Wild Card by Moira Rogers Page B

eyes. “I am, though. All I want is to be left alone. I like it that way, Jack.”
    His hand dropped away. “You’re nearly out of options, Ginny. You came to me, and that makes you mine. Mine to protect, anyway.” He smiled, small and bitter, before turning his back on her abruptly and striding to the table. “Don’t worry yourself too much. When you’re safe, I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want.”
    “Will you?” He couldn’t mean it, not with the way he’d been watching her for months.
    Jack picked up a heavy leather gun belt and buckled it around his waist. “If that’s what you want.”
    Of course it is. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but what came out was, “You’re not riding out to Dawson’s spread now, are you? Alone?”
    “No.” He tightened the belt and reached for his coat. “I’m going home with you.”
    She stared at the back of his head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, what ?”
    “I’m going home with you. You’ll need help rounding up your stock, and you’re not going to be out there alone until I’ve dealt with them. So you stay here, or I go there. Your choice.”
    He’d be in her home. It was the one place she knew she could escape from everything, everyone, and Jack would be there. “But --” She looked at the tense set of his shoulders and swallowed the rest of her protest. “I don’t have a spare bedroom. You’ll have to bunk down in the parlor.” She couldn’t help the challenge that crept into her voice.
    He just sounded amused when he answered. “Bunked down in worse places.”
    Ginny wanted him in her bed. The knowledge should have shocked her, but it had been a long time since she’d slept any way but alone. Hard up and horny, she thought dourly. Might fuck anything with two legs and a pulse at this point. Doesn’t mean anything. “Let’s go.”

    Jack pulled his horse to a stop at the fence that surrounded Ginny’s property and closed his eyes, letting the scents and sounds of the night come to him. The moon hung low in the sky tonight, nearly full, and the call of it tickled at the edges of his senses as he reached out with his power.
    He sensed Ginny first, a strong, vibrant presence just behind him, and the wolf inside him paused. The wolf always perked up when Ginny was around, always rode him hard and demanded he lay claim to her. He was alpha, the leader , and it was fitting that such a female should belong to him and no other.
    Maybe if it had happened to him before, Jack would know how to quiet the animal. But single women were a scarce commodity these days, and available female wolves even more so. Of the dozen or so in his pack, only two had the sort of strength that tempted his wolf. Neither had interested the man.
    Ginny interested every damn part of him. The man, the wolf… My cock. The scent of her was enough to make him uncomfortably hard, but the feeling of her power brushing against his, so close he could reach out and touch her…
    No. He’d been patient thus far. Ginny was a wild creature. If he spooked her, she’d run so far and fast he’d never catch her. And now that she’d finally come to him, he could hardly afford to frighten her away for lack of a little care.
    Even if it meant sleeping on her couch and wishing himself dead.
    She pulled her mount alongside his and sighed. “I only got them all back last time because they ranged down to the corner of Ollie’s property, where the creek cuts through. Doesn’t matter though.” She drew up the reins on her horse and led Jack through a damaged section of fence. “I think maybe you were right. I think they’re through with warnings.”
    “Ollie will help you round them up in the morning,” Jack murmured, his eyes still half shut. He could sense someone in the woods, one of his wolves. One of his pack. Ignoring Ginny, he urged his horse around and faced the line of the forest that marked the end of her property. In the moonlight it would be impossible not to