2. Wentworth
TWO
Wentworth
WHILE KAIT DRIVES US DOWN THE MOUNTAIN, I TEXT THE driver to see how close he is.
Unknown: I’ve arrived and am parked at the ranch entrance as instructed, sir.
Me: Thanks. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.
Hitting send, I drop my phone into my lap and look at Kait. She looks nervous. Fuck that—she looks scared.
Of course she’s scared, asshole. You asked her to marry you and she said yes, which means she just wiggled her way out of one trap and into another.
I open my mouth to tell her that she can change her mind. That she doesn’t have to marry me. Not if she doesn’t want to. That it was a stupid, impulsive thing to ask, but I don’t because as stupid and impulsive as it was, I don’t want to take it back. I don’t want her to change her mind.
I want her.
To keep her, for as long as she’ll let me.
“It’s going to be okay.” I keep saying it and even though I sound like an idiot every time I do, I can’t seem to stop. “We’ll be long gone before anyone even knows we left and married before anyone can do anything about it.”
“I know.” She shoots me a quick look before she refocuses on the road in front of us. “It’s just…”
I think I’m making a mistake.
I got caught up in the moment.
I don’t really want to marry you.
“Just what?” When she doesn’t answer me, I reach across the SUV’s console and give her thigh a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay, Sunshine—you can say it. Whatever it is, I?—”
“Where will we go… after?” She finally blurts it out. “I mean, after Helena. After?—”
After you’re cleared on vehicular manslaughter charges and the tabloids stop chasing you around.
“Anywhere.” I give her another squeeze, more relieved that she doesn’t want to bail than I have a right to be. “Anywhere you want.”
“I’ve never been there,” she tells me while the road levels out beneath us. Instead of taking a right that will take us to the house, she continues straight ahead, toward the long service road that’ll lead us off the ranch.
“Never been where?” I ask while I reluctantly let go of her thigh to settle back into my seat.
She flashes me another look, this one accompanied by a quick grin. “Anywhere.”
Letting out a loud bark of laughter, I give her a nod. “Then anywhere is the first place we’ll go.”
KAIT PARKS THE SUV ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, ABOUT thirty yards from the wrought iron arch that marks her family’s ranch. On the other side of it, a stretched, black Escalade is idling with nothing but it’s running lights to show us the way.
Killing the engine, Kait stashes the keys to her mother’s car under the seat while I go around the back to open the hatch. Shouldering both my duffle and her backpack, I close it as quietly as I can before making my way to the front of the Land Rover where she’s waiting for me, my brown leather portfolio clutched to her chest.
“Ready?” Against my better judgment and everything that I’m hoping, I give her one last chance to change her mind. All she has to do is get back into her mother’s car and drive home.
If she does that, it’ll take everything I have to keep myself from tackling her in the dirt and throwing her into the waiting SUV.
Instead of running, she casts her look past me, down the dark road, at the house that sits at the end of it. “No.”
“You can change your mind, Sunshine,” I tell her, even though I’m not entirely sure it’s true.
“No…” Turning, she tilts her head so she can look up at me. “I can’t.” Moving closer, she pushes herself up onto her tiptoes. “I don’t want to.”
That’s it.
That’s all I need to hear.
Jerking the portfolio out of her grip, I toss it onto the hood of the car before I wrap an arm around to pull her close. “I’m glad you said that...” Lowering my mouth to hers, I trace the curve of her lush lower lip with the tip of my tongue, my dick stiffening in an instant when I feel her soft gasp brush against my lips.
“Why’s that?” she whispers it, each word skimming and teasing her mouth against mine.
“Because I was beginning to plan your kidnapping.” Suddenly, I’m sure that if I don’t get her into the waiting SUV, I’m going to end up getting her naked and bending her over the hood of her mother’s car. I can see it—Kait’s jeans in a dusty heap in the middle of the road. Legs spread wide. Pussy bare and on display. Wet and swollen. Eager to be filled. Me, standing behind her. Jeans yanked down around my hips. The head of my hard, thick cock splitting the seam of her?—
Fuck.
Later.
I’ll draw it later.
Then we’ll do it for real.
Forcing myself to let her go, I take a step back. “We have to leave.” Circling my hand around her wrist, I start the walk to the SUV, pulling her behind me in my wake. “Now.”
“Why?”
I can hear it in her tone—she knows exactly why.
Stopping in front of the Escalade, I signal the driver to stay where he is when he starts to move. I can open my own fucking door. “Because I’m about two seconds away from bending you over the hood of your mother’s car,” I answer her anyway, hoping to shock her into behaving.
No such luck.
“And?”
Groaning softly, I shake my head. “And I don’t think you’re ready to be fucked in public, Sunshine.”
“Is that something you’d want to do?” Looking up at me with wide blue eyes, she rolls that plump lower lip of hers between her teeth. “Fuck me in public?”
I consider lying. Telling her I’d never do something like that. That the thought had never even entered my mind.
Instead, I tell her the truth.
Pulling the door open, I offer my free hand to help her into the waiting SUV. “I’d fuck you in the middle of Vatican Square, in front of the Pope , if the opportunity presented itself.”
“ Hmmm …” Giving me a slow grin, she reaches out to pull her backpack off my shoulders and I let her. Watching while she tosses it into the waiting SUV and begins to climb in after it, I feel my already aching cock start to throb when she stops, mid-climb, to give me an over the shoulder look. “I think I just found the next item on my bucket list.”