Dean has spent most of his life drifting between one-horse towns, drowning himself in short-lived pleasures and the certainty that no one ever stays. Until he finds himself with a bullet buried in the gut, deep in a desert that the locals claim is cursed - that once you go in, you don’t come back out. He’s saved from bleeding out by a handsome stranger, but as they trek through the inhospitable wilderness together, it turns out that the only thing worse than being stuck in the desert alone, might be to be trapped there with someone you can’t trust.
Excerpt:
“Need a hand, partner?” The stranger’s voice is deep and rough, either from disuse or from having inhaled too much desert sand.
Baby is just as rigid as Dean is. She has never much liked strangers. Dean hasn’t either, he just hides it better. He has to. Especially out here, alone and weak. Easy pickings.
Hesitantly he puts his rifle on the ground and takes the offered hand. It’s broad and solid. Strong. The stranger hauls him to his feet like it’s nothing.
“I’m fine,” Dean lets go of the stranger’s hand as soon as he’s standing. He attempts to take a step back. Everything spins around him and the step turns into a stumble, his knees buckling under him.
Strong arms catch him and he’s half pulled, half falls, slamming directly into a firm chest.
The voice is even rougher now, “Every predator within thirty miles can smell the blood on you, darlin’.”
It’s not a good time for the flare of arousal that stabs through Dean’s abdomen. It’s the words. The voice. The breathing that’s jagged from Dean having just slammed the air from the guy’s lungs.
The arms around him are tight against his own unnerving weakness from all of the blood that has drained out of him over the last grueling hours.
A low sound reverberates around him. The vibration of it hums against his body like a backdrop to Baby’s scream. He has never heard her sound like that before. Not even remotely.
He whips around to locate her. The world turns black for a moment. The hold the stranger has of him is the only thing that keeps him from tumbling to the ground.
When he finally focuses his gaze, it’s to the view of his horse bolting for the horizon.
