Sarah's Surrender (4 page)

And John admitted to himself that he had always been a leg man.

Those killer legs were further accentuated by high-heeled sandals in a light tan color. They were the kind of sandals a lot of women were wearing these days, the kind on a platform that gave them an added inch or two, and they were no doubt one of the reasons she couldn't dance as well as the women who wore boots.

The shoes might not be good for dancing, but what they did to her legs was utterly stupendous. Her calves were so cut that her muscle tone and definition was impossible not to see, her knees were actually sexy and her thighs were smooth and silky.

As he focused on those awesome legs, arousal slammed through his body and his brain went on full alert as incendiary heat slithered down his spine.

That was the one. That was the woman.

If her face possessed only a tenth of the beauty he could see so far, he'd have those legs wrapped around him within a few hours. Already he knew a blowjob would have to come later.
Much
later.
All he could think about was ramming his cock between her spread legs and pounding her between those silky thighs.

Yeah, he would need that several times before his guts could decompress enough to allow him to lie still and let her take him into her mouth.

He swelled in his jeans even more at the arousing thought.

As the dance ended, he didn't let her out of his sight, and when the crowd of people began to disperse he saw another woman with a laughing smile walk up to her and grab her around the waist as they exited the dance floor together.

They turned in unison, walked toward the bar and the general direction he was standing, and he got a good look at her face for the first time.

A short, sharp feeling of surprise hit him, quickly followed by such an incredible anger, he gritted his teeth so hard he felt pain radiate through his jaw. He turned and slammed his beer bottle on the counter behind him.

Frustration and rage jerked through his bloodstream. He couldn't believe she was sexually thwarting him for a second time.

His eyes stayed focused on her as a blinding wave of resentment and ill temper burned through him. As she and her friend walked to the bar to order drinks some twenty feet away from him, her eyes skittered to his and quickly looked away again in shock, panic or pure rejection. He didn't know which emotion he saw in her eyes and he didn't much care.

Irritation at the restraint it was costing him not to get what he wanted
that instant
, made him seethe. He wanted to take it out on her, and badly.

At that moment, from his peripheral vision, he watched as a redheaded woman he'd slept with before and who was always after him, slinked up to his side. He wasted no time, and in a fit of pique, reached out and snagged her by the arm and brought her into his body. What he was trying to prove, he had no fucking idea. He didn't try to analyze it. As their chests clashed, the woman looked into his eyes, but he looked past her into the eyes of the woman who had been fucking with his brain for the last five days and who was now blatantly watching him with open contempt.

With the last vision in his head that of Sarah McAlister looking away from him in disgust, he lowered his head and plastered a kiss on the lips of the redheaded woman, whose name eluded him for the time being.

She tasted of stale bourbon and reeked of strong perfume, and as he kissed her he felt his erection dwindle and die. The angry knowledge that the redhead had once been able to get his motor running caused a strong grievance at Sarah, and he notched up another reason to be pissed at her.

He pushed away from the redhead, told the bartender to put her tab on his bill, and he turned and walked away from her without a word, only wanting to get the hell away from this place.

He made his way to the men's room, paced the floor a couple of times, stopped and pissed in a urinal and as he was washing his hands the irritating idea of leaving and going home alone was replaced with the sudden urge to confront
her
.

Why the fuck was she out on the town if she had a fiancé? Did she not realize she was in the biggest fucking meatmarket in this part of the state? Had she lied to him to get away from him more quickly? Because it had damn sure worked. After she told him she was engaged, he'd turned away, gotten in his truck, and driven off without a word.

He didn't fuck with other men's women.

But goddamnit, engaged
wasn't
married. It wasn't adultery. Not that he was religious; he wasn't a religious man. But he did have a moral code. And that was all a moot point because she'd probably lied anyway.

When in hell had a woman ever lied to escape from him? When had a woman ever wanted to escape from him at all?

Anger simmering to boiling point, he walked out of the men's room, and found Steven, the owner of the honky tonk, and abruptly called in a favor.

Steven sat in a darkened booth with a woman under his arm. John didn't waste time mincing words. "I need to borrow your office for a few minutes."

Steven gave him a level look and turned to the woman under his arm. "Give us a few minutes, babe."

The woman looked wounded, but she quickly vacated the booth and Steven turned his attention back to John. "You planning on getting some ass in my office?"

John narrowed his eyes at the other man's tone. "Need some privacy for a few minutes. But with the amount of money you owe me, I wouldn't think you'd mind if I had a
goddamn orgy in there."

Steven's expression went from blank until he very slowly smiled. "Point taken." He reached down and dug in his pocket and threw a set of keys in John's direction.

John reached out, grabbed the keys in mid-air, and pocketed them. He turned and left the booth and began looking around for his prey.

His timing couldn't have been better.

He saw her tottering on those heels as she left her friend who was chatting up a guy at the bar and made her way to the ladies room. Steven's office was in the same darkened corridor, so John waited until Sarah went into the restroom and then he followed in her steps, stopped at the office, and unlocked the door.

****

Sarah's mind was in turmoil as she took a much needed respite in the women's room. She couldn't call it a lounge because the room was little more than three stalls and three sinks crowded into a small rectangular space.

But it was impeccably clean and she rested against the sink on hands that shook.

What were the odds?

What were the odds that she would see the same guy from the gas station and that he'd induce the same kind of feelings in her as before?

She admitted that what she felt was excitement burning through her system. Unwanted excitement laced with quivering fear. A conversation from earlier in the day came to memory.
The kind of man who could cream her twinkie, and with just one look, have her salivating for him.

As she admitted to herself that he was the kind of man who had the ability to do exactly that, she also admitted the other emotion that was running through her bloodstream.

Fear. She recognized the fear she felt. The fear that said he would be the kind of man who would win. The kind of man she'd be powerless to resist and who would hurt her in the end.

Damn.

She hung her head. All she wanted at this moment was to stay away from him.

Yes, for sure
, she tried to convince herself. She should stay away from him. Her very careful, very sane self knew that she should stay away from him. She liked what she had with Randall. He was safe. The distant memory of her ex-husband cheating on her when she was pregnant with their child, and the absolutely gutted way she had felt from his defection blasted through her brain. She hadn't been able to eat or sleep and whether or not that had anything to do with the miscarriage, she didn't know. But she had loved that baby, more than life itself. Truthfully, she'd gotten over Greg long before she'd gotten over losing her baby. Maybe she wasn't over it yet.

And now here she was, hiding in a restroom, trying to stay away from a man who made her feel even stronger things than even her ex-husband had induced when she had first met him.

This man John radiated something she couldn't explain, but she understood it was something elemental in her psyche that made her respond to him. The way he looked at her, the way his eyes swallowed her whole as if she already belonged to him. There was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that he hadn't forgotten their meeting at the gas station.

The memory of him reaching out and kissing that other woman in such a blatant, sexual manner was still causing a slight feeling of nausea within her.

Jealousy.

Oh God.
She was jealous. The black and green emotion hit her square in the stomach when she finally understood what it was she had felt when he'd kissed the other woman.

But she couldn't be jealous. She wouldn't let herself. She was engaged to Randall. 'John' meant nothing to her.

The image of him taking that woman in his arms screamed through her. But there was no denying he'd looked Sarah in the eye when he'd pulled the other woman in his arms. Looked her straight in the eye and given her an intense stare filled with what had looked like recrimination. He'd also pushed the other woman away and turned and left, leaving the poor woman alone. It was a telling action on his part. He'd done it to punish Sarah for being engaged to another man. He had turned to another woman in an attempt to show her what he was feeling, to shove it in her face that she had all but turned him down and that he could have someone else.
Easily
. But then--he hadn't carried through with it. He'd left the other woman standing alone and turned and walked away from them both. But still, Sarah knew that he and the woman had a past. He was bound to have a past with a million different women.

But she'd be damned if she'd be one of them.

Thank God he'd left.

Now all she had to do was try to convince Jaime to do the same before the headache she felt niggling in the back of her skull developed into something all too real.

With that exact thought in mind, she left the room and began walking down the darkened corridor toward the main area of the dancehall. She hadn't taken more than ten steps when her wrist was enclosed by a strong, ruthless grip and she was hauled into a room that she hadn't even realized was there, and the door was slammed shut, trapping her inside. The room was in shadows with only a soft, subtle glow from a small table lamp negating the otherwise darkened interior of the room.

Her spine landed against the closed door, and a hard, masculine hand came up and covered her mouth and cut off the scream that tried to leave her throat. Fear, vivid and real slammed through her and made her pulse take off so fast and hard she could barely concentrate enough to breathe through her nose. Her mind ran away from her as every nightmare she'd ever had hit her from all sides.

The need for flight kicked in and as her eyes widened in fright, she began struggling against the man who held her.

He controlled her easily, dominating her entirely, and gave her one shake before she felt his hot breath in her ear. "Sarah."

She recognized that voice easily and went completely still with the shock of discovery. It was especially stunning to her because she had thought he'd left the building. A huge feeling of relief that she wasn't about to be brutally violated hit her. At least, she didn't think she would be violated. It was immediately followed by butterflies in her stomach as she realized it was
his
steely muscles that surrounded her. His hand stayed over her mouth, but he lifted his head from the side of her hair where he had spoken her name, and now he looked into her face.

His eyes glittered down into hers and she could see them smoldering with lethal fire. The sexual significance of the moment hit her deep inside, the aggressive action that dominated her completely had a stark, primal connotation that incapacitated her and rendered her helpless.

"You're safe. I only want to talk to you." His voice was firm, his jaw clamped, and she swallowed deeply and managed a small nod of her head.

Her heart was banging loudly in her chest, she breathed roughly through her nose, and excitement that she couldn't deny laced with fear and panic skittered down her spine.

He continued to hold his hand over her mouth, taking his time to release her as he pressed his torso into hers and tightened the hand that still held her wrist. Her eyes flared and she knew he must see the apprehension and question in them.

"I'm going to take my hand away now. Don't scream." His words were rough, resonating deeply in the small room.

She swallowed and remained still.

He slowly lifted his hand from her mouth but continued to hold her wrist in a firm grasp. His palm left her mouth and moved to her cheek, then to her scalp as his fingers fisted in her hair and held her trapped. The talk he wanted to have with her must have been secondary, because the moment his eyes fell to her lips she felt a groan shudder through his chest and then his mouth lowered to hers.

The kiss didn't start slow. There was no gentle seduction or slow exploration of his lips against hers. His mouth covered hers urgently and his tongue pushed inside and for a split second, Sarah was hit with the most all-consuming heat and
relief
that she'd ever felt in her life.

The heat she understood was sexual; the relief she didn't understand at all.

That thought was quickly followed by the image of the redheaded woman in his arms not even an hour earlier.

She began struggling against him when that image fought its way into her brain, and she lodged one free hand between them and pushed with all her might. She couldn't get enough leverage to get away from him but she turned her head away and broke free from his mouth.

He pulled her face back to his until they were staring at each other, both dragging in air. His fingers bit into her flesh, his jaw firmed and his head lowered as if to go back for more.