Addicted (Outlaws Book 2) (5 page)

He was flattered. Tamara ate men for dinner and spat them right out, so the fact that she had a soft spot for him was, frankly, a relief. The woman was a legend in the free land. A smuggler, she was an outlaw’s go-to for anything his heart desired, but the prices she charged for her services were damn steep. She also wouldn’t hesitate to shoot someone down if they betrayed her. Hell, she was capable of doing it just because they’d annoyed her or caught her on a bad day.

Luckily Lennox didn’t annoy her often. Didn’t annoy anyone, for that matter. He wasn’t being naive when he said he didn’t have any enemies among his fellow outlaws. He was well liked by everyone, and he used that to his advantage.

“Where you off to?” he asked as she ran one hand down the center of his chest.

“South Colony. I need a vacation.”

He snickered. Only Tamara could get away with saying shit like that. She had the means to do it too. With her connections, she could sunbathe nude on any beach on the globe, in full view of the Enforcers.

“I wish I could go with you,” Reese grumbled.

Tamara grinned at the other woman. “You should. Ditch this shit hole and travel the Colonies with me. Think of all the trouble we could get into.”

“Plenty of trouble to be had here.” Reese brought her hand to Lennox’s belt and slowly undid the buckle.

A second later, she had his zipper down and was holding his jeans open for Tamara, who wasted no time sliding
her
hand inside them.

Lennox groaned as warm fingers encircled his rapidly hardening cock. Tamara pumped him slowly. Reese leaned in to suck on his neck.

Every man in the room was staring enviously in their direction. Including Rylan, who caught Lennox’s eye and tipped his head in an unspoken question.

“Rylan wants in,” Lennox murmured.

Reese stiffened, lifting her head to frown at him. “No fucking way.”

He tried another angle. “I hear he’s good with his tongue…”

“Oh, he is,” Tamara confirmed.

“I don’t care how good he is,” was Reese’s muttered response. “This is a private party. He’s not invited.”

Lennox shot a rueful look at Rylan, giving a slight shake of his head. The blond man rolled his eyes before turning to say something to Pike.

Ah well. He’d tried. Rylan was on his own tonight. And Lennox, well, he was suddenly being tugged to his feet by the two women, Tamara’s hand still buried inside his jeans.

“We want you to ourselves tonight.” Reese brought her mouth to his ear, flicking her tongue over the lobe. “And you better not be tired from that long drive, because we expect you to last all goddamn night.”

A wicked grin lifted his lips. That sounded fucking phenomenal.

Or rather, it sounded like phenomenal fucking.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

When Jamie approached the huge lot behind the town square the next morning, she knew without a shred of doubt that she was going to enjoy every single second of the Foxworth combat training.

Rylan, in all his masculine glory, was stripped down to a pair of jeans and scuffed black boots, his bare chest and golden hair gleaming in the sunshine.

She suddenly wished she’d fooled around with Beckett last night instead of spending the time catching up and shooting pool with him. If she’d gone to bed well fucked, then maybe her body wouldn’t be pulsing like an electric current right now, aching for action.

Speaking of well fucked… Lennox looked more relaxed than ever as he strode up to her. He’d disappeared with Reese and Tamara yesterday, and Jamie didn’t need to guess what the trio had been up to all night. The answer was right there in Lennox’s heavy-lidded gray eyes.

“Had fun last night, did ya?” she teased.

“Reese and I had a lot of catching up to do,” Lennox said with a wink.

Three stone walls no more than four feet high enclosed the north side of the town square, and Lennox hopped up on the wide ledge of the back wall. His body was angled so that he was facing the parking lot rather than the bronzed statue in the square behind them. The statue was a man on a horse, but the engraved letters on the plaque at the base had been scratched off. Jamie figured the guy was probably a war hero. Maybe from one of the battles that had been fought long before the final war that had led to the formation of the Global Council.

“I’m sure.” She climbed up beside him, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. “And Tamara? Catching up with her too?”

He shrugged. “She left for South Colony this morning. Someone needed to send her off with a bang.”

Jamie snickered.

Their attention turned to the lot, which today was serving as an impromptu gun range. Rylan and Pike had already set up targets in various sections of the lot. Now the two men stood near a large wooden crate, checking the arsenal of handguns and rifles stashed there. Jamie wasn’t sure how Reese had accumulated so many weapons, but there was no point in asking the woman. Reese never divulged her secrets if she could help it.

The first group of trainees trickled in. According to Beckett, of the eighty people living in Foxworth, only about twenty of them knew how to shoot a gun. The other sixty were clueless, and Rylan and Pike were splitting them up into groups of fifteen for the training sessions.

Jamie raised an eyebrow at the amount of young faces she was seeing. Normally she only spent time with Beck, Travis, and a few other close friends, so she hadn’t realized there were so many kids in town. Half of the first group was made up of teenagers.

Two skinny boys who couldn’t have been older than fourteen were laughing to each other as they walked up. One jabbed the other in the ribs, which led to a lighthearted shoving match that had them cackling.

“Were we ever that young?” she asked Lennox.

He teasingly pinched her arm. “Yep.”

“Are you sure? Because I feel so old now. Actually, I felt ancient even when I was their age.” She nodded toward the exuberant boys.

“You’re twenty-five, love.” Lennox grinned. “Hardly what anyone would consider ancient.”

Rylan’s easygoing drawl drifted over from the target range. “Everyone grab a gun,” he was telling the new arrivals. “Hold it. Get used to the weight of it in your hands. Then we’ll show you how to load the magazines.”

Jamie chuckled as every boy eagerly reached for a handgun. The girls seemed more reluctant, except for one dark-haired teenager who snatched up a slate-gray Glock as if it were a rare piece of chocolate.

“We should have brought Piper,” Jamie mused. “She could have benefited from these lessons.”

“Rylan can teach her when we get back,” Lennox answered in a firm tone. “I don’t like her being out in the colony.”

“Uh-huh, sure. More like you don’t want her witnessing all the debauchery here in Foxworth.”

It didn’t surprise her when Lennox didn’t offer a denial. He couldn’t, because he was as protective of Piper as he was of Jamie.

“What, you think Piper’s innocent eyes can’t handle the sight of you screwing Tamara from behind while she’s going down on Reese?”

“That’s not what happened last night.”

“No?”

He broke out in a wolfish grin. “If you must know, Tamara was riding my face while Reese rode my cock.”

The crude confession sent a jolt of lust straight to her pussy. She had no doubt that Lennox had made Reese and Tamara very happy last night. She’d seen him in action before, and damn, her best friend had no problems in the sex department.

“Braggart,” Jamie accused.

“Right, like you weren’t doing the same thing with Beckett and Travis.” Lennox paused, donning a faraway look for a moment. Then he let out a rough curse.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” His voice sounded pained. “I was just remembering the last time Beck and Trav were over at the old house.”

She remembered it too. Vividly. The two men had driven her wild that night. Beck pounding her pussy while Trav pounded her ass… A shiver ran through her as the delicious memories rose to the surface.

Beside her, Lennox shifted as if in discomfort. “How many times did you come that night?”

“God, I can’t even remember. Three? Four?”

He grunted out a noise.

Jamie turned toward him, armed with a grin, but the smile died on her lips when she saw his eyes. They were molten, gleaming with raw heat that caught her off guard. It was a look she’d seen often, and one he wore well. A look that dampened the panties of any woman lucky enough to be the focus of that deep, intense stare.

But Jamie wasn’t usually on the receiving end of it. Her nipples puckered into tight buds as the heat on Lennox’s face singed right through her shirt. Sizzled right to her core. A strange current crackled in the air between them as their eyes locked.

“Len?” she said uncertainly.

His tongue came out to brush his upper lip. Jesus. Either she was completely misreading the situation, or Lennox was actually —

“
Never
point your weapon at someone!” Pike’s sharp voice snapped in their direction. “Treat every gun like it’s loaded, even if you’re sure it isn’t.”

“Seriously, don’t fuck around with these things.” Rylan spoke up in agreement, but his voice was far gentler than Pike’s. “You wouldn’t believe how many innocent suckers have had their brains blown out by ‘unloaded’ weapons.” He air-quoted that, then stepped up to one of the boys and nudged the kid’s gun barrel in a safe direction with no human targets in sight.

Jamie liked the easy way Rylan interacted with the teenagers. Pike was too harsh, but that was to be expected, seeing as the man was a coldhearted robot. Rylan was the more personable, down-to-earth of the two, and the kids in the group seemed to respond to that.

“Shouldn’t you be over there?”

Lennox’s voice had her glancing back at him. It was clear that whatever moment they’d just shared had passed – his usual lazy expression was affixed firmly on his face. No trace of heat whatsoever.

But she knew she hadn’t imagined his arousal before. It had been there, clear as the cloudless blue sky above them. Was it her, though? Had
she
been the one to stir his libido, or had he simply gotten off on the idea of Beck and Travis tag-teaming someone? Maybe he’d swapped her face for another woman’s as he’d pictured her sandwiched between two men.

That seemed likelier the more she thought about it. She hadn’t lied to Hudson when she confessed that Lennox had never shown even a hint of sexual interest in her. So it was hard to imagine that
now
, after twenty-odd years of knowing each other, he’d suddenly decided he wanted her.

It was probably better if he didn’t. She’d put her attraction to Lennox to bed a long time ago. She was focusing on other men these days.

“That’s one of the reasons you wanted to come here, right?” Lennox added, an edge in his voice. “To brush up on your own training?”

She flushed at the reminder of the lie she’d told him. It had been an excuse for her to spend time with Rylan, and they both knew it.

“I’m more interested in the hand-to-hand stuff,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe the knife training too. I already know my way around a gun.”

Lennox didn’t answer. Tension stretched between them, so thick she could slice it with the knife hooked to her belt, but she didn’t know how to make it better.

For the next hour, they watched the training in complete silence, and it wasn’t long before Jamie found herself yawning. Rylan and Pike were busy teaching the group how to hold the weapons in a simple two-handed grip, how to provide leverage against the recoil, the proper stance to use when aiming at a stationary target. Nobody had even fired a gun yet.

By the time the trainees were allowed to discharge their weapons, Jamie had reached her boredom breaking point.

“Want to grab something to eat?” she suggested.

With a curt nod, Lennox slid off the ledge and held out his hand to her.

She took it, curling her fingers around his as he helped her to the ground. The tension was still there. She got the feeling he was mad at her, which only triggered a burst of irritation, because she hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve his anger.

“Everything okay?” she asked tightly.

His head jerked in another nod. “All good, love.”

Bullshit. But she wasn’t in the mood to argue or pry. Lennox was like Rylan in many ways – easygoing to the max and oozing sexuality – but he also had his Pike moments of broody intensity. She’d learned never to push him when that moody cloud entered his eyes.

They headed down the cracked cobblestone sidewalk toward the large corner restaurant at the far edge of Main Street. The bright red sign had once read
MERYL
’
S
FAMILY
RESTAURANT
, but someone had crossed out the
MERYL
’
S
and spray-painted
GRAHAM
’
S
on top of it. Seeing it always made Jamie chuckle.

“Graham better be cooking up some burgers,” she said as Lennox opened the door for her. “Beck said Reese and Sloan were butchering at the farm the other day.”

The wind chimes hanging on the doorframe tinkled to signal their entrance. Sure enough, the delicious aroma of beef and deep-fried goodness filled Jamie’s nostrils.

Foxworth had an operational farm beyond the town gates, which was run by an older couple who preferred farming and solitude to the constant activity in town. Reese assigned people to work shifts at the farm, but Jamie had never visited the place. It would’ve made her feel too guilty to look at all those sweet cows knowing she was going to eat one. Apparently the farm had started out with fifteen cows when Reese’s group settled in the area, but last time Jamie was in Foxworth, Reese admitted they were down to three.

“What are they going to do when the beef runs out?” she murmured to Lennox, who was guiding her to the long counter across the room.

He shrugged. “Hunt more, I guess. There’s lots of game out in these woods.”

They slid onto a pair of tattered vinyl stools and greeted the outlaw woman behind the counter.

“Holy shit,” Jamie exclaimed, gaping at the pretty brunette. “You absolutely weren’t this big when I saw you a month ago, Bethany. You look like you’re going to pop any second!”

Bethany rubbed a rueful hand over the enormous bulge of her stomach. “I know, right? Feels like I’m way too big to only be six months along, but I don’t have anyone else to compare it to, so maybe it’s normal?”

Jamie didn’t have a source of comparison either. There hadn’t been a single pregnant woman in her camp growing up, and she and Lennox had never run into one during their travels. Bethany was the first and only woman she knew who was brave enough to get pregnant in the free land, and Bethany’s decision brought a tug of envy to Jamie’s heart.

She wanted children too.

She really, really did.

The one time she’d confessed it to Lennox, he’d laughed gently and told her she was crazy for wanting to get knocked up. Not only was the free land fraught with danger and hardship, but the Global Council strictly prohibited procreation. Only the handpicked breeders and studs in the cities were allowed to increase the population, and every pregnancy was carefully monitored.

Outlaw procreation was even more of a concern to the council. The Enforcers rounded up the pregnant women they found, and if they discovered any children in the free land, the parents were killed and the child was whisked away to the city.

So yes, it was a dangerous desire to harbor. Jamie was well aware of that. But the longing was there. The need to put down roots and bring new life to the world was embedded deep inside her, and seeing Bethany’s rounded belly and rosy glow only intensified the urge.

“Maybe it’s twins,” Lennox suggested, waggling his eyebrows.

Bethany paled. “Oh hell, don’t say that, Len. I don’t think I could handle it. And Arch would faint on the spot.”

“He’d lose his shit,” Lennox agreed with a laugh, before going serious. “Your man taking good care of you, love? Do I need to have a chat with him?”

Bethany rolled her eyes. “Arch and I are doing just fine. We’re both excited for this baby, both pulling our weight.”

“Good.” Lennox nodded briskly.

Jamie hid a smile. She knew Lennox would’ve kicked Arch’s ass if it turned out he wasn’t supporting Bethany. Lennox was everybody’s champion, but that was one of the things Jamie loved most about him. He’d lay down his life for the people he cared about. Hell, he’d lay down his life for strangers, depending on the circumstances.

“What can I get you guys?” Bethany asked. “Burgers and fries or beef stew. Take your pick.”

“Burgers and fries,” they said in unison.

The brunette grinned. “Coming right up.” She disappeared into the back to place their order with Graham, the grumpy, bushy-haired cook who had the tendency to call Jamie “little one” even though he couldn’t have been a year or two older than her.