CHAPTER 13
Axel fumed. The best she could come up with was I save lives? How could Coop be so careless with her own safety? Did she honestly think he was going to watch her throw herself in front of a tornado and not do anything? He didn’t care how bad she wanted her data, it wasn’t worth dying over. Especially after she’d come breezing back into his life again.
“Jesus, Coop, you scared the shit out of me.” Relief and anger roiled inside him. “Do you realize how close that thing came?” He held up an arm. “We’re soaked. And my shirt’s in shreds.” Probably from the gravel, and maybe a few sticks. He could tell without looking that he was going to have scrapes all over his body from the debris.
That tornado had come a lot closer than she’d realized. And now, she was yelling at him? Because he’d been looking out for her safety? She might still do batshit crazy stuff without him, but he’d be damned if he let her compromise her safety while he was around. He couldn’t face himself in the mirror if he let her get hurt and there was something he could have done about it.
Hands down, he’d pick her up and drag her back from the brink again in a heartbeat. That was a fucking no-brainer.
Axel had half a mind to call up Forte and chew him a new asshole. What kind of operation was he running that his employees would put data before safety?
Coop squirmed beneath him, her dark eyes sparking with anger and… lust.
Maybe it was the adrenaline still screaming through his body, or the sheer relief that it was all over and they were in one piece, but his body responded instantly. His cock grew hard and pressed against his zipper. It wouldn’t take much. They were practically glued together anyway, legs and arms still tangled protectively.
“Coop?” His body grew tight in anticipation.
She licked her lips, heat radiating off her in waves. And when she gave a little thrust of her hips, he was lost. He surrendered as she pulled his head down, and pure animal need roared to life as she slicked his lower lip with her tongue and gave it a nip.
Letting out a guttural moan, he tightened his grip on her and quickly took over the kiss, plundering her mouth and exploring every crevice, every hot recess. She was alive and warm beneath him, a moving reminder of how close they’d come to serious injury, if not death.
“Goddammit, Coop,” he gritted between kisses. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
Her hand was at his fly, working the button. “Don’t ever ruin my research like that again.” Her mouth was hot on his neck.
“Crazy bitch.”
“Bastard.”
The ridiculousness of it all hit Axel square in the gut, and a great bubble of laughter threatened to burst out of him. “God, I–” Love you. The words formed in his mouth.
Fuck.
He loved her. He still loved her.
The realization washed over him like torrential rain. Flooding his senses.
He couldn’t tell her. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. He shut his eyes, trying to gather his focus and failing miserably because her hand was now stroking his shaft. His eyes rolled back as wave after wave of delicious sensation coursed through him. And God, he was on the brink of completely fucking losing it. Tension snaked up his legs, settling low in his spine. If he didn’t distract her fast, he’d be done before they started.
“Coop.” Need for her strangled his voice. He fumbled with the zipper on her cargo pants. At least they were baggy and slid over her hips easily.
He dipped his head, running his tongue across the part of her collarbone left exposed by the vee of her shirt, and grinning in satisfaction against her skin when she sighed heavily.
“I swear to God, if I get poison ivy on my ass, I will kill you.” Her voice was husky with laughter.
That was an easy problem to solve. He’d risk a week of misery or more to show her how much he loved her. Twisting his hips, he rolled them so she straddled him, his erection nestling against her hot, slick, core.
She leaned over him, cheeks flushed and lips swollen from his kisses. Placing his hands on her hips, he guided her onto himself, groaning as her tight, wet, heat encompassed him.
“Yes, Axe,” she said breathlessly. “Just like that.”
This, right here, was heaven. He didn’t care that they were in a ditch, or that they’d had a near miss with a twister. Being with her, feeling her surround him, pushing into her and hearing her eager moans – these were the moments a man lived for.
Their hips rolled together, and he pulled her down, crushing her mouth to his. There was nothing soft and sweet about this encounter. This was about need, and release. He bit her lower lip, then swept his tongue across the mark his teeth made. She thrust her hand through his hair, grabbing hard and pulling as he thrust more deeply.
His balls tightened as fire fused into a white hot knot. At the same time, Coop squeezed her legs against his hips and bore down, her own orgasm ripping through her. Axel let go as she tightened and rippled around him, white lights bursting behind his eyes. He gripped her hips hard as she rode out the remains of her own release, until she collapsed on top of him, giggling and out of breath. For a moment, maybe ten, they lay entwined, and he stroked her back reassuring himself she was safe and slowly returning to coherence.
Thunder rolled in the distance.
But instead of acting as an assurance the storm had passed, it acted like an alarm and Coop popped up, pulling her pants back on. “We can’t do this. It will cost me my job.”
All his warm fuzzy feelings vaporized. He propped himself up, “What do you mean? It’s not like we’re teenagers, Coop.”
“Exactly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Where the hell was this coming from? His brain was still fuzzy, but he was coherent enough to know that this was bullshit. He stood, closing his jeans and wringing out the hem of his soaked shirt.
“It means you have a life on the ranch that I have no place in. You’re a rule follower. You always have been. And–”
“Fuck the rules. And since when do you care about following the rules?”
“Since I have a promotion on the line,” she bristled, voice rising.
That’s what this was about? A promotion? She’d throw him under the bus if it meant getting a promotion? That burned. He scrambled out of the ditch and stood, eyeing the clouds. “So you’re saying this promotion is more important than–”
“Than anything,” she confirmed.
More important than him, was what she implied. Pain knifed through him. “More important than people?”
She followed him out of the ditch and started walking to the car, but stopped short when she saw it had been moved by the winds.
Seeing the car parked wonky in the middle of the road startled him. But at the same time, he swelled with vindication. He hadn’t just been overreacting, or scared. They had been in real danger, and he’d made sure she was safe.
Ha.
“See? Look what the twister did to your fancy car.”
Take that, Coop.
She rolled her eyes. “The twister didn’t come close enough to do that. That was the RFD.”
He must have looked confused because her mouth thinned into a straight line. “Rear Flank Downdraft. It’s where the strongest winds often are, outside of the twister.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And if you’d let me do my job, I could have set the intercept probe a hundred yards that way.” She pointed her thumb behind her. “And driven us to safety. But you had to go all caveman and protect me.”
He raised an eyebrow, smirking. “You seemed to enjoy it a few minutes ago.”
Her cheeks flamed. “Of course I enjoyed it. That’s not the point. Do you know how many people I can save if I get this promotion? How I’ll be able to affect policy and early warning systems on a national level?”
That sparked a fire in him. How dare she throw that at him after he’d pulled them from harm’s way? Why was she pushing him away when he’d protected her?
“You know what? It was your obsession with saving lives that ruined us. Did you ever stop to think about the collateral damage that goes along with your crusade to save every stranger in the world?”
Her face twisted and her eyes narrowed to two glittery points. “Oh, don’t you put that on me, Mr. Family Loyalty Above Everything Else.” She snapped, hands fisting at her hips. “I’m trying to make sure you have a family.”
“What do you know about family loyalty?” he shouted. “You ditched everyone who loved you as soon as it got tough.”
“Don’t you dare bring that back up. You made it perfectly clear when we were younger that if I couldn’t ‘hang with the fam’,” she quoted with her fingers, “that I wasn’t the girl for you.”
He stepped back, reeling from her words. “What do you mean? I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s obvious to pretty much everyone that your family is your life. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Eddie boss me around the way you let him boss you around.”
A white hot flame of anger licked through him, and his body tensed. “Don’t you think that’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?” he kept his voice quiet and even. “You’re the one quaking in your boots over Forte. No one’s going to fire me for who I have sex with.”
Her head snapped back as if she’d been slapped. But then she paced over to him, eyes flashing and poked him in the chest. “I have a job to do, and I’m here to do it. Brilliantly. This,” she waved between them, “is a distraction. A very nice distraction, but a distraction nonetheless. I can’t – I won’t – let emotions get in the way. Emotions on the job do nothing but cloud judgment, and that costs lives.”
So he was nothing but a distraction, huh? That offended him to his core. He ground his teeth together as he stared down at her. She stood there in front of him, vibrating with indignation. And then the realization hit him like a ton of bricks. “That’s a very nice speech, Dr. Cooper, but you’re full of shit. The whole reason you’re in this field is because of emotion.” He crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels, triumphant at his razor sharp assessment. “Look me in the eye and tell me it’s not.”
She grimaced, but held her ground. “I don’t expect you to understand. You’ve always had a safety net… a family.” She set her jaw and stared at him hard, eyes boring straight into him. “I pray to God you never lose one of them in a way that’s preventable.”
The weight in her voice was fearsome. Full of pent up emotion that matched his own.
She spun on her heel and marched to the car, stopping to pick up the control box where she’d dropped it earlier.
It was going to be a long ride back to the ranch.