LITMIR.BIZ

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his pants—before she opened the door.

      He’d forgotten how she took those steps two at a time.

      “Here,” Holly said, even as she came through the door with her bounty, a tube of hydrogel included. “Faith said you would use this stuff.”

      “You told Faith?” He couldn’t quite keep the alarm from his voice.

      She made an amused sound. “Did you think she didn’t already know?” At his silence, she added, “And you shouldn’t have left that mess of a man-bandage in the counter trash if you wanted it to be some big hairy secret. What was that, half a roll of duct tape?”

      “It didn’t stay on anyway,” he grumbled with generalized disgruntlement.

      “While we were doing that hay? No kidding.” Holly seemed more cheerful now that she’d outmaneuvered him regarding the truck keys. If it made her feel as though she’d gained some control over her life, she would have it.

       For the moment.

      Holly busied herself pulling butterfly bandages from the box and lining them up on the tiny breakfast bar jutting out from the wall between the kitchen and the window area. Aside from the plants, the window space held exactly one couch—it was as close to a social space as the loft got, with the bed tucked in behind the half wall across from the window and the bathroom taking up just as much room across from the kitchen. He’d roughed in an unheated closet, but he doubted she’d discovered that particular feature yet.

      It wasn’t a bachelor pad so much as the space of an alpha wolf still alone at heart.

      “There.” Satisfaction tinged Holly’s voice. “Come on over and lean against the bar.”

      Lannie released a silent sigh and complied, leaning to expose the injury to the light and grunting at the painful stretch of it.

      Holly made a dismayed sound in her throat. “Have you looked—”

      “It’s fine,” Lannie said. “If it was a problem, the fast healing would kick in—and I’d know if that was happening. It hurts.”

      “And that doesn’t?”

      “It hurts more,” he said pointedly.

      Holly rested hesitant fingers on his side; he twitched against it, swearing inwardly as the wolf reared up and took interest. Warm fingers, gentle touch...for an instant, it was the only thing he could feel. At least, until the rest of his body figured it out and responded.

      Well, the wolf was alive. And so was the man. And Holly’s touch reached them both.

      “It’s ugly,” Holly said, her fingertips pressing lightly around his ribs as she assessed the cut. “Really irritated. Until it does heal, you ought to quit taking yourself for granted.”

      He frowned at the countertop. “Ow!”

      “Like I said.” She dabbed ointment along the edges of the wound.

      His hands bore down on the counter, as much irritation as bullet biting. “It shouldn’t be that—ow!” He jerked away, turning a glare of impatience on her.

      “Uh-huh. Whatever. Stop growling.”

      By dint of will, he did, and he held himself still while she pinched the edges of the wound and placed a generous row of butterfly bandages. By the time she finished—by the time she stretched her arms around him to wind the self-sticking elastic around his torso—that pain was a thing of the past, and her touch was again the only thing of the present—light, skimming his flesh with authority, patting the whole arrangement into place. Lingering, while her scent permeated the air around him—his shampoo and her own personal perfume, mingled into something that felt so very much like possession.

      She stood, fumbling the bandage onto the counter—hesitating, when she might have been stepping away, her face flushed. She visibly hunted for words, her teeth lingering on her lower lip before she found them. “I don’t know how long that’ll last, but...try to take it easy?”

      He barely heard her. From behind the static, a sweet melody flowed, winding through Lannie like the vines winding along his window. He leaned into it, breathing it deeply into his body, his eyes closing as he absorbed that brief purity.

      When he opened them again and found her so very close, so visibly trembling, he had nothing to say—nothing he could say. Not when enthralled in such a deep thrum of underlying need. Mine. A singular thought, threading through sensation. Mine. Not as alpha, not as Sentinel. Just as man.

       Mine.

      Holly’s eyes opened wide; she stood taller and straighter, and her nostrils flared. “I am not yours.” She looked right back up at him, her pupils grown big within a narrow ring of darkening brown. She might even have stood on her toes, leaning into him physically just as he’d breathed in the song of her. “I am not Sentinel and I am not yours, and nothing you can do will change that.”

      The song stuttered back to static, staggering him as much as the connection had done. Holly slapped the remainder of the elastic bandage on the tiny breakfast bar and turned on her heel, going down the steps with the same authority with which she’d come up.

      And Lannie stood there with his side aching from her touch and aching for it, and knew she was exactly right.

       Chapter 5

      Lannie snagged Holly’s file from the cupboard nook where he’d stashed it and went to his thinking spot—or at least the thinking spot he used while in human form.

      He sat beside the mule paddock, leaning against the join of two metal corral panels and propping his knees up to serve as a desk for Holly’s file. He’d pulled on a worn chambray shirt, rolled up the sleeves and left the tails hanging out. Not customer-worthy and not concerned about it even if the store had another hour to go before closing. Everyone knew better than to bother him when he went to sit with the mules.

      Everyone except Aldo.

      The old man approached with a sideways sort of step, not quite looking at Lannie, a giant plastic travel mug in hand.

      “Hey, Lannie,” he said.

      Lannie blew out a sigh. “Hey, Aldo.”

      “Brought you iced tea.”

      “Did you, now.”

      Another few steps and Aldo held the mug out. He looked his usual borderline disreputable, his thinning gray hair drawn back in a braid, his red-checkered shirt only half buttoned, and his jeans a size too large and hunting for a place to settle on skinny hips.

      Lannie took the mug—although when he lifted it for a gulp, he stopped long enough to ask, “You didn’t put peyote in this, right?”

      Aldo affected an offended expression. “Wouldn’t do that to you, Lannie-boy.” Although when Lannie raised a skeptical brow, the old man added, “Least, not without telling you. And this time I’m telling you not.”

      The tea went down cold and crisp, and Lannie set the offering aside. “What’s on your mind, old man?”

      Aldo looked around, not half as surreptitiously as he likely thought. “That Holly girl gone?”

      “Up the hill,” Lannie told him, perfectly aware of the thin thread of Holly’s presence. “Using your spot, I believe. Let her be.”

      Aldo only nodded, somewhat more sagely than often. But he was coyote; he had a nose for knots and implications, and he knew as well as any that Lannie wouldn’t leave Holly completely off leash. Not yet. “Already bringing her into yourself, then?”

      Firm if not unkind, Lannie said, “It’s not your business.”

      Maybe

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