* * *
This kiss is a rip current. I'm being sucked under and pulled out to the Saxon Sea.
His lips are soft and powerful, his tongue smooth and insistent and hot and searching, and I don't want to breathe, don't want to come up for air, don't want to swim parallel to the shore—I don't want to escape this rip current.
I cradle the stubble on his jaw, clutch him to me, fusing my mouth with his and delving into the kiss with all that I am.
How can I not?
It's not every day a former assassin with the body of a golden god kisses the very soul out of your body.
His knee sinks into the seat between my thighs, dipping me forward. His fingers steal into my hair, stutter along my scalp, and god, god, god, his touch is like magic, sizzling into my core, igniting me from the inside out. His other hand cups my cheek, and fuck, he's kissing me as if he never wants to stop. Never intends to stop.
I don't want him to.
I curl my hand around the back of his neck, up his nape, against the back of his head, and with my other I grip the back of his thigh, pull him closer. His ass is carved out of pure marble. His broad, hard back is hot to the touch through his thin dress shirt. Touch him everywhere I can reach—his cliff-like shoulders, thick biceps, narrow waist. Under the hem of his shirt, over the ridges of his abs. God, his abs. Yeah, I'm a shallow girl, a sucker for a killer set of abs.
I could kiss him forever.
He pulls away first, growling. "God fucking dammit, woman." He goes in for more, clawing a handful of my hair into a knotted grip that makes my pussy clench and my nipples ache. Pulls away again. "Your fuckin' mouth, Terra. It's every fuckin' drug on the planet, and then some. Fuckin' addictive." He bites my lower lip. "Especially now that I know how it feels wrapped around my cock."
The moment is ruined by the pop of a gunshot and Saxon grunting in pain and shock.
He surges over me, curling into the car on top of me, yanking the door closed, his hard weight suddenly crushing me. The pops and bangs of gunfire are immediately muffled, but the cracks and smacks of the rounds hitting the armored SUV are deafening and terrifying.
The rear glass is pocked and spiderwebbed. Saxon scrambles over the console and into the driver's seat, shifting into gear and moving the accelerator to the floor. The heavy SUV rockets forward, the tuned V8 responding beautifully. And then the turbos kick in, boost spooling up and releasing, smashing us back into the seat. I twist and look behind us—a big black SUV is behind us, and falling up away swiftly, hopelessly outmatched by whatever monstrosity of an engine this thing is running.
The freeway curves and Saxon takes the curve with the accelerator on the floor.
"Hold on," he snaps.
I grip the oh-shit bar, tighten my seatbelt, and brace as he takes an exit—he taps the brakes and hauls on the wheel, and we scream around the exit ramp at sixty-something miles per hour, the body rolling sickeningly, but holding to the road by some miracle.
The light at the end of the exit is red, but there's no traffic, so Saxon doesn't slow or stop, just blasts right through the intersection on a sharp left turn. It's a tiny rural Massachusetts town, little more than a McDonald’s, a grocery store, a dollar store, and a few dive bars. A single traffic light blinks yellow. The nav system is chattering at Saxon, admonishing him to make a U-turn. To turn left in a quarter of a mile. He ignores the nav and hauls ass down the two-lane road out of the town and onto a non-descript two-lane highway through nowhere, from nowhere, and to nowhere. At least, that's how it seems to a city girl like me.
I glance behind us. "I don't see them."
He doesn't slow down. "Keep watching."
I glance behind us every few seconds, but no headlights appear. He whips a right turn at a four-way intersection, for once following the GPS's direction. After a few miles, he takes a left, and then another right puts us on an on-ramp onto the freeway again, where he finally eases off the accelerator until we slow to a legal speed.
Saxon leans forward. "How bad is it?"
There's a big spreading crimson stain on the white of his shirt, low on his back near his right side. I lift the hem carefully—not carefully enough because he hisses as the shirt unsticks from the bloody wound. I dab the area with the hem.
"Not too bad," I report. "Creased you. Stitches, maybe." I lean and twist and unbutton his shirt. "Come on, off with it."
He shrugs out of it—fuck me. Fuck, fuck, fuck me. He's absolutely jacked and shredded. I've never met a man built like him. And his skin is littered with scars. Bullet holes, cuts, burns. Other scars with less obvious provenance.
"Knife?" I ask.
He digs in his pocket and produces a pocketknife. I use it to cut the sleeves off and tie them together and then cut a big swatch which I fold several times. I place the makeshift patch over the wound and tie it in place with the tied-together sleeves. Not great, but better than nothing and the best we're gonna get with no medical supplies.
"You've done that before," Saxon remarks.
