Live By The Team (Team Fear Book 1) by Cindy Skaggs Read Free Book Online Page B

Having her underneath him again felt right; the first right thing in six months. She was his wife, warm and willing beneath him. He braced his weight on his arms. “How’s the head?”
    “ Hurts.” She swiped a hand over the gash. The blood had slowed to a trickle, so there’d be no need for stitches.
    “ What about the back of your head?”
    “ Fine.” She reached back, grimaced when her hand scraped the wound. “Okay, well, maybe a little blood.”
    He turned to sit huddled in the ditch and helped her sit up. He ran fingers over the back of her skull. A large knot formed around an already healing gash, likely caused by the back window of the pickup. Her hair was sticky and matted. “Do you feel dizzy?”
    “ No.”
    “ Headachy?”
    “ Little bit.”
    He itched to go, but he’d already pulled her from the wreck, which was ill advised and brought on by his paranoia. Now that they were out of the twisted metal and settled in the darkness, he could take the time to make sure she was okay to travel. “Do you feel good enough to ride the rest of the way to Debi’s on the bike?”
    “ Not yet.” She climbed into his lap and burrowed in. “Are you leaving in the morning?”
    Darkness covered them in this pocket of ditch almost like a cave, surrounded by winter grass and silence. “In the morning, we’ll go to the bank. Fix the problem.”
    “ And then?”
    The need to stay with Lauren was a visceral thing—she was his from the moment he had laid eyes on her—but the need to protect her from the hell raining down on him was stronger. Her kiss in the bar was filled with all the goodness he wasn’t sure any of them deserved. Team Fear was the heartless result of focused recruiting combined with tireless training and a little R&D. They’d sold their souls, each and every one, for a power they could never fully comprehend. Ryder forced his thoughts onto the woman in his arms. “I have to leave. You have to let me.”
    The flex of her throat when she swallowed drew his attention. “Ryder, I just got in a car accident.”
    “ Let’s get you to Debi’s and patch you up.”
    “ I’m still not feeling one hundred percent.” She adjusted to put one knee on either side of his hips. “Let’s take a minute to celebrate the fact that I didn’t die.”
    The way she melted into him, soft to his hard, warm to his cold, was all the encouragement he needed. She wanted him. Like the kiss in the bar, this was inevitable. And fleeting. No one knew the time limit better than Ryder. They couldn’t be together as long as he had the potential to go off the rails like Madigan. But right now?
    Right now, his woman straddled his lap, nestling his crotch between her legs and she looked up at him with—
    This time, he couldn’t go slow. He took ownership of the kiss. Of the woman. Her lips parted under his assault. She knew him, knew he would swoop low to taste her. Home, she tasted like sunshine and honey and home. This is what he’d missed, what he’d needed more than food, water, or air. How could he walk away from the only bright light in his life?
    The night filled with moans. Her lips answered his, the kiss blistering in intensity. He nipped and tasted. He controlled. She wriggled her hips to slide closer to home. Her hands caressed his arms to settle around his neck. She twisted her fingers through the hair at his nape and pulled him closer. Harder. Need shot straight to his balls. Her tongue pushed into his mouth and she became the aggressor. Maybe they’d both held back before, the perpetual honeymoon of deployment and homecoming keeping them at their best behavior. Something the accident had shaken loose. They’d been denied time to settle into real life. They didn’t know how long they had together this time around, so they both took and gave, real and hard.
    With a tug, she pulled his head back to release her lips. The pressure on his scalp shot straight to his groin. Her chest rose and fell, her breath