Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven 1)

It was time to leave.

When he was sure her smooth, beautiful skin was clean, he kissed her chastely. “I’ll get you a towel.”

He cut the faucet as he stepped out and stretched for the rod across the way. When he turned back, he had to stop and just stare at the woman in the mist. She was as ancient as time in her naked glory, and some romantic notion in his fucking pea brain turned her into the pinnacle of all that had come before.

She was the apex.

At least for him.

And that was the way it worked, didn’t it. Perfection was relative, not any singular characteristic, or even a group of them, but rather how the composite fit together for the person who was regarding the whole.

Could you fall in love in a matter of days? he wondered.

Fuck that. When it came to Lydia, he’d fallen in seconds, standing in the doorway of her office for that interview.

Daniel dried her off and helped her out of the enclosure. Then he wrapped her up.

“What about you?” she said as he opened the door to the hall. “You’ll get cold.”

It’s nothing compared to the center of my chest, he thought.

“Don’t worry about me.”

As she lowered her head, he tipped her chin back up. And kissed her softly.

Lydia left the bathroom, turning away from him, going alone to where they’d slept side by side. Her wet feet left prints on the wood, and as she disappeared into her bedroom, he watched the moisture marks recede.

Closing the door, he opened the saddlebags he’d brought in with him. He used the T-shirt he’d slept in to dry off, and he threw some clothes on. Back out in the hall, he glanced to her open bedroom. He could hear her moving around, the creaking of the floor and the rustling of cloth making him picture her standing in front of her bureau, snapping on her bra, pulling on her panties, drawing up pants, tugging on a shirt over her still-wet hair.

Shaking his head, he hit the stairs with his stuff. If he went in there?

He was never going to leave her.

Down in the kitchen, he set his bags by the door and hustled into the cellar. During dinner, he’d run a load of wash through her machines, and as he pulled out his boxers, alternate pair of jeans, and three T-shirts from her dryer, he pressed them to his nose because they smelled like her.

He was ascending the rough-hewn steps, halfway back up, when he heard the knocking on the front door.

Instantly alert, he put his hand to the small of his back—

Damn it, he’d been distracted and hadn’t tucked.

Hurrying up to the kitchen, he leaned around the open cellar door, using it as a cover to look to the front of the house. Overhead, Lydia was jogging down the stairs.

“It’s okay,” she called out. “It’s just Eastwind.”

“Lydia, don’t answer the door before I—”

“I’ve got it.”

Just as she reached for the knob, Daniel dove for his saddlebags and got out a gun. As he wheeled around, he got a look at the sheriff standing in the entry. The man took off his hat and held it in front of himself with both hands.

“Is there something wrong?” Lydia asked the guy.

A pair of dark brown eyes shifted past her and locked on Daniel’s face. The other man’s expression hardened to the point of granite.

“Sheriff?” she said.

“I gave you a chance,” Eastwind said to Daniel. “To do what was right on your own. But you didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Lydia glanced over her shoulder. “What’s going on here?”

Daniel closed his eyes.

“He’s not who you think he is.” Eastwind took a folder out from behind his hat. “Daniel Joseph is an alias. He never worked at any of the businesses he provided you as references—”

“Hold on.” She put her hands up and shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Candy gave me his résumé yesterday morning. She wasn’t sure she had done the background check right, and she was worried because he was … getting close to you. When I went deeper than she did? Nothing exists.”

As the folder was pushed forward, she took it with a shaking hand. Then she looked back into the kitchen. “Daniel?”

Eastwind spoke up. “I’m not going to tell you how to run your life, Ms. Susi, but whatever this man has said about himself, whatever he’s done for you … you can’t trust it. I can’t even find his true identity. He’s literally a ghost.”

There was a tense silence. And then Daniel gave her the only answer he could.

He bent down and picked up his saddlebags. Slipping them onto his shoulder, he thought about the night he’d spent beside her, staring up at the ceiling, looking for a way out that included her not hating him.