Taken

by Lora Leigh

  Damn her. His body craved her like air. She was as natural to him as breathing, and he couldn’t seem to exist without finding a way to see her, to touch and hold her.

  He let his palm slide up her thigh, beneath the skirt. His fingers tucked beneath the tiny square of material that barely covered her sex to find her hot and wet, the silken folds drenched in sweet, feminine honey.

  He was so damned hungry for her it was all he could do to keep from ripping the zipper of his jeans and impaling her with the stiff flesh of his dick.

  He wanted inside her so bad he could barely think for it, barely concentrate on anything but the remembered feel of her pussy milking the cum from his dick.

  As he snarled his head jerked back, his hips grinding between her thighs as a soft, desperate little moan escaped her lips.

  “Tell me, Sheila.” He had to hear the words. “What do you want from me? Tell me, baby, and I’ll give you what we’re both dying for.”

  He left his fingers tucked between the folds of her pussy, to rub against the snug, clenched entrance in a sensual promise to fill her if she gave him what he needed.

  “Casey, just tell me.”

  He froze. Staring down at her he could see the confusion in her gaze, the desperation, and he could see how much she loved him.

  A love so strong, so deep was what he felt for her.

  No, his was stronger, deeper he decided, because he knew it for what it was, felt it for what it was, and she continued to hide from it. From him.

  His fingers eased back.

  “Casey, please,” she cried out, her voice hoarse with tears. “What do you want from me?”

  What did he want from her?

  Hell.

  “As strange as it may seem, baby, I want you to see without being shown.” He sighed as he eased her back to her feet and steadied her until she was standing on her own. “Come on, I’ll take you to your car.”

  Before he ended up fucking her against the wall.

  That was a serious danger if he didn’t get her the fuck away from him. He would end up taking her there in the shadows and he wouldn’t give a damn who caught him.

  “Wait.” The fingers of both hands wrapped around his wrist. “Were you at the house last night? Did you come to see me?”

  He could hear the need in her voice, the same desperation that he had. What the hell did she want? To ensure he made the first move?

  “No, I wasn’t.” But he knew it wouldn’t be long. He would break, and the thought of that sent a wave of anger rushing through him.

  She had to know what he felt for her. She had to have realized it. No woman could be so fuckin’ obtuse that she couldn’t see when a man was so engulfed in her that he would gladly die for her. Or worse, kill for her.

  He’d wondered several times, and prayed he was only being facetious, when he’d wondered who he had to kill to convince her he loved her?

  “Oh.” She released him slowly.

  Catching her hand, he drew her to her car.

  “Where’s your key?” He couldn’t keep the anger from his tone.

  Pushing her fingers into the side pocket of her skirt, she pulled out the small electronic key and the snick of the door locks filled the silence.

  Jerking the door open, he held it for her, watching as she moved around him to slide into the driver’s seat.

  “Why are you doing this?” she whispered as she stared back at him. “What kind of game are you playing with my heart, Casey?”

  And that only pissed him off more. If she thought he was playing a game, then it could only be because she was playing one herself. And the thought of that lit a fuse to his temper that went straight to his lusts.

  He’d find out the game she was playing.

  He hadn’t been at her home last night, but tonight? Oh baby, he promised her silently, he’d be there tonight.

  “Go home, Sheila,” he told her gently as he stepped back, gripping the edge of the door. “And think about it. I’ll give you one more chance to figure it out on your own.”

  He closed the door before she could argue and stepped back, his gaze still connected with hers, his expression harder than she might have ever seen it.

  She had him ready to explode. Not so much in anger as in pure dominant male lust. A dominance and a lust that went far beyond anything he had ever wanted to give another woman.

  He wouldn’t allow her to play games with what he knew existed between them. He’d be damned if he’d ever seen the love a woman felt for him in her eyes. But he’d seen it in Sheila’s. Just as he’d felt her pain, her longing, her fucking confusion.

  The vehicle started, and as he watched, she backed out of the parking space and turned, heading to the exit.

  He watched until her taillights faded around the curve ahead and several other vehicles pulled out behind her.

  And he promised himself, he silently swore to her, that before the night was over, she would know to the soles of her feet who the fuck she belonged to, and why she belonged to him.

  After tonight, she’d know better than to ever again ask him what game he was playing with her heart.

  chapter 11

  by all accounts and research, Sheila Rutledge was a good girl.

  Her heart had been broken once by Ross Mason, a young man who had used her to further his own ends. He had, at a very vulnerable time in her life, used her to get to her father and to gain an important government position within the financial sector.

  The knowledge of Ross Mason’s deception had caused Miss Rutledge to retreat behind a wall of frigid unconcern where men were involved. Until a man named Nick Casey had arrived in town five years before to work for Ethan Cooper at the Broken Bar.

  Gossip, it appeared, had been focused on Miss Rutledge and her bouncer since the day she had met him.

  And in the past nine or ten months, it had only become stronger.

  Since the night Miss Rutledge had left the bar with her bouncer and spent the night at his apartment.

  They were an item, despite the fact that it seemed the young miss was determined to hold on to the man whose past was shrouded in shadows.

  Strange, that Captain Rutledge seemed blissfully ignorant of the fact that Nick Casey wasn’t who he said he was.

  Of course, Rutledge himself had a rather shady past as well. A man in his fifties and he’d never risen above captain? For all his connections and political friends, his rank should have been far higher. Which meant somewhere, in some way, Rutledge had compromised his position and his values.

  Ahh, such tangled webs.

  A sigh filled the pickup. Following Miss Rutledge, knowing the task ahead, weighed heavily on the shoulders.

  It wouldn’t be easy, terrifying her, harming her. She was a gentle person, a kind person, and forcing her to pay the price for a past she had nothing to do with would be a haunting act. It would be a memory that would haunt not just the present, but the future as well.

  Hands tightened on the steering wheel. The vehicle began to accelerate. No, harming her wouldn’t be easy, but what other choice was there?

  Beau refused to make the call.

  There was no gossip that his woman was in danger, Miss Rutledge had kept her suspicions to herself. No one else knew her home had been broken into. No one knew a vehicle followed her a little closer each night.

  No one else knew about the phone message she had on her recorder.

  Beau had no idea his lover had been targeted and had not yet made that all-important phone call.

  It was time to ensure that all knew Miss Rutledge had a stalker. One willing to kill her to achieve whatever ideal she represented.

  The vehicle accelerated further, moving steadily closer to the small car ahead and the future Sheila Rutledge might well pay the ultimate price for.

  chapter 12

  sheila watched in her rearview mirror as the headlights behind her accelerated at an unusual speed. They were moving faster, coming up on her at a speed that was rarely used
on the back road that led to the exclusive estates outside Simsburg.

  The mostly retired residents didn’t drive like bats out of hell. Like the vehicle behind her and the one that had ridden her ass for the past several trips to the bar. For some reason, she never failed to miss the driver who came up on her like an Indy Car driver and, after a few seconds, zipped around her as though she weren’t even there.

  Tonight, though, it wasn’t zipping around her.

  This time, it wasn’t a car but a monster four-by-four. The powerful sedan that had come up and gone around her at such high speed was absent. The chrome grille of the pickup filled her rearview mirror, the lights almost blinding as they speared into the back window.

  And it wasn’t trying to pull around her.

  Sheila slowed down, and the truck slowed.

  She sped up, and the truck sped up.

  She didn’t take any more chances.

  With her heart in her throat, she hit the call button on the steering wheel.

  “Casey.” She had to fight to steady her tone for the voice-recognition software that powered the automatic calling feature of the Bluetooth connection.

  The sound of the phone’s ring was overly loud in the car as the truck’s motor revved behind her. And it came closer. Impossibly closer.

  A second ring as her gaze jerked back to the rearview mirror.

  “Sheila, you okay?” Casey’s voice came across the line, concern filling it.

  Yeah, that was right, she never called anyone as she drove home. It was an agreement made when she first began carrying the flash drives from the bar to her father.

  “I have a tail.” Her voice was trembling now. “A close one, Casey.”

  The sound of the truck’s powerful motor giving a hard, dark growl behind her sent fear pumping through her system.

  “Stay on the line,” he ordered. “Turk, Jake, Iron, and I are on our way. How far away are you, baby?”

  She swallowed tightly at the threatening rumble of the vehicle behind her as it advanced, slowed, then advanced on her once more.

  “I’m about fifteen minutes from home, Casey. I’m passing through Gator Bay now.”

  Gator Bay was the locals’ nickname for the road she was on because of the increasing number of alligators seen on the road and along the edges of the swampy marsh further out.

  “We’re coming after you, sweetheart—”

  At that second, the sound of the engine behind her revving and the harsh, shocking impact of the truck’s grille on her bumper caused a shocked scream to escape her lips.

  Her foot hit the gas harder as she fought to control the little car and edge away from the truck as it nearly rammed her again.

  Casey barked out her name, the sound of loud voices and harsh orders being called out on his side of the connection echoing around her.

  “Oh my God, Casey, he just hit me,” she cried out as she clenched the steering wheel and fought to get more speed out of the car. “I can’t outrun him, Casey. Oh God, I can’t outrun him.”

  She was trying, but the car wasn’t built for speed. They were doing seventy down the little country road and Sheila could feel the tires’ grip on the road lessening with each curve she took at that speed. They threatened to skid, to throw her sideways; at one point, the back end almost fishtailed as she hit a particularly tight curve.

  A curse exploded from her lips as the headlights behind her gained on her once again. A second later the impact of the truck’s grille on her already abused bumper had her cheek hitting the steering wheel as she nearly lost control once again.

  Sheila screamed as the car was thrown forward, the tires screaming as she fought to control the vehicle, to employ the driving lessons Casey had given her when she had first taken the job as courier from the bar to her father’s office.

  “Casey!” she cried out as the truck suddenly rammed the back of the car again. “Casey, I can’t stay ahead of him!” she screamed.

  “By God you will!” he screamed back at her. “I didn’t spend those months teaching you to drive to let some asshole defeat you.”

  Fear was a cold, hard lump in her throat as she pressed her foot harder to the gas, barely managing to keep from being rammed again as both car and truck tires squealed going around another curve.

  The car was jerked sideways as the tires lost precious traction. Fighting the steering wheel, Sheila finally managed to straighten the vehicle when another hard nudge from the back nearly had her crashing into the guardrail protecting motorists from the deep, still waters that ran alongside the road in that area.

  She could feel the terror lashing at her. There were alligators in that water. They’d been driven into the area after the last tropical storms had swept through. As though they were tired of playing in the Everglades and decided to come to Texas and play there instead.

  And Sheila was terrified of them.

  “Casey!” she gasped as she finally sped past that danger, only to have the next heavy nudge throw the car onto the wide graveled shoulder of the road before she managed to fight the car back onto the blacktop.

  The headlights stayed behind her. No matter how hard she tried, how fast she went.

  “I can’t take much more!” she screamed as the next nudge nearly jerked the steering wheel out of her hand. “Casey, where are you?” she cried out desperately.

  “I’m coming, baby. We’re passing Gator Bay. I’m almost there.”

  “Oh God.” She pressed the gas harder.

  The truck was trying to come around her.

  She was afraid of what that meant, terrified of allowing the huge vehicle to come around her. It had been years since Casey had taught her the defensive driving techniques, and then, they hadn’t had someone actually trying to knock them off the road.

  “Casey, I can’t keep him behind me,” she said, feeling the tears, the terror threatening to choke her. “Oh God, Casey, I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand. Casey, I’m so sorry—”

  “Sheila, don’t you dare let that bastard win.” Casey felt his guts clenching with pure, unimagined terror as he pushed the truck as hard as he dared, speeding around the curves at a speed he had never dared before as he raced to get to her.

  Beside him, Turk grabbed hold of the handgrip above him and, through the Bluetooth he wore, continued to report to Cooper and the others behind them.

  Casey and Turk had managed to tear out of the bar well ahead of the others when the call had come through.

  He heard her scream again, then swore insanity was only seconds away as he heard the horrifying explosion of a weapon and Sheila’s agonized scream of his name as glass shattered around her.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Sheila!” He was screaming her name as he pushed the truck harder, his foot landing heavily on the gas and sending the truck careening around the curves. He listened to Turk yelling out a report to Cooper as he jerked the Glock from the holster beneath the jacket he wore and checked the clip despite the wild ride Casey had him on.

  “Sheila!” Casey screamed her name again as he heard an impact and the sound of what he knew was the driver’s-side air bag inflating. “Sheila. Answer me, damn you. You will not leave me like this. I won’t let you.”

  She wasn’t answering.

  Casey felt such an insane rage overcoming him that he didn’t know if he could control it. God help whoever, whatever, had struck out at her. If she was harmed, if anything had happened to her, the pain he would deal out to the culprit once he found him would be unimaginable. No mercy.

  “I have her.” Mechanical, cold, the voice came over the line. “The past has come to collect, and the future no longer has a defense. I have taken her, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

  Casey heard the weapon cock as he slid around the curve to see the vehicles in the small clearing off the road just ahead.

  A black-garbed, shadowed form took off running as Casey raced for the location.

  He let it run.

  Th
e truck sped away just as Casey swung into the clearing and came to a bone-jarring stop next to Sheila’s car.

  He was aware of Turk sliding over and the truck racing off after Sheila’s attacker as he jumped out and ran to the car.

  The driver’s-side door was open and his woman, his life, was slumped over the air bag, blood smearing the inflated pillow as he searched desperately for a sign of movement.

  “God no! Sheila. Baby.” He was terrified to touch her, fear unlike anything he had ever known in his life gripped him, took him by the throat, and strangled the sanity from him as he reached in for her.

  Terrified of what he might see, Casey gripped her shoulders and eased her back carefully.

  She was breathing.

  Tears, honest-to-God moisture that hadn’t touched his eyes in longer than he could remember, as her eyes slowly blinked open, and he watched her take a shaky, confused breath.

  “Casey.” The tears she held back slowly fell from her dazed, confused eyes as he lifted her from the car only to collapse to the ground beside it as he held her tight to his chest.

  His head bent over hers as he shook, trembled, and felt the first rivulet of salt water ease from one eye to her hair as he rocked her, held her, and let himself believe she was alive.

  “No more games.” Ragged, torn, he whispered the words against her ear as he let his head lower further against her. “No more games, baby. I love you. I love you clear to my soul and beyond, Sheila. Oh God, baby.” His hands stroked over her, and he found himself terrified that feeling her alive and breathing against him was only a dream. “Sweet, sweet Sheila. How I love you.”

  “What? Casey. What?” She forced him to pull back, to lift his head as she stared back at him blinking, her gaze confused, filled with disbelief. “Me?” She shook her head, clearly confused. “But why?”

  He touched her face, desperate to feel her warmth, to feel her alive. “Why do I love you?” he laughed raggedly, cherishing her tears, her confusion, even her disbelief. Cherishing her and the fact that he could hold her, that she was in his arms where he intended to keep her. Safe, as he intended to ensure she stayed. “Because you make me warm in a place where I think I’ve been cold all my life, Sheila. Because the first day I saw you, I began to live. God help me, Sheila, because you’re my fucking life and I think I died listening to that bastard try to kill you.”