Desert Ice Daddy by Marton, Dana (pocket ebook reader .TXT) 📕

tighten. She was Taylor. Taylor McKade was in his arms. How long had he waited for this?

A century would have been worth every minute.

She needed distraction, just one moment in the midst of all danger and worry. He needed her, plain and simple. But this wasn’t going to be about him.

He wanted her to feel sheltered. Better yet, transported. And just good, plain good. As good as she was making him feel.

Taylor was in his arms and she was kissing him.

Getting carried away would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. So he made sure she was on board with every move he made. And he was eager to make as many moves as their limited time would allow.

He caressed her breasts first, breasts that had grown fuller with motherhood. Her nipples tightened against his palm. The exquisite sensation pumped heated blood through his veins. And things only got hotter when he pulled his lips from hers and bent to take a nipple into his mouth through her yellow lace bra.

Yellow lace was going to be the death of him yet.

His hand slipped down her flat stomach, her hip, the outside of her lean thigh. Her skin was soft and smooth. He reveled in the feel of it as he hooked a hand under her knee and pulled the leg up. He wanted nothing more than to lose himself in her body and make her come apart in his arms.

On some level, he was aware that he wasn’t thinking, but he couldn’t bring himself to start. Feeling was so incredibly good. Who needed thoughts?

He soaked up the feel of her as her knees parted to let him closer.

“Are you sure?” He pressed against her core, leaving no doubt what he was asking.

She opened those cornflower eyes that looked midnight blue in the dark, and fixed her gaze on him. “Of course I’m not sure.”

And in an instant their circumstances came back to his mind again. Thoughts cranked into gear even as his body protested. He had sought to make her forget for a while, and instead it had been him who had forgotten just about everything. A car door slamming outside underscored the realization. He hadn’t even heard the vehicle roll up.

He swore and came up to a crouch to spy through the window. One of the pickups from the day before was standing in front of the gate no more than thirty feet from the guardhouse.

One man got out. He had a key to the padlock. It wasn’t Jake Kenner, but definitely one of the guys who’d been there at the boulder.

The man got into the vehicle, rolled through the inner gate then got out to lock it again. Akeem yanked his pants on and pushed the door open, waited until the man was coming back to his pickup, not ten feet from the guardhouse. When the guy was close enough, Akeem rushed forward without a weapon. He needed both hands free.

The heightened emotions that had filled him just moments ago switched to determination and anger in a split second. This was the bastard who had taken Christopher. He felt his control snap, felt that Bedu warrior blood in his veins that he’d been hiding all his life. And this time, he didn’t care.

He brought the man to the ground, one hand going to the guy’s mouth, the other to hold him down. The bastard bit hard, to the bone, and in a reflex response, Akeem’s hold loosened. Only for a second, but that was enough. The man pulled a knife and embedded it in Akeem’s thigh.

Pain seared down his leg, but Akeem didn’t let go. He hauled the bastard up and kept the pickup between himself and the refinery, for cover, as he dragged the man back to the guardhouse with him, each step hurting like a sonofabitch. He had his own knife stuck in the back of his waistband, but his hands weren’t free to reach for it.

“You raise your voice, you die. Now, where’s the kid?” he asked when he had the guy inside and hauled up against the wall. He kept his weight on his good leg as he loosened his hand around the guy’s mouth, keeping the bastard’s neck pinned with his other arm.

Akeem had him opposite the window so a slice of moonlight lit the guy. Looking into that shifty face filled him with anger. He and his partners in crime had taken an innocent little boy, shattered the child’s sense of safety probably for years or decades to come, for something as inconsequential as money. They might as well have ripped the heart from Taylor’s chest. And Akeem found that he knew no mercy when it came to someone hurting Taylor or her son.

Pain pulsed through him, honing his anger to a fine edge. “This is the last time I’m going to ask nicely. Where’s the kid?”

The man was glancing around, hoping to spot a possible weapon or a way out, no doubt. He didn’t understand the severity of his situation. He lurched against Akeem’s hold. “Who the hell—”

“Wrong answer.” He smacked the guy’s head against the wall. “Where is Christopher?”

They were running out of time. He reached for his gun on the small desk in the corner, pressed the barrel under the man’s chin, although he had no intention of shooting this close to their target and alerting everyone. Since the guy was here, he was even more sure now that they had to be keeping something valuable at the refinery. Most likely they were hiding Christopher somewhere here. But the buildings were enormous. He needed to know where to go and where the traps lay that he needed to avoid.

At this moment, he was willing to do anything to get that information.

The man he’d captured didn’t have much of a choice. He had to know that he would either talk and be killed by his buddies when they caught up with him, or not talk and meet