Page 64 of Under Pressure

It was a damn good thing that he loved it when she fought back.

They both knew exactly where it was going.

Electricity practically crackling between his lips and her neck and excitement pulsed through her body. He snarled, biting into her flesh, branding her as his, just the way she liked. He felt her heart thundering as he worked his way up her neck, the magnetism between them shifting them to a familiar place.

Her lip trembled as he worked, her hands slamming harder in desperation against his unmovable frame. She was fighting him as much as she was fighting herself, he could tell. He refused to drop his arms and make it easier for her. He needed her to hate him—to stay the fuck away. She was better off without him.

“I’ve always been a monster,” he growled as he kissed his way up to her lips.

“You don’t have to be,” she disputed.

“I do.”

A flash storm rolled in over the arid landscape and the air pressure dropped. It almost never rained in Southern California, and even less so in the desert hills.

“I’m going to give you a choice,” he countered, making his terms damn clear. “Stay and you get fucked—hard—right here, against this truck. Or leave and get the fuck out of my life.”

Her body stilled, and her gaze fell on him one last time. It was that moment that he saw deeply into her—deeper than he ever had. He grew sober, more conscious than he’d been in a long time. The storm was beginning to crack overhead, and it struck him that it was going to be the last time he’d ever see those sapphire eyes.

Then she slipped out of his arms, stepping away from him. Away from his body, out of arm’s reach, a confession poured out of her mouth—an unexpected, explosive confession.

“You want to know what happened last year? I found out I was pregnant. I tried to tell you—but you left.”

His jaw dropped as he were trying to find the right words to respond.

She continued, “But you already know, don’t you?”

“I—”

He was too late. There was no more pretending.

“Stay out of my life,” she threatened, livid. “You’ll never meet your son.”

Never.

Angry as he was, something inside him collapsed, watching her march away from him. He fell numb, unable to even flinch, as she grew smaller and smaller in the distance, finding her way out.

His cock ached, pulsed, needed relief. His mind pounded like he hadn’t slept in months. He couldn’t process any of what had happened, was happening. For the first time in a long time, dark clouds overhead opened, and Delta felt the cold, harsh rain of the desert dripping down the side of his face.

Chapter Twenty-Four

One year before

“I didn’t expect this from you,” Kendra moaned as Delta kissed up her neck.

The way he held her as he laid her down on his bed validated everything she was coming to think about this new mystery man.

“What didn’t you expect?” he said, slowly lifting her shirt, brushing his lips down her throat, chest and abdomen.

“I expected a guy like you would just as soon have me in his truck.” She gasped as he licked a line down her tight stomach, feeling ripples of excitement permeate through her core. “Let alone go through all the effort of bringing me to his home.”

Slowly, he undressed her as she drank in her new reality. He’d driven her from the bar to his place, barely able to keep his hands off her during the ride. It had been the same for her. Everything was coming down to that moment. It was the first time she was letting herself have what she—and also Delta--really wanted.

As he unbuttoned her fly, stripping off her jeans, he kissed slower and more intently around her thighs and the lacy panties she’d donned, driving her insane with arousal. He was teasing her—and teasing her well.

“I thought you’d look good on my bed,” he replied, grinning up to her. “And I was right.”

Then his rough, warm hands found their way down her smooth legs, massaging and making her feel so damn good. He slid his tongue up her thigh toward her panties, tugging at the side of the thin cotton garment. He wasn’t wasting time.

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