He closed his thumb and forefinger on her nipple and pulled, gently but steadily, until the tweak of pleasure became a deep, sharp pulse of pressure, and then he gave her nipple the slightest twist.
It hurt, in the best way she’d ever felt, and her back arched as if he’d yanked her up. Her head fell back, and she heard a backward scream as she sucked air through a body rigid with need. “Oh fuck oh fuck,” she gasped as he pulled until her nipple popped from his grasp.
“Jesus,” he groaned, thrusting his hips against her hip, driving his hard cock against her again and again. “You’re takin’ me over. I want all of you. I want to feed on you.”
His hand drove between her legs, rough fingers sliding back and forth over her clit, and he slammed his mouth over hers, demanding her response. She looped her arms around his neck, opened her mouth, spread her legs, and let him take what he wanted.
~oOo~
He made her come twice more, with his hands and his mouth, before he flipped her to her side, rolled on a condom, and fucked her from behind, driving his cock deep inside her, stretching her, finding more of her than any man ever had. His hands clutched and scratched and plucked every inch he could reach, and his mouth bit and sucked until she felt like he had fucked every molecule of her body.
Yet even in their wild abandon, he never hurt her leg. She had, she thought without interest. She’d forgotten again and again not to strain it. But he had been careful.
When he finally came, just after he pulled the fourth and vastest orgasm from her with his cock and his fingers and his mouth, he roared and rolled to his back, holding her on his chest, driving up into her so hard her body flopped with every thrust.
In the moment after, as he relaxed under her and they both strove to remember how to breathe, Willa understood that all of this was real. Her reality was now and would forever be different from what she’d known before Rad. Even if he left her right now, nothing would be the same.
He kissed her shoulder and rolled them, setting her gently on the bed as he pulled out. When he moved away and cool air replaced his hot body on her skin, Willa moved to her back. A thrill of worry tightened her neck. “Rad?”
“Just takin’ care of the rubber. I ain’t leavin’.”
He stood and walked naked from her room. A single tattoo covered most of his back—the head of an angry black bull surrounded by flames, like the patch on his kutte. His chest and arms were covered in ink, all sorts of different pieces crowded together into a single eclectic entity, and he had ink on his legs, too, but that bull got his back all to itself. The muscles under it made the bull’s face seem expressive.
God, his body. His power showed in every move he made.
Ollie lay in his bed, now with his head up, watching the empty doorway. Willa knew he was trying to decide whether he needed to go see what Rad was up to.
Before he decided, Rad was back, and Ollie put his head down again.
Picking up one of the towels from the floor, Rad brought it with him and slid it between her legs, wiping her gently. She was sore all over now, and her leg throbbed angrily, but his touch soothed, and she spread her legs and purred.
With a quiet chuckle, he tossed the towel away. They got under the covers, and Rad stretched out his arm, inviting Willa to settle on his chest. She did so, and closed her eyes at the pleasure of his strong arm wrapping over her shoulders.
Nearing dawn began to lighten the window as they eased toward sleep.
~oOo~
She woke alone, without even Ollie for company. The light from the window told her it was nearly noon.
Willa sat up—shit, everything hurt. Her skin burned, her muscles ached, her knee throbbed. Her head felt clogged. She groaned and tried to stretch out the stiffness from her shoulders.
Before she could work up a good steam of offense that Rad had left her while she slept, she saw his shirt on the straight-back chair by the door, and his boots on the floor next to it, right where he’d left them. He was still there.
Smiling, she eased herself off the bed and tested out her leg. It took her weight, but it wasn’t happy about it. She’d need to wrap it and really rest it today and tomorrow, and hope that was enough to get her back to work. She’d hate to take a sick day right after her vacation. She’d never taken a sick day yet.
She lifted her robe off the back of the door and went out as she slid it over her shoulders. When she came into the front rooms, she heard the sizzle of a frying pan at work, and smelled…cheese?
Rad was at her range, wearing nothing but his jeans. He had his hair pulled back in its stubby ponytail. Willa put her hand to her chest at the sight of him.
He was making scrambled eggs, and he must have added cheese to them. There were two hunks of cheese from her fridge—cheddar and provolone—on the cutting board with her grater.
Ollie had been sitting at Rad’s side, watching with interest. When he saw her, he trotted over for a morning cuddle, and Rad noticed her. He grinned.
“Mornin’. How’s your leg?”
Rad and his fixation with her leg. “It’s fine. Good morning. You cook.” The toaster popped, and four golden slices of bread appeared.
He brushed her observation off with a lopsided shrug. “Nah. I can wreck eggs and stick bread in slots. Can’t make coffee, though. Never figured out the secret.”
With a grin, Willa gathered up the toast and spread butter on the slices while they were still warm. Then she brought her bag of Colombian roast down and got the coffeemaker going.
The eggs were done, and Rad stood there with her skillet, looking stymied. She took down a couple of plates and set them out on the counter, dropping two slices of toast on each. “We’ll have juice now and coffee later. You want jam on your toast? I’ve got strawberry jam and plum butter.”
“Not for me.” He plated the eggs while Willa filled two glasses with cranberry juice. They carried their breakfast to the dining room.
By force of habit, because she always watched the news with breakfast, Willa picked up the remote from the sideboard where she’d left it last night and turned on the television.
It was too late for the morning news, but the noon report was on. As she returned to the table, she noticed that the current story was about some woman, heavyset, with brown hair in a short, mannish cut, being arrested. She was trying to shield her face from the cameras.
Willa’s attention wandered to her plate, and she took a bite of eggs—they were good—but Rad picked up the remote and turned up the volume. The clipped, unaccented voice of one of the Tulsa daytime news anchors ran over the footage.
After a brief armed standoff with county deputies, Gaines was arrested near Dexter, Missouri, where she was hiding out at the farm of her uncle, Morris Gaines. Again, for those just joining our broadcast, Roberta Gaines, of Inola, was arrested this morning in Dexter, Missouri.
The anchor, a generically attractive woman with perfectly coiffed blonde hair and wearing a conservative, pale blue suit, appeared on the screen before an image of the Tulsa skyline at midday. With a serious expression befitting the tone of the story, she stared earnestly into the camera lens and continued to read the teleprompter.
The incident, now known nationally as the Winchester Wreck, left eleven people dead and sixty-three others injured earlier this week. Of the injured, seventeen remain hospitalized, nine of those in critical condition. Multiple witnesses on the scene reported a Ford Aerostar minivan being driven aggressively for several miles before the first impact, when the minivan sideswiped two motorcycles, each bearing two riders, and started a chain reaction collision on the busy highway. In all, nearly one hundred vehicles were involved in the crash, and US-75 was closed for more than five hours.
A silver 1983 Ford Aerostar is registered to Roberta Gaines. It was seized during her arrest.
The screen shifted away from the news anchor and showed a picture of a silver Ford Aerostar with a badly damaged left front fender and side. Then the image changed again, and
Willa saw herself, helping Chase, the paramedic she’d met that night, calm a crying little girl. That little girl was an orphan now. Another image showed the crash site from the sky, and Willa’s memory heard again the buffeting chop-chop of a helicopter hovering overhead.
Gaines is being held at the Stoddard County Courthouse pending extradition to Oklahoma, where she is expected to face multiple charges, including several counts of vehicular homicide. Morris Gaines, her uncle, was arrested on the charges of obstruction of justice and armed criminal action.
“It was a woman who caused all that?”
Rad turned sharply at her question. “Women can be assholes and cowards just like men.”
“I know. Sorry. It’s just…God. All that rage, all that death. I was sure it was a man.”
“Truth is, so was I. Fuck. Fuck.” He slammed his fist on the table, and Ollie sat up.
“You’re upset.”
“I don’t trust law. Somebody who did that wreck deserves real punishment. But a woman…fuck.”
Willa understood that Rad had been planning, or at least considering, hurting, perhaps even killing, the person who’d caused the wreck. Seriously thinking about it. But he wouldn’t hurt a woman.
She tried to feel worried about getting involved with a man for whom killing wasn’t unthinkable. But she couldn’t.
She laid her hand on his. “With all the press the crash got, and all the people who saw the way she was driving, and her van trashed like that—she won’t get off. Kids got killed. People won’t stand for her to get anything but justice.”
“Maybe. But you know yourself—lawyers twist everything up.”
That was true. To save the state the expense of a trial, the prosecuting attorney in Austin had let Jesse plead down to burglary. That charge, and the light sentence he got for it, erased what he had really done to her. As far as the law was concerned, he hadn’t beaten her, hadn’t strangled her, hadn’t ripped her clothes off and shoved himself into her, hadn’t bruised her, torn her, made her bleed, hadn’t left her curled on the floor sobbing and broken.
So he’d gotten a chance to do it again in Dallas.
Willa shuddered, and Rad grabbed her hand. “Easy, baby. Sorry I brought it up.”
She cleared her throat and stood, levering herself up without using her sore leg. “It’s okay. Coffee’s ready.”
Rad followed right behind her and turned her around to face him when she stopped at the coffeemaker. He stared down at her with his intense eyes, that heavy brow shadowing them. “He won’t hurt you again.”
With a smile to show him she appreciated the sentiment, she picked up his hand and kissed his knuckles, which were scraped from his adventure the night before. “I’m glad you’re here. I feel safe with you. But you can’t promise to keep me safe. You won’t always be around. Not even Ollie can keep me safe anywhere but here. I’m gonna have to take care of myself.”
“Willa…”
“Rad. It’s true. And it’s important to me that I can.”
He put his hands on her hips and gave her a little shake. “I will make you safe. I will put somebody on you. When it can’t be me, it’ll be somebody I trust. I can make it so you’re never alone.”
“No. We don’t even know if he knows where I am. I don’t even know if he cares where I am anymore. I’m not going to cower every day waiting for the possibility that he comes after me. I’ve been making a decent life, and I want to live it. And if he finds me, I’m ready. I was ready before I met you. He doesn’t get to undo me a third time.”
With a grudging smile, he bent his head and kissed her lightly. “I like it better when women do what I want.”
She laughed and swirled a fingertip over his nipple until it hardened under her touch and he shivered. “Do you? You seemed to like it fine when I did what I wanted.”
“Mmmm. I guess I can’t deny that.” He pulled her robe loose and slid his hand in to cup a breast. His thumb flicked over her nipple, and she shivered, just as he had.
He leaned down and in, pressing his face against her neck. “Eggs is not what I want right now. How ‘bout you?”
“You can still stay?”
“Gotta be at the clubhouse by five. That’s hours yet.”
Yes, it was. She wanted to rest her leg, she needed to rest her leg, but she was in no hurry for Rad to leave. She was sore all over from their earlier exploits, but she didn’t mind the thought of his rough hands on her extra-sensitive skin.
Didn’t mind that thought at all.
“I don’t want eggs, either.”
They left their uneaten breakfast on the dining room table and went back to bed to have what they really wanted.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Rad parked his Dyna on the clubhouse lot later that afternoon, he was actually relieved to get off the saddle. His body hurt from his shoulders to his toes. He’d spent far too little of the past forty-eight hours at rest. Instead, he’d been in a highway wreck and spent hours pulling people out of harm’s way, he’d worked a full shift, he’d been in a massive brawl, and he’d repeatedly fucked Willa and himself senseless.
He’d come five damn times in the past twelve hours. He wasn’t sure he’d ever come that many times in one day. His cock felt sprung, and his hips ached like an old man’s. For a woman with a gimpy leg, Willa was…hearty. She’d come about twice as many times. He’d left her languid and disheveled.
Leaning back into a groaning stretch, Rad grinned. Goddamn, he was having a good time.
In all things, Rad was first and foremost a tactician. He saw what was in front of him and made the most of it. As the Bulls’ SAA, he’d learned to slow down a little and think a step or two ahead, see a bigger picture, but even so, it was his way to let other men make the big plans and then point him in the right direction.
In his personal life, he wasn’t the kind of man who thought about things like ‘true love’ or finding ‘the one,’ or any of that shit. He didn’t pine or seek. He simply felt and acted. When he wanted companionship, he found it. When he liked a woman, he went for her. When he wanted to be with her, he put himself in her company. When he no longer wanted her company, he sent her away. He didn’t dither.
Whatever he felt, he went in all the way. After Dahlia, he’d tried to curb that impulse, that blind drive to have what he wanted no matter what. For the past three years, he’d kept out of range of women who might capture his attention. Sweetbutts and road chicks only, the kind of women who were either far too familiar, or far too distant, to be of interpersonal interest.
He’d been content with that. Got his knob polished regularly, focused on his club, kept his keel even. No losing of his shit.
That was all over now, because he was in with Willa. All in. One-hundred percent. That woman was a fucking marvel.
To commemorate that occasion, he was going to find a particular Dirty Rat, and he was going to kill him slow and bloody. He was going to release his woman from her tormentor and make him pay proper for all he’d done to her.
Willa needed him, whether she knew it or not, and he was going to take care of her.
~oOo~
The pool table had been restored to its normal function. Simon was in the recliner now, awake and watching the Cardinals game on the big television. He gave Rad a nod and a wave as he came over.
“You look like shit on toast, brother.”
He really did—his skin had a grey tint to it, and his reactions seemed a step too slow. Even his smile moved up his face at half speed.
“Fucking hurts to get sliced in the gut,” Simon answered hoarsely.
“I’m goin’ for Willa after church. She wants to check on you again.”
Simon nodded. “I like her. She has soft hands. She’s a good one, bro.”
Rad was figuring out that people were right when they called him an asshole. Here was his friend, his brother, suffering with a stab wound, and Rad’s first impulse upon hearing him say something appreciative about Willa was jealousy. E
arlier, while she’d been whispering in Simon’s ear, calming him so she could sew him up, Rad had stood there tensely, pulled in two equally strong directions—wanting to push her out of Simon’s reach, and feeling pride and admiration for her gentle, skillful care. Her banter with Gunner had produced the same effect. When Delaney had called him away to meet with him and Dane, Rad had about pitched a fit.
But now, every time he felt that jealous turmoil over Willa, he called up the name Jesse Smithers. He’d recognized far too much of himself in Willa’s story. Not the stalking or beating or rape—Jesus fuck, not that—but the possession and need for control.
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