His eyes snap open. The pale blue of his irises catches the faint moonlight filtering through the roof.
The heavy, terrified energy of our escape suddenly shifts, thickening the air between us into something dangerous and suffocating. The fear of getting caught, the adrenaline of the sprint, the sheer desperation of our survival—it all pools into a sudden, undeniable gravity.
“Rue,” he warns, his voice a low, gravelly scrape that sends a shiver down my spine. “What’re you doing?”
“I want you,” I whisper, my thumb tracing the line of his jaw.
His chest rises sharply against my own. The cold, detached mask he’s been using to push me away is completely gone, replaced by a dark, feral hunger that mirrors the frantic beating of my own heart.
“It does you no good to want me,” he breathes, his good hand coming up to wrap around my waist. His grip is possessive, his fingers digging into my hips. “I have nothing to give you but this fucking nightmare.”
“I don’t care.” I lean down and press my lips to his, desperate for the relief he brings me.
Noah groans in a raw guttural way. His hand tangles in my messy hair, pulling me down harder as he kisses me back with abrutal, bruising desperation. I press myself against him, careful of his bad arm.
I whimper as his tongue slides against mine. I shift my weight, straddling his hips in the narrow space between the hay bales, the rough twine of the hay scratching at my jeans.
“Fuck,” he curses against my mouth, his good hand sliding under the hem of my white T-shirt. His warm, calloused palm sears against the bare skin of my stomach, trailing upward until his thumb brushes the underside of my breast.
My breath hitches, my entire body igniting. Out here, hiding in the rafters of a stranger’s barn with the law hunting us, everything feels amplified. Every touch is electric. Every ragged breath feels like a rebellion.
“You're going to make me lose my goddamn mind,” Noah rasps, his lips trailing down my jaw to the sensitive skin of my neck. He bites down lightly on my collarbone, and I bite my lip to keep from crying out.
“Noah,” I challenge him softly, my hands sliding under his hoodie to feel the hard, bruised planes of his chest. “I don’t want anyone to walk in on us…”
He blinks, and then with a sudden, effortless surge of strength, he rolls, pinning my back against the scratchy hay. His large frame hovers over me, blocking out the moonlight. He stares down at me, his chest heaving, his eyes entirely consumed by a dark, possessive fire.
“If anyone comes through those doors today,” he whispers, his face inches from mine, “I’ll kill them before I let them touch you.”
The dark, twisted romance of his words sends a fresh wave of arousal straight between my thighs. I reach up, wrapping my arms around his neck, and pull him back down to me.
31
NOAH
I am entirely fucking consumedby her, and within a minute, I’m buried deep inside of her.
The world outside this cramped, dusty alcove of hay has ceased to exist, as I groan into her shoulder. There are no US Marshals hunting me. There is no stolen New Mexico SUV left abandoned at a travel plaza. There is only the frantic, ragged sound of Rue’s breathing, the scratch of this fucking hay against my knees, and the absolute, scorching heat of her body clamped tightly around mine.
She arches up into me, her nails biting into the bruised skin of my shoulders. I swallow her soft, breathless whimper with a brutal kiss, my hips driving forward.
“Just like that, Noah,” she murmurs into my ear, her hips grinding back against me. “Please, I’m so fucking close.”
Fuck, I love it when she whines like that.
It’s enough to put me on a razor’s edge, completely reckless, chasing my release. I angle my hips, pulling back just enough to feel her internal muscles flex and chase me, before driving deep again.
Rue gasps against my mouth. Her internal walls spasm around me, tight and desperate as she starts to tip over the edge of her own climax.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I groan, the sound vibrating deep in my chest, ready to let go and follow her into the blinding high.
I explode inside of her—just as the booming, aggressive bark of a massive dog echoes off the corrugated steel of the barn, vibrating straight through the floorboards and up into the rafters.
My blood runs cold.
Every muscle in my body locks into absolute, paralyzing rigidity, even as my dick finishes pulsing. My heart, which had been hammering with lust, seizes with a violent spike of pure adrenaline.
“Quiet down, Buster. It’s just me,”a gruff voice echoes from the other side of the thin metal wall.
