Her Vigilante Passion

by Her Vigilante Passion (lit)

  He should leave. He started to say that, too, but caught the almost imperceptible shake of Adam’s head out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t leave again even if he wanted to. Not unless she wanted him to. “But I’m going to anyway. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me, Lara? Can you look at me every day for the rest of our lives and know one of the men you married is the man who shot down your brother?”

  Chapter Seven

  Tears streamed down Lara’s cheeks. Her heart, broken so long ago by the events Luke described, by his abandonment, shattered once more by the anguish in his tone. Forgive him. Forgive him! She wished she could laugh at the absurdity of his request. He asked her forgiveness for something he couldn’t prevent. How did one exonerate a man for being himself, for acting on the bone-deep reflex to protect and see justice done?

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  His gaze fell, but not before she saw the devastation in his eyes.

  “No.” She finally touched him. She caught his face in both hands and made him look at her. “You don’t understand.”

  “I do.” He covered her hands with his and tried to pry her hands from his cheeks. Lara stiffened her hold, determined not to let him push her away. “I don’t blame you, pretty girl. What I did to you, to your family, there is no forgiveness for that.”

  “Stop it!” She didn’t mean to shout, but the force of her words at least gave him pause. “Damn it, Luke, I can’t forgive you for something I never held you responsible for in the first place. What happened was an accident. You said so yourself. You reacted just as any man would have. The only thing I blame you for is leaving me.”

  “You mean that.” His words rang with such surprise that she suppressed the sudden urge to slap him.

  Stupid man. What would it take to convince him? She knew of only one way to get through the barrier he threw up between them. Keeping her hold on his face strong and true, she shifted herself until she could straddle his lap.

  “This is the last time I’m going to hear any confessions of guilt out of you, Luke Stonewell. Do you hear me? I won’t stand for it.” She felt like she talked to a child and knew she likely sounded as such too. But, if it took treating this hard, determined man like a two-year-old to get through to him then, by golly, that’s what she meant to do.

  The cursory idea of a child sent her mind careening on an unrelated path. Her belly danced. Her womb constricted at the desire to be filled with a child, his child.

  Their child, she amended as she shot an imploring look at Adam. He moved to her side though still a bit behind, and sat now with his legs drawn up, his forearms resting on his knees as he watched them. She saw the evidence of his tears on his cheeks. Still, he gave her space. He gave Luke space when Luke revealed all that ate him up inside. Luke didn’t need that space now. He needed closeness, reassurance, love.

  She reached for Adam, at the same time sliding her other hand behind Luke’s neck. She pulled Luke closer and kissed him. His primal response, heated and instantaneous, confirmed she made the right move. He devoured her mouth, possessing her in a way that compelled juices to leak from her center. Her pussy ached to be licked with the same exuberance.

  His hands raked over her flesh. The calluses on his palms and fingers abraded her sensitive skin. His thumbs glided over her taut nipples. He gave a low growl as she arched into him, asking without words for more of that touch.

  Luke broke the kiss only to skim his mouth down her throat, her collarbone, her chest. Adam moved closer at her back. His body pressed against her, his chest there to support her head when she let it fall back. His hands moved beneath her arms and around to cup her breasts. He held them firm, lifting them and squeezing slightly as Luke dipped his head and closed his lips around one taut peak.

  Luke alternated nibbling at her hardened nipple and then licking it to soothe first one breast and then the other until her pussy flamed and she writhed against him and Adam. With his hands free, thanks to Adam’s hold on her breasts, Luke delved a hand between her legs on a direct course to her sopping and ready folds. He reached between her body and Adam’s with his other hand and palmed her ass.

  Lara’s breath caught. She knew what he meant to do. She feared it even as her body hummed for it. The touch didn't feel as foreign as it did the first time. Luke moaned against her breast. His warm breath fanned her highly sensitized nipple as his finger grazed the swollen bud of her clit. On her ass, his hand skimmed her cheeks, then spread them. One finger slipped between.

  Despite the fresh memory of such a touch, Lara’s body went rigid just the same. She opened eyes she didn’t realize she’d closed to find Luke gazing at her. The corner of his lips tilted in that sexily superior half-grin that made her insides flutter. Seeing his playful mood return, no matter how haughty, brought her spirits soaring. She decided to meet him action for word.

  “I want that.” The confession offered her nearly as much excitement as his touch. She shivered in his arms. “What you said about taking me there while Adam’s cock is inside my pussy, I want that, Luke.”

  The sound he made at her affirmation couldn’t be defined. Pain, need, desire, torture mixed together to form a noise she never heard before from a man. From any human. “You’ll get it, woman. You’ll feel my cock inside that tight ass just as you’ll feel my belt on that soft skin for the words you speak.”

  This time Lara heard the unintelligible sound come from her own throat. “Luke.” He meant to spank her. He continued to talk of such a thing. The intent in his gaze left no doubt in her mind he would do it. The sizzle in her body, the burn in her ass that made her inner muscles tense in anticipation left no doubt in her mind that she would enjoy every swat.

  Adam leaned down, chuckling in her ear as he nipped her lobe. “You’re blushing again.”

  Lara couldn’t stop herself from smiling at that any more than she could stop her body heating from head to toe at Luke’s words. She craved all he spoke of with a fierce hunger she never thought to experience, and the knowledge embarrassed her even as it thrilled her.

  “She is, isn’t she?” Amusement laced Luke’s question.

  “Your words seem to have that effect on her,” Adam commented.

  “Adam never touched you here, never fucked you here, did he?” As he spoke, his finger delved inside her anus. The familiar, pleasurable burn rendered her unable to do more than shake her head. “I didn’t expect he would. I’m glad. Thank you, brother, for leaving that hole virgin for me.”

  “My pleasure.” Adam’s hands caressed her breasts, his thumbs grazing over the nipples Luke left aching for more attention.

  “The pleasure will be our lady’s when I decide to claim this part of her. I won’t do it today, my love.”

  Lara whimpered at his refusal before she could stop herself.

  Luke smiled and nipped her jaw. “Right now, I want to be inside your tight, wet pussy. I want to feel your inner muscles squeeze around my cock. I want to be so far inside you that our bodies feel glued together.” He bent again, taking first one nipple and then the other in his mouth for more of the torturous pleasure her breasts craved.

  “Okay.” Luke bit her right nipple with a little more force than before, and she shivered clean to her toes. Shards of pleasure-like crystal rained through her body and collected exactly where she wanted him most, in her sopping, throbbing channel.

  “There’s something more I have to tell you first.”

  Lara’s heart skipped.

  No, please, no.

  He meant to tell her he planned to leave. She knew it. She couldn’t handle it, knew she would die if forced to watch him ride away a second time.

  Luke licked a path up her chest and neck to her mouth and kissed her lips more softly than he’d ever kissed her before. He pulled back enough to meet her gaze, his eyes intense, serious, and captivating. “I love you, Lara.”

  She tried to swallow, but couldn’t around the lump in her throat. His confession didn’t come as
news to her. She knew he loved her. But hearing him say it, seeing the echo of it in his eyes, feeling it in his touch brought another rush of tears to her eyes. “I know,” she whispered. “And I love you.”

  He grinned, the curve of his lips so proud she could’ve sworn she saw his head swelling. “I know.”

  Adam’s hand glided up her front. He tapped her chin with one finger, and she turned her head to look at him. “Since we seem to be saying things we already know…” He shot a smile at Luke. He opened his mouth to continue, but stopped when Luke groaned.

  “Don’t start with the poetic horse manure again.”

  Adam acquiesced with an almost imperceptible movement of his head. “I love you, too.” He kissed her.

  They turned her in their arms, not needing words between them to communicate their intentions. They never did, she recalled and figured it to be a good thing seeing as Adam’s tongue remained inside her mouth. They guided her to kneel between them, her front now pressed to Adam’s unyielding body, her hands braced on his shoulders. Luke’s hands splayed on the back of her shoulders and glided down in a firm but tender fall south.

  Luke leaned in and whispered in her ear, “I’m going to take you from behind like I did our first time. I believe you called it mounting an animal.”

  The laughter in his voice made her smile as she broke the kiss with Adam. “And I believe you fucked me with the exuberance of said animal, too.”

  “As I will again. Spread your legs for me, Lara.”

  She did, sliding her knees on the grass, wincing only slightly at the abrasive sting to her kneecaps. Luke’s lips closed over her flesh, and he licked a spot at the juncture where her neck met her shoulder, then bit the same spot. She shivered down to her soul.

  Her gaze locked with Adam’s. He watched her intently, holding her lovingly with his arms around her waist.

  “Keep your hands on my shoulders and arch your back,” he instructed her. “Let Luke guide your body where he wants it.”

  Luke’s hands moved to her hip and the small of her back. The position coupled with Adam’s fixed gaze on hers seemed dirty and erotic. She felt electrified, needy, and ready.

  “Please.” The word escaped her lips before she could stop it. They’d barely touched her and already she’d started to beg. She didn’t care. She would beg if it took that to get what she wanted. Right now she wanted Luke’s cock inside her aching pussy.

  “Thought you wouldn’t ask for such things, Miss Franklin,” Luke chided her, his cock pressing to the sodden folds of her pussy.

  “I’m not asking. I’m demanding. And what I said I wouldn’t request is something entirely different than what I want now.”

  “We’ll argue that point later.” Luke positioned his cock at her fiery opening and plunged.

  Lara screamed. She couldn’t help it. The single, vicious, deep thrust tore the sound from her in a riot of pleasure, pain, and sheer bliss. He fucked her. She could think of no other word to describe the ferocious and primal way he slammed his cock into her sodden channel. She burned for him, and he met her flames with a dynamite of his own, taking her fast and hard to an orgasmic peak she couldn’t have backed away from if she wanted to.

  It was rough and rapid and totally superb. Her body rocked forward with each piston of his cock into her. Her breasts slapped Adam’s chest, the sensitive, hardened peaks sizzling at the abrasion of his coarse chest hair.

  “Lara.” The sound of her name seemingly wrenched from Luke’s balls proved enough to send her over the edge. Whether he called out to her in warning, permission, or passion, she didn’t know. Either way, she couldn’t hold back if she tried.

  “Go with me.” She ground the words through tightly clenched teeth, the last coming out as only half a sound while her body convulsed. She quaked as the orgasm blasted through her. Her nails dug into Adam’s shoulders. She wondered how she didn’t draw blood as she struggled to hold her position while her body gave in to the spasms. Dimly, she heard Luke’s release, felt the hot spurt of his seed as he came deep inside her.

  “Shit!” The oath, so uncharacteristic coming from Adam, broke through the roaring in her ears first. Lara lifted her head from where it fell to rest on his chest just below his throat and met his gaze.

  “Tell me about it.” Her words were labored, her breath ragged, but she managed a smile that spread from ear to ear.

  “I don’t suppose you can handle that a second time.” His hands glided caressingly up and down her arms.

  Lara lifted a brow. “With you? But we’ve never fu— made love like that.”

  “I think I might be just on the edge enough to give it a try if you don’t mind.” His hands skimmed her front, lingering on her breasts, and then trailing down. “That is if Luke didn’t hurt you too badly just now.”

  “Hurt me? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Seeing as I’m not.” He caught her waist, twisted her around, planted her gently on her back and covered her body with his all in a move smoother than churned butter.

  Lara gave a soft chuckle as she stared up at him in surprise. “That’s something new.”

  “I have a few moves I’ve yet to show you. I'll have to be on top to give you the full impact.” The head of his penis created a lightly insistent pressure to the outside of her opening. His wide hips spread her legs, and his lower body pressed to her stomach, a spectacular weight pinning her to the ground.

  “Oh, my,” she said raggedly. She cried out with every rapturous, sensational part of her being as he drove every delicious, wondrously hard, and long inch of his dick inside her awaiting pussy.

  * * * *

  “Didn’t you say nobody expected the Desert Riders to show for two days’ time?” Lara planted her fisted hands on her hips and turned to Adam before spinning back around to glare at Luke.

  She looked so damned sexy with a hint of temper coloring her cheeks that Luke very nearly grinned before he caught himself. He might have been single his whole life, but he watched men with their women, and he learned real fast. Until he figured out what got her back up this time, it would be best to keep such observations to himself.

  “If that’s the case, why are you spending the night in town?”

  Luke scooped his shirt off the ground near his booted feet and pulled it on. “That ‘nobody’ doesn't include me.” When her eyes narrowed, he sighed and decided to try smoothing her ruffled feathers despite being oblivious to their cause. “I explained to you what I mean to do, Lara. I can’t organize the gang and coordinate everything with the sheriff from way out here. I have to be in town.” He said it more to reiterate the fact to himself than to convince her. He wanted to stay. If only he could turn a blind eye, let the sheriff do his duty, and then Luke could stay right there with Lara where he belonged.

  “You didn’t tell me about that.”

  Luke glanced down at the tin star pinned to his shirt and suppressed a sigh. Shit, no. He hadn’t told her, but something told him he was about to now, or else. “No, I suppose I forgot to mention it.”

  Lara cocked her head. “Forgot to mention it or conveniently omitted it?”

  “Did the sheriff deputize the whole gang or just you?” The calmness of Adam’s question landed like a log in the center of Lara’s interrogation, making Luke blink. He shifted his attention to his brother.

  “The gang,” Luke snagged his hat off the branch he’d hooked it on and settled it on his head. “Dillinger saw to that.”

  Adam nodded. “He needed to. It’s best if all of you are legal before this goes down. There’s no telling what you’ll have to do to stop the Desert Riders. Good to see the sheriff is keeping his head.”

  Luke bit back the first retort that sprang to his tongue. From what he saw before he left town to come to the ranch, Sheriff Baird would rather eat rotten prunes than swear in a bunch of vigilantes like the Stonewell Gang. He did it, though.

  “You don’t think it will take them two days to reach town.” Lara’s softly spok
en comment drew Luke’s attention back to her. She stood, her hand still planted on her trim hips, her blonde hair falling in wavy locks around her face, her eyes awash with too many emotions to name.

  Luke stepped to her, hooking an arm around her and drawing her close. Her lithe body fit to his less pliant one with such perfection. It fed so much blood to his cock that it threatened to burst from the confines of his britches. He swallowed a groan. The woman screamed of plain hellfire, and he couldn’t get enough of her.

  “I think they will reach town long before two day's time,” he answered her honestly. Baird argued with him to the last, but Luke refused to budge. Instinct told Luke that Baird didn’t believe they had two day’s time either. Still, if the sheriff got his way, the Stonewell Gang would stay out of town until the moment the first Desert Rider’s horse stepped its hoof on Wildwood ground. The sheriff’s attitude didn’t set right with Luke, which is precisely why Luke didn’t intend to give the sheriff his way. “They’ll be here sooner.”

  Lara nodded. “And when they do, you’ll be there.”

  “I mean to be.” Luke rested his forehead to Lara’s, his gaze locked with her. “I have to be. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do. I wouldn’t expect anything less out of you.” She pulled back and looked away, hesitating. “I um, well, I’m s–sorry I got so angry about you going to town tonight.”

  Luke did a good job of stifling the laugh of surprise that bubbled in his throat. Then he screwed up and glanced at Adam. The shock Lara’s apology had etched on his brother’s face undid him. Luke lost it, nearly doubling over as the laughter escaped.

  Lara went rigid in his arms. He figured if eyes could shoot arrows he would be full of holes right about now. Her hands flattened on his chest, and he braced himself for the slap even as he held her tighter when she attempted to push him away.

  “Am I nothing more than a source of constant amusement to you, Luke Stonewell?”

  “You’re many things to me, pretty girl,” Luke managed through fits of laughter. “A source of constant entertainment for sure. Comically.” He got himself under control and brushed his lips to her forehead. “Dramatically.” He moved his lips down the bridge of her nose to kiss the tip. “Sexually.” He found her mouth next and traced its shape with the tip of his tongue until she gave a small gasp, her lips parting to offer him entrance.