The inevitable blush burned Cat’s cheeks. Pilar nodded gravely. “I saw the change in you the night Kelpie came back lame. I see it even more strongly now. Who is he?”
Cat found that she had no desire to pretend any longer. “I met him that night. He helped with Kelpie, and—” She broke off, unable to describe how she’d felt that first time. “He was…is…unlike any man I’ve ever known.”
“What is his name? Where does he live?”
All of Pilar’s questions were logical, but the answers would tell her nothing. “His name is Andrés,” she said. “I don’t think he has a home.”
“Yet he has won your heart.”
Pilar’s words, so simple and blunt, stopped the air in Cat’s lungs. She tried to stand and fell back again, her muscles gone weak and useless.
She’d known Andrés all of three days. It just wasn’t possible to fall in love so quickly. But she’d never believed in curses or men who could change into horses, either.
“He was not what you expect to find when you came to us,” Pilar said.
“No.”
“Your mind tells you to stay away, yet you cannot.” The older woman placed a plump hand on Cat’s shoulder. “Has he done you some wrong, this Andrés? A wrong you can’t forgive?”
How could Pilar possibly have guessed? Andrés had betrayed Itzel. He’d let her people die while he stood by, refusing to intervene. His punishment had been no less than he deserved.
But that isn’t why you turned on him. It isn’t what happened hundreds of years ago that matters, is it? It’s what he did to you, how he deceived and manipulated you….
“Perhaps you came to us for a reason,” Pilar said. “Not only to find love, but to free yourself from your own past.”
And to free Andrés as well.
Cat jumped to her feet. “I have to go out, Pilar. Don’t expect me back before dawn.”
The housekeeper nodded, smiled, and returned to her pie crust. Cat grabbed several bottles of water and a chunk of cheese from the refrigerator, fetched a blanket from her room and ran outside to look for Turk. When she didn’t find him, she saddled a mare and placed the blanket, food and a supply of oats in a pair of saddlebags she hung over the mare’s hindquarters.
Rosie was more than ready to cooperate with Cat’s eagerness to be gone. Cat rode north toward the Colorado border, certain that Andrés would head away from civilization. She paused at five to drink and eat and rest the mare, refusing to give up hope.
By eight the sun was beginning to set. Cat had no idea how far she’d gone; the countryside had hardly changed, and she’d encountered only cattle, horses, and a few pronghorn antelope. Her legs ached, and Rosie was beginning to droop.
Cat dismounted at the foot of a small hill, stretched, and left Rosie to graze while she finished off the last bottle of water. Her heart was a leaden weight in her chest. She couldn’t continue with only the supplies remaining in the saddlebags; when morning came she’d have to turn around. The chances that she’d find Andrés were growing smaller by the moment.
Wearily she spread the blanket on the brown grass and lay down. She had just closed her eyes when Rosie nickered softly. Half afraid to hope, Cat opened her eyes again.
The stallion stood at the top of the hill, the plume of his tail stirring in the evening breeze. Cat rose, adrenaline rushing through her body.
Come, she begged silently. Come to me.
For a handful of minutes it seemed he would turn and flee. But slowly, hesitantly, he started down the hill, head lowered and ears pressed flat. He stopped several yards away, his eyes filled with that very human sadness.
“Andrés,” Cat whispered.
His ears flickered, but he came no nearer. Cat offered her upturned hands.
“I was wrong,” she said. “You’ve paid enough. It’s time you had a second chance.”
The stallion lifted his head. An eldritch light sprang up around him, gilding his coat and crackling the grass under his hooves.
Cat was never sure what she saw then. Andrés changed; four legs became two, and the ebon mane became a shock of thick, dark hair. He stood naked before her, still silent, still waiting.
Love and desire tangled in Cat’s mind, one inseparable from the other. She, too, had been transformed.
“We forgive you,” she said. “I forgive you, Andrés. Be free.”
He began to shake, and she realized he was laughing. His voice boomed in a cry of triumph and joy. He opened his arms and she walked into them, breathing in the sharp, clean scent of his body.
“Mi gatita,” he said, taking her face between his hands. “Gracias. Gracias desde el fondó de mi corazón.” He searched her eyes. “How may I repay you?”
In answer she kissed him, her hand wandering between them to stroke his erect cock. “If you really want to repay me,” she murmured, “don’t make me wait a second longer.”
She took his hand and led him to the blanket. He removed her clothing with something like reverence, worshiping her body with lips and tongue. But when he parted her thighs to enter, she rolled over and pushed him onto his back.
“It’s my turn now,” she said, and mounted him with a groan of pleasure.
That night she had the ride of her life. And when it was over and they lay together gazing up at the fading stars, she knew Itzel was at peace.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Stay with me forever.”
He traced her lips with his fingertip. “Forever is a long time.”
“Not nearly long enough.”
“You hardly know me. How can you be sure—”
“Let me show you just how sure I am.”
And they rode together, bound as one, until they could ride no farther.
TO DIE FOR
Keri Arthur
CHAPTER 1
THE WORST THING ABOUT WORKING FOR AN INVESTIGATIVE agency specializing in paranormal and psychic events was the long, often irregular, hours.
My field of expertise might be missing persons rather than things that went bump in the night, but it still involved late nights and long shifts. Monsters mostly preferred the cover of darkness, it seemed.
But the second worst thing about working for the aforementioned agency was having a boss who had no respect for the “eight hours between shifts” rule, made law years ago.
So when Frank’s phone call woke me up after I’d barely been asleep for three hours, I was neither happy nor surprised.
“Rioli?” he said, his voice more gravelly than usual. Meaning he’d either been up all night or he’d hit the smokes again. “Need you in here ASAP.”
“Frank, I only just got home from the Harbor case—”
“This one’s important, Grace. Be here by seven.”
I glared blearily at the clock. He’d given me a whole thirty minutes. How generous of him. I hung up, dragged myself out of bed, and threw on some clothes. Luckily for us both, the traffic at that hour of a Sunday morning was practically nonexistent, and I found a parking spot right out in front of the agency’s multistory building.
It turns out I wasn’t the only investigator Frank had called in early. And when I heard the rapid tattoo of footsteps coming up behind me, I barely restrained a groan. There was only one man in this building who could make the mere act of walking sound so sexy, and I really wasn’t in the mood to cope with his banter this morning.
“Hey, Ravioli, wait up.”
“Ravioli is a food,” I said tartly, not breaking stride as I headed for the elevator. “And my name is Rioli. I’d appreciate it if you’d actually remember that.”
“Are you always this touchy in the mornings?” he asked, his voice so warm, so rich, that shivers of delight ran down my spine.
But then, I’d been supersensitive to this man’s presence from the moment he’d walked elegantly—and oh-so sexily—into the Preternatural Investigations offices eighteen months ago. Luckily for me, I was not alone in my admiration, and Ethan had wasted no time dipping into the pool, so to speak. The man was a werewolf who knew how to work both his aura and his lean, powerful body. He was sex on a stick, as one of my cubicle mates had noted. Right before she’d taken him home and enjoyed his stick.