Broken Road (15 page)

   Devil wet her lips and he groaned. She stopped him with a hand as he came closer. “No way Mister. You think all you have to do is throw me onto a bed and I’ll let you have your way with me?”

   He grinned then and it would have sent her to her knees if she wasn’t already there. “I haven’t even started yet, darlin’. But I figured that’s how this is going to work.”

   “Ooh,” she seethed angry again at his cockiness, no pun intended. “No why in hell would I let you touch me if you were the fugliest man in the world! I’m serious you jerk, put them back on!”

   “Fugly,” he asked, sending her a glittering look of anger. “I’ll have to punish you for that one, little kid.” He stocked over to the bed as he pushed off his jeans. He trapped her with a hand on either side of her face against the headboard of his bed. “This coming from the clumsiest woman in the world. No, scratch that. The most accident prone woman in the world.”

   “I’m not accident prone,” Devil snapped back, mouth dry from his closeness. “I’m just unluckly luck challenged.”

   Winthrop looked at her in amazement. “Unluckly luck challenge?” he echoed.

   Devil nodded with a glare.

   His sudden grin made her nervous. “Let’s try and change that then,” he whispered in her ear just before he took her mouth.

   “Winthrop,” she breathed breaking the kiss.

   “Soon,” he promised and moved with his lips and tongue down her neck.

  When neither of them could take the torture of each others touches and kisses they started to rip the rest of their clothes off.

   “Wait,” Winthrop said quietly as she had her hand on the edge of her t-shirt, “let me.”

   He moved behind her and slowly skimmed her body with his hands before he came to the edge of her shirt. He pulled it up slowly and licked his way up her spine as he pulled the shirt off. Devil shivered in delight as he nipped the rest of the way up and unhooked her silk bra.

   He came around to face her again and slipped her onto his lap and into his arms. He looked down at her and smiled slightly.

   “My god how beautiful you are,” he breathed. And kissed the top of her left breast and then the right.

   Devil shied away and looked down at her many scars, pale white against her very tan skin. “Yeah right,” she murmured.

   He gave her a gentle shake. “I see what I see.”

   “Then you are a blind man,” she told him.

   He bit her neck. “That I doubt. Now how about that punishment?”

   Devil chuckled. “I did say I was going to make you pay.”

   “Let’s see who wins this one,” he said against her ear and jerked her hard on his lap and groaned.

   “I’ll win like I always do old man.”

   “I’ll show you old man,” he murmured before the war started.

…

Royal shook his head and stared at his granddaughter. “What is it do you think the bad guy wants?”

   Lilla and her five month old self looked at him with serious little blue eyes just like Devil and cooed. Then she started making noises that sounded as if she were trying to tell him something. Her little brows frowned and she waved a fist at him and then smiled showing no teeth.

   Suddenly an idea came to mind and he stared at the child a smiled as if she had given him the golden key to the vault of the US Treasury.

   “Just maybe your right. Draw him out, it might work, but,” he said tapping the girl on the nose, “we have to find out more about him.”

Winthrop’s fingers were tracing lazy circles over the small of her back, sending shivers of delight down her spine. His breath was steady drawing in deep and slow, melting all of Devil’s tenseness away.

   Devil flexed her hand which was spread palm down on Winthrop’s chest, over his heart.

   “I was thinking,” she said starting to make circles of her own, “that with everything happening so fast that we need to take a break.”

   Like a cold splash of cool spring water in winter his dreamy haze parted to the cold breath of reality breathing down the back of his neck. Winthrop jerked into a sitting position.

   “What?” he gaped at Devil.

   Disgruntled about being moved Devil sat up not even bothering to cover herself.

   “We need a break, Winthrop. Or else we’ll drive ourselves into a hole in the ground,” Devil explained. “I already feel stir crazy being trapped here.”

   Something settled into the pit of his stomach.
Not this again, anything but this…!

   Winthrop braced himself against the words that were going to shatter his new found happiness. Devil was going to tell him that she was leaving with Lilla and she never wanted to see him again, it was Lisa all over again, but somehow this was going to be different from when Lisa had left with his cousin. When Lisa had walked away she had walked away with his trust in women, but if Devil left he would lose much, much more then that.

   Then it hit him, he really cared for her. Cared to the point he would tie her up to keep her from leaving. Well he had cared somewhat with Lisa, but he more then cared for Devil. The little hellion and her niece had turned his world inside out and him too for that matter.

   Oh yes, he did more then care, but he was too scared at the thought to even put words to the feeling. Hadn’t he been mistrusting of women and hated them for their cold and cruel thinking?

   Yes he had, but Devil wasn’t like any other women he had met in his life.

   He had nothing however, that he could use to make her stay. She was the famous Devil Runner after all, she was richer then he could ever dream of, and she was beautiful, by god was she beautiful, and so not within his reach.

   Winthrop came back from his black thoughts as she snapped her fingers in front of his face.

   “Helloooo? Earth to Winthrop. Do you even hear a single word I said?” Devil asked him, searching his face.

   “Yes,” Winthrop muttered darkly.
             

   “Good,” she smiled then, “we need a break. Go somewhere where no one knows who we are or cares for that matter. And where no one will try and kill us or put us in danger.”

   “What?” he asked in surprise for the second time no less. He had been waiting for her to say she was leaving and this is what she tells him? A plan to get away for a few days?

    She frowned at him. “What? You want to be stuck in this- this,” she chewed her bottom lip thinking of the right words. “This mafia/military warzone fort,” she decided with a nod of her head, “forever?”

   Winthrop laid back on the bed pulling Devil on top of his chest with a howl of laughter.

   “Not really,” he admitted a few moments later.

   “Good. In that case we can leave for a little while and go out to play,” Devil said cheerfully.

   He felt himself grin crookedly down at her youthful happiness. “Sorry, Kid, but I don’t play at my age.”

   “Oh really?” she lifted a brow, “And don’t do that.”

   “Do what?”

   “Call me a kid. I’ll be nineteen in a few days and with my past I never got the chance to be a kid. Plus I don’t think you would be jumping my bones if I were one,” Devil said giving him a punch in the shoulder.

   Surprise flashed in his silver blue eyes. “You didn’t tell me your birthday was coming up,” he said gruffly and he nearly winced at the roughness in his words.

   Devil was surprised herself. “You care about my birthday?”

   Winthrop grabbed her by the arms and pulled her close until they were face to face, when they were he leaned in and kissed her forehead.

   “Of course I care, why wouldn’t I? Why didn’t you tell me?”

   Touched by his gentleness she shrugged. “I didn’t find it important. I’ve never celebrated a birthday before. It’s just another day in another year.”

   He shook her by the shoulders. “No, it is not. It was the day you were born, a special day.” Winthrop brushed the hair that had fallen in her face behind her ear. “You are special, never doubt that and value the life you were given.”

   This was like nothing that she had ever been told before, never has someone, anyone told her to value her birth in the world. Not even Royal, no, he had cared a lot, but didn’t like personal matters of a serious nature. So now she didn’t know what to say or do.

   “Thank you?” She hadn’t meant it to come out as a question with her shaking voice, but it had, and tears stung her eyes. She now knew just how much he cared.

   Winthrop looked down at her and into her face and saw tears swimming in her eyes. He pulled her fully against his body in a tight embrace, laying his head on top of her hair and closing his eyes. Rocking slowly back and forth he willed the pain to leave her, for the memories to leave her as well.

   How could any parent be so cruel to a child, but he knew. His mother hadn’t meant to be cruel when she left him and his little brother, but she had been.

   Devil squeaked when his arms tightened to a point where he could have snapped her in half.

   Quickly he loosened his grip and relaxed with her in his arms.

   She was special indeed. She was the key to everything he had been trying to lock up, and she gave him the gift of understanding when she had so much pain in her past.

   She wasn’t special he decided then she was a miracle.

    “Where do you want to go?” was all he asked.

   Devil grinned up at him and wiped away her annoying tears. “I was hoping you would ask me that. I want you to show me what you did growing up.”

Half an hour after they left the ranch after Royal had wanted to skin them both for the idea; they found themselves in the town Devil had first come to find the ranch and Lilla. They had gone horse back riding most of the day and there had been a place in town Winthrop had wanted to share with her.

   Devil eyed him with surprise when he parked in front the oldest brick building downtown. “What are we doing here?”

   Winthrop sat back in the driver’s seat and smiled down at her. Her small, beautiful face showed confusion and he curved the urge to take her right there on the front seat as her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

   What a soft groan he pulled her onto his lap. “I just can’t keep my hands off you.”

   Devil giggled when he pressed a kiss to first her forehead and then her neck. She smacked him as he gave her a gentle bite. “Not here
,
you dork. Wait
until
we get to the hotel! Isn’t there a place you wanted to show me?”

   Winthrop laughed at her smack. “Was there? I don’t seem to remember.”

    Devil frowned at him as he smiled a
wicked little smile.

 
“If you don’t stop this then you won’t be getting anything tonight and you sleep on the sofa.”

    “Now there’s no need for that.” He grinned. “I’ll get it anyway and you know it, but the point is that this place is special to me. I started coming here when I was thirteen. After Mom left us.”

    No even saying a single word Devil pressed herself against him in a tight hug. She hated the woman who left him and couldn’t imagine why she would leave behind two beautiful children.

    Winthrop settled his cheek against her soft hair. “Why don’t we go in? It’s sure to be full tonight
;
that friend of yours made a call for me.”

      “She didn’t!” Devil gasped.

    Getting out of the truck and pulling he along he murmured, “Oh yes
,
she did.”

    Upon entering an old unremarkable door Devil was momentarily blinded then her eyes popped out of her head. Inside the old brick building was a country club with two upper layer balconies that gave the perfect view to watch from the huge stage. But inside people were stuffed from wall to wall and all the way around.

   When someone spotted them they started cheering, and then it was all dominos after that.

   “I am going to kill you! I said somewhere no one would know us!” Devil hissed back at him from behind her smile.

   “They aren’t cheering for you this time, sweetheart. Follow me,” Winthrop said taking her hand and pulling her to the front of the crowd. “Stay,” he ordered as he left her and got on stage.

   Her chin dropped.

   He chuckled and went up the microphone. “How ya’ll doin’ tonight?” he asked the crowd.

    The crowd screamed again.

   He looked down and winked at her, then looked back out to the people. “This is my first time back in about five years so be kind to me. This first song is going to a special little song bird that has come recently into my life. I hope you enjoy it.”