Make It Hurt (Texas Bounty)

by Jackie Ashenden

  Her chin firmed and suddenly she was the one coming toward him, getting right up in his face the way she’d been doing since yesterday. As if she wasn’t scared of him and wasn’t intimidated. It made something even hotter join his anger, adding petrol to an already blazing fire. “What do you mean I ruined your life?” she demanded. “I’m sorry you got fired, I really am, but that’s no excuse for acting like a douchebag in the bar yesterday, or for blackmailing me into bed. I was only trying to do my job, which, FYI, has nothing to do with what happened eight damn years ago.”

  She didn’t know. She really didn’t. Because if she did, surely she’d be a hell of a lot more sorry than she was now.

  Unless she really doesn’t care…

  But he didn’t want to think about that, or why he was pushing her so hard. What he wanted from her or why the past mattered so very much to him. All that seemed important now was getting some fucking satisfaction out of her.

  Smith stared into her dark eyes. “Hate to disappoint you, golden girl, but it has everything to do with what happened eight years ago.” He took another step, so they were mere inches apart. “You wanna know what happened after your daddy got me fired? He put it around that I assaulted you, that I was a rapist, that I couldn’t be trusted. I couldn’t get another job after that, not even cleaning toilets at a truck stop. No one would hire me, not one single goddamn person.”

  She blinked, golden lashes fluttering, the cotton of her tank stretching over the perfect curves of her breasts as she took a sudden, sharp breath. “What?”

  He could feel his mouth stretching in another feral grin, something inside him taking primitive pleasure in her obvious shock. “You heard me. I couldn’t get a job. So it was either start again somewhere else, or became a Ministry prospect. But you know what?” He leaned in even closer. “I couldn’t face starting over somewhere else. I wanted to be good, show your dumbshit dad I wasn’t the trailer-park-trash kid he thought I was. So I joined the army, did a couple of tours.” He let the feral grin on his face become savage. “I guess I should thank you. Fucking Afghanistan showed me there’s no such thing as good or bad, that people die the same way, angel or devil. It’s a kill-or-be-killed world out there, golden girl, you showed me that and I should have remembered. Good guys die just as easy as bad so what’s the fucking point of trying? So I came back, joined the Ministry and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  She didn’t say anything, but she’d gone very white, her eyes huge.

  A heavy, intense silence settled over the room.

  “What?” He kept his voice low and harsh. “Got nothing to say? Nothing to say at all? Guess nothing’s changed then. When push comes to shove, you’re still a fucking disappointment.”

  In some dim part of his brain, the part that wasn’t entirely made of rage, he knew he’d gone too far. And when she flinched, a thread of shame wound through him.

  But what could he say? She had disappointed him. The night they’d been discovered, she’d told him she loved him, and he’d been going to tell her the same thing. Yet he’d never gotten the chance. And when he was hauled into her father’s office to face the music the next day, he’d fully expected her to tell her father that he was a lying sack of shit. Smith hadn’t known much about love, but he’d thought that’s what people who cared about you were supposed to do. They were supposed to back you up, support you. But she hadn’t then and the fact that she was silent now felt like she was rubbing salt in the wound.

  And? This is all old ground you’re going over. What the fuck are you expecting to get out of it?

  An apology, some hot sex, and then moving right along with his goddamn life, that’s what he’d been expecting to get out of it. He just…hadn’t thought he’d feel this angry, this bitter. Even after all this time.

  Nora had turned away, looking down at the floor, her shoulders hunched, her arms crossed protectively over her chest as if his words were blows, hitting her.

  The thread of shame wound deeper and, along with it, that soft, stupid need to reach out to her, pull her into his arms and hold her. She’d always melted against him, burrowing her head against his chest as if she needed him, and he’d loved that. Loved feeling like he was her go-to guy. The guy who could give her comfort and protect her no matter what.

  But he couldn’t give in to that kind of shit. He didn’t do comfort, he didn’t do soft. And anyway, he was still too goddamn angry to go hugging anyone.

  Great. You’re all butt-hurt about it and now you’re taking it out on her. Excellent move, a-hole.

  Well, that’s what he was, wasn’t he? An asshole. He didn’t care. He’d embraced it long ago.

  “I didn’t know,” she said after a long moment. “I didn’t know Dad had…done that.”

  Her voice was small and vulnerable sounding, and for a second he regretted what he’d said. “Bullshit,” he muttered roughly, both to himself and to her. “How could you not have known?”

  She turned to look at him, her face white, eyes glittering. “Dad told me I wasn’t to contact you in any way so I didn’t. I just…put you out of my head, because that was easier.”

  Jesus. For days after he’d been fired, he’d waited in his one-room shitty apartment. For a call or a visit or any sign at all that she was thinking about him. That she was sorry. But a whole week had gone by before he finally admitted to himself that he probably wasn’t going to hear from her again. It had been such a fucking bitter moment, because as far as he was concerned, there was only one explanation for her silence: she didn’t give a shit.

  It had crossed his mind that maybe her father had forbidden her to contact him, but he’d thought that if she cared enough, she’d find a way. The fact that she hadn’t told him everything he needed to know about that.

  “So, you just put me out of your head,” he said, bitterness staining the words. “Just like that, huh?”

  Anger and something that looked suspiciously like pain glinted in her eyes. “No, actually, not ‘just like that.’ It was hard.”

  “Yeah? And you know what else was hard?” His fingers curled into fists. “Sitting in my apartment waiting around to see if you’d call, waiting for one goddamn sign you were thinking about me. That you were sorry about all the lies your bastard father said about me. But you didn’t call. I got fucking nothing from you.”

  Her face twisted and she looked away again, biting down hard on her lower lip, the way she used to do when she was concentrating or when she felt deeply about something. “He wouldn’t let me, I told you. And he would have found out if I had in any case. I couldn’t do anything, Smith. I had to…let you go.”

  For some reason, that just made him even angrier and before he was even aware of it, he’d moved over to where she stood, gripping her by her upper arms and turning her to face him. She went stiff, her body taut with resistance, but he ignored it. “You could have gotten out,” he said angrily. “You could have come to me. Jesus Christ, you knew where I lived. Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I was eighteen, asshole. Eighteen! I hadn’t even graduated from high school. Going to you would have meant giving up my whole life for…” She stopped suddenly.

  His grip tightened on her. “Go on. Say it. Giving up your whole life for a piece of trailer trash like me.”

  “No, that’s not what I was going to say.” The gold in her eyes glittered with anger. “Stop putting words in my mouth. I meant giving up my whole life for a guy I’d only known a couple of months. I never thought you were trailer trash, Smith. Not once, so I have no idea where you got that idea from.”

  Jesus, she has a point. Where did that come from?

  He had no fucking idea and he didn’t want to stand around analyzing it now. In fact, he was sick of thinking about this. Sick of the heavy mass of emotion sitting in his gut, emotion he couldn’t figure out and didn’t know what to do with.

  What was important, though, was the feel of her bare skin beneath his fingers and the delicate musky flower scent
wrapping itself around him, making him almost dizzy.

  Yeah, shit, arguing about the past was a waste of time. Talking about feelings was a waste of time. He was over it. All he wanted was her under him, that was all that mattered now.

  He tugged her toward him, pulling her up against him, watching her eyes widen as their bodies made contact, her irises receding to a thin rim of gold around the black of her pupil.

  “So that’s it?” she said breathlessly, her gaze dipping to his mouth as if she couldn’t help herself. “That’s all you want?”

  “No, of course that’s not all I want.” He let go of her arms, settled his hands on her hips, then slid them down over the curve of her butt, hauling her closer, fitting her tighter against the rapidly growing ridge of his cock. “I’m just bored of this stupid fucking conversation.”

  “You were the one who wanted to talk about it.” Her voice had gotten husky, the pallor in her cheeks fading, lost under a stain of red.

  “Yeah, and now I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” His hands tightened on the sweet, giving curves beneath his palms. The tension had gone out of her, the stiffness in her posture ebbing as she uncrossed her arms and put her palms on his chest. There was a slight resistance there, but only slight.

  “Well, amen to that,” Nora muttered with feeling. Then she slid her palms up his chest, up to his shoulders and into his hair, and she pulled his mouth down on hers.

  —

  Kissing Smith was an explosion, a burst of wild heat in her veins, igniting every cell in her body, setting the whole world on fire.

  Nora curled her fingers into the black silk of his hair and flung herself headfirst into the flames. Because this was better than anger, and certainly better than the guilt that twisted inside her like a giant snake.

  She was furious with him for that alone. Absolutely fucking furious.

  For bringing back all those old memories, all those old feelings. For confronting her with what was basically her worst nightmare.

  All these years she’d been telling herself that he was fine. That he’d probably gone off and found himself a great new job, with a great new girlfriend, getting himself the life he’d always talked about. That he’d probably forgotten about her and how she left him hanging that day in her father’s office. Which was great, because then she didn’t have to think about him, didn’t have to worry about what had happened to him. Didn’t have to let the guilt eat her alive. And if the fact that it hurt he hadn’t somehow known about her father’s manipulation and come to find her afterward, then she didn’t let it show.

  Sure, she’d loved him, but she’d been too young to throw away the life she knew for an unknown future with Smith anyway.

  Keep telling yourself that. It’s better than the alternative.

  What alternative? Telling her father to go to hell? Being kicked out of home, with no money and no qualifications, all for a man she’d only known a couple of months? Yeah, that wasn’t an alternative.

  But she hadn’t thought it would all go so horribly wrong for him, that her father would be so terribly vindictive.

  Didn’t you? Didn’t you really?

  There was a reason she didn’t want to think about the past or her role in it. It hurt too much. It was far too painful and it needed to stay in the box she’d shoved it into.

  She clung on tight to him, wanting to lose herself, heat leaping through her entire body, like she’d brushed too close to a million-volt electrical cable. Her lungs seized, every muscle taut, her skin feeling like it had been washed with boiling water.

  She trembled, honest to God trembled, part of her wanting to let go, put distance between them, pull away before he realized what he was doing to her.

  But then that large warm palm of his slid around the back of her head, holding her gently, inexorably, where she was. Keeping her lips right where they were, beneath the light pressure of his own. Then his tongue touched her, a light, insistent taste. And she couldn’t stop the helpless sound that escaped her, her mouth opening under his, allowing him to deepen the kiss.

  It happened very slowly, the sweet, liquid glide of his tongue inside her mouth, the taste of him so intensely familiar it made tears start in her eyes. Like the very first time she’d convinced him to come swimming with her, and he’d kissed her in the shallow end of the pool, hot mouth and cold skin and the bite of chlorine…

  She hadn’t had a kiss like it before and she hadn’t had one like it since.

  Another large hand slid up from her butt to the small of her back, exerting a gentle, inexorable pressure. Easing her more fully against him as he continued the slow, maddening seduction of her mouth.

  A second tremble went through her as the hard-muscled heat of his body joined hers, and she found herself tensing up in denial, in negation. Telling herself sex with him wasn’t going to be a big deal was one thing, but being faced with the actual reality of it was quite another. It had been too long and she hadn’t realized until now how much she wanted it. And if this went any further she didn’t know what would happen to her, whether she’d fall apart or scream or, worse, turn into the eighteen-year-old she’d once been, desperate for a man who was and who’d always been far too much for her to handle.

  You’re scared, just like he said.

  A burst of determination shot down her spine. No, she goddamned well wasn’t. She was tough as nails and she was going to prove it.

  So she ignored the urge that told her to push him away and protect herself however she could. She made herself stand there instead, with her fingers curled into his hair, letting his big warm hands hold her, cradling her head and resting on her back, his lips moving on hers. Letting his tongue explore the inside of her mouth as if he had all the time in the world and wasn’t in any hurry.

  He tasted good, of those long, hot summers and the dark, alcoholic bite that was all Smith. That taste had kept her coming back for more over and over again, unable to get enough. God, she’d never forgotten how intoxicating she’d found his kisses. Better than anything in her father’s liquor cabinet. Better than the chocolate brownies Mrs. Jacobs, the Sutcliffe housekeeper, used to make. Better than anything.

  Nothing had changed. It was still there, that madness. That intensity. The thing that had made her give her heart to a man who had no business taking it. A man she should have known better than to be with. But she hadn’t. She’d been eighteen and lonely, and he’d been hot and intense and so into her she hadn’t be able to help herself. She’d fallen for him in the way only a teenage girl can, with everything in her.

  And everything she’d felt was still there, hiding underneath the veneer of toughness she’d cultivated over the years. Still there in all its painful glory.

  She shuddered against him, the desperate, needy part of her she’d tried to repress all these years suddenly wanting more. Because he was deepening the kiss, his tongue sliding further into her mouth, licking a response from her and then she was kissing him back, giving him the answer he was looking for.

  She felt the pull on her scalp as his fingers curled abruptly in her hair, not so gentle now, his other hand pressing her hips more firmly against him, the long, hard ridge of his cock pushing insistently against the zipper of her jeans. Her lungs constricted as he gave a subtle roll of his hips, her zipper hitting her clit, sending a shockwave of pleasure through her.

  “S-Smith,” she whispered, her voice sounding hoarse. “You should…You sh-should…”

  His hips did another roll and another shockwave washed through her. “I should what?” God, that rough gravel-and-velvet voice…It was a caress all on its own. “Tell me what you want, golden girl. Tell me what you like, I’ll give it to you. You know I will.”

  Oh, she knew, but she wasn’t going to tell him. She’d given him an apology and she’d meant it, she really had. But the only other thing she was willing to give him that he wanted was her body.

  So she turned her head, claimed his mouth again, kissing him aggressively, ramp
ing up the urgency in both of them. The quicker they did this, the sooner it would be over. Then she could get back to her life and pretend this had never happened.

  Smith gave a low growl deep in his throat, the sound echoing through her, and the hand at the small of her back slid lower, his fingers spreading out, curving over her butt, gathering all that soft flesh of hers into his palm. He squeezed, not hard but enough that all the remaining air in her lungs expelled in a sudden rush. And he fitted her tighter against him, the firm press of his cock against her zipper insistent, the movement of his hips rubbing at her clit through the denim.

  She gasped, the sound muffled by his hungry mouth, the desperate pleasure intensifying, waves of heat rushing through her. An inexplicable fear tangled with it and she found herself pushing at him, panicking for reasons she couldn’t name.

  But he didn’t let her go, didn’t let up that exquisite movement of his hips, the gentle, relentless friction. One hand kept squeezing her butt, the other gripping tight to her hair. And he kissed her, slow and intense and hungry. Inexorable, inescapable.

  Nora shuddered, trying to push at him and yet unable to stop herself from kissing him back, from tasting him, from arching against the incredible, muscular heat of his body. She’d been wanting fast, but not this fast. She didn’t want to be standing here, on the brink of an orgasm not thirty seconds after he’d touched her. It would reveal…

  What? The truth? That you’re desperate? That no other man has been able to do this to you but him?

  No, Jesus Christ, no. That was a truth too far.

  The air rushed back into her lungs and she pushed hard against him, trying to get away, but again, he wouldn’t let her, holding her tight. Rocking against her, the hard ridge of his cock hitting her clit over and over again, making her shake uncontrollably and moan into his mouth.

  She fought the climax that began to gather at the base of her spine in a great dark wave that built and built. She tried to hold it back, to not let it break over her, crush her, wash her away, but it was impossible. It was like trying to hold back the tide. It rose inside her, unstoppable, unrelenting. Drawing sounds from her, sounds she didn’t want to make. Her fingers curled in the soft, warm cotton of his T-shirt and she squeezed her eyes shut in a desperate bid to hide as those wicked hips of his gave one last, delicious glide. And then the wave broke inside her, helpless pleasure crashing through her.