Free Money Shot by Susan Sey Page B

followed the beam and he moved closer while she was distracted. She smelled like cloves and rosemary and warm water. Spicy and clean and somehow . . . green. Fresh. He wondered if it was her shampoo, her soap or just the scent God had given her.
    Need opened inside him, raw and urgent, flaying him with sharp imperatives. Without the armor of her perfect hair and makeup, she didn’t just appeal to him. She sang to him. He wanted to snatch her up, lay her down, mark her as his. He wanted to dip his fingers, his tongue, himself, into all her secret fragrant places until he wore her scent as easily as she did. Until she wore his. Until even the greediest of interlopers would concede that this territory was taken. Held. Cherished.
    “I need to dry my hair,” she said.
    Rush smiled. “Come on and sit by the stove, then. It’ll be dry before you—”
    “I need to blow it dry.”
    “Why? Come on, Goose, this is Mishkwa. Nobody’s looking at your hair. And even if they were, it looks fine. You look fine.” God, fine ? She had him half insane with lust and the best he could come up with was fine ? He cleared his throat. “Better than fine, okay? You look—”
    Delicious , he was going to say. That was a good word, and perfect for the primitive churn of hunger she’d touched off inside him with that kiss of hers the other day. She was delicious. Edible. Snackable. Any word that involved his mouth and her person would do.
    “Rush.” The thin anxiety in her voice, a near desperation, pierced the haze of desire and Rush stopped. “Will you please fix the fuse?”
    He studied her, from her huge eyes to her bare feet. “This isn’t about a hair dryer,” he said. “You wouldn’t panic over a stupid thing like that. You’re afraid.”
    “Afraid?” She huffed out a little laugh.
    “Yeah. Terrified.”
    “Rush, please. What would I be afraid of?” But she shivered as she said it, a fine trembling that started in her center and moved outward until it claimed her all the way out to her fingers. Rush put a savage rein on the desire riding him, on the curiosity biting at him with sharp little teeth, and turned away.
    “Two minutes,” he said between his teeth.

Chapter 9
    GOOSE EMERGED from the bathroom fifteen minutes later to find Rush pacing the cabin like a mountain lion flying coach.
    “Feeling better?” he asked, his pale gaze touching everything from her newly smoothed hair to her ugly wool socks.
    She touched her head furtively, but her native ringlets remained utterly straight, perfectly obedient. “You have no idea,” she said.
    “I really don’t, no.”
    She ignored the implied invitation to explain herself. Hair dryers and blown fuses didn’t begin to cover the kind of danger those curls represented.
    “So,” she said. “How far to the old mine?”
    He studied her for a long moment. Deliberating, she’d guess, whether or not to let her off the hook. How far did that honesty thing go, anyway? Did omission count? Or did it apply only to actual statements?
    “Five miles,” he said finally.
    Relief loosened her stiff shoulders. “Nice day for it. I’ll be ready after breakfast.”
    “Breakfast?”
    “Sure. You know, food in the A.M.?”
    He glanced pointedly at his coffee cup. “Breakfast of champions,” he said. “You can have a travel mug. Now let’s—”
    She gave him a pity-filled look. “I sincerely don’t know how you expect to intimidate a grizzly bear or whatever it is you have out here—”
    “Moose.”
    “—moose then, on an empty stomach.” She squatted in front of the lopsided cabinets under the little counter and found an ancient container of Quaker Oats. A quick rummage in the freezer produced a packet of frozen blueberries.
    “Skipping breakfast isn’t healthy,” she said, throwing a couple handfuls of oats into two bowls, adding water and tossing them into the microwave.
    “I don’t think a moose takes my eating habits into account when he decides whether or not to