by Shirl Anders
Angel’s eyes jerked away. “I’m careful,” she muttered.
Carly sighed. “Angel, I’m only telling you this because I care, Vincent cares, we all care. But if Vincent finds out you’ve been doing this, and he—”
“Can’t stop me just like Walkinghorse can’t stop me and you can’t,” Angel said angrily, standing and starting away.
“Angel,” Carly called, but Angel went straight to the Indian girl and knocked off her sunglasses. The Indian girl screeched, trying to hide her two black eyes, while Angel glared at the short, mean-looking Indian coming to his feet.
Zeb hadn’t seen many men move as fast as Justice did going after the mess that Angel was getting herself into. When he arrived at Justice’s side, he saw Justice had just managed to block a swing at Angel.
“Arrest him!” Angel exclaimed. “He swung at me! I’ll file charges!”
Justice had a time wrestling the short Indian down, as Zeb glared at his buddies, daring them to move, while motioning Carly to stay back. He was very glad she followed his command, because he didn’t need her in the middle of Angel trying to drag away the Indian girl with two black eyes.
Justice just got the guy handcuffed and had straightened with his boot in the guy’s back, when he growled, “Angel let her go, now!”
Angel looked at him as if he’d slapped her, and she spun away.
“Do not move,” Justice shouted, pointing to the girl, her handcuffed boyfriend, and his buddies.
Then Justice sprinted out of the bar after Angel, and Zeb caught their words as he held the bar door open, looking both ways at the group inside not moving and the two outside yelling.
“He’ll beat her worse!” Angel yelled.
Justice stood with his hand gripped on the back of his neck, as he uttered, “You can’t force them to do what you want.”
“I had her,” Angel declared. “If you’ll just haul him off, I know I can convince her.”
“You don’t have her, honey,” Justice said. “You used other people to try to get her, but you did not do it. You used me.”
“You could just haul him off,” Angel whispered. “He’ll beat her.”
Justice swore, and Zeb thought the man didn’t show that side of himself out in public much because of his professional life. Justice’s hand swung out, and he pointed at Angel. “You owe me.”
“Thank you!” Angel exclaimed, and by the look on her face alone Zeb knew how she had her hooks into one federal marshal. Then she rushed back into the bar.
Justice came slower and he stopped by Zeb, muttering, “Angel’s brother just got sent up for three years on his first drug trafficking charge. She’s—” He shook his head and walked back into the bar.
Later, Zeb and Carly drove to the lake house slowly, on the back roads Carly was guiding him through. Zeb had hold of her, while she sat against him without her seatbelt. That was the reason he went slowly.
Carly’s head was on his shoulder. “I didn’t know Angel’s brother got in that much trouble that quick. It’s so sad. Rusty will be upset, but I knew Rusty had to let him go for not showing up, and one time he didn’t bring her taxi back for two days, then it was trashed.”
Carly had explained to Zeb about Angel’s brother being one of the first tries at having a young man’s version of what WTSF did for girls. Zeb thought that young men might need a much tougher version, and even more like a military version, to kick their ass to the right side of things.
When they reached the lake house, Carly kicked off her heels and she asked him if stir-fry and rice was good for dinner.
He watched her hips swaying as her bare feet moved through the great room, and he said, “I’ll cook, you go relax. After dinner you pick the hot tub.” The place had two hot tubs, one by the pool and one in the amazing boulder grotto that was lakeside. “And sweetness, find me some swimming trunks.”
Carly turned around, looking at him in surprise with her pink lips parted. “Um,” she mumbled, looking as if she was processing, then she smiled. “You cook?”
He slung off his leather vest. “Enough to pop those premade meals you have filling your freezer into the microwave.”
Her smile got even bigger, watching him prowl toward her.
“Cool,” she whispered, right before he caught her up to drop his mouth over her smiling lips. The kiss was instant heat as he pulled her hard against him and she gave him the sweep of her tongue. When she lifted her warm lips from his, her voice was low and seductive, as she said, “Hot tub by the lake, ranger. I’ll find something for you to wear.”
That evening under the stars and after dinner, Zeb hooked Carly’s hips with a strong arm to hold them where he wanted them, while his other hand was cupped inside the front of Carly’s bikini bottoms. The hot tub water bubbling on high jets around them hid most of what he was doing, except for the way he’d popped her buoyantly full breasts out of the tiny cups of her pink and lime green bikini top.
“Ranger,” Carly warned, with her eyelashes spiked from wetness and her hair slicked back, giving her a very sexy look that emphasized her eyes. The colored lights in the grotto, right next to the big black lake of water, made Carly’s bare breasts look light blue and her hard-jutting nipples look even darker blue.
“You owe me,” he warned, while doing a curl-and-flick motion with two of his fingers that brought a sweet moan from Carly’s lips. She clutched his shoulders, while pressing into his fingers flicking her soft pussy off. “This is the first payment,” he growled, feeling the quivers run through her body.
“We can’t do it out here,” she half pleaded and half moaned, then she nibbled his ear, as he twirled her needy clit.
“We can do this,” he promised. Then he gave her something he knew would make her come. “Sweetness, you will do this for me,” he ordered.
His mouth lowered into the bubbling water and he caught her nipple, pinching it with his lips as he worked her sweetness lower. She cried out, slamming against him and quaking as she came hard.
Carly eyed Zeb as she worked to stop panting. He’d released her after he’d fingered her to climax. The water and steam did something to him. For one thing, it made his tattoos come alive with vividness against his muscular body. The one around his bicep drew her eye, because it empathized how big and delicious the muscle there was. The flame ones licking up over his chest followed every indent and mound of sinew.
She’d known in the back of her mind he was one hot man, but looking at his chest hair matted down, his dark eyelashes spiked, his whiskered jaw hard and angled, and all that against his light blue eyes just made her realize what a luscious hunk of man he was.
She was incredibly lucky.
Lucky, lucky girl.
Added to that smoking hotness his toe-curling dominant side, and she had no trouble forgetting she ever had a creepy husband trying to do her in.
God, there were some small moments where she wondered what Zeb saw in her, he was so fine. She was okay, a little round in places, but no model, except she did know how to accessorize herself and her assets. Such as the rather tiny bikini she’d picked to come to the hot tub with Zeb after he’d served her a good meal, she’d not had to create herself.
Wow.
Now Zeb had a look in his eyes that told her he had further plans for her, and she did have big plans for that hard ridge in his swim trunks, but not by the lake, where any night boaters passing by could see them.
So before Zeb could pounce, she scooted out the far side of the hot tub—not pulling down her bikini cups back over her breasts—and she wiggled her butt and bare breasts to the lakeside cottage she’d built for changing suits, showers, drinks, and, well, probably for too much stuff.
But it was decorated very nice and it had blinds and furniture.
“Carly,” Zeb growled in his “I want you back here now” rumble.
Well, she had to do something to get him inside the cottage and out of the hot tub, where she was certain he had planned more sex and fun, so
she blurted, “I’ll be on my knees waiting, ranger baby.”
Oh boy oh boy did her cheeks flame as she tiptoed into the cottage, flipping on the low lighting as she went. The quivers that ran through her were an out-of-body experience about thinking of kneeling for all that masculine fineness and power. She licked her lips, eyeing the small living room with fireplace in a new light. Where did one kneel that might be the sexiest?
She picked the fluffy white fake bear rug in front of the fireplace and turned all the other lights off but the fireplace accents, which she hoped would make her wet skin look like it was glowing. One quick detour to slap the blind controls to turn them to blackout and she was running and kicking off her bikini bottoms right before she lowered to the fluffy white rug.
Two seconds later, she didn’t see him in the darker edges of the room, but she could feel him, as a quiver made her wet and achy, while excitement made her breathless. Then he prowled closer and she caught the firm lines of his strong body.
“Fucking beautiful,” he growled out.
Zeb held the back of Carly’s head as she worked him as deep as she could go, but it wasn’t as deep as he was. He couldn’t give a fuck, because what she was doing with that hot mouth of hers was something he’d had very rarely in his life, and it was fucking unreal, and hot, and it made him want to get even dirtier he was so turned on.
He grabbed her hand at the base of his cock and he squeezed her fingers and his fingers around the thick shaft. Carly’s silver eyes, the color of a black storm, looked up at him from where she knelt naked at his feet with his hard cock between her pink lips.
“Gonna come,” he growled. “You decide.”
Fuck him.
Carly took his load with sweet sucking that nearly brought him to his knees, and she looked very pleased about it afterward when he rolled her under him on top of some shaggy but really soft rug before the fireplace.
“How am I going to find the need to spank that sweet ass you keep this up?” he asked her on a fake irritated growl.
Her blond hair was fanned out and drying as she smiled and traced his bottom lip with her deep crimson-painted fingernail. She accepted his firmness against her softness, but he kept raised on his elbows.
“I’ll try to find a way to be bad before the night’s over,” she promised.
He bit her finger lightly for that, then he sucked on it slowly as he told her with his eyes they were going to be very bad that night, and she giggled with excitement that he felt clear to his cock.
NINETEEN] Something’s Working In The Universe
The next morning Carly woke up with a sore bottom and Zeb draped over her tightly from behind. She was cocooned by muscle, and she wasn’t sure where she started and he stopped. But she did see they were in her huge bed in her unused master bedroom, which was so not unused anymore.
In four positions it wasn’t unused.
She’d lost count after the fourth orgasm and the carton of Turtle Rock Fudge ice cream they’d eaten at around two in the morning. That was when she lost track, because Zeb kept waking her up. Once he was inside her from behind, moving slowly, and the other time she’d come awake with him holding her wrists and pulling her over his lap, where he spanked her bottom hot and red, then he’d made her come even hotter and redder while lying over his knees.
After she’d come so hard she thought she’d squirted a little, he’d flipped her over, ordered that she lift her legs, and spread them open for him, then he’d given her another climax, pounding into her so good, the big bed that was so heavy it should never move did move, and she loved it.
Carly felt a big finger caress her nipple, and she shivered, but Zeb didn’t otherwise move from around her.
“Baby, you do it for me,” Zeb growled in her ear, moving the hair there. Carly inhaled a pleased breath. Wow. But Zeb wasn’t done. “When you’re being my sweetness, you light my fire like no other woman.”
“Ranger,” she whispered, and she reached back to cup his head. “I love being your sweetness.”
“I might not walk right for a few days,” he rumbled. “Don’t know about you.”
She laughed and turned in his arms, which he widened a bit to accommodate her. “So worth it,” she told him, but then she admitted, “Yeah, maybe a couple days.”
Zeb chuckled and kissed her bottom lip. “I hate to break this mood, luscious, but we have some plans to figure out.”
“Okay,” she whispered, snuggling closer against him, then she said, “The main pageant’s tonight at eight, which I must do. But I think besides that I’m going to take a few days off or more, while you and Justice do your thing.”
“You make it so easy on me,” he murmured, and his hand dropped to squeeze her bottom. “I like that. So you get that you need to lay low, then?”
“Yes, baby,” she said, and he kissed her slowly and she thought it might be for calling him baby. When he let her lips go, she said, “Just Angel, I might try to talk to her again, but I won’t go do it alone.”
Zeb rubbed deep, and she purred, which made him smile in a lazy, very sexy, and satisfied way. “Got to meet that Merc Inc. dude. Not sure if it’s today or tomorrow. You want in on that?”
Carly looked at his chin, thinking. She was curious to meet a mercenary, but said mercenary would also have the knowledge that she had a husband trying to get rid of her.
“If the timing is good, maybe for a minute.”
That let Zeb know she’d not be in it long enough to muddy his plans, which she was staying strictly away from so she wouldn’t blurt out the fact that she really didn’t want him doing it. Because she really understood he was going to do it, no matter what she thought, and he was going to do it to protect her.
So she had to let him do that, even if it scared her. Maybe she even needed that from him ... the willingness to put it on the line for her. But she didn’t want to admit that either.
“Okay, baby,” he said, caressing his big hand up the curve of her back. “I’m making this happen as quick as I can, but still be safe.”
She nodded. “I just have one problem, really,” she muttered. Zeb looked deep at her. “I need a dress for tonight. Everything’s at home and I’m not going back there.”
The outer edges of Zeb’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Call your girls, babe. They’ll get you set up.”
Her eyes widened. “What a great idea. I have girls now, don’t I,” she exclaimed softly. “And not teenaged ones.”
At about eleven that morning, Zeb left the women outside by the pool that had a waterfall, slide, and wet bar, where they were drinking daiquiris Carly made, while planning a coup. That coup was Carly dressing for the pageant her new man’s wife was starring in, and it had been decided there wasn’t enough time to properly shop, so Carly’s girls brought over a load of dresses, any of which Carly could borrow.
After the daiquiris and shoes came out, he got the hell out of there, willing to wait and see what came of it and very happy his woman had her some ladies to spend time with, and those ladies seemed like they both had heads on their shoulders—even if they were a little bit crazy on the fashion side.
Oh well, what the hell, he would really enjoy the results.
So he grabbed Carly’s work truck, to once again try to make it to Rowdie’s and pick up some of their things that were still in his room there. He was going to keep the room a few more days, because he thought it could be handy for the plot taking shape on Shaw. As he drove the back roads, he broke the law, making an important call to the head of Mercenary Inc., who was a dude named Cavalcade Rome—whom Vincent called Caval for short.
It was an interesting name, and Zeb wasn’t sure what he’d find. “Need to speak to Caval Rome, Zeb Andersen calling.”
Zeb looked out the windshield of the truck as he waited for the secretary to put Caval on the line. “Welcome back to the world, ranger.”
Zeb squinted; the man was definitely ex-military, and he had a file on Zeb to know he was an ex-ranger.
“Thanks. I appreciate your time, sir,” Zeb said.
Crazy-ass deep laughter charged from the other side of the cell call. “Damn, man, I haven’t been called ‘sir’ for a fucking long time.”
That meant to Zeb that Caval had been an officer who’d led men, and not a candy-ass officer who hadn’t. Caval kept talking: “Call me dick or call me Caval; I’ll call you Zeb.”
Zeb held his chuckle. “You’re going to help my woman I’ll call you Caval, and I’ll owe you.”
“I like that, owed by an ex-sniper. The perks of this job never cease to amaze me, and I have some good news for you, Zeb—we got him hooked. I’ll be down to your little town tonight with the burner cell number and cell phone Shaw is set to call, looking to buy a mercenary. You, buddy, will get to be on the other end. I’ll give you a few insights into what I think you should say.”
“Sounds good, man. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. I do not like men fucking with women unless they want fucked with, if you get my meaning. Besides, I’ve seen Carly a time or two when she didn’t know it, and if I didn’t have mental issues I’d be after that pretty lady, who also happens to be under the wing of a man I have respect for, Vincent Whitehorse. And if that isn’t enough, stirring up shit just gets me off, so let’s rock.”
Zeb did chuckle then, and they made plans to meet right after the pageant, since Zeb had no intentions of letting Carly out of his sight while she was there.
***
Carly had looked at the beautiful gowns both Rusty and Tess had brought over, which were thousands of dollars’ worth of silk, beads, fancy inlays, and expensive gems, and she’d got tears in her eyes.
Then after two daiquiris, she’d spilled about Rick’s evilness.
“Freaking bastard,” Rusty declared, with fire in her eyes. “We need to kick his ass.”
Tess had set her daiquiri down, and grasped Carly’s hand. “Babe,” she whispered. “What can we do? We need to do something. We need to tell Vincent—”
“He already knows,” Carly said, interrupting her and squeezing her hand back. Tess nodded, instantly looking less worried.
