe will throw us back together again.
I’m sure of that.
I tiptoe down the sidewalk like a college girl doing the walk of shame out of the frat house and climb in Daisy, my VW bus. It starts right up, thanks to Titus.
The road blurs as I drive away, but I don’t look back.
I can’t.
Leaving is the right thing to do, no matter how much it hurts.
CHAPTER 1
Titus
I PARK my motorcycle at the Rio Grande gorge bridge and walk down to check out the scene at the end of the bridge.
And it is a scene. There are vendors assembled on the side, some with tables set up, some operating out of buses or the backs of pickup trucks. There are pinon nuts for sale. Local honey. Jewelry. The vendors are a mix of Native Americans and hippies.
A bridge stretches across the Rio Grande gorge, a nauseating six hundred or more feet above the giant canyon. I hear a tour guide telling someone it’s one of the highest bridges in the country. I recognize it from Easy Rider and one of the Terminator movies-favorites of mine.
I scent the air, catching the smell of coffee, ice cream, sweat. The sun beats harder in the high altitude and my leather riding jacket suddenly feels too hot.
I peel it off and toss it over the seat of the bike. I don’t know why, but I have a good feeling about this rest area. Like I’m going to get the information I need from one of these humans milling about here. There’s a positive energy crackling in the air.
Someone knows something. I’m here for a reason; I can feel it.
My alpha sent me to follow up on some intel we received about another Data X lab out in the high mesa of New Mexico. I scouted around Sandia National Labs, because we thought it might be there, but I caught no scent of shifters. I checked out Roswell, because of the alien lore, but struck out there, too. There may be aliens, but I didn’t smell any shifters.
I only know one wolf in New Mexico and he’s a loner. No pack, totally off the grid. So off the grid, he doesn’t have a phone-landline or cell. It’s been years since I’ve seen him. Hell, I don’t even know if he’s still around, but I figure if any of the weird shit that went down with the Data-X guys-any government testing on shifters or disappearances happened in his state, he’d know.
So I’ve come up to the one place I know he always goes in summer-the Taos and Red River area for fishing.
“Titus? Oh my goddess!” A female voice stops me in my tracks and my entire body reacts like a flash flood of lust dumping into my veins.
Fuck.
Not her.
I’m so not up for this right now.