Thorns in the Mesquite

I lunged forward, scooping a handful of coarse caliche gravel and hurling it straight at her eyes.

She pulled the trigger. The gunshot was a deafening roar inside the narrow gully. The heavy slug tore through the shoulder of my denim jacket, scorching the flesh beneath with a line of blinding heat.

I didn't stop. I planted one boot on the corrugated iron wall of the pump shack and sprang upward, catching the edge of the limestone ledge with both hands.

Tlalli was already cycling the lever. The brass casing flew into the dust with a sharp ring.

Before she could shoulder the stock again, I threw my weight over the lip and drove my shoulder straight into her midsection.

We both went down hard into the mesquite brush.

The rifle went flying, clattering across the rock and sliding into the dry scrub near the boulder. Tlalli didn't waste time gasping. She brought her knee up toward my groin with vicious speed. I twisted just in time, taking the impact against my outer thigh, and drove an elbow toward her jaw.

She blocked it with her forearm, her skin burning hot against mine.

We rolled through the thorns. Dirt clogged my teeth. Twigs snapped under our weight as we grappled for leverage. She was leaner than me, but faster, her muscles corded like steel cables under her work shirt. She grabbed my collar, trying to pin my throat against the dirt, and I brought both hands up inside her grip to break the hold.

My knuckles caught the side of her neck.

A sharp spark tore through my skin.

It wasn't static. It felt like grabbing a live spark plug off a running V8 engine. The jolt traveled up my arm, seizing my shoulder, slamming directly into the center of my chest.

My breath locked in my throat.

Fever, my brain told me stupidly. The poison got into my blood.

The heat spread in a blinding wave, burning through every vein, melting the marrow in my bones. My vision blurred. The scorching desert air seemed to vanish, sucked out of the canyon until all the sound died away. The howling wind stopped. The flapping iron roof went silent.

The whole damn universe shrank down to the circle of dust beneath us.

I was staring right into her face. Her pupils were blown wide, black swallowing the amber-brown of her irises. Her chest rose and fell in ragged gasps, her throat bare beneath my pinned hand.

Then the scent hit me.

It wasn't dust. It wasn't sweat. It was crushed desert sage after summer rain, sun-warmed river stone, and the dark, sweet tang of mesquite smoke. It flooded my mouth like clover honey, coating my teeth, drowning out the reek of chemical rot.

My wolf didn't growl. She didn't pace. She slammed against my ribs so hard I thought my sternum would crack open.

Mate.

The word hung in my skull, heavy as an anvil.

My stomach dropped straight into the abyss.

No. God, no.

Not her. Not the sister of the man who had sworn to put my head on a fence post. Not the sharp-eyed tracker who was currently trying to gouge out my windpipe. The Moon Goddess had an absolutely sick sense of humor.

Tlalli froze beneath me.

Her fingers had been digging into my collar, looking for the kill stroke. Now her grip went completely slack. Her lips parted, her breath washing over my cheek with that maddening scent of rain on dry sage.

She looked at me as if she had just watched the desert split in two.

"You," she whispered. The word barely carried over the heat.

My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Every instinct in my shifter biology screamed at me to lower my head, to press my mouth to the pulsing vein along her neck, to sink my teeth into the junction of her shoulder and claim her right there in the dirt.

My wolf was practically howling with need. Mine. Take her.

"Get off me," I rasped, but my voice had no iron in it. It sounded cracked, ruined by the sudden fire burning in my blood.

Neither of us moved.

Her hand slowly lifted from my shirt, her fingers brushing against the bare skin of my jawline. Another jolt of electric heat sizzled across my nerve endings. It felt so good it made my teeth ache. I could see the pulse jumping at the base of her throat, frantic and terrified.

She felt it too. There was no hiding it. The bond was a two-way wire, humming between our chests with lethal voltage.

Then, half a mile to the north, the sharp crack of an eighteen-wheeler's air horn broke the silence.

The spell shattered.

Tlalli flinched, reality slamming back into her eyes like cold water. She shoved me off her with both arms, scrambling backward on her hands and knees until her back hit a caliche boulder. Her chest heaved. Her hands were shaking so violently she couldn't ball them into fists.

"What did you do?" she choked out, staring at me like I was a demon that had climbed out of the well. "What the hell is this?"

I stumbled to my feet, my knees nearly buckling under the lingering tremor in my thighs. My denim jacket was torn at the shoulder, soaked in dark blood, but I couldn't even feel the bullet graze. The only thing burning was the phantom imprint of her fingers against my throat.

"I didn't do anything," I said, backing away toward the edge of the ledge. "You jumped me, remember?"

"You're highway pack," she spat, though her voice shook. "You're Macario's dog."

"And you're Yaretzi's sister." I wiped a streak of dust and sweat from my brow, forcing my breathing to steady. "If your brother finds out about this, he'll hang us both from the highway billboard."

"He'll kill you first," she hissed. But she didn't pick up a rock. She didn't dive for her fallen rifle. She stayed pressed against that boulder, her eyes wide and dark, watching me as if she couldn't decide whether to run or pull me back down into the dirt.

I dropped down into the wash, landing heavily in the gravel beside the pump house.

My fingers were still tightly clenched around the amber glass shard. It was smeared with our mixed blood and caliche dust, but the serial number was intact.

"Look at the tracks around the well, Tlalli," I called up to the ledge, not looking back. "Coyotes did this. Not us. You tell your brother that before he starts a war he can't win."

"Ocotlan!" she called out.

Her voice had an edge of panic that hit me right between the shoulder blades. I didn't stop. I forced my boots to keep moving, scrambling up the southern embankment toward my steaming truck.

I threw myself into the cab, slammed the door, and locked it as if thin steel could keep out what had just happened. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely fit the key into the ignition.

The starter ground twice, caught, and roared to life.

In the cracked side mirror, I saw her silhouette emerge at the rim of the arroyo. She was holding her Winchester now, but the barrel was pointing at the dirt. She just stood there in the baking heat, watching the dust trail of my truck as I turned around and hammered the gas toward the highway.

My wolf whined in the back of my skull, a low, miserable sound of abandonment.

Shut up, I told her, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. Just shut up.

I had the evidence in my pocket. I had the coyote tracks. But none of that mattered anymore. Because if Macario smelled her scent on my jacket, or if Yaretzi figured out why his sister had let an enforcer walk away, the war wouldn't just be about water.

It would be about us. And in this desert, nobody survived a treason like that.