Free Goddess Rising by Alexi Lawless Page A

delight, Samantha succumbed, slipping her fingers around his elbow. Wes automatically cinched her closer, delighted when she squeezed back tentatively.
    “Ry and I are just going to check out the rest of the exhibit while we wait,” her father called after them.
    Samantha only nodded, as Wes led her away.
    “You should know I went back every day for a week hoping to see you again,” Wes confided, leaning toward her. He caught a drift of her scent, something lightly floral and deliciously hypnotic, like jasmine. “I was beginning to wonder if I’d dreamed you.”
    *
    September—Friday, Late Afternoon
    Memorial Student Center, Texas A&M
    S A M A N T H A
    “Honestly, I was just fiddling with time-lapse techniques. The storm rolled in, and I figured I might get very lucky catching a lightning bolt,” Wes explained to the reporter as Sam listened. His striking, golden eyes caught and held hers. “But I captured a completely different kind of lightning altogether,” Wes finished with a wicked grin.
    Samantha’s breath hitched as the reporter glanced at her. “So you’re the ‘Unnamed Muse’ Wes named the photograph for?”
    “Umm… I suppose I am.” Sam shifted on the sofa, reddening at the sudden attention. “I didn’t realize the photo existed until a few moments ago—much less that it had won an award.”
    In the brief time she’d been sitting there, Sam could have sworn she’d fallen down some sort of rabbit hole. She’d gone from being anxious to see her family to being confronted with a guy who made her feel so tongue-tied and stupid, it was a wonder she could answer the reporter’s question at all. What the hell was wrong with her?
    The reporter returned to Wes. “So, you two aren’t together?” she asked, her question clearly targeted at a different kind of information gathering.
    Samantha pressed her lips together as she considered the reporter. She gauged the woman to be in her mid-twenties, clearly an up-and-comer, wearing a pencil-thin skirt and a silky blouse that was opened just a single button down from appropriate. The reporter leaned toward Wes, making her interest apparent, her behavior a hair’s breadth short of outright flirtation.
    Wes sat back against the sofa, legs crossed casually, his expression genial, and his answers just the right amount of modest. But Sam wasn’t buying that b.s.—not for one moment. She’d only just met him, but Sam knew that Wesley Elliott had charisma to burn, magnetism coming off of him like heat. It was impossible to overlook or ignore him. And he knew it too. Sam didn’t know if she liked that about him or if it turned her off, but she watched with unwilling fascination as he turned toward her again, picking up her hand and interlacing their fingers like he’d been doing just that for years—as if he had every right to do it. A frisson of awareness flowed like an undercurrent between them, followed by the sound of alarm bells.
    Wes Elliott wasn’t just trouble. He was an alluring, seductive operator who could—and probably had —gotten everything he ever wanted, women included. He was unapologetically, head-snappingly handsome despite being a little rough around the edges. He reminded her a little of the good-looking cowboys her Uncle Grant had occasionally employed during the busier seasons—charming rascals who were oftentimes more trouble than they were worth—the kinds of guys who never stayed around when the best of the action was through, always looking for the next thing.
    “We only just met,” Wes told the reporter as he smiled at Sam. “But I’m hoping to win this one over,” he added in a confiding tone. “She’s my muse, after all. And a real thunderbolt.” Wes squeezed her hand.
    “So what’s this thunderbolt’s name?” the reporter asked, annoyance flashing briefly before her expression smoothed. She stared Sam down with the eyes of a woman unused to not getting a man’s undivided attention.
    “I’d rather