Breaking Free: A Colorado High Country Crossover Novel, Pamela Clare [i can read book club .TXT] 📗

so I thought.” Jason saw it all differently now—her love of nice things, her constant talk about money, her focus on appearances. She’d only wanted to make life better for herself. “Every weekend when I was working, she went to visit her auntie in Tucson, taking her food, picking up her medicine for her, doing her hair and nails.”

“That was kind of her.”

Jason had to laugh. “That’s what I thought.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A little more than six months ago, I was working, cutting sign along the border. I got a text from my boss to come to his office. A DEA officer was waiting for me there. He told me that they had just arrested Elena for trafficking cocaine—part of a long investigation. They recorded her bragging about how she was engaged to a Shadow Wolf and how she’d learned by listening to him how to avoid feds.”

It had felt like a physical blow—a bullet through his chest.

“Oh, Jason!”

“When prosecutors questioned her, she told them how drug runners dropped off cocaine at her salon in shampoo boxes and how she transported it to a house in Tucson for five grand per trip every time she visited her auntie. She’d gotten away with it for years, right under my nose. She just didn’t want to live on my salary.”

Winona shifted so that she faced him. “I’m so sorry. That must have hurt. You trusted her. You loved her.”

“I’m grateful I found out when I did and not a few months later when we would have been married.” He’d have had a divorce to contend with then. “But, yes, it hurt.”

“You broke up with her?”

“The same day.” Elena’s tear-stained face flashed through Jason’s mind. “I went to the jail. I needed to hear from her why she’d done it. She expected me to bail her out and help her pay for an attorney. Instead, I ended things. She knew drug runners had murdered my parents. She knew I’d spent my entire adult life busting people who did what she’d done, that I’d lost fellow Wolves, that I’d been shot. Still, she’d gone to work for the enemy. That’s what hurt the most. It felt like a betrayal of everything I am.”

Winona laced her fingers through his. “It was a betrayal.”

Jason looked into Winona’s guileless eyes, saw nothing there but compassion. He tried to hold back, but he couldn’t. He leaned forward—and kissed her.

The sweet shock of Jason’s lips against hers made Winona’s breath catch. Heart skipping, she leaned into the kiss, resting her palms against his bare chest. All else faded from her mind, the world around her melting away until there was nothing left but the two of them.

The searing press of his lips. The silken caress of his tongue. The spicy scent of his skin. The rapid beating of his heart beneath her palms. The hard feel of his body.

Oh, yes.

He sat fully upright, slid one big hand into her hair, and turned the two of them, bearing her back onto the mattress, his lips never leaving hers.

Anticipation shivered through her, just the weight of him arousing. It had been so long since she’d been with a man. But Jason wasn’t just any man. He kissed her like he meant it, paying attention to the tiniest details—the dip at the center of her upper lip, the outline of her lower lip, the corners of her mouth.

At last, he broke the kiss, the intensity of his gaze making her pulse skip. “Are you sure you want this?”

She caught his face between her palms, looked into his eyes. “Yes.”

He groaned and claimed her mouth once again with a blistering kiss that was as fierce and raw as it was perfect. She matched him stroke for stroke, tongues teasing, tasting, twining, her need every bit as desperate as his.

But he was ruthless, relentless.

She surrendered, lost in the rush of being overwhelmed by him. Needing more, she slid her palms up his chest and over his shoulders, savoring the satin texture of his skin, caressing the shifting muscles of his back.

God, even touching him turned her on.

He dragged his lips from hers and straddled her hips—and pulled her sleepshirt over her head, tossing it aside, leaving her completely naked.

His gaze dropped to her breasts then moved down her body, breath leaving his lungs in a rush when he saw she wasn’t wearing panties. He whispered words in his own language, then spoke in English. “You’re so damned beautiful.”

She shivered, her nipples drawing tight—and he hadn’t yet touched her.

Then a big hand closed over each breast, and she arched into him, her eyes drifting shut as he toyed with her nipples, palming her, circling her areolas with his thumbs, grazing the sensitive tips, his touch sending darts of arousal to her belly.

Oh, she wanted him, heat building between her thighs.

“Jason.” She moaned his name, opened her eyes just a sliver, and found him watching her, his pupils dilated, a smile on his lips.

She sucked in a breath, watching him as he watched the effect he had on her, the heat between her thighs now incandescent. “You’re tormenting me.”

He chuckled, gave her breasts a gentle squeeze. “I hate to tell you, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Then he stretched out beside her, lowered his head, and sucked an aching nipple into the heat of his mouth.

“Oh, God.” She moaned, her eyes closing again, her fingers sliding into his short hair. It felt so good as he feasted on one nipple and then the other, his lips tugging on her, the sharp edges of his teeth teasing her, his tongue flicking her. The heat inside her became a backdraft, her body twisting beneath him, her hips rocking upward, her body instinctively seeking release.

Without realizing it, she crossed her thighs and squeezed.

He slid a hand down her belly, nudged her thighs apart, and cupped her. “You’ve got to let me in.”

“Yes!” That’s what she wanted—him inside her.

She bent her knees, let her thighs