Bound Hearts 01-12

by Lora Leigh

  His gaze flickered with agony then. "Damn you, Jaci. You're just a kid. You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

  "And you're just my friend," she whispered. "Who's going to run those bigger boys off when they bother me, if you don't wait for me? If you leave, I won't have my dark knight anymore."

  She tried to smile, but she wanted to cry.

  He shook his head and stared out the windshield again.

  "Dark knights are bad news," he finally muttered. "Dumb little fairy tales. You'd do better to look for a white knight."

  "They're boring." She tried to smile, but his face was so still, so grief-stricken, she couldn't find it in her to make her lips curve.

  "They're safe." His voice echoed with an aloneness that suddenly frightened her. Frightened her, not of him, but for him.

  "You're going to leave, aren't you?" A tear fell from her eyes. "And I'll never see you again."

  She didn't know why it was so important that Cam not leave. Shoot, he could do better anywhere than he could in this dusty little county they lived in. But she didn't want to lose him. Not yet.

  "Maybe." He finally cleared his throat. "Maybe I'll just leave for a little while."

  His voice was faint, aching with pain. She wanted so bad to ease that pain, and she didn't know how.

  "I'm your friend, Cam," she told him fiercely. "I'll always wait for you to come back. I'm not like Laida Jones, always wanting to hang on you and run your friends off. I want you to have lots of friends. And I'll always be here when you come back."

  He turned and looked at her again, those eyes piercing inside her.

  "What do you want from me, little Jaci Wright?" His voice was hard, like her daddy's got when she said something he didn't approve of.

  Her hand tightened on his wrist then pulled away as she stared back at him in confusion.

  "I don't want anything from you, Cam. I just want to see you smile. And I don't want you to go away."

  "Why?" his voice was ragged. "Why does it matter?"

  "Because you're my friend, and because I love you. I love you better than anything, Cameron Falladay. I love you enough to know that if you left, one of these days I would find you. And when I do, I'll show you what being a friend really means."

  And he was her friend. A friend she never wanted to lose.

  He blinked back at her and she realized how fierce she sounded. Like her mom sounded when she was telling her daddy how much she loved him. Sometimes, Jaci heard them talking at night when she shouldn't. And her mom's voice sounded just like that.

  Cam shook his head then. "You're dangerous." He sighed.

  Her eyes widened. "Shoot, Cam, then we're best friends. 'Cause that's what Daddy says about you."

  Image

  Cam watched as Jaci Wright rode her horse back toward home, and he breathed out roughly. The fingers of his left hand were still clenched around the pistol, the single bullet lodged inside just waiting to be released.

  He lifted it and stared at it. It was his father's service weapon. The military pistol he had used before his death.

  One bullet. But he'd only need one.

  He stared back to where Jaci had ridden off. Dumb-ass kid. She was wilder than the wind. Her father didn't have a hope in hell of keeping up with her and keeping her out of trouble.

  Somehow—he hadn't figured out how—it had fallen to him to keep the molesting bastards in town away from her. The boys that were too old for her, and sure as hell old enough to know better than to fool with a baby. But she was right. Who would run them off if he left?

  He laid the pistol on the dash and capped the whisky.

  If he was too fucking weak to take the easy way out, then that left the hard way. Son of a bitch. The hard way sucked, too.

  Eight Years Later

  It was the bad boy party of the year, held outside the small Oklahoma town Jaci Wright had been raised in. The music was a hard, throbbing pulse through the night air. A bonfire burned in the center of the clearing, huge speakers were set up in the back of a pickup, the rocking music pounding through them as the beer and moonshine flowed freely.

  Bodies danced in abandon, whoops and yells could be heard through the clearing as the scent of burning wood filled her nostrils.

  It was her first year attending, not that she hadn't tried to slip in over the years. Unfortunately, Cameron was usually here, and he never failed to pull her out within the first few minutes. Cameron might well be here now, but his excuse for pulling her out no longer applied.

  She leaned against the bed of one of the pickups, her beer in hand, and watched the antics of the partygoers. The first faint chill of fall was in the air, the university would be beginning its first semester next week, and the yearly party to celebrate the end of summer was under way with all the excitement and desperate exuberance of the crowd and the vacation that was soon to end. Many of those here had been attending for years and no one wanted to miss out on it.

  She let her gaze rove over the crowd once again, searching for the tall, dangerous form of her tormentor.

  Cameron had been pulling her out of this party since she was sixteen, when she'd tried to attend for the first time. He was always here.

  In the center of the clearing bodies gyrated, male and female, dancing with abandon. She wondered if Cameron danced when he was here. With his tall, hard-muscled body, the graceful way he moved, he would be a sexual fantasy come true out there. But she doubted he did. Cameron wasn't the type of man to shake his booty for the crowd.

  She smiled as she lifted her beer to her lips, intent on taking the first drink of the cold, bitter liquid. She had been putting it off as long as she could.

  As it touched her lips, a hard, well-tanned hand came from behind her, gripped the bottle, and held it still. She could barely taste it against her lips, barely felt the icy sensation of liquid. But behind her, the heat of the man seared her back.

  "Your father would have a cow if he saw you here."

  Trepidation surged in her stomach at the sound of the dark voice in her ear, the feel of a broad palm covering her hip, and the sensation of being surrounded with heat.

  He pulled the bottle from her hand and passed it to another woman passing by them. The blonde flashed him a smile and a wink as she took it and continued on with her companion.

  "That was just rude," she told him.

  She didn't turn; she couldn't force herself to turn. For the first time in all the years she had been teasing and tempting Cameron Falladay, he was finally touching her.

  His chest pressed against her shoulders, his hand gripped her hip, his arm rested on the side of the truck beside her. She felt surrounded by him. Heated by him. She felt sinfully aware of the hard press of his hips against her lower back and the erection beneath his jeans.

  "That was common sense." He nipped her ear and she felt her pulse ignite with a heat that burned across her nerve endings. "You shouldn't be here."

  "I'm legal," she reminded him, suddenly feeling more feminine than she had in her life.

  "By all of three months?" The rasp of his rough cheek against her ear nearly had her coming undone.

  She was breathing hard and fast, and she knew it. She couldn't stop it. Her heart was racing in her chest, her thighs felt week, her clit was swollen, her nipples hard. She could feel every inch of her body readying itself for him.

  "Three months, three years." She shrugged with an attempt at a laugh. "Does it matter?"

  As she spoke, his arm lifted as though in a signal. Within seconds the pulsing, hard drive of the music eased away to be replaced by a slower, softer tune.

  It was late, it was normal. The music turned sexier, pounding with sex and excitement rather than anticipation.

  "Dance with me."

  Jaci stiffened in shock as Cam's hand tightened at her hip and he drew her back toward the shadows at the front of the truck, which had been backed toward the circle of partygoers.


  She turned in his arms, hands pressing against the dark T-shirt as he stared down at her, his broad chest sheltering her, warming her as his arms moved around her.

  "Cam." Wonder filled her voice. She had been dying for this for too many years. To be held against his large body, his arms around her.

  She felt the rasp of his cheek against the top of her head, the sliding of his pants against her bare thighs beneath the short hem of her skirt.

  He wasn't wearing jeans. He was wearing the camouflage pants he usually wore when leaving for or returning from duty. How long had he been home? It couldn't have been for long. Had he come straight here for her? Just for her?

  "You shouldn't be here, sweetheart." His hands slid over her back. Up. Down. Then, his hand slid beneath the bottom of her shirt and touched her bare flesh.

  Oh God. His hands were broad and calloused, warm, impossibly arousing. She could feel the shudders working up her spine from his touch, tearing at the control she had promised herself she would have around him.

  At twenty-six, Cam was a world ahead of her in experience. A warrior, a conqueror. It was in his dark face, in those light green eyes.

  "Where should I be?" She lifted her head to him, he with his gaze imprisoning hers as he stared down at her. He swayed to the music with her, rubbed against her.

  "Safe," he answered.

  "At home, playing with my dolls?" she suggested sweetly. "Those days are long gone, Cam."

  His expression was hungry. She teased him, though she knew better. She tilted her hips toward him, then gasped in shock as his hands slid to her rear, clenched the rounded flesh and jerked her to him.

  "Cam?" Her nails dug into his shoulders as the hard wedge of his erection pressed tight against the sensitive flesh between her thighs.

  "You can go home with me, or I can take you back to your parents'," he rasped. "Which one?"

  Her lips parted as she fought to breathe, to make sense of this abrupt change in the man she had been flirting with and teasing for so many years.

  "The party—"

  "You're not staying here." He backed her against the front of the truck, lifting her until he was wedged fully against her, his hands sliding beneath the skirt to the bare flesh revealed by the thong she wore.

  No, she wasn't staying here. She stared into his eyes, instinct clashing with feminine need and fear, until she fought to breathe through the sensations racing through her.

  The party was a catalyst, nothing more. It always had been—since that first party, when she was sixteen.

  He was the dark visage that moved from the shadows, caught her wrist, and dragged her from the date she had arrived with, and had made certain she never stayed.

  He had taken her home that night. Tonight, he would take her to his home. Since she was thirteen and found him in that truck at the back of her father's land, Cam had been her protector in ways he had never been before.

  He pulled her to his pickup, unlocked the passenger door, and lifted her to the seat. Before she could turn forward, one hand slid into her hair, the other clamped to her hip, and he was staring at her. His gaze bored into hers, the tension building until Jaci felt as though it would eat her alive.

  "My house or your parents'?" his voice was hard, demanding.

  There was no question of which.

  "Yours." She had waited too long, fantasized for too many years.

  No sooner had the words left her than his lips covered hers. Possessive, demanding. He made no concessions, no apologies. His tongue stroked into her mouth, nudged against hers and in those seconds she learned more about a kiss than she had learned in her entire life.

  She learned a kiss could burn from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. That it could slam into her womb, convulse it and release inside her a hunger for more that she didn't know she was capable of.

  Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her head tilted to his, mewling cries leaving her lips as he nipped at them, sucked them, then pressed against them once again.

  He kissed her like he was dying for her taste and hers alone. He kissed her with an experience, a knowledge worlds away from hers.

  When he pulled back, she stared up at him, dazed and uncertain and wanting so much more.

  "You know what coming home with me means?" he asked her then. "Everything it means?"

  She nodded. Oh yes, she knew what it would mean. She wouldn't be tossing alone in her own bed. She would be in his bed, beneath his hard body.

  "Everything, Jaci?" His fingers tightened in her hair as he jerked her closer, his thighs spreading hers, her skirt riding up until the hard proof of his arousal pressed dead center between her thighs.

  "Everything," she gasped.

  He could have her here, right here in the front seat of his pickup, if that was what he wanted. Whatever he wanted. She was dying for more, primed for it.

  "You shouldn't have come here tonight." His fingers caressed her cheek, his expression darkening. "Any night but tonight."

  "But I knew you would be here tonight," she answered. "I came for you, Cam. I always come for you."

  He grimaced, a hard flex of his expression as his hands slid to her thighs, curved on the bare flesh and his hips pressed harder against her.

  Jaci felt her lashes droop, sexual weakness filling her, pumping through her. A drugged awareness of the fact that he was more man than she could handle, but the only man she wanted.

  "Get in there before I end up fucking you here." He jerked back, slid her around on the leather seat and slammed the door.

  He didn't drive sedately back to the house he shared with his brother on the other side of town. He took the back roads with a speed that should have been reckless, but instead felt controlled.

  He handled the vehicle the same way he had handled her earlier. With confidence and determination, he drove the truck into the twocar garage where he drew it to a stop and cut the motor.

  He wasn't giving her a chance to change her mind. He turned, opened his door, and stepped out before reaching back for her. Lifting her against his hard body, her toes barely touching the floor, his lips stole her kiss, and stole her senses.

  His lips devoured hers, his tongue slid past them, licked against her tongue and danced over it as she strained to get closer. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she held on tight, lost in a sea of such incredible sensations that she never wanted to emerge from it.

  Her senses were tossed amid the lust burning out of control between the two of them, but there was more, she thought. There was a lifetime of waiting, of knowing this was coming. Years of saving herself for this one night, for this one man.

  One arm remained around her back while the other gripped the side of her rear, holding her against him as he walked, maybe stumbled a bit to the door that led into the house. Her eyes were closed and desperate mewls of pleasure were echoing from her throat.

  His hand clenched on her butt as he braced her against a wall. She didn't even know which room they had stepped into.

  "Take this off." He pulled the shirt over her head, disposed of it, tossed it behind him, and a second later he was laying her back on a wide, leather couch as he knelt on the floor beside her.

  She wasn't wearing a bra. She had deliberately not worn a bra, and now, as Cam stared down at her, as those light, bright-green eyes narrowed on the swollen, hard-tipped mounds of her breasts, she was fiercely glad she hadn't.

  Her nipples ached. They hurt with the need for his touch, the stroke of his tongue, his lips.

  "You're beautiful." He said it so simply, his voice so husky and rasping with hunger that she felt her lower stomach tighten violently in reaction.

  "I'll never get enough of you." One broad hand cupped a breast. "Ever."

  Then his lips were covering her nipple, sucking it deep inside his mouth, as her back arched and a cry fell from her lips.

  She was only barely aware of his other hand pushing at the elas
tic band of her short skirt, pushing it over her hips. The black skirt was amazingly daring, the thong beneath it so brief that she had nearly not worn it.

  But this was Cam. There was no shame with Cam.

  She writhed beneath his mouth, his tongue flickering over her nipple, flaying it with heat as she kicked the skirt from her ankles and his large hand pressed between her thighs.

  His fingers pushed under her panties, found her slick and wet, as acry ripped past her lips and her fingers tightened in his hair.

  The tip of one finger rubbed at the entrance to her body, drawing more of the silky wetness from her.

  Jaci felt as though she were burning from the inside out, lost in a vortex and fighting to find her way.

  "Hold on to me, baby," he whispered, as though he knew, understood. "Just hold on to me. It's all okay."

  But it wasn't okay. She had waited too long, needed too much.

  Her hands tore at his shirt until he jerked it from his shoulders with one hand. The fingers of the other continued to stroke, to massage the swollen folds of her pussy.

  Her hands pushed down on his chest as she fought to breathe, her fingers fumbling with his belt, then the zipper of his pants.

  A minute later, the hard, impressive length of his erection was free.

  He knelt beside the couch, his fingers doing erotic, wicked things between her thighs, and all she could do was stare at the hard, swollen head of his cock.

  It was dark, throbbing, the heavily veined shaft twitching under her fingers as she curled them around it.

  Not that they could meet. There was a lot of flesh there.

  "Jaci," he growled her name—a rough, thick sound—as she lifted her head and placed a kiss at his thigh.

  "I've dreamed of this." And she had. Endless nights of dreams.

  "All of it, Jaci?" he asked her then. "Everything?"

  "Everything." She lifted her head and licked over the engorged cock head, the taste of stormy male and dark lust meeting her tongue as she moaned at the knowledge that he wanted her. Cam wanted her.

  "Like this." His hand caught in her hair, held her head still, then his hips pressed the thick length closer.