Page 66 of Rolling Thunder

“What if Trent talks?”

“He won’t. He’s got a rap sheet a mile long for drugs. And…” Evan sighed. She was going to hate this as much as anything.

She made an impatient gesture with her hand for him to spit it out.

“Jake’s gonna take the fall if anyone has to be arrested. But the cop said she isn’t pursuing it. I really don’t think anybody is going to come after us.”

“This is like everything I didn’t want to happen. Because you had to go after him.”

“I know, but we also got him arrested for violating the protective order and assaulting you. That’s more charges he’ll face and more evidence of who and what he is.”

“Fine, but you didn’t fucking listen to me, Evan!”

“Yes, I did. I didn’t go fucking kill him the first time you told me what he did. And I didn’t kill him when we caught him out by the edge of the swamp and believe me when I tell you that Jake knows how to get rid of a body. We barely touched him compared to what we wanted to do and what he deserves. I hear you, baby. I get it. But this situation has been all kinds of fucked up, and we did the best we could. You can’t tell me you would have felt fine if I just politely asked him to wait for the cops to arrive after he’d hurt you again.”

He moved close enough to her that she could plant her palms on his chest, a threat of a shove, but she didn’t do it. He touched her face gently with his fingertip to remind her it was bruised and scraped. And in her heart, she knew he was right. She’d gone to him for protection, and he had protected her, avenged her. Everything she’d needed and wanted him to do.

His eyes met hers at close range, and it was as if a signal fire lit, triggering a thousand others in answer throughout her body. She suddenly remembered him fucking her in this very kitchen before everything went to hell. By the smoke in his gaze, he remembered it too. He backed her up onto the counter and crushed her with a kiss that stole her breath. She reached down for the hem of her tank top and ripped it off, going after his clothes next. The fleeting memory of Trent hounded her mind, but the pressure of his fingers on her thighs as he yanked off her jeans shocked her out of it.

He lifted her up and sat her on the counter, dropping between her legs with no warning and no time for her to prepare. His mouth seized her in white-hot pleasure, and his hands kneaded her legs farther apart. Her gasps and moans filled the room as he drove her mercilessly toward the cliff of a frenzied orgasm.

Again, he felt her fight against him, pulling away from him. She wrenched away from him, panting. Grabbed his hand, dragged him into the bedroom. As if it were all just a ploy to get to a more comfortable sex location. By now, he knew better. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed. Now, he’d seen two sides of her. The seductress, and the vulnerable girl who he was pretty sure was who she really was.

The same push and pull that always seemed to happen between them began. He’d take control of her, but before he could give her too much pleasure, she would find some way to distract him by driving him wild—take the focus off her. She grabbed his belt buckle, her eyes glancing up at him in that way she had as she unbuckled it, dropping his jeans. He doubted any man had ever tried to see past what she showed them. He stilled her hands on him by the wrists and pushed her back onto the bed.

“I wasn’t done with you,” he said. She opened her mouth with some saucy retort, he was sure, and he touched her lips, silencing her. Then he traced his fingers through her slick folds. She was so wet, so ready, that she jerked involuntarily as he stroked her. He lay alongside her and shifted her onto her side, lifting her top leg so he had access to her.

He ran his mouth along her shoulder as he lazily played with her clit until her hips jerked again, desperate for more. He pressed his straining dick at the slick entrance, but didn’t quite give it to her. Instead, he went back to slowly teasing her. The cries that came from her became ever more desperate.

“Please!” she hissed, trying to move toward him. She didn’t have the leverage. Grabbing her by the hips, he entered her with one sharp stroke that drew another cry of pleasure. She gripped him so desperately that he felt like he could blow his load right then. Instead, he held still and squeezed her with his fingers until she lost control, and he felt her body spasm completely around him. He took up a relentless rhythm in time with the contractions of her body squeezing out the last bit of her orgasm. He had wanted this to last longer, but her orgasm was so intense, it triggered his, and he let her body pull it from him.

Somehow, he managed to fuck her into submission and get control of her again. He was the only lover Kayla’d ever had who she couldn’t simply manipulate into doing exactly what she wanted, keeping herself in the safe zone. There was no safe zone with Evan. As soon as she lost control in one way, she lost control in every way. The emotions she bottled up and shoved aside were bearing down on her like a runaway train and she was strapped to the tracks. He rolled over and met her gaze, and the tears came. She was choking on it all.

Her heart quaked and shook in her chest as she reached out for him. He held her tight, somehow seeming to understand she’d gone from wild lust to not being able to cope, and he was just there for her.

“Talk to me, baby.”

“I don’t know how to have sex if I’m not drunk,” she said, her voice quivering.

“You don’t need to be drunk to be with me. Whatever happens, I got you.”

And there it was. That was everything in one sentence. She wanted a life, a man, that she didn’t have to be drunk for. “I used to just drink until I could relax. Now…I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“I know a thing or two about that. When I got out of prison, nothing seemed normal. I overreacted to everything. It seemed like I either felt too much or nothing, and I never knew which it would be.” The relief that flooded through her at his admission was a shock. He hadn’t judged her or run away, but calmly made her feel normal somehow. “Give it time. You learn to live a certain way, and it’s the only way you know how to be.”

“Horses run back into a burning barn because it’s where they know to feel safe.”

“Except right now, you’ve got a choice not to run back to it. Is this why you always try to run away or zone out after we have sex?”

His question was like having the light flipped on suddenly, catching her snooping in a dark room. Because the restlessness had just settled into her bones and she was trying to think of an excuse to bail.

“Yeah.”

“Stay,” he said, pulling her into his arms. She’d fallen asleep in his arms only once before, and that was the night she’d passed out drunk after confessing her and Trent’s terrible history. It was an effort to realize that not running was harder than running. But everything was just one excuse or another to avoid being present for her life, which had become totally intolerable in her mother’s dark life in Fort Myers. It was a little like waking up, realizing that the worst was over. Now she had a real chance. A good man loved her.

“I called one of those places that Officer Desmond told me about,” she confessed quietly. “I think I need help. Annie says I should talk to someone about it so I don’t drink over it.”

“No shame in that. You went through a lot.”

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