Chapter 21 Gabriel
Gabriel
The patrol car's headlights cut through the darkness as I navigate the winding mountain roads toward home, rain beginning to spatter against the windshield in fat, irregular drops that blur the world into watercolor smears.
My jaw aches where Jake Cutter's fist connected before we got the cuffs on him, and my ribs protest every time I shift in the driver's seat. Small price to pay for getting one of those bastards off the streets permanently.
The plan worked. Mostly.
Cindy took the bait exactly as predicted, slipping out of the Dusty Spur twenty minutes after Colt and Beau's very public argument about needing ketamine for emergency surgery.
My deputies and I followed her up a godforsaken mountain road to a camouflaged shack hidden behind mesh netting and strategically placed branches.
Jake was there, passed out drunk on a filthy mattress surrounded by enough drug paraphernalia to put him away for the next decade.
His brother wasn't home. Either he was out on another score, or he'd gotten spooked and run for the hills.
Either way, we'd disrupted their operation and eliminated half the threat. Not perfect, but I'll take the victory.
But none of that matters now. Not when I've been thinking about Lucy for hours, about the way she looked when I left this morning. Sleep-mussed and beautiful in my kitchen, worry already creeping into those dark eyes.
The memory of our kiss replays in my head on constant loop, the taste of her still lingering despite everything that's happened since.
She told me about Colt. That they'd kissed, that she felt guilty letting me kiss her without my knowing.
The honesty in her confession should have bothered me more than it did. Should have triggered the possessiveness that's been my downfall before, the need to own completely or walk away entirely.
Instead, it made me want her more. Made me want to understand how this could work. How three men could share one woman without destroying each other in the process. How we could all protect her together, give her everything she needs instead of making her choose between pieces of her heart.
The rain picks up as I turn onto my road, drumming harder against the roof and turning the Montana night into something wild and primal. My headlights sweep across my driveway, and my pulse quickens at the thought of Lucy waiting for me, safe and warm in my house.
Then I see her.
She's running toward my car barefoot, wearing nothing but tiny sleep shorts and a thin t-shirt that's already soaked through from the rain. Her hair streams behind her, dark and wild, her bare feet flying across the gravel like the only thing that matters in the universe is getting to me.
I slam on the brakes and throw the car into park, my heart hammering against my ribs as I vault out of the driver's seat. "Lucy, what the hell are you—"
She launches herself at me before I can finish the sentence, her arms wrapping around my neck as her legs circle my waist. The impact drives me back against the car door, and then her mouth is on mine, desperate and demanding and so fucking perfect I forget how to think.
Rain soaks through my uniform shirt, plastering her thin cotton to skin that's warm despite the cold. She tastes like need and relief, and when she nips at my lower lip, I groan into her mouth.
"Are you okay?" she gasps against my lips, pulling back just enough to search my face with frantic eyes. Her hands frame my face, thumbs tracing the bruise blooming along my jaw with infinite gentleness. "Are you hurt? When you didn't come home..."
"I'm fine," I manage, but my voice comes out rough and broken. "Lucy, sweetheart, you're soaked. You'll catch pneumonia out here."
She silences me with her mouth, kissing me harder, fiercer, like she's been starving for it. Her tongue sweeps into my mouth, claiming me, and I can feel her heart racing against my chest, feel the heat of her pressed against my rapidly hardening cock through our wet clothes.
"I was so scared," she whispers between kisses, her voice breaking with raw emotion. "When you didn't come home, when the hours kept passing, I thought they'd hurt you. I thought I'd lost you before I could tell you..."
"Tell me what?" I growl, my hands sliding down to grip her ass, pulling her harder against the rigid length of me.
"That I need you," she breathes, her hips moving restlessly against mine. "That I couldn't stop thinking about you."
Control. I've built my life on control, on discipline, on doing the right thing at the right time in the right way. But this woman in my arms is unraveling every carefully constructed wall I've built.
"You've been driving me out of my mind," I tell her, my mouth moving to the sensitive spot below her ear. "Every night, knowing you're in my house, wanting to take you to my bed and show you exactly what you do to me."
Her response is to wrap her legs tighter around my waist, pressing her core against the hard ridge of my cock through my uniform pants. The friction sends lightning through my veins, and I bite down on the sensitive spot where her neck meets her shoulder.
"Please," she gasps, and the single word shatters what's left of my restraint. "I need you, Gabriel. I need this."
That's it. I'm done pretending to be civilized.
I reach down with urgent hands to unbuckle my utility belt, letting the leather drop to the wet ground with a heavy thud.
The sound of metal and gear hitting the ground should probably worry me, but all I can focus on is the woman in my arms.
I spin us around, pressing her back against the warm hood of the patrol car. The metal is slick with rain, heated by the engine underneath, and she arches into me with a cry that's pure want.
I pull back to look at her, rain dripping from my hair onto her upturned face. The headlights cast us in stark relief, turning her skin luminous in the darkness.
Her eyes are dark with desire, pupils blown wide with need. She whispers fiercely. "Take me. Right here. Now!"
The words hit me like a physical blow. This beautiful woman, trusting me enough to be vulnerable like this, to give herself to me completely without reservation.
"Such a brave girl," I murmur, my hands sliding under her soaked shirt to find warm, wet skin.
She arches into my touch with a sound that's half moan, half sob, and when I find her nipples, hard peaks against my palms, she cries out and grinds against my cock.
I push her shirt up and over her head, baring her to the storm and my hungry gaze. She's gorgeous in the harsh light from the headlights, skin gleaming with moisture, chest rising and falling with rapid breaths.
"Perfect," I tell her, lowering my head to capture one peaked nipple between my teeth. I suck hard enough to make her buck against me, her hands fisting in my hair, holding me to her as I worship her with my mouth.
"Gabriel, please," she pants, her hips moving restlessly against mine. "I need more."
I straighten to look at her, taking in her flushed cheeks, her swollen lips, the way she's looking at me like I'm everything she's ever wanted. "Tell me what you want."
"I want you," she breathes without hesitation, her voice thick with arousal. "I want you to show me what it means to be yours."
The honest desire in her voice sends a surge of possessive heat through me that's almost violent in its intensity.
I hook my fingers in the waistband of her shorts and drag them down her legs along with the scrap of lace underneath. She's bare to me now in the rain and headlight glow, and when I slide a finger through her slick folds, she's absolutely drenched.
"So wet for me," I growl, teasing her clit with gentle circles. "So ready. You've been aching for this, haven't you?"
"Yes," she gasps as I push two fingers deep inside her, her walls clenching around me like a velvet vice.
She's tight, so fucking tight around my fingers, and I can't wait to feel her gripping my cock the same way. I pump my fingers in and out of her, curling them to find that spot that makes her see stars, while my thumb works her clit in slow, deliberate circles.
"That's it," I murmur as she starts to ride my hand, chasing her pleasure with abandoned desperation. "Show me how much you want it. Show me what a good girl you are for me."
The praise makes her clench around my fingers, and I file that reaction away for future reference. My girl likes to be praised while she's being pleasured.
Her hands are frantic on my belt, on the zipper of my pants, and when she wraps her fingers around my cock, I have to bite back a curse. I'm harder than I've ever been in my life, my dick throbbing in her small hand as she strokes me from base to tip with instinctive skill.
"Christ, your hands," I groan, my hips jerking into her touch. "But I want to be buried inside you when I come."
I pull my fingers out of her, ignoring her whimper of protest. "Clean," I tell her, meeting her eyes. "Had my physical two months ago, no one since. You?"
"Clean," she confirms, her voice breathy with anticipation. "And protected. The shot."
Perfect. Nothing between us but skin and heat and desperate need.
I line myself up with her entrance, the head of my cock pressing against her slick heat. She's so wet I can feel her arousal coating me, and the thought of sliding into that tight warmth has me dizzy with want.
I push into her slowly, savoring every inch, every soft sound she makes, every flutter of her inner muscles as she stretches around me. She's tighter than I imagined, her pussy gripping me like she was made for this, made for me.
"Oh God," she gasps, her nails digging into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks. "You feel..."
"Perfect," I finish for her when I'm fully seated inside her, my cock buried to the hilt in her heat. "This sweet pussy was made just for my cock."
I stay still for a moment, letting her adjust, fighting every primal instinct that's screaming at me to move, to claim, to take. But when she rolls her hips experimentally, when she moans at the sensation of me stretching her, I lose the battle with my self-control.
I thrust slow and deep, watching her face in the headlight glow as pleasure transforms her features. The rain pounds down around us, turning our skin slippery, making every touch electric. The heat from the engine warms the metal beneath her while our bodies generate their own fire above.
"More," she pleads, her nails raking down my back through my uniform shirt. "Please, Gabriel. Harder."
I give her what she needs, what we both crave, driving into her with increasing force. The patrol car rocks beneath us, metal creaking in protest, and the primal rightness of it all threatens to overwhelm me.
Taking her here, in the rain, desperate and wild and completely out of control.
"That's it," I praise as she meets me thrust for thrust, her pussy clenching around me with each stroke. "Take it, sweetheart. Show me how deep you need it."
Her response is to tighten around me, her back arching as she chases her release. I can feel her getting close, can see it in the way her eyes lose focus, hear it in the increasingly desperate sounds she's making.
"Are you going to come for me?" I ask, my hand sliding between us to find her clit. "Going to come all over my cock like the perfect girl you are?"
"Yes," she cries, her body starting to tremble with approaching climax.
I rub her clit in tight circles while I fuck her harder, deeper, chasing both our releases with single-minded determination.
The combination of my cock filling her and my fingers on her most sensitive spot sends her over the edge with a scream that echoes through the rain.
She convulses around me, her entire body shaking with the force of her orgasm, her pussy milking my cock as waves of pleasure crash over her. The sight of her falling apart in my arms, the feel of her clenching around me, is the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced.
"That's my girl," I growl, fucking her through her climax. "Come for me. Show me who this pussy belongs to."
The possessive words send another wave of pleasure through her, and she clamps down on me so hard I see stars.
I follow her over the edge, burying myself as deep as I can go.
The orgasm hits me like a freight train, stealing my breath, making my vision blur at the edges as I spill into her with pulse after pulse of heated release.
For a moment, there's nothing in the world but Lucy and the incredible feeling of being connected to her in the most fundamental way possible. Rain pounds on our skin, the headlights create our own private world, and she's everything I've ever wanted wrapped in my arms.
When I can finally think again, I realize we're both shaking, whether from cold or aftershocks or simple emotional overwhelm, I can't tell. Lucy's forehead is pressed against my shoulder, her breath coming in soft puffs against my collarbone.
"Okay?" I ask softly, my hands stroking over her rain-soaked skin with infinite gentleness.
She looks up at me, and the expression on her face takes my breath away. Soft but fierce, completely undone but somehow more herself than I've ever seen her.
"Perfect," she whispers, her voice hoarse from screaming my name.
The trust in her voice, the heat still burning in her eyes despite having just come apart in my arms, sends a fresh surge of desire through me.
"Good," I tell her, pulling out of her carefully before scooping her up in my arms like she weighs nothing. "Because I'm not nearly done with you."
She laughs, the sound rich and throaty and full of promise. "Then get me inside before we scandalize the neighbors."
"Oh, I'm getting you inside," I promise as I carry her toward the house, her naked body pressed against my uniform, soft skin against rough fabric. "And then I'm going to spend the rest of the night showing you exactly what it means to be mine."
I carry her through my front door, both of us dripping and breathless, already planning every way I'll worship her body before dawn breaks over the mountains.
This woman has changed everything. My carefully ordered life, my rigid self-control, my belief that I had to choose between love and duty.
For the first time in my life, I'm not afraid of losing control.
Because with Lucy in my arms, surrendering feels like the most natural thing in the world.