Sinful Southern Hero: 2 (11 page)

Dez’s gaze went to Dalton. “Did your woman just use the word
‘mojo’?”

His woman?
Lucy was both pleased and scared to death
of this title.

Dalton gave her hip a squeeze. “Yeah, she’s kind of a goof.”
He guided her to a chair by the table and settled her into it. “Stubborn, too,”
he continued, ignoring Lucy’s glare. “She thinks I have mojo, too.” He winked
at her, causing her glare to ratchet up a notch. “Though, I believe she called
it ‘hillbilly magic’.”

Dez arched one dark-blond eyebrow and bounced his gaze
between Lucy and Dalton before shaking his head. A full-on grin exposed his
straight, white teeth and Lucy thought he might not be so scary after all.

A pounding knock sounded on the front door.

Lucy jumped and probably would have bounded from her seat if
not for Dalton’s strong hands gripping her shoulders and keeping her still.

Dez visibly tensed as if readying his body to pounce, his
head cocked to one side like a jungle cat listening for prey.

Nope. Still scary.

“Jed and Abigail,” Dalton stated.

“How?” Dez asked.

Lucy assumed Dez must have been asking how Dalton knew who
it was without looking outside.

“I know his knock. Obnoxious bastard. Knocks with his fist
and a whole lotta force.” With those words, he gave Lucy’s shoulders a squeeze
and stepped back.

As he moved to the front door to let their guests inside,
Lucy was left alone in the kitchen with a rough-looking male stranger. Not a
place she particularly wanted to be.

Dalton rubbed his knuckles against his closed eyelids. No
sleep for nearly two days made blinking an effort, his eyelids feeling more and
more like sandpaper. He was grateful his friends had dropped everything to
converge in his home and tackle Lucy’s problems, but damn he was glad they were
gone now. A quiet snuffle drew his attention. He dropped his hands to his hips
and studied the small but curvy body tucked into a tight ball on his sofa.

Dez, Abigail and Jed had enough compassion and violent
tendencies between them to turn the impromptu gathering into something closer
to a tactical discussion of war. Abigail, like Dalton, had wanted to turn the
tables and make Lucy’s ex the prey. Hunting the bastard down and castrating him
sounded perfectly rational to them. The guy presumably had two nuts, Abigail
and Dalton could divide the trophies of war equally. Problem solved.

Dez and Jed, the level-headed bastards, had to inject reason
and law into the situation and vetoed the plan involving testicle removal. Buzz
kills, both of them.

Lucy had hung in there until about an hour ago, when she’d
finally succumbed to exhaustion. As it stood, she hadn’t missed much. Dez was
putting some old military and PI contacts into play to track Ross’ movements.
Jed and Abigail would keep an eye out for anyone strange showing up at the shop
looking for Lucy. Dalton…

He smiled and moved toward the sofa. Dalton had the best job
of all, protecting Lucy, which meant keeping her very, very close. He knelt
beside the sofa and used his index finger to gently tuck an escaped curl behind
Lucy’s ear. She sighed and turned her cheek into his palm, nuzzling him.
Unconscious, she welcomed his touch. Now, if she’d only do the same while
awake.

Dalton slid one arm beneath her shoulders and one under her
knees before standing and settling her warm, soft body against his chest. She
turned her head, burying her nose against his nipple and making him stifle a
groan.

“What was that, darlin’?” he asked when she mumbled
something he couldn’t understand.

“Stop carrying me around like a sack of dog food,” she
grumped, still half asleep.

“Now, why would I do that?” Dalton took the steps to the
second story, the addition of Lucy’s weight barely adding to his effort.

“’Cause you’ll throw out your back lugging my fat ass up a
flight of stairs. You’re too heavy for me to lift if you fall and can’t get up
and you won’t be able to get away from Rachel when she pounces on her downed
prey.”

His chest shook and he tightened his grip on her and entered
his bedroom. “I don’t want to hear you calling yourself a fat ass. You may be
right about Rachel though, she has a screw loose I didn’t notice before.”

Lucy’s eyes opened a mere slit and she glared. “I won’t call
myself fat as long as you never use the words ‘screw’ and ‘Rachel’ in the same
sentence ever again.”

Dalton’s dick jumped against his zipper. “Jealous?” He sat
her on the right side of the bed, the side furthest away from the door. “Darlin’,
I like that look on you.” He tapped her cute little nose with his finger before
stepping back and moving to the heavy oak dresser against the far wall.

“I’m not jealous. I just think it’s possible your girlfriend
is an escaped mental patient who was probably one of the whores in some king’s
harem in a past life.”

He laughed and decided not to address the “your girlfriend”
comment. Lucy already knew the score. It lightened his heart to know she felt
safe enough with him to tease. Because he planned to push her boundaries in a
few moments, Dalton grabbed a fresh pair of boxers from a drawer and headed to
the bathroom to change for bed.

When he emerged from the bathroom, dressed in only a
comfortable pair of boxer shorts, he found Lucy had scooted to the middle of
bed and now lay on her side facing away from him with both hands tucked under
her cheek. He grinned.

Lifting the corner of the blanket and sliding into bed in
one smooth movement, Lucy didn’t have time to retreat. He heard her gasp and,
as he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her back snug against his
front, he felt her body stiffen.

“Relax, Lucy. I won’t hurt you. Nothing will happen tonight
but sleeping.”

“You can’t sleep here. I can’t sleep in a bed with you.” She
tried to roll away but he held firm.

“I can, and you will.” When she trembled, he reconsidered
the veto on castrating her ex. The fuckwad had done a number on Lucy. Dalton
was a patient man, however, and would see Ross’ hold on Lucy broken one way or
another. “Lucy. Lucy, look at me.”

She remained frozen, her eyes squeezed shut. Dalton waited.
After a few tense moments, she craned her neck and opened her eyes just enough
to see his face.

“There you are, darlin’. You’re safe here with me. You’re
safe in my bed. I only want to hold you tonight. Let me hold you, Lucy.”

“Why?” she whispered, suspicion and fear crawling across her
pale face. “I can’t…I can’t be intimate with you, Dalton. I don’t know if I’ll
ever be able to do that again.”

He raised his brows and gave her a crooked smile, hoping to
disarm her. She relaxed the slightest bit, her eyes moved from squinting to
wide open. “First, you have a concussion and I’d never screw an injured woman.
I want you healthy and able to give as good as you get. And it will be good.
No, fuck that, it’ll be great.” He tucked her closer against him, forcing her
to take her eyes from him. “I won’t lie to you. One day soon I’m going to make
love to you, Lucy, but not tonight. Go to sleep.”

“Make love?” Her voice sounded small and unsure. “I thought
you…”

“What?”

“I didn’t think you were a man who made love.”

Understanding dawned and he pressed his face into the
fragrant and soft curve where her shoulder met her neck. “I can’t say I’ve ever
made love to a woman. You’ll be my first, and I intend to make love to you
frequently. That said, I’m also looking forward to fucking you so hard and in
so many ways you’ll forget every touch but mine.”

Dalton felt her hold her breath before she slowly released
it.

“I don’t want to disappoint you, Dalton.” Her breath hitched
and he thought she was fighting tears. “I’ve never enjoyed sex all that much,
even before Ross. I’m not very good at it and certainly not at the level of
your other…your other lovers. Please don’t put me in that position. I can
withstand a lot of things, but disappointing you in that way isn’t one of them.”

He stroked his thumb over her belly where his hand rested.
At least she was opening up to him, and what she was saying wasn’t all that
surprising. He hated that her only sexual experiences had been poor or probably
forced, but he had thought this to be the case given her history. “I’m guessing
the men in your life didn’t take much time with you, other than to take what
they wanted. I’m not that kind of man. Trust me, darlin’. I won’t
ever
slide my cock into you unless you’re dripping wet and begging me for it. And,
Lucy?”

Her breath hitched again and there was a tightness in her
voice Dalton knew had nothing to do with fear or crying and everything to do
with heat and want. “Yes?”

Dalton placed a tender kiss on the delicate skin behind her
ear and half whispered, half growled his words. “You
will
beg. I’ll make
you want me so bad you won’t be able to think about anything else. When we get
there, you won’t be worried about pleasing me. I get hard just seeing you walk
into a room. There’s nothing you could do, in my bed or out, that would
disappoint me. Now, baby, you’re not ready, you just got out of the hospital
and we both need some sleep. Just let me hold you now, we’ll worry about the
rest later.”

His words must have slipped past Lucy’s worries and walls
because she rubbed her thighs together and restlessly shifted in the bed. Fuck,
a man’s good intentions could only survive so much. Dalton growled and
tightened his arm on her waist to still her rubbing her sweet ass against his
dick. “Darlin’, you keep moving around like that and I’m gonna have to go take
care of myself before I get the first case of blue balls I’ve had since I was
fifteen.”

Lucy stilled. “I could…” She cleared her throat. “I could
take care of it for you.” The tentative way she spoke melted his heart but shored
up his decision to wait.

Dalton snagged a pillow from the mound at the head of the
bed and shoved it between his hips and her ass before cuddling back against
her. “I’m not saying no, I’m just saying not yet. Not tonight. Sleep, Lucy.”

He lay in the dark with Lucy wrapped in his arms, a pillow
shielding his erection from her tempting curves and a grin on his face. Caring
for a woman in a way that involved more than the promise of a mutual orgasm was
uncharted territory for Dalton, but damn if he wasn’t enjoying it. Eventually,
Lucy’s breathing slowed and deepened, and knowing she slept, Dalton let himself
drift off, a contented sigh marking his last conscious breath of the night.

* * * * *

“It’s time, Dalton.” Lucy paused to study his dark scowl.
She’d been living and working out of Dalton’s house for two weeks and if she
had to spend one more celibate night pressed up against his hard body, tortured
by his leather-and-sawdust male scent, she would lose her damn mind.

“No. You’re safer here.”

“It’s been two weeks since anything happened. According to
Dez, Ross has been in Ohio since the day I was released from the hospital and
hasn’t set foot outside of Cincinnati.” She closed the laptop she’d been
working on at Dalton’s kitchen table and stood. After walking to where he stood
with his hips braced against the door jamb, she placed her hands on his muscled
chest and gave him a look she hoped conveyed her feelings. “I appreciate you
letting me stay here, taking care of me, protecting me, but I can’t hide forever.
I have to get on with my life. If I stay in seclusion like a coward, Ross will
have won again by controlling me. I can’t let that happen. I’m stronger now,
fully healed. It’s time I went home.”

Dalton rolled his gaze to the ceiling, blew out a frustrated
breath and ran a hand over his head. His warm breath stirred Lucy’s hair, which
she’d started to keep free and wild instead of pulled back in her usual sloppy
bun at the base of her neck because the man in front of her had mentioned he
liked the way she looked with it down. Why she’d begun to care what he thought,
started to change herself—more small shifts, really, than actual changes—in an
effort to please him, Lucy had no idea. One morning in the past two weeks,
she’d simply looked at the small elastic band she employed to keep her curly
hair contained lying on the bathroom counter, then looked to the strange, new
creature with sensual, tousled red curls framing a pale face staring back at
her from inside the mirror above the sink, and made the decision to leave the
hair tie where it lay.

As Dalton scrubbed his hand over his scalp once more, Lucy’s
fingers curled of their own accord into the taut muscles of his flexing chest.
The index finger on her right hand lay directly over the beaded nub of Dalton’s
left nipple. She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes, working to drown the
sudden urge to scrape a fingernail over the hard pebble.

Shit. I’ve got to get out of here.

Dalton’s hands moved to cover her own, cradling them in his
grasp against his chest. “I can’t protect you as well if you’re not here.”

Lucy pushed against his chest, their hands still clasped
together, forcing him back a step. “If I stay here one more night, you’ll have
to be thinking about an entirely different kind of protection, Dalton.”

His blue eyes went dark. Lucy pushed once more, moving
Dalton until his back was against the wall. She knew she was only able to do
this because he’d allowed it. Never having been the aggressor, having this big
man submit to her, even in a small way, sent a rush of feminine power through
Lucy she’d never experienced. Dalton made her feel something no one else had
ever managed to make her feel. Safe. Safe to argue or push or try something
new. Just…safe.

Inching up onto her toes, she pressed against him, chest to
chest, hip to hip, and leaned as close to his ear as her height would allow. “Either
you take care of this ache you’ve built inside me, right now, or I’m going home
to spend a few hours with my vibrator.” Her voice sounded breathy and laced
with raw need.

One dark, masculine brow arched and amusement battled with
desire for dominance in Dalton’s gaze. “Hours?”

Lucy gave a slow nod. “Usually I’m satisfied after about
three minutes. Working
you
out of my system is going to take hours.” She
felt her eyelids close a fraction. “Days. Weeks, maybe.” A shiver worked down
her spine.

Dalton released her hands, slid his own to her hips and
bumped his pelvis against her, the proof of his arousal nudging her belly.

Lucy tilted her head down so she could look up at him from
under her lashes in a manner she’d seen other women do to men while attempting
a seduction. She wasn’t sure it would work for her, not having had cause to
practice the skill before meeting Dalton. She pushed out her bottom lip just a
bit, figuring a little pouting couldn’t hurt. “I’ll have to order in food so I
don’t starve to death before I’ve gotten rid of all the frustration seething
inside me from sleeping beside you night after night for two freakin’ weeks.”

Dalton’s long fingers flexed, securing her hips in an
unbreakable hold just this side of painful. A dark thrill washed through Lucy.

“I wouldn’t want you to suffer, darlin’.”

Empowered, Lucy demanded, “Are you going to stop treating me
like a cracked piece of glass? I might be damaged goods but I’m still a woman,
after all.”

Dalton’s body stiffened and he seemed to grow impossibly
bigger. “You’re not damaged goods,” he growled.