by Lora Leigh
“Friends that let his widow suffer,” he reminded her. “What happened, Sabella? Who finally told you the garage was going to hell? According to Rory, you hid in that house on the hill and wouldn’t even answer the door some days. How did you figure out the Malones were trying to destroy you?”
Her lips tightened.
“Yeah, old Nate, he was well loved.” He sneered. “So well that his widow was deserted and nearly lost her ass while she was grieving. What the hell happened with that one, Sabella?”
“Again, none of your business.” But her voice was tighter, the edge of hurt flaying his guts.
He knew what had happened. His family had turned against her. Mike Conrad, it was rumored, had offered to help her out if she would be so kind as to let him fuck her. Noah had to force the violence down. And once the Malones and the bank had turned against her, then finding anyone willing to help hadn’t been easy. Only the fact that Nathan Malone had indeed had friends who were still willing to use the garage had saved her. Friends who didn’t have power, and there were too many of them for Grant Malone, or Mike Conrad, to be able to strike out at effectively.
He knew what Mike Conrad had wanted. The garage was the perfect setup for laundering money and was centrally located for the militia members to congregate. With the apartment upstairs, the reputation of the garage, and Nathan Malone’s good name to fall back on, it would have worked.
The sheriff and his wife had stood by her, though it was rumored the friends Mike Conrad had in the local government were pressuring the sheriff to choose sides. Mike’s or Sabella’s. Noah knew Rick Grayson, if he wasn’t part of the BCM, was at least a suspect. Hopefully, the program Noah had slipped into Mike’s laptop would give them the proof they needed to bring that bastard down. Him and his friends.
The mayor, one of Grant Malone’s boyhood friends, had taken the city’s contract from the garage, illegally. Rory was checking with a lawyer in Odessa about suing for that one. What they had done to Sabella was unconscionable and wouldn’t be tolerated any longer.
The gossip and rumors that filled small-town life were there for anyone willing to listen. And Noah listened each time a customer got nosy enough to question him regarding the talk now circulating that he was taking the place of the man they had nicknamed “Irish.” He listened, picked through the gossip to find the truth, and the truth only managed to piss him off more.
“I’m making it my business,” he finally warned her.
The battle he faced would have been amusing if it were anyone else. He was going to have to steal his wife’s heart back from his own memory. Hell of a position for him to find himself in.
He watched as her gaze lifted, just her eyes, and she stared up at him, and he could have sworn he felt his balls twitch in warning. He had only seen that look one time in the two years they had been together.
Her lips parted as the door from the convenience store opened and Rory stepped in.
Noah’s gaze sliced to him, his demand to leave clear. Rory grinned back then his gaze moved to her neck. She was getting sick of that. The surprise, the look of shock that a man had marked her neck. What, did everyone suddenly think she really wasn’t woman enough to draw a man’s passion?
She curled her lip angrily before getting to her feet, moving around the desk, and jerking open the door to the garage. She stepped into the garage bay and slammed the door closed behind her.
“Asshole,” Rory muttered as Noah stared at the door she had gone through.
Noah turned to look at him. “Take care of that firing you’ve been putting off today. Your new mechanic is showing up tomorrow.”
Rory grimaced. “Yeah, just get her all pissed off at me now.”
“Do it,” he growled, before rising to his feet and making for the door to the garage. “And stay the hell out of my way for the next little bit.”
He pushed through the door and found Sabella standing next to the mechanics’ counter, going over the roster. She was frowning, then she glanced in the direction of the mechanic Rory was about to fire.
Before she could say anything he surprised her, and everyone else, by pulling the clipboard from her hand, slapping it to the table, and pulling her back to the office.
“Have you lost your mind!” she yelled as the door closed behind them. “Why isn’t Timmy’s name on the roster? He’s standing out there twiddling his damned thumbs on my time and I want to know why.”
“Rory took him off.” He took the easy way out. “He’s firing him.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did Rory know he was doing this before you told him to?” Sweet Southern rage brewed in her voice.
Noah crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at her.
“Rory agreed he’s not doing his job and made the decision.” Sort of.
“The hell he did.” She was in his face, her gray eyes dark and thunderous, her face flushed, her little fists clenched at her side. “My garage. My employees. My decisions.”
Her jaw was so tight he was afraid it was going to crack. Her lips tightened, moved, he could see the fury burning hot and wild inside her. Fury and arousal. It burned in him too. It set a spark to the darkness he tried to keep under control, to the hunger he fought not to reveal to her too quickly.
“Rory has never done anything without asking me first,” she bit out. “You made him do this.”
Noah shrugged. “I merely made the suggestion.”
“You bastard!”
“Call me another name, Sabella, and you’re going to regret it,” he warned her.
She had never cursed him during their marriage. She had rarely cursed.
She bared her teeth at him. “You arrogant damned misfit.”
That was it.
He dipped his shoulder, threw her over it, and turned for the stairs that led to the apartment.
He ignored the little fists beating at his back, the shrieks of rage, her attempts to kick out of his hold.
Sabella didn’t curse. She had never cursed. She had given him that haughty little good girl look every time he said “damn” and asked him if he really wanted their future children to hear that dirty word coming out of his mouth.
She had nearly broken him from cursing in two years. Now, if she wanted to handle the cursing she could deal with the consequences. Because it made him hornier than he had been to begin with and made him wonder what else he could convince her to say if he used just the right persuasion.
He slammed the apartment door behind them, locked it, then let her slide to her feet. He caught her fist as it slammed toward his face, then caught the other one and glared down at her.
“Enough!”
Something flickered in her gaze, some shred of trepidation as he released her wrists and stepped away from her.
“You are not firing Timmy.” She jerked that damned shirt around her like a shield.
“Rory is firing Timmy and as of today you’ll be back in the office where you belong,” he snapped, turning back to her in time to catch the sudden, overwhelming hurt that flashed in her face.
“No, I won’t be.” She squared her shoulders and faced him with a defiant lift of her chin and rage burning in her eyes. “Neither you nor Rory can enforce that one, Noah. I’ll burn this garage to the ground before I’ll let you take me out of it.”
Her expression was fierce, furious, and reminded him of the night he tried to force her to stay home rather than go out with her friends.
He frowned back at her. “Dammit, Sabella, you’re killing yourself out there. It’s hard, damned dirty work. There’s no sense in your having to labor like that. You could go to the spa. Get your nails done. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Sabella fought to hold back the fury strangling her. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to scream at him and slap that arrogant, condescending expression off his face. At that moment, she could see where Duncan got the impression that Noah was just like Nathan. Superior. Certain of his own strength and determined to have his way. Nathan ha
d gotten away with it simply because she hadn’t matured enough in their marriage to put her foot down while he was home. She had matured now. And this wasn’t Nathan. Noah wasn’t a SEAL who could be called out at any minute on a mission, and he wasn’t the man who had once claimed her soul, so he could go to hell as far as she was concerned.
“If I wanted a manicure then I would have one. If I wanted to sit back and play receptionist all day then that’s what the hell I would do. If I wanted another man to decide how I should act, dress, or present myself then I’d have one. That is not a part of your job description, Mr. Blake, and if you think you can make it happen then you can take a flying leap into hell.”
Noah stared back at her, shocked.
“Your husband dictated those things for you?” he asked her, feeling his guts ice over, because he knew he hadn’t.
She paused. He watched her expression soften, sadden. Her gray eyes flashed with arousal, and suddenly, her slender body seemed softer, sexier with whatever memories poured through her.
“No,” she finally admitted. “I dictated it, because it was what I thought he wanted. He liked his painted-up little wife. The nail polish and the pretty clothes and the helplessness.” She shook her head as he felt his chest clench at her sorrow. “He used to call me his little Southern Bella. He died before he ever learned what a complete imposter I was. Before he ever knew that I was just as knowledgeable about cars as any of his mechanics were. I loved Nathan. He was my heart and I gave him what he needed while I had him with me.” She flicked him a searing glance then. “But you’re not Nathan. And I don’t give a damn if you have what you need or not.”
Did she think he had given a damn about the frigging nail polish? Anger tore through him, not rage, not fury, but pure unbridled offense and male pride. Damn her, what pleased her had pleased him, but had she thought he had needed her to be something she wasn’t?
He tensed at the sexual, dominant surge of heat that filled his body. Before he could stop himself he was stalking toward her, jerking her to him.
“And did you get what you needed from him?” he rasped. “You’ve eaten me alive every time we’ve touched, Sabella. Did he fuck you like you needed or did you play the pretty little doll for him then too?”
“He gave me everything I needed,” she snarled back.
But he saw it. A little lie, just a little one. And he remembered the nights that she had tossed restlessly in their bed beside him. How he had felt, sometimes, that his Sabella needed something harder, something darker, than he had given her, but then thinking that it was only his own fantasies and needs that drove him to sense that.
It wasn’t. He saw it in her eyes. He recalled the torrential lust of last week when she had marked his shoulders with her sharp little nails, then his memories of their life together before hell, and he knew. He knew Sabella had longed for a hell of a lot more than he had allowed himself to give her. Pure lust.
A tight, hard smile twisted his lips as her gaze finally flickered in awareness of the animal she had just let loose inside him.
“You’re a liar,” he breathed, knowledge searing him, dominance rising inside him. “Tell me, Sabella. Did you ache? Did you dream of being taken hard and rough? Of getting wild and dirty with your husband? Were you too afraid to be the little wildcat you wanted to be?”
There was the truth. The flush leached from her face, her eyes darkened. He could see the lust filling her, pure, unbridled, but tinged with an emotion that tightened the heart in his chest.
Sabella wanted more than just sex. She wanted more than just the wild loving. She wanted everything he had ever dreamed of giving her. And he was going to give it to her right now.
She’d hidden things from him; well, there were damned sure things he had hidden from her as well. And the need to hear his sweet Southern Bella get nasty had been an all-consuming need.
“You can get wild with me, baby.” He jerked her harder against him, let her feel the erection pounding beneath his jeans. “Come on, I dare you. I’m a stranger, Sabella. Nothing to you. Nothing to that paragon of a husband you knew. Get wild with me. And I’ll show you how I can get wild right back.”
CHAPTER TEN
Get wild with him? Pour everything into him that she had fantasized about pouring into Nathan? She stared up at Noah, her body so sensitive, so highly excited, she couldn’t deny her need.
She could barely breathe for it. It was tearing through her veins, the temptation burning through her sex.
“You want to be taken hard and wild, Sabella.” His voice deepened, darkened, as his hands speared into her hair, fingers clenching, pulling at it.
Sabella felt the shocking sensations unravel inside her. Her lashes fluttered, her knees weakened.
“You want to pull my hair, baby? Come on, Sabella, I dare you. You don’t have to give me anything he had. Give me what he didn’t have.”
She jerked against him as she felt his lips on hers, whispering over them. Her eyes opened, and wild dark blue eyes held her trapped.
“I carried your scratches last week like other men carry a medal,” he growled, then nipped her lips. “I jacked off remembering how hot you were in my arms. And then I imagined your mouth. Watching your eyes. Seeing how hungry you could get.”
He tapped into her fantasy.
Sabella licked her lips, unconsciously imagining it. Feeling his hands in her hair, imagining him holding her in place, straining against her, demanding she take him, suck him.
Noah watched her eyes, saw the need, and his cock felt tighter, harder, thicker than it ever had.
Keeping one hand in her hair, he used the other to jerk his shirt off her shoulders. She wore his clothes like a defense against the world. He wasn’t going to allow her a defense against him any longer.
Below it was the sleeveless T-shirt she wore tucked into her jeans.
“I don’t think—”
“Don’t think,” he urged her, keeping his voice low, his eyes on her. “Unless you want to think about me fucking your mouth. I’m going to do that, Sabella. I’m going to watch those pretty pink lips open, watch my cock sink inside your mouth.”
She’d gone down on him before. She’d teased, licked, sucked playfully, she’d even taken his release and licked her lips like a little cat. But that wasn’t what she wanted now, it wasn’t what she needed.
“Take the boots off.” He held her gaze as he moved her and pushed her onto the couch. “Take them off now, Sabella, or you’ll be wearing your jeans around your ankles while I slide deep and hard inside you. Wouldn’t you rather use those pretty legs around my back, holding me inside you?”
She licked her lips again as he moved back and sat on the heavy coffee table to untie his own boots. He got them untied, then looked up when she moved.
But she didn’t move to take off her boots. She came over to him. Noah went back on the table, catching her, his hand burying in her hair again as her lips were on his, a cry of need and hunger filling the air.
“Ah hell. Yes!” She flowed over him, straddled his hips. Her hands buried in his hair as he shoved his tongue in her mouth and fought to dominate the kiss.
She was wild. As she writhed above him, her back arched, her pussy bore down on the thick erection beneath his jeans and her hands tore at his shirt.
He managed to get it off. Managed to get her shirt and bra above her breasts while she sucked and bit at his neck, leaving a mark he knew the world would see and he didn’t give a damn.
And it wasn’t the only mark she would leave. Her lips moved to his chest, his hard, male nipples.
She had never done that before. Sucked and licked at the flat, hard discs, and it made him wilder than he swore even the whore’s dust had.
“Damn you, yes,” he growled as she moved lower, her hands falling to his jeans, jerking his belt loose, scrambling to loosen his jeans. “Take it, Sabella. You little wildcat. I’m going to fuck your mouth until you’re begging for me to come. Begging to taste it. To f
eel it. To fuck me with every breath in your body.”
He was snarling the words. Hands in her hair, controlling her, pushing her down until she straddled his bent knee and pulled the fully erect, throbbing shaft of his dick from the parted material of his jeans.
She looked up at him and the expression on her face was one he knew he would remember forever. Pure, undiluted hunger.
Her hand tried to wrap around the width, but her fingers didn’t quite meet. She stroked up, over the violently sensitive head, and stared back at him with drowsy lust as she breathed in and out, each panting breath lifting those hard, flushed breasts.
“Make me,” she whispered then.
The demand seared his brain, his imagination, his fantasies.
He gripped the shaft of his cock with one hand, and with the other he forced her head down, his eyes locked with hers, watching as her lips flowered open over the bulging crest.
Sabella was lost in the lust. She ground her sex against his knee, feeling the exquisite sensations of cloth rasping against her swollen clit as the heat and hardness of his cock head pushed inside her mouth.
God, his taste. It was hot and male. Earthy and filled with lust. She licked over the blunted crest, feeling the iron hardness, the silky flesh, the throb of lust beneath.
She looked up at him, saw his wild eyes, like an unearthly glow, and dark, primitive need slashed through her. She needed to taste, needed to torment.
She licked beneath the head, rubbing her tongue over that spot that her Nathan had once loved her to caress so well. Noah tightened, the muscles of his thighs bulging, his hips arching, burying his cock deeper inside her mouth.
“Suck it, Sabella.” There was an odd, lyrical quality to his rough, dark voice. “Take me.”
She took him. His hands clenched in her hair, pulled at the strands as he moved her head, fucked into her mouth, and filled her with the heated hard crest of his erection.
She was needy, hungry for him. She could feel that hunger raging inside her as she cupped her own breast, her fingers plucking at her nipple, creating another burn, losing herself in the pleasure.