Wild Ones: Prowl by Zoey Daniels

 
     
     
    Chapter One
     
    Lainey closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the sun. Had any sun on any world ever felt so fine? She thought not. Leman’s sun caressed her skin as gently as an accomplished lover, but it was no weakling. Its rays burnished the world brown, carried forward over fields of gold in heated breaths of wind that reminded her of hot kisses traced down her body.
    A fine world to live in. She’d like it here.
    “It hits us all that way at first,” Rosemary remarked. Lainey could hear the smile in her voice. “Don’t ever get used to it. Then it’ll lose most of its charm.”
    Lainey let her eyes drift open and let out a soft breath of satiated desires. She gazed across the gold and brown of the fields and unpaved roads, the green tops of trees already afire with the reds and golds of autumn. It was only natural to take her hat off and rest it not over her heart, but her hip, as a woman of her professional background might in a sign of respect.
    “I don’t ever plan to take this for granted,” she said. She wished she could strip naked in the sensual warmth of this world and stretch herself out in the grass to let it saturate her through and through.
    Rosemary chuckled; she had an infectious laugh and she was around the same age as Lainey. They’d probably led the same kinds of lives before they came here, to the world no man wanted and every woman dreamed of. Any woman with any sense, that was.
    “Good,” Rosemary said. “Let me check once more to be sure…” Proprietress of the small mercantile that was the only place one could buy supplies without traveling a few hundred kilometers in any direction -- not that that bothered Lainey -- she indicated they should get back to business by removing the stylus she’d tucked behind her ear and pointing it at her digital slate.
    Lainey knew as well as Rosemary what she’d need and wouldn’t need and that she hadn’t forgotten a single thing on that list, but no harm in letting the woman do her job. She stood by with her hat at her hip, half-daydreaming through the double-check. “I have gold, not credits,” she reminded Rosemary.
    “Good. Gold spends; credits are almost worthless out here.” Rosemary patted the side of the wagon. “Right, then. I’ll go total up your bill.”
    Politeness, that. Lainey watched Rosemary retreat inside the mercantile and approved of it. She’d have the bill already totted up on her tablet, of course, but it would have been bad manners indeed to stand by and watch a lady retrieve her money from its hiding place. Even if she likely already knew where that’d be after packing the sturdy farm wagon with everything from seeds to vegetable growth supplements to pitchforks and a tin washtub big enough for Lainey to stretch out in.
    Homesteading on a new frontier or not, Lainey was stubborn enough and fond enough of her few creature comforts that she’d no plans to give up any time soon.
    Though Lainey liked Rosemary just fine, she was glad enough to have the peace and quiet back to herself for a moment. She extended her arms wide, as if she’d embrace the heat from the sun, and let the golden light wash down over her, better than rain.
    A slight scuffing sound broke the silence that’d fallen. Not much of a noise, but Lainey’s ears were sharp and some training lasted throughout a lifetime. She could tell even without looking that whoever had come visiting wasn’t Rosemary, nor any of the other women settlers she had a nodding acquaintance with.
    No, this was a Man. Lainey could smell the musk, wilder than most of the polished rich boys she’d dealt with once as mistress and madam in turn, before selling off all that hubris and heading out here to make her way, by her choice.
    Not just a man, Lainey’s senses told her. A strong man, one who walked with the confidence of a fellow who had no fear of anything, but who stopped far enough away to show her he meant no harm. And -- she cocked her head,