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“Well then, stud, looks like you have until daylight to see how effective you can be in making me accept the answers to the questions I’ll be asking when the sun rises.” Her head tilted, those green eyes suddenly so fucking sultry, sexy, that lust tightened his body to a breaking point. “So, Jack, do your worst.”
He was out of his chair in the next breath, and he stalked to the basement door, jerked it open, and yelled down, “Come up here before daylight and I’ll fucking shoot you.”
He slammed the door closed, turned back to a far-too-amused Poppy, and let the reins he kept on himself where she was concerned slowly drop away.
She’d been sixteen when he realized the girl he’d tried to protect for so long was growing up. From the day he’d been shipped out of Barboursville to the foster home that actually saved his life, he’d threatened, bargained with, and bribed everyone he knew in Barboursville to keep her safe. Just keep her safe. Until she turned fifteen and he’d seen the first teenage Don Juan trying to charm her. After that, he threw all his efforts into keeping Poppy innocent.
She was a baby, he’d reasoned, too young for a broken heart or to have all her sweet innocence stolen before she knew what it was herself.
Then there was the summer she turned seventeen. When he’d burst into that run-down shack after hearing her screams to see that bastard collapsed over her, dead. Because he hadn’t protected her properly. And she’d had to protect herself instead.
And he made certain that if any man seemed to be getting too close, he was quickly warned away.
Because he knew he’d come back for her. Inside, where a man can’t lie to himself and can only hide from the truth for so long, Jack had known he hadn’t watched over her because of her kindness that cold winter’s day.
He’d watched over her because when that seven-year-old girl had put her hands on her hips and demanded he get his butt in the house right now, so he could get warm and her momma could feed him, he’d claimed her.
She had owned every part of him after that, even after her father had sent him to face the worst hell a child could face, still, Poppy Octavia Porter had owned him.
All the way to his broken, scarred, black soul.
He’d reined himself in to protect her. Her innocence, her inexperience, her dreams of a tender lover. He’d fought to hold back the dark, gnawing hunger he felt for this woman, to ensure she never knew a moment’s hesitation with him.
She’d grown up. Matured. And maybe he’d forgotten that in his need to protect her. And if he knew to his soul he belonged to her, then every part of him belonged.
Even the hunger he had for her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Poppy watched the look that came over his face.
Sexual. Intense.
His look darkened to the color of thunderclouds, and a hint of red stained the sun-bronzed cheeks.
She was crazy to push him like that, and she knew it.
Jack wasn’t a man to try to convince a woman to let him touch her. He would know if a woman wanted to be touched, and if he wanted her, then he’d touch.
He was confident. Secure in himself.
And he believed he wasn’t a good man. Her heart ached with that knowledge.
As she sat in the chair, staring back at him, wondering what he’d do, she knew the moment he had made that decision.
He removed his leather vest and tossed it to the counter, then his T-shirt. Dressed in nothing but jeans and those black leather chaps, his hard, muscular body rippling, he released the button and zipper of his jeans.
Poppy lost her breath.
She lost her sanity.
As he stepped to her, he released his erection from his jeans, his fingers curling around it, stroking up to the crest, then down again.
She had to catch her breath, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen.
The dark crest was swollen, plum-shaped, throbbing. Moisture gleamed on the broad tip, and as she watched, a bead of pre-come welled from the slit.
She could feel the heavy, sexual lassitude filling her. That feeling that even bourbon couldn’t give her, invading her senses. It was like being drunk and being high at the same time as her body, her senses began preparing her for him.
