“Damn it, Delilah—”
“Goodnight my love,” she said, disconnecting the call before he could say another word.Scratch everything, that woman was industrial-grade crazy, innocence be damned.
Standing, he rolled his shoulders, breathed deeply, and cracked his neck left, then right, rolling his shoulders three times more before sitting down in front of the monitor, prepared to find out all he could about Delilah no-last-name-given.
An hour and a half later, he hadn’t found anything. He’d discovered a lot about the people whose house she was living in. The older retired couple were good folks, by first reckoning. They were devoted to their faith, their five children, and their eight grandchildren. Financially they lived within their means and had no outstanding debt. More importantly, they didn’t have any relatives named Delilah. He’d checked two generations before them and after.
At least he knew where Delilah was. Maybe he’d have one of his Brood mates go to the house and investigate tomorrow, maybe even bring back her fingerprints so he could run them. He’d do it himself but thought it best to stay as far from the woman as possible.
It was after two in the morning when he turned off his computer, secured his house, and went to his bedroom to lay down. An hour later, he was no closer to sleep. He couldn’t corral his thoughts. Delilah was an irritant he didn’t need; his inability to keep calm, the struggle he was having managing his episodes was a danger to everything he held dear, and Stormy…his thoughts and needs always circled back to Stormy.
And that was a reality that couldn’t be borne.
Rising from his bed he adjusted his boxers, laced on his gray steel-toed Doc Marten ankle boots, pulled on his Sooners baseball cap, and grabbed his gun and his keys as he headed out the front door. In less than an hour, he was parked in front of Stormy’s house. The Alameda neighborhood was quiet, dark and quiet. He rubbed his hands over his face, eyes burning with fatigue even if his body refused to relax.
He’d thought life would return to normal after he, Lynx, and Zeus returned from dealing with Sabrina’s ex in Florida. However, bearing witness to Zeus and Sabrina sacrificing themselves for each other, seeing them survive being beaten bloody for each other, watching them heal and love on each other…that shit was messing him up in a way he couldn’t have foreseen. His grands, the love they had for each other was rock-solid, unflinching. Mama and Terry, their long-burning passion, fierce devotion to each other, unstoppable, but those two unions were aberrations of past generations. Nothing he’d witnessed in his own generation seemed to come close to those couples. Until Zeus met Sabrina, and he hadn’t been right since. Now things left buried if not forgotten, were intruding into his reality, feeding a malignancy inside of him powerful enough to destroy the perfect life he created from the inside out.
Stepping out of his truck, cold air hit Big Country like his daddy would on those nights when Belle Mère abandoned their family for livelier times—hard and without remorse. Now, like then, Big Country shook it off, fought his way through it, as he made his way to Stormy’s front door.
Stormy snapped awake on the brink of orgasm, remnants of the dream surrounding her. She still felt a half-mad Lucas gripping the back of her neck, pinning her on her hands and knees. Still felt him ramming her from behind in bone-jarring thrusts as a storm raged around them. She still felt her hands digging into earth that oozed like rusted blood through her fingers as she screamed out…
Trembling, she sat up and wiped sweat from her face. Her whole body was drenched in it, her sleep shirt and sheets were soaked with it.
Jesus, she couldn’t take this much longer, it was like her libido was raging over being ignored for so long. Lucas had riled it up with words of bayou’s in the moonlight and it hadn’t been acting right since. Shoving the covers off her, she pushed them aside and perched on the edge of the bed as she peeled off her nightshirt and panties.
Sudden banging at her front door made her startle. It was so forceful she was afraid the double doors would break off their hinges. Cursing, she reached for her knee-length teal robe and wrapped it around her body, tying the belt around her waist as she marched downstairs knowing,knowing, no one except cops or inbred country boys banged on residential doors in the dead of the night like that.
Bare feet slapping against the cherry-oak floor, she stopped to disarm the alarm, stepped toward the front door and looked through the peephole before cracking the door open. Lucas used his massive body to push through to her foyer, holding a gun in one hand and keys in the other. He was wearing a pair of dark blue boxers, a beat-up baseball cap over his wild hair, a pair of camel-colored suede boots…and a weary smile, nothing more.
Her nipples hardened painfully.
“Sienna Red, as I live and breathe,” he uttered as he kicked the door shut and locked it.
“Stormy. It’s Stormy,” she snapped, trying to hide that she was a jittery shaking mess on the inside. “Use it.”
“Oh, I’m gonna use it good and well, darlin’.”
She crossed her arms under her breasts, looking away from the temptation trapped in the crystallized green of his eyes and looked down at his gun. “So what, is this supposed to be payback for this morning?”
“I understand how you could draw that conclusion, but naw, that’s not me at all, I’m not a violent man, I’m a shy fella.” She pursed her lips in disbelief. “No, I’m serious now, I’m shy. Get all tongue-tied and start twitching at the very idea of talking to a beautiful woman such as yourself.”
“I distinctly remember you holding me in your arms and serenading me with blatant lies Friday night, so you can take that shy bullsh—”
“It’s a different kind of shy! It ain’t as obvious because I’m so big… and manly.”
“You’re such an idiot,” she muttered as she smiled. She couldn’t help it.
His gazed lingering on her unbound breasts. “Biggest idiot I know.”
The way her heart quickened, the way her clit fired shots of pleasure through to her womb, readying itself, made her the biggest idiotsheknew. “Why are you here, Lucas?”
“Can’t sleep,” he groused, tossing his keys and hat onto the entryway table beside the door, rubbing a hand over his face.
“So what am I supposed to do, sing you a lullaby?”
He shook his head, his gaze turning roguish. “I’d rather be rocked to sleep.”
Stormy took a step back but couldn’t escape his touch as he grabbed her upper arm. He turned off the foyer light and dragged her up the stairs, seemingly guided by the second-floor illumination from her bedroom. Lucas released her arm as he stepped into the room, toeing off his boots before walking over to place his phone and gun on the end table next to her bed.
