Sofia's Lobo: Chapter 1
"Now there's a pair of panties I recognize."
Sofia Tijerina looked up from the menu at the sound of that familiar voice. When she recognized the gorgeous man standing by her table, her heart began to pound fiercely.
Antonio Valdes.
It had been six years since she'd seen him last.
Glancing down, she saw that the short skirt of her summer dress was semi-tucked into the side of her pink panties. Her face warmed up fast. Shit. She'd just returned from the bathroom on the other side of the bar. Frantically, she yanked the hem of her skirt out of her underwear and took a deep breath. Maybe she could salvage a little dignity despite the fact that she'd just shown off her underwear to her former lover and most of the other patrons of Rio's.
"Antonio." Sofia grinned at him, hoping she wasn't staring at him like a gaping idiot. Ay! Dios Mios. He still looks so damned good. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that she wouldn't see him on this trip to Mexico, and that it didn't matter, deep down she hoped she would catch at least a glimpse of him.
"It's been a while. I doubt you recognize these panties, Antonio."
"Is that an invitation?"
"Not exactly," she fought to keep her voice calm.
A corner of his mouth curved up in a very confident little smile.
"Too bad."
He looked like a vision from a sexy dream, standing there gazing at her through the haze of cigarette smoke that filled the crowded room. His dark hair was still long, pulled back from the hard lines of his face and tied at the back of his neck. She'd always loved the dark, silky locks of his hair felt on her skin and in her hands. And how could she have forgotten how incredibly sexy his mouth was with that full lower lip? Now that she saw him again, she remembered perfectly what those firm lips could do to her and how good they could feel.
Just seeing Antonio again and thinking about the steamy weeks they'd spent together six years ago had her body humming with excitement. She remembered Antonio as a man who knew how to push every sexual boundary. He'd known how to set the wildness in her free. That combined with the fact that he'd been a very attentive lover who knew how to make her feel that she was the center of his universe had made their parting hard for her. He'd known how to make her blood boil with heat and desire, how to melt her heart with a single glance. She hadn't found a man since him who was anything like him.
Okay, focus. That was then and this is now. You have to focus on the present.
Well, the man still knew how to dress. Everything from his fine silver shirt and charcoal satin tie to his crisply pressed slacks screamed expensive and showed off his long, powerful body to perfection.
Sofia had no problem whatsoever recalling how that body felt beneath her hands, inside her...
Get a grip, chica.
Antonio slid onto the seat across from her in the small booth. The flame of the single candle on the table made his eyes gleam like obsidian. His gaze moved over her face and down her body. Oh, how easily he could get her going, even after all this time. Even though they'd parted as they had with him being a secretive asshole and her playing the martyr card.
Sofia had left him and she still felt that she'd been right in doing so. Still, she'd thought of him often, wondering what things would have been like had she stayed.
"How are you, Sofia?" He lowered his voice. "You're still as beautiful as ever."
Don't think about the sex. Forget the fact that you were once in love with this guy. You're here on business not to stir up old flames.
"I'm doing well."
"You must be. I see the commercials for your show all the time. When I actually have time to watch television that is."
"Really?" So he'd seen the promos for This Old Haunted House? It was all she could do not to beam all over herself at that thought. "You've watched the show?"
Antonio grinned then, a beautiful flash of white teeth. And oh didn't that smile do wicked things to her insides?
"Several times."
Sofia had often wondered if Antonio ever watched the show she hosted about real life supernatural events. Knowing that he hadn't cared for reality shows during the time they were together, she'd always assumed he hadn't. Yet he had watched her show and that sent her thoughts in dangerous directions, intensifying her awareness of him. Like her body needed to be more aware of him.
"I've got to ask you something." Antonio's eyes locked with hers. "Is all of that ... real? The ghosts and haunted houses? Or is it just bullshit?"
Sofia got that question a lot.
"It's real."
"You've really seen and heard the things you talk about in your show?"
Sofia nodded, smiling at him. It was easy for her to smile about it now. Some of it had scared the shit out of her at the time.
"Are you afraid when you encounter those spirits?"
"Sure I am. But if I can survive time with you, there's not much left that can scare me."
The deep sound of Antonio's chuckle had her heart squeezing in her chest. Damn, she'd missed the way his smiles and laughter brushed her with warmth. She just hadn't realized it until now.
"Is that why you're back in Mexico now?" His expression slowly sobered. "For your show?"
"It is," she told him. "We arrived in Juarez this morning."
"You're here because of La Llorona, aren't you?"
"Yes." The story of crying woman of the Rio Grande was exactly why the production team was there.
The story of this particular ghost was sad and recent, a pathetically exciting prospect for someone in her line of work. There'd been many versions of La Llorona told over the years in her native Mexico and parts of Texas. Each tale of "the crying woman" involved a lady or girl scorned by a man. She usually had children, either by the man responsible for her heartbreak or from another father. In most every tale, the woman vented her frustration and anger at the rejection by killing her children. When she realized what she'd done to her children and was too late to save them, the woman would then kill herself only to become an apparition doomed to endlessly search for her lost little ones.
This particular story had made headlines in the states when it happened six years before. A woman from the slums of Juarez, a single mother named Maria Suareza, had murdered her three children one August night and thrown their bodies into the Rio Grande. Supposedly she'd done it because she'd believed her wealthy, married lover would leave his wife for her if she had no children. When she told him what she'd done, he'd rejected her immediately. The woman then despaired and threw herself into the river where she drowned.
Witnesses claimed one year later, and on the same night each year since then, to have seen the woman's ghost walking along the bridge where the unspeakable acts had taken place. Many speculated that she was looking in vain for her lost children. Some speculated that it wasn't Maria Suareza at all.
Sofia was here to find out exactly who the apparition was and to capture it on film if at all possible. At the very least she hoped to get enough to make into an episode of her show.
"La Llorona is why we're here."
All traces of the seductive smile had left his face now. It was like the warm summer sun withdrawing to hide behind the clouds. It left her feeling a little cold.
His reaction also had her curiosity piqued. He'd put together why she was here awfully fast.
"Do you know anything about the case?" she had to ask.
"Probably not as much as you do."
Something about the way his jaw tightened as he said that gave her reason to believe he knew more about it than he was letting on.
"Then why do you look as if you lost your happy thoughts?" Sofia tried to pull off a teasing tone but didn't quite make it.
"I guess I'm arrogant enough to hope that you'd come back for me."
He was clever in grabbing the opportunity to change the subject. And there was still something he wasn't telling her. She could feel it.
Yet, the way he said it, with pure desire lighting up those dark eyes, had her thighs clenching and her juices wetting the same pink panties she'd flashed him.
"What makes you think it would work out this time, Antonio?"
The hand that he'd casually placed before him on the table slowly curled into a fist.
"I have to know something." The intensity of his gaze captured her complete attention. "Did you leave me because of what I am?"
He didn't say it and neither did she. Not in a public place.
Hombre lobo. Werewolf.
"No, I never had a problem with that."
Problem? No. Had she been consumed by lust and excitement every time she'd been near him because of the sheer power of him and the danger he posed? Absolutely. She'd always believed it was the beast inside him that had helped push her to heights of screaming pleasure that she'd never experienced before him and hadn't reached since they'd parted.
But Sofia had never felt threatened by any of it. Ironically, she had him to thank for her success in television. Until her affair with him, she hadn't believed in anything paranormal or other worldly. Her time with Antonio had expanded her awareness quite a bit. The idea of auditioning for a reality show about haunted houses had seemed intriguing to her when she wouldn't have tried for it before she knew him. She'd have written it off as so much nonsense.
"Then why?" his voice was tight. "Why did you leave me?"
"Because of all of your secrets," Sofia explained, the old emotions welling up inside. "There were so many things about you I didn't know. So many things about your life were hidden from me. In the end, I just couldn't take it. It was like fucking a married man. I was jealous, resentful even."
Those incredible dark eyes narrowed on her.
"I told you how things had to be from the very start, Sofia."
She couldn't argue that point.
"I was honest with you. I was upfront. Yet you, on the other hand, just disappeared one morning. No word, no explanation. You should have told me something, Sofia."
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she knew all about what it was like to awaken and find your lover inexplicably gone. How many times had he done that to her? Too many to count or remember. The only explanation he could offer each time was that it had been necessary because of the part of his life he couldn't tell her about. The werewolf part.
He always came back to her though and she never once sensed that he'd been unfaithful to her. Not when his attention to her bordered on obsessive when he was actually with her.
"Maybe I should have tried to explain, Antonio." She'd give him that. "But what would it have changed? Nothing."
Jerking the menu out of her hands and flinging it to the side, Antonio captured her hands in his. Sofia trembled in his grasp, she couldn't help it. Just that simple touch ensnared all of her senses, making her body storm to life in a carnal way.
"What if I told you that everything would be different now?" His fingers caressed her hands with butterfly strokes causing the heat pooling low in her belly to build. "No secrets."
"Right." Sofia shook her head at him even as her traitorous mind started plotting out how it would work. It didn't help that her body was fast becoming one big quivering mass of want.
No, she couldn't hear this. She wouldn't take his words to heart.
"Antonio, my life is totally different now. I've come a long way from the girl who was the weekend anchor of the local news. I have a very successful show and it's important to me. Why should I give all that up just because you say things will be different now?"
"Why would you have to give it up?"
Don't do this to me. Don't give me options. Do you have any idea of how close I am to just straddling you here in this booth?
After all, most everyone had already seen her panties.
"Well, I'm hardly ever home for one thing. I travel extensively as you know since you've watched the show."
Antonio nodded. "And?"
"And? A relationship where I'm home two days out of the month at the most?"
He cocked a sable brow at her.
"It's always like that?"
"Not always but often enough."
"What else?"
Shit. He was dead serious about this.
"What about the fact that I'm the host of a ghost hunting, paranormal seeking television show? What happens when they find out that my significant other would make a great special on lycanthropy?"
Antonio smirked at her.
"Maybe it would boost your ratings."
"Shut up." Sofia would not lose control here. She had a major story to grab. Under no circumstance would she allow Antonio distract her from this. "It's not going to happen so stop."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want this."
"Yes, you do."
Damn him. She did still want him. But she'd be damned if she'd tell him that.
"I can't."
"Can't or won't?"
"Both."
Lifting one of her hands in his, he brought the tender flesh of her inner wrist up to his warm lips. That alone almost brought her out of her seat. When his tongue snaked out to tantalize her skin with slow, wet lashes, she thought her control, which was tentative at best right now, would snap.
"Give me one night then." His dark eyes locked with hers, bright with the same desire that raced through her veins. "Just one more night with you."
No. No. No.
Sofia shook her head. She wanted to. She wanted to feel that teasing tongue on her nipples, on her clit. He was one man who truly understood what a tongue was for.
"Turn off your mind, Sofia. Forget the past. Give in to what your body wants. I can smell your excitement through those little pink panties and I want to taste it."
The inner walls of her cunt quivered at that thought.
What harm would one night with an old lover do?
You might not have the strength or will to leave him this time. That's what.
"Say yes, Sofia."
More wet, lazy circles traced over her skin with maddening slowness. The walls of her pussy clenched hard in need and her heart was beating so loudly now he could probably hear it above the din of the crowded bar.
Her body warred with her mind. It was a short battle and her body easily won.
"One night. Yes."
)
After a six-year absence, Sofia Tijerina has returned to her native Juarez, Mexico, with the crew for her reality show This Old Haunted House. Her mission? To film the ghost of La Llorana, a woman who is said to have murdered her children to please her lover's demands, and then to have taken her own life in despair. La Llorana reappears every year on the anniversary of her death, and Sofia knows what a ratings boost she would get from capturing footage of this annual haunting. But La Llorana isn't the only specter in Juaraz that can haunt Sofia. Antonio Valdes, the sexy werewolf lover she left six years ago, taught her about the truth that lies behind paranormal stories. In a way, he inspired her career as a TV ghost hunter. And now he's a terrible distraction and a temptation she can't resist. When Sofia begins to have visions of the female ghost, she realizes that Antonio is tied to the mystery of the spirit's fate. Will the secrets he kept from Sofia all those years ago resurface to tear them apart once again?
