“Hopefully the aunt and uncle will take her back.”
“They don’t sound like the most generous of hearts. A foster home might be preferable.”
“Foster home?”
“CPS could place her—”
“CPS?”
“Child Pro—”
“I know what it is,” he said, vexed. “But to get them involved, Lisa would have to report the sexual abuse.”
“Of course she’ll report it!”
“She hasn’t up till now.”
“But she will. Those two degenerates need to be in jail.”
“Yes. But it’ll never happen. It should. But it won’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know the mind-set, Doc. It’s a clannish mentality. They protect their own, no matter what. Pauline has ignored and denied it up to this point. She’ll go on the same way. She’ll handle it, but outside the law and without government interference.”
“If neither she nor Lisa reports it, if you don’t, then I will.”
“You would do that to Lisa? Put her through the fallout, which could involve harsh reprisal from Norman and Will on both her and her mother?”
“So we’re supposed to look the other way and let them get away with rape?”
He didn’t say anything, but Emory shivered at the look that came over his face.
“What are you going to do?” She looked down at the pistol. “You can’t kill them.”
He held her gaze for a moment, then walked over to the fireplace and began shifting the logs with the poker. “Not your problem.”
“You made it my problem.”
“Well, it won’t be from here on.”
She was about to launch another volley when she noticed the controlled actions of his strong hands. Not a single motion was wasted, each was deliberate. She experienced that misplaced constriction in her throat again. “You’re taking me back.”
He didn’t say anything, only stared into the heap of embers.
This accounted for his mood since he’d awakened her. She swallowed. “Tonight? Now?”
“Whenever you’re ready. The roads are clear enough.”
“We should go now then,” she said, although it hurt her throat to speak. “People are out in the cold, looking for me.”
“Not tonight.”
“What?”
“I went online and checked the news while you were asleep. They suspended the search until daybreak tomorrow.”
She glanced over at the laptop that she’d noticed earlier on the kitchen table.
“What are they speculating happened to me? Did you read anything about Jeff?”
“I only read the bullet points, not the details.” He kicked at an ember that had fallen just outside the grate. “What will you tell him about your time here?”
“I haven’t the slightest.”
His head came around, his right eyebrow slightly arched. The expression was so familiar to her now. He wanted an answer but didn’t want to come right out and ask for it.
“I have no idea what I’ll tell Jeff. Or anybody. I don’t remember what caused my concussion, so I can’t describe it as either an accident or an attack. I don’t know where we are, exactly. What can I tell them about you when I don’t know anything? Not your name or…or even why you brought me here.”
He cursed on a soft expulsion of breath as he braced his hands on the mantel and dropped his head between his arms. He remained staring down into the flames for several moments, then added logs to them and replaced the screen. He dusted his hands on the seat of his jeans.
Then he turned to her. “Well, I can clear up that last uncertainty for you. Why I brought you here. I found you on the trail. What I did for you, sheltering you, feeding you, providing first aid—”
“You would have done for any stranger in need.”
“Hell I would,” he said harshly. “Yeah, I would have taken an injured person to an ER, dropped them off, and driven away. No risk, no involvement, no chance of exposure. But you, the most serious threat of all to—” He looked around at the interior of the cabin. “To everything. You, I wanted to hold on to for just a little longer.”
He held up his hand and closed it into a fist, as though demonstrating. “You’ll never appreciate the risk I took to keep you here. You sure as hell can’t identify with the struggle it’s been to keep myself off you.” He walked toward her, and when there were only inches separating them, he asked, “You still scared of me?”
“Very.”
He took another step. “But you’re not running. How come?”
“Because I do identify with that struggle.”
The sound he made was part groan, part growl. “You’d be smart to stop this now, Doc.”
He gave her time, but when she didn’t move, he reached around her with one hand and splayed it over her bottom. It seemed the heat of his hand dissolved the fabric of her running tights as he brought her up against him. He slid his other hand under her hair and curved it around the back of her neck, as he had done the night before.
“Last chance.”
She placed her palms on his chest and then slid them up onto his shoulders.
“Okay. I warned you. I told you that if I ever got my hands on you again—”
“You’d put them all over me.”
“That’s not all I said I’d do.”
He covered her lips with his and unleashed the hunger he’d restrained the night before. Nothing was tempered, not the introduction of his tongue, not the need with which her mouth opened to him, not the darkly erotic words that he whispered when he finally broke the kiss and released her, but only so he could hastily undo the buttons of his shirt she wore.
He opened it and looked at her, his gaze scorching every place it touched on. He caressed her tummy with the backs of his fingers, gauged the narrowness of her rib cage by bracketing it between his hands, then plumped her breasts in his palms. She leaned into them and made small wanting sounds when his fingertips charted the tapering shape of her breasts all the way to the tips which hardened beneath his caress.
“Damn,” he murmured.
Taking her hand, he towed her over to the bed, where he pushed the shirt off her shoulders so he could continue to look at her while he pulled his sweater over his head and threw it aside.
Then his hands went to his fly and deftly unbuttoned it. His eyes never breaking contact with hers, he slid one hand inside the vee of soft denim and made an adjustment that caused her breath to hitch.
“I won’t last long.”
“You won’t have to.” She lay back on the bed and scooted up to make room for him.
He got onto the bed on his knees, leaned over her and peeled off her running tights, then positioned her bent legs on either side of his hips. He looked down at her with such avid interest, she went hot all over.
Swearing with impatience, he worked his jeans down, then did as he’d said he would: he put his hands on her. First insistently against her inner thighs as he spread them, then tenderly when he stroked where she was wet and achy, then aggressively beneath her ass as he tilted her up. He pushed into her in one, purposeful glide.
“Jesus, Doc,” he groaned, “I promised you it wouldn’t hurt.”
“It won’t.”
“It might.”
Flexing his hips, he seated himself even deeper, then stretched out above her and began moving. Mating. All raw, male power and surety. Unapologetic, dominant and possessive.
Encircling her wrists he raised her hands above her head. Looking directly into her eyes, he slid his other hand between their bodies and touched her with such carnal precision, she arched up into his hand, rubbing herself against it in a silent plea that he press, circle, stroke. And he did. Again and again. He lowered his head to her breasts, sipped at her tight nipples and flicked them with his tongue.
Her orgasm was shattering.
With a snarled obscenity he pulled out barely in time and imprinted her body with his.
Writhing and straining, they wrung out every ounce of pleasure, and when he came, the pulses were strong and intense. Then they seemed to melt into each other, spent. It was a long time before he released her hands and moved off her.
When she finally had the wherewithal to open to her eyes, he was lying beside her on his stomach, cheek resting on his stacked hands, black lashes casting long shadows on his cheekbones.
There was a sheen of sweat on his back. The skin was smooth, the slopes and hollows of his musculature beautiful. His jeans rode low, in the seductive territory where the dip in his back swelled into his ass.
Feeling her stare, he opened his eyes. It was like twin lights coming on inside a blue glass bottle. His attention was drawn to the semen on the flannel shirt that was now hopelessly twisted around her. His eyes moved back to hers. Sounding defensive, he said, “You sorry yet?”
By way of a reply, she reached out and brushed her fingers across the small of his back. Then a bit lower. Then her fingertips ventured beyond his waistband and flirted with the shadowy cleft.
“You keep doing that, I’m gonna have to roll over.”
With a touch as light as a breath, she traced the groove as far as she could reach.
Grunting with a mix of discomfort and arousal, he rolled to his back and kicked off his jeans.
The human body held few mysteries for her. She’d seen hundreds, thousands, of bodies. Every shape and size. But she was awestruck by his. And actually a bit shy of its uncompromising maleness—his overall size, the fan of hair that spread over his chest, the lightning bolt tattoo just above the crease where his thigh met an abdomen corded with well-defined muscles, his sex, tight and full again with want of her.
Impatiently he rid her of the shirt, then placed his hand on the back of her head and pulled her toward him. He kissed her long and deep, his tongue repeatedly plumbing her mouth. When he finally broke the kiss, he set her just far enough away from him so that he could study her, which he did with a boldness that thrilled and excited her.
He placed his hand around her breast and gently squeezed the nipple between his fingers. His voice a sexy rasp, he said, “You’re not gonna go run screaming from me?”
In a sublime state of arousal, she smiled and shook her head no.
“Then make memories for me, Doc.”
“Memories?”
Leaving her breasts tingling, he skimmed his hand down over her belly. He contemplated the architecture of her hipbone as though it was a marvel. Then he brushed the backs of his fingers over the soft hair. “Make memories for me to take out and play with when you’re gone.”
“What kind of memories?”
Her question ended on a surprised inhale when he deftly relocated and moved her thighs far enough apart to accommodate his wide shoulders. She could almost feel the probe of his hot gaze as he slid his hands under her and pulled her closer. She definitely felt the first sweep of his tongue, then his lips moving against her as he whispered. “Dirty ones.”