Saving Her (Her Protector Book 2) Read online

  “I need you naked. Now.” The words ground from my throat, my voice so hoarse it hardly even sounded like me but Zoe responded with a shudder before shoving the straps of the dress off her shoulders. The fabric fell in a pool of blue at her feet and she kicked it away.

  All the moisture left my mouth. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the only other thing she had on a was a little scrap of lace that hid nothing at all. Really, what was even the point? Not that I could complain. The image of Zoe standing there, in the middle of my hallway wearing nothing but a miniscule red lace thong would be etched into my brain forever. An image I would never, ever be able to erase.

  I was back against her in an instant, waiting only to strip off my own shirt and kick my boots off before my mouth was pillaging hers. My thoughts were on fire and all I could think about was touching all of her. Tasting all of her. Exploring all of her. Every single delicious, feminine inch.

  She was just as desperate as I was, I could feel it in the rush of her breath in and out of her lungs and the racing of her heart next to mine. And I loved it. I loved feeling her tremble beneath my touch. I wanted to make her completely come apart in my arms. It was a need that I couldn’t deny.

  My hands skimmed down her body, feeling every curve and it only took the slightest bit of pressure to rip the tiny red thong off her hips.

  “Sorry, I’ll buy you a new one.” I whispered between kisses but Zoe just shook her head.

  “I don’t care. I want more. I want you.”

  Those words coming out of her mouth added more fuel to the fire raging inside me. Now that she was naked there were so many things I wanted to do to her. So many things I wanted to make her feel. But more than anything else, I needed to taste her.

  I dropped to my knees in front of her, bracing her back against the wall as I slid one finger between her thighs. She was already so wet it drove me insane, but I knew she wasn’t ready for me. Not yet.

  I am…proportionate. And Val always said that she had a problem with my size. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was hurt Zoe in any way. I only wanted her to feel pleasure. As much pleasure as I could give her. I wanted her crying out for me, screaming my name in ecstasy.

  I grabbed her hips, lifting her easily and spread her thighs, resting her legs one on each of my shoulders so that there was nothing at all between me and her sweet center.

  Zoe let out a gasp of pleasure as I left a trail of soft, feather light kisses up one sensitive inner thigh and down the other. Teaser her, just a little, and loving the way she squirmed with need at the slightest touch.

  “Jake! Please. I’m dying here.”

  “We can’t have that, now can we.” I whispered the words against her and her hips arched again, even that light pressure enough to have her reacting to me. It was intoxicating.

  I was already drunk on her, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

  My cock was rigid hard and straining for her but I needed to taste her first. I needed to drink her down. I needed her crying out, shuddering around me. I needed that more than I needed to breathe.

  I licked her, the tip of my tongue barely there but it was enough for her to moan above me. I tasted her, one like at a time.

  “Peach pie.” I murmured, savoring her like the sweetest treat. Just like peach pie.

  Zoe opened her mouth but whatever she was going to say was lost in a cry of pleasure as my tongue found her clit. That sensitive button that drove her wild. I licked in circles, gentle then firm, finding the rhythm that made her gasp, that made her breath catch in the back of her throat.

  It didn’t take long to have her rocking her hips against me, panting in pleasure above me and I knew the moment she came because she grabbed my hair, holding me close as her whole body shuddered and spasmed in release.

  Feeling her come shot a lightning bolt of need through me, stronger than even before. I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed her now.

  A sudden thought hit me and I cursed to myself.

  “What? What is it?” Zoe asked breathlessly but I was already scrambling for my pocket. I thought I had a condom in my walled. Didn’t I? What was the last time I even checked? When was the last time I needed to?

  My fingers closed around the small foil packet but they were trembling so hard that I could barely get the damned thing open. I gave a small but heartfelt prayer of thanks as I finally got the thing open and rolled it on, Zoe reaching out impatiently to help. Even that small touch was enough to have my breath huffing out in a gasp of pleasure.

  I stood, dragging her up the wall with me. I grabbed her, wrapping her thighs around my hips and the head of my cock nestled against her entrance. I had to close my eyes and grit my teeth at the bliss of it. The feel of her was like nothing else and I wasn’t even inside her yet.

  But I had to make sure she was ready. She was so much smaller than I was and holding her like this, towering over her, my body dwarfing hers, All of my protective instinct rose up. I didn’t know what it was about her, but all I wanted to do was shelter her, protect her, keep her safe from the rest of the world.

  “Are you ready?” I forced the words from my throat, the taste of her still coating my mouth, her juices still in my lips.

  She let out a dark, breathless laugh. “I’m so much more than ready, Jake. Please.” She looked up at me through dark lashes. “Fuck me.”

  Her words triggered something wild inside me and I could almost feel my control snap with an audible sound. I thrust inside her and I was lost. Completely and utterly lost. The pleasure was so intense that it nearly bordered on pain. I was a storm, raging out of control, and there was nothing I could do, nothing I could hold back. But she was right there with me, every stroke, every moan of joy, every gasping kiss. Thunder and lightning. Crashing together, over and over.

  I drowned in the feeling of her and I felt her orgasm rip through her just a second before my own hit me. We shuddered together just as the sunlight started to stream through the windows. The storm was over.

  9

  Zoe

  I was dreaming of music again, but this time it was different. It was dark in my dream, as it always was. But I didn’t feel scared. The stifling fear that would normally wake me up in the middle of the night choking on a scream was missing.

  Instead, there was something else there. Something just out of reach. The music was distant still, more of a memory of a sound than anything real or tangible. But there was something else there and it wasn’t my monster. It wasn’t fear. It was warm and comforting and drew me towards it like a moth to candlelight. I couldn’t help but move closer to it.

  I held my hands out, trying to grasp it. Trying to find it in the dark corners of my mind but it was nowhere, it was everywhere. It was in the very air around me and trying to hold on to it was like trying to hold on to smoke. The more I tried the more it slipped through my fingers.

  I ran in my dream, for the first time since the nightmares had come, I was running not way from something. But towards something.

  It took my breath away and startled a laugh from me. Even in my dream state, half aware, it felt momentous. There in the dark, I felt something indelible shift within me. It was small. Barely a shudder. But I had felt it. and I reveled in the feeling.

  Joy filled me as I spun around in circles, and then the warmth was back, moving around me, surrounding me, holding me safe and sound and as soft as a lover. And then that warmth started to grow into a heat, and inferno inside of me that exploded into awareness as I felt hands slide over my body.

  My mind was still half dreaming as my body moved and rocked, my hips arching into the hard, male body curled around me. Slowly reality occurred to me, coming in bits and pieces and flashes. In bed. I was in a bed.

  There was a man in bed with me. Jake. My mind whispered the name like a prayer as I felt strong hands sweep up the side of my body, pulling me even closer until I could feel the hard cock pressed against my hip.

  It sent a delicious, forbidden th
rill down my spine and I shuddered. Jake made a hum of appreciate, his voice still rough with sleep and the sound of it combined with the rasp of his two day stubble across my shoulder sent another wave of tingles shivering through me.

  His lips were next, trailing the softest of kisses across the back of my neck as he lifted the mass of my hair. It was probably a tangled mess but I didn’t care. I was wrapped in a blanket of sleep and desire and a slow-burning heat that was intoxicating and let no room for things like worry or morning after regrets.

  Not that I had a single one, if I was being honest with myself. Every moment with Jake had been incredible. Mind-blowing. Unlike anything I’d experienced before. We had only gotten to bed a few hours ago but already I wanted him again.

  I wanted him with a the same ferocious need that had taken me over last night. Or this morning, technically.

  After taking the edge off together in hallway, we had made it as far as the living room. And then again on the stairs, before finally making it to bed. My legs had been so weak that Jake had carried me up, otherwise I never would have made it.

  He had tucked me in to bed and then turned to leave but I’d grabbed his hand and pulled him down next to me. I’m not sure why I did it, I just knew that I hadn’t wanted it to be over. Not yet.

  I was still hungry for him. Starving, in fact. He’d woken something up inside me that had been dormant for so long, and now that this wildness was loose, it was ravenous, and only one thing would satisfy it. Him.

  I writhed my body against his like a snake, trying to get closer. My mind was still wrapped up in my dream world, still more than half asleep and as Jake touched me and kissed me I could still hear the music my mind. My music. The music of my soul.

  It carried me away to a magical place that made my heart ache and my breath catch. His kiss was like a symphony, his strong fingers gliding over my skin the harmony as everything inside me built and built and built until it was almost unbearable.

  “Jake. I need you. Now.” I hardly even recognized my own voice, rough and husky and sexy and demanding. “Now, Jake. No more teasing.”

  He answered with his own rough chuckle. “What if I like teasing you?” His voice whispered in my ear sending a wave of chills down my body. “What if I like feeling you tremble and shake and come apart in my arms?”

  His words left me completely breathless as they painted a picture in my head.

  “What if I like touching you like this?” His fingers, callused and work-roughened, ran up the skin of my thigh, my hip, moving until he could grasp the sensitive curve of my ass and it surprised a gasp of shock as he squeezed.

  “What if I like kissing you like this?” His lips skimmed down the curve of my neck, so light I could barely feel it and it had me arching my hips again, demanding more. And then he surprised me with a sudden, sharp nip of his teeth against my skin. A bite that startled me more than anything else, but that sensation had a rush of moisture flooding between my thighs.

  “Jake, please,” I begged raggedly.

  “And what if I really, really like it, when you beg me?” His voice had dropped another octave and was laced with that dark, wildness that I saw in him from the first day. That untamed quality. The same wildness that he had begun to awaken in me.

  “You know what I like?” I asked breathlessly, looking over my shoulder at him and seeing him there, how handsome he was, those silver eyes swirling like mercury in the morning sunlight, stole my breath all over again.

  “What?”

  “I like this.” I rolled as I said the words, surprising him enough that I was able to push him back on to the bed. Or he let me. Either way, I reveled in the power of it as I threw my leg across his, straddling him. I stared down at him, victorious, soaking up the heat in his gaze like sunshine.

  “God, you’re beautiful.”

  I wanted to shake off the compliment. I had never thought of myself as beautiful. Striking, maybe. Dramatic at best. I was a mix of contradictions. Night black hair. Pale skin. Green eyes. Red lips.

  I had always been short, and even at the best of times my body had been more athletic than curvy and my time on the road had only honed the leanness of my muscles. No extra padding to soften my sharp edges.

  Elliot had called me pretty, and I was okay with that. But beautiful? I just couldn’t see it. But there, kneeling over Jake’s hard, rippling abs, staring down at his gorgeous face, I could see the truth of it there in his eyes. He believed it. He truly did think I was beautiful.

  I felt it then, that same shift from my dream, that tiny but infinite change inside me. It another chink in my armor being removed. By Jake. Piece by piece he was dismantling the wall that I had built around me over the past year.

  It should have terrified me. I had put up those defenses to protect myself from the fear, from the numbing terror, from the loneliness. The worry. The panic. Never feeling safe, never having a home to land.

  But it didn’t. Instead, it filled me a golden warmth to match the fire raging inside me and turned it into something else entirely. Something so beautiful that it made my chest ache with it.

  With a gasp, I sank down and drew Jake’s cock inside me in one sweet thrust. Hip met hip and we both let out a low moan of pleasure, harmonizing again. Both moving in perfect time as I started to ride him.

  Pleasure swept through me, fanning the flames but Jake was there, that look still gleaming in his eyes, fanning the warmth too. Like twin suns glowing inside me until it was so bright I couldn’t see anymore.

  My eyes slid shut, and all I could do was feel. Feel Jake’s hands on my hips, guiding me faster and harder. His cock buried all the way inside me, so deep I could feel every movement hit all the way through me.

  He was larger than I was used to but my body felt made for his, as he thrust to me my rhythm and hit every nerve ending along the way.

  I rode him harder, panting now, sweat dripping down my temple and the suns inside me burned even brighter, even hotter. The whole world fell away as my orgasm ripped through me, tearing me apart from the inside out.

  On and on, the waves of pleasure racked me, my nails digging into Jake’s shoulder, but he held on just as tight as he came beneath me.

  Both of us shuddered, still feeling the aftershocks and I collapsed on top of him. My heart was racing so hard I could hear it pounding in my ears, but I could hear Jake’s too, racing just as fast, keeping perfect time with mine once more.

  “Sorry, I’m crushing you,” I whispered and got a hoarse chuckle in return.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s impossible.” But still he swept me in his arms before turning us both so we were laying side by side in the bed. The sheets and blankets were all tangled up between our legs and I was caught. I loved it.

  As I lay there, just listening to the sound of his breathing, neither of us talking, my thoughts raced.

  I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel, now.

  Everything with Jake was amazing, but so intense. So completely different from what I had felt with Elliot. Elliot was luke warm water compared to Jake’s steam and It had me wondering if what I’d had with my ex had ever been real. Had ever been more than a comfortable convenience. Because being with him was easier than joining the dating game. I had been too busy to date, then.

  I didn’t know much about Jake, not anything really, except what I had learned over the past month. I knew he was more than a little bit uncivilized. I knew he was deadly protective of his family and his home and the people who worked for him. I knew he was terrible at paperwork. And I knew that he was kind.

  And more importantly than all of that, I knew that I felt safe with him. For the first time in over a year, I felt safe. And that meant more to me than I could ever put into words. For that alone I would always be grateful to him.

  I could hear the sounds of the ranch outside, intruding on our dream world and I turned to look at the old alarm clock on the bedside table.

  “Damn. It’s almost eleven.”

>   “So? We came to bed at dawn. And even then we didn’t get much sleep.” Jake said with a roguish grin that teased a smile of my own to match. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  “I have that phone call with the contractor guy in thirty minutes. Gonna save you a couple thousand dollars today.” I said, leaning down to give him a kiss before scampering off the side of the bed before he could catch me and drag me back. It wouldn’t take much to make me stay, but if I was honest with myself, I needed some time to figure out my own thoughts and feelings about this whole thing. Whatever it was.

  I threw on my clothes, a pair of skinny jeans with holes in the knees and a button down shirt that had seen better days but I like the way it hugged my curves. I did indulge myself with one more long, drawn out kiss before stepping back. “Thank you.”

  With that, I turned and left before Jake could tempt me again and I’d end up just taking all of my clothes off again. He was a hard man to resist. But I had to get ready before my phone call and I needed the distraction of work while I waded through my own thoughts.

  I walked downstairs, feeling stronger than I had in a long time, fearless.

  I was drawn to the piano in the living room and slowed this time instead of walking past it pretending not to see it like I normally did every morning. I stopped in front of it, staring at the closed lid.

  Hesitantly, I lifted it to reveal the black and white keys underneath. I ran my fingers across it and that same dark shadow from before started to rear its ugly head in the back of my mind. With a shaky curse, I silently closed the lid and took a quick step back. Not today. The last thing I want to do is ruin the afterglow of incredible sex that was still buzzing inside me. No, not today.

  I turned away from the piano, that music still playing in my head, and I walked out to head towards the office. I saw Westley who was doing some repairs on a pair of horseshoes and waved. He smiled, looked past me to were Jake was just now stumbling out of the farmhouse looking just as disheveled as I’m sure I did. The ranch manager gave me a knowing look and a wink.