Page 28 of Captive of Outlaws

I WHIRL AROUND TOWARDthe front porch, surprised to feel my body trembling.

Staring down at me is Rob, looking a bit sleepy-eyed and tousle-headed.

And bare-chested. Like, the man is fully-half naked. Wearing nothing but a forest-green plaid pair of pajama pants.

And I have to say, the body on him is...not bad. He doesn’t have the sheer iron bulk of a weightlifter, like LJ does, but he’s definitely cut. The long, lean muscles of his chest and abs narrowing down to a taut V that disappears into the waistband of those pajama pants, hard flesh against soft fabric.

I swallow hard in spite of myself.

“What the hell is going on?” Rob cries. He takes the steps two at a time, storming out to the driveway.

“Please...” I say. “Please don’t...”

I squint my eyes shut as he advances, but when I dare toopen them, Rob’s up in LJ’s face, not mine.

“We’ve talked about this,” Rob grits out. “She’s staying here. Period. And you’re just going to have to come to terms with it.”

“Oh, really?” LJ all but snarls, his arched lips curving. “Does she know that? Because it seems like she was ready to make a break for it. Weren’t you, Princess?” He turns on me.

Rob does, too, his grass-green eyes trained on me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. Nervously, I shuffle my weight from foot to foot.

“Maren—”

“Don’t!” I cry, throwing my arms in the air in front of my face, crossing them protectively and sending the giant sleeves of the sweatshirt sliding down to my elbows.

Rob stops. But his voice is still ice cold.

“What,” he says, “thefuckis that?”

I’m genuinely confused. “What the fuck is what?” I glance around, behind me, at the ground, but Rob’s staring right at me. At my forearms.

He seizes me by the wrist, firm and commanding, and yanks my arm up to his face almost hard enough to hurt.

“This,” he says, and traces a finger over the pale flesh just inside my elbow.

The feeling of his touch against my skin is distracting. I hate that I like it, hate that I can imagine those rough hands running over other places on my body, hate that I’m such a slave to my damn hormones that even in this tense moment my body’s urging me to climb this guy like a tree.

But then I realize what he’s looking at, and I set my jaw.

“It’s nothing,” I say, barely glancing at the fingertip-sized rosette of raised tissue.

“Bullshit,” he growls.

“A birthmark,” I say, thinking quickly, but Rob just drops my arm, hard.

“Bullshit,” he says again. “That’s a burn mark, Maren. A scar. Who did that to you?”

His anger has my breath catching in my chest. No one’s ever beenangryon my behalf before. Angryaroundme, sure. Angryatme—absolutely. I mean, look at the freaking cigarette burn.

But never angryforme.

“Who did it, Maren?” Rob repeats, his voice lower and softer.

LJ snorts. “You really think she was just hiding out in her car in the woods for fun? Seems more like she was running away. And now she’s doing it again.”

My heart trips in my chest at his words. A muscle in Rob’s jaw tics, but LJ puts a hand on his shoulder like he’s stopping him from going ballistic.

“Bad boyfriend?” Rob grits out.

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