Mary Wine (11 page)

Her bare skin flashed in the moonlight as she dipped down to grab her clothing. A push from her firm legs and she jumped away from him and into the trees. Lifting the phone, Jared cursed again as Roshelle slammed a wall in front of their link.

Chapter Eight

Trust him? When her hair turned gray! She didn’t walk out into the middle of road without looking. She didn’t invade peaceful slumber. She didn’t… Have a clue as to why her body responded to his.

Her eyes focused on the stark white ceiling of her room, Roshelle finally let her anger slip away. Lying to herself wasn’t going to get her anywhere. A hot shower hadn’t driven his scent from her body. Her passage ached and her skin was sensitive to the smallest touch.

It wasn’t right. Her chosen profession was dominated with men that could offer a wide range of positive reasons to attract her attention. Just because the ones she’d dated didn’t make her blood race was no reason to turn her attention to someone like Jared.

Sweet mercy! Jared represented a sharp edge of society that she would rather believe civilized people didn’t need any longer.

Yet, here she was trying to decide just why her lips were still tingling. Maybe there were corners of her brain that had never evolved. There was no other explanation for the rush of sensation that he could wring from her body.

Getting angry wouldn’t help her. Neither would lying to herself. But maybe talking to Christina would.

A smile lifted the corners of her face. Yes! Christina dealt with men’s advances all the time. She could let the most handsome man slip right off her mind and never look back. Roshelle just didn’t have any experience. That was the reason everything felt so intense.

Intense seemed like a tame word for the last hour’s events. She shied away from the memory of her mindless behavior. Nothing had mattered but her craving for Jared’s body. Even now she pulsed and throbbed in the deepest part of her body.

She had to break free before it rose up to consume her again.

* * * * *

Roshelle was asleep. Jared thrust through her wall the second he returned to the house. He stopped in the doorway as he felt the deep slumber she was wrapped in. His staff throbbed as he cursed again.

Walking into his room, he headed for the bathroom. He grabbed an electric shaver sitting on the counter and applied it to his face. Roshelle’s skin was too soft for his evening shadow.

He was balanced on an edge. The face staring back from the mirror showed a harsh determination. The only words he seemed to mutter were curses. Why in the hell was he in such a hurry to get back between her thighs?

He’d had her. It should be pathetically simple to wash her from his mind. Instead he was grooming with the purpose of going down the hallway for another taste. His rod rose to stiff attention as he considered sinking back into that tight passage of hers and taking the time to ride her slowly.

Turning towards a shower, Jared rolled his shoulders and tried to loosen the grip of his emotions. Her fleeing from him had stung his pride. He snorted with frustration. It should have pleased him to have her take off. That made it so much easier to return to his life. Sex was something his body demanded but it had to be kept separate from his real life.

Instead he was royally ticked off.

Jared pulled his clothes off but froze as he lifted his pants to pull his phone out of the pocket. Rust-brown fluid stained the front of them. There were splotches on both sides of the zipper. It was blood. His eyes identified it instantly.

Jared felt his lips turn up into the slightest of grins as he looked at the evidence on his pants again. He let his mind go searching for hers and found her still sleeping. He turned back to the shower as his grin turned into a smile. Base and primal, the expression on his face was pure approval.

Roshelle had been a virgin. He laughed deeply and smiled again.
His
virgin.

* * * * *

“Shelly, you have got to get off this mountain.”

With her mouth full of scrambled eggs, Roshelle sent her friend a confused look before swallowing.

“I was sort of hoping you could tell me something I don’t already know.”

Turning away from the stove, Christina slid herself down into the chair opposite her friend. How did she tell her best friend that she didn’t have a prayer? Jared just wasn’t the sort of man that a girl could push around. There was too much intensity in the man.

“As selfish as this may sound, I’m grateful he’s looking at you instead of me.”

“This is becoming more confusing.”

“Shelly, I don’t just push men around for fun. It’s just that I get so angry when I see them looking me over like a piece of fine art. The ones you see me casting off never took the time to ask what my favorite color was or to see anything other than my face. It’s easy to dismiss them when I know they don’t care about anything under this skin.”

Raising her eyes up to her friend, Roshelle sent the other woman a smile. She wasn’t any closer to discovering what to do about Jared, but at least she had a friend here.

“Christina, I’m sorry about all this.”

“Don’t be silly! You aren’t anymore responsible for this mess than I am.”

Standing up, Roshelle made her way to the sink. “I just can’t help thinking that this thing revolves around me somehow.”

“Why would that be?”

The plate she was washing slipped from her fingers as her body jumped in response to Jared’s voice.

“Don’t look now, Shelly, but I think we’ve just been invaded.”

Her friend’s comment struck Roshelle as funny. Jared and Shane stood in opposite doorways cutting off any escape from the kitchen. Green and brown camouflage clothing adorned both men, as did two rather evil-looking guns. “Roshelle, why do you think it revolves around you?”

Jared’s voice was completely calm, but his eyes sent her a demand that Roshelle knew he wouldn’t let her refuse. She had never told Christina about what was happening because everything just seemed too insignificant. But not taking those little things into account had almost cost both of them their lives.

“Strange things really. I don’t think it’s me, just my grandmother’s land. Abba was complaining about the persistence of the Huntley firm, too.”

“Is that why you had it out with Clark Huntley?” Christina tilted her head as she issued her demand.

“No, that was about my cell phone.”

Jared rolled his eyes over to Shane as the two women continued their conversation. They were spilling information faster than any interrogation could have produced.

“You were raised here, Shelly, half the county has your phone number.”

“Not my new cell phone. I had that phone for just twenty-four hours before Huntley called me. Believe me, I know how weird it sounds. But the man was petrified when I demanded to know just where he got the number.”

Not half as terrified as the man was going to be when Jared got a hold of him. Getting a cell phone number was far easier than most of the public knew, but it required specialized equipment. Jared intended to discover just why the local law office seemed to be running in that sort of loop.

“Roshelle, what else?”

She really considered his question. Roshelle could see the anger displayed by his green eyes but for a change it wasn’t directed at her. The entire concept that Jared might be angry on her behalf sent emotion zinging along her nerves.

“I don’t bake.”

“I knew it!”

The blonde’s triumphant look confused Jared. Roshelle’s confession didn’t make any sense to him. “Meaning what?”

“I couldn’t have left something in the oven because I had never used it. Not even once.”

“Your grandmother could have left it there.”

“The church ladies did a good job of clearing out the house after Abba passed. All the utilities were turned off.” Jared crossed his arms over his chest in response. “A gas oven has a pilot light. It has to be lit.”

“I take it you didn’t get around to doing that?”

“It wasn’t a priority, seeing as I hadn’t even thought about using the oven. Besides, leaving something in the oven wouldn’t have hit me over the head. Whoever these people are, they don’t mind murder or kidnapping. And it all seems to come back to my land.”

Holding a civil conversation with the man was unsettling. His eyes were just too sharp as they inspected her. Roshelle felt her cheeks flood with heat as he let his eyes drift over the blush staining her face. Shane had drifted into the kitchen, leaving the doorway free.

Coward or not, Roshelle headed out of the kitchen. She had tossed and turned most of the night as her dreams filled with nothing but Jared. She couldn’t seem to evict him from her thoughts. Instead her body had burned and signed as she recalled each and every detail of their encounter.

With nowhere to go, and even less to do, the hours of the day stretched out in front of her endlessly. It gave her mind far too much time to indulge in memories of Jared. Roshelle would rather face residency again.

Lifting her eyes to the top of the ridge, she set her body in that direction. At least scaling the peak would give her something to do. Maybe she could trick her mind into sleeping if her body was exhausted.

Jared watched her determined stride with a frown. Roshelle was becoming far too mobile for his piece of mind. As small as the bits of information she had given him were, they tipped the scales more than she would ever know.

Someone wanted her dead. Jared intended to make sure that never happened.

For now he was going to have to keep her under a tighter watch. Despite their patrols, it would be possible for someone to breach the security as far as the surrounding woods went.

“I think it may be time to pay a visit to Benton.” Shane stepped into the morning sunlight and shot Jared a hard look.

“I think it’s time to confiscate a pair of boots.”

Shane rubbed his jaw as his eyes followed Jared’s glare. The cause of the man’s concern wasn’t hard to guess. Their guest was making her way up the hillside oblivious to the vulnerability her action opened her to.

Both men swore under their breath as two identical paging tones bounced between their bodies. Withdrawing their phones, it took seconds for the line of code to be understood by both.

Jared considered Roshelle again. His duty could not be ignored. Like it or not he had no intentions of leaving her safety open to distract him during this assignment. But he did have to admit to enjoying the idea of facing the little fireball when he got back.

* * * * *

Stomping her foot in temper only gained Roshelle a sore heel. With nothing on her feet, the unyielding wood floor bore up to her displeasure far too well.

She felt like screaming! The poorly stifled laughter of the solider as he walked across the drive only infuriated her more. The brute had enjoyed dragging her back to the house, just as he had almost gleefully demanded her boots.

Where was
he
?

Jared had ordered this. Well the man could bloody well face her.

Promise to her mother aside, Roshelle was going to find that man. At the very least try her best to give him a splitting headache. Maybe it was the many times that she had purposely tried to control her vision, but it was actually becoming easier to do so.

Especially with Jared.

For some reason she could see him if she truly tried. Reaching out, Roshelle forced herself into his brain as she tried to communicate her complete unhappiness.

The feeling that washed over her in response made her retreat in all haste. The precision of his invasions had left her feeling exposed before. This time pure male intention flooded her body. The sensation moved down her body over every curve. Touching her as deeply as his body had done. Her flesh responded immediately. Her nipples drew into tight beads as an ache returned to her passage.

A scarlet blush burned across her cheeks. It just didn’t make sense. The man was rude, threatening and far from normal. He had ripped into her very soul. But he had also saved her life.

Standing at the window, her eyes took in the man that currently held her boots. He had withdrawn to a shaded spot closer to Shane’s house. Once again an automatic rifle lay cradled across his chest as his eyes made slow scans of the area.

There was such an alternate world feeling here. Everything just seemed foreign. The very patterns of life were carried out so drastically differently. These people lived each day expecting some form of hostile activity.

When that violence had reached out to touch her life, it had shocked her down to her toes. These people expected nothing else. It was amazing to discover such people existed in her own backyard.

Maybe she was being a little too judgmental. It was very possible that Jared needed his rough edges. Roshelle couldn’t see him fitting into her world and she certainly couldn’t adapt to his.

But just maybe she should let him help her get out of this net she found herself tangled in.

The truth was, she couldn’t think of anyone more suited to the task. Her captor was still out there. As much as she really hated to agree with Jared, his point made sense. If she tried to return to her life, she might not live very long.