Wild to the Bone by Peter Brandvold

there’s anything you know, Bear, that thing is beautiful women, nasty and otherwise.”
    Haskell grinned around the cigar and then continued to puff.
    â€œThat being said,” Pinkerton added, “and because women—good, nasty, and everywhere in between—do occasionally tend to cloud your rational thinking, I’ve decided to assign you a partner on this assignment. To, uh, help you see the finer points more clearly.”
    Bear dropped the match into an ashtray on his side of the desk, glowering. “Ah, come on, Allan, you know I don’t . . .”
    He let his voice trail off when a knock sounded on the door.
    â€œI do believe she’s here now,” Pinkerton said, rising from his chair.
    â€œShe?” Bear said.
    â€œCome in!” the elder detective called.
    When the door opened and the black-haired beauty stepped into the room, lifting her chin to reveal her radiant cobalt-blue eyes beneath the brim of her black hat, he said, “Agent Haskell, surely you remember Detective Raven York?”

7

    H askell’s heart skipped a beat as he rose from his chair and tried like hell not to blush.
    How could he have forgotten Miss York, whom he’d partnered up with on an assignment only last year in the Sawatch Range of central Colorado? Despite Pinkerton’s rules against his agents cavorting with each other, Bear and Raven had not only gotten the man who’d been trying to ignite a war between freighting companies up around the Ute Field of gold and silver mines near the mountain town of Wendigo, but they’d also cavorted to the point where they’d damned near fucked each other into early graves.
    Of course, Allan Pinkerton must never know about that aspect of Bear and Raven’s partnering. The boss detective was well aware of Bear’s predilection for breaking the rules now and then, but he had a fatherly attitude toward Miss York, who in turn respected the old man most highly. Bear knew that she would be devastated and humiliated if her esteemed employer ever learned that she’d broken any rule at all, much less the one strictly forbidding dalliances between agents.
    â€œI could never forget Agent York,” Haskell said, wincing as he stumbled over a leg of his chair.
    Miss York dropped her eyes to the chair leg in question, and Haskell thought he could see the effort she was making not to titter. She restrained herself well, however, and after shaking Allan Pinkerton’s hand, she stepped forward to extend her own toward Haskell.
    â€œAgent Haskell, how’ve you been?” she said with a cordial dip of her chin.
    â€œFine as frog hair,” Haskell said, taking his stogie in his left hand to give the girl’s a squeeze with his right. “You?”
    He looked into her eyes. She refused to meet his gaze or to offer the faintest acknowledgment of their previous relationship.
    Bear wasn’t surprised. With her clothes off, the raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty was the most unprofessional professional Bear had ever known. He could still hear her love cries raking his eardrums, feel her snatch expanding and contracting wildly around his dick as she ground her heels into his back.
    Now dressed in a pink silk blouse buttoned to her throat, a dark green traveling skirt, a wide black belt, and black boots, however, Raven was as prim and proper as the parson’s teetotaling spinster daughter.
    â€œI’m well,” Raven said, coolly turning her attention to their employer and saying, “I’m sorry if I’m late. You do park a ways out here, Mr. Pinkerton.”
    â€œA man in my position can’t be too careful, my dear Miss York,” Pinkerton said. “Bear, why don’t you give your chair to Miss York and pull another one up from the wall?”
    Haskell grabbed the back of a second visitor’s chair and pulled it up beside the one that Raven was just then sinking her pretty ass into.
    God, how