Page 16 of Bad Moon Rising
A pause. “Okay, that girl had phenomenal tits, and I was bored waiting in the hotel for you to get your ass in gear.”
“I almost lost my arm because you missed my signal.”
“I said I was sorry. It’s been eight months since Belfast.”
Roman froze and met her startled gaze as a small smile played at the edges of her lips. Shit, could Nova speak Gaelic? His face and neck heated.
He turned away from her again to whisper, “I’ll meet you at the plane. I think she understands us.”
Silence came from Flynn’s end. Roman gripped the steering wheel tight with both hands and asked out loud in Gaelic while staring through the windshield, “Do you understand me?”
Her smile. Devastating and stunning…
Although she’d caught him trying to be secretive, the Flynn blowjob conversation didn’t embarrass him…not too much. Her smile hit him straight in the gut and stole his breath for a whole other reason. A reason that meant trouble for him. He’d forgotten what this felt like since it’d been decades, maybe a half century since he experienced anything this immediate with any woman. He tried to label it—temptation, lure, magnetism. He wasn’t a monk. He had sex. Regularly. But his partners didn’t get anything from him beyond mutual physical release. He didn’t let them. None did whatever the hell this was.
Lycans, in general, didn’t do insta-love or any of that fated mate crap in literature, but there sure was insta-attraction. He’d experienced it once before with a human woman, before the curse, but she’d turned out to have the fidelity of an alley cat, so it hadn’t lasted. His mother’s words flitted through his head, “Instant chemistry leads to scorching sex. Everyone needs to find that at least once. It’ll blow your mind.” With affection, he silently cursed his mom’s candidness.
Pull it together. She’s hurt. She’s alone and clinging to me as the only person she knows. This is about figuring out who she is and getting her out of my life.
She had to belong to someone, maybe not mated but at least a family. Lycan society functioned on old rules, like a female wasn’t to be touched or even looked upon unless it was sanctioned by her family. They decided whether she could be out in the public eye or hidden away at home. Most kept their women hidden under heavy guard since there were so few females left. She could also be mated to someone else. His dead brother, perhaps. No, that made no sense. Shane had been out of his mind, possessed by a demon for a long time before he died in a bomb explosion.
The ruling body of lycan society, the Lycan Council, had decreed long ago that all unmated, unprotected females who were spotted out in the world were to be reported immediately. Thank God, he didn’t feel an ounce of obligation to that aging group of chauvinistic assholes or their stupid rules. The Crown’s rules, on the other hand…
Don’t forget you have no choice but to leave her. Help her and leave her.
He sighed and dropped his head. “Nova, please, get out of the car. You go your way, and I’ll go mine. Run and run far. Disappear where no one can find you. I’m not someone you should be around or trust.”
When she didn’t reply, he looked up into her remarkable blue-green eyes. In an agonized whisper, he said, “Go. Please.”
“You’re supposed to help me, remember?” She tugged her lower lip between her teeth.
“I never agreed to help you. I don’t know you.” He fixated on her mouth. The indentation of her upper lip looked soft. A single taste before she left would be so good.
“I jumped in front of a bullet to save you,” she said. “That’s got to count for something.”
“I’m not ungrateful, even if you did cause the wannabe warlock to explode, which complicated everything.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Jesus, she was hot when she got angry. Just watching her, he was getting harder, something he couldn’t afford right now.
When she made no move to leave, he pulled the car back onto the road and sped toward the small, private airport.
“I’m not sure I like you.” She drummed her fingers on the door.
“You shouldn’t.”You like me.He’d caught her checking him out not once or twice, but three or four times since they got in the car.
“Who’s on the other end of that ear communicator?”
“My brother.”
“Are you a spy? You were using a British accent, but now it’s more muddled. Are you MI6?”
“Something like that.” Accents came easy to him since he’d lived all over the world over the centuries. England certainly wasn’t a place he’d ever call home. His base accent had become more a blend of Spanish and Italian. Who knew anymore? He focused on the road’s icy curves while pushing the car to speed three times the limit toward the airport.
“Who do you work for?” she asked.
“I’m… It’s classified.”
