Musk on the Sandstone

I locked my heels into the chimney wall. I used every ounce of enforcer muscle I had built hauling engines across Macario's shop floor.

I hauled upward.

Tlalli scrambled with her boots, finding a dime-wide toehold on a quartz seam. She surged up my body, her chest slamming against mine. Her arms wrapped around my neck. Her breath, hot and ragged, broke against my collarbone.

I grabbed the back of her leather belt and heaved.

Together, we tumbled over the lip of a dark overhang twelve feet above the churning flood.

·  ·  ·

We crashed onto the flat sandstone floor of a natural cave.

The air was thick with the deafening thunder of the river below. A brown torrent six feet deep rushed through the slot canyon, carrying boulders that banged against the bedrock like muffled thunder.

We lay tangled on the dry stone.

My left shoulder was on fire. Blood trickled down my arm, pooling on the rock. My chest heaved like a broken bellows.

Tlalli was on top of me. Her wet hair dripped river water onto my forehead. Her hands were still clenched in the collar of my denim jacket, her knuckles white with strain.

For three seconds, neither of us moved.

The danger of the flood receded into the background. The roar of the water became distant white noise.

My entire nervous system locked onto the woman pressing me into the stone.

Her wet shirt was plastered to her skin. The heat rolling off her chest was blistering, hot enough to scorch through my damp denim. Her pulse hammered against my collarbone, fast and wild.

My sight narrowed. The cave, the storm, the mission—all of it vanished.

There was only the curve of her jaw. The wet arch of her throat. The dark, predatory flare in her eyes.

The scent hit my tongue.

It was no longer masked by degreaser or dust. It flooded my mouth like crushed berries and wild cedar. Sweetgrass washed clean by rain. Hot rifle powder. And the sharp, electric musk of a female wolf who had just looked death in the face and refused to yield.

Mate.

My wolf surged forward, howling in my skull.

Mine.

"You're bleeding," Tlalli rasped.

Her voice was low. Thick with an edge that wasn't fear.

"I noticed," I said. My own voice sounded like a stranger’s—rough, tight, stripped of every scrap of truck-stop sarcasm.

"You tore your shoulder pulling me up."

"You're heavier than you look," I muttered.

She didn't laugh. She didn't move away.

Her thumb drifted up my jawline, tracing the hard angle of my bone until her skin touched my neck. A violent shock wave tore through my chest. My hips twitched upward on pure instinct. My wolf let out a needy, shuddering whine that scraped the back of my teeth.

"You should have let go of the knife," she whispered.

"And let you drown?" I countered, staring straight into her dark eyes. "Macario would have killed me anyway. At least this way, I get to call you an idiot to your face."

"You're a terrible liar, Ocotlan."

"Runs in the territory."

She slowly shifted her weight, sliding off my chest to sit back against the dry cave wall. The loss of her body heat hit me like a bucket of cold ditch water. I almost reached out to drag her back.

I gripped the sandstone floor instead. I forced my breathing into a slow, tactical rhythm.

"Look outside," she said quietly.

I rolled onto my knees, cradling my bad shoulder, and crawled to the mouth of the overhang.

The flash flood was already beginning to crest below us, churning violently between the narrow canyon walls. But past the mouth of the cut, through a gap in the sandstone pillars, the high badland plateau opened up.

Two miles north, nestled in the jagged bowl of a dead box canyon, yellow sodium vapor lights cut through the night.

The old Obregon leaching plant.

Heavy diesel generators thrummed in the distance, their low hum carrying across the rain-slick desert. Through the drizzle, I could see fresh tire ruts—deep, dual-axle tracks from ten-ton tanker trucks—carved into the red clay road leading up to the rusted industrial tanks.

"They're active," I said, my pulse steadying into grim focus. "That's not a ghost operation. Those tankers are bringing in chemicals by the ton."

Tlalli leaned beside me, her shoulder pressing against mine. She didn't pull away.

"They're dumping reagent straight into the fault line," she said, her voice dropping into a dangerous chill. "They want the aquifer dead by next week."

"Which means whoever runs that plant wants both our packs to wipe each other out tomorrow night."

"Yes."

We looked at each other in the dim light of the cave.

The wind howled across the slit of the overhang, carrying the cold desert spray. My wet shirt clung to my ribs like cold lead. A hard shiver racked my frame, rattling my teeth.

"Take that jacket off," Tlalli ordered.

"I'm fine," I lied.

"You're soaking wet and losing blood," she said. She reached over and unbuttoned my torn denim jacket with practiced efficiency. "Freezing in a cave isn't in our plan."

"Freezing would save Macario the price of a nine-millimeter cartridge," I muttered, but I let her peel the sodden fabric from my arms.

She stripped off her own wet canvas coat, spreading both garments across a flat boulder near the entrance to dry.

Underneath, she wore a dark cotton tank top. Her skin was warm, bronze, and mapped with faint white scars from border wire and wolf skirmishes. The sight of her bare shoulders made my throat dry up completely.

She dug into her coat pocket and pulled out a small tin of salve and a clean cotton bandana.

"Sit," she said.

I sat with my back to the wall.

Tlalli knelt between my legs. She dipped her fingers into the herbal grease—it smelled of pine resin and dried chaparral—and smoothed it over the bullet graze on my shoulder.

Her touch was gentle. Too gentle for an enemy.

Every stroke of her fingertips sent ripples of heat through my collarbone. My wolf whimpered, pressing against my ribs like a dog begging at a kitchen door.

Touch her, my wolf demanded. Claim her.

I gripped my own knees, digging my fingernails into my denim pants until the fabric strained.

"Your wolf is loud," Tlalli whispered. Her fingers lingered on the curve of my shoulder, tracing the outline of my deltoid.

"She doesn't have good manners," I rasped.

Tlalli tied the bandana around my arm, pulling the knot snug. She didn't move back. She remained kneeling between my thighs, her knees bracketing my hips.

Her gaze rose from my wound to my lips, and then locked with my eyes.

The silence between us grew heavy, thick with unresolved violence and undeniable need. The cold air of the canyon swirled around us, but in the shelter of the rock, the air was fever-hot.

"You felt it at the well," she said, stating it flat, like reading tire tread.

"I felt it," I admitted.

"You knew what it meant."

"I knew it meant I was dead if Macario smelled you on me." I looked at her, refusing to look away. "And you're dead if Yaretzi finds out you pulled an enforcer out of a flood."

A slow, wry smile touched the corner of her mouth. "My brother is an arrogant bastard. He doesn't know half of what happens on his own fence line."

"And Macario is a butcher," I said. "We don't have a future, Tlalli. You know that. We have eighteen hours to break into that mining camp, find out who owns those tankers, and throw the proof in their faces before the shooting starts."

"I know the clock," she said softly.

She leaned in.

She didn't kiss me. She didn't bite. She rested her forehead against mine, her breath mingling with mine in the dark. Her hands came up, resting flat against my ribs, right over my pounding heart.

The warmth of her skin seeped straight into my bones, chasing out the last bitter chill of the desert storm.

"One step at a time, enforcer," she whispered against my lips. "We rest until the surge crests. At first light, we take that plant."

I looked down at her mouth, then past her shoulder toward the harsh sodium glare of the mining compound. The bond burned in my chest, steady and lethal, locking my choice into place.

"At first light," I said, racking the slide of my sidearm. "We take them down."