“Is that why he’s running? He’s afraid of frightening me?”
Again, she hit the proverbial nail on the head. “He’s running from himself, too.”
“But you aren’t anymore.” Her gaze danced over his face, and she choked back a half sob before she asked, “Why?”
“It wasn’t doing me any good. I knew the moment I found you on the roadside, I couldn’t run anymore.”
“That’s not all of it, is it? Right now there’s something more you aren’t saying.”
Jacob threw his head back and took a deep breath. “The only thing I’m not saying right now is how much I feel like an ass.” He lifted his head, looked down, and found her still gazing up at him with those so-expressive, so-confused eyes. “Want to know the whys of that, too?”
“Please,” she whispered.
“I feel like an ass because, even knowing how upset you are, how much Mitch hurt you just now, what I really want to do is fuck you like he said to do before he left.” What he should do instead was help her dress and send her back to the house. Damned if he could find the willpower to do anything besides continuing to hold the naked beauty in his arms and burn to bury his rock-hard cock in her sodden pussy.
“So you’re pretty good at taking orders from him, too?” One corner of her lips quivered in an attempt at a smile.
Jacob let out a half laugh. “Not usually, but he’s telling me to do something I’m chewing at the bit to do anyway.”
“Would it make you feel any better if I tell you I want you to?” She pulled back, her hands falling from where she’d flattened them on his chest on a direct course to his belt. Her gaze didn’t waver from his as she boldly began unfastening his belt, the button beneath, then his zipper. “Right here. Right now. Alone. Will you this time?”
How in hell could a man say no to that? He lost his need for reinforcements when he surrendered to her last night. Mitch would come around eventually. As soon as he faced the demons that haunted him and realized Angel was the woman for them that they both needed and wanted her to be.
Wordlessly, Jacob let her peel his jeans and briefs from his hips, stood stoically still as she pushed them down his thighs. When her long, slender fingers curled around the base of his throbbing cock, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Jesus,” he growled and gripped her hips, lifting her as he walked her to a nearby workbench and set her on the edge.
The height of the bench put his cock in perfect alignment with her pussy. Her legs spread without prompting, wrapping around his body. Her ankles locked together and pushed against the back of his thighs as she attempted to pull his cock inside her. She stopped when he lifted a hand to her face and skimmed the back of his thumb down her cheek.
“Did he hurt you?” He’d seen how rough Mitch had been with her. She’d seemed to enjoy the hell out of it. At least everything up until the moment Mitch showed his ass and walked out of the barn. Still, Jacob had to ask.
She swallowed, answering with a nod rather than her voice.
“Bastard,” Jacob swore under his breath. “Where?”
“Inside,” she said softly.
Jacob traced her lips with the pad of his thumb. “Your throat?” Mitch was a big man, and he knew it. He hadn’t given her time to adjust to the length and width of his cock before pounding inside her mouth the way he did. Jacob had seen her nearly choke on the first thrust, but she’d seemed to gain control of her gag reflexes and throat muscles quickly enough.
She shook her head, and his eyes narrowed. “Lower.”
Lower? It took a moment before he understood. Lower as in her chest, her heart. The pain Mitch inflicted hadn’t been physical. Jacob saw that now as he stared at her, realizing for quite possibly the first time that she belonged to them as surely as they did her.
“I’m sorry. I never wanted to see anyone hurt you again.” And he’d be damned if he would let Mitch keep this shit up. He understood his friend’s demons, even related to them on every possible level, but there was no turning back now that they had come this far with Angel.
“You’re hurting me now.” The corner of her lip inching up again coupled with the firm push of her heels into the backs of his thighs gave him clear indication she was joking.
God, but he loved this woman. He didn’t understand the hows or whys of time any more than he did the wonders of the universe and no longer cared. It was what it was. Love.
Jacob slid his hand from her waist to the small of her back, slipping his free hand beneath the back of her hair. He turned that hand over, fisting it in her silky strands and pulling as he held her body still with his other hand and entered her in a single, unforgiving thrust that had her crying out a sound that could only be pure ecstasy. He knew because he heard an echoing sound leave his own throat, felt nothing short of ecstasy electrifying his veins, tightening his balls, and zinging through his shaft.
Her channel welcomed the invasion, gripping his shaft like a wet fist, forcing him to take a moment to gather his composure. Christ, he’d never been so quick to blow his wad with a woman!
“How about now?” he asked as he pulled his hips back, nearly letting his cock slip from her pussy before pistoning inside her once more.
“Yes.” She groaned as he repeated the move again and again until they both cried out with their own release.
“Really?” Jacob drew back to ask long minutes later when he finally managed to catch his breath. The confusion on Angel’s face nearly made him laugh.
“Really, what?”
“Was I really hurting you?” He’d thought she’d been playing around, but in the heat of the moment, he knew he might have very well caused her pain.
“Yes.” Her answer made his gut turn until a slow, dazzling grin spread on her luscious lips, and she added, “Deliciously.”
Jacob chuckled and moved back a half step, letting his cock fall from the heated serenity of her pussy. He glanced at the car behind him then looked back at her. “It’s gonna take a few days to get the parts we need to fix your car, another couple after that to get her running again.”
“I told you I’m in no hurry to leave. Not for a couple of weeks at least. I’ve got money in the bank and a two-week vacation from my job. One phone call, and I can get that two weeks extended if necessary.”
Indefinitely? Jacob started to ask but decided to leave that conversation for another time. As far as he was concerned, she wouldn’t be leaving in a few days or weeks or ever.
“Good. Let me know if there’s anything you need that we don’t have. I’ll take you into town or get it myself.”
“Got food in the kitchen?” she asked, hopping down from the workbench and walking, completely unabashed by her nakedness, to where she’d left her clothes in a heap not far inside the open barn doors.
Jacob lifted a brow, unable to take his gaze off her naked flesh, barely stifling a whimper when she started to cover all those beautiful curves with her clothes. “Loads of it. I might be a bachelor, sweetheart, but one thing I know how to do is cook.”
“So do I, and I’m starved. Mind if I go inside and cook breakfast?”
“I don’t mind.” Jacob watched her finish getting dressed and head for the barn doors. He stopped her just before she stepped outside. “Angel.”
She didn’t turn but looked at him over her shoulder.
“Give Mitch some time,” he told her again. “He didn’t mean to hurt you. He’s just—”
“No, he wants to hurt me more,” she cut him off, surprising him once more. “You both do.”
“Then I guess we both need some more time to let ourselves go.”
“Guess so. Give me a half hour and come to the kitchen if you want that breakfast.”
Jacob angled his head, studying the way her hips swayed with each step as she strolled out of the barn and across the yard to the back door of the main house. The woman, he decided, would definitely never be dull to have around.
Chuckling softly and shaking his head, he left the barn t
he same way she had, detouring to the stables rather than the main house to kill the next thirty minutes. He figured he made it about twenty before he gave in and went looking for her. He stopped short when he reached the kitchen doorway to find his brothers’ woman, Taryn Aldean, moving about the room rather than Angel.
“What are you doing here?”
She spun around, her blonde ponytail swinging as she greeted him with a smile that dripped with mischief. “Well, hey there, cowboy. ’Bout time you showed up.”
“Where’s Angel?” He scanned the room, looking for obvious signs of where she might have gone. To his surprise, he didn’t find any signs she’d even been in the kitchen in the first place.
“I suspect she’s pulling up at Mitch’s apartment right about now.” Taryn leaned against the refrigerator and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. Her stance dared him to have a fit about that bit of information.
“Mmm hmm, and how do you suspect she got there, considering her car is in the barn with a rod through the engine block, and she doesn’t have the first clue where Mitch’s apartment is located?”
To Taryn’s credit, she held his gaze and answered him without hesitation. “Seeing as you were so surprised to find me here, I’m figuring you didn’t see my truck out front.”
Jacob sighed. The woman was a pit bull. He never wondered for a moment why his brothers had fallen for her. His only question came in how they’d managed to stay away from her for eight years before finally staking their claim.
“You loaned her your truck.” Jacob hung his head as a million thoughts ping-ponged in his brain. “And likely told her exactly how to get from here to Mitch’s.”
“You can bet your sweet ass I did, better than any GPS on the market could’ve done, too.”
“Taryn,” Jacob groaned.
“Don’t ‘Taryn’ me, Jacob Shelton. It’s about time that boy stopped running from what he wants. You, too, for that matter, but I put money on the chance that you’d follow her to save both their asses if I sent her along. Am I right?”
“Somebody’s gonna have to,” Jacob muttered.
“And that somebody’s gonna be you. I’ve been there. Not so long ago, in fact. I know from experience the only way to stop a Shelton man from running is to catch him.”
Jacob raked a hand through his hair and puffed out his cheeks on a hard exhale. “This isn’t the same situation as the one you had with Royce and Clint.”
“You don’t think so? I’ll admit I don’t know the whole history between you, Mitch, and that stunning redhead I met less than an hour ago, but the obvious is the obvious. You and Mitch are trying to protect a woman who doesn’t need protecting. You’re doing exactly what your brothers did, thinking she can’t handle what you want to dish out when what’s really happening is you and Mitch are apparently the ones who can’t handle what you feel for her.” She stopped her ranting only long enough to shake her head. “Guess denial runs in the family.”
“Mitch isn’t family.”
“Hogwash, that boy is as much your family as Royce and Clint. Now, are you gonna stand around all day yabbering or are you gonna go after her? I’m betting with the mood she was in when she left she’s likely to lay into Mitch before it’s over. Do you really want to miss that show?”
“It’s starting to sound like I better be there to referee the show.” Jacob scoffed and spun on his heel. “Thanks for nothing, Taryn.”
“Any time, cowboy.” She giggled as he walked out the back door.
Chapter Six
The hellfire look in Mitch’s eyes when he opened the door to his apartment nearly made Angel take a step back. She didn’t, though, squaring her shoulders and standing her ground one more time. It would be the last time, she assured herself. Whatever demons he was running from were coming out now, even if she had to handcuff his unhappy ass and interrogate him for the next twenty-four hours. Being the aggressor didn’t come easily to her, but she had learned over the past years she could do anything she set her mind to. Getting past the wall Mitch Dallas placed between them was something she aimed to do no matter what it took.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” Solid ice hit her in the form of words, sending those now-familiar frigid fingers of trepidation dancing down her spine. He turned his back on her, walking away yet again but leaving the door open.
At least he didn’t slam it in my face. She stepped inside, pausing a moment to let her vision adjust to the darker atmosphere of his apartment. “Yeah, you keep saying that.”
“Seems to me once a woman hears something enough she should learn to listen.” He veered right, bypassing the muted big-screen television that occupied the wall just inside the door and heading for a computer desk in the adjoining room most people would have used for a dining area.
Angel closed the door behind her, blinked, and then narrowed her eyes to bring his computer screen into focus. She caught sight of a photo of a redhead beneath the words PerfectMatch.com a nanosecond before he clicked the web browser closed. She lifted a brow and gnawed her bottom lip. Did he really think he could replace his need for her with some stranger on the Internet?
There’s not a chance in hell of that happening, darlin’.
“Seems to me,” she countered, following him to the other room, “that when a man finds what he wants he should have the brains enough to stop looking.”
His head whipped around, pinning her with a glare so dangerously sexy it actually made her pussy wet.
“That’s quite a temper you’ve got.” She pursed her lips and stared back at him, steady and hard. She would not back down.
“I figured that would’ve been clue enough about me to make you stay away.” The kitchen connected to the dining area by a narrow archway, and he walked through it, returning seconds later with a pitcher of water.
Angel noticed then that the man actually had plants in the corner of the dining room flanking the window. She couldn’t help but smile. “It’s not directed at me. I’ve been on the receiving end of a temper many times. I know the difference.” She shuddered, pushing away the memories of Mack’s anger, of the times he’d degraded and humiliated her, of the times she had feared he would go so much further. “The thing is I can’t figure out why you’re so pissed at yourself.”
“You don’t need to figure it out. It’s not your problem.” He didn’t look at her as he watered the plants and returned the pitcher to the kitchen.
“Don’t I? Isn’t it?” Angel let out a humorless laugh. Men could be so freaking clueless sometimes, but one thing seemed to make every man tick: sex. He had already given her more ammunition than necessary to take him on that subject. “The sex in the barn was great. A bit one-sided and definitely too short, but…”
“I snapped. I shouldn’t have made you do that.”
“No,” she said slowly. “You should’ve made me do more. You should’ve done what you really wanted to do, Mitch, take me the way you’re burning to, the way we’re both wanting you to.”
Angel heard the front door open and shot a glance over her shoulder, not surprised to see Jacob enter the apartment. She met his gaze briefly but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t the one she needed to corner anymore. Mitch was.
“You’re just in time,” Mitch told Jacob before his gaze landed on her once more. “You know you’re pushing this, pushing me.”
“Apparently I have to.” It worked in the barn, almost. She had gotten what she wanted. He had taken what he needed, almost. She was sick of almost. She wanted it all.
“What I should do, what I want to do, is show you what happens to a woman I own that talks to me the way you’ve been doing since you got to town.”
Twin bolts of excitement and apprehension shot through her system, ricocheting off every erogenous zone in her body. A third bolt managed to separate from it all to settle in her chest, swirling around her heart. “Am I your woman?” She could barely ask the question for the hope that clogged her throat.
“You’re damn
ed right you are. You have been for over a fucking year, from the moment I spotted you with that no-good son of a bitch you were with.”
“Then prove it.”
She’d done it. His expression didn’t change as he closed the distance between them in two long strides, his gaze didn’t waver, yet she knew without a doubt the demons holding him captive had finally let him out of his cage completely.
He’d been afraid, she realized, scared to let the dominant side of his personality go with her because of the abuse she’d taken from Mack. It wasn’t the same, of course. The dark desires and control that ruled Mitch sexually were completely different from the humiliation she’d endured in the past. This was passion, pleasure, an ecstasy that would rock their worlds two ways from Sunday and create a bond between them no force could break.
His fingers caught the neckline of her shirt and pulled, buttons flying as he ripped the shirt from her.
“Hope you know how to sew,” Jacob muttered, a hint of amusement lacing his tone.
“You never wore the shirt anyway,” Mitch countered, his hands already moving for her shorts.
“Wait!” Angel snagged his wrists, surprised when he actually listened. “How about you let me take these off? I only have a couple of pairs of shorts with me.”
“You won’t need any of them for a while, but fine, you do it.” He went to work on his own clothes instead, stripping in front of her in record time. Then his hand found her nape, cupping the back of her neck and yanking her closer. He kissed her hard and demandingly, his lips searing hers. His tongue invaded her as if he had every intention of crawling inside her through her mouth. He tasted magnificent, of solid male control and pure eroticism, exhibiting skill she knew she would never outmatch but would spend the rest of her life enjoying to the max.
Somehow she managed to find a sliver of herself not wrapped in the kiss and used it to remove her shorts. She stepped out of them, kicking them aside, moaning into Mitch’s mouth when she felt the heat of Jacob’s body close in behind her.
Mitch’s arm wound around her to caress her ass before sliding back to come to rest on her hip. His hand slid from her nape and broke the kiss, spinning her between his body and Jacob’s, pulling her back so she stood with her back flush to his front. He nuzzled his face against the side of her neck and whispered, “So hot. So hungry.”
Ramagos, Tonya - Running from Angel [Sunset Cowboys 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 7
