Page 59 of Protected By the Mountain Man

“I’m sorry about what happened at the Spur,” I said. Kat brushed past me, moving toward her bedroom. Maybe it wasn’t an invitation, but I followed; I couldn’t avoid this talk any longer. “But honestly…he had it coming. He touched you like that even after you slapped him, it was going to get ugly?—”

She rounded on me. “There is a right way to do things and a wrong way,” she said. “And you clearly haven’t learned the right way.”

“Kat—”

“I really was starting to think you’d changed…but you haven’t.” She put her hands on her hips. “You like hurting people.”

My head swam, heart pounding. No…she couldn’t think that about me, could she? I shook my head, then the words tumbled out. “No, Kat. I did my time in the Marines. I learned what it means to hurt people, to…to kill them. Paid my dues and left my blood, sweat, and tears in the desert. I know that violence has a time and a place, and I don’t like doing it. Not like I did when we were kids. But I had to do that tonight.”

She stiffened. “Why?”

I reached for her…and she let me. I gripped her arms, pulling her close. “Because I will do anything to protect you,” I said quietly. “You’re the one and only thing I can’t lose, Kat. You.”

She stared at me, eyes wide.

Then we exploded.

She shoved me backwards against the wall, her fists curling in my t-shirt as she practically climbed up my body. Her lips found mine and I took hold of her, pulling her up on her tip-toes to reach, devouring her moans. She shoved my jacket off and I helped her along as it fell to the floor, as her fingertips found the hem of my shirt to roam over my abs.

Having her touch me…fuck, it was some kind of divine. I pulled away from her only to take my shirt off, then I kept kissing her and kissing her and kissing her. I couldn’t stop, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t survive another second without having her. She nipped at my lower lip, took off that low-cut blouse as we parted for another agonizing second.

“You make me crazy,” she groaned against me as we stumbled to the bed, shedding our clothes as we went. “Fuck…never felt anything like this.”

“Nobody pisses me off like you, Kat Martin,” I growled back. She fell back as her knees hit the bed and I went down to the floor, pulled off her boots, then her jeans. She was wearing lacy white underwear, soaked through with arousal. “But fighting with you, fucking you…it’s all the same. Turns me the fuck on.”

I gripped her thighs and buried my face between them, licking her through those lace panties. She keened and tugged on my hair, leaning back, arching into my mouth. I used one hand to pull those panties aside and found her clit, sucking on it.

“Jesus, Gabe…”

I wanted to talk to her, to tell her all I felt—but I wanted to pleasure her even more. She rocked against my hips as I traveled lower, plunged my tongue into her clenching heat.

“Watching you…” she gasped out. “Fuck…you were like…”

“Talk to me, baby,” I crooned against her.

“Like a monster…it scared…it scared me…”

I almost stopped, listening.

“But you’re my monster,” she finished. “All—all mine?—”

She was coming against my lips, then, thrusting up toward me, begging me for more. Maybe I was a monster, sure, but there was one thing I was certain of.

I was hers, body and soul.

I crawled up her body, losing my pants along the way, finding her mouth and kissing her hard. We were half-way on the bed, messy, desperate. I loved it. Loved her. I pressed her into the rumpled blankets, looked down into those beautiful brown eyes, and slid my cock along her seam.

“Fuck!” she cried out. Her clit was still sensitive from when I’d licked her to climax. “Fuck me, Gabe, please?—”

I kept stroking my cock along her, through her panties. “Nah…not right away,” I said. “I’m gonna make this night last, spitfire. Didn’t get to play with you the first time…second time you took the lead. Now I’m in your bedroom, you’re all mine for the night.”

The words came out instinctively, but they sparked something deep and primal.

If I was hers, then she was mine.

Kat clawed at my back like she could force me to fuck her right now, so I snatched her wrists out of the air and pinned them above her head as I moved her further up the bed. She was still wearing a bra, and I used my free hand to yank out her gorgeous breasts…lowered my mouth to them as I continued sliding my cock between her thighs. I licked around her nipple, sucked it into my mouth, and she purred like a damn kitten.

“Always acting like you want to be in charge,” I teased, even though every word was a struggle. “But you like being bossed around, don’t you?”

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