He slipped silently through the entrance, moving along the back porch, his gaze wandering around the area as he sought her out. The blood was pounding through his body, hardening his cock past the point that he considered bearable.
He found her moments later. One of the large, padded, wooden lounge chairs had been pulled into the shelter of several low-branched trees. She was stretched out on it, one arm thrown above her head as she watched him approach her.
Blue jeans conformed to her hips, thighs, and slender legs. And in the dim light of the moon that filtered through the trees, he could see the arousal, the longing in her gaze. Her flame-red hair flowed out around her, her emerald gaze stroking the fire raging through his blood stream to a greater height.
He stopped at the foot of the lounger, staring down at her, dying inside with his need for her. “You weren’t waiting for me.”
He watched as she shifted her legs, then tilted her head to watch him mockingly. “Shame on me.” Her tone held such indulgent sarcasm that it had his teeth gritting as he fought for his own patience.
She had been around them long enough to know what a sexual challenge did to them. How it heightened their arousal, made the need so sharp, so imperative it was like a demon raging inside them.
“That’s okay, baby.” He smiled wickedly. “I found you. You should have known I would.”
She rose up on her elbows, the position highlighting her breasts, the slender line of her ribs and stomach.
“Sam, sweetie,” she said with exaggerated patience. “I’m on duty. I don’t have time to fuck with you tonight.”
“You’re off duty,” he snarled. “You work for me, by God. I decide when you’re on duty and when you aren’t.”
She arched her brow as Sam gritted his teeth at the deliberate mockery in the movement.
“So fire me.” She shrugged. “You’re so testy anymore I’d consider it a vacation to leave this damned ranch.”
He clenched his fists. The smell of Windsong and woman drifted in the air, making him weak, making him need.
“Why are you doing this?” he growled, restraining himself, determined to keep the control he was fighting so desperately for.
“Because I’m not your puppet, Sam, nor do I take orders real damned well. Get used to it, baby, because submissive never was an adjective that fit me very well.”
“Stubborn and bullheaded maybe,” he bit out, breathing harshly. “You’re pushing me too far, Heather. Farther than I would have thought possible. Keep it up, and I’ll hurt both of us.”
Her laughter was soft and filled with silky amusement as her smile lit the darkness around her.
“Be still, my heart. You do have a way with romance, Sam. It just makes my heart go all aflutter to hear your sweet nothings.” Her tone of voice pricked at him. She was pissed—no, he took that back—she was furious. Still.
“I’m not an easy man,” he whispered. “The laughter and jokes, Heather, are gone. I can’t find them anymore. And there never was much romance, baby.”
“Poor Sam.” There was a definite lack of sympathy in her voice now. “Why don’t I go down on my knees and suck you dry again in recompense. Would that help?”
He narrowed his eyes. The memory of her on her knees, his cock pushing in her hot mouth, had his cock twitching in need.
“Would an apology help?” he asked her curiously.
“Would you mean it?” she asked him archly.
He sighed deeply as he moved closer, stopping at her shoulders then hunching down beside the lounger.
“Likely not.” He grinned as her eyes flashed with ire. “That was a damned pretty sight, Heather, and hot as hell. Watching your mouth move on me, driving me crazy.”
She snorted. “I’m sure it was, Sam. Too bad you don’t like returning the favor.”
His lips tightened as a grimace of regret flashed across his face.
“If I get my tongue inside you, my cock won’t be far behind it,” he warned her. “I want you too badly.”
“Really? Strange, I don’t feel so wanted, so I don’t think I’ll put myself out to believe it. Go see if you can convince Marly or Sarah. They might be willing to go along with your line of crap tonight.”
Sam winced. Hell, she was past mad.
“What do you want, Heather?” he asked her softly, regretfully. He understood why she was upset, knew he had pushed her when he shouldn’t have, knew his own demons were driving her away from him.
Her eyes widened with exaggerated surprise. “What makes you think I want anything? I was out here minding my own business. You’re the one intruding.”
The garden was dark, but the light of the full moon was enough to see the hard peaks of her breasts beneath her shirt. Her breathing was harder, and she appeared more than a little agitated as he raised his gaze slowly back to hers.
“I want you so bad I’m shaking with it.” He shook his head, more than a little amused at his own lack of control. “Surely that counts for something?”
She shrugged, watching him closely. “Not for much on this end, Sam,” she told him coolly. “Try me again tomorrow. Maybe I just need to think about it for a while.”
His eyes narrowed on her. She was provoking him and she damned well knew it. He looked at the lounger. The special build, like most everything in the August home, was wide and made for comfort. Before Heather could catch his intent, before he could give it much thought himself, he moved from his position quickly. Before she could do more than gasp, he had pinned her body to the thick pad, his elbows holding his weight from her chest, his legs parting hers as he settled quickly between them.
“How about I help you decide?” he bit out then and lowered his head.
Sam meant the kiss to be forceful. To show her, prove to her, his claim that he could only hurt both of them with his desire for her. But the moment his lips met the petal soft curves of hers, he hesitated. He held her still, his tongue stroking over the seam of her closed lips as he stared down at her opened eyes. He nudged at the soft curves with his own, stroked them with his tongue, fighting the compulsion to devour with greed as he savored the taste of her.
A small whimper of longing came from her as her eyelids lowered partially, sensually, a second before she parted her lips just enough to allow his tongue entrance. Sam couldn’t halt the groan that vibrated in his own chest. He couldn’t stop the need that burned in his loins like an inferno threatening to rage through his senses.
She was heat and soft, silky desire. Her lips opened to him with a hesitant wariness, much as she had with their first kiss. A tentative acceptance that had his body tightening with lust. His cock throbbed with imperative demand even as he fought its insistence.
“Heather.” He whispered her name as he sipped at her lips, then stroked inside her mouth once again.
His hands moved from hers as his need to touch her overcame his need to dominate her. Her skin was so soft, so silky and smooth. He wanted to feel it against his fingertips, luxuriate in her response to him. And she was responding.
Her thighs tightened on his. Her hips jerked against his, grinding her cunt against the length of his erection as his tongue stroked over hers, his lips sipping at her as he groaned at the erotic tastes he found there.
Before he ever realized his intention to do so, he had pulled her shirt from the waistband of her jeans, and his palm was sliding up her waist, his fingers trembling with the need to cup the swollen mound of her breast. Her nipples were hard; he knew they would be hot, knew she would cry out when he captured one between his thumb and forefinger.
Her nails bit at his skin through the fabric of his shirt as he rotated his hips firmly against her cunt. He could feel her heat through both pairs of jeans, and the need to sink inside her was nearly driving him insane.
“I could eat you up, right here,” he bit out as his lips moved to her throat, his hand cupping her breast as his fingers gripped her nipple, milking it and caressing the hard point as a strangled groan tore fro
m her throat. “You make me lose all common sense when I’m around you, Heather.”
“What common sense?” Her voice was torn, ragged, as she arched into him, her neck tilting as his tongue raked over her collarbone.
Sam couldn’t help but smile. Her sharp tongue was lethal. But, he had his own weapons. He shifted back, exposing her breast further as he moved toward it, his mouth watering at the thought of the pleasure to come.
* * * * *
Heather fought for breath as his lips covered her distended nipple. Heat seared her flesh, stroked her nipple as his mouth suckled at the mound firmly, his hand gripping it, fingers caressing the underside erotically. She arched to him, a broken moan whispering from her throat.
“Someone will see,” she whispered brokenly. “Hear me.”
“Mmm.” Evidently, the thought didn’t bother him. Then she remembered who she was talking to. Sam. The same man torturing her body with the needs tearing through it was the man who would want to share her, to watch as his brothers took her.
His teeth rasped at her tender nipple as the thought flared through her. She couldn’t halt the desperate clench of her womb, like a soft blow to her stomach as the image of it drifted through her mind.
“I want you.” His lips pressed beneath her breast as his hands moved to the clasp of her jeans. “I need you, Heather. I need you more than the air I breathe.”
And she didn’t have the strength to deny him. Not now, not while the fire of the arousal he called up, poured through her body. As though her blood was lava and her nerve ending receptors of heat that only made it burn brighter.
Her jeans loosened. Heather watched Sam as she gasped for breath, shadowed sensuality in his expression, the intent in his dark eyes. His head lowered again as he kissed his way down her stomach, her smooth abdomen, his hands pulling her jeans and panties down her thighs with teasing strokes of his hand along her skin.
She was shaking as he blew a puff of air across her burning cunt, then shuddered as he finished removing her clothing.
“I want to taste you,” he growled. “Lick you like smooth, warm chocolate, Heather.”
He dropped her jeans and panties to the ground a second before he moved between her thighs, spreading them slowly as he stared up at her.
“Sam.” She could barely speak as she fought for breath. “Someone will see…”
“See me lapping at you, fucking you with my tongue, drawing liquid paradise from your body, Heather. Let ‘em watch, baby. Let them see how fucking pretty you are as you come for me.”
Her hips jerked, rising from the lounger as his tongue swiped through the narrow slit of her inner lips then licked around her swollen clit. The breath halted in her chest, then released on a rising moan. Smooth flame, his tongue was like snaking fire as it licked and probed at her soaked cunt.
He licked around her clit, pulled it into his mouth for a second less than it would have taken for her to climax, then licked down again before his hard hands lifted her hips and his tongue plunged inside her clenching pussy.
She could hear the wet sound of his suckling at her vagina, drawing the cream from her body as more replaced it. Her hands gripped the rails of the lounger as she twisted against his mouth, fighting for more. She needed him deeper, harder, licking her like that to her very womb.
He slurped at her cunt, his lips smacking as he released her, then his tongue plunging again. His hands moved to her buttocks, holding her open as his fingers spread the delicate mounds, one placing exquisite pressure on the puckered entrance to her anus.
She twisted in his grip, needing more. Her vagina shuddered around his tongue, her clit pulsing, throbbing as her fingers went to her nipples to ease the heated ache there. She pinched lightly, biting her lower lip as she fought back her moan of rising ecstasy.
“So good, Heather.” His voice washed over her senses. “Like candy baby. Like warm, sweet chocolate.”
His tongue plunged deep, the tip of his nose burying against her clit, stroking it, caressing it. Heather gasped, caught her breath, but when the resulting explosion hit her she couldn’t contain the low, breathless wail that tore from between her lips.
Her body tightened, her cunt spasming as the pleasure streaked over her in drowning waves of sensation. Sam was crooning as he licked her, sucked her, his tongue fucking her through the sharp bursts of exquisite pleasure until he moved back with a groan, his hands going to his own jeans.
“You’ll scream for me this time,” he bit out. “And everyone will know you’re mine, Heather. Mine.”
He was within an inch of freeing his cock to take her when the tree behind them cracked, spraying shards of the wood as the first gunshot rang out.
Chapter Twenty-One
They rolled from the lounger in a tangle of limbs and virulent curses as the bullet struck the tree at the same angle that Sam’s head would have been had he not been lowering it to her body. Heather grabbed her jeans, cursing as she pushed Sam behind the shelter of the trees, struggling back into the suddenly uncooperative denim.
“Dammit,” Heather cursed as she jerked her gun beneath the lounger. She struggled against Sam, cursing as he plastered himself to her back, holding her harder to the bark of the tree. Dammit, he was trying to protect her.
She was supposed to be protecting him.
She jerked her comm. link from the back pocket of her jeans, bringing it quickly to her ear as the raised voices of the agents rushing for the pool area could be heard.
“Rick, dammit, where the hell are you? Sam’s with me and we have incoming gunfire.”
Raised voices began to fill the night as bodyguards rushed into the pool area. Several more unknown shots were fired, but none returned as the men rushed to surround Sam as the sound of a helicopter lifting from the front yard cut through the din of raised voices.
“Contain August. Get his ass in the house.” Tara’s voice was sharp as she barked out the orders to the bodyguards swarming around them. “Dammit to hell. If he gets hit I’ll kick all your asses.”
“Chopper’s in the air,” Rick called out. “Stay put until we know where the hell it’s coming from. Goddammit, how the hell is he doing this?”
Heather struggled against Sam as he pressed her closer to the tree, his body a heavy weight behind her, an effective shield between her and any bullet that might cut through the darkness. The other agents surrounded them, guns drawn, watching the darkness with the night vision goggles attached to their faces.
“Stay still,” he growled as she struggled against him.
“Dammit, I’m supposed to be protecting you,” she hissed. “Let me move!”
“Listen to me.” His voice roughened, savagery reflecting so harshly in his tone that she automatically stilled. “You will not take a bullet for me, Heather. Do you understand me? You will not stand in front of me, you will not try to protect me, or so help me God, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
Then he was gone. “Sam.” She cried out his name as he jerked from her and began pushing his way through the small garden. The bodyguards surrounded him as he stalked toward the house, rushing to provide a force of protection around him.
The agents scrambled to move around him, to place themselves where they could protect him as he pushed them roughly aside. Heather propped her hands on her hips and watched his furious face, breathing out thankfully when he made it into the relative protection of the house.
“Son of a bitch is going to get himself killed.” Rick stalked toward her. “Did you tell him that, Heather?”
She shrugged, fighting the rapid beat of her heart. She made certain her shirt was in place as she faced her boss, thankful she had managed to pull her jeans back on. Only God knew where her panties were.
“Does it do any good to tell him anything?” she bit out as she tucked her gun back in the holster. Glancing over the wall surrounding the pool, she checked the helicopter’s progress as its bright lights swept over the hill behind the house. “Where were those damne
d dogs? I thought they were patrolling the hill back there.”
“Not in the dark.” Rick shook his head sharply. “It’s just too damned dangerous for the animals and the men. It would be a hell of a lot easier if you could keep Sam’s ass in the house.”
“Me?” Incredulity rocked her system. “What in the hell makes everyone think that man listens to me?”
“He follows you around like a fucking buck during rut,” he snapped. “Don’t pretend he doesn’t. You have house duty from now on, no exceptions.”
Heather shook her head desperately. “Forget it. You know what goes in there at night, Rick. I’d get everyone killed. I’d never keep my mind on the job.”
For some reason the August men thought the family room was the place to fuck, rather than their bedrooms. She avoided that room at all costs. She avoided any room but her own until after everyone else had settled down for the night.
“Do what the rest of them do,” he snarled then. “Join the others in the kitchen for coffee or park your ass at the front or back door. I don’t fucking care which, but keep your ass in the house. That bastard gets his ass killed and Cade will kill us.”
“Why don’t I just go ahead and fuck him then?” Sarcasm laced her voice. “Hell, Rick, that would solve everything, wouldn’t it?”
“Damned right. And it’s not like you’re not itching to do it.” He faced her, anger tensing his body as bodyguards milled around them and the helicopter continued to search the hill behind the house. “I don’t give a damn how you keep yourself in the house, just fucking do it.”
She would have snapped back. Would have told him where the hell he could shove his orders if he hadn’t stalked off as her mouth opened to blast him. A growl of frustration broke past her lips as she barely restrained herself from stomping her foot in fury.
“Damn, Heather, I can’t believe you don’t want to guard that August hard body.” Amusement echoed in the female voice as a chuckle reached her ears.