Chase Me (10 page)

“—talked to me first?” she spat out. “Had the courtesy to discuss ‘our plan’ with me before presenting it to everyone else as a done deal?”

“Yes.” His prompt agreement startled her into silence, so he took advantage of the lull. “Last night, after the sauna, I was… wired. I couldn’t sleep. You were in your cabin for the night, the lights off. My brain wouldn’t shut down, so I… worked, like I frequently do. You were gone when I woke up this morning, and you didn’t return to the compound until just before the meeting started. I considered rescheduling the meeting, but you know as well as I do how tough it is to find an opening on Elliott’s calendar.” He shrugged. “I should have discussed it with you first, and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

Lorin scowled at him, and then nodded. “Thank you. And for what it’s worth, it’s a decent plan.” She paused, seeming to consider her words. “When you first got here, you said we needed to present a united front. You’re right, but it goes both ways. Please remember that Schlessingers have run this dig—without you—for decades. We’ll run it after you’re gone.”

It was his turn to nod and extend a conciliatory hand. “Okay. Truce?”

“Ooh, not yet, bucko,” she snapped. “What the hell were you thinking, kissing me like that in front of Paige?”

A jolt raced down his spine as he parsed her words. Might she be open to him kissing her in private? “You left the meeting before we could talk about a cover story. When Paige jumped to the conclusion she did, I… went with it.” He managed a shrug. “If she believed it, the others probably will.”

Her incredulous expression made his stomach clench. Of course it wasn’t believable. Lorin Schlessinger slept with the pick of the litter, not mutts who were legally blind without their glasses. “Let the crew think you’re slumming for the summer,” he said with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Last night I practically threw myself at you, and you let me know in no uncertain terms you just weren’t interested.”

His jaw dropped. “Not interested? Are you really that dense?”

“It’s okay, really,” she interrupted with a remote smile. “It really is. It’s entirely your choice, and you said ‘no’ in every way that mattered. But given that you did, why is pretending to be my lover a solution you’re comfortable with?”

Were all Valkyries so oblivious? Screw his scruples. Spearing one hand into her sweat-dampened hair and clamping the other on her ass, he yanked her body against his. Lorin’s widened eyes made it clear that, if she missed it last night, she certainly noticed his erection now. “Make no mistake about it, Lorin,” he nearly growled. “I want to eat you alive.”

“Same goes.” She eyed his mouth. “So what’s the problem?”

When her hips snuggled against his, he choked back a groan. Their nearly equal heights aligned their bodies perfectly. “You report to me.”

“A technicality. I turned the job down before it was offered to you.”

Okay, rumor confirmed.

“Come on, Gabe. Your management style is so hands-off it isn’t even funny. Mom’s been on sabbatical nearly a month already and I’ve barely heard from you.”

He’d been too busy dealing with his eyes and climbing the steep learning curve on his new responsibilities, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “Hands off?” He flexed his fingers against her firm hips, so muscular, yet so quintessentially female. Now that his hands were on her—and her hands were on him—all the reasons he’d denied himself last night simply floated away. When her fingers twined in the belt loop at the back of his jeans, he felt the subtle, diabolical tug all the way down to his balls.
Concentrate.
“Your mother and I communicate rather frequently. We need to do the same.”

“I’m not my mother,” she said, trailing her finger over his ass.

“No shit.” He’d never felt the need to strip Alka Schlessinger bare.

Lorin’s snort of laughter made clear her thoughts had traveled down the same sick track.

He steeled himself against the shivers caused by her clever, clever finger. “We’re in an odd situation here, Lorin. You and I haven’t had a chance to hammer out our new working relationship yet, and here we are, practically living in each other’s back pockets, working on what could be the biggest find in our people’s history. This situation is complicated enough without us—”

“Sleeping together?” She shrugged. “What’s so complicated about it? You want me, I want you.”

She
wanted
him. She’d said it out loud.
A sudden energy swirled through his system, tense and invigorating, like he was about to dive off a cliff without having checked the waters below. “We have students to supervise.”

Her mossy green eyes lit with amusement. “You act like they’re in kindergarten, Gabe. They’re adults who work independently for long stretches of time, and who—believe it or not—have sex lives of their own.” Stepping closer, Lorin pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. Licked him. “We could disappear a half-dozen times a day and no one would even notice.”

A half-dozen times a day? Gabe nearly groaned aloud, but his mouth was too busy chasing her agile tongue. He didn’t know whether to be thrilled or intimidated by the prospect of satisfying this woman. Lukas had suggested that Lorin was in a sex drought of her own. How long had it been since she and Rafe had—

No.
Thinking about the pleasures Lorin had experienced in the sex demon’s bed was a one-way ticket to performance anxiety. He might not be as smooth as the other man, but he had some skills of his own.

Impatient with the chase, he slammed his mouth over hers and speared his tongue into the dark, damp cavern. Her strong fingers clenched his ass with bruising strength, pressing his erection more firmly into the humid notch between her legs. A growl rumbled out of his chest. He grabbed back with shaking hands.

He’d never wanted a woman so much in his life.

“Damn it,” Lorin breathed against his lips as a caravan of vehicles crunched into the parking lot. “They might be adults, but they don’t need to watch us go at it in the parking lot, either.” She reluctantly drew away, raking his frame with an avaricious gaze that felt like the stroke of a hand. “Later?”

Ah, hell. He was going to do this. Was already doing this. “Yes.”

“When?” she asked. “Where?”

A car backfired. “Where should I park, Lorin?” a dark-haired, sharp-featured guy called from the driver’s window of an old Skylark. “I’m leaking oil.”

“Damn,” Lorin muttered. “Park over to the far side of the lot, Nathan.” She pointed to where she wanted him to go. “Hi, Ellenore,” she called to a gamine redhead with a centerfold body who’d just stepped from a red Miata.

Didn’t Lorin hire any ugly people?

Over in the parking lot, crewmembers gathered around Nathan’s now-smoking car. “Go take care of business,” he said. “I’m going to—”

“Take care of business?” she said with a grin, staring at the front of his pants.

“You’re evil.”

“You can handle it,” she said as she walked backwards toward the parking lot. “Later.”

Were her words a threat, a promise, or both? Suddenly Gabe couldn’t wait to find out.

***

“You’re making a mess.” Nathan held out his hand as yet another hamburger fell apart on the grill under Lorin’s hand. “Let me.”

Across the room, Gabe’s laughter rang out again. “Fine.” She slapped the spatula into his hand.

Gabe and Paige sat across from each other at the end of one of the picnic tables in the cookhouse dining room, and if the laughter they shared was any indication, they were hitting it off very well indeed. As Lorin watched, Paige licked at the ketchup dripping off a loaded hamburger while Gabe scrawled in the open notebook sitting next to his silverware.

Instead of crawling up the walls like she was, Gabe was working. And laughing. With someone other than her.

Another Tinker Bell giggle from Paige. There was a sparkle in her eyes, a confidence and flirtatiousness in her body language, that another woman could recognize a mile off.

Damn.

“What’s left to cook, Lorin?” Nathan asked.

Lorin steeled herself and looked down at the list. Whether she was annoyed or not, people needed to eat. “One steak, medium, for Ellenore. Two steaks, extra rare, for Mike. And a veggie burger for Gretchen.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “Like those two are interested in eating.”

“Hmm?”

Nathan gestured with his head. “Look.”

Mike, her bone guy, and Gretchen, a first-year crewmember who’d be their primary artifact cataloguer, sat across from each other, their heads nearly touching as they talked. Their feet tangled together under the table.

“Okay, that didn’t take long.” She darted a look at Paige. The young faerie’s excessive vivaciousness had a cause—and, thankfully, it wasn’t Gabe.

Nathan shook his head as he slapped raw steaks onto the grill. “Vamp and siren. This ought to be interesting.”

Lorin didn’t respond. Hookups weren’t unusual when healthy and hormonal young people lived together in such close proximity for months at a time. Factor in the idiosyncrasies of their species—shifting werewolves, vamps who could glamour others into compliance with a look, incubi and succubi who absorbed emotional energy for sustenance and emitted luscious pheromones in response, sirens who amplified emotional responses with their voices, and faeries with their off-the-charts empathic abilities? Hookup city.

She was the only Valkyrie on the crew this year, which left her no one to spar with. She and Mike had tried last summer, but the experiment had been an utter failure. Mike hadn’t been able to tackle a woman—even one as strong as she was.

“Okay, here you go.” Nathan transferred the steaks and the lonely veggie burger onto a platter and handed it to her. “I’m King of the Grill,” he crowed, holding the spatula like a scepter. “I like this gig.”

“I’ll remember that.” Lorin tried to assign crewmembers to work they liked to perform. If only the crew had a neat freak who loved washing dishes and cleaning outhouses. So far, no luck.

Tonight was Paige’s night to do dishes.

Lorin delivered people’s food, circulating around the dining room, making sure she talked to everyone, especially Gretchen. Lorin laughed at her good-natured grumbling about the outhouse and black hole–sized drop-offs in cell phone coverage.

Finally there was no one else to talk to. After reminding Gretchen about the safety and procedures session tomorrow morning, she walked over to Gabe and Paige. Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” floated through her head as she approached their table. Gabe laughed indulgently as Paige told a joke that had been as old as the proverbial hills back when Valerian was in short pants.

“Oh, hi, Lorin,” Paige said, looking up with a smile. She stood up, picking up her tray and indicating her now-open seat. “He’s all yours. Alas, it’s my night for dishes. I hate doing dishes.”

“I do too,” Lorin commiserated, taking Paige’s seat. “You’ll have them knocked off in no time.”

“This year I came prepared.” Paige jutted out a hip, displaying a pair of hot pink rubber gloves with frilly decorative cuffs hanging out of her back jeans pocket. “So, Dr. Lupinsky—”

“Paige, I told you to call me Gabe,” Gabe interrupted. “We’ll be working together all summer.”

The younger woman flushed a delicate shade of shell pink. “Okay. Gabe. I’ll pull that white paper you suggested and see what Miller has to say about the ductile properties of iron ore versus taconite.” She looked back and forth between Gabe and Lorin. “Um, see you two tomorrow. Have fun.”

Silence resumed after she left. Finally Gabe cleared his throat, indicating the Bat Phone resting on top of his notebook with a jerky hand. “Did you see the updated schedule Jules sent?”

Good.
He was as tense as she was. “No, I was up at the site all afternoon.” And if he said one word about her not being up-to-date on her email, she’d blow. The crew would have sun protection tomorrow because she and Nathan had put up the gazebos, and the tarps they’d erected over the pit would block both the sun and snoopy overhead satellites.

A huge crash came from the kitchen as something large and metal dropped to the floor. After a second, hoots and applause broke out.

“I pinged you this afternoon, and you didn’t respond,” Gabe said.

“I didn’t have my phone with me—”

“That has to change, Lorin. What if the problem was more urgent than someone not knowing where to find biodegradable toilet paper? We found more, by the way.”

“So sorry about your asses.”

A ruddy flush climbed his neck. “The toilet paper isn’t the issue,” Gabe gritted. “You don’t answer email, you don’t pick up the phone, you don’t return texts. In case you missed the memo, Lorin, this is the reason I’m here. Elliott needs a reliable line of communication. You don’t even try to provide one.”

She glared at him. “The real problem is your expectation that I return your emails and phone calls within minutes, even when the communication just isn’t all that urgent. Toilet paper? Really? Would it have killed someone to walk up to the site?”

Gabe seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “It would be more convenient if—”