Wild Ones: Prowl by Zoey Daniels Page B

glances. They didn’t bother hiding their amused expressions. Half little boy, half very grown man, all playful and enjoying themselves in a way that drew equal pleasure out of anyone they wanted to draw into their games.
    They liked her all the better for not giving in easy. Lainey liked this unlikely pair all the more for giving her something to pique her mind as well as moisten her thighs.
    “Tonight,” Asher said. He pressed his finger to his lips and winked at her.
    Lainey would have said more to him, or maybe lifted her hat to them as they went wherever they planned to go, but at that moment her ears pricked to the sound of Rosemary emerging from the mercantile with a bill of sale in hand.
    She glanced back a second later, wondering what Rosemary would make of them. Turned out she didn’t need to. Whoever those men had been, they were gone as if they’d never been there at all.
    Lainey settled the cowboy hat, already nicely worn in, atop her head. The brim shaded her eyes and hid her expression, all the better to let her consider this new set of circumstances in as much privacy as could be had.
    There were other old wives’ tales she’d heard before boarding the ship for Leman. One of them -- the first of them -- she’d heard from an old client who’d come back from less than a year here pale and shaken, half the man he’d been. Not that he’d been too much of a man to start with, though he’d had kingly opinions of himself.
    Not after he got back from Leman, he didn’t. Lainey could see him in her boudoir now, thin as a rail and tense with nerves and barely restrained anger. “That place ain’t natural,” he’d insisted. “Not fit for anyone except fools.”
    She’d knelt by his feet, as the job demanded; besides, he was paying her well enough to indulge his whims. “Go on.” The sound of this world had tickled her sense of whimsy.
    “Nothing to go on about,” he’d snapped.
    Liar, liar. Lainey had known he’d gone out to Leman with a full herd of cattle and careless of the expense, still a rich man, and left it all there to come back to his home planet with barely enough credits to keep him in whiskey and women.
    “Do what you’re paid for,” he’d barked at her, still snot-nosed proud, like he hadn’t been chased off a world that was supposed to be easy pickings.
    Lainey never had cared to sit still and take what was handed to her. She raised her chin stubbornly before she did as the client commanded. “It was just the men that Leman didn’t care for? The ranchers? Women were all right?”
    “When are women all right? Weak, all of you.” He’d rubbed his face. “I don’t know, whore. I guess. Didn’t any of them see what the men saw.”
    “Which was what?”
    “Weren’t you listening? Bah. Wolves, woman. Crazy wolves that didn’t act like wolves, dogging our heels. Couldn’t rest, couldn’t work, couldn’t grow or harvest. Couldn’t go nowhere without them darting out to nip at us or howling under our windows at night.”
    Lainey hmm’d and said nothing.
    Her client hadn’t liked the turn of this conversation; stung his pride something fierce. “Why? You got a mind to go out there?”
    Lainey had shaken her head and said nothing. She’d hidden her smile, too. Bad for business.
    But inside, she’d been busy thinking…
    And she’d figured, well, we’ll see who’s weak, won’t we?
    * * *
    Lainey dusted her hands off on her hips and slipped her small pouch of gold coins from a hidden compartment in the wagon, all ready to present to Rosemary when the woman came back out. Didn’t take her long once she heard the jingle of Lainey’s cash, but she came clearing her throat in a mannerly way to make sure Lainey knew she was coming.
    A good woman. Lainey hadn’t had a friend in ages. Might be she’d come across one now. Time would tell.
    “Fifteen gold,” Rosemary told her, holding out the bill of sale. A pittance on sophisticated planets; a fortune here.
    Lainey had