Read Cross Fire (Padre Knights MC Book 3) for Free Online Page B

lady’?”
     
    “No.”
     
    “Because I’m a girl?”
     
    “No!” His hands came down on her arms, hard, incredibly hard, and she was afraid then, afraid all the way down through her heart. Not because she thought he would hurt her—she was sure he’d never hurt her on purpose, but anything that provoked this intense of a reaction from him made her afraid. Petrified. Scared, through and through. “Don’t you get it, Ali? I’m trying to protect you because I love you. Because I want you— I need you to be safe. I can’t go without you again, baby, it broke my heart so badly that I thought that carving it out with a tattoo needle would hurt less.”
     
    She wanted to run, to hide, to give in, but she took a deep breath. She brought her hands up to cup his cheeks, staring into his eyes. She could feel tears sliding down her face, and she let them fall as they might. “I know. Baby, I know. I understand. This isn’t something I want to be involved in. It’s nothing I ever wanted, but you knew it last night. They know where I live. They know they can get to me through you. Whether we like it or not, I’m a part of this now. I’m not safe, and because I’m not safe, I have to be ready. I have to plan, I have to help you fix this. Because I can’t sit back and knit and wait for the menfolk to make it all better. I’ve never done it in my life, and I won’t start now.”
     
    He tried to pull back, pull away, and she moved with him, standing, following him. “And what happens next?” he asked. “We deal with the Diablos, and then the Padres leave town, and— What? I give up everything I know and love to stay here with you? You abandon your grandmother’s ranch and your dream of a business to follow me? Neither one of us want that.”
     
    “There’s a solution,” she said. “We’ll find it. If we don’t give up on each other.”
     
    She waited while he teetered in the balance. She watched as he warred with himself, as he fought between what he thought was right, and what he wanted. Right had won before, over and over. She saw the moment when the balance tipped her way. “Fuck it all,” he murmured, and his hands on her arms were pushing her back onto the bed, savagely pressing her down into the mattress. He was hard in moments, and his fingers were between her legs. She cried out at his roughness, and he paused, searching her eyes.
     
    “It’s okay,” she said, spreading her thighs just a little wider. “It’s okay.”
     
    He spared a moment to open her with his fingers, and then he was surging into her. She was wet, but not soaked, and he seemed to recognize it with just a corner of his mind. He pressed forward as far as he could, slipped back, and then pressed forward again, moving deeper. She moved her hips with him, giving over to him, letting him set the rhythm. She trusted him, she trusted him not to hurt her, or to stop if she said. That fine edge of pain, that sense of knowing that he was taking her, ready or not, was thrilling through her fingertips.
     
    Fully sheathed inside of her, he reached down, planting his hands on her ass and angling her hips up. His movements were hard, rapid, almost jerking. He made a sound, again and again, and it took her a moment to understand his words. Or word, really. “Mine,” he said, again and again as he slammed into her. “Mine. Mine.”
     
    “Yours,” she said, and on a whim, dug her fingernails fiercely into his shoulders.
     
    He came in a rush, so fast and hard she wasn’t even sure that he knew it was going to happen. He roared with it, a vicious, needy howl as he pushed himself just a little bit deeper into her with every pulse of his body. It had been only a few minutes since he’d entered her.
     
    She held him, rocking him softly, and he panted into her skin. When he could speak, he said only, “Sorry, mi amor . I didn’t mean that to be quite so… abrupt.”
     
    Ali felt her heart still beneath the words. She didn’t