I run around to the side alleyway and see a guy has pinned Ella to the wall. He has gelled back hair and a polo shirt. I don’t even think before I grab him by the back of his fancy shirt and throw him onto the dusty ground.
“Hey!” he yells at me. But I see no fear in his eyes.
I’m far from done. I pick him up again and hold him against the wall, ramming my fist into his face again and again and again.
I can hear Ella yelling somewhere in the distance but I don’t stop. Michael Evans was just the beginning. Michael triggered me. Michael was a warmup for whoever this asshole is.
I won’t stop until blood is flowing over my hands.
Then I feel warm fingers on the back of my neck. “Luke. Please. You’re going to kill him,” she yells.
I’m brought back to reality, to this preppy asshole in my hands whose face is no longer recognizable. It’s covered in blood, his baby blue polo spattered with dark red liquid. I let go of him and he drops to the ground, groaning.
“Who is this guy?” I ask Ella.
She’s crying again. “My ex-boyfriend.” She looks scared.
I turn around and crouch, getting eye level with the scum staring up at me. “You leave her the fuck alone or next time she won’t be here to stop me from fucking killing you. You hear me? I see you in this town again and I’m putting a knife to your throat and fucking slitting it.”
The guy does something I never expected anyone to do after I’ve beaten the shit out of him.
He smiles.
Then he opens his mouth to slur two words. “Yes, sir.” They are biting and sarcastic, laced with not one bit of apology nor fear.
I grab Ella and walk back toward the bar. She’s shaking under my arm. “You’ve got a patient to attend to inside,” I grumble.
She looks at me curiously.
“Michael Evans.”
An hour later, Michael’s bruised jaw on ice, we’re back in my truck.
“How did you know?” Ella asks me.
“How did I know what?”
“How did you know to come after me? Did someone tell you I was outside?”
I shake my head. “I always pay attention to when I feel a certain way. Never failed me. Only time I didn’t listen?” I slam my fist into my leg, wincing. “This happened.”
“Well, thanks,” she says quietly. “But I had things under control. He doesn’t scare me,” she says, sticking her jaw out defensively.
I pull the truck over and put it in park. “Ella, look at me. He should scare you. What’d he do? Come all the way out here from California to come harass you?”
She nods.
“That’s not fucking normal, Ella. Look at me. Promise me you’ll be careful. Next time you see him, if you see him, you run to someone in public and you call me. And you stay there until I show up. You got it?”
“He won’t bother me again. You made sure of that, I think,” she replies.
I look out the window at the moon lighting up the ground around us. I don’t want to scare her, but I’m not so sure about that.
I put the truck in drive and make my way back towards my house, but it’s not long before we’re arguing.
“I just want to sleep in my own bed,” she says from the passenger seat, her arms crossed over her chest indignantly.
“Then I’m sleeping next to you,” I say.
She shakes her head. “You scared the shit out of Jason. He won’t be coming back for me. I know that,” she insists. “You don’t fit in my bed and I need my space.”
“Fine,” I say, chewing on the inside of my cheek, still angry from earlier. “But you have your phone on with the ringer. If I call you and you don’t pick up in five seconds, I’m calling the sheriff and I’m coming over here with my gun.”
Ella glances at me. “You have a gun?”
I wipe my mouth with my hand. “You think I don’t have a gun? I’m an ex-Marine Texas boy.”
“I don’t like the thought of you having a gun,” she says. “I really, really don’t like that. I hate guns.”
I shrug. “It’s not really up for a vote.”
“Just like you joining the military apparently wasn’t up for a vote?” she spits at me.
I scoff. “Yeah, I reckon it was kinda like you deciding to not tell me about our daughter.”
Our acid words fill the air of the truck. I pull to a stop in front of her house. She opens the door. “Goodnight, Luke.”
I roll down the window as she slams the door shut. “Ella, wait!”
But she’s already halfway to her house. “I don’t want to talk to you right now, Luke Davis. Go away.”
I roll the window up and pull away from her house.
But I don’t go home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ELLA
The next day, I wake up late, the full sun pouring through the tiny window in my loft. I fell asleep in my dirty clothes. I smell so bad I make myself cough as I stand up.
I take a long, hot shower and wrap myself up in a towel. My body is aching from the stress of the previous day, and I can’t help but think about the parting words Luke and I had for each other.
And then there’s Jason.
As much as I tried to play it off in front of Luke, I was scared. I still am scared. I’ve never had a guy act the way he’s acting. I’m drying my hair in the mirror when I hear a noise in my kitchen.
My stomach drops through my feet. I reach for my phone when I realize with a start that I left it upstairs, doing exactly what Luke told me not to. My heart is thudding as I try to think. I start to turn the hair dryer off but think better of it. I leave it blaring on the counter and open the drawers looking for anything I can use as a weapon.
I pull out a pointy eyeliner brush and hope for the best. I’m sure I can jab the hard end of it into an eyeball if I have to. I open the door quietly and peek out. I hear more shuffling noises over the sound of the hairdryer.
It’s now or never. I turn around the corner and scream at the top of my lungs, hoping it’ll give me the upper hand. I lunge toward the man standing two feet from me, barely looking at who’s in front of me.
He grabs my arm without even turning around, my wrist paralyzed in mid-air.
“Your technique needs some work, but points for style,” Luke says in his drawl. He finishes mixing cream into a coffee mug and hands it to me with a smirk. “See? This is why I didn’t want you sleeping alone.”
I glance at the front door. “Did I leave that unlocked last night?” I go back in my mind. I was pissed off and exhausted. It is totally possible that I forgot to. My routine was messed up. This is how people end up leaving their toddlers in hot cars. You forget one step in your usual way of going about things, and bam. Tragedy.
Luke laughs. “I have a key.”
My eyes go wide and I stomp one of my bare feet. “How dare you!”
“It wasn’t on purpose. I still had it from the renovation I did. Feel free to change the locks.” He leans against the counter with a tired grin.
“Wait…did you sleep outside last night?”
He shrugs. “Wasn’t so much sleeping going on, but yeah. I sat out on your porch.” He suppresses a yawn. “I’m not that tired, though.”
I roll my eyes and pull him over to the sofa. “Sit,” I say. “I’m making you breakfast and then I’m driving you home. You shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery after a twenty-four-hour period of no sleep.”
“Longer,” he says.
“What?” I ask him over the sound of me pulling down frying pans.
“I said it’s longer than that. Night before last we spent most of the night tangled up in each other. Or did you already forget?”
I flash him a sultry look. “How could I forget that?”
I turn around to crack eggs into the pan when I feel his hands around my waist through my towel. He kisses me behind my ear and I’m covered in goosebumps. I nearly drop the egg. “You have to be hungry,” I say to him.
“
Mm, something like that,” he replies, reaching up to my breasts to undo the knot of towel there. It falls to the floor and I’m naked in my own kitchen. “Two steps to the right,” he says. I obey him, my heart pounding, my mouth dry. Other places on me aren’t so dry. I don’t know how a single touch from him can do this to me, but it does.
He trails his fingers down my sides and up my back. He rests a flat palm against my spine and presses me down so I’m bent forward over the countertop. I hear him unzip his jeans. He pulls my hair to the side, my stomach pushed hard against the newly-refinished laminate. “We said some things last night,” he whispers.
“Things that needed to be said,” I retort angrily, trying not to breathe hard under the weight of his seduction.
He laughs. “I’m sorry for what I said.” He nibbles at my earlobe and my knees buckle.
“I’m…not…sorry,” I gasp as he moves one hand between my legs from behind. I hear the crinkle of a condom wrapper.
“You don’t need to be,” he replies, bending me over harder and pinning my arms behind me with one hand. I feel him slip into me roughly, my cheek pressed against the cold countertop, the smell of burning butter a foot from my nose. But I don’t care. He’s angry, and I can feel it.
And so am I. I growl and groan as he pounds himself into me over and over and over. I’m helpless against him.
And I like it.
I’m about to careen over the edge when he pulls out and lets go of me. I turn around, pawing at his shirt, tearing it over his head. Our mouths are on one another’s, tongues and heat and skin and passion. He lifts me up on to the kitchen counter and I wrap my legs around his torso, pressing my heels into his perfect, muscular ass. I trail my fingers down the tattoos on his arms and he pins my hands above my head this time, tacking them with his fingers against the cabinet doors.
He’s staring into my eyes as he slides into me again, this time harder and rougher than before. I’m driving my heels into his back, willing him to be deeper and deeper inside of me. I want to feel every inch, every centimeter, every millimeter.
We fall together into bliss as the smoke alarm goes off.
I can barely walk so he carries me to the sofa, laying me down gently. He kisses my forehead as the alarm continues to shriek at us. “I’ll clean up and make breakfast. You just lay here.”
“Okay,” is all I can muster, my chest still heaving from our little culinary interlude.
I lay on my sofa, totally naked, the thick cotton twill soft against my skin. The ceiling fan spins from the high ceiling above me and I feel my eyelids start to flutter shut, Jason the furthest thing from my mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ELLA
“We’ll just need you to run the water dunk booth. That’s it,” Tanya intones from the doorway of my office. She keeps trying to sit down but I’m up to my eyeballs in paperwork and I don’t want to have this conversation.
“I really, really don’t have time for volunteering or for this right now, Tanya,” I reply, flipping through three different patient charts looking for a sticky note I lost.
“Hot date tonight with you-know-who?” she asks knowingly.
I start to object to the implication but the blush in my cheeks gives me away. I glance up at the clock. “Yes,” I say in a measured tone.
“You two have been seeing an awful lot of each other recently. Or I presume you have. Tim tells me he hardly hangs out with Luke anymore.”
I bite my lip. “He broke Man Code to tell you that?”
“You know me. I can needle anything out of anybody, sweetheart.” Tanya traces her fingers over the doorframe. “He even told me that Luke missed karaoke night last week.”
“We were doing some renovations. Lost track of time,” I reply. I’m still flicking through charts but I’ve lost the entire trail of what it is I’m supposed to be doing. The letters flicker before me and none of the words are reaching my brain. I think back to last week, the smell of sawdust at Luke’s house, how he’d been standing behind me as I held a hammer drill in my hand. How our renovation work had turned into a sea of salty flesh and sex on top of a drop cloth. Three rounds of sex, to be precise. By the time we’d thought to look at a clock, karaoke night was long finished.
“Renovations? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
I slam the charts down. “Tanya, you’re not going to leave until I say that I’ll volunteer at the fundraising festival, are you?”
She smiles and nods. “That’s correct. Everybody in town does it, and you’re no exception just because-“
“Just because I have full clinic hours, am open on Saturdays, take night calls, and make time to go to the school to check in on the kids twice a week?”
She nods. “Hey, I was the history teacher, guidance counselor, and mayor for a time a few years back. I know the song you’re singing better than you do.”
I sigh and slip my glasses off of my face, rubbing my eyes. I can’t wear my contacts when I’m this tired. “Alright. Okay. I’ll do it.”
She claps her hands together. “Great! You’ll be paired up with Amy Waters.” Tanya grimaces and waves goodbye. “Alright, have a good evening!”
And on that firebomb, she leaves my office.
I’m so engrossed in what I’m doing an hour later I don’t hear the front door open.
“You should really lock that,” Luke says from the doorway.
“Mm,” I reply absently. “Just…hang…on…one…second!” I finish the last of my paperwork with a flourish. “Alright, I’m done.” I look up at him.
“You heard nothing I just said, didn’t you?” His arms are crossed, his tattoos clear and the lines of his muscles clearly defined through his skin.
I’m about to answer when I realize I’ve left yet another stack of files on the small table by the doorway. “Dammit!” I yell, walking over to pick them up. “I just need to run through these, I thought I was done. I’m so, so sorry.” I stand on my tiptoes to kiss him on the mouth quickly, but he pulls me closer to him before I can get away.
“I think I’m gonna need another one of those if there’s any hope of me waiting for you tonight,” he says in a sexy voice. I oblige, giving in to three more kisses that hardly make me want to do more work.
I push him away finally, adjusting my glasses. “Give me twenty minutes to work through some of this. That’s it. I promise. Then we can leave. Scout’s honor.”
Luke pulls a chair up next to me and rests his hand on my knee. “You don’t mind if I do some work while you’re working, do you?” he whispers in my ear.
I nearly drop my pen. “I’m not sure how productive that’ll be…” but I trail off as he kisses my neck. I force myself to stare at Mrs. Johnson’s chart, double-checking her bladder stone prescription and willing myself to not be distracted by Luke. He’s climbed down to the floor on his knees. He pushes my legs apart and shoves my skirt up my thighs.
I sigh and drop my pen. He looks up from kissing my inner thighs. “Keep working,” he says. “Otherwise we’ll never get to the main event.”
I pick my pen up again and scribble some more notes as he moves my panties aside. It’s getting harder and harder to concentrate as I sit here. “Can I just take a break-“
Luke stops again. “No. You said you needed to work, so keep working.” His fingers are underneath my panties, feeling my wetness there. He strokes the tender skin and I’ve lost all sense of what I’m reading in front of me. I grip my pen tightly and start writing nonsense on a scrap of paper to keep Luke satisfied.
His lips are against my skin, my panties pulled to the side. He licks me between my legs in all the right places. I squirm and moan against his tongue, which flicks and glides around, bringing me closer and closer to climax.
I drop my pen and scream, gripping onto my desk as hard as I can. Luke comes up for air, smiling. “You finished with your work yet?” He picks me up out of my chair and shoves his lips up against my ear. “Because I’m not.”<
br />
He carries me into the exam room and pulls down a fresh roll of paper. “Patient is presenting with extreme sexiness,” he says as he pushes me onto the table and unbuttons my sweater. “Insists upon teasing her boyfriend by wearing those glasses and putting her hair up onto her head.” He slides my sweater off my shoulders and starts working on the bottom of my tank top, his calloused fingers gliding up my skin. “Prescription is for her to sit up, shake her hair out, and take her glasses off her face like the sexy librarian she is.”
I laugh and cover my face with my hands. “Stop it,” I say, giggling.
“Oh no, I’m the doctor and what I say is gospel in this space.” Luke slides his hands under my lower back and pulls me upright. “Do it, Madame Librarian.”
I’m blushing uncontrollably but I can’t resist his stare. I take my hair out of its twist and shake it out around my shoulders, pulling off my glasses. I bite the end of the stem for full effect. Luke grabs at his heart dramatically, staggering around the room. “You’re trying to kill me, Ella.”
Then he’s back at the table, sliding off my panties and pulling my bra out from under my tank top. I’m still wearing my skirt, which is up around my stomach. He pulls off his pants, shoves my knees open and is close to pushing himself inside of me when I remember.
“Wait!” I yell. “Condom. Um, there’s some in the bowl in the front of the office.”
Luke takes a step back. “You sure we need one?” he says with a smile.
My body is aching for him to be inside of me, raw and bare and pressing flesh against flesh. “Yes, please.”
Luke leans over me and teases my nipples through my shirt with his teeth. “I’d love to fuck a baby into you, Ella Hanover.”
I moan as he bites and nibbles at my tender pink nubs through the lightly ribbed fabric. “Just…this…once,” I whisper back to him, totally losing my mind to the moment. It’s not hard for me to forget myself right now, and a second later when he’s inside of me, I lose all of my thoughts.
We ride each other until we can’t take anymore, me feeling like my throat is going to be raw and red from the screams he elicits from my body.
Rescue Me: A Bad Boy Military Romance Page 13