Desert Moon (The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch Book 1) Read Free

all too easy to picture him shirtless, letting the sun bronze his skin. But then he’d taken the next bag right out of her hand, and her vision had gone red.
    Alphas. They had the people skills of Neanderthals. As the daughter of one and sister to three others, she should know. Alpha males were all the same.
    Except this one was the finest thing she had ever seen. Deeply tanned with brown-black hair, the man was downright delicious, like dark chocolate ice cream with molten fudge on top. What she wouldn’t give to dip right in. His face wasn’t so much handsome as it was enticing, but his lips were pursed, his brow creased. His thick shoulders were squared as if he was about to challenge an adversary. Was he always so tense?
    And did he always smell so good? He’d showered with something very, very masculine. It smelled like the desert: edgy and brutally honest. Or maybe that wasn’t soap, but just him.
    A scowl crossed her face, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the local girls had some kind of lottery system for who got to share his bed. Or did he stick with just one? She doubted it. You could tell a mated wolf from a mile away; peace and satisfaction sloughed off him in waves. Ty was too restless, too brooding for that.
    She sniffed again. A man like him ought to carry the scent of half a dozen recent conquests, like a magic potion of virility that only served to attract more. His partners would probably make damn sure they rubbed him close and hard to leave their mark for the world to witness. She pictured a wall of graffiti, sprayed all over. Cyndi was here , it would say, and that would overlap with Ty + Lucy , written inside a heart, or maybe Kerri loves Ty , with part of the Kerri gouged out by some jealous soul. She sniffed again and was surprised to find no trace of a recent female scent intertwined with his. If anything, the man smelled like duty and responsibility. An alpha, through and through.
    She gave her head an inner shake and tried to pry her senses away. But this man sucked her in like no man ever before. She suddenly understood what birds must feel when they flew south. She was being pulled, like Mother Nature was pointing and uttering urgently: Him! Him!
    But whenever she worked up the nerve to throw a covert glance his way, he seemed to retreat further into his invisible armor, curling tighter and tighter until his emotions were as safely guarded as an armadillo in a ball.
    She forced herself back in her seat, as far as she could. The guy was way too intense. Too…too everything. Wasn’t her mother always warning her about alphas?
    The Wagoneer left city congestion behind, heading north into open desert. She had resolved to resist the call of the landscape, but since it now seemed the lesser of two temptations, she peered out the window. Prickly pears blurred past, and a scattering of saguaro cacti gave way to scrappy bush as the highway climbed. Every plant clung to its patch of scorched earth, struggling to survive. Yet there was something here that whispered to her, as it had on her first visit. The realization both thrilled and frightened her.
    As did Ty. Her senses couldn’t resist throwing themselves at him—not just peeking but measuring, studying, imprinting the details in her mind like the last days of summer.
    A good thing it was cooler up here at higher altitude than in the city. The Jeep struggled with a steep incline that she vaguely remembered from her first trip. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an incongruous flash of red in the arid landscape. A sports car was pulling alongside the Jeep. It was so close and so loud the bass notes of its stereo thumped in her bones. Lana checked Ty’s expression in the rear view mirror, but his mouth remained straight, unrevealing.
    With a boastful rev, the sports car sped ahead. Any one of Lana’s brothers would have hurled a comment after it, but Ty’s only reaction, if it was one, was a quick scratch of his ear. Then his hand was