Vivian Arend - Black Gold

Her name was Gem, she was his mate, and she was delicious. Did he really need to know more?

It took a great deal of strength to pull away when what he wanted was to crawl over her and make love all morning. Maybe all day. Heck, he didn’t have any true commitments until three days from now when he had a private booking.

“Shit.” He’d be gone for a couple weeks at the least. Shaun smiled to reassure her, a puzzled expression crossing her face at his exclamation. “Yeah, we need to talk, because…oh man, there’s a lot we need to figure out.”

Gem wiggled back on the bed, and he swallowed hard. She sat perfectly straight, which meant her breasts were now staring him in… Well, he was staring at them.

Wolves might be okay with naked, but this was his mate, and he was freaking a little he wanted her so much. He stood and examined the room.

“What are you looking for?”

Shaun paced toward the bathroom. “Clothes, towels, the bed sheets. Something to cover you.”

Gem laughed. “Am I that ugly?”

The connecting door to the next room was open, sunlight streaking across the floor to spotlight rather messy piles of abandoned clothing. He recognized one article and scooped it up, turning to toss his shirt to her. “Trust me, love. If you want to talk, I can’t have you naked or the only talking will be our bodies.”

“Then you’d better find something to wear, so I don’t become overwhelmed with lust as well.” She winked before turning to examine the shirt he’d tossed her. An adorable little frown appeared on her face as she wrinkled her nose and sniffed. Gem left his shirt on the bed as she headed to her suitcase and took out a long shimmery…thing. Shaun watched in fascination as she pulled it on, the floor-length garment wrapping her trim body in meters of mouthwateringly see-through fabric.

“I don’t know if that’s going to help the situation.”

She sat in the corner chair, legs crossed at the ankle. The swath of layers around her hid enough his brain functioned. He stepped into his room and scrambled until he had managed to turn his jeans right side out and tug them on sans underwear, since that article of clothing seemed to have vanished altogether.

If they hadn’t talked last night, maybe he wasn’t as far up shit creek as he’d supposed. A moment’s unease snuck in. While it was fairly normal for strangers to discover they were mates, he had never imagined the logistics of what having it happen to him would mean. Saying there was a lot for them to discuss was an understatement of massive proportions.

Shaun took a deep breath and hoped like hell whatever good karma he’d earned in his life to this point would somehow descend right about now.

He marched back into her room feeling somewhere between being ushered into paradise and being offered a long walk off a short plank.

Gem was sore in all the right places. The only thing that made her sad was the lack of a warm body snuggled against her. She’d been looking forward to waking in Shaun’s arms and seeing what other mischief they could get up to. While she didn’t have a ton of experience, sex with a mate was much better than anything she’d experienced before—she had so many things she wanted to try with him.

Shaun returned to her room and nabbed his shirt off the bed, snapping the wrinkled garment a few times before tugging it on and flopping down opposite her. Even rumpled and a total mess, he was all kinds of sexy. She imagined he’d look more impressive yet in a silk shirt. A pale blue would be spectacular against his skin.

“You come here often?” His delicious voice stroked her, and there was that smile again. The one that made her heart rate double.

She shook her head as she laughed. “My first trip north. You?”

Shaun rearranged the pillows against the headboard and leaned into them. “Born and bred in the Yukon. My family has been a part of the Takhini pack for generations. We have stories dating back to the gold rush. Of course, none of us hit it rich, but we did okay.”

“Do you work for the pack?” She could already hear the questions her father would ask, so she’d better get those out of the way first.

“Nope—well, lately I’ve been giving Evan a hand and doing the bouncer thing in the bar, just to keep out of trouble.” He paused and made a funny face.

A bouncer. Gem kept her smile firmly in place. Well, at least his position wasn’t something that would lock him in the north. He could get a job in one of the local bars.

Or they could buy a bar for him if he wanted. There were many possibilities to consider.

Gem pulled her legs up and hugged them tight. “I’m not employed right now. Once I finish my degree, I hope to get a position with one of the family companies. Maybe working in environmental research for green products and controlling the impact of industry. It’s a fascinating field.”

“But you’re here for the summer?” he asked.

“I’m here for a few weeks, yes.”

Shaun frowned. He opened his mouth and paused. When he did speak, it was obvious he’d changed tangent.

“Anyway, I own an aviation company with a friend. Tad does less flying and more of the bookings these days because he’s got a young family, and he’s pretty busy with all his pack work. We’ve hired an additional pilot to help pick up the slack, and I do all the helicopter flights. We contract out to an adventure company called Maximum Exposure.”

“You fly…” Gem adjusted her image of him as a red-necked, untrained brute, just a second before it hit her. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

“Right. You’ve heard of our company? That’s cool.”

“I’ve hired you.”

Shaun sat upright. “The caribou trip? You? You’re the insane scientist who wants to go into the bush for two weeks?”

“Insane?”

Shaun snorted. “Sorry, not you personally. It’s just that almost every occasion in the past that we’ve had a southerner book flights into the backcountry, things have gone nutso. Statistically, you’re a walking time bomb.”

She wasn’t sure when she’d crossed her arms in front of her, sitting even straighter than usual. His comments were not what she’d expected, not in terms of the trip or their relationship.

“I’ve contracted a perfectly acceptable research project, with all the background information completed. I simply need to gather the final hard data and report my findings.”

His expression of disbelief hadn’t budged. “You want to go chase caribou?”

“Yes.”

“You.”

The heat in the room kept rising, but no longer because she wanted to jump him. “Me. To complete a project for my undergrad studies.”

“But you ? Love, show me your hands.”

She tugged them from under her robe and snapped them in his face. He took one and rested it in his palm. Like a knight of old, he kissed her.

Gem huffed. “This isn’t the end of our discussion.”

He shook his head, but didn’t take his eyes off her fingers. He stroked them, long draws with his hand, his thumb on one side, the other four fingers rubbing and massaging. “So soft.”

Shaun rotated her palm upward and touched his lips to the pulse point on her wrist. The echo of lust-filled pleasure from the previous night reverberated through her body. “Stop. Please.”

Another kiss. “You don’t want to go into the bush. These beautiful hands aren’t the kind to handle the work.”

Her rising passion was doused by a bucket of all-too-familiar discouragement. She yanked her hand free and rose to her feet.

“I am very capable of whatever it takes to complete this assignment. I’ll have you know I practiced everything I needed for the wilderness part of the excursion.” Gem stomped to the dresser, head held high. Of course, bare feet on carpet meant her heaviest treads didn’t make much of an impact.