Uncommon Passion (9 page)

on the next, fire raced from her core along her nerves as she tipped over the edge, her swollen walls

clenching around Ben’s length. Soft cries echoed in the truck’s back seat. Only when the release began to

ebb did she realize they came from her.

When she opened her eyes she blushed, hard, because based on his face he’d watched . . . everything.

She ducked her head to let her hair slip over her face.

“No,” he said, and tucked it behind her ear. “That was hot. That was very, very hot. Now do the same

thing for me.”

The demand made her blush harder, but she eased back into the rhythm, and studied his face for cues.

Faster, or slower? Hard, or soft?

Sweat trickled from his temple to his jaw. She remembered his response to her teeth, leaned forward

and licked the bead from the stubble, then closed her teeth on his jaw. His big body shuddered under her,

so she did it again, testing the edge of her teeth along his jaw, then more gently on his lower lip, and all the

while she took him into her body with no other goal than returning the pleasure back to him, of making

him feel what she felt.

His shaft throbbed inside her and his hands closed hard on her buttocks. His head tipped back, exposing

his throat. She took advantage, biting the straining tendon before licking the hurt to soothe it. Emboldened,

she braced her hands on his shoulders and dug her fingernails into the taut muscles. A shudder rolled

through him. He’d held himself entirely still under her, but with the sting of her nails his hips lifted into her

as she slid down.

Now she got it. Slow, but hard. Impact like hammer strikes with body and mouth, and she could make

him lose control like she did. Her next moves matched his intensity, and moments later a blood flush

bloomed on his cheekbones as he fought to keep his eyes open. Reveling in the delight and desire coursing

through her body, she rode him until his arm locked around her hips as he pulsed inside her.

She eased forward to lie against his heaving chest until the tension in his muscles eased. There was so

much power to this, female power.

No wonder this wasn’t allowed.

“Off,” he said.

Their bodies disengaged when she sat back on her heels at the far end of the bench seat. In one smooth

motion he shifted upright, then out of the cab. His motions were hidden but she assumed he was removing

the condom. He added something to the sack of trash generated by their picnic, then jerked his jeans up and

buckled his belt.

Modesty kept her from leaving the truck until she found her bra and blouse on the floorboards and put

them on. He turned his back to her, running his hand from crown to forehead before buttoning his shirt.

She stepped into her panties, tucked in her blouse, smoothed down her skirt. Hands on his hips, he gazed

across the creek at the fallow pastureland.

“Do you want to say hi to your parents? It’s a long drive out here without stopping in for a moment.”

He looked at her. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “No.”

For the first time that night an embarrassed flush swept up her neck, into her cheeks. Of course he

wouldn’t want to stop in and say hello to his folks with the woman he’d spent two hours rolling around in

the back seat of his pickup truck.

“I could stay in the truck,” she offered, trying to make it better.

A long moment passed, then without looking at her he slammed shut the tailgate. Metal clanged against

metal, shocking the silent night air and startling her nearly out of her skin.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said. The breeze tossed her hair into her face; without thinking she quickly tamed it into

a loose French braid she bound off halfway down her back. Arms braced on the tailgate, he watched her,

but this time there was no pleasure in his eyes. Now they were the color of the sky during an icy cold snap.

Blue frost.

“Ready?”

“Yes,” she said.

She opened the passenger door and climbed inside. He stepped up into the driver’s seat. They drove

back to Silent Circle, music from an alternative rock station filling the silence between them. She directed

him to the next driveway down, the direct road to the apprentices’ bunkhouse, and gripped the door as they

jounced through the potholes.

“You’re angry,” she said. It was a guess, more than anything else. Elysian Fields didn’t just restrict

choices in hair or dress or sexual activity. Everyone spoke with soft voices, said only kind words. Harsh

feelings were reason for prayer, and certainly weren’t vocalized. Not that Ben was actually speaking. But

whether he realized it or not, emotion carved the line of his jaw, the thin set of his mouth, the rigidity of his

shoulders. And while he’d looked much the same thirty minutes earlier, just before she brought him to

orgasm, this was different. Very different.

“Nothing to say.”

“All right.” She opened the passenger door. Hot air rushed from the truck’s undercarriage up her calves

as she slid out of the truck.

He stopped her before she could close the door. “Rachel.”

She turned to look at him over her shoulder. The interior light cast his square jaw and forehead in

planes and shadows. “You’re going to confuse it with love. It’s not. It’s sex.”

“Actually, I don’t think I will,” she said. “I know what love feels like. That wasn’t love.”

He looked out the windshield, then gave a little laugh, the flashing, daring smile’s dark and jaded

cousin.

“Why did you do this?”

“Because I could,” he said with a shrug.

Her eyes narrowed slightly and her lips pursed as she considered this.

“That pisses off most girls, you know. It’s supposed to piss you off.”

“My train of thought derailed back at the idea of having sex just because you could. I’ll think about that

for a while,” she said. She slid down to the parking lot’s dirt. “Thank you for a nice evening,” she said, and

closed the passenger door.

By the time she opened the bunkhouse’s door, Ben’s truck was raising dust on the dirt road back to the

highway.

Chapter Six

Ben stood outside No Limits watching the bouncers handle the door. A line contained by a red

velvet rope stretched from the front door along the brick exterior to the corner nearest the parking lot. The

door staff, both muscle-bound bruisers, maintained an orderly line and for the most part kept things under

control in the bar. Ben and his partner Steve, another off-duty Galveston cop, were there for when things

got really out of hand.

Nothing that happened at No Limits was as dangerous as setting foot on the Bar H for the first time since

he moved out. He’d taken Rachel out there because it was private and quiet, and to prove to himself that the

ranch meant nothing to him. As casual as he’d been to her, he’d been facing off with danger down by the

creek, in more ways than one. She smelled like danger, like thunderstorms and lightning and abandonment,

a scent he’d learned to be wary of on the Bar H.

The door opened to let patrons out into the parking lot, and club music thumped into the hot night air.

Ben glanced up, using eight years of experience to assess the sobriety of five women leaving the club. Four

of the five teetered on their heels, but the one who shepherded her friends to a Jeep Cherokee and got

behind the wheel was sober. Until Linc Sawyer bought the bar two years ago, No Limits had had a

reputation for sex acts both inside and outside, and a higher-than-average number of DUI arrests and

accidents for people leaving the premises. GPD logged more calls to No Limits than any other bar in the

county. But Linc had fired the manager and all the bartenders, implemented strong policies about cutting off

drunks, hired bigger bouncers, and added off-duty cops for consequence while improving the sound

system and marketing the hell out of the place. As a result, the city’s hottest nightclub had the fewest

number of incidents related to alcohol while gaining a reputation as the place to go for a hot hookup.

Most nights the work was five hours of boring punctuated by the occasional ninety seconds of action.

Stand outside and use the uniform to discourage fights, drunk driving, and parking lot hookups. Steve

relieved the tedium with a Facebook addiction. Ben scanned the line, then the parking lot, keeping his

behavior-detection skills sharp.

A familiar blonde, tall, slender, and dressed in a halter top and tight black skirt, detached herself from a

pack of similarly dressed friends, ducked under the rope with considerable grace for a woman in heels and

a microskirt, and had a short conversation with the bouncer. He nodded, then when she headed across the

parking lot for them, gave Ben and Steve one raised eyebrow. Ben didn’t need special training to determine

her intent. Every cop on the force knew Juliette, or a woman like her.

“Incoming,” Steve said under his breath. “Say yes this time.”

Ben didn’t move a muscle, just watched her walk, tugging down her skirt as she moved. Legs to her

ears, and as the Gulf breeze caught the silky fabric of her halter, flashing hints of perky curves. With her

lifted palm turned outward she brushed her hair away from her cheek, the gesture simultaneously feminine,

vulnerable, and flirtatious.

He couldn’t imagine Rachel doing anything that calculatingly female. Then again, he’d completely

misjudged her. Twice.

“Hi,” Juliette said when she drew near, stretching the single syllable out.

“Hi,” Steve said in response, checking her out from heels to hair.

“I heard about the gas station,” she said to Ben, then looked back at the pack of girlfriends she’d

brought to the bar. “My hero. After we close this place down we should party.”

“Sounds great,” Steve said.

Ben’s phone vibrated against his thigh. He pulled it from the side pocket of his cargo pants, saw the text

disappearing into the background.

You alive?

His brother, asking a question he already knew the answer to, but Ben keyed in an answer anyway. Sam

knew Ben was alive the same way Ben knew Sam was. While the connection wasn’t as tight as it was in

high school, he still knew when Sam burned himself with the welding tool, or when he had a close call with

a semi on the highway. Sam was the first person to call after the gas station incident, hours before it made

the news. He knew. He just knew.

Yes.

“Maybe,” Ben said.

The corners of Juliette’s gleaming red lips lifted. “The SWAT team guys party, Ben. You’re not going to

get in trouble for staying out late.”

He gave her an A for persistence, but there was the text from Sam, and then there was Rachel. He

shrugged and turned back to the parking lot.

“I’ll be there,” Steve said again.

Juliette turned to Steve. “Bring a friend,” she said, with a sidelong glance at Ben. “One who likes to

party.”

“No problem,” Steve said.

“Come on, Juliette!” Her friends, now standing in front of the door, waved her over.

“I’ll catch you later,” she said, then ran, in those heels, to the door and disappeared into the wall of

noise inside the bar.

“Why the hell not?” Steve asked.

“How many guys in the department has she fucked? Four?”

“Five, last I heard, and six tonight, if things go good.” At Ben’s snort, Steve added, “You never turn

down a piece of ass that hot.”

And hot she was, in all the right ways, with a thing for badges, but just because he could didn’t mean he

would. Cops got all kinds of perks, and he’d played football for Texas before he was a cop. He’d been

there, done that, and while Juliette hadn’t handed him the T-shirt afterward, the women who had were

indistinguishable from her.

“I’m not interested in lining up behind half the department,” Ben said. He ran his thumb over his cell

phone screen, keeping it awake, waiting for Sam’s return text.

“You feeling okay?” Steve said.

“Fine,” Ben said. Just fine. Rachel and Sam and the Bar H, and spring thunderstorms rolling in from the

Gulf every other fucking night. “I’m fine.”

Steve sent a couple of texts then went back to Facebook, and for the next hour, the typical Saturday

night at No Limits continued. Normally Ben drifted with the music, noise, laughter, but tonight flashes of

Rachel punctuated the noise with silence. Crickets, the leaves in the trees, the faint sound of water over

rock. The hot, involuntary sounds she made when his touch brought her alive. The look in her eyes, dazed

and astonished and oh-so aroused when he swept her hair over her breasts.

She’d been nearly silent the whole time, dropping deeper into sensation, into herself as he showed her

what her body could feel and do. He loved to talk dirty during sex, but the image of Rachel looking over

her shoulder to say
oh yeah, you like that baby?
while he fucked her from behind made him huff out a soft