4. Amanda

Chapter 4

Amanda

I turn and my breasts brush his shirt. My nipples instantly peak toward him. I look up at his face, drinking in the hard line of his jaw, the wildness in his eyes. I’m not a stupid woman.

He’s a man who reminds me of a horse that will not be tamed. And I don’t want to tame him. I only want that wild ride. I want to be trapped in his strong arms begging him to take me and do his will with my body. I want to be owned by him and own him in return even if it’s just for a little while.

Those are the things I think but will never say because I know what it feels like to want something that’s out of reach. Like someone who really cares about me. I had it once but never saw him again after I was taken from the home.

“You don’t know where I’ll sleep?” I ask when he continues to stare down at me silently.

“Do you want to be under me?”

My mouth drops open at his abrupt statement. “Under you?” Did he really just say that? Like under him, pinned by his cock, under him?

I hate the hot blush spreading across my cheeks. My sex life in thought is a hell of a lot hotter than my actual sex life and I’ve always been on the shy side. “Did you mean…are you talking about like a bunk bed in a bunk house or something?”

Leo lifts a brow.

“Oh.” Apparently not.

I shrug trying to appear cool and nonchalant and not act like the only thrilling action I get involves my fingers.

He tips my chin up. “Or you can be over me. Whichever way you like it as long as we take that sweet ride together.”

OMG. OMG. I wonder if it would make me seem desperate if I told him to get in the truck and floor it to the ranch.

He lets go of my chin. “Decide what you want and let me know. If you don’t want me at all, then tell me.”

Like I need to mull that over. “I’m in,” I say.

“In?”

“Well, I’m not in. You’ll be in but ha ha…” my voice trails off and I seriously wish I wasn’t so damn awkward. I always wanted to be one of those girls who’s beautiful and confident.

But I’m just me. Weird little horny me. But that’s okay. Weird is okay. I’m okay.

Leo cups the back of my neck and lowers his head so we’re eye to eye. “Can I really have you?”

His gaze slides over my shirt and stops at my breasts.

“Yes.” I lift my hand slowly, tentatively, and put it against the side of his face. His beard is rough, and scratchy beneath my hand. “What will you do once you have me?”

“I’ll show you.”

His hands circle my waist, his fingers sliding beneath my shirt to caress my skin.

“But not here. It’s time to get in the truck.”

He picks me up like I’m no heavier than a loaf of bread and sits me on the seat.

“Buckle up, baby.”

I know as sure as it’s now night that his words are a precursor for what’s coming my way.

He gets in beside me. His jeans are tight across his thighs, and I sneak a peek at his crotch. As I’m watching, his dick hardens, pushing against the denim.

“Talk to me,” he says. “Tell me what you like in bed.”

“You,” I blurt out.

He grins and I’m hooked on the way his lips curve in amusement.

“That’s a given.” He glances at me. “Do you want to know what I’m thinking?”

I nod, unable to look away from him.

“I’m thinking I’m going to go so deep in you that I’ll have to keep my hand over your mouth to keep you from screaming so loud you’ll wake the neighbors twenty miles down the road.”

How fast is saying, oh hell yes that sounds good, appropriate? I clear my throat. “That sounds nice.” Then I mentally groan. Nice? Good job, Amanda. That’s sooo freaky naughty. He’ll really think I’m sexy as hell with talk like that.

“It will be nice.”

He puts his arm on the back of the seat and his fingers thread through my hair. “I’m going to hold your hair as I ride you.”

I squeeze my legs together. “Then what?”

“You like it when I talk this way?”

“Yes. I do.”

He tugs at my hair. “I’ll pull your head back as I enter you.”

I roll the window down because my lust is heating me up, making the truck feel like an oven.

He smiles and releases my hair, then begins massaging my shoulder. “Do you want my thick cock between your legs, Amanda?”

“So badly.” There’s something in the inflection of his voice that gives me the sense of connection with him again. “I know what I’m about to say sounds so off the wall.” I squeeze my fingers together in my lap. “But you remind me of someone.”

Scowling, Leo pulls his arm back. “I’ll fuck him out of your memory,” he says with a deep growl. “I’ll fuck you so good you’ll stay wet for days.”

“You don’t understand,” I start to explain but the truck slides to a hard stop in the driveway.

The ranch house is larger than I expected and beautifully landscaped. Light spills through the windows and it looks so much like a home that it makes me ache. Makes me wish I had that.

I climb out of the truck and Leo walks around to take my hand. He’s moving so fast I take two steps to every one of his to keep up with him.

When we go inside, I get a quick glimpse of the foyer before he’s barreling up the stairs with me in tow.

He pushes open a door and brings me inside. “Get ready to scream, honey.”

I open my mouth to respond but his lips claim mine, swallowing my words.

Leo

She tastes like summer and sunshine. Like a smile and blue skies. Like she was meant to be mine. I drink in the softness of her lips and I’m drowning in her heat, sparking, then burning.

My hand spreads across her lower back, pulling her into me. Her tits crush against my chest and still, it’s not close enough. I lower my hand to her firm ass and push her against me, against the throbbing hardness of my cock as I grind into her.

Amanda moans.

“You like the feel of me?”

“Yes.”

I grip her ass cheeks and pick her up from the floor.

She wraps her legs around me and I walk us toward my bed. “Wild and savage, the first time. That’s how I’ll take you. But if you don’t like it say the word and I’ll stop.”

“Take me that way and a dozen other ways,” she says.

“I’m so fucking hard for you that it hurts.” I drop her onto the mattress then strip my shirt off. I turn to toss it onto a chair.

Her eyes widen. “Your back,” she says with a cry torn from her.

I forgot the marks of survival that are there. The contact from steel-toed boots. The belt buckles. The scars from stitches I got from a broken beer bottle hurled at me.

I was the boy who hurt, the boy who bled, the boy who took the blows so the girl he draped himself over didn’t have to.

“What is this? What happened to you?”

“Nothing.” I straddle her on the bed, but she sits up, almost nose to nose with me, her eyes full of anxiety.

“Wait, Leo.”

“Did I move too fast?” I ask, backing down her legs.

“No…it’s… your scars…” She puts a hand on her forehead. “They look familiar. It would be too good to be if it were true.”

“What are you talking about?”

She dips her hand into her shirt and pulls out a necklace. “I might be mistaken, but do you recognize this?” She opens her hand.

A ladybug. No, not just any ladybug. One I recognize. The one I gave my broken angel years ago.

“How…” I run my fingers across the initials of the name I used to have. I don’t know what to think. What to feel. A wall of emotions races toward me. Emotions I buried deep when I lost her.

“Are you….” I can’t even say that name out loud.

She’s sobbing, tapping the center of her chest with her open palm. “It’s Sammie. I’m Sammie. They changed my name.”

Grief. Anger. Love. Pain . So much goddamn pain. My hand trembles when I reach to touch a strand of her hair. It’s her. I guess my heart knew even when my brain didn’t.

“You’re Alex, aren’t you?”

A name I haven’t heard since I left that place. A name I want to leave behind.

“You saved me,” she sobs and buries her head against my chest. “You kept me alive so many times. I didn’t get to say goodbye…I thought I lost you forever.”

I close my arms around her and let her cry.

I’ve spent years searching for her, hoping she was okay, losing weight and sleep wondering about her.

Her sobs finally peter out and she raises her head, her lips curving into a smile, her eyes lighting up. “Alex.”

The name sobers me. Alex is the name of a boy who did dark things so he could keep breathing.

I roll from the bed. “It’s Leo. Alex is gone, honey.”

I can’t do this. I can’t touch her knowing what she’s endured. I can’t touch her knowing I failed her.

I snatch my shirt from the floor and yank it over my head. I’m halfway to the door when she launches herself from the bed and throws her arms around me.

“I don’t care what name you go by now.”

She would care. She’d care if she knew what I had done, and she’d cringe in revulsion.

Her lips caress the back of my shirt over one of my deepest scars. “I want to finish what we had started.”

“I won’t add to your pain,” I say.

“You were never part of my pain.”

I don’t say anything because I can’t and finally, her arms drop away from my body. “I understand. I’ll wait for you.”

I close the bedroom door behind me, take two steps, and my knees buckle. I slide down against the wall. My angel is okay. She made it.

Now someone is after her again, wanting to hurt her. Making her scared. I found her that way years ago and I was too little to fight back. All I could do was take the blows for her.

But I’m not a little kid anymore. I’m a man who knows how to descend into hell to free an angel.