Trespass (23 page)

She laughed. “She sounds charming.”

Russ grinned, looking a bit relieved that his announcement hadn’t scared her.

“She’s half in love with you too,” Sarah added, the closest she’d ever come to saying those three little loaded words to a man. She stroked his neck and admired his handsome face. She touched his neck, leaned up to kiss him, light and shallow. “Give it another week and she’s a goner.”

His grin deepened, crinkling the corners of his eyes and giving him a dimple. “Good. I just wanted to say that, in case it slipped out when I lose my mind a couple minutes from now.”

“You have my permission. You won’t frighten me off.”

He nodded then began to thrust, slow and steady. Sarah shut her eyes and simply felt him, all the power and need and surrender in his body and voice. She ran her hands over his back and arms, fisted his hair as he sped up. “Good.”

“You feel so amazing,” he whispered. “I love the way you touch me.”

Like you’re hungry,
her memory echoed. She wanted to give him everything he craved. She slid both hands to his hips, tugging to punctuate each of his thrusts and urge him to be as rough as he liked. Russ accepted the invitation. His moans turned darker and his body grew aggressive. His hips shifted, spreading her wider and taking her deeper. He swore under his breath, and Sarah welcomed it all, drawing her nails across his back.

“Come on, Russ.”

“Not yet.” He slowed. Grabbing her waist, he rolled them over so he was beneath her.

Sarah grinned at him, pleased by the challenge. She leaned back and set her hands on his belly. “I can’t believe you’re mine,” she said, the words tumbling out of her subconscious.

Russ’s eyes looked glazed, and she could feel him inside her, ticking like a bomb. She gave him what he needed, drawing his cock out with a raising of her hips, then taking him back inside. She watched with satisfaction as Russ’s hands grasped the pillow beneath his head.

As she took him, Sarah felt her desire growing again, stronger than before. “How close are you?”

“Dunno,” Russ said, then gasped as she welcomed him deep again.

“Could you hold on maybe two minutes?”

He nodded wildly, looking incapable of speech.

She lowered down, bracing her hands beside Russ’s shoulders. The angles came naturally with him, and Sarah found what she needed, the brush of his pubic bone against her clit as she rode him. His hands cupped her breasts, and he raised his knees, scooting her forward and intensifying the friction between their bodies. She gave in to the feeling, dropping to her elbows and burying her face against his neck.

“You feel so good,” she whispered. She savored him, getting lost in everything masculine about him—deep voice, hard cock, strong muscles. She shoved her hands beneath his shoulders and dug her fingers into him, never wanting to let go. She hadn’t removed the necklace and its beads bit into the skin of her throat, beautiful. Russ moved his palms to her waist, following the greedy motions of her hips. As he began to thrust back, she lost it. Just that little taste of how needy and turned on he was threw her headlong toward a second climax.

“Russ.”

His hands and hips kept her riding him as the pleasure peaked. His aggression burned just as hot as the friction and penetration, and Sarah heard herself moaning as she came, the orgasm so intense it bordered on painful.

“Oh God.” She found herself back in reality, sweaty chest plastered to Russ’s, the quiet room filled with the heat and the smell of them. She pushed up to stare at his flushed face, and he tucked her hair behind her ears and raised his head and shoulders to kiss her chin.

“Wow. It’s so your turn.”

He urged her to roll over again, gentler this time. As she felt his weight on top of her, Sarah had a moment of intense clarity, a realization more potent and irrefutable than she’d ever felt before.

She stared straight into his eyes. “I love you.”

He said nothing, but his eyes stayed on hers, steady.

An urge to cry struck her, tingling in her sinuses. She’d always thought is was a load of baloney when movies showed people professing their devotion in bed, making love as opposed to good old-fashioned screwing. Now here that was, happening to her—to Sarah Novak from the crappiest, most dead-end corner of Buffalo. Before the tears could come she turned herself over to Russ, hugging her legs tight around his hips and hugging his cock deep inside her core.

He took the hint, eyes leaving her face to study her breasts and the view between their bodies. Tiny indentions traced an upside-down arch below his collarbone—the impressions of her necklace’s beads. He moved gently and slowly inside her.

Sarah bit her lip and smiled up at him. “Don’t go all tender on me now, just because we’re suddenly making love.”

He laughed softly. “Forgot what you said before, about never fucking you like a lady.”

“Damn straight.”

She thought she’d die right then as Russ’s arms tensed beside her, muscles standing out dramatically in the lamplight. He gave her exactly what she wanted, that hot, fast, mean slap of his body against hers and the forceful thrust of his cock as he finally put his pleasure first.

She stroked his chest as she studied his face. “Good.”

“I’m so close.” His hips sped into the home stretch, rough and perfect.

Sarah watched his abdomen as he hammered her, and raked his skin with her nails just to draw a final gasp from him.

“Yes.” His entire body froze, cock buried as deep as it went, eyes shut tight. Three tremors tightened and released him, and Russ sighed, eyes opening to stare down at her. For once, no regret lurked in his expression, just sex-drunk bliss.

Sarah stroked his face and brushed his hair from his eyes. “Good.” She traced his lips and they widened into a smile. He withdrew and got rid of the condom. When he returned he tugged the covers from beneath them and rolled them onto their sides. Cocooning their bodies together, he kissed her lightly as his breathing slowed. She placed a hand over his heart to feel its racing beats, keeping it there until the rhythm slowed to a faint murmur. Russ nodded off ages before she did, leaving her to bask in this extraordinary moment until she, too, finally joined him in the sweet oblivion.

Chapter Thirteen

Russ woke earlier than usual to find his arms locked tight around Sarah beneath the covers. For a minute his heart pounded, then eased. He’d given in. It was done, the decision turned over to his heart, and thank goodness. He didn’t care what she was to him anymore, or how long she’d be in his life. All he cared about was the way she looked at him, how alive he felt when they shared a ride or a meal or a bed.

Peeling his arm from her waist as gently as he could, he craned his body, hoping to turn off the impending alarm. She stirred and made a sleepy noise, and he froze, not wanting to rouse her.

“You awake?” he whispered.

“Mmm-hmm.”

He pressed his lips to her neck, breathed her in. After a few seconds’ silence he mumbled, “Thank you.”

She turned over to smile at him, eyes bleary. “What for?”

“For last night…after I was so wishy-washy about it that other night, then acted like a jackass at the bar.”

She laughed and reached back to pat his head awkwardly. “You’re allowed to be wishy-washy about sleeping with fugitives. That sounds wise. And you’re very much allowed to act like a jackass if it means you’re going to drag me home all jealous and give me what I want.”

“Anytime.”

“Oh good.” She turned away, pressing her back into Russ’s chest, pure heaven.

He cleared his throat and emptied his brain of a few thoughts that’d been brewing since the ride home from the bar. “Are you happy here?”

She nodded against the pillow. “I am.”

“And you think you’ll stick around for a while?”

She rolled over again to face him. “Yeah. I don’t want to go, Russ. I want to stay for a while, like you offered, help you out and earn my keep.”

“How long’s a while?”

She shrugged, lips pursed shyly. “As long as my back holds up?”

“Winters are real long and cold.”

“Can’t be worse than Buffalo.”

He smirked at that.

“I don’t know,” she said, expression turning sad. “Right now, naked in bed with you or outside under that gigantic sky…this is better than anything I could go back and find in New York. But it’s impractical. We both know that.”

His heart sank. “Yeah.”

“We can play house for a month or a year, but eventually something will happen. We’ll need to travel, or I’ll have to go to the hospital or drive you someplace, and the fact that I don’t want to share my ID with anyone is going to get problematic. And trust me, I’m leaving before I have a chance to get you into trouble for it.”

Russ entertained a couple of desperate, ridiculous schemes—paying for false paperwork, running off to Mexico with her. He sighed. Even in the most candy-coated of all outcomes, he couldn’t ever marry her, not without somebody someplace running her social security number through a series of legal checks. He envied his forefathers intensely at that moment, living in eras when every last movement a person made wasn’t linked to some computer system. She was right. This couldn’t ever be practical, not unless she went back and faced the music, and served who-knew-how-many years for what she’d gotten tangled up in. That thought hurt nearly as badly as the idea of never seeing her again once she left—this vibrant woman left to wither in a prison cell. Still, one thing scared him worse.

“I hate thinking of what it’ll be like for you, after you leave. Out there, wherever ‘there’ is.”

Her eyes snapped back and forth between each of his. “It scares me, too.”

“What if… Maybe nothing bad
would
happen. If you stayed.”

In the faint dawn light he saw her brows rise, intrigued or skeptical.

“Maybe you could stay here indefinitely. Help me out around the property, maybe get Harry to pay you under the table to bartend a couple nights a week, so you don’t feel like you owe so much?”

She smiled weakly. “Then one day I break my arm and you can’t fix it with your little vet kit, and the hospital staff wants to know who they’re checking in. Then you go to jail right alongside me for being an accomplice or harboring a fugitive or whatever.”

His chest deflated, and he nodded, knowing she was right.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Russ. It’s a relief just to be able to stay still for a while, and I’d like to enjoy that while it lasts. And I’d like to stay with you, at least for the winter. I’ll just be real careful about injuring myself too grievously.”

“Okay.”

“And if something does happen… I want you to tell the police you had no idea who I really am. Tell them you know only what we made up last night, that stuff about Florida. I want you to promise me you won’t throw yourself under the bus with me if something goes wrong. I’ll bet you’ve never lied before in your life, but if that ever happens, lie. Promise me.”

He looked past her face to the pink light slipping through the blinds.

“Russ.”

“I don’t know if I can promise that. Not if telling the authorities
you
lied to
me
this whole time could make things worse for you.”

She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Well, if that day ever does come, I hope you’ll think of your family first. And everyone around here who relies on you.”

Russ buried his face between her neck and the pillow, exhausted by this conversation. Terrified of the day he might watch her walk away from him and into who-knew-what, out there in the larger world. Terrified of being alone again after feeling what he did with her. He wished he had it in him to turn her in. At least he’d know she’d be safe. Or safe-ish, depending on what women’s prison was like… But he understood her well enough to believe that losing her freedom would damage her worse than losing her sense of safety.

“You’re right,” he said, words muffled. “Let’s enjoy the winter. Let’s just enjoy this for however long it lasts.”

She ran her fingers through his messy hair. “Good. And more importantly than that, let’s enjoy today. For all we know, it could be our last one together.”

“In that case, I’m making us pancakes.”

She smiled. “I won’t stop you.”

“Then as soon as the horses are tended to, we’re riding out to the river and I’m going to give you what we talked about before. You and me, outside, under all that sky.”

She laughed. “It’s got to be in the midfifties out there.”

“We’ll build a bonfire.”

Her grin turned shy. “Okay. I’d like that. Then later this morning I want to finish those curtains and maybe make you a matching tablecloth if there’s enough of that fabric left over.”

Russ had to grin himself at such a domestic proposition. “That sounds lovely. Bring this place into the twenty-first century.” He kissed her forehead, then her cheek. When he reached her mouth his priorities shifted, the thought of pancakes and curtains dissolving. Just as things were heating up, the alarm began to shriek. Russ swore, leaned over and slapped it off.

“Where were we?” Sarah asked.

He was all set to remind her when another ruckus spoiled the moment. The dogs began to bark, and he caught the unmistakable grind of tires against gravel. He cursed again and left the bed to yank his shorts up his legs.

The doorbell sounded as he reached the living room. Russ glanced out the window and spotted Ben’s cruiser parked alongside his truck. His heart dropped into his feet.

He ran back to the bedroom threshold, barely breathing. “The police are here.” The bell chimed again.

Sarah’s eyes went round, amber circles with white all around them. “Oh my God.”

“Go to the barn and hide.”

“What’ll you do?”

“I don’t know, but go. Now. I’ll find you when it’s safe to come out. If I shout at the dogs, that means he’s with me and you should stay put, okay?”

She nodded.

He grabbed his robe from the hook and thrust it at her. “Hurry. Before he goes around back looking for me.” He turned to the den and bellowed, “Hang on!”

She shoved her arms into the sleeves and ran for the back door, closing it quietly.