Feral

Chapter 2

2

WILLOW

Cocky cowboy asshole.

Rob Wolf was hot as hell, admittedly, but a total d**k. How dare he barge into my house… into my room? I set my gun back on the nightstand. Humiliation made my anger burn as I dropped the towel and pulled on my panties.

Dammit. I came to Cooper Valley, to the Shefield property, to entice the neighbor, but not that one.

The other asshole. Jett Markle.

I stood at my window and watched the two cowboys mount their horses—a delicious sight, not only for the sheer grace of their movements but also for the way their asses filled out their jeans. Well, Rob’s ass. I wasn’t even watching the other guy.

I wasn’t surprised when Rob looked back. I’d just given him an eyeful of my t**t stuffed with a vibrator. God, I could just die. I should have shot him. That would have felt good. It would have been messy though. Not just a dead body but explaining it to my boss.

He lifted his chin at me from his saddle. How could he even see me? The sun was reflecting off the pane of glass and should have made me invisible from the outside.

Strange.

He tipped his hat next, a sexy smirk on his rugged face. He didn’t seem the least bit bothered I’d aimed my service pistol at him.

Damn hot cowboys in general, but damn him, especially. Although his arrogance was a better response than getting all embarrassed and awkward and running out stammering after my little show or piss his pants at having a gun pointed at him. Not that I believed a man like him had ever stammered or pissed himself. He didn’t even blink when he came through the door or when I’d removed the safety. My n*****s hardened at the size of his figurative balls. I hadn’t seen his actual ones, but I hadn’t missed the thick outline of his d**k in his jeans. It had gone down his leg! What guy was that big? How’d he walk with that thing? Or ride a horse?

I groaned, my p***y unfulfilled, now considering what it would be like to ride him to my finish. That thought made my inner walls clench, and I was hornier than ever.

What the hell was wrong with me? The guy had barged into my house, and I was fantasizing about the size of his d**k. Of using it instead of my toy to get off.

I was losing it. The only good news was that I’d hopefully snuffed out his interest. I pulled a gun on him and had been bitchy as hell. Rob Wolf probably wouldn’t be coming back. Had he honestly thought I needed protecting? I wasn’t sure if I should find that appalling or sweet. It didn’t matter either way.

I was here for the job. I had to focus on the investigation. On Jett Markle.

I had to blend in though, and I sure hadn’t done that with the welcoming committee from the Wolf Ranch. I grabbed said dildo and went across the hall to the bathroom to clean and sterilize it before tossing it back on the bed. It made no sense to put it away. I’d have to use it again later, this time to ease the ache Rob Wolf brought about.

“f**k,” I whispered, pushing the confrontation away. I’d been in tenser scenes than that. I needed to get a grip. And an orgasm. I groaned at myself.

I still needed to clean out the drawers in the dresser to make room for my things… clothes and not just my small s*x toy collection. I was a loner and a woman has needs. As for the rest of the place, I would’ve liked to clean out the whole house, but I didn’t want to overstep. This place wasn’t mine. I wasn’t Natalie Shefield. I was Willow Johnson, DEA agent.

The real homeowner would arrive when the case was over, and I couldn’t very well tell her I’d donated her uncle’s things, even though that’s exactly what should be done for most of it. The house hadn’t been updated since the sixties, and I had to be thankful it was too damned warm to need hot water. The place needed work—a gross understatement—and I’d have to tackle some of it while I was here or else it would seem strange.

I pulled my damp hair up into a ponytail and slipped on a pair of cowgirl boots to go with my jeans and tank top. It was time to meet the neighbor, and not the sexy one. I was cranky because while Rob Wolf was a tall drink of water—as they said in Montana—I hadn’t gotten off. He’d interrupted me right before the big finish, and now, I was not only hot but horny too.

Not wanting to go to Markle’s place completely unarmed, I slid a small pocket knife into my back pocket. I’d rather take my Glock, but that wasn’t an option. A knife I could explain away but not a pistol.

I picked up my cell about to text my boss an update, when he called. Speak of the devil… which made me an employee of the devil.

“Johnson here,” I answered.

“Yeah, what’s your status?” No hello, no how’s it going in Montana?

“I’ve arrived on location and, ah, settled in.” Of course, I didn’t quite get to finish that settling in, thanks to Rob Wolf. “I’m about to go to Markle’s for a friendly introduction.”

“I still don’t like it,” he grumbled.

It worked out perfectly that Natalie Shefield had inherited the property next door to Jett Markle but had yet to move in, meaning no one in the area had met her. We couldn’t have asked for a better setup. Finding someone to replace Natalie, a twenty-six-year-old woman with ties to the state, had been narrowed down to me. Only me. I’d lived in Montana until the day after high school graduation, knew how people rolled around here. Regardless, Vaughn thought sending a female agent alone on a job was a disaster waiting to happen. He didn’t have another agent to spare to play house in Cooper Valley, Montana. Honestly, I didn’t want anyone cramping my style.

There was one advantage to being female in the DEA. It was, well, being female. I knew from my research that Markle was registered on several dating sites and cut a swath through the eligible women in town. He wasn’t going to pass on his pretty new neighbor. A single one, which was the nail in the coffin for me having a partner on this undercover job. It wasn’t as if any one of my male colleagues could show a little cleavage and sweet talk his way into Markle’s house to look for evidence of drug running.

Getting friendly with him was going to be the easiest and most efficient way to get up in his business. While he checked out my boobs in this snug tank top, I’d check out his place. I didn’t want to sleep with the guy—I definitely drew a line there, but I had to keep tabs on him, search his property, and figure out exactly what his connection was with the Colombian drug czar Carlos Murrieta. Getting him to think he had a shot of getting in my pants, that was something else entirely.

I rubbed some lip gloss on and applied a little mascara. Watch out, Markle. Here I come.

I headed out the back door, noticing the screen door needed the hinges oiled, and followed the path along the telephone line toward Markle’s ranch. The hedge fund tycoon-turned-rancher had bought the huge property next door. To the world, he’d retired a billionaire to the quiet life of Big Sky Country. The DEA knew he’d left because he’d lost a billion in clients’ money and been fired. Digging had discovered that one of his clients was a shell company for Murrieta. We had to assume he was either hiding in plain sight or a cog in the drug running to Canada.

The county records indicated his property was over a thousand acres, half of it open grazing land with a huge farmhouse, the other half rugged terrain with pine and aspen trees. Plenty of space for bad s**t to go down.

Markle had been relentlessly trying to buy the Shefield place since he moved in. According to Natalie, he’d emailed and called her with pitches that varied in nature from dire warnings about the state of the deterioration to offers far exceeding the value to downright threatening, saying he’d be turning her in for every type of county code violation imaginable.

Sure, the place needed updating. I paused in my walk, looked back at the house. It was two story with wood siding painted a forest green. It was faded in spots, and the white window sills and trim needed some scraping, but it was… homey. The roof was shot, the grass overgrown. It looked neglected, which it was. But it wasn’t dangerous or against county code. Hell, I didn’t think there were any regulations way out here. It all led to the fact that Jett Markle was most likely a d**k. A retired hedge fund manager on paper but most likely a drug runner who wanted the extra land for some illegal purpose.

When I reached the end of my property line, I carefully pulled up the top string of barbed wire and set my boot on the lower one, then slid between them to emerge on his side.

A group of cows turned their heads to watch me approach, completely uninterested. Two were lying down in a small patch of shade near the fence line.

I breathed in the Montana air—the scent of wild grasses and dusty earth hit my nostrils. I’d thought I would hate being back in Montana, but it was strange—there was definitely a sense of “home.” A rightness or belonging, even after the nightmare of my childhood. I couldn’t hate an entire state for the wrongs of the Carp family. I’d stayed away long enough, but now… I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. Like this was how outdoors should feel, with the hot sun on my face, the constant breeze, the verdant smell. It was like my body recognized it here over the places I’d been living the past ten years.

I was playing a part, but even the cowgirl boots and jeans felt right on my body. I wished I had the hat to go with the outfit. I made a mental note to buy myself a cowgirl hat at the seed and feed in town. I walked until I neared the ranch house, barn and stable—all new buildings in pristine condition. It made the Shefield place look like something out of a horror flick.

Two men stood near the stable, one of them speaking in a raised voice like he was giving the younger man a dressing down.

Markle. Even if I hadn’t spent the last six months investigating the hell out of the guy, I’d know him by the designer jeans and five thousand dollar Stetson that just looked stupid on him. He looked like a Hollywood cowboy. Not because he was good looking, which he was, but because he appeared to be in costume or playing dress-up. He might own a ranch, but he sure as hell wasn’t a rancher.

Not like the ones I’d been raised by anyway.

I strode up, and the older man broke off his tirade. Both men gaped at me in surprise.

“Afternoon, gentlemen.” I let my hips swing as I approached, and their gazes tracked the movement. When I reached them, I stuck my hand out to Markle. “I’m Natalie, your new neighbor. I wanted to stop by and introduce myself. We… uh, talked on the phone, but that’s not the same thing as seeing someone in person.” I took the moment to look Markle over, just as he did me. Blatantly, as if I liked what I saw. Dark hair, fake tan, chiseled jaw.

Markle’s dark eyebrow raised. Then he grinned, showing off perfect veneers. He was attractive. I wasn’t blind and could see women giving him a second look, especially with his vast amounts of money. But he hadn’t spoken yet. What was the saying? Light traveled faster than sound because some people seemed bright until you heard them speak.

“Yes, in person is a hell of a lot better.”

He waited a beat before reaching out to shake my hand. A gold Rolex flashed on his wrist. Definitely out of place on a rancher. He closed his fingers around mine and squeezed too hard. It was the kind of grip that made me want to shake my hand out afterward. Or maybe that was just because I didn’t like him.

I didn’t let it show, though. I stepped in a little closer and bent down to swat an imaginary bug off my leg, letting him get a view of my cleavage.

He coughed a little, like the sight disturbed his equilibrium. “Jett Markle.” He didn’t bother to introduce his ranch hand.

I turned my sweetest smile on the other man and stuck out my hand. “Hey, there. I’m Natalie.”

“Jack.” He gave me a handshake as limp as Markle’s was firm and didn’t make eye contact. He couldn’t be older than twenty, barely old enough to shave. Markle probably had his ranch full of guys he could kick around. He definitely was a power trip kind of guy.

Strange that he was most likely in bed with a drug cartel. It almost seemed like something he’d find beneath him, a task he didn’t want to get his callous-free hands involved in. So either the reports of his firing had been wrong, and there was a lot of money in it for him, or he was in bed with them in some way I haven’t figured out. Maybe a family connection or more likely Murrieta had something on him.

It was my job to figure it out, so I turned my smile back on Markle and started up my helpless female charade. “I just got in today. You were right on the phone. There’s a lot of repairs required. It sure looks like I’ll have my hands full.”

He eyed me up and down, as if he wanted to have his hands full of me. “You have a plan for managing the numerous repairs? Contractors? Funding?”

I grinned back at him. The sun was in my eyes, and I really wished I’d had that cowgirl hat, but this look was probably better, anyway. Let him get a gander at my girl-next-door freckles and youthful appearance. Let him underestimate me. I knew he was thirty-five, so he might even play the daddy card if he got off on it.

“No, I’m just going to try to tackle things on my own.”

I saw calculation in his eyes. “Well, I might still be willing to take a piece of your land. You’ll probably be desperate for cash for the repairs. I know the county taxes haven’t been paid yet.”

Yeah, the asshole was probably hoping to buy the lien on them the moment it came up at auction. I’d have to let the real Natalie know she was in danger of losing the property for a few thousand bucks of unpaid taxes.

I tipped my head to the side. “Thanks for the offer. I’ll take it into consideration.” I made my voice soft and husky while I tried not to clench my hands into fists, ready to punch him in the face. What a d**k.

The sultry tone worked. The hardest edge of him softened. “You probably don’t have your kitchen stocked yet or even the utilities turned on. How about I take you to dinner in town tonight? Show a little local hospitality.”

Markle considered himself a local. That was hilarious.

I feigned consideration, biting my lip. “Yeah, I guess that would be nice. I don’t have much in the house. But only if you promise not to try to wear me down on selling the place. As I told you before, it has a lot of sentimental value to me.”

“All right.” He scratched the back of his neck as if those words cost him. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

I glanced at Jack, who hadn’t said a word, then nodded. “Deal. I’ll see you then.”

I put a little promise in my voice but not too much. I didn’t want to have to screw the guy or kick him in the nuts on our first date. I was trying for an opening to be on his property and get to know his habits and schedule. Dinner was a warmup and a way in, which meant I could stop back again, especially if he thought he had a chance to get in my pants.

I left the way I came, knowing the men were watching me—most likely my ass—as I sauntered away.

All right, I was in.

First objective achieved.

Tonight I’d do my part to ingratiate myself to the target next door. After I got home, I would finish what I started. Not because I’d picture him to get off but because all the time I was taking in Markle, I was comparing him to Rob Wolf. I doubted Markle had a d**k that ran down the inside of his thigh. My p***y clenched at the thought. Yeah, I’d be getting off later thinking about my sexier neighbor because I had a feeling after I got a guy like Wolf inside me, I’d be ruined for all others, including my dildo.