“I sense a but coming,” I said hesitantly, eyeing the book. It was something I wanted so desperately, but I had a feeling it came at a cost.
“No buts. Not really. Right now, we have to go to my buddy Cole’s, but I’ll teach you later,” he laughed, tucking a strand of wet hair behind my ear. “You all set to go?”
I nodded, letting him guide me out of the house. The locks on the door were formidable and took a considerable amount of time to secure. All the while I watched him, only one thought plagued my mind.
I’d never been in a vehicle before.
The Children of Awe had a few, but the truck sitting in Anderson’s driveway was much larger than anything they possessed. Women and children weren’t allowed to leave the community, anyway. Given our conversation the day before where Anderson stressed that women could determine who touched them, I suspected that was why.
Jonathan couldn’t have the young women of his community learning the truth. That outside that compound, an entire world existed where they could choose for themselves.
I wanted to have that right. I wanted it for me and for Noelle, and for any others who dreaded the day someone chose a husband for them.
When he finally finished, he brought me over to his truck and hefted me into the passenger seat, oblivious to the nerves I felt as soon as he closed me in. He climbed in next to me and some of that anxiety melted away. As much as I might not be able to stay with him, I had no doubts that Anderson wouldn’t let anything hurt me. He reached over and pulled the strap over my shoulder and snapped it in next to me, doing the same for himself before he turned the key and the truck roared to life.
The vibrations jarred me as he eased down the driveway, but the moment he rested his hand on my thigh, it distracted me from my discomfort. The heat of it was like a brand as he maneuvered the truck through the winding mountain roads. We turned off the main road a few miles down, squashing my hesitant hope to slip away in town.
I cared for Anderson despite only knowing him briefly. Too much to let my problems come down on him. Besides, what kind of woman escaped a life where everything was decided for her and settled with the first man she saw? No matter the pulsing attraction I felt for him, no matter the way I wanted to curl up in his arms and let him protect me from all the things that scared me, I’d never seen anything beyond Mount Awe.
I hated that I had to find a man who made me weak right off. I despised that I couldn’t stay.
“Where are we going?” I asked him, settling my hand down on top of his. The rough skin of his hard-labored hands echoed my own, feeling like a perfect match for me. The memory of how those hands had felt gripping my hips, with his arms wrapped around my thighs as he feasted on me, brought a flush to my cheeks.
He turned his palm over, grasping my hand in his. The massive size of him overwhelmed me, made me feel tiny compared to him. Even sitting in the seat next to me, he towered over me like a giant. “To my friend Coleman’s. I didn’t want to bring you into town until I trust you not to run, so he made a supply run to pick up some clothes and stuff for you. His shed is a little bigger, so we keep our extra gear at his place. I’ll grab that while we’re there.”
“You think I’m going to run?” I whispered, studying him. His eyes left the road for a moment, a smirk transforming his face as he gave me the full force of that hazel stare.
“Baby, I know you’re going to disappear the first chance you get. I just won’t give you that opportunity.” I stared at him long after he turned his attention back to the road, disbelief making me fumble over what to say.
“Don’t you think it should be my choice? Isn’t that what you said? Nobody gets to decide like that for me now?” His hand clenched around mine, his jaw tightening briefly. Still, he didn’t take his eyes off the road.
I got the distinct impression I wouldn’t like what I saw if he did.
“Have I hurt you?”
“No. Of course not, but—”
“Did you not ask me to put my mouth on you last night?” I blushed, not voicing my answer. We both knew I had, as much as it embarrassed me to admit. “If you wanted me to let you go, you should have never let me touch you, Baby. Now I’m playing for keeps.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” I sighed.
“It means I’m keeping you. I want it all, Del. Marriage. Babies.”
“What if I don’t want that? That’s the life they chose for me in the Children of Awe. I want to see the world, Anderson. I want to get off this mountain.” He pulled into the dirt driveway, turning the truck off and unbuckling himself.
Turning to face me suddenly, he unbuckled me and captured my face between his massive hands. “Then we’ll wait for the babies, and I’ll take you to see the world. I just want to go with you, Del.”
“This is your home. I can’t ask you to leave it for me,” I whispered, feeling the starkness of his stare as he stripped me open. “I don’t know what kind of life I’m going to want. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re my home now. If you don’t want to hurt me, then don’t.” His voice went deep, riddled with agony as he stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. “I know you don’t understand. It kills me you can’t see how special this is between us, because you have nothing to compare it to. Not every relationship feels like this. Not every man will set you on fire and feel like home all at the same time. Not every man will look at you and think you were made for him, or that you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. You’re mine, Baby. And I’m yours.”
I sniffled back my tears, choosing to echo his vulnerability with my own. “You’re everything I could have dreamed of having, but I can’t believe it. There’s no way I stumbled through those woods and was picked up by a man who is going to love me the way I need.”
“I fell in love with you the moment I saw you curled up on the ground in the woods, Del. I didn’t even know your name, but I already knew you were mine in a way I never thought possible.” Hope surged within me. Something I’d thought dead and gone, beaten out of me by the man my parents gave me to. There was nothing I wanted more than to feel it, but my mother’s words echoed in my head.
Men who lived a life of sin would tell all lies to corrupt you.
While I didn’t trust in my mother’s words, there was something to be said of the improbability of falling in love in a day. In the community, love came after years of companionship.
It didn’t sear you alive from the inside out with a single glance, and it definitely didn’t make you abandon everything to follow someone you barely knew around the World.
I shook my head, although I wanted to believe those words more than anything. “You don’t even know me. I don’t even know me.”
“I know you. Because I feel you in here.” He took my hand, pressing it to his heart and holding it there for me to feel the steady rhythm. It thumped like the ticking of the clock in my room, strong and constant and reassuring all the same. I gaped at him until he leaned in and pressed his lips to mine gently, unsure what to say in the face of such a confession.
It was insane, but I wished that it could be true.
When he pulled back, he stepped out of the truck onto his ridiculously long legs, leaving me floundering as he came around to help me down. He didn’t expect me to say it back. He said it himself. He knew that I didn’t understand what we had.
The questions, the self-doubt, being so lost in life outside the Children of Awe was overwhelming. To have choices suddenly thrust upon me, how could I possibly know what was the right choice when I had no experience to base it on?
Anderson touched his lips to my forehead, smiling down at me with a breathtaking expression on his face. He stared at me like I was the only thing that mattered. Like all he saw was me when he had me in his arms.
Men couldn’t lie about that, right?
Taking my hand, he led me to the breathtaking cabin at the top of the little hill that separated it from the driveway. I’d known Anderson said his
friend’s house was bigger, but I didn’t appreciate just how much bigger it would be.
I preferred the coziness of Anderson’s home—that he was almost always within sight.
I didn’t know what that said about me leaving inevitably. If I didn’t want to be out of sight in his house, being on the other side of the World seemed…
Devastating.
A man threw open the door and hurried down the steps, his blond hair gleaming in the sun and deep brown eyes shining as he approached us. Similar in size to Anderson, I had a moment to wonder if all men outside the compound were that large. “The Disciples were definitely not created equal,” I whispered, making the man in front of me chuckle. Anderson’s hand tightened on mine, not crossing over the threshold to be painful, but a warning no less.
“Del,” he warned, his expression clearing when I turned wide eyes up to stare at him. “If you tell me you think he’s handsome, I’ll have no choice but to beat the shit out of him so he isn’t so fucking cute anymore. I really don’t want to have to do that.”
I felt the warning in the words, but nothing could stop me from biting my lip and asking the most pressing question. “What’s shit?”
The man waiting at the foot of the steps barked out a loud laugh, tossing his head back and clutching his chest as it shook. “Yeah, Anderson, what’s shit?”
“What’s fucking?” I asked, waiting for either of them to answer the question.
Anderson’s cheeks pinked, and he shot a glance toward his friend cautiously before his gaze settled back on mine. “I’ll show you later, okay?”
“You going to show her shit?” the other man asked, and I hated the feeling that I was on the outside of the joke. It was just another way that I didn’t fit with Anderson.
“Okay,” I whispered instead of voicing my hurt over being made fun of.
“This is Coleman. He’s a buddy from work,” Anderson said, introducing us. When we reached the bottom of the steps up to the porch, Coleman held out a hand to me. I stared at it, touching my hand to his with no clue what he wanted.
“It’s a greeting,” Coleman said, smirking at Anderson as he wrapped his hand around my waist and tugged me away from his friend.
“Let’s just not put your grubby paws on my woman, yeah?”
“Dude, it’s her hand,” Coleman laughed, pulling his hand back and scrubbing it over his face to hide his smile.
“Do I look like I give a fuck? Don’t touch her. Better yet, don’t even look at her,” Anderson said in his menacing voice.
With a kind smile for me in the face of Anderson’s odd behavior, Coleman turned, striding for the house. Anderson pulled me to follow, and the inside of the cabin was even more breathtaking than the outside.
High ceilings. Wood beams. Beauty I’d never even dreamed of a few days before. “Coleman comes from a long line of rich men. He would have been disowned when he joined the Army, if his dad hadn’t died before he could change the will. But Cole doesn’t like anything that keeps him stuck sitting behind a desk. So the family investment firm just wasn’t for him,” Anderson explained, nodding his head to the only other man in the cabin. “That’s Brick. He’s from our Headquarters in the city.”
“He’s just up to make sure my systems are up to date,” Coleman reassured me, watching the way Brick eyed me with distaste.
“It’s true then, huh? You got yourself your very own virgin?” Brick asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Shut up, Brick,” Anderson growled, moving to the corner to inspect the guns Coleman had lined up.
“The girls in the city will be so disappointed to know the mighty Anderson won’t be coming to fuck them.” I still didn’t know what that word meant, but in that context, it seemed like it could only mean one thing.
Anderson growled out a curse, getting up in his friend's face with his fist at the collar of his shirt. I couldn’t hear the words he spoke, but Brick’s face twisted in disgust before he tugged out of Anderson’s grip and stalked out of the cabin. Anderson sighed, turning to me and running his hand through his hair. “Baby—”
I shook my head, biting down on my tongue as I forced the lie from my mouth. “I’m fine.” I waved him off. I hadn’t thought he would be untouched. With what I knew of the world outside the Children of Awe, I knew that was nearly impossible. I’d never stopped to consider what that meant for me. Never thought about the fact that he could never be satisfied by a woman who had no clue how to please a man.
I hadn’t even known it could feel good for a woman until he’d pushed me to touch myself.
“The clothes are on the couch, if you want to look at them.” Coleman smiled, drawing me out of my contemplation. Anderson studied me as I moved to the stack, touching the floral prints with reverence. “Anderson said you like flowers.”
“I love them. Flowers and color and anything not white,” I admitted, watching as Anderson finally averted his attention back to studying the weapons and whatever other supplies he needed to secure his property against the people who wanted to drag me back.
Without the burden of his stare on me, I felt like my lungs could finally get a full breath.
I needed to get away from him before I lost all my common sense, because even while he tried to focus on everything Coleman showed him, his attention kept coming back to me.
He glared whenever Coleman glanced my way until I finally sighed and moved over to them. Inserting myself into Anderson’s side, I snuggled in and wondered how I’d ended up with the one man who couldn’t stop looking at me long enough for me to run.
Seven
Anderson
Del’s foot tapped impatiently, and she delicately picked at the skin of her fingertips. Her body hummed with the steady energy of a woman who needed to move. With her ass perched on the edge of the sectional sofa, she looked every bit the type who didn’t know the first thing about getting comfortable. I shook my head with a brief grin, turning back to the pot I needed to scrub.
“I can do that,” she said, jumping to her feet.
Spinning, I pointed a scolding finger in her direction. “What you need to do is rest. Drink the rest of that water, get comfortable, and take a nap.”
“A nap?” she whispered, raising her eyebrows at me. “Babies nap. I may not understand why you call me Baby, but even I know that I’m not actually one.”
I dropped my head forward, chuckling into my shirt. It seemed so strange to have my woman understand me, but still not really understand me at the same time. “You are definitely not a baby,” I sighed, drying my hands on a dish towel and moving to sit beside her on the couch. I drew her into my arms, settling back against the cushion and dragging her with me. Careful not to jostle her wrist, I held her tight enough that she had no choice but to rest her head on my chest. With her head right above my heart, she was right where she belonged. My world felt complete with her in it.
“Then why call me that?” There was no judgement to her tone, only curiosity and a vague sense of annoyance. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been to be thrown into the world of American Slang.
“It’s a term of endearment. Some people call their spouse Baby,” I explained, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear as she turned her face up to look at me. That small mouth pressed tightly together as she mulled over my words.
“So I should call you Baby?”
“You could if you wanted to,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.
Eventually she wrinkled her nose and shook her head, bringing me a sigh of relief. “I don’t know what to call you, but Baby isn’t it.”
“You could call me your man,” I said, pausing before deciding to push her just a bit. Being patient with Deliverance didn’t come easy, not when I knew what I wanted without a doubt. I couldn’t wait forever for her to catch up to me. “Or if my buddy pulls through with the Annulment, you could call me Husband.”
She stilled in my arms, averting her gaze. My arms tightened around her, holdi
ng her still as she debated with herself internally. Her body felt like a war zone in my hold, the struggle between her warring desires something that I could feel through her. “I’m not ready for that,” she whispered finally, and I took it as the win it was. She didn’t say that she couldn’t. She didn’t say that she’d leave me.
“I need you to get there, Baby,” I said. “Can you do that for me?”
There was a stretch of silence between us as I waited for her answer. Finally, she nodded. “Okay,” she murmured, and I didn’t bother trying to control the broad grin that crossed my face before I tugged her up closer and kissed her.
The first touch of my lips on hers always knocked me breathless. Like a sucker punch to the gut every single time. Her air and my air mixed, blending into something new that felt unique as we each left I behind and became us. I snagged her hips, dragging her on top of me until her knees spread around my hips and her sweetness touched the ridge of my cock through my jeans. She gasped into my mouth, her hips rocking involuntarily at the first spark of friction.
I wasn’t even sure she was aware she did it as I held her head steady with a hand buried in the curtain of her straight hair. She could explore my body however she felt comfortable, because there was no way I’d be able to hold out much longer.
I needed to be inside my woman.
I just had to hope she would want that as much as I did.
She moaned into my mouth when I reached between her legs, stroking her over the fabric of her panties. Pulling back sharply, she buried her face in my neck. “Oh,” she sighed.
Encouraging her to sit up, I brought her hands to my shirt. Placing those dainty, calloused fingers at the top button, I watched indecision war in her eyes before she ground her little pussy down harder on my fingers and slowly unhooked that first button.
The second followed without prompting. Her eyes narrowed on the small expanse of skin she revealed in the center of my chest. Her fingers brushed against it as she moved down farther, following the trail of buttons on the flannel I’d thrown on, when I’d thought I could bring myself to separate from Del long enough to go outside and set up additional security. The light, innocent touch went straight to my cock, making it twitch in my jeans more enthusiastically than any of the women in my past had managed.
Deliver Me from Evil (The Men of Mount Awe Book 1) Page 4