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Chapter 1

Angela Norton, international expert on folk tales, myths, and legends, slammed back another shot of tequila and bit the lime and wished she could take a bite out of Diego Calverton. She didn't even need a lick of salt to add to the flavor when she bit him. The anticipation of the taste of his blood and his scream of pain when she sank her teeth into him made her lick her lips.

Angela tasted the last of the lime juice and pulp. Then the tequila's heat hit the back of her throat and added to the anger burning in her gut.

Damn Diego and his bimbos. Ph.D. in Anthropology. Head of her department. And absolutely no brains in her head. With complete disgust at herself, Angela realized that even after three years of having sex with Diego and knowing - knowing - what the dick-head was like and what and who he liked, she still held the delusion that she was the special woman in his life.

But, there Diego was, boogying away on the dance floor with a petite, dark haired, sloe-eyed bimbo whom he'd try to pass off as yet another cousin.

Angela was damn tired of Diego and his so-called cousins. She'd seen the way he'd made a beeline to that girl when she walked into Nita and Call's wedding reception dance. Smiling at her like she was the love of his life and he hadn't seen her in years.

Damn men and the way they sniffed around those young girls.

Being over thirty, close to six feet tall, and smart sucked big time.

Angela banged the shot glass down on the bar. Too bad it wasn't Diego's skull.

"Again."

"Hey, Professor Doctor," yet another of Diego's cousins - this one male and a solid hunk like all the others - put his hand over her glass preventing the bartender from filling it, "you're drinking 100% Blue Agave, Reposado tequila. And you know the count. 'One tequila, two tequila -'"

"'Three tequila, Floor,'" Angela quoted along with him and the bartender. "Teach your grandmother. Head like a rock. Besides this isn't my fourth."

"It's her sixth," the bartender helpfully supplied. "I was going to shut her off, sir."

"Hey," Angela peered at him over her glasses. "No way. I'm not driving. I can drink. I bet I can drink any of yous, uh, yews, yourse guys under the table."

"We'll try it later." Like damn Diego, this cousin had the same smooth deep baritone voice that made her curlies wet. His, though, had the lightest hint of Hispanic accent, just musical enough to make her toes curl as if scrunching in hot, white beach sand while being plied with tall, frosty, fruity alcoholic drinks and wondering why the hell she hadn't picked a nude beach.

"Right now, let's go eat. My mamacita will want to know how you liked her ranchero beans and my uncles are proud of their fajitas. You must try them."

Feeling slightly hypnotized, okay and a lot drunk, Angela kept her hand tucked into the hunk's hand while he led her to a table.

His calluses were precisely rough enough to bring out the cave-woman in Angela, the part that said, "This man's a Man with a capital M."

Why she didn't get wet around all the available brainiacs around the universities and digs she frequented, she didn't know. She definitely had ample opportunities.

But, nooooo, she had to hang around waiting for dick-head Diego to call or come back from whatever job he was troubleshooting for his family's businesses.

She needed to do something with her life. Like move on with it.

And holding her hand, weaving through tables of people, chatting in both English and Spanish, was this gorgeous hunk. His black Armani suit had been poured on him, delineating broad shoulders, above which rose a golden brown neck that supported a head with deep brown hair with sun-highlighted red streaks.

Angela knew women who paid big bucks for hair that color.

He turned his head and smiled at her. It was the kind of smile advertisers would kill to get to use to endorse their products.

Angela knew women who would pay big bucks for that smile on that face above his naked body - if he were in the market to be a high-class call-boy-toy.

He had a smile a woman could get drunk on.

Oh, wait. She was drunk. Never mind. Angela decided she'd just smile back and pretend for a bit that he was her personal call-boy-toy. After all, what's-his-name dick-head was off in another corner of the room listening to that chicky girl yap like she was the most fascinating woman on the fucking planet.

Maybe she'd just go home with her pretend call-boy-toy. Diego - oh, yeah, that was the bastard's name. Angela managed to keep herself from spitting when his name floated into her tequila-soaked brain cells. Diego didn't have any claims on her, just like she didn't have any claims on him. She had no ring. They'd set no date. All they had was great fucks, occasionally, when their jobs gave them time to get together.

Shit, she was beginning to think rationally. She needed her own bottle of tequila.

Boy-toy - yum, yum, Angela got a quick glance at his package slightly tenting those smooth Armani pants when she sat in the chair he pulled out from a table for her. Forget boy. This definitely was Man.

The Man was talking. Angela focused for a minute, then realized he was introducing her to the four other people at the table. Names floated in one ear and out the other. Angela smiled, nodded, and reached for the tequila bottle.

So pretty with the agave plant blown inside the bottle.

The Man's hand stopped her. "Let's eat a bit first, why don't we?"

Angela puffed out her bottom lip at Mr. Man who had the audacity to laugh at her. Hell, it never worked with Diego either.

She just wasn't cute and cuddly. The pouty lip only worked for cute and cuddly chickies, like the chick who was looking at damn-his-body Diego like he was the greatest stud in the fucking world.

Crap, okay, so maybe he was. But - damn it all - he was still her stud. Isn't there a law about dancing with the one who brung ya? Or in her case, being danced with the one who brought her?

"Darlin', I'll dance with you."

Angela turned to stare at the wizened old man seated next to her. "I beg your pardon?"

"If your stud Diego is stupid enough to leave you alone, I'll dance with you."

"Wrong, viejo, you dance with anybody, it's me," an equally old woman informed him.

"My stud?" Wildly, Angela looked around the table.

"You are real purty and cuddly-lookin'. Personally, you can do that pouty lip on me and I'll be putty in your hands. Who the fu.... Ow," a young man jerked his head back from the slap across his mouth the woman next to him had landed on him.

"Don't you use words like that when there's ladies present, dirt bag. Damn it, I think your hard head made me break a nail."

"Give him the pouty lip and make him buy you a new set," the Man suggested calmly. "Drink some tea, Professor Doctor."

"Um, what is going on here?" Angela hissed at the Man and then nearly choked on the heavily sugared tea that tasted more like limeade than tea. Damn it, that young woman pouted the puffy lower lip at her date. In turn, he cooed at her fingers like they had the magic to turn his putty into rock-hard marble.

"You talk a lot," the sweet-looking, white-haired grandmotherly woman leaned around her husband to address Angela, "and loud. So far we've heard that Diego is your stud, and you're jealous of the young woman Diego 'the greatest stud in the f-ing world' is to talking to. And, hija, you have absolutely no reason to be jealous of any woman, especially not Katarina. You also said you like Esteban's package - he gets that from this old viejo, by the way. He was hung prime in his young days."

"Ewwww, abuelita!" Voices shrieked from people not only at the table, but from tables around them.

The old lady pounded her laughing husband on the back until he stopped choking.

The old man drank some water from the glass the young woman held. "What? You think you kids invented sex? Only one Virgin Birth in history and Jesus Christ ain't at this wedding. And, veija, I'm still prime hung."

"Gramps!"

"Si, si, you're hung all right. That's the problem," the old woman sighed, "you just hang there these days."

"I'll get you some male enhancement herbs, Gramps," Esteban nodded thanks at the waiter who set heaping plates in front of him and Angela.

"Come dance with me, viejo. Maybe I fix you up right. I'm all the male enhancement you need."

The old man stood and gave Angela a courtly bow. "My wife commands me. I must dance with her. If Esteban does not behave properly, you must tell me. I am his grandfather. I shall have him beaten."

"Yeah? You and what Army? Try it and I don't get you no man herbs."

It amazed Angela how quickly this sophisticated man immediately went berserk with testosterone overload and dropped to the level of a schoolyard boy's sneer at the thought of a fight, even when the challenge was from his elderly grandfather.

"Me and your father and uncles and your cousins."

Okay, so Esteban learned attitude at a young age by Gramps' example.

"Yeah," the young man rubbed ice on his cut lip. He pointed a finger at the woman next to him, "This one's got a mean right hook. She'll help take you out."

The grandfather nodded. "Yes, she learned that from her abuelita."

He turned back to Esteban. "And I have no need of man herbs. I have a wife." He helped his wife from her chair. "Time you got a good one also.

"But not this one," the old man pressed withered lips against Angela's cheek. "This one is Diego's. He is just estupido and hasn't realized it yet."

The older couple moved slowly, but gracefully onto the dance floor followed at a watchful distance by the younger couple. With all six of the other chairs at the table now empty, Angela looked down at her plate of food. Better that than looking at Esteban directly. She wondered if she could just crawl out of the dance beneath the tables.

"I apologize for embarrassing you," Angela told her fork, wishing it were the pretty bottle of tequila.

"Hey, it's okay. Rather flattering actually." The sneering schoolboy was gone and Mr. Charm was back. "You've been drinking Reposado tequila. Tequila takes people in different ways. Some fall on the floor. Some get mean. You chatter. We'll pass it off as the tequila talking."

"Thank you, Esteban." Angela picked through the food with her fork. Fajitas, ranchero beans with salt pork and celantro, Spanish rice, guacamole, chili con queso, flour tortillas. It all smelled delicious, but Angela was too busy eating crow.

She'd never be able to face Diego's family again. "Excuse me, Esteban. I need to leave."

"Steve," he said with a heartbreaking smile at odds with his grip on her shoulder keeping her from standing up. "Only my grandparents call me 'Esteban.' My parents had me baptized 'Stephen.' But the grandparents are proud of the Mexican heritage, even though their own parents were born in the U.S. They insist on calling all of us by the Spanish equivalent of our names and only spoke to us in Spanish when we were young."

"It's the best way to learn a language." Angela tried to shrug his hand off her shoulder. She didn't want to use the young woman's example of decking him, but she wanted out. Now. She'd call a taxi. If there weren't any hotel rooms left in town, she'd pay for him to take her back to Phoenix. No way in hell was she going back to Diego's house and his bed.

"Eat, Professor Doctor." Without taking his hand off her, Steve rolled a bit of fajita in a piece of flour tortilla with his other hand and held it to her mouth.

Angela bit, but missed the bastard's fingers. She had to settle for chewing the fajita and tortilla and glaring at him.

"I'm telling you, Professor Doctor -"

"Angela," she interrupted around a mouthful of savory, chewy meat.

"Angela," he repeated with an incline of his head, "come tomorrow, no one's going to remember your tequila words. Be grateful. The only time I got that drunk I ended up a daddy nine months later."

Angela relaxed fractionally, hoping to catch him off guard so she could make a dash out the door. "Must have been a sobering experience."

His white teeth gleamed in dark honey skin. Damn it. Why couldn't she blow off Diego and take this gorgeous man into her bed?

Because he didn't make her nipples hard with a glance. His scent of smoky white sage with a hint of lavender was comforting, but didn't make her panties wet like Diego's scent of soap and male musk lust.

Steve's hand on her shoulder was just damn annoying. Diego's slightest brush of his skin against hers sent ripples through her that made her blood sing and her innermost being weep for his hands, his mouth - hell - his cock between her legs.

She continued to eat the food Steve poked in her mouth and wondered where the hell Diego had taken off with the bimbo-chick. Idly, she wondered how he'd feel if she took off with Steve.

Goose for the gander. No wait, that wasn't right. She must still be a trifle drunk. Sauce for the goose? Naw, that didn't sound right either. But she sure did want to cook Diego's goose.

She glanced at her plate. Damn, had she almost finished all the food? Now that she was sobering up, she'd be able to plan on just how to get back at Diego for deserting her for some chicky girl.

She knew. First, she'd tie Diego on the bed. Naked. Then she'd slowly stroke a feather boa across him until his first cum jeweled on his tip. When he screamed for her to take him, she'd tie the boa around his cock and slide it up and down while she made herself come. He'd shoot straight into the air and beg her for more.

She glanced sideways at Steve. Odd how she hadn't noticed that bit of red on his cheeks. He should use a sun-block to keep from burning like that.

Maybe now that she had some food on her stomach, she might be able to persuade him to give her back that pretty bottle of tequila.

He looked directly into her eyes. "Not even if you tied me up with that feather boa, baby. You're chattering again."

"Shit. Shit. Shit." Angela covered her face with both hands.

"Hey, baby, it was a cool fantasy. And if I didn't think Diego would kill me, I'd go home with you tonight. Diego's a damn lucky man."

Angela slumped in the chair. "Diego's a bastard. He's been chasing after some young girl ever since she walked into the wedding reception. I don't know why I wait for him."

"Because according to my sister Nita, who heard from our cousin, who was told by her niece, who was informed by her best friend, who learned from her mother, who was informed by my own abuelita that you consider me the greatest stud in the f-ing world," Diego said smoothly.

Cocky bastard looked smug, but Angela felt her own cheeks heat with embarrassment, especially when she saw the cute, young, so very fucking young, chick holding Diego's hand.

"And this," Diego lifted the girl's hand to his heart, "is my love, the reason for joy in my life. My daughter, Katarina Irene."

eCataRomance Reviews: "Hysterical laughter is to be had while reading this extraordinary story of Aztec legends, cats and exceptional romance." Sheryl

Romance Junkies awarded 5 Ribbons: MALACHITE MEMORIES is about the sweetest revenge and making someone realize what they within their grasp could be very special." Connie Spears