Paying Up

by Mary Wine

  Shane felt rage boil up inside him. He actually enjoyed the emotion as it took the bite off his hunger. His cock still throbbed but it was a dull steady ache that mixed with his rage giving him the balance to walk back to where he’d parked his Hummer. He slipped behind the wheel and punched the accelerator to the floor.

  The winner in any battle was the man who took the time to prepare. A true warrior never faced off in a struggle without planning his attack. The aching cock in his pants was his reward for facing Christina without a plan.

  He wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

  Shane pulled into his driveway and simply walked right into his house. The ranger on duty issued him a salute that he barely returned. There was no such thing as off-duty for him. He ran a classified ranger unit that didn’t exist. That meant his personal life and his military one were a single entity.

  If his men didn’t know where he’d gone tonight, they would know where he was headed tomorrow. A low snarl of approval came from his lips as he considered that idea. Good. He wanted every male on the planet to think of Christina as his. He wanted them to believe he’d snap their necks if they even thought about looking at her long legs.

  He marched into his bathroom and turned the shower on. Shane left the light off—the dark fit his mood as he stripped. Moonlight streamed in through the bathroom window. He folded his clothes as he took them off, out of habit, and his boots were lined up against the wall, his gun slipped on the top of the shower stall on a small corner shelf that he’d installed just for his sidearm.

  The weapon never sat out of his reach, ever. It was his life. He stepped into the shower and bared his teeth as the icy water coated his hot skin. He’d only turned on the cold water, craved the contrast of temperature against his raging blood.

  His cock stuck out from his body, refusing to slacken as the taste of Christina’s lips lingered on his. Her scent was deep in his lungs as his cock gave another twitch at the idea of the hot arousal he’d smelled on her. She’d been wet for him. So wet, he smelled it right through her clothing. His erection stood firm in the cold water as hunger chewed at the logic that had sent him away from her bed.

  He curled his fingers around the swollen rod, slipping up and down its rigid length. Pleasure joined the ache as he worked his hand faster. His seed splashed onto the tile as his lips curled away from his clenched teeth.

  His mind sharpened as his body’s demands quieted. Stepping out of the stall he reached for a towel and began to plot.

  Chapter Three

  Christina woke up tired. Her sheets were pulled and twisted from her bed and her hair was a nest of knots that pinched her scalp as she forced a brush along the strands.

  She looked at her reflection like the body in the mirror belonged to a stranger. Those couldn’t be her breasts. The globes looked swollen. The nipples drawn into little puckered nubs that still hadn’t returned to the flat state they normally lay in.

  Her skin seemed almost flushed and it was ultra-sensitive too. She lingered over the details of her makeup and hair because the bra she’d removed from her dresser looked like a torture device. Her breasts were still pulsing with little zips of feeling that screamed against the idea of anything containing them except Shane’s hands.

  She didn’t want to put her jeans on. The folds of her sex felt too crowded already, and the idea of stepping into her panties made her mad. All she wanted to do was put on the lightest of cotton sundresses and leave her skin free to feel the air.

  Christina hissed with frustration and pulled her clothing on.

  Shane Jacobs had done this to her! She didn’t know how but somehow he’d pushed some button in her brain that turned her gender against her common sense. Interrupting her normal morning thinking were flashes of his face, images of the way his arms bulged with muscle and the feel of his hard erection against her belly.

  The stack of work she had waiting for her battled against her mental fantasies. She made mistakes and forgot details that were so practiced in her routine, she would have laughed if the cause wasn’t so frightening.

  Oh, she was scared. It made her furious but Christina couldn’t very well lie to herself. She’d been kissed before. On a hundred dates that she couldn’t seem to remember faces from. All she saw was Shane and the way he bared his teeth at her.

  The boys she’d dated had kissed her but Shane had taken her mouth and tasted it like a man. Her body blossomed with the memory as her sex actually heated and sent its lubricating flow down the walls of her passage just from the memory.

  Yeah, she was scared. Right down to her virginity. She had never gone past first base with any date and never let them see her breasts or touch her nipples. Maybe she had known that her body would tumble into insanity like this. Perhaps that was the reason she had clung to her resolve to deny the offers of love that had been presented as reasons to yield her body.

  Her body shivered as she recognized the basic fact that Shane wouldn’t be thinking about getting to second base with her. That man was going to strip her body and take it through the entire game, pitch by pitch, without missing a single inning.

  Her only chance was to refuse to take the field and leave him on the pitching mound alone.

  * * * * *

  “Dad, can I drive a truck to The Pit?”

  Her father immediately stood up. His eyebrows slated over his eyes as he aimed sharp eyes at her. Christina offered him a smile she hoped was normal. Her stomach was working itself into a huge knot as the sun set and the time for her walk to The Pit neared.

  She didn’t own a car anymore. When she’d been kidnapped it had been right out of the front seat of her own car. Out on one of Benton’s mountain roads. Two trucks had forced her to stop or collide with them. She still had no clue what became of the car. Her kidnappers had been well-funded and a tow truck came with her abduction. They had hauled away her car just as they had taken her hostage. There hadn’t even been skid marks to tell anyone where she’d disappeared from.

  Her parents came up with excuse after excuse to keep her away from a car dealership. She had just let it slide because her father owned all three trucks that he’d ever bought in his lifetime. In the four months she’d been home, she’d spent three of them attempting to get her insurance company to pay a settlement on her previous car. With no wreckage, it was proving to be an uphill climb.

  But she wasn’t walking to The Pit tonight. She’d rather face her father and ask for a ride before risking another run-in with Shane in the dark.

  She would overcome her urges, her gender was not going to control her. Her kidnapping ordeal was just making the connection with Shane more intense. That had to be the reason her body leapt under his touch. He was part of that cloak and dagger world that had swallowed her up and spat her back out, barely clinging to her soul.

  As long as she avoided the man, her body would return to normal. That shouldn’t be too hard. Shane didn’t belong in her world. He stuck out like a lion at a cat show. Sure he might prowl around the dark edges but he’d stay away from the bright lights.

  “Sure, take Betty.”

  “Thanks, Daddy.”

  He pointed to his cheek and she ran over to give him his kiss. He had a name for each truck and seemed to like them all just about the same amount. “Betty” was the smallest of the three and the one he knew she liked to drive the best. But since they were each her daddy’s babies, she always let him choose which one to loan her.

  After all, she was well past the age of being in the nest. That was another thing her parents kept finding reasons to delay. Moving out on her own once again. But she needed a job for that and her position at the courthouse had been filled while she healed from her gunshot wounds. It wasn’t exactly fair to discharge the current employee since everyone had believed she was dead at the time.

  She needed a car so she could drive to a better job that would give her the means to set up her own house. Instead, she unlocked her dad’s truck and drove it toward The Pi
t.

  Tomorrow she was going to buy a car. She needed to get out of Benton and back on track with her own life. Shane Jacobs was part of the things she needed to move beyond.

  That meant he had to be retired to her memory as well.

  * * * * *

  Instead he was sitting at a corner table waiting for her. A mug of double black coffee was already resting in his hand like he knew she wouldn’t serve him if she could avoid it.

  His lips offered her a grin as his eyes watched her. Those sharp eyes followed her everywhere for hours. Her stomach turned into one solid mass of tension that wouldn’t let her drink a glass of water.

  The grin melted off his face as the strain bled through her cheerful mask. But he kept his eyes on her. She fumbled her third set of mugs before lifting her head to stare at him. Somber eyes returned her gaze. Shane had the most amazing eyes she’d ever seen on a man. They were hazel but so calm and steady she could find peace while staring into them. She had forgotten just how much she enjoyed looking into his eyes. It seemed so completely right.

  He stood up and walked straight toward her. The place was quiet and almost empty. His eyes held hers the entire way until he leaned over the bar to whisper next to her ear.

  “I have a question for you. Answer it and I’ll leave.”

  A tiny wave of disappointment surfaced as she considered him leaving.

  “All right.”

  “Are you a virgin?”

  His eyes sliced into hers as he watched her face while asking his question. He was making certain he caught her honest reaction. It sprang up as a blush that stained her cheeks crimson. Her jaw dropped open but she couldn’t find any way to conceal her innocence from him. The look that sprang into his eyes made her shiver.

  “Answer the question, Christina. Have you ever taken a man’s length?”

  “You can’t just ask me a crude question like that,” she hissed under her breath and looked around the room quickly. No one was paying them a bit of attention but it felt like everyone could tell exactly what they were talking about. Her face burned so hot, she was sure the couple in the dark corner could see her blush. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

  His hands landed on top of hers to keep her in place. His thumbs eased under her wrists to stroke the skin of her inner wrists once more. This time her body jumped to attention. It didn’t heat up in stages like last night, it jumped into full arousal with just the first touch. Her nipples instantly hardened. His eyes lowered to her sweater and found the twin points before rising back to her face again.

  She gasped at the hard glitter staring back at her this time. There was nothing friendly about him, not a single shred of peace in his hazel eyes. Pure male aggression aimed its way into her head.

  “You don’t want to push me, honey. The way you look at my crotch drives me insane and the smell of your wet pussy makes me want to rip you open but I don’t want to hurt you. So answer my question, have you ever taken a cock into your sweet little body or any kind of sex toy?”

  “No.” She hissed the word and hoped he’d choke on it! “Bet or no bet, that won’t be changing either.” She pushed off the bar forcing him to let her go or have her body jerk to a halt like a freshly caught fish. His hands lifted in a split second as he curled his fingers into fists.

  “I answered you, so leave.”

  His eyes lowered to her nipples instead. They lingered over her breasts and wandered up the curve of her neck.

  “When you make a bet with me, Christina, you’d better plan on paying up.” His eyes turned hard as he leaned back across the bar. “Or I’ll hound you until you die.” His hazel eyes softened as he stroked the side of her face with a warm hand. “But I won’t hurt you, so don’t be mad at me. You want me, honey, I can smell how wet you are right here. Maybe that isn’t warm and flowery but it’s honest and I don’t play little boy games.”

  He stood up and straightened to his full height. The hard cut of his body screamed at her to invite him to do everything a man did with his woman. A hundred dark whispers from her fantasies urged her to indulge his whims. He suddenly grinned at the look in her eyes and leaned toward her to whisper once again.

  “I see your face when I close my eyes at night. Every night since I took you back to your father my house has been empty.”

  He was gone a second later. A silly smile covered her face as she thought about his admission. He hadn’t come back for their dumb bet.

  Shane had come back for her.

  * * * * *

  He was watching her when she left The Pit. There was no mistaking that the Hummer parked on the curb was Shane’s. Oh, it was plain-looking, not really even military-looking. The dull brown all-terrain vehicle could have belonged to another resident.

  It didn’t. The huge form of the driver, even in the dark, was Shane and she just knew it. It was almost like she felt his eyes on her. The Hummer wheeled away from the curb the second she drove past. It made a U-turn and followed her truck around the corner. He pulled over again to watch her park in front of her dad’s store.

  The bottom floor was the store and the upper floor the family residence. Her dad owned a small cabin up the mountain but she had been raised above his shop. Unlocking the door, Christina slipped inside, closed it and peeked through the curtain.

  Shane had moved. The curb was empty almost making her question whether or not the man had really been there. She shook her head and turned toward the stairs. He wasn’t like the men she’d been raised around. Even her dad.

  Shane was some kind of predator that had been trained to deadly perfection. Just normal everyday things were done differently than she’d always seen. Things like walking. Shane was always watching his surroundings, his eyes moving and recording anything that moved. Tonight, he’d sat with his back to a wall and both doors clearly in sight. He didn’t sit behind the table either. He angled his chair away from it and left his mug on the edge. He could have sprung out of his chair in a second flat. No fumbling around chairs or the table, the man made certain of that before he sat down.

  He always expected something to happen and made sure he could respond when it did. Standing in front of her mirror she looked at the evidence that said he had the right to live that way.

  Four bullets had ripped through her body in a split second. Shane hadn’t been there. He and Jared had left her and Roshelle under the guard of their men. The attack had come so quickly, it was over before she realized her life was in danger. Everything had gone silent as she listened to her own heart beating because she expected it to stop forever.

  Instead, she’d looked into those hazel eyes of Shane’s and discovered exactly how much she liked them. Hope had stared back at her as he tended to her wounds, and despite the fact that she’d told him she thought she was dying, somehow he’d made her believe she wouldn’t.

  And she had lived, so she owed the man a kiss. A shiver shook her body. She watched her nipples tighten in the mirror as warm liquid heat slipped down the sides of her passage. She felt so needy with an ache in her womb that clamored for her to answer her needs.

  Instead she crawled into her bed without her clothing. Her skin refused to be covered and that was the only desire that she seemed to be able to answer.

  Chapter Four

  “Damn lovers’ holiday.” Two dull thuds hit the floor as her dad muttered some more. Standing up from the small desk in the little office of her dad’s shop, Christina looked at her father as he scowled at whatever he’d dropped on the floor. Her movement caught his attention and he gave her his disgruntled male expression.

  “Your mother has booked us a romantic getaway.”

  “I’m really sorry, Daddy.” She held the corners of her lips down because her dad considered fishing in a remote cabin romantic. The very fact that the two-room structure had indoor plumbing was his idea of luxury. How he had ever married her fashion plate mother was a mystery.

  “I’ll run the shop, Dad, no worries.”

  “A
w, forget it! No one came in on last Valentine’s Day. Leave the door locked.”

  “Tomas! Ready or not…”

  That was her mother’s normal warning before unleashing her newest shopping trip look. There was the tap-tap of high heels on the wooden stairs before Terri slipped into view. Her father’s face almost glowed as he looked at her. Suddenly it wasn’t so hard to understand what drew the two together.

  “Young lady, you appear to be lost, want to get into trouble together?”

  “My papa might make you meet me at the church first and make me an honest woman.”

  Her parents sent each other looks that no daughter wanted to be reminded they knew how to give each other. Her dad grabbed Christina in a hug as he winked at her.

  “Hey now, I married her, didn’t I?”

  “Have fun, Dad.”

  Her dad twisted his face into a crooked smile before he picked up their luggage and followed her mother out the door.

  “If you need us, dear, just call the cell phone.” Her mother blew a kiss as she climbed into the front seat of a truck. She seemed out of place in the utility vehicle, as pristine as she looked, but the glow on her face said she was right where she wanted to be.

  * * * * *

  “You are saving an old man’s life tonight.”

  Mick rolled his eyes as his hands continued to mix a drink while he spoke. The Pit was wall-to-wall people. Even Cynthia sat at the register with her injured ankle propped on a crate as she ran the register. Valentine’s Day weekend and no one wanted to stay home. The actual lovers’ holiday wasn’t until tomorrow, but Friday night was a good enough reason to begin the celebration.

  Christina was enjoying the night. Her feet ached and there was a pinch between her shoulder blades but the excitement of the place just made her happy. The only thing waiting for her was a dark house. Here, there were friends and a few extra tips to help with that car-buying expedition.

  Her parents’ unannounced trip was going to be her opportunity to step back into the world. Tomorrow morning she was heading out of Benton and toward a car dealership.