Wanted: Devil Dogs MC (10 page)

“It’s not charity.” He shakes his head at her, as if he can’t believe what it is he’s hearing. “And if it were, so what? Do you think the power company gives two shits if the money you pay them is a gift or not?” He paces up and down, but his eyes don’t leave her face. “You know what your problem is, Bel?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Please, I’m desperate to know. Tell me, Wes, what is my problem?” She crosses her arms, feeling the fire of her anger return.

“You’re too damn proud.” He throws the words like an accusation. “You’re too proud to let anyone help you, because you want to be able to say you did it all yourself. You’re not happy unless you’re proving something to someone. Why can’t you just let someone help you?”

Isabel feels a prick of sadness come into her voice, despite her best efforts to quash it. “Because the more they give you, the more you rely on them and then what happens when they’re gone?”

A flash of understanding falls across Wesley’s features and he lowers his tone, making his voice gentle as he steps closer to her, closing the distance between them in two strides. He hooks this index finger underneath her chin and lifts it up so he can look into her emerald-green eyes and she can look into his bottomless dark ones. “Why are you so determined to see the worst in everyone? Does that just make it easier for you to push everybody away?”

Isabel’s mouth works wordlessly, but it’s hard to bring herself to say anything around the lump in her throat. “You’ve known me for all of five minutes, Wes. You can’t possibly know who I am or the way I behave.” She waves away his comment, despite the fact that he’s managed to hit the nail directly on the head.

“I know you better than you think, Bel. You can fool a lot of people, but you can’t fool me.” He leans towards her, invading her space and it’s all she can do not to lean into him, not to let him get to her. “You’re scared, Isabel.”

She scoffs, shaking her head, sending her curly dark hair tumbling around her shoulders. “I’m not scared of anything, Wes, and least of all of you.”

“Oh yeah?” He leans in farther, scrutinizing her expression, his face only inches from her. “Because I think you’re terrified, terrified that you feel something when you’re with me that you can’t control, something that doesn’t fit into the nice, safe little life you’ve made for yourself.”

“Don’t act like you know more about me than you do, Wes.” The fire is in her words but there’s nothing matching in her tone. His observations about her have hit far too close to home. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.” She makes a move towards the door, but his hand shoots out to her arm, holding her in place.

He tugs her gently, spinning her around and pulling her close to him so she’s right up against his chest. She’s plastered against him and there’s no mistaking the hardness pushing on her hip. They’re both breathing heavily from their battle of wills and when Isabel looks up at him she sees his eyes are hooded with lust. Her body responds to him instantly; she feels her nipples harden and the heat between her legs spread.

“Let me go, Wes.” Her voice is husky, with none of the anger that had been filling it before. She twists weakly in his arms, but it’s more for show; she doesn’t really want to get away from him. If anything she wants to be even closer.

“Tell me you don’t want this.” The challenge in his tone is clear and the way he’s looking at her leaves her in no doubt as to what ‘this’ entails.

She swallows hard, unable to form the words because the thought of his naked body against hers is almost too much to handle.

“Bel.” His voice is strained and Isabel can tell that he’s as turned on as she is. He’s holding on to his last vestiges of control.

But she doesn’t want to give in to her desires. There’s something about what he’s said to her, the way he seems to know her so well without even having to try. It’s disconcerting and, more than that, it’s dangerous. Isabel is all too aware that one day he is going to up and leave the boarding house. There is no scenario in which he is going to stay forever and they are going to live happily ever after. The realization makes her heart ache a little and that just bolsters her certainty over what she has to do. She has known she’ll have to start pushing him away sooner or later; she had just hoped that it would be later. She can’t deny the way she feels about him is growing each day and the power he seems to wield over her is like nothing she’s ever experienced before. Her self-preservation instincts are kicking in and she knows what she has to do.

“I don’t want this.” She holds her breath, her eyes looking up at him defiantly as her mouth forms the words that are almost impossible to say.

Wesley raises his eyebrows at her, surprised at her reaction and then he looks deeper into her eyes as if he’s searching for some kind of meaning there. “Liar.” That one word is enough to topple her defenses, but she stands tall, refusing to let him see. He releases her from his hold and steps away from her, looking at her in a way that tells her he’s reading her mind again. “When you’re ready to tell the truth, you know where to find me.” He turns away from her, leaving the kitchen, padding quietly away from her.

It’s not until she hears the door of his bedroom close behind him that she allows herself to sink down into one of the chairs. She looks down at the table that’s covered in bits of bloody gauze and bandages. It looks like there had been a war in this room and she supposes it’s not all that far from the truth.

Isabel tosses and turns, unable to sleep. The first fingers of dawn are still a while away from spreading across the sky. She plays her argument with Wesley over and over again in her head until she can’t stand it anymore. She throws off her bed covers, not stopping to grab her sweatshirt to ward off against the cold of the house and pads downstairs quietly, careful to avoid the creaky floorboards.

Before she has time to second guess her decision or re-think what she’s about to do, she opens the door and makes her way inside. The room is dark, but she still knows it like the back of her hand. It’s only as she approaches the bed and she sees the half-naked body underneath it that she stops to wonder what the hell she’s doing. Creeping into a guy’s room at night, ready to jump him because she can’t think about anything else other than him, really isn’t her style. Not to mention the fact that it goes against everything she had said to him only a few short hours before.

She’d told him she didn’t want him when the opposite was true. What stung was that he had been right: she pushes people away because it is too hard to depend on someone only for them to let you down or disappear forever. But no matter what her reservations are, what her fears are, Isabel knows what she wants. There seems to be a force stronger than anything she’s ever felt before that draws her towards him. She’s powerless to escape it, no matter how much she tries. It’s as undeniable as gravity.

“Are you going to stand there staring at me all night or are you going to come to bed?” His voice is clear as a bell, not even partly shrouded in sleep, telling her he’s been awake since their fight, too.

“With an offer like that, how could a girl refuse?” She spars with him out of habit, but the undercurrent of nerves is evident in her voice. This feels like their first time again, except that first time she didn’t remember feeling so much like she was about to fall off of a precipice. She slips into bed with him and he pulls her close, his body warming hers through and it’s only then that she realizes how cold she was without him.

“You’re shivering.” He pulls her even tighter up against him, wrapping himself around her, his searing heat invading her senses and body.

She takes a deep breath, figuring that the best way to do this is fast and all at once. “I’m sorry for getting mad. The drama queen bit has never really been my thing but you seem to bring it out in me.” She shakes her head at the memory of how hot-tempered she had been with him when she had always prided herself on how cool and calm and collected she could be. “Anyway, you were right. I did lie to you.” She listens to the regularity of his heartbeat, her head resting against his chest.

“I know.” He says the words so full of confidence that Isabel looks up at him, not a little indignant.

“You’re pretty confident in yourself, aren’t you?” She smiles wryly up at him and he shrugs expansively.

“I have my moments.” His mouth quirks up as amusement dances in his dark eyes. He leans down and kisses her gently on the forehead, a gesture of tenderness, something more than the, admittedly, deeply-satisfying sex they’ve been enjoying. “So, tell me. What exactly was it that I was so right about? You may need to refresh my memory.”

“Oh, really?” Her voice is coquettish as she wriggles against him, her hand sneaking down his belly, resting over the hard shaft straining against his boxers. “Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do about that.”

Her hands reach inside his boxers, stroking the length of him as she leans up and kisses him teasingly on the mouth, her tongue darting against the seam of his lips. She’s rewarded by a deep groan as he pulls her even closer to him, but he lets her take the lead, holding himself back, as if he knows she needs this, this feeling of control.

Isabel wants to fill her senses with him, wants to feel him all around her, inside her. The very thought warms her through and sparks a wetness between her thighs. She positions herself over him, straddling his hips as she continues to kiss him thoroughly, tenderly, deeply. He moans as she wriggles her hips, feeling the answering jump of his cock underneath her. He reaches up to pull of her top, but she catches his hands with her own, pushing them back down onto the bed, above his head.

“Patience.” She breathes the word out, smiling teasingly and she takes a moment just to take in the sight of this beautiful man laid out beneath her. The muscles of his arms and his chest are taut and hard. His face, framed by sexily mussed dark hair and eyes that are even darker is kick-in-the-gut gorgeous. She leans down, kissing him again, letting her chest rest against his, so he can feel the hardness of her nipples through the soft material of her top.

She slides down his body, looking up at him occasionally to find him watching her slow progress down to his hips. Slowly, she pulls his boxers down, freeing his shaft that has been straining for release. She takes hold of him, tugging gently on his length.

“Isabel.” Her voice is a groaned whisper on his lips and hearing it bolsters her confidence. She leans down and takes him into her mouth, not gently, but all at once. He sits up in the bed, the force his pleasure pulsing through him. She licks his tip, tasting his saltiness, twisting his shaft and feeling it swell even more in her mouth.

She licks and sucks the tip hard and, in that moment, Isabel loses all control. He pulls her up so they’re face to face before flipping her over so she’s underneath him, his hips pinning her where she lies. His fingers find their way underneath her top and he pulls it over her head, impatiently. She looks down to see desire written all over his face and she feels the answering hunger within her. He cups her breast with his hand, dragging his thumb over her nipples that are already so sensitive they’re almost painful.

She leans into his touch, powerless to do anything but feel. He rolls her nipples gently, between his fingers, first one and then the other; she arches her back surrendering to the feeling. He leans into her, taking his nipples in his mouth, licking them, suckling them, first softly, then harder, making her feel all the nerve endings scream with pleasure.

Her hands are in his hair, encouraging him, willing him on. His fingers move farther down, skimming her belly, making her moan with anticipation. He slips inside her silky shorts, finding the heat between her legs.

“Oh, Bel. You’re so wet for me. You’re so ready.” His fingers part her slick folds, finding her clit and rubbing it gently, making her feel like she’s about to dissolve into a puddle of need right there and then.

“You are lovely.” He says the words reverently as he touches her, his clever fingers skimming the soft skin inside of her. “I want to taste you.”

For a split second, Isabel moves to stop him. There are only a handful of men she’d ever let go down on her, partly because for some it had seemed like a chore they felt was necessary to get what they wanted. “You don’t have to.” Her voice is raw with need and she can’t help but lift her hips as he strokes her insistently, inserting a finger inside of her and making her cry out, his name on her lips.

“I know. But I want to.” Wesley clearly isn’t taking no for answer. But he waits for her permission, watching her as he takes her to the edge of pleasure with his clever fingers, but leaves her dangling.

She nods quickly, having lost the ability to speak and she watches the satisfied smile form on his lips. He scoots down her body, pulling off her silk shorts that are now sodden with her own desire. Before she has time to think, his mouth is on her, licking and tasting her most intimate parts. She bites her lip, trying to hold onto some semblance of control, but it’s an impossible task. Already, she knows when it comes to Wesley, she has no hope of keeping her desire under wraps. She lifts her hips and he takes the invitation, his fingers moving inside of her as his tongue stimulates her clit, turning her body into a ball of sensation. Her hands grab hold of his shoulders, just as her orgasm rocks her and she comes hard against his mouth, bucking and moaning loudly.

“I love to watch you come, Bel. So beautiful.” His voice reaches her through the fog of her pleasure. She smiles up at him, lazily, through thickly lashed eyes.

He leans down to kiss her and the taste of herself on him is enough to stir her senses again, making her ready for more, more of him, as if she could ever get enough. She slips her hand between them, encircling him with her fingers and opening her legs to him.

They lock eyes as she guides him to her entrance, her legs moving to wrap around his hips as he hovers, pausing just for a moment before he plunges into her. The heat between her thighs builds with every thrust he takes and her hips rise up to meet him each time.

“Look at me, Bel. I want to see you.” Her eyes fly open at his command, as if she is powerless against him. He could ask her anything in this moment and she knows she would do it, so consumed is she with desire for him.

They watch each other as he moves inside of her, filling her up with every plunge. Their rhythm quickened and just as she feels like she can’t take any more, her climax wracks her body. She cries out his name, his own guttural roar signaling he has found his tumultuous release.

They hold onto each other, as if they are going down on a sinking ship. Her embrace is nearly fierce, so intent is she on having his body as close as is physically possible to hers. They lie in bed, wrapped around each other, their rapid breathing coming back to normal as they fall back to Earth. She loves the feel of being in his arms; she can’t help but wish that she never had to leave.

“So, I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had earlier, the one where you threw about a thousand dollars in my face.” He says the words mildly, coolly, as if her behavior had no effect on him whatsoever.

“Okay…” Isabel holds her breath, hoping he’s not going to renew his offer. Much as she now understands that it comes from a good place, that he just wants to help her, there’s something that just doesn’t sit right with her about taking cold, hard cash from him. The rent he’d paid as a tenant was different, a business transaction – pure and simple and had all happened before they’d started sleeping together. This is something else entirely.

“Well, as that conversation went so well,” his voice is heavy with sarcasm, “I thought we could try something different.” He doesn’t give her time to interrupt him, yet another signal that he knows her better than she thought. “I’m pretty good with my hands.”

“I had noticed that.” She nods, seriously at him, shivering as he puts them to good use, stroking the soft skin of her back, rhythmically.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” The humor in his voice makes her smile. “Anyway, I figured I could help some with this old place.” He says the words fondly, as if he had a soft spot for the rundown Victorian building. “There are a good few jobs that need doing that would make all the difference – some painting, fixing up that back porch before It falls onto the garden, stuff like that.” He shrugs as if it what he is offering is no big deal.

Isabel blinks the tears away that come to her eyes, unbidden. Her emotions really are all over the place when it comes to Wesley. She opens her mouth to tell him that as much as she appreciates the offer, she can’t accept it. But he places his index finger over her lips, stopping her protests before she can utter them.

“Don’t say no yet. Just think about it.” His words are soft but firm and she complies, keeping her mouth closed and edging closer towards him as he pulls her even tighter into his arms. “But now, it’s late. Try to get some sleep, Bel.”

She doesn’t tell him she knows she’ll have no problem falling asleep, that the only place she feels truly at peace is with him, in his arms.