Текст книги "Dangerous Pleasure"

Автор книги: Lora Leigh

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

10

God, what she did to him. She thought he had no intention of talking to her? That he could sleep with her much longer without losing his mind?

It wasn’t fucking her that he had no intention of doing. It was loving her. And he could see in her eyes that she hadn’t been merely talking about sex. She had said fuck, she had referred to sex, but she meant so much more.

Her heart was involved and she intended to involve his as well.

Holding her to him he turned his fingers into her hair, pulled her head back, and as he fought the grief he felt at the thought of never loving her, his lips covered hers.

Sweet heat, fiery feminine anger and passion overflowed from her lips. Her fingers curled into fists and pressed into his shoulders, stopping just the second before true rejection. She wasn’t saying no, but the threat of it was there.

Give her a chance to consider the true reality of what he might very well intend and she would be screaming her rejection from the rooftops, and he wouldn’t be able to blame her. Hell, he would agree with her.

He had no intention of giving her a chance.

As his lips covered hers, his tongue brushed the seam. He considered for less than a second the seduction he had actually considered each night he lay with her, her naked body curled into him.

He decided against it.

Dominance rose inside him. The need, the overwhelming hunger for her sexual submission rushed through him like a tidal wave of epic proportions.

Need beat at his brain. Control disintegrated. Only instinct remained. The instinct of a primal animal, determined to fully possess his woman on every physical level that could possibly exist.

He tugged at the strands of hair he tangled his fingers in. Just enough pressure to drag a moan from her lips and have her arching into his hold.

This was her acceptance of him and her acceptance of what she had to know was coming from him.

He wasn’t her lover, and easy had never been a part of him.

Sliding one hand from her back to her buttocks, his fingers curled around her firm, wounded globes as he lifted her off her petite feet, turned, and all but stumbled to the large bed at the far end of the room.

He paused only long enough to strip the hated throb from her body. If he never saw another of those hated garments shrouding the perfection of her body then it would be far too soon.

“Lay down,” he growled as he stripped himself. The loose tunic and trousers came off, along with the even looser white underpants and the custom-made hiking boots he had worn.

She didn’t move to obey him, rather she stared back at him defiantly, her breasts rising and falling quickly, tight, hard little nipples beckoning him.

“You lay down.” Breathless, heat filling her voice along with the defiance. The sound of it had the head of his dick throbbing imperatively.

He almost allowed a smile to tug at his lips.

“Do you think it works that way?” he asked silkily. “Oh Paige, precious, it doesn’t work that way.” She was pushing at him, defying him and expecting to get away with it.

Turning his fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back and took the taste of her hunger with his lips again.

She tasted innocent. Her lips moved beneath his with just a hint of hesitancy, as though she hadn’t kissed in a while. As though she had never been kissed by a man intent on drowning out her deepest hunger.

A hunger he would have, no matter the lengths he had to go to.

Jerking her against him until his cock pressed firmly into the flesh of her belly.

The heat of her body seared the sensitive head of his cock, drawing a pulse of precome from the bloated head.

Sinking his tongue past her lips to possess the sweet nectar of her hunger.

It wasn’t submission she gave him. As his tongue pressed against the seam of her lips, they tightened, and pushing forward past their resistance he found her teeth locked tight to him.

Her fists were unclenched, her nails rasping against his shoulders like a little kitten kneading in pleasure.

Removing his hand from her hair he gripped her jaw instead, his thumb and two fingers pressing into the back of her jaw to force her teeth and lips to part.

A ragged little groan left her throat as his tongue forged inside to stroke against hers and to taste her need. It was there, the hunger and heat meeting his and flaming out of control.

Her nails pricked at his flesh as he arched her closer to him. The demand in his cock was beating through his body, thundering through his bloodstream.

Damn her. She nearly had his knees trembling from no more than her kiss. No more than her heated body arching, her stomach stroking against his dick.

Pumping his tongue into her mouth he nearly groaned as she suckled at it, hungry, sweet dreams of her heated mouth that had his cock jerking and throbbing from the engorged crest along the heavy thick shaft.

He wanted her mouth there. He wanted to stare down at her, watch her take him, watch her suck him, watch as her hot little tongue licked around it.

He pulled his head back, the breath rasping from his chest as he watched her eyes slowly flutter open.

Pleasure reflected in the brilliancy of her emerald eyes, the flushed features of her face. Her tongue peeked out to flutter against her lips, the sight of it drawing his balls tight with desire.

“Suck my cock.” The demand had her face flushing further and lust deepening in her gaze.

He stroked his hands up her shoulders, pressing against them to ease her to her knees, the demand imperative, the need clawing at his spine.

Not that she did as he expected. She didn’t go immediately to her knees. She didn’t suck his cock into the fiery furnace of her mouth.

Instead—

She destroyed him.

She tore aside the fragile illusions of cynicism.

She used that ragged wound growing in his soul.

She broke him.

Then lick by sweet lick down his body she began to remake him.

Paige could barely breathe.

Heat raced within her chest furiously, nerves and desire, fear and excitement making her entire body tremble.

As his hands pressed against her shoulders her lips moved to his shoulders, her tongue tasted the salt and male flavor of his flesh.

Her hands moved down his sides as he caressed down her arms, back up, along her back. His head lowered, strong teeth nipping at her ear in retaliation.

Then she retaliated back. Her teeth scraped over his shoulder and she nipped hard, then lowered to the heavy muscle at his chest, then the male point of a nipple.

Abram jerked, groaning in surprise and in pleasure as her hot little tongue rakeer his nipple, and sent heat spinning through his senses.

Damn her, she made him want things, made him want things from her that he was certain weren’t good for either of their emotional health.

“My emotional health is not inexhaustible,” he groaned as her tongue licked and strolled down his chest to the tight, clenched muscles of his stomach.

The closer she got the harder his dick pulsed and swelled. The flesh was tight, so hard it was painful, so damned sensitive he swore he could feel the air around it.

Her nails scraped down his abs to his thighs as she kissed, licked, and nipped her way down until she was only inches from the heavy, engorged head.

And he was sure as hell doing his best to encourage her to lower, faster.

Damn if he wasn’t ready to fucking explode from the need tearing through him.

Slender, graceful fingers curved around the side of the shaft, but there wasn’t a chance of them fully encircling it. But she was touching it, and those pouty lips were coming closer by the second.

His fingers were buried in her hair again, clenched, and he grimaced as he felt her heated breath against the engorged, throbbing head of his dick.

He watched, his gaze on her flushed features, closed eyes, and her pink little tongue as it suddenly licked over the darkly flushed head.

She licked and tasted, each stroke of her tongue like a lash of painful ecstasy. Once she got her lips around it and sucked him inside, he wouldn’t last seconds.

Then her lips were there, slowly, so damned slowly, enveloping the head of his cock and sucking it into the tight, hot depths of her mouth.

He watched. Watched as her lips closed on him, as her tongue began to lick and rub against the underside of his dick as his fingers tugged at her hair, pulling and releasing as she moaned against the overly sensitive crest of his cock.

Holding onto his control was hell, not releasing the heavy tension invading his balls was becoming the most ecstatic torture he had ever known in his life.

Her tongue was lightning and rapture, her fingers silken heat as she began stroking the heavy shaft, her moans vibrating along the nerve-laden crest as he began thrusting slow and easy, fucking those sweet, pretty lips as he’d only fantasized about for many years.

And he wasn’t going to survive this much longer. The tight suction of her mouth, her tongue lashing at it.

His hands tightened.

He could feel the perspiration easing down his temple as his control began to fray to the point that he could feel his balls tightening violently.

He was going to come.

Control be damned. He couldn’t keep it together here. He wasn’t going to last and he wanted to be buried inside her first. He had to be buried inside her before he lost his mind as he had the first time he had her naked body beneath him.

“Enough,” he growled.

She didn’t stop.

Her lashes lifted. Her eyes watered from taking him deep and she moaned again.

“I’m going to come in that sweet mouth of yours.” He breathed out roughly, his voice ragged. “Is that what you want, precious? My come filing your hot little mouth?”

She flushed deeper. She sucked his dick tighter and left him strung out on a rack of impending bliss.

“So pretty, precious,” he crooned, watching her swollen lips draw on the heavy width of his dick.

Her mouth capped the swollen crest, worked around it and rubbed the overly sensitive underside with her hot little tongue.

She was destroying him.

He couldn’t hold on.

He didn’t want to let her go.

He wanted inside her. The full length of his cock sheltered in the sweet heat of her pussy.

His hips shifted, thrust, and moved against the swollen beauty of her lips.

His hands clasped her head and he forced himself to draw back. To drag the painfully swollen length of his cock away from the pleasure of her mouth.

Glistening, moist from her mouth and so damned hard he was dying. Then he lifted her from her knees and laid her back easily on the bed.

Then she shocked him. She had him stilling, his mouth watering, every nerve ending in his body heating in fiery response.

She laid back against the pillows, slender legs parted as her fingers slid into the moist heat of her saturated pussy.

Slender fingertips moved through the wet folds as she stroked and circled the swollen bud of her clit.

Dazed, mesmerized, she stared back at him, stroked her pussy, and whispered a broken moan.

He moved. Quickly, firmly, he gripped her wrist and pulled her fingers from the flesh he was going to own. Every kiss, every touch, every sweet erotic moan.

“It was feeling good,” she whispered hoarsely, her fingers curling against his hand. “Aren’t you curious how I please myself? How I fantasize and whisper your name when I come?”

Seeing it would have him coming to the air alone, and that he wasn’t doing.

Taking her other wrist he placed both on the pillow above her head with a determined look.

“Leave them there,” he warned her. “Don’t move them.”

Her hot little tongue flicked over her lips as he shoved his knee between her thighs as he moved over her.

He hadn’t meant to kiss her lips, he’d intended to go straight to her pussy to lick at the sweet, heated warmth spilling from it.

But those sweet lips beckoned, they drew him.

His tongue pumped into her mouth, stroked and devoured her as he came over her, spreading her thighs to create the sweetest embrace he’d ever known.

Her legs lifted, knees bending as her feet pressed into the mattress, her knees gripping his thighs.

Thick and heavy, his cock slid against the slick wet folds of her pussy. Engorged, aching with a hunger tearing him apart.

His lips slid from hers, ran down the silk of her neck to the rise of firm, sweet breasts and tight hard nipples.

He had to taste her nipples. Candy pink and hard and sweet as hell. He curled his tongue around one and let his hunger have its way.

Paige was drowning. She could feel herself drowning in pleasure so incredible she couldn’t find the strength to even attempt to resist even a second of it.

He’d warned her to keep her hands at the pillow, but she had to touch him, she had to hold onto him.

Her head was spinning like a top, pleasure whipping through her system like a fire burning out of control.

Her fingers dug into his hair as his lips drew the sensitized flesh into his mouth.

Sucking, drawing on it, his tongue licking, his teeth scraping. Flares of sensation whipped and raced through her entire body. Arching into it she was desperate to get closer.

She wanted to hold onto him forever. She just wanted to stay here in his arms.

“I waited,” she whispered, dazed, so much pleasure. “I waited so long, Abram.”

So many years and so many dreams of his touch.

“God, Paige, sweetheart.” Lifting his head he stared down at her, his legs pressing hers farther apart as he lifted, his knees digging into the bed, the head of his cock nestling into the satiny soft folds of her pussy.

The clenched entrance flared around the tip of his cock as he pressed forward, his eyes locked with the drowsy heat of hers and he began to work the stiff flesh into the heated grip of her pussy.

Paige was caught by the midnight of his eyes. She was caught by the pleasure-pain piercing and stretching her sex.

Her thighs trembled, her back arching, neck stretched back as her nails dug into his shoulders, her knees lifting, gripping his hips and opening herself to him.

“There, baby,” he groaned, his fingers gripping her hips, his gaze still locked with hers.

“Hold onto me, baby,” he groaned as she watched his expression tighten, watched his eyes flare.

That heat was burning through her. Like flames licking over her flesh, ripping through her senses. The thick width of his cock pressed in, stretched her and sent desperate aching need shattering through her as she arched, bucking against him, fighting to drive him deeper.

His fingers tightened on her hips, his hips keeping a steady, heated rhythm. He didn’t speed up, he didn’t go any slower. Keeping his gaze on her, he continued to work deeper into flesh rarely used.

Her head twisted on the pillows, dug into them, and with desperate whimpers she begged for more. She wanted to cry out, she wanted to scream for more, but oh God, she couldn’t breathe.

“Please,” she gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders, gripping as the muscles of her cunt rippled and sucked in tight hard spasms as the head of his cock lodged inside her. Working against the resistant muscles, the heavy flesh throbbing, burning inside her.

She needed more.

“Abram, please,” she moaned. “Oh God! Fuck me. Please, Abram.”

His hips jerked, burying him deeper.

Paige lifted her knees, her legs wrapping around his hips as she ground her pussy upward, gasping with pleasure.

“There you go, precious,” he groaned. “Fuck that sweet pussy up to me. Give it to me, baby. Work on my cock.”

His lips moved to her neck, biting kisses, strokes of his tongue licking over her as he began to move deeper inside her.

Finally.

“Yes,” she whispered, her pleasure echoing in the low cry that left her lips. “Deeper, Abram.”

She lifted closer, her legs tightening around his hips. “Fuck me deeper.”

His hips jerked against her, driving his cock deeper, harder inside her.

She was shaking, shuddering in his grip, but he was shuddering too. She could feel him. His face buried in her neck, his lips moving against the sensitive flesh, his hips moving harder now, pushing his cock deeper inside her.

The pleasure began to whip through her. Sensation upon sensation as she writhed beneath him, her legs tightening around his hips, her arms clasping his neck.

“Take me, Paige.” He nipped at her shoulders. “Take all of me, precious.”

She didn’t have so much as a second’s warning. She’d barely drawn in a tremulous breath when his hips bunched, gathering strength, then in one stroke he buried the full length inside her.

The heavy breadth of his cock forced its way inside her. Every hard inch stroking to her furthest depth and deeper. Pleasure and pain became rocketing fire as he began to move. He didn’t pause, he didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath or to prepare for the sensations tearing across her body, throwing her into a maelstrom of pure bliss. She wanted to scream it was so good, but she couldn’t scream. Instinct kept the desperation bottled inside, silent, or nearly silent.

She had to bite her lip. She bit his shoulder.

“Ah fuck!” Her teeth at his shoulder did something. It triggered a reaction. It set loose a primal, sensual creature she could have never expected. A wild, primitive, erotic lover that hijacked her senses.

His hips twisted and surged, shafted inside her and fucked her with driving, forceful strokes. Each rasp of his cock thrusting through her pussy, pushing her to a limit she hadn’t known existed. Pushing her toward an ecstasy so fiery she was lost in it, begging for more, dying with each stroke.

Each heavy thrust parting and delving, stretching and burning. She bit into his shoulder harder, fighting the cries welling inside her, fighting to hold back.

“No,” she moaned. 01C;No. Please, Abram. Don’t…” She shook her head. “I want to scream,” she whimpered. He growled. His lips covered hers, his tongue delved inside. He trapped the sound. He thrust harder, his cock stroking deeper, fucking her, possessing her, owning her as he never had before.

In that second she felt the sensations rushing, surging. Silent screams were ricocheting through her head and through her soul.

She was coming with a force. She didn’t know if she could survive. Exploding around the thick wedge of his cock as it began to throb violently. He groaned into the kiss and began coming inside her. Heated, deep spurts of his semen pulsing, surging inside the spasming flesh of her pussy.

Groaning into the kiss that held back her screams, his arms holding her to him, possessively, desperately.

And for the first time in her life she swore she belonged.

For the first time in his life, he knew what belonging meant.

And it terrified them both.

11

“Move! It’s time to go!” Abram hissed at her ear, a sense of danger filling his voice and awakening her with a surge of fear-laced adrenaline.

Paige’s eyes came open, staring up in confusion at him, his hand capped over her lips to cover any sound she may have made, born of fear or surprise.

Staring up at him she saw the icy features of his face, the cold, murderous rage glittering in his black eyes and she knew something, somehow, had just gone to hell.

“Clothes.” He lifted his hand and with the other pressed clothing into her hands. “Shoes.” They felt like hiking boots and they were shoved into her other hand. “Hurry.”

Gripping her wrist as he jerked the blankets back, exposing the warmth of her naked flesh to the chill air outside the covering, he pulled her from the bed.

Coming to her feet she was surprised to find soft, wool trousers, a heavy, short tunic, socks, and definitely hiking boots. She dressed quickly, her gaze trying to pierce the darkness as she caught Abram’s shadow moving close to her as he dressed as well.

“Extraction will be in place,” Tariq hissed through the darkness. “There are horses waiting in the caverns, but we’re going to be cutting it close. Azir is with the Matawa now, and they’re itching to get in here.”

The Matawa, the feared religious police who enforced the strict Islamic law on all matters from courtship to dress and marital intercourse.

“Why are they here?” Jerking her socks on she tried to keep the fear from her voice as she hurriedly finished dressing.

“For us,” Tariq snarled in a sibilant whisper. “Azir called them in. They’ll hold you, me, and Abram until he makes the vow to the emissary, and once the emissary is finished they’ll secure Abram for punishment of the crimes of sexual deviance and intent to abdicate a vow given to the monarchy, which is the same as treason. Until then, you will be held in the cells below the castle until the vow is given to give you time to contemplate your sins before you’re stoned to death.” Disgust rang in his voice as she laced the boots then rose to her feet.

“Here.” Jacket, gloves, and a hat. “The temperature’s dropped significantly. We have to hurry; they’ll be here within minutes.”

There was a sound of stone scraping against stone, and seconds later Abram gripped her hand and rushed her into a darkness even more overwhelming than that of the bedroom they had been in.

As he and Tariq wrestled whatever door was used back into place securely, the click of the lock reengaging, they all froze at the sound of heavy pounding at the bedroom door.

“You will open this door. Abram el Hamid Mustafa. Tariq bin Sa’id Mustafa. Paige Eleanora Galbraithe, you are hereby under arrest for the crimes of sexual deviancy and conspiracy to commit treason against the Saudi Arabian empire.”

Paige reached out, her fingers clenched on Abram’s arm at the sound of the rough, cruel tone and the charges being leveled against them.

The voices turned lower, the words muffled by the wood and stone barriers, only barely reaching her ears as adrenaline began to surge through her.

Why were they just standing there?

Her fingers clenched tighter on his arm, the need to run overwhelming her now. Each of those charges were punishable by stoning for a woman, though only the charge of treason held such a punishment for Abram and Tariq.

She could feel him against her, the tension in his body mounting as he extricated his arm from her grip only to wrap it around her shoulders and pull her to him.

The pounding came again.

“Three.” Abram began counting off. “Two.” As he spoke he turned her toward the back of whatever cave, cavern, or room they were hidden within.

A second later the loud, raucous sounds of a heavy metal band began to scream through the room.

Paige jumped, only barely managing to hold back a cry of surprise at the shrill music. In the same d, Abram’s arms tightened around her and they were rushing headlong into a darkness barely lit by the penlight Tariq held out before him.

“What the hell happened?” Abram snarled as they began to run through the stone corridor that she was certain had to run on forever.

“I don’t know what the hell happened,” Tariq hissed back. “I was with our contact arranging extraction when he got the call that the Matawa were moving in on the fortress to arrest the three of us, and that Jafar couldn’t be found. Azir contacted them from what our contact, Yassir, learned and he rushed me back to the cave entrance. From what we were being told as we ran for the caverns, Azir called them in and informed them of the charges. He’s also having an ‘arrest on sight’ order placed against Khalid, Paige’s mother, and her father if they enter Saudi Arabia. It’s a fucking mess, and I still haven’t figured out how Azir arranged it.”

Azir, Abram’s father. He had found another way to betray his son.

“He has minor influence with the Matawa,” Abram growled. “He’ll be able to keep the order in force only until the authorities in Riyadh hear of it and bring it before the king. But until then, they can do exactly that; kill on sight.”

He didn’t even sound breathless or tired and Paige knew her legs would have already given out on her.

She tried to draw enough air into her lungs to keep from collapsing, her heart racing hard and fierce as Abram all but carried her at a dead run.

“Did you complete the extraction plan?” Abram’s voice was lifeless, all emotion stripped from it now.

“Extraction was all but complete when the call came in. Yassir managed to call in emergency extraction at that point,” Tariq informed him. “We have three hours to reach the pickup point in the mountains. If we’re not there, then they leave without us. I talked to the commander of the rangers myself and he intends to make damned certain nothing stands in the way of that information getting into their hands, but he’s not willing to watch his men die to get it. Did you get the files?”

Had any of them had time to get anything?

“On my back,” Abram bit out. “My pack holds everything we’ve gathered over the past year. Don’t worry; extraction won’t leave without us, Tariq. They need this too damned much and they know it.”

He had made certain he wouldn’t become a casualty to politics or indifference in the plans made to pull him and Tariq, and now Paige as well, out of Saudi Arabia.

“Jafar had Chalah driven to the desert airstrip where a private Learjet made a quick stop and picked her up before heading out again, earlier9;t worry;ening. That’s where we suspect he is, on his way back from the airstrip,” Tariq reported, as Paige swore there was no end to the tunnel.

“At least she’s out of here,” Abram bit out roughly. “Having my friends endangered in this war Azir has been waging against us is going to get him killed.”

And she could hear the certainty in Abram’s voice that he would be the one to kill his father.

“What I’d like to know is why the hell Jafar was so damned intent on getting her out of here tonight,” Tariq questioned, his voice harsh.

“Why hasn’t he kept her here, as Azir has been pushing him to do?” Abram asked in return. “God only knows what either of them have planned.”

“There are horses waiting in the cavern, and we should arrive at the extraction location just in time if we’re damned lucky,” Tariq stated as they rounded yet another curve in the tunnel.

“Is there any way they can find the hidden door in Abram’s room?” Paige whispered as the fear clenched her stomach and trembled in her voice at the thought of being followed.

“Azir has searched that room and every other room in the castle for the doors to the tunnels he’s already closed in. He still hasn’t found some of those. Many of the tunnels veer off in several different directions with the ones leading to more strategically located rooms accessed by more than one hidden stone door and tunnel, like a damned underground maze with no map,” Abram told her. “This particular corridor empties into an old mine. It’s easily millennia old and the exit is no more than a narrow slit in a wall surrounded by fallen boulders. If it were going to be found, Azir would have done so by now.”

They hadn’t slowed. Both men kept a steady pace that never slackened, one Paige couldn’t have had a hope of keeping up with if it weren’t for Abram’s arm locked around her waist.

Still, she was breathless, tired, and fighting to keep up just enough to keep him from having to slow his pace. She felt helpless, weak, and unable to fight enough to even participate in her own escape.

“Why did Azir turn you into the Matawa?” She gasped as she struggled to help Abram keep her on her feet. “What was the point?”

“The hell if I know,” Abram growled. “It’s at least two more weeks before the emissary is due to arrive and Azir has to have me there to give that vow, not under arrest, awaiting death, or dead. It served no purpose.”

“He would have held Paige and me until you gave your vow, then saw to our deaths once you gave it,” Tariq stated, his voice heated and rough as he led the way through the corridor. “He’ll nt risk allowing you even a single ally if he can keep you here.

“Paige is an American citizen whose family is more than aware of where she is,” Abram growled. “He knows he can’t get away with that, just as he knows I would find a way to contact the American consulate, the Saudi royal offices, and any journalist willing to listen.”

“And accidents happen in jails all the time, especially the detention cells the Matawa keep. When they did release her, Abram, you know the shape she would be in.”

Paige didn’t want to imagine the shape she would be in. She’d heard enough about the Saudi prisons from Khalid as he recounted the horrors friends of his had suffered when being held by the Matawa.

“Doesn’t sound like my idea of a favored vacation activity,” she whispered, her voice trembling as she thought she felt a breeze and detected a touch of fresh air ahead.

“Yeah, well, you need to talk to your travel agent about that, baby,” Abram assured her somberly.

“Maybe demand a refund,” she whispered.

Yes, that was definitely fresh air.

Thank God. She hadn’t known if she could stand it much longer in that enclosed corridor with its dark, dank air and sense of forced enclosure.

The narrow slit of the opening in the cavern wall deposited them first onto a shallow pile of boulders that reached toward the roof of the rock ceiling overhead.

As though they had been tossed randomly at the wall and bounced to the floor around it. Still gripping her wrist, Abram pulled her through the brief stone maze into the main room of the large cave.

The nicker of a horse had her eyes turning to the exit and the group of men and horses awaiting them.

Three of the riders instantly jumped from their mounts, holding their reins loosely as an older rider dismounted and waved them toward the horses.

“My nephew sent the message that Azir’s guards and the Matawa are preparing to leave the castle.” The rider moved quickly to Abram, handed over a rifle and a handgun holstered on belted leather.

Looping the belt around his neck and under his arm, Abram grabbed the rifle and looped it over the pommel of the saddle before turning and quickly gripping Paige’s hips to help her onto the horse standing next to his.

“Do they have a direction they suspect we’re riding to?” Abram asked quickly as Paige took the reins he pushed quickly to her.

“To the mountains.” The rider spat to the ground after speaking. “Ride hard and beat them there, but they may still get there before extraction.”

He was American. The sound of the Texas accent surprised her.