Harper was coming back around the pile of furniture when Levi cornered it with such speed that she nearly collided with him.
“What the actual hell?” she squawked, swinging her purse around defensively in front of her.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
“Taking a leak, if you must know.” She brushed a sweep of hair out of her face. “I’ve got tissues in the purse.”
She didn’t tell him that she’d taken her phone, too, and had texted her housemate Madisyn, the reliable one, letting her know not to expect Harper until late that night. She’d also considered calling the police. It probably would have been a good idea, whatever Levi claimed. After all, he had stolen her car, and he’d even admitted to stealing something else that, by his own admission, was worth way more.
But she had a weakness for bad boys, and Levi fit that description to a T, though she’d bet cold, hard cash that he wasn’t a bad guy—which was quite a different thing. That was her favorite combination, even when it wasn’t in a form as appealing as the long-bodied, amber-eyed one that Levi had.
She felt safe falling for a bad boy because she never had to waste time wondering whether it’d work out and he’d stick around. It was perfectly obvious from the beginning that such relationships had an expiration date, so she was never tempted into fooling herself that it might last.
And maybe he was telling her the truth about the thing he’d stolen. Maybe for once, she’d fallen in with someone who was fighting for the cause of truth and justice and all that, even if in a roundabout, backhanded way. Harper had never found herself in that kind of situation, and she found more than the novelty of it appealing, if she was honest with herself.
And anyhow, she had her car back now—more or less.
“Fine,” he said, still frowning.
“So what are we doing now?” she asked. He was close enough to touch.
“Waiting. We’ll leave after sunset,” he said.
“So we’re behind the search lines, you said.” She shook her head at him. “Why am I supposed to believe you?”
“It doesn’t much matter what you believe,” he said. “It’s true.”
She looked up into those delicious amber eyes above that hard jaw and she wondered what the hell she was doing there with him. Without a conscious decision, she reached out and stroked his cheek with one finger, running it across the stubble that was just long enough to start to turn soft.
He caught her wrist, his gaze going sharp in a way that made her breath catch and her heart stumble over a beat. Oh, he was interested in her, all right.
She tried not to think about how interested she was in him.
“I stole your car, and then you shot me. How do I know you just don’t want a chance to put another hole in me?”
She lifted her chin challengingly. “Same way I’m supposed to believe you, I guess.”
“We’re at an impasse, then,” he said, still gripping her wrist.
Harper shrugged, trying to pretend that she wasn’t noticing his hand on her in a very visceral way. “Why don’t we just agree to believe each other? For the time being, I mean? It’d be much less drama, and I’ve never been big on drama. You said you’d give my car back. If you meant it, that’s good enough for me. I’m willing to wait.”
Levi chuckled. “You’re crazy.”
“Well, did you mean it?” she pressed.
He shrugged. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
“So, then,” she said. “I wanted to come along with you. And that’s what happened. So I don’t see as to why I’d have any complaints.”
“You’re forgetting the car chase. That sort of happened in the middle.”
“It wasn’t much of a chase, on that bike of yours.” She shook her head, still having a hard time believing how easily he’d abandoned that beautiful machine. She loved her car, but even she was in touch with reality enough to realize that no one in their right mind would make the exchange Levi had unless he felt forced to do so. “Are they really that dangerous? The people who’re after you?”
“More dangerous than you can imagine,” he said.
“Well, I can imagine pretty dangerous.” Her other hand reached out almost of its own accord, catching the open flap of his motorcycle jacket.
He caught that one, too, his gaze on her growing even more keen. “More dangerous than that. More dangerous than me.”
“That is dangerous,” she said, her breath coming a little faster.
“You have no idea,” he murmured, and his mouth was already angling down.
With a single step, Harper closed the small distance between them so that her body pressed against their joined hands, her purse sliding to the side. She raised onto her tiptoes, and met his lips with hers.
Instantly, he reached around her, his hand closing around a fistful of hair at the back of her head. He pulled her hard against his mouth, trapping her hands between them as his other arm encircled her waist and slid downward, across her rear, his body weight driving her backward toward the car.
His mouth explored hers, efficiently, expertly, devastatingly, his rhythm driving shockwaves of heat down into her belly and lower, to the juncture of her thighs.
She kissed him back, pushing past his lips and teeth into the hotness of his mouth, tasting him as he took her. She broke off only when the backs of her legs met the car’s bumper and dropped her rear onto the hood.
Levi stepped back then, retreating two paces. She was about to protest when he reached into his waistband and pulled out her revolver. Flashing it at her with raised eyebrows, he set it carefully at his feet, followed by the jeweled dagger—seriously, what was with the Indiana Jones crap?—then a nine mil in a black clip-on holster and a pocket knife. He stripped off his jacket and dropped it over the lot.
“Quite the armory you’ve got there,” Harper said, letting her purse slide to the ground at her feet and bracing against her hands on the hood as he approached again.
“Keeping it out of your reach,” he said.
“Don’t you trust me?” She looked up at him.
He was close now, standing between her knees. “Not a chance.”
“I’m disappointed.” She thrust out her lower lip in a pretend pout.
He caught the back of her neck with one hand and ducked his head so that his stubble-roughened cheek was against hers. “I don’t believe that for an instant,” he said, the words a low growl in her ear.
Her laugh was cut off abruptly in a gasp as his lips found the sensitive place just below her ear, kissing, sucking, nipping as he moved down to follow the edge of her deep V-neck tee. Oh, God, but he was good with that mouth….
She arched against his hand, hooking her legs behind his and pulling him against her hips and the ache there. She could feel the hard bulge against the juncture of her thighs, even through their pants, and she shivered at the sudden jolt it sent straight through her body.
Her hands went to his belt again, and this time, disarmed, he did nothing to stop them. She jerked the buckle loose, then loosened his fly, tugging it down and sliding her hands against the flat plane of his belly and under his waistband to catch his cock in her hand. It was hot, velvety, and hard, pulsing in her grip.
She felt reckless, suddenly powerful. This wasn’t the Harper she knew, but she didn’t care, not right now. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, but she didn’t want it to stop.
Levi made a noise low in his throat as she slid lower to encircle the shaft, breaking away from kissing her to catch her with his amber gaze. His tousled hair was even wilder than before, a deep flush staining his cheeks and shadowing his eyes with a deep and nameless hunger.
“You’re not shy, are you?” He said the words as if he meant them to be light, but there was a strangled kind of tension in his voice despite their flippancy.
Harper gave a breathless laugh, skimming her thumb around the bottom ring of his cock’s head as she hooked her other arm up under his arm, her hand closing around the fabric of his shirt. “You have no idea.”
He stopped her mouth with another kiss, and she moved to the rhythm of his body, stroking him with every beat until his breath came as hard and fast as hers did. His free hand slid up, under her shirt, cupping, kneading her breast over her bra—then shoving the top edge down so that she spilled out over it. He took her nipple between his fingers, sending another jolt of need so pure down between her thighs that she groaned with it.
A shudder went through him, and he went still then, completely and utterly. She was left dazed and panting, need sawing on her nerves like the sharp edge of a blade.
She tightened her grip on his cock. “Don’t you stop. Don’t you dare stop now.”
“Is that the way of it, then?” he said, and his caress turned into a punishing pinch that made her whimper with pain-tinged desire as he kissed her again. It hurt, oh, it hurt, but in just the right way—
He let go, and she went limp in his arms for an instant, blinking against the hot haze that seemed to infest her mind. He caught her hand and pulled out of her grip as he bent down, pulling her t-shirt up and over her head. He kissed a line down her throat to where her breasts met, spilling over the cups of her bra. He dragged down the other cup, baring that nipple to the cool air of the barn.
“I’m going to screw you so hard against the hood of your car that you’ll never be able to look at it again without thinking of me,” he promised.
She laughed unsteadily, believing him. “That’s a tall order. You don’t even know that you’re the first.”
“I’ll be the only one that matters, after this.” And then he lowered his mouth to her breast, enveloping her nipple in its heat.
Harper grabbed his head with her free hand, fingers curling in his hair, making strangled noises as she arched into him. He stroked her with his tongue, softly at first, then harder, rasping across the sensitive tip as she rocked with him. He broke away abruptly, surprising a tiny cry from her as he left the damp skin suddenly exposed to the cool air of the barn, then turned his attention to the other, his free hand working at the fly of her jeans. Then he slid his hand down, into her jeans, under the elastic of her panties, sliding across the smooth skin down to her slick opening. She rocked her hips toward him, invitingly, but he refused to be hurried, pincering her clit between his fingers and rolling it to the rhythm of his mouth on her breast.
She gave a strangled sound as she pushed just over the edge into a small orgasm—and as if the sound were a signal, he suddenly slid a finger inside her and caught against the sensitive place there as he stroked her with his thumb, knocking her hard into a deeper climax that caught her utterly off guard as it slammed into her brain.
A wordless noise tore from her throat. She cursed him roundly, thoroughly, as he pushed her ever further into it until she had no breath left to do anything but gasp and arch in his arms.
She was still shaking with the aftershocks as he stepped away, leaving her leaning dazed on her arms against the hood, trying to shake the lingering haze from her brain. Levi caught her legs where they crossed over his and loosened them, tugged her ankle boots off, and dragged at the cuffs of her jeans.
She stooped down for her purse as he stepped back, digging to the bottom for a small foil packet that she pulled off a strip—she’d kept condoms there since before she’d broken up with her ex; he’d always managed to ‘forget’ them, no matter how many she bought. Then she raised her butt from the hood of the car, letting him drag her pants off. He peeled her socks off with them, and as he stepped back toward her, she shimmied out of her boy shorts so that all that she wore was her bra, the cups shoved low to expose her breasts.
“Now, this hardly seems fair,” she said as he stepped between her knees again, displaying a little more bravado than she felt. “You get all of me, and all I get of you is your pretty face and that.” She motioned toward his erection, concealed now behind the elastic and cotton of his underwear. “Take the shirt off.”
He hesitated for a second, as if he was considering her order. Then he grabbed the bottom hem of the t-shirt and dragged it off, exposing an impressive sheet of muscle—and something more, angry marks, faint but unmistakable, the tracery of old scars. He skimmed off his motorcycle pants and underwear, too, revealing even more marks across his thighs.
For a moment, Harper was shocked out of the mood. “What happened to you?”
“I told you, babycakes,” he said. “There are some very, very bad men in the world. And some of them want things out of people like me, while others hate us for what we are.”
Harper leaned forward, tracing the lines down one side of his ribs. “I’m sorry, Levi.”
“And that’s why I didn’t take off the shirt before,” he said. “I don’t need pity sex.”
She looked up into those hard eyes. “Who said that’s what you’re getting?” She held up the foil packet between them. “But first—this. I may be wild, but I’m not stupid.”
She ripped it open and slid out the condom. Then, catching his cock again, she rolled it down in a single smooth motion even as she felt his thighs tighten at her touch.
“You’re awfully practical for a crazy woman,” he remarked.
She was glad to see a ghost of his grin return.
“Or awfully crazy for a practical one,” she agreed. “Now stop talking and make good on your promise. Because if you stop right now, what I’ll think when I look at the car is how very, very disappointed I was.”
“What, the first time you came didn’t count?” he said, raking his gaze across her. “From where I was, it sure looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
“For an appetizer, it was good enough,” she granted him. “But I want the main course—and dessert, too.”
He caught her mouth in another kiss, and anticipation shot up to her lips from deep in her belly, making her nipples and clit ache with it. She held him against her with her legs, one hand around the girth of his cock, the other in his hair. The length of him was against the juncture of her legs now, pressing against it, so close to where she wanted it, riding against her clit with the rhythm of his kiss. She tried to move it, but his hand came down over her wrist, pinning it in place as she moaned against his lips.
Then he broke away, kissing her shoulder as he loosened his grip, allowing her to angle his cock down to her entrance as she wiggled her hips toward him.
The head slipped just inside her, and she clenched hard around him, panting. His forehead was against her shoulder, his entire body rigid.
She was so wet he just slid into her body, so deep and hard that she almost came apart right then. He drove in again and again, pulling back almost to her entrance each time. One of her hands tightened in his hair, the other sliding between them, stroking herself in time to his thrusts. He moved faster, his hand reaching down, pushing hers away, driving her on with merciless skill and insistence. She felt herself slipping—away from herself, into the heat and the need and the sharp edge of an orgasm, approaching quickly.
It took her suddenly, jangling all her nerves and muddling her brain until she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but get lost in the intensity of it, hammering straight into her nervous system. She closed her eyes and let it take her, rocking against him, squeezing him with each wave after hot wave.
She came back to herself again just as Levi shuddered his own release. She slumped forward against his chest when he finished and took one shaking, gasping breath after another as he held her to his body, hard.
And just then, the barn doors exploded.
