Captured Boxed Set: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys Who Will Capture Your Heart (50 page)

I draw back from his kiss to say, "I
have to get my pants down." I realize anyone could walk in on us. "We
should go into a stall."

He grins. A wild, sexy smile.
Quickly he gets my jeans and undies pushed down to my ankles. Then he gently
parts my legs. He steps over my scrunched up pants. With amazing speed he takes
a condom out of his wallet, which he stuffs in his back pocket—his pants are
unzipped but are still sitting on his hips. He lifts me. This way my legs are
wrapped around him. It’s incredibly erotic, since my ankles are caught together
by my clothes.

He shifts and I’m so wet and
excited his cock slides right in me. This is so wild and daring. I’m hugely
turned on.

Carrying me as if I’m weightless,
he takes us into one of the stalls.  I have my arms wrapped around his neck, so
he closes the door. It’s a tight fit, but thrilling.

Our mouths meet in hungry kisses.
He leans me back against the door, then drives deeply into me. He shifts his
body, so the shaft of his cock caresses my clit with each thrust. It’s so good.
I’m sobbing with pleasure into his kisses.

Then the teasing pressure against
my clit triggers my orgasm. God. God. God. I come, rocking on him. Sawyer
climaxes too, at the exact same moment. He staggers, almost collapsing.

He breaks our kiss, leans his
forehead against the door, gasping. He supports me on him, amazing me with his
strength.

As he kisses me again, I start
worrying about him. About his safety. About his future.

I
wonder about going to the police myself. But to do so would be a huge betrayal
to Sawyer.

* * *

Given how scared I am for Sawyer,
I shouldn’t care when I see Trey walk up to Sawyer at a frat party. I came with
Abby and Shanelle and ‘ran into’ Sawyer here. He still wants to convince Helman
I am not his girlfriend so we have to meet carefully. But we did slip into a
bedroom to kiss, and got interrupted by Trey and a girl—a different girl than
the one he was with at the last party. So much for the look I saw in his eyes
before. Guys like Trey are never really in love, I guess, with anyone but
themselves.

I am walking back from the
washroom, when I see Trey strike up a conversation with Sawyer.

"Are you actually dating
Claire Thomas? Are you crazy, man? Claire is a geek-fest." Laughing, Trey
keeps talking. He tells Sawyer how he just remembered me, and how I was a big,
brainy idiot who got completely tormented in high school.

I stop in my tracks. My heart
hammers. I’m listening to Trey tell Sawyer how geeky and unpopular I was in
high school and my blood is freezing to ice. Sawyer is definitely going to push
me away now.

"Fuck, you are an idiot,"
Sawyer snaps. "You’re insulting my girlfriend to my face. You have ten
seconds to get the fuck out of this house, before I tear you apart."

Trey looks at him blankly. Then
starts laughing. Drunkenly.

Sawyer smashes his fist into the
wall, near Trey’s head. His hand goes through the plaster, leaving a hole.

"Fuck." Trey spills his
beer on himself. He backs away.

"You have five seconds now,"
Sawyer says.

Trey takes off.

Sawyer sees me. He comes up to me,
kisses me with such heat that my shoes almost sizzle. "Let’s go back to my
place," he says. He leaves money with one of the frat guys to repair the
damage to the wall.

I pull my hood up to cover my hair.
Sawyer knows my deepest, darkest secret—high school humiliation—and he doesn’t
care.  He isn’t judging me based on the way everyone else treated me.

Sawyer is incredibly wonderful.

I want to do everything I can to
help him.

Chapter
Six

To keep our relationship quiet
and ‘hidden under wraps’, I suggest we spend most of our time in bed. We’ve
stayed under his covers for almost a whole week. Literally. I’ve missed three
quarters of my classes.

But I don’t care. Sawyer is like an
addiction. Even after I’ve had multiple orgasms, I’m exhausted, and I know I
should get out of his bed and study, he reaches over and plays with my pussy or
sucks my nipples and I’m instantly aroused again.

During our week of sexual
decadence, I learn a lot about Sawyer. We both like mystery novels and math
puzzles—along with anal sex, oral sex and…basically every kind of sex. On Sunday
morning we lie in his bed and do puzzles from the newspaper, while naked and
drinking coffee. Sawyer ties me up with ties and his clean socks to make love
to me. He introduces me to my slightly kinky side. When we talk, we share
stories about our pasts, I try to ease his mind, and he worries about keeping
me safe.

He has to race on a couple of
nights. He leaves me in his bed, where I study—and worry—until he returns. As
long as Sawyer does what Helman tells him to do, it looks like he will stay
safe.

But I keep wishing there was a way
I could get the men who call themselves his "sponsors" arrested. If
they are responsible for Jaxon’s accident, they have committed murder and they
should pay for it. But Sawyer refuses to go to the cops. Nor will he tell me where
he races.

Sometimes, when he’s engrossed in
studying, I just sit and watch him. He looks sexy when he’s deep in thought,
when his black lashes dip over his violet eyes. I know he used his bike racing
winnings to pay for his mom’s cancer treatment, buy this house, and his car and
truck and two motorcycles. He also donated a lot to local charities. He buys
thousands of dollars of presents for toy drives for children. He tries to use
the money he wins by illegal racing to do good.

On Thursday night, he drives me to
a concert at one of the local bars. A lot of indie bands play there, and he’s
dropping me off so I can meet Abby and Shanelle.

"Are you really willing to
give up racing?" I ask. "You wouldn’t have the same kind of income. I
know you do a lot of good things with the money. Are you sure you don’t quit
because you know you couldn’t help your mom? And buy the things you can buy?"

This has been bugging me for days.
The fear that he tells me he wants to quit, but it’s not really true.

He doesn’t say anything.

"Sawyer—" I know he’s
driving, but I need to know the truth. I care about him. I want to help him.
But what’s the point if the real truth is that he doesn’t want to give up the
money?

"You’d hate me if I said I was
staying for the money, Claire. But I need it. You don’t know what it is like—"

"I do know! My mom used to
work two jobs and I would look after my brother, so we could afford to pay for
his drugs. I do know what it’s like. I think you would be willing to sacrifice
yourself to help your mother—"

"Shouldn’t I be willing to do
that?" he asks sharply, interrupting me.

"I don’t think she would want
you to."

"You’re right, she doesn’t.
Mom won’t speak to me anymore because of the bike racing. But she does cash my
checks, because she doesn’t want to die either, and because she needs money for
herself and my sisters. She may hate what I’m doing and she may have told me
not to come home unless I change my fucking life, but she needs me to be making
tens of thousands of dollars on a race."

"Your mother won’t speak to
you?"

"That’s her solution to me
putting myself in danger. She can’t deal with it, so she told me not to come
home. But like I say, she cashes the checks." He turns to me. "If I
don’t stop racing, are you going to say you don’t want to see me again?"

"No. I want to see you."
I
don’t want to lose you.

"It’s true that I’m fucking
trapped. But I did it for money. I’m still doing it for money. Yeah, I wanted a
career. I wanted to be an engineer. But I need to make a lot of money. Fast."

"What if they kill you?"

"Then I died trying to help my
family." He shrugs. "I’m not good with guilt."

"I can’t believe it. You feel
so responsible for your family you’d rather die than let them down? This is
wrong."

"It’s who I am. Apparently,
the more you get to know me, the less you like me."

"That’s not true!" I
soften my tone. "You sound so angry."

"Maybe I am angry. Maybe I was
happy with my life before you came along." His eyes are focused on the
road, his mouth hard and tight. "You’ve made me doubt everything. I
figured I’d found something I was good at, something that solved all my
problems. Yeah, it’s risky, but that’s why I make money. You make me want to
get out of it; you make me want to escape. If I didn’t have you, I’d be happy."

I swallow hard. "Okay, I’m
sorry. I’m sorry I made you unhappy." I think I’m being wrongfully blamed
and it hurts deeply.

Sawyer turns so fast, he jerks the
wheel. We veer toward a light standard. He quickly straightens the car. "I
didn’t mean it like that."

"You did. You’re angry at me.
You wanted to push me away. And you’re doing a really good job." I start
to wonder—maybe it’s more than his dangerous bike racing lifestyle that has led
him to have only one night stands. Maybe, in his heart, he doesn’t want more of
a relationship. He wants to drive me away.

"I just don’t know what the
truth is," I say. "Are you really angry? Are you really pushing me
away to protect me? We’ve been together for a couple of weeks. Maybe this is
starting to feel too serious to you."

He takes one hand off the wheel and
rubs his gorgeous, stubble-covered jaw. "When you dated before, how did it
last for you?" he asks.

"Uh," I say. Actually,
never. I guess I should be honest. "I’ve never really had a relationship
before," I admit. I expect he is going to be shocked.

But he says, "Then I’m sorry
for what I just said. I was a jerk. I don’t want to push you away."

"What about you?" I ask
softly. "Have you ever had a long term commitment?"

"Yeah, I have. And I lost her."

Pain again. I hear it sharp and
brittle in his voice. "You broke up."

"She took her own life."

"Because you broke up?"
As soon as I say it, I wish I could haul the words back. Sometimes my brain
works far ahead of my sense of social etiquette. I was trying to figure out
what exactly happened, and I should have been thinking about speaking carefully
so I didn’t hurt him more.

"No, while we were dating. She
killed herself while we were together. While I was in love with her and I
thought she was in love with me." He shakes his head. "There are a
lot of reasons you should stay away from me—"

"And one of them is that you
have a broken heart," I say softly. A broken heart that hasn’t healed.
Maybe the time he’s spent with me reminds me of how much he misses her. "You’ve
had a lot of terrible things happen."

"I’m aware of that," he
snaps.

That hurts. I know I said a clumsy
thing, but it hurts that he attacked it—and me. Maybe this is why he was
willing to risk his life racing bikes. He lost someone he loved, so he doesn’t
care about his own life.

But that’s wrong.

I need to find a way to get him out
of racing.

The car stops. We’ve reached the
concert. Without saying another word, I get out of his truck. He gets out too.

"What are you doing?"

"I don’t know. I’m sorry. I
can’t just drive away from you." He pushes through the crowd at the
entrance to the pub, and I follow him in. We stand side-by-side, but he doesn’t
say a word. He buys me a soft drink without asking if I want one.

He’s still in love with someone
else. I have to accept that.

It doesn’t change the fact I care
about him. It just means we aren’t going to have a relationship.

It
doesn’t change my determination to save him from the deadly thugs who are using
him as a pawn.

* * *

As the crowd grows to watch the
band, Sawyer leaves me to get more drinks. Standing on tiptoes, I see him over
the crowd. He’s carrying two glasses of Coke, but he’s been waylaid by a girl.

It’s Shanelle. She looks a little
tipsy—apparently she had a few drinks before coming here. She is draped over
Sawyer’s arm, stroking his shoulder and giggling.

Shanelle knows Sawyer and I are
dating. She is supposed to be my friend, but apparently all is fair when a guy
like Sawyer is concerned. And she did have a one night stand with him.

I wonder how intimately they…talked
that night.

That’s what really grips my heart
and twists.  Did he share as much with her as he did with me? Was it just sex
between them? Did he give her the same gorgeous smiles he gave me?

Uh, of course he did. That is how
he smiles.

But did he open his heart to her?

They talk together in low voices. I
move closer, feeling like an idiot. I have no right to listen in and I’m going
to leave, when I hear Shanelle use my name.

"Claire’s whole plan was to
have a one night stand with you and learn some seduction techniques. Then apply
them to Trey, this guy she’s been crazy about since high school," she
tells Sawyer. "She was using you to teach her about sex."

It shouldn’t matter. I mean, I know
now that he is still grieving. But his expression changes. His mouth hardens
and his eyes go cold. "I didn’t know that," he says.

"It’s totally true," she
says. "I assumed that’s why you two have been together for more than one
night. A course in great sex apparently takes longer."

He looks around. I slip behind a
large Yardley football player—who is fairly huge even without his protective
equipment—and hide.

I don’t know why I’m hiding.

So I
step out again, right in front of Sawyer.

* * *

We’re outside, in the parking
lot. The concert is over and Sawyer is taking me home. I know I have to be
honest. "I heard you talking to Shanelle. I didn’t mean to overhear, but I
was close to you, and when she mentioned my name, I listened."

Sawyer leans back against the door
of his truck. He’s studying me. "That Trey guy—he was the one who talked
to me at the party."

I hate to admit it now. "Yes,
that was Trey."

Sawyer’s dark blond brows draw
together. "You like him?"

"I did in
high school
.
Years ago. It was a stupid, meaningless crush, based solely on Trey’s looks as
I had no idea he lacks both brain and personality."

Sawyer’s lips twitch in a smile for
a second, but it disappears. "So that’s why you wanted to go to bed with
me? To learn how to seduce that asshole?"

"No! I mean—"

"It is, Claire. That’s why you
propositioned me, which I have discovered is very unlike you."

"I—" I’m floundering. I
did want to experience sex. I did think Sawyer was gorgeous. My heart had been
broken by seeing Trey with another girl. "I don’t know why I did it. But
when I—uh, when we made love, I did not care about Trey. I don’t care about
him."

He looks so hurt. I can’t
understand it. He just told me that I made him unhappy, and that he was in love
with someone else—someone he couldn’t forget. How can he be hurt by a stupid
crush I had on Trey that is now over? Is his pride hurt because he thought I
had been crazy about him from when I first saw him and that was why I
propositioned him?

He’s had one blow after another:
losing his girlfriend, having his mother reject him, losing Jaxon, having to do
whatever a group of violent criminals want him to do.

"I couldn’t care less about
Trey now," I say. "I do care about you. Even if you don’t want us to
date, I won’t stop caring about you."

"I care about you." He
approaches me, his head tipped down. He holds my gaze. "I really care
about you. I guess it scares me. My girlfriend’s name was Kerry. I knew she was
unhappy about stuff at home, but I acted like she didn’t need help. I acted
like she didn’t need anyone other than me. She really needed to talk to someone
who knew how to help her through depression. My stupidity hurt her. My stubborn
need to be the most important person in her life killed her. Because if I’d
been supportive and got help for her, she wouldn’t have committed suicide—"

"You don’t know that," I
gasp. "And you were young, too. I don’t think it was your fault."

"I’ve been afraid to tell
anyone about that. You’re the only person who knows."

I get up on my tiptoes and touch my
lips to his. After wanting to learn how to kiss, I know how to kiss Sawyer now.
Tenderly. Lovingly.

He cups my face and returns my
kiss.

When we stop and take ragged
breaths, he looks deeply into my eyes. "I can’t understand how you can
accept me, now that you know about this."