He lifted it and stared at it. It was his father’s service weapon. The military pistol he had used before his death.
One bullet. But he’d only need one.
He stared back to where Jaci had ridden off. Dumb-ass kid. She was wilder than the wind. Her father didn’t have a hope in hell of keeping up with her and keeping her out of trouble.
Somehow—he hadn’t figured out how—it had fallen to him to keep the molesting bastards in town away from her. The boys that were too old for her, and sure as hell old enough to know better than to fool with a baby. But she was right. Who would run them off if he left?
He laid the pistol on the dash and capped the whisky.
If he was too f**king weak to take the easy way out, then that left the hard way. Son of a bitch. The hard way sucked, too.
Eight Years Later
It was the bad boy party of the year, held outside the small Oklahoma town Jaci Wright had been raised in. The music was a hard, throbbing pulse through the night air. A bonfire burned in the center of the clearing, huge speakers were set up in the back of a pickup, the rocking music pounding through them as the beer and moonshine flowed freely.
Bodies danced in abandon, whoops and yells could be heard through the clearing as the scent of burning wood filled her nostrils.
It was her first year attending, not that she hadn’t tried to slip in over the years. Unfortunately, Cameron was usually here, and he never failed to pull her out within the first few minutes. Cameron might well be here now, but his excuse for pulling her out no longer applied.
She leaned against the bed of one of the pickups, her beer in hand, and watched the antics of the partygoers. The first faint chill of fall was in the air, the university would be beginning its first semester next week, and the yearly party to celebrate the end of summer was under way with all the excitement and desperate exuberance of the crowd and the vacation that was soon to end. Many of those here had been attending for years and no one wanted to miss out on it.
She let her gaze rove over the crowd once again, searching for the tall, dangerous form of her tormentor. Cameron had been pulling her out of this party since she was sixteen, when she’d tried to attend for the first time. He was always here.
In the center of the clearing bodies gyrated, male and female, dancing with abandon. She wondered if Cameron danced when he was here. With his tall, hard-muscled body, the graceful way he moved, he would be a sexual fantasy come true out there. But she doubted he did. Cameron wasn’t the type of man to shake his booty for the crowd.
She smiled as she lifted her beer to her lips, intent on taking the first drink of the cold, bitter liquid. She had been putting it off as long as she could.
As it touched her lips, a hard, well-tanned hand came from behind her, gripped the bottle, and held it still. She could barely taste it against her lips, barely felt the icy sensation of liquid. But behind her, the heat of the man seared her back.
“Your father would have a cow if he saw you here.”
Trepidation surged in her stomach at the sound of the dark voice in her ear, the feel of a broad palm covering her hip, and the sensation of being surrounded with heat.
He pulled the bottle from her hand and passed it to another woman passing by them. The blonde flashed him a smile and a wink as she took it and continued on with her companion.
“That was just rude,” she told him.
She didn’t turn; she couldn’t force herself to turn. For the first time in all the years she had been teasing and tempting Cameron Falladay, he was finally touching her.
His chest pressed against her shoulders, his hand gripped her hip, his arm rested on the side of the truck beside her. She felt surrounded by him. Heated by him. She felt sinfully aware of the hard press of his h*ps against her lower back and the erection beneath his jeans.
“That was common sense.” He nipped her ear and she felt her pulse ignite with a heat that burned across her nerve endings. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m legal,” she reminded him, suddenly feeling more feminine than she had in her life.
“By all of three months?” The rasp of his rough cheek against her ear nearly had her coming undone.
She was breathing hard and fast, and she knew it. She couldn’t stop it. Her heart was racing in her chest, her thighs felt week, her cl*t was swollen, her ni**les hard. She could feel every inch of her body readying itself for him.
“Three months, three years.” She shrugged with an attempt at a laugh. “Does it matter?”
As she spoke, his arm lifted as though in a signal. Within seconds the pulsing, hard drive of the music eased away to be replaced by a slower, softer tune.
It was late, it was normal. The music turned sexier, pounding with sex and excitement rather than anticipation.
“Dance with me.”
Jaci stiffened in shock as Cam’s hand tightened at her hip and he drew her back toward the shadows at the front of the truck, which had been backed toward the circle of partygoers.
She turned in his arms, hands pressing against the dark T-shirt as he stared down at her, his broad chest sheltering her, warming her as his arms moved around her.
“Cam.” Wonder filled her voice. She had been dying for this for too many years. To be held against his large body, his arms around her.
She felt the rasp of his cheek against the top of her head, the sliding of his pants against her bare thighs beneath the short hem of her skirt.
He wasn’t wearing jeans. He was wearing the camouflage pants he usually wore when leaving for or returning from duty. How long had he been home? It couldn’t have been for long. Had he come straight here for her? Just for her?
“You shouldn’t be here, sweetheart.” His hands slid over her back. Up. Down. Then, his hand slid beneath the bottom of her shirt and touched her bare flesh.
Oh God. His hands were broad and calloused, warm, impossibly arousing. She could feel the shudders working up her spine from his touch, tearing at the control she had promised herself she would have around him.
At twenty-six, Cam was a world ahead of her in experience. A warrior, a conqueror. It was in his dark face, in those light green eyes.
“Where should I be?” She lifted her head to him, he with his gaze imprisoning hers as he stared down at her. He swayed to the music with her, rubbed against her.
“Safe,” he answered.
“At home, playing with my dolls?” she suggested sweetly. “Those days are long gone, Cam.”