He didn’t let her finish. His mouth crashed over hers in a hard kiss, all his frustration coming out in the greedy thrust of his tongue, the curl of his fingers around her slender throat. Reese gasped against his lips, but she didn’t push him away. She kissed him back with fervor, her hands pressing against his chest, stroking him over his shirt.
When they finally pulled apart, they were both breathing hard and the back windows of the Jeep had fogged up. Reese’s men, Trace and Daniel, sat quietly in the front seat. Neither commented on the display of passion and aggression that had just filled the car.
“Rylan,” she started, her expression holding a hint of reluctance.
“You should get some sleep,” he said gruffly, then tugged her toward him. When she tried to squirm away, he forcibly moved her head against his shoulder. “Sleep, Reese. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
After a few seconds, she relaxed, her steady, even breathing warming the side of his neck.
He, on the other hand, was the farthest thing from relaxed. The tension refused to leave him. So did the worry, which gnawed harder at him each time his gaze lowered to Reese’s bandaged arm.
She could’ve died tonight. That bullet could’ve done more than graze her flesh. It could’ve pumped a hole in her head, burned into her abdomen and made her bleed out, punctured a lung and she would’ve drowned in her own blood. And then what the hell would he have said to Sloan? Sorry, brother, but our woman got iced by an Enforcer. My bad.
Fuck.
Fuck.
In a moment of clarity, Rylan suddenly understood Connor’s longing for the old farm. For the days when it had been him, Con, and Pike. The days before Xander, before Kade, before Hudson and Reese and Sloan and all the other outlaws they’d met and formed connections with since then.
Connor was right. Life was so much easier when there was nobody around for you to give a damn about.
17
It was morning when the convoy drove through Foxworth’s gates. Reese expected to find Sloan waiting in the courtyard for them, but to her chagrin, he was nowhere in sight.
He must still be angry with her, then.
And he had every right to be.
She slid out of the Jeep and issued a few orders before stalking over to Vaughn and Davis, who, unlike Sloan, were there to greet her on arrival. She felt Rylan’s blue eyes boring a hole into her back as she spoke with the men, but she didn’t turn around. Nor did she go to him once she dismissed her people. Instead, she took off in a swift walk toward the building she shared with Sloan.
Their apartment was empty.
Fuck. Where was he? She hoped he didn’t plan on avoiding her all day, because she had important things to say, and damned if he was going to deny her the opportunity to say them.
In her room, she stripped out of her dusty jeans and let them drop to the floor. She was just removing her shirt when she heard the muffled thud of footsteps outside her door.
Sloan entered the room without knocking. His dark eyes rested briefly on her breasts, covered only by a snug black bra, before shifting to the bandage on her upper arm.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “It was just a graze.”
“Let me have a look.”
Reese didn’t voice an objection as he led her to the bed and gently forced her to sit. Then he settled beside her and peeled off the bandage. He examined the wound, his fingertips skimming the outside edges of the long, red scrape.
Maybe with you, those hands would be gentle.
Unwittingly, Rylan’s words floated through her head. Right now, Sloan’s touch was gentle. Infinitely gentle. But it hadn’t been gentle before she’d left on the outpost mission. His hands had been rough and unforgiving then, gripping her ass tight enough to leave marks on her flesh.
She shivered at the memory, but Sloan mistook the response for one of pain rather than remembered pleasure.
“I’ll be right back,” he announced, then left the room in purposeful strides.
Reese heard his footsteps in the hall, in the living area, in the small kitchen they shared. When he returned, he held a plastic pill bottle in his hands.
“No,” she said immediately. “We’re not wasting our antibiotics on one silly cut.”
“That cut is as prone to infection as any other, silly or not,” he replied in a stern voice. He shook two pills out of the vial and onto his palm. “Open your mouth.”
Her chin jutted out in a stubborn pose.
“Teresa.”
“Goddamn it, Sloan, it’s a waste of resources—”
He took advantage of the parting of her lips by pressing the pills on her tongue. The coarse pad of his finger slid across her tongue on its way out of her mouth, and then he pinched her lips together and said, “Swallow.”
Reese made a disgruntled sound, but since his fingers were keeping her mouth closed, she had no choice but to swallow the meds. Without water to ease their way down, the pills scraped the back of her throat and brought a sour taste to her mouth. “Asshole,” she accused.
He chuckled.
Sighing, she leaned toward the night table and grabbed the half-empty bottle of water sitting atop it. After she’d gulped down a few mouthfuls, she twisted the cap back on. “You weren’t at the gate when we drove in,” she said softly.