Wild Card (34 page)

He shot her a glare from the corner of his eyes. "What the hell does that mean?"

"No marriage license, Noah. You're not my husband, my father, or my brother. You have no

right to that opinion."

"I'm your lover," he growled furiously. "That gives me the right. And I'm sick of hearing about Nathan. Sick to my back teeth of having him shoved down my throat."

"In my eyes, you don't have that right," she informed him. "And my eyes are the ones that

count. And by the way, you just passed the house."

"I know I just passed the damned house." His fingers were wrapped tight around the steering

wheel. "I meant to pass the house."

She shot him a wary look. "That's good to know."

He turned his head, glared at her, then turned back to the road. "You have a habit of being

mildly sarcastic, Sabella."

And she hadn't before, she knew that. Sabella managed to restrain her smile.

"Just mildly? Damn, and here I was trying for completely sarcastic. I must need to practice."

His expression was set in tight, furious lines as he stared broodingly at the road stretching out

before them.

"Bastards," he finally cursed. "They treat you like a simpleton and it pisses me off."

She laughed at that. "My husband thought I was a sweet little thing. The classic dumb blonde.

He was tall and muscular, and he loved it when I was helpless."

It was the truth and he didn't like it. He hated it. It showed him a side of the man he had been

that he simply didn't like. He'd wanted Sabella dependent on him. He'd never realized how

much it was the opposite. He'd been dependent on her. Depended on her to bring the laughter

and the warmth back to him when he returned from a mission. Depended on her laughter and

her love to keep him human.

"And you tolerated that?" he asked her.

"I loved being helpless for him. Then. I've grown up, Noah. I'm not a doll. I'm not dumb. And I

can survive without a big strong man to lean on. I've proved it. To myself and to anyone else

who thought I was no more than the dumb blonde I let them see. Hell, I was eighteen when I

married Nathan. Twenty when he was lost on that last mission. I loved him with all my soul,

but I'm a woman now and games aren't a part of who or what I am. And you may as well get

used to it, because I won't play the simpleton for you."

"Your husband didn't deserve you." His jaw was so tight it looked ready to crack.

"He deserved all of me," she said softly. "The fact that he didn't have it was my own fault. That and my youth. But we would have grown into each other. I believe. We would have learned all

those things neither of us had shown the other at that point."

She watched curiously as he made a turn onto a dirt road rather than continuing to Odessa as

she thought he was doing. The truck lights speared into the darkness, picking up the pine and

piňon, lighting their way as he cut into a small canyon, turned the track around, and cut the

lights.

"We're here why?" She looked around in the darkness.

"For this." He turned, unclipped her seat belt, and a second later, the back of her seat met the back seat of the dual cab, creating a bed, of sorts.

"I didn't know it did that," she exclaimed nervously as he lifted her, pushing her until her head rested on that back seal and his hands gripped her waist.

His breathing was hard. Deep. She could see the wild glitter of his eyes, the hunger in his face.

"You had no business staying here," he bit out again. "No business putting up with the bastards that stare at you as though you should be in their beds while they sweat over you. As though

you're a toy for their amusement."

Jealousy, it poured from him. It glittered in his eyes and struck an independent nerve she didn't

know she had.

"Am I more than that to you?" Her hands lay by her head. She didn't push him away. She didn't

fight against the arousal building inside her. "You're bitching over something you want

yourself, Noah. Possession."

He parted his lips as though to speak. To answer her. A second later his head lowered and he

caught her lips in a kiss instead.

Like a match to gasoline, the hunger and the need exploded inside them just that fast.

Noah could explain, but not fully, the need to fuck her in that pickup truck. The fact she had let

him drive it, thinking he was another man. That she had sat next to him, that the irrational

jealousy was eating him alive. He wanted to imprint himself on the truck and on the woman.

He wanted to make damned sure no other man ever drove this truck, ever fucked this woman.

His.

Possessiveness bit into his guts like a demon. The unfairness of it was uppermost in his mind,

but the need overpowered the thought and left him helpless to fight it. He had known, before he

left her, during his capture and after, that there were plenty of men willing to fill Sabella's bed.

He'd assumed that after three years, she would have had a lover. At times he had wished she

had so he could have walked away and never had to look back.

But as her kiss filled him, as he took it with a desperation, a hunger, that only continued to

build inside him, he knew it wouldn't have mattered. They would have still ended up here, one

way or the other. The clock had been ticking, each second drawing him back; his hunger for

her would have eventually proved to be too much.

Tonight, though, he might have gone too far. Only Rory knew that Nathan had readjusted the

lever on the seats in the truck that would allow it to create a small bed within the dual cab. To

make the front seats lower all the way back to meet the edge of the back seats and hold their

position there.

The head rests folded back once the seat was lowered automatically, creating a wedge between

the seat and the floor to keep it sturdy.

It had been done with every intention of eventually doing this. Taking Sabella parking. He'd

never gotten around to it. But now, that obsession he had always fought with his wife rose

inside him, ripping at his mind.

She thought her husband dead. Gone. And she had allowed another man to touch her, hold her,

to drive his damned truck.

After tonight, no matter what the future brought, no other man would have what was his.

His hands tightened on her hips as he growled against her lips. His tongue stroked inside her

mouth, licked over hers, and the pulsing awareness of need flowed around them like bands of

flames, tightening on them.

He didn't feel the stretch and pull at the tender healing flesh of his wounds. He didn't give a

damn. All he felt was Sabella, her hands gripping the leather of the back seat as he kissed her,

craved her.

Jerking his head back, he stared down at her. Moonlight flowed into the cab of the truck,

caressed her face, her dove-gray eyes, and swollen lips. Beneath the thin silky blouse her

breasts rose and fell as she panted for air. Noah had to clench his teeth to keep from tearing the

blouse from her body.

Levering himself over her, he stared down at her body. The skirt had ridden up her thighs,

nearly showing her panties, kicking a punch of reaction in his gut that stole his breath.

Her thighs shimmered in the moonlight, like satin, like sweet, soft magic. Sabella had always

been magic to him.

Loving her had been his salvation and his greatest torment His fiercest hunger.

"You're perfect." He laid his hand against her thigh, watched the lightly toned muscle ripple

around his touch, felt her response against his palm.

"Not hardly," she whispered, the throaty sound slicing through his senses with a surge of lust

he could barely contain.

He smoothed his hand over her thigh, petting, caressing. The feel of her was like a narcotic,

going to his head faster than any drug.

"I want you naked." He wanted it until it filled his head with nothing but the remembered sight and feel of her. "Keep your hands up there." He pushed them to the back of the seat, watching

as her fingers curled beneath the shallow indent between seat and cushioned back. "That's a

good girl. Just let me touch you."

"But I like touching you too." She arched as his fingers went to the little buttons of her blouse.

They were almost too tiny, his fingers almost too clumsy. God, he wanted her until he was

shaking with it.

Adrenaline spiked through him. He could feel it. He could feel the advanced lust that surged

inside him, just at the thought of having her naked.

No other woman would do. No woman but Sabella had the power to do this to him. Even

during his stay in hell, when the erection throbbing between his thighs had been in agony, he

couldn't bear the thought of touching another woman.

He always knew. No matter how dazed the lust and the drug made him. No matter how much

the women they brought to him looked like Sabella, the second he touched their skin, he knew.

Knew it wasn't his wife, his life, he was touching.

"I dream of you," he murmured as the edges of her shirt parted, flashing pretty, pale flesh.

"Dream." Had dreamed. "Of touching you. Tasting you."

"Why dream?" She watched him with shadowed, dark eyes, her lashes feathering her cheeks.

"You don't have to dream, Noah. I'm right here."

He smoothed the shirt aside, stared down at her breasts, covered in nothing but the thinnest

lace, her nipples hard, pointed. He knew the shape of them. The color of them. How they felt

beneath his tongue, in his mouth. He knew and he hungered for more.

No woman should have the power over a man that this woman held over him. But he'd

accepted the power she had long ago. He had accepted it. Loved it. Relished the heat and the

need that flowed between them.

He pulled her hands from where she gripped the bottom of the seat back, lifted her and drew

the shirt over her shoulders, his hands stroking her flesh.

He had to clench his teeth as her lips found his neck. She licked his flesh, her lips smoothed

over it. He wanted to howl with the need striking hard and deep at his balls.

He pushed the shirt from her arms then flicked open the little hooks on her bra and drew it from

her as well.

God, her breasts. What was it about a woman's breasts that so fascinated a man? Hard tight

nipples. Smooth luscious mounds. A woman's response showed in her breasts. They became

swollen, flushed. Nipples darkened, lengthened, and tasted like pure, sweet desire.

His hands flattened on her back, holding her in a half-reclined position as his head lowered to

the tight points of her nipples.

He curled his tongue around one and her moan raced over his senses like a caress.

"I love your nipples," he sighed, pursing his lips and kissing one tight point with a soft suckling motion. "So sweet and tight. So hot and hard."

She tensed, arched.

Noah slid her to the middle of the seat, straddled her legs, holding her, laying her back, and

lowered his head again.

"I'm going to suck your nipples, Sabella. Suck them so sweet and deep that you come from that

alone."

He had done that for her, once. Long ago. In those months before they married. He'd had her so

hot, so wet, teased her perfect body with merciless hunger until the suction at one sweet nipple

caused her to come.

He wanted that again. He wanted her wild and waiting for his lips against her pussy. Her juices

thick and slick, clinging to his lips. He wanted her so wet, so hot, the imprint of their lust so

deep inside this vehicle that she never, never allowed another man inside it with her.

She writhed beneath him as his head lowered again. He licked around her nipple. Kissed

beneath the swollen mound. His teeth raked close to her nipple, he nipped at the creamy flesh

and left a soft, reddened mark as he drew it into his mouth.

Branded her. The little love bite would darken, mark her as his.

"So sweet and lush." He drew his shirt over his head as he watched her and tossed it aside.

"I want to touch you." Her voice was thick with desire now, dazed, hungry. "Let me touch you, Noah."

"Not yet." He ran his palms over her arms, pressed her hands deeper between the seat bottom

and back. "Hold on right there. Don't move your hands, or we'll stop."

The hell they would. If she touched him he was going to go up in flames and slam inside her so

hard and fast that neither of them would know what hit them.

"Stay right there, Sabella. Stay there, and let me love you."

What was he doing to her? There were aspects of him that bore no resemblance to the husband

she remembered, that drew parts of herself free that she knew Nathan had never possessed. Just

as he gave her the parts of himself that she hadn't known during their marriage.

She arched as his hands cupped her breasts, just rough enough to spike an air of danger and

overwhelming hunger. Pressing the mounds together as he licked around her nipples, stroked

his fingers over them, then his tongue.

Nathan had always been a thorough lover, but now, it was as though the hunger that raged

inside him raged for everything. Every part of her. Even her soul.

And her breasts were so sensitive. Her nipples were hard points of pure sensation. His short,

closely cropped beard rasped against her flesh. His lips smoothed and nipped, and his tongue.

She arched, twisted, and tried to get closer to that diabolic tongue as each lick around the tight

points sent rapturous spikes of sensation tearing into her pussy.