Animal Magnetism

Two

B rady wasn’t an impulsive guy. Years on the streets as an untethered, unwanted kid had taught him a certain innate caution-which had saved his life on more than one occasion. A stint flying for the army and then Special Forces had only hammered it home.

But it hadn’t been until he’d left the military and became a pilot for hire in places that weren’t safe for so much as a cockroach that he’d really learned to appreciate his instincts.

And yet those instincts abandoned him in a blink as he offered his Danica Patrick wannabe a ride.

Luckily, she was smarter than him.

She was still standing by her Jeep, watching him carefully, clearly unwilling to just hop into his truck.

“I don’t bite.”

She laughed a little. Nervous, he realized. He made her nervous. She walked to his truck and peered cautiously inside. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for; signs that he was a murderer or rapist maybe, and he looked into the truck as well. She straightened, gasped at how close he now was, and stumbled back a step.

Reaching out, he steadied her with a hand to her hip-which, he couldn’t help but notice, was nice and curvy and warm beneath his palm. Her eyes were a clear, deep mossy green. She had a few freckles across her pert nose and the hint of a sunburn. Beneath her blue knit cap, her straight brown hair hit her shoulders, with long bangs shoved off to the side as if in afterthought. Her mouth was full but naked. No makeup for this pretty little felon. She wasn’t model beautiful, but there was something undeniably arresting about her features, something that drew him right in… Probably it was the blatant mistrust she had all over her face. “I’m not a kidnapper. Or a woman-napper.”

“And yet you do have candy in your pocket.”

“If I promise not to offer it to you, or say ‘Hey, little girl’ in a really creepy voice, will you get in?”

Her gaze was locked onto the Snickers sticking out of his pocket, and into the silence her stomach once again rumbled with shocking vehemence.

He actually felt a smile curve his mouth. “Or maybe I should offer it to you. Are you hungry?” He hadn’t considered the fact that maybe she was homeless, but he took in her clothes and rust bucket Jeep and wondered. He held out the Snickers bar.

Looking away, a faint tinge colored her cheeks, she shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly-”

“I have another,” he lied.

Shielding her eyes from the bright sun, she gave him a long, serious once-over. Not playing fair, he tore open the candy bar and wafted the chocolate beneath her nose.

“You’re evil,” she said, and snatched it out of his hand. She broke it in half and then slid his part back into his pocket. Sinking her teeth into her portion with a big bite, she went still, then moaned in pleasure.

“Do you need a moment alone with that?” he asked, amused. And also a little turned on.

“Oh my God.” Her voice was thick and throaty. “Good. ”

“So it’s true,” he murmured, watching her mouth avidly. It was a really great mouth, soft, with a plump lower lip. “Everyone has their price.”

“Yes, and mine is chocolate. Offer me some and probably I’d follow you anywhere,” she admitted.

“Probably?”

“Well, you’re still a stranger.”

“I told you my name.”

“I’d need more than that.”

He just looked at her, smiling. They both knew he’d had her at chocolate.

Laughing at herself, she took another bite of the Snickers, licking that lower lip of hers to get a stray strand of caramel. “Seriously, I was raised better than this. Make me feel okay about getting into a stranger’s truck.”

What could he possibly tell her that wouldn’t scare her off or deepen the mistrust? And why did he even care? “I’m a pilot,” he said.

“Okay.” She nodded. “That’s good. I’ve never heard of a pilot who murders people. Who do you fly for?”

“An international organization who hires me out to places like Doctors Without Borders, the government, whoever’s paying. So see? You’re safe enough from me. Get in.”

She looked into the back again. “What’s with the camera case?”

An observant, junk-food-loving felon. “I’m also a photographer.” Sometimes even a paid one. His photos had been in both Outsider and National Geographic this last year. Given his adrenaline-fueled life, taking pictures grounded him in a way nothing else could.

Well, except sex. Sex was always his first choice, of course. Not that that would be happening while here in Sunshine.

Lilah was watching him closely again. Mistrustful little thing, which for some reason, made him like her all the more. “It’s just a ride,” he said quietly.

“Yeah. Um, so do you ever lure women into your truck with candy bars in order to get them to pose naked for you?”

“Nah. My editor frowns on the exploitation of women. It’d have to be a side job and only if you say please.”

She rolled her eyes at him but took a step closer to the passenger door. “So does being a photographer ever get you laid?”

There was no good answer to that question, but yeah, sometimes it got him laid.

Clearly reading his face, she shook her head. “Don’t tell me. You trade on your good looks and that whole sort of badass vibe you’ve got going on, right? And women fall for it hook, line, and sinker.”

“Yes, but you’re on to me, so no falling for you. Plus you’ve got protection.” He jerked his chin toward the mallard at her feet. “A guard duck.”

They both looked at Abigail, who was busy preening and fussing with her feathers to get them just right. “Is it legal to own a duck?” he asked.

“I’m duck-sitting. Are you sure you’re not also a cop?” Lilah wanted to know.

“Why, do I look like one?” He felt the weight of her scrutiny. He knew what she saw when she looked at him. Dark hair cut short enough to be maintenance-free-when he remembered to have it cut at all. Tanned skin and a rangy, tough build from long months at a time in places where three squares a day were pure fantasy. The nondescript clothes he’d gotten used to wearing so as not to be marked as an American in places where being an American meant certain death or far worse.

“Actually,” she finally said, “you look like trouble.” Her gaze touched over his features. “The sort of trouble that women actively seek out against their better judgment. It’s sort of a fatal genetic flaw of my entire gender.”

She was right about the trouble part, but he’d never met a woman who liked it for long. “So now that we’ve established that I’m probably not a murderer, what’s it going to be? A long walk home with… ” He gestured to the box on the front passenger’s-side floorboards. “Two puppies and whatever that thing is, or-”

“A potbellied pig.”

He looked closer. “Are you sure?”

She laughed. “Yes!”

“Okay, I’ ll take your word for it. You getting in or what?”

She took another bite of his Snickers and studied him from those remarkable eyes. “The road out to my place needs some work,” she finally said. “It got washed out in the floods last week and hasn’t been repaired yet.”

At least she had a place. “I can handle it.”

“I don’t know…” Her eyes sized him up as if she were six feet tall instead of maybe five foot four in her steel-toe work boots. “In my experience, guys are rarely the drivers that they think they are.”

In the army, he’d driven in and out of hot spots that made Iraq and Afghanistan look like Disneyland. Hell, for his more recent work, piloting for hire, he’d driven on roads that didn’t officially exist. He had no doubt he could take on anything the serene mining town of Sunshine dished up.

Having apparently made a decision, Lilah slapped a hand to his chest to push him out of her way. Because it amused him that she thought she could move him at all, he let her. As she shifted past him, the scent of her hair filled his nostrils with something like… honey, maybe? Whatever it was, it was better than anything he’d smelled in a long time.

She climbed up into his truck, her baggy Carhartts tightening across her back end as she stretched farther to check on her box of babies. Yeah, he thought, there really is nothing on God’s green earth nicer than a woman’s ass, and he took a minute to soak in the sweet view before walking around and angling behind the wheel. “Where to?”

“North straight through town.”

Town was relatively quiet, and so was his passenger. The human one. Not the animal ones. The duck in the backseat hadn’t shut up for more than two seconds since he’d turned on the engine.

“Quack, quack, quack… ”

Brady finally cut his eyes to it via the rearview mirror. “Hey.”

Abigail looked at him.

“I know this great duck soup recipe,” he told her.

Lilah gasped.

Abigail shut up.

Not the animals in the box at her feet, though. The two puppies and little piglet were wrestling and rolling around each other, having a party for three.

At the end of town, the road went from smooth concrete to torn-up, pitted asphalt, and as Lilah had promised, it was a mess. He hit a pothole and got a little air.

“Uh-oh,” Lilah said.

“What?” He couldn’t look, because she’d been right-the road was bad. If he took his eyes off of it, they were going to go flying. “And Jesus, you weren’t kidding about-” He broke off when Lilah clicked out of her seat belt and dropped to her knees on the floorboard.

“It’s okay,” she cooed softly, and crawled toward Brady, touching his calf.

He went very, very still as she leaned down even farther, reaching between his legs…

“I’ve got you.” Her voice pure sex, and still in that erotic position, began to make kissy kissy noises that went straight to his…

“There,” she murmured, lifting the potbellied piglet to cuddle against her chest.

Brady let out a very long breath and realized he was jealous of a fucking pig.

Lilah flashed an apologetic smile and climbed back into her seat, rebuckling her seat belt. “Runaway.”

It took him a full sixty seconds to find his voice. “You seem to have your hands full.”

“Little bit.” She turned in her seat to face him. “And I really am sorry about all this. Not that it’s an excuse, but I stayed up too late last night studying, and I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what I was doing.”

“What are you studying?”

“Animal science. I’m trying to finish up my degree online at night. I’d like to go on to vet school after that.”

“Makes for a long day.”

“Yeah. Keep going straight here.”

On the outside of Sunshine now, the road was lined by forest, thick and unforgiving. Classic northern Idaho. After the glaciers of the last great Ice Age had melted away, they’d left meandering rivers and lakes of all sizes, most pristine, some more remote and intimate than any of the places in the far corners of the planet in which he’d been. Once upon a time, the vastness of those Bitterroot Mountains and the waters of the Coeur d’Alene had changed his life, given him a sense of self when he’d desperately needed it. He didn’t need it now. He knew who he was.

A man not quite ready to face the past that was about to be shoved in his face.

“So what brings you to Sunshine?” she asked, smiling when he glanced at her. “Maybe I just want to know more about the guy I’m going to buy a new rear bumper for. Thanks for sharing.”

“No problem.” He watched as she licked the last of the chocolate off her lips. “Still hungry?” he asked, amused.

“Yeah.” She licked her finger, scooping up a fleck of chocolate. He was certain she didn’t mean for it to be sexual, but watching her tongue run over her lips, hearing the sweet sounds of suction as she worked those fingers, was giving him a zing nevertheless. It was hard to tell what the rest of her body was like in those baggy clothes, but apparently it didn’t matter in the least.

He was attracted to her, and he handed her the other half of his candy bar.

She stared at it like it was a brick of gold. “I’m on a diet.” But she took it. “A see-food diet, apparently. I see food and I eat it.” She took another big bite. “I mean, I try to eat healthy, but I have a little thing for junk food. Uh-oh… ”

“What now?”

“Abigail, no.” She reached back and pulled the strap of Brady’s duffel bag from the duck’s beak. “She also likes to eat.” She laughed easily, and he found himself smiling at the sound with rusty facial muscles. His shoulders loosened and he realized he was feeling relaxed.

And even more odd-at ease.

“Are you here on vacation?” Lilah asked, petting the creatures in the box at her feet.

“Not exactly.”

She let that go, leaning back to watch the scenery, which was admittedly worthy of the fascination. Lush and green, the mountains loomed high thirty miles off in the distance, the exotic rock formation forming mouth-gaping canyons he’d once explored as an angry teen looking for a place to belong.

His passenger let the silence linger, which he suspected was unusual for her. When he felt her watching him instead of the landscape, he turned his head and briefly met her gaze. Yep, she was waiting patiently for him to crack the silence. A good tactic, but it wouldn’t work on him.

“Huh,” she finally said, slightly disgruntled.

He felt the corners of his mouth turn up. “Used to people caving?”

“ And spilling their guts.” She eyed him again, thoughtfully. “You’re a tough one to crack, Brady Miller, pilot and photographer. Really tough.”

Not anything he hadn’t heard before. “I was thinking the same could be said of you,” he said.

That got him a two-hundred-watt smile, along with a sweet, musical laugh. “True,” she agreed.

The road ended, and he had two choices-the highway straight ahead, or left to head away from the towering peaks and out to ranching land, where as far as the eye could see was nothing but gently rolling hills and hidden lakes and rivers.

“Left,” she said, pointing to a dirt road. “And then left again.”

The road here was narrow, rutted, and far rougher. “Ah. You’re bringing me to the boondocks to off me so you don’t have to pay for the damages to my truck.”

She laughed. She really did have a great laugh, and something went through him, a long-forgotten surge of emotion. “Not going to deny it?” he asked, sliding her a look meant to intimidate.

She wasn’t. Intimidated. Not in the least. In fact, she was smiling. “Worried?” she asked, brow raised, face lit with humor.

Giving her another long look-which she simply steadily returned-he shook his head and kept driving. “I never worry.”

“No? Maybe you could teach me the trick of that sometime.”

Yeah, except he didn’t plan on being around long enough to teach anyone anything.

His enigmatic passenger shifted in her seat and crossed her legs. The hem of her Carhartts rose up, giving him a good look at her scuffed work boots and the cute little black and pink polka-dotted socks peeking over the top of them. Which of course made him wonder what else she was hiding beneath those work clothes.

The growth thickened on either side of the road, which narrowed, commanding his attention. He caught glimpses of a sprawling ranch, and then a glistening body of water, flashes of brilliance in a color that changed the definition of blue. The road narrowed again, and at the hairpin turn, two of his four tires caught air.

“Not bad,” she said in admiration. “So how does a pilot get such mad driving skills, anyway? Because you’re not just a pilot and photographer.”

“No?”

“No. You’ve got a quiet intensity about you, an edge. It’s why I thought cop or military.”

She was good. “Army.”

“Ah,” she murmured, saying nothing more, which both surprised him and left him grateful at the same time. People were naturally curious, and his life choices and experiences tended to bring that curiosity out, but he didn’t like talking about himself.

“Here we are,” Lilah said a minute later. “Home sweet home.”

The road ended in a small clearing, at the top of which sat a tiny cabin next to what looked like a large barn. The sign on the barn read SUNSHINE KENNELS.

Peeking behind the property was a small lake, shining brightly, surrounded by a meadow radiant with flowers, and lined by the not-so-distant jagged ridges stabbing into the sky.

Actually, Brady knew this land fairly well, though it’d been a long time. Emotions tangled with the need to reach for the beauty wherever he could find it, and he soaked it all in, letting it bring him something that had been sorely lacking in his life.

Pleasure.

Lilah unhooked her seat belt. “It’s special.”

“Yeah.”

“The Coeur d’Alene Indians found it,” she said. “They lived here.” She paused. “The myth goes that the water has healing powers.”

He slid his gaze her way, wondering if she believed it.

“They based their lives around the legend.” She paused and bit her lower lip, like she knew damn well he didn’t buy it. “Don’t laugh when I tell you the rest.”

He wasn’t feeling much like laughing. Not while watching her abuse that lush lower lip that he suddenly wanted to soothe. With his tongue. No, laughing was the last thing on his mind.

“Legend says that if you take a moonlight dip, you’ll supposedly find your one true love.”

“Of course.” He nodded. “It’s always midnight. So, do you swim often?”

“Never at midnight.”

He couldn’t help it, he laughed.

With a slow shake of her head and a smile curving her mouth, she reached out and touched a finger to his curved lips. “You’re a cynic,” she chided.

It’d been a long time since someone had touched him, unexpected or otherwise. A very long time, and he wrapped his finger around her wrist to hold her to him, letting his eyes drift closed.

“For how big and tough you are,” she said very softly, “you have a kind mouth.”

He opened his eyes and met her gaze. “You should know it’s not kindness I’m feeling at the moment.”

“No?” A brow arched, and the light in her eyes spoke of amusement, along with a flash of heat. “What do you feel?”

Dangerous territory there. Nothing new for him. He did some of his best work in dangerous territory. “Guess.”

Still smiling, she leaned in so that their lips were nothing but a whisper apart. Even surrounded by a duck, two puppies, and a potbellied piglet, she still smelled amazing. He wanted to yank her in and smell her some more, but he held very still, absorbing her closeness, letting her take the lead.

When she spoke, every word had her lips ghosting against his, her breath all warm, chocolately goodness. “I’m more of a doer,” she whispered, and kissed him.

She tasted as good as she smelled. Then almost before it’d even begun, she pulled back. “Thank you.”

He had no idea what exactly she was thanking him for now but he was all for more of it. Their connection, light as it’d been, had still carried enough spark to jump-start his engines. “For…?”

“For driving me all the way out here.” Again she was letting her lips brush his with every word. “And for not being a serial killer.” She was staring at his mouth. “And for… everything.”

Not wholly in charge of his faculties, he took over the lead, pulling her in until she was straining over the console before covering her mouth with his.

With a low murmur of acquiescence, she wrapped her arms around his neck, angling her head for the best fit, deepening the kiss.

Which worked for him.

He lost track of time, but when she pulled back, breathless and panting for air, she licked her bottom lip as if she needed that last little taste of him.

He knew the feeling. He was more than a little flummoxed by the loss of blood to his brain. She’d felt good. Good and soft and willing. He had one hand low at her back, the tips of his fingers tucked into the waistband of her pants, against warm, satiny skin while his other hand cupped her jaw.

“Gotta go,” she whispered, and pulled free. Twice she tried to grab the door and missed. Leaning past her, he pushed it open for her.

“And we’re still at least a hundred yards from the water,” she muttered. “Imagine if we got in it.”

He heard himself laugh. “It’s not the water.” He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was positive it wasn’t the water.

“Cynic,” she repeated without heat, looking both flustered, and aroused.

An incredibly appealing combination that made him want to haul her onto his lap and show her cynic. “True enough,” he agreed. “But it takes one to know one.”

She snorted and it was the craziest thing, but hell if he didn’t feel the tug of attraction for her all the way to his toes.

Yeah. Definitely dangerous territory.

“Wait here.” She slipped out of the truck and vanished inside the kennels. Twenty seconds later she was back with her insurance card. “Keep it, I have another.” She wrapped Abigail’s leash around her wrist and grabbed the box. “Thanks for the ride, stranger.” Then, with a flash of a smile, she sauntered off in those baggy Carhartts toward the kennels, looking for all the world like a princess going into her palace.