Firestorm (7 page)

Damn it, he should have protected her.

He should have killed the bastard who hurt her.

But now, with any kind of luck, GreenTex's sabotage problems would be over.

Kate stirred in his arms, opened her eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked, surprised at the hoarse sound of his own voice.

“I—I think so.” Kate coughed, then shot a horrified look toward the woods. “Jake, the fire!”

“It’s under control.” He hoped to hell that was true.

Suddenly he was furious. She could have been burned alive. “What were you doing out there?”

She shook her head. “That man. I saw him heading back into the woods. He didn’t look like one of your workers, so I followed him. Jake, I was scared.”

“He knocked you out. You could have been killed.”

She gave him a watery smile. “But you saved me.”

“Damn it, lady, that was blind luck. Don’t you have more sense than to go chasing off into burning woods after some stranger three times your size?” That SOB must have been six-six or more, and from the way he’d thrown punches Jake figured he had to weigh three hundred pounds. He'd been damn lucky to get in that knockout punch.

Otherwise they both could have died on a bed of smoldering pine needles in Kate’s woods.

“He hit me from behind,” she said, her voice conveying disbelief. “Did you catch him?”

“Yeah.” His knee throbbed as though somebody had stabbed it.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

40

“Jake. The fire…” she said again.

“Will be out soon if it isn’t already. Honey, I’m sorry.” He shifted a little, trying to ease the pain in his bad knee.

“Why are they doing this?”

“I don’t know. But I intend to find out. I’m certain it has nothing to do with you, or with this particular drilling operation, if that makes you feel any better. GreenTex has been hit with too many disasters the past year or so for me not to believe somebody’s trying their damnedest to put us out of business.”

“Oh.”

“Do you feel up to taking a look at the guy who set your woods on fire and seeing if he’s the same one who torched your barn this morning?” Though he needed her input, he hated to put her through more grief.

“I guess so.”

Jake hated it when she pulled away and stood on shaky feet. But his own bumps and bruises distracted him as they made their way down to the drilling site.

* * * * *

When Kate sadly shook her head and told them their prisoner was not the man who had set her barn on fire, Jake felt as though he'd just taken another blow from the brute's meaty fist. The fire was under control now, but the trouble wasn't over, after all.

“Talk,” he snarled as he grabbed the man's grimy shirt and jerked him onto his feet.

“Who hired you?”

“I ain't saying nothing without a lawyer.”

Jake drew back his right fist. He would have nailed the guy in the mouth if Skip hadn’t grabbed his arm.

“Jake. His hands and feet are tied. Let the sheriff handle him.”

“Damn.” Jake should have killed the son-of-a-bitch when he had the chance, out there on the path to the woods.

He didn’t need any help figuring out that the sheriff wouldn't appreciate him beating a helpless prisoner half to death. But he didn’t much care.

The bastard had set a fire that could have blown the oil well over half of Mississippi. He might have set off the explosion that killed Dale Martin last month. And he’d come too damn close to killing Kate.

Jake strained against the hands that held him back. “Let go,” he rasped, his breath coming fast and hard.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

41

“What’s going on?”

Jake gave Sheriff Jones a quelling look when the lawman ambled in as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “We caught you an arsonist, Sheriff. You might want to see if you can get him to tell you who put him up to it.”

“Looks like he might’ve given y’all a bit of a tussle.” Jones looked pointedly at the cuts and bruises on the prisoner's face, then glanced at Jake's bruised jaw before turning back to the arsonist.

“What you got to say for yourself?” he asked the man gruffly.

“I want a lawyer.”

The sheriff laughed. “Well, folks in hell, they want ice water, son. The public defender’s out fishing for catfish this week on the Alabama River, so unless you get yourself a high-price, hotshot mouthpiece, you’re gonna be waiting awhile. Why don’t you just do yourself a favor and ‘fess up? Don’t want to miss my supper because of some no-account jailbird like you.”

“Fuck you, too, cocksucker.” The prisoner strained at his bonds, spat at the lawman.

When Kate gasped, Jake turned and saw the look of horror on her pale face.

Damn! He should have taken her home as soon as she got a look at the man they’d captured. He certainly shouldn’t have let her watch him practically assault their prisoner or made her stay and listen to the bastard’s filthy mouth.

“Come on. I’ll take you home,” he said, crossing the room to meet her halfway.

“There’s at least one other one like him, running around causing mayhem,” he told Jones as he ushered Kate out.

“Until this is over, I don’t want you in that house by yourself,” he said to her.

“Does that mean you’re going to stay?”

“For now, at least.”

“Thank you.” She managed a shaky smile.

Jake wrapped an arm protectively around her shoulders.

* * * * *

“You're hurt.”

Kate stared at his legs when he limped across her living room toward the sofa. “It’s nothing,” he said, cursing the weakness he didn’t like her noticing. “How’s your headache?”

“Better.” She looked at him, worried her lower lip between her teeth. In her eyes he saw trust—and the beginnings of something more.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

42

Suddenly the pain in his knee seemed unimportant, the urgency to end this trouble less intense.

“Hey, I’m sorry you had to witness that scene,” he told her.

Jake had flat out lost it, said and done a bunch of things he knew damn well he never should have done. Not in front of a decent woman like Kate. “I've been brought up better than it must have seemed when I tried to beat up that guy.”

Kate gave him a tentative smile. “It’s all right. If I could have, I’d have liked to give him a bump on his head, the way he did to me. Somebody could have died. And he hurt you.”

She reached over and touched his face, and he couldn’t stop himself from pulling her close.

“Calm down, honey,” he murmured, trying not to dwell on the fact that at least one person had already lost his life because he’d gotten in the way of whoever was out to destroy GreenTex, and he and Kate had just had a close call. “Why don’t you pack a bag? Go to a friend’s house. I’ll take you.”

She shook her head against his shoulder. “No. Just stay with me for a little while.”

“All right.”

The thought of her getting hurt ate at Jake. No way was he going to let her far out of his sight as long as another madman was on the loose. He stroked her back, trying not to think about the way his body was responding, just to being close to her.

Damn! She made him ache in all the places that had escaped the arsonist’s flailing fists and legs. Her nipples hardened and burrowed into his chest like tiny needles of fire. Flames that spread straight to his cock.

Now was not the time for this, he told himself, but his hands didn’t work when he tried to push her gently away.

“Please hold me.”

Her warm, damp breath tickled his neck and made him forget time and place—and the madmen bent on destruction. Her soft voice soothed his mind and torched his senses. And the feel of her, pliant and giving in his arms, was driving him insane.

“Sure.”
I'll hold you, honey. For starters.
He tightened his arms around her.

Cradling her in his arms this way, while she snuggled up so close that he could practically feel her heart beating against his chest, had the blood coursing straight to his cock. He had to have more. And he didn’t give much of a damn about the consequences—or anything but hauling Kate to the nearest bed and putting out the blaze.

“Take me to your room.”

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

43

“The other night you said you wouldn't pay the price,” she reminded him, but her soft voice sounded like a caress.

He had to have her. He craved her touch. He wanted her pussy wet and throbbing around his cock. “You’re right. I did. But damn it, honey, I was a fool.”

As he stood and set her down beside him, he caught a whiff of her flowery perfume mingled with the smell of burning pine branches.

Hell, she could have died out there!

He had to touch her, reassure himself they had both survived this time.

Dragging her back in his arms, he held her close and fed his own hard need. “Do you want this?” he asked, cupping her bottom in his hands and nudging her soft, inviting curves with his erection.

She just trembled in his arms, but when her hips shyly moved, brushing his cock with a tantalizing kind of fire, he sensed that she wanted him, too.

And he couldn’t fight her and the potent attraction any longer.

“Make love with me, honey,” he whispered in her ear, savoring the way her nipples responded to his searching fingertips when he cupped her breasts in his hands.

“Yes.”

It was just one word, spoken so softly he could barely hear it. But it was all he needed.

Ignoring the ache in his knee, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her upstairs.

* * * * *

“I’ll close the curtains.” Kate averted her gaze from the man whose presence made her roomy bedroom feel as if its walls were closing in on her.

As long as he was holding her, she had no doubts about what they were going to do. But now that he’d set her down in this familiar room, it struck her that he’d never said a word about his feelings for her.

“You got second thoughts, honey?”

He came up behind her and nuzzled at her neck, his warm breath sweet-smelling despite the lateness of the day. His five o’clock shadow tickled her jaw.

He was giving her a chance to change her mind.

She should. But she couldn’t. Today she had seen how fleeting life could be. She wanted to live, to feel the joy of Jake’s hot passion before her chance was forever lost.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

44

If she could only have him now, like this, it would have to be enough. He made her want his fire to consume her like the actual flames that had threatened them hours earlier. She took his big, callused hand and brought it to her lips.

“No. But Jake, I don’t know much about this.” She hoped her inexperience wouldn't turn him off.

“I know.”

She shuddered when he turned her around and wrapped her in his arms, crushing her against his big, hard-muscled frame. They were so close, she felt each strong beat of his heart through his soft cotton-knit shirt.

His steely arousal nudged her belly, graphically demonstrating that, at least for the moment, he wanted her as much as she wanted him. Her blouse fell away with a brush of his big hands. Then she felt her bra straps sliding down her arms. Kate gasped for breath.

His mouth descended on her bare breasts nipping and suckling at one tingling nipple and then the other while he tugged at the waistband of her shorts with both hands. His velvety lips soothed the places where he’d nipped her with his teeth, and when he closed them over one nipple and sucked it into his mouth she gasped at the new, sizzling sensation that slammed into her belly and made her want more.

Mindlessly, she began unbuttoning his shirt. She wanted, needed, to touch him the way he was touching her.

“My God, honey.”

“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered, snatching her hand away from his chest as he shrugged out of the shirt and tossed it to the floor.

“Don’t stop. For God’s sake, don’t stop.” Sounding as though she were torturing him, he groped for her hands and pulled them back to skin as soft as textured silk stretched taut over rock-hard muscle.

Then another sudden jolt of sensation coursed through her body. He’d moved his hand between her legs, and his long, callused fingers were doing something wonderful, something that made sizzling, sparkling feelings grip her in their hold.

“Jake.”

She hardly recognized the husky sound of her own voice. Soon, though, the emotions he was arousing in her swept away her ability to think at all. All she could do was hold onto him and drown in the heady vortex of newly discovered passion.

“You like that.”

He sounded hoarse, almost as if he was choking. She let her hand drift down, away from his flat, masculine nipples, and her fingers combed through soft, dark hair that thinned into a fine line before it disappeared into his low-riding jeans.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

45

“I like touching you. A lot,” she murmured. He felt good. Warm and alive. His power was barely leashed under her seeking hands. She delved shyly with her fingers beneath the waistband of his jeans, and he sucked in his taut stomach muscles to give her room.

“I want you naked,” he said gruffly, and she stood still while he drew her shorts and plain cotton panties down her legs.

Without any of the shyness she had thought she’d feel, she stepped away from the puddle of clothing at her feet and stood bare and trembling before his hot gaze.

“Beautiful. You're beautiful. So sexy.”

She watched his handsome face, saw his dark eyes grow almost black with passion.

Would he stand there, as if transfixed, forever? She wanted him to undress.

“I want to see you, too,” she said, deliberately feasting her eyes on his big, muscular body.

When he moved, it startled her. His usually fluid motions were abrupt. She watched him bend over and tug off first one boot and then the other. Next came his socks.

She drew in a deep breath when she realized the significance of the huge, hard bulge that strained against the zipper of his jeans. Would he finish undressing now?

He didn’t. She saw him reach into his pocket and withdraw several small packages.