Hawk and the Cougar by Tarah Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

assigned her senior classes.”
    Liz stared. “But she’s only an undergrad.”
    “An immensely talented undergrad who deserves as much help as she can get.”
    “You could still change your mind.”
    His brows rose. “If you piss me off?”
    “Wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened.”
    “It would be a first for me. Not to mention, I’m not stupid enough to let a student’s mother get between me and some great funding.”
    Liz blinked. “She’ll garner that much funding for you?”
    Hawk shrugged. “She’s a hot commodity. I’m simply a smart enough businessman to have tied up the deal before someone else did—and I have no intentions of giving her up, no matter how hard you try to talk me out of it. Though I won’t stop you from plying me with your womanly wiles in order to try.”
    “Talk you out of it? I… I don’t know how to thank you.”
    “I didn’t do it for you, Liz—much as I’d like to take the credit.”
    “I know,” she swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat, “which only makes it all the more amazing. You did it because you’re a nice person.”
    “Mostly a good businessman,” he said.
    She touched his cheek. “No. A nice person.”
    “Careful, Liz.”
    A quiver rocked her stomach. The husky note in his voice would do her in. “You were right,” she said.
    “What?”
    “I have lousy timing.” Not to mention mush for a brain.
    He laughed and pulled her close. “Yeah, but my timing’s great.”
    Liz thought about his great timing that morning when he’d had his mouth on her pussy, and her pulse skipped a beat—then faltered.
    “Oh, my God.” She buried her head in his chest.
    “What’s wrong?” he demanded.
    “They were watching us when—” She groaned.
    “They—” He chuckled, then gave her a reassuring hug. “It’s more likely Reid’s men came later.”
    “You can’t know that.”
    “Any more than you can know they were watching. And, even if they were, the only thing they saw was us kissing.”
    “And you on your knees when you—” Her cheeks heated, despite knowing he couldn’t see her face.
    “When I what?”
    His deep voice reverberated through her. “You know what you did.” She winced at the squeak in her voice.
    “I can’t wait to do it again.”
    Liz jumped at the feel of lazy circles travelling along her arm.
    “You want me to fuck you that way again,” he said. “No woman reacts the way you did and doesn’t want to have that done to her again”—he brought his mouth close to her ear and added—“and again.”
    Liz had thought that very thing, and her clit ached painfully at the idea.
    “Last night, you said Vance Reid wanted you to declare a dig out in Mesa to be Navajo. Why does he care?”
    The lazy circles stopped. “The dig crosses onto property he’s building on,” Hawk said. “By all indications, the site is Paleo-Indian and could predate anything we’ve found so far.”
    She grunted. “Pinning down evidence of Paleo-Indians is like hunting ghosts in a fog.”
    “You sure you’re not an archaeologist?” Hawk asked, admiration obvious in his voice.
    She laughed. “Em was eight when she decided she wanted to be an archaeologist. Once she’d exhausted the library, she made me buy every book on Native American history she could find.”
    Liz settled her cheek more comfortably against his chest and stared through the window at the moon that rose against a darkening sky. “So, Reid isn’t willing to wait the years it will take to determine the site isn’t Paleo-Indian.”
    “Hey,” Hawk said.
    She giggled, then sobered at remembering the SUV that had nearly run her down—then tried to run them down in Hawk’s truck. “You said they would blink first.”
    He squeezed her arm. “I was wrong.”
    Warmth flowed like liquid silver up her arm from where he touched her.
    “Reid isn’t chancing that we’ll beat him,” Hawk said. “And I do plan to beat him. Did plan to beat