Luke (Armed and Dangerous Book 2) (12 page)

“You’ve done it this way before?” he asked, then gritted his teeth at the thought of any other man sharing this with her.

“Never.” Trinity shook her head, her hair sliding over her back with the movement. “But I—I have fantasized about it.”

Luke relaxed. He’d damn sure be the only man who’d do it, too. He increased the motion of his finger, and she rocked her hips back and forth and rode his hand. “You’ve played with toys like this... haven’t you?” he asked, and stopped the motion of his finger but kept it lodged inside her.

“Yes.” A whimper escaped Trinity’s throat that she couldn’t hold back. “Don’t stop, Luke.”

“I’m not through with you yet.” Luke slipped his finger out and then in the next instant, he scooped Trinity up.

She gasped as she found herself on her back in his embrace, and she threw her arms around his neck. “What are you doing?”

Instead of answering her question, he eased onto the underwater bench in the hot tub and cradled her in his lap. He fondled one of her nipples with his thumb, and she squirmed on his lap. “Why’d you run out on me at Nevaeh’s?”

Trinity moaned, so incredibly aroused from what he’d been doing to her just seconds ago. “I—dang. I can’t even think when you do that.”

Luke gave a soft chuckle. “Try.”

“Fear.” She swallowed, her eyes heavy-lidded as her arousal grew. “I was afraid if I stayed around you, something would happen. Something like this.”

“What’s wrong with what we’re doing?” he asked softly.

“You know.” She could feel heat rise in her cheeks. “A few nights ago, this would have been cheating. That kiss at Nevaeh’s—it was cheating.”

The blaze in his eyes nearly made her come unglued. “And tonight?”

“Tonight, it’s not.” Trinity let out a moan from his touches. She couldn’t help it. “I told you, it’s over with him. I called him and told him I wasn’t going to see him anymore.”

“Damn good thing.” He held her tighter with one arm and continued his exploration of her body with his other hand. “He’s not right for you.”

Her gaze met his as she tried to straighten in his arms. “You’ve never even met Race.”

Luke grinned at the bastard’s name. “Race?”

Trinity tilted her head up and glared at him. “He’s a great guy. Kind, gentle, thoughtful.”

“You’re too passionate a woman for kind and gentle.” Luke slid his palm down her flat belly toward her mound and felt her tremble beneath his touch. “After awhile you’d feel bored and trapped. Wouldn’t be fair to either one of you.”

Frowning, she placed her palm on his bare chest, like she was bracing herself. “You don’t even know me.”

“Better than you think.” One hand rested on her belly as he slipped the other into her hair and rubbed the base of her scalp in a slow, sensuous movement. “You’re confident in your work, but insecure in yourself. You’re sexy and gorgeous, but you don’t even realize how beautiful you are.” When she dropped her jaw in surprise, he gave her a smile. “The time I first saw your eyes, it was plain as day.”

Trinity stared at Luke, amazed and unable to speak for a moment. The churning waters of the hot tub filled her ears along with the sound of her own heartbeat. “We just met.”

“The pictures Skylar keeps in the family room.” He gently continued massaging the back of her head as the jets caressed her body. “Months ago when I saw those photos of you, I thought you’d be worth getting to know real well.”

Prickles raced along her skin. “Who are you?”

“Foreman for the Flying M.” He shrugged. “Been here ’bout six months.”

“You live and work here?” Trinity clenched her fist against his chest, her thoughts spinning. “At the ranch?”

The corner of his mouth quirked and he nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Oh, lord.

“That’s just great.” She rested her head against his muscled chest. “That’s like leaving Eve in the garden of Eden not far from the apple tree. Irresistible temptation within walking distance.”

Luke chuckled, his chest vibrating beneath her ear. “Irresistible, huh?”

Shifting on his lap, she felt the hard insistence of his cock pressed against her ass, and could hardly form a coherent thought for a moment. What if he slid into her tight rear hole and took her now?

Taking a deep breath, she said, “I don’t know what it is, but you make me forget everything.” She leaned back and tilted her head to look at him. “Except you. All I can think about is you. And I barely even know you, Luke Rider.”

“That’s as good a start as any.” He adjusted her in his lap, turning her so that she was straddling him, his cock pressed against the soft curls of her mound. “For now I want to see you climax again.” She laced her fingers around his neck and arched her back as he leaned down to flick his tongue over her nipple. The damp ends of her hair rubbed over her back as she moaned and squirmed on his lap, against his erection... dying to feel him inside her, yet hesitating to take that step, to cross that boundary.

Luke slid his forefinger between her thighs as he licked and sucked and gently bit her nipples. Harder he stroked her, bringing her closer to yet another orgasm.

“I can hardly wait to be inside you, Trinity,” he murmured against one nipple. “I want you so bad I can taste it.”

“Yes,” Trinity whispered as she rode his fingers. “You’re so big. You’ll feel so good.”

He groaned and bit harder at her nipple, causing Trinity to cry out with the pleasure and the pain of his teeth sinking into her soft flesh. His cock pressed against her belly as his hand worked between her thighs, and she wondered when he was going to slide inside her. Deep. Hard. Fast.

Just the thought was enough to push her over the edge.

A furious climax stole her breath and all her senses, going on and on until she collapsed against his chest.

She expected him to raise her up, to drive his cock into her core.

Instead it sounded as though he was speaking through clenched teeth as he said, “I’ve got to go before I lose what’s left of my control.”

“What?” Trinity rose up to look at him, but he grasped her waist with his big hands, moved her aside, and set her on the bench. “What are you doing?” she asked as he stepped out of the hot tub.

He snatched the towel off the deck chair and rubbed it over his body. Even while she was confused by his sudden actions, she couldn’t help but admire his muscled body.

Talk about prime choice cowboy ass!

When he started to yank on his jeans, she scrambled out of the hot tub to stand beside him, water trailing over her body and trickling to her feet.

“You’re gonna catch a chill,” he muttered, taking the now damp towel and rubbing it over her shoulders. “I intended to grab a fresh towel for you.”

Conflicting emotions stormed through her. Was he rejecting her now that he knew she wanted him? Was that why he was leaving? Yet he was rubbing the towel over her so gently, and instinctively she knew this man didn’t play games.

“Why are you getting dressed?” she asked as he dried her thighs, the soft hair of her mound, and on down to her calves.

“If I stay around you any longer I’m going to take you, sugar,” he all but growled. “Right here and right now.”

“Isn’t that what we both want?” she whispered.

Only the sound of the bubbling hot tub and a smattering of chirping crickets were her response. Luke stood, grabbed her bathrobe off the deck chair, helped her slip it on, then tied the sash with a rough tug.

“When I make love to you,” he finally said, his voice still rough with desire, “you’re gonna be sure it’s what you want—and I mean all the way sure.” He caught her cheeks in his callused palms and forced her to look at him. “No lingering feelings for some man in England. No rebound issues. No doubts. No fears. No regrets. You’re gonna be ready for me. For us. Understand?”

Trinity nodded, unable to speak. Barely able to think.

“I want you to meet me this week for lunch.” He brushed her lips with his. “I’ll call you.”

“Lunch.” Trinity had a wild image of herself naked on a restaurant table with a red checkered tablecloth, legs spread wide, with Luke pounding into her until the damned wooden legs of the table snapped underneath them.

She was so far into the fantasy, she wasn’t sure she was really speaking out loud. “Sure. That’d be great.”

Luke gave her a quick, fierce kiss, then grabbed his boots and T-shirt and strode into the house without looking back.

“Wayland and his people haven’t turned up anything on Gina Garcia yet.” Rios slid a folder marked INVOICES down the bar toward Luke as the Watering Hole jukebox kicked up with some old country tune Luke didn’t know. “We’re coming up empty, too—I say we pass on your suspicions and we turn her and her barn over to Wayland. Local law enforcement’ll come closer to getting a warrant than we will.”

Luke frowned. He didn’t want to get a warrant and beat down the woman’s door, or her barn door, but he was beginning to wonder if that wouldn’t be the best thing.

He took the folder Rios had given him, then had to fight back a yawn as he opened it. He hadn’t been sleeping well, thinking about Trinity, but now wasn’t any time to doze on the job.

He’d be seeing her for lunch in a few, the first time he’d actually be with her since the night in the hot tub. He’d force himself to wait and indulge in his fantasies when he was looking into her green eyes.

He and Rios used this ranch hand gathering place to cover their own meetings. During their time off from their ranch cover jobs, they both pretended to be fairly heavy beer drinkers, starting early and finishing late, like the five or six guys already here before lunch.

The bartender knew how to keep his distance, too, and never approached unless they waved him over—which Rios had done twice already. The man’s dark face already had a little flush to both cheeks.

Luke ignored the sour sawdust-and-sweat stench of the place and gave his beer a fake swig. At the same time, he looked at the autopsy report on the UDA from Wade Larson’s place.

His eyes swept over the incidental findings, major issues, cause of death, and—

“No drugs in his system, no traces on the skin—but a chainsaw cut him up? Shit.” Luke closed the folder. “What happened to the vats of lye they used in Douglas?”

Rios downed a third of his beer. “This may be a separate issue. Doc said the guy was already dead—and already dead for a while— when some sick fuck turned on the spinning saw blades. All the shit on the ground around the prints—cow’s blood, to make it look like a new kill site.” Rios tapped the autopsy report. “This guy, he’d been on ice somewhere. Literally.”

Shit.

A turf war. UDAs out of control and surging across the border. Coyotes, mules, and drug lords. Scared women with barn issues. And now a freak-job with a chainsaw cutting up an unknown kid and going to huge pains to dump the body—for what?

Welcome back to the new version of the wild, wild West. Luke shook his head and thought of Tombstone, not fifty miles northwest of here.

“What happened to the good ol’ days like in Tombstone, when a man called out his enemy and shot him dead in the street? Or death by hanging. These bastards definitely deserve a public hanging.”

Rios snorted back a laugh. “Reminds me of that old Toby Keith song, ‘Beer for My Horses’.” Rios faked a drunken man swaying on his bar stool and belted out, “ ‘Take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree.’”

Luke smiled, closed the folder, and passed it back to Rios. The DEA agent dropped pretenses and his dark eyes went serious as Luke asked, “Who was the victim?”

“No idea. No prints in the system, no identification.” Rios drained the rest of his beer. “Harder, since we just found the pieces, no clothes.”

Luke was very tempted to drink all of his own beer, but decided it wouldn’t help him stay alert. “Somebody had Juan Doe in a freezer, pulled him out, cut him up, and staged a kill site on Larson’s land.”

Rios shrugged. “Or Larson had enough of the UDA traffic across his land, killed him, froze him, waited for a good dump time, and splat.” He popped his palm against the bar. The hard smack made a big man at the far end of the bar raise his head.

Luke pretended to drain his own beer, surprised to recognize Bull Fenning. The big rancher had on rumpled, dirty clothes and a thick gray-white stubble that suggested he’d been a few days without a shave. He didn’t seem to recognize Luke or Rios, and even if he’d seen them, he couldn’t hear them from where he was sitting.

Damned odd, to see him in here, this time of day, looking like that.

Luke gave an almost imperceptible nod to Rios in the direction of Fenning. Rios followed his gaze until his eyebrows lifted a fraction.

“Wouldn’t have taken that one for a drunk.” He glanced toward Luke, then Fenning again. “Obnoxious, maybe. A little unhinged, but his accounts and ranch upkeep suggest he’s taking care of his business.”

“Maybe it’s a binge thing, or recent.” Luke studied Fenning, who had already gone back to nursing his drink, seemingly numb and oblivious to the bar around him. Something in his posture suggested to Luke that Fenning was very familiar with this place, with that seat, and with slumping over a drink before lunchtime. “Could even be some woman dumped him.”

Fenning still had his big head down, toying with the edge of his glass. If Fenning spent a lot of time here doing close observation of shot glasses and highballs, who was really minding his store?

As if to answer that question, the door to the bar knocked open, spilling light across the dusty, empty dance floor. Luke recognized Brad Taylor by his height and build, and watched as Bull Fenning’s foreman strode over to the old man.

They exchanged a few words, then Fenning got up and walked toward the door with Brad holding his arm to give him some support.

For a time, Luke and Rios just watched the men go, but as the door swung shut, Rios said, “Rumor says he does twins.”

Luke glanced at his partner. “So I heard.”

He sighed and filed the whole Bull Fenning—Brad Taylor situation in his mind for consideration, then went back to the autopsy report. “About the murder—there were a lot of tracks for it to be just Larson.”