Page 17 of Protected By the Convicts
She threaded her fingers through his hair. “I hate to say it, but I’m used to men screaming around me. Grew up with it, for years. It makes me nervous and anxious, but it doesn’t scare me. What scares me is the thought of something happening to you.”
He pressed his lips to hers and she opened, readily, eagerly. The thrill running through him was too intense to ignore. He’d had sex with her when she was high, though he didn’t know she’d been high at the time. He should have because the connection with her hadn’t been there. That coupling had been nothing but pure lust, the need to release inside a woman after so many years.
This here, tasting her warm lips and knowing she truly wanted him created an insatiable need that surpassed the need to breathe air even. He’d wanted her for so long, more than her body. Hannah, the woman whose smile lit the kitchen each meal she served him and whose eyes followed him with concern after he’d fought with one of the others or stormed off to avoid everyone. A woman who cared not what he could do for her, but constantly sought ways to make him happy. The woman who looked and talked to him as if he were important, not for the skills he provided, but for who he was inside.
“I should have believed you about the ship,” Ren said, as he kissed a path down her neck to the top of her shirt.
“But you didn’t. It says something about us, about who we are. I haven’t done anything to earn your trust, have I?”
He pulled away and stared into her face. “That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.” He traced his fingers down her cheek and let his thumb glide over her incredibly soft lips. She was indeed a dream come true. He’d lost one dream today. He sure as hell wasn’t going to lose her too.
“I don’t trust easily, Hannah. Not since The Company framed me. And the one person I trusted most on this whole fucking planet after eight years of knowing and working alongside him on many difficult projects just stabbed me in the back. Worse, he stole my only chance at freedom.”
She grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. . . a long, tongue down his throat type of kiss. If he wasn’t already hard, that kiss would have done the trick right there.
“You swore,” she hastily explained between heavy breaths. “But I guess I didn’t kiss you fast enough,” she said when she pulled away. “And that wasn’t your only chance at freedom. You’re still a Level 4.”
“Dresden will never let me go.”
“Dresden’s dirty, Ren. Those shipments. . . The calculations have been off. Remember the fruit you weighed for me? Something didn’t seem quite right, and it’s taken me a while to remember after the drug scrambled my brain. Dresden’s using the fruit to ship the NK171. He lists fruit, has some thrown in to hide the drugs. Simple, clean, since the weight of fruit varied from load to load and no one cared about a low-profit item.
“When I get back to the port, I’ll take a look at the manifest from the day of the spill. I bet there’s no medicine listed in that shipment, only the fruit. That drug was being shipped in glass containers, too, which supports my theory. The med-center’s supposed to use metal containers for shipping medicine, but those are carefully tagged and tracked. No one tracks glass containers. I’m right about this. I know I am.”
He grabbed her by her upper arms, harsher than he intended. Her eyes went wide. “No. You’ll stay out of it. Don’t get mixed up with Dresden, Hannah. He’s dangerous.”
“He won’t know. Accessing manifests is part of my job.”
“I know I have trust issues, which is going to make this request seem hypocritical, but I’m asking you to trust me. Stay away from Dresden and whatever he’s mixed up in. It’s too dangerous.”
She considered him for a minute. “I’ve never blackmailed a person before, not sure I could pull it off, but I want to help you, Ren.”
“Not like this.”
“Then how?”
“Let me make love to you. Not like in the woods. I want to see your eyes when I move inside you, Hannah. I want you to know it’s me making you moan. That I can care for you as much as the others.”
With a soft and vulnerable expression, Hannah nodded. There were no other words as he picked her up and took her to his bedroom. His bedroom, not Ky’Li’s. He was reclaiming the master bedroom, but more importantly, he would be claiming Hannah.
Ren set Hannah down on her feet and slowly stripped her.
“Are you sure about this, I mean me, Ren?”
He tossed his clothes to the side as he lowered her to the bed and leaned over her, his arms caging her. “Vaughn confessed.”
She shook her head. “Even so, you’re always so angry, and I seem to make you angrier all the time.”
Her question was justified, but even as he ran his hand down her curves, he couldn’t think of an answer. One look into her face and he suddenly realized he didn’t need to justify anything to her. Hannah accepted him for who he was. He needed to do better for her, for all of them who tried to make this unit livable. He never thought he’d be stuck here long enough for any of that to matter.
Hannah’s hand went to his face and turned him to focus on her again. “You turned away. Maybe I should go clean up a bit, try to make myself more presentable.”
Presentable. . . the woman could wear a sack and she’d still be the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. In fact, that’s essentially how she’d been dressed up there on that dais the day Dresden auctioned her off. Instead of allowing herself to be sold off to Griggs, she’d challenged for the right to choose her own unit. If it hadn’t been for Ky’Li fighting in her place, she would have been sold to Griggs, and the animal would have used and destroyed her.
Unable to give her the pretty words she deserved, Ren nudged her legs apart. She opened for him. Why she trusted him, he’d probably never know, but she did. That was his biggest weakness and her strength, the ability to trust.
“You don’t need to get dolled up for me.”
“You’re right,” she said, swallowing hard. “This was a bad idea.” She started to leave, but he kept her caged as he moved his hips, just enough to slide his cock through her folds.
