Hot Pursuit (36 page)

“No one is harboring him.”

Wolf stared down at Angel. He prayed he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life. But at the same time, letting her know the truth of why he was here helped him see once and for all that Angel really didn’t know anything about the Mulligan Stew assassin. At least not where he might be hiding.

There wasn’t any ignoring the strong wave of protectiveness as Wolf held the woman who was staring up at him. He accepted that he probably would have told her the truth even if she hadn’t made such fierce demands. Whether the alcohol had encouraged her actions or she’d been stewing on this for a while he wasn’t sure. And it didn’t matter. There was something growing between them. Something a lot stronger than lust. As much as he wanted to fight it, Wolf wanted Angel. He wanted her in bed. He wanted her in his life.

“Are you saying he is living here in my town, as one of us?” she asked, her eyes wide and sensual in the dark.

She was breathing hard. That lace bra of hers barely held her full, round breasts captive. They threatened to spill out of the thin fabric. Her nipples poked through the film of lace. Wolf’s dick was so hard he doubted this conversation would last much longer. Angel had her terms, but so did he.

“He’s been living here probably close to a year.”

“Who is he?”

“I doubt you’ve seen him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t think he comes into town.” Wolf wasn’t going to mention Maggie. He wasn’t sure what Angel would say, but already he knew her loyalty to her friends was as strong as it was to her town. He didn’t quite understand that. He’d never felt anything for a community other than using it as a means to survive. “The assassin doesn’t live alone.”

Her mouth curved into a tight little circle. Wolf’s dick danced with demands of its own between them. Angel glanced down, looking away from his face for the first time since he’d begun explaining the truth about why he was in Zounds. The moment she acknowledged his dick, the breath she sucked in spoke volumes. Her lashes were heavy over her incredibly dark blue eyes. Her brown curls were tousled around her pretty face. But when she finally raised her attention back up to his, the sensuality smoldering in her gaze released something primal inside Wolf.

“I’ll do whatever you want to help you catch him,” she said on a whisper of a breath.

Wolf swore that Angel saw what he felt erupting inside him. But he saw something in her. Submission. That primal side of him, so freshly released, roared with the urgent demand to possess and brand her as his own. There wasn’t the slightest bit of argument in his brain telling him this wasn’t what he wanted, or that he sucked at relationships, or that allowing another woman the chance to take all that was his and mock him while doing it would destroy him.

“You already are,” he managed to mutter.

Wolf lifted Angel in his arms. He simply stepped forward, grasping her until her backside pressed against the wall. His brain didn’t have time to focus on where the bed was. Angel had submitted to him. She agreed to help him no matter what it took. Wolf wouldn’t need her help, but her support mattered more to him than he had thought it would.

“God, Wolf!” Angel cried out, and wrapped her arms around his neck as she let her head fall back and exposed her long, enticing neck to him.

“I gave you what you wanted,” he snarled, his need for her so fierce it was eating him alive.

“I still want more.”

“Greedy woman,” he muttered, and pressed his lips over the throbbing pulse just above her collarbone.

“I am,” she agreed, her voice thick with need. “I want all of it.”

“Darling, you’re going to get every inch.”

He heard the words coming out of his mouth and was glad they made sense. Wolf didn’t see any need for further conversation. Whatever it was that was locking the two of them together was too strong for him to acknowledge at the moment. Not when his cock ached to be buried deep inside her heat.

His woman.

That thought seemed to repeat itself with every pounding beat of his heart.

Wolf didn’t dwell on it. Instead he shoved his body against hers, pressing her even harder against the wall. Angel responded by dragging her nails deep into his shoulders. A hum rose from her throat, and it raked over his flesh like waves of electricity. Already charged, he was like a madman, finally given what he’d craved for so long. And Angel was exactly what he needed. In the few moments that she’d suggested there would be nothing between them if he weren’t honest, Wolf had known with outstanding clarity that he had to share everything with her. Losing her wasn’t an option.

When she brought up her legs and wrapped them around him, then thrust her pelvis forward so that her soaked heat pressed against the tip of his cock, all coherent thought drained from his brain. Wolf needed to be inside her. He needed to bury himself in her heat and feel her wrapped around his cock. Just the thought of not having her tore at him with a pain he didn’t know he was capable of feeling. When Rebecca walked out on him, it had stabbed at Wolf’s pride. But just now, he’d known for the first time what a woman could do when she stabbed at his heart.

Angel had to have chosen the undies she wore more to torture him than for any other practical purpose. He thrust against the flimsy fabric and it held fast, refusing him entrance. She moaned and relaxed more against the wall, her arms draped over him and her head fallen to the side.

“Take them off,” she murmured.

Wolf chuckled. “I’ll rip them off.”

Her head didn’t straighten, but she opened her eyes. The look she gave him was more a challenge than one of cooperation. “I like this lingerie,” she informed him.

“I don’t,” he growled, and pinned her hard with his arms as he prepared to do battle against a tiny piece of lace.

“I can take it off.”

She didn’t have a chance to move, not that he planned on letting her try.

Wolf thrust against the flimsy sheathing of her lace thong until his cock cried victory and he sunk deep into the fathoms of her pussy. Not once in his life had he known heat to be so incredibly intoxicating.

“Wolf, yes!” Angel cried out, grabbing his arms just below his shoulders and pressing her fingers into his flesh. “Oh my God! Fuck me … please.”

Her plea faded into alluring moans that encouraged Wolf to dive deeper into her soaked pussy. He barely managed to register the thumping sound they made against the bedroom wall as he lost himself in pleasure so exquisite he wasn’t sure how he had ever managed to live without it or her.

Chapter Sixteen

Zoey wandered outside, nursing her cup of coffee as her breath formed small clouds in front of her face. It was colder this morning than it had been the last few days she’d been there. As warm and cozy as it was inside Micah and Maggie’s cabin, the icy chill of the morning woke Zoey faster than Maggie’s incredible coffee did.

Winter was going to set in early. Zoey had lived in Zounds long enough to know what heavy gray mornings like this one meant. It was going to rain, and it would probably rain all day. Zoey didn’t mind the cold weather; if anything, she loved it. There was nothing better than cuddling up to a warm fire and reading a good book on days like this. Except she didn’t have any of her books.

The only Internet connection as well as all communications with the outside world, was all set up in a small room next to Maggie and Micah’s. Zoey hadn’t asked to go in there. Along with knowing her weather, she also knew when a room was off-limits. That one looked more off-limits than any she’d ever seen. There was a lot more than a computer in there, and Zoey wasn’t sure she wanted to know what all of that equipment could do. She hadn’t asked questions at her father’s house, and she wasn’t asking questions here.

No, not her father. She had made that decision the night she and Maggie and Angel had gone out together. Cortez had taken Zoey from her mother when she’d been a young child. She didn’t doubt he was her father. A man like Cortez would know those things, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have taken her into his home if she weren’t his daughter. But Emilio Cortez hadn’t loved her. There had never been a father/daughter bond of any kind. Zoey was simply another tool, a resource at his disposal that he would use when the mood hit him. Cortez had made it very clear how Zoey would be used in his never-ending plot to make more money and control more of the world around him. She wasn’t going to have anything to do with him or his criminal activity ever again.

Zoey heard Maggie and Micah talking in the small shed behind their cabin. Maggie’s happy laughter sang through the morning air. There wasn’t any doubt in Zoey’s mind that those two were the happiest couple she’d ever met. It was day three since she’d told Ben to leave. Zoey felt as if the rest of the world had disappeared along with Ben once Micah had taken him back to the cabin. Since then she’d taken walks with Maggie and Micah. Zoey had helped cook in the kitchen with both of them and cleaned up afterward. They had spent evenings talking. Never about anything important, just idle chatting among the three of them, or more like between the two of them. Micah usually reclined, listened, and commented occasionally. Zoey had told them about some of the famous people in history she admired, which had held both Maggie’s and Micah’s attention. Zoey couldn’t say that she felt unwelcome, they were the perfect hosts. But she was bored.

Whenever Micah disappeared into his computer room, she and Maggie had been able to enjoy girl talk. Maggie had shown Zoey her books, which were stacked along the wall in her and Micah’s bedroom, next to an incredibly large bed. They weren’t the kind of books Zoey liked to read, though.

A mischievous wind picked up and whipped through the trees bordering the large yard surrounding the cabin. Zoey took too big of a sip of her coffee. It burned all the way down her esophagus just as the wind blew around her. She was damn near knocked her off her feet. Just as she decided to hurry to the shed and join Micah and Maggie, Micah’s booming laughter stopped Zoey in her tracks. She hadn’t heard him laugh yet during her stay there.

Maggie insisted he was a quiet, cautious man but a completely different person when the two of them were alone. Zoey hoped so for Maggie’s sake. The man Zoey had spent time with over the past three days was brooding, stared at her with dangerous-looking eyes, and hardly ever said a word.

She hunched down into the coat Maggie had let her borrow. It was warm and too large, which at the moment was a good thing, because she was able to wrap it around her hand with her coffee. She stared at the shed, with its door partially ajar, and almost hated joining them. Maggie hadn’t complained once about Zoey being there. It had been quite the opposite. Maggie had informed Zoey enough times that there wasn’t a safer place on the planet for her to be. Maggie had no problems bragging about Micah’s abilities to protect Zoey, even though it was due to his skills as a murderer. And Zoey appreciated the two of them letting her stay with them. She was more than feeling like a third wheel, though. Now with bad weather threatening, God only knew when she’d be able to leave the cabin. Already she was seriously going stir-crazy.

She might have been stuck in that small cabin with Ben while it poured outside, she mused, stepping over uneven ground as she walked around the well-kept rustic cabin to the screened-in back porch. Opening and closing the screen door without letting it bang, she decided to let those two enjoy their time alone with each other. She relaxed on the porch swing and stared out at the breathtaking view behind the cabin.

Zoey wasn’t in the mood for breathtaking views. Warmth flowed out of the partially open back door that led into the kitchen. The wood-burning stove probably would keep the entire cabin warm. Maggie and Micah were ready for winter. Those two would be able to live without the rest of the world in perfect happiness. Would Zoey ever get that same shot at being that happy?

“Are you really going to start feeling sorry for yourself now?” she snapped, relaxing on the swing and letting the oversized coat fall open as she placed her coffee on the round table next to the swing. A nice crocheted cover gave the simple table a distinguished look.

Dishing her phone out of her pocket, she ran her fingers over the screen. Cortez had laughed when he’d seen the picture of Princess Diana on her phone. Zoey had loaded the picture as a reminder as to what happened to young women when they tried leaving families with enough power to prevent the women from embarrassing them.

Zoey studied the picture of Diana and her sad smile. At least that was how Zoey saw the picture. If someone were to take Zoey’s picture right now, would she have a sad smile, too?

She saw the picture in new light now. All it had taken was the courage to walk away. Zoey wasn’t in the hands of her father’s hired thugs. She was being very careful and staying out of Cortez’s radar. But was she free? Maggie and Micah weren’t free. They were in hiding, continually checking their safety and always plotting their every move. They would never be able to have a picnic in a park, take lazy strolls downtown, or go shopping in a mall.

Clearing the screen saver, Zoey tapped the phone to make a call. Then placing the call before letting her nerves get the best of her, she held it to her ear and listened to it ring.

“Zoey,” Ben said after it rang once. “Are you okay?”

He sounded worried. And incredibly sexy.

“I’m fine,” she sighed.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Zoey made herself remember how she’d rehearsed this conversation when she’d first woken that morning. “I wanted to talk to you about the cabin and the rental car. The cabin is in my name and the car in your name.”

“I’ll drive up there right now and follow you back here,” he suggested.

Zoey closed her eyes. Was he going to apologize? Offer some viable explanation as to why he’d lied to her and made her feel like a fool?

“I want you to stay in the cabin for the rest of the week since it’s paid for,” she continued, praying he’d say something so she could agree to come to him.

“I’ll pay for the rental car for as long as it’s needed.” That wasn’t exactly an apology or explanation. “And I’ll head out the door right now. We’ll have you back here before it starts pouring.”