the woman’s brown eyes. It’s worse.
* * * * *
“You did what?” Boone barely withheld the roar that threatened to shake the dust in their bedroom suite.
Lauralee folded her arms, the action only thrusting her breasts up in that uniform that kept driving him to distraction. Even if she claimed the blue made her look sickly, his eyes bugged out at the sex appeal.
He shook himself back to the matter of her putting herself at risk big time.
“You would have done the exact same thing, Boone Wynton!”
“Keep your voice down. We can’t have someone overhearing us.”
Lowering her voice to an angry whisper, she inched up to get in his face as she told him off. “You would have taken the tray too.”
“You’re right—but I can handle myself if shit goes south.”
“Aren’t you even going to ask me about her? Her living conditions, her state of mind? Or are you only concerned with me not following your rules?”
“Both. But tell me about the woman now.”
Lauralee threw him one of those looks a long-suffering wife gives her husband after the spark dies. It’d only taken a few days and they were already at that level in their relationship.
“She looks like pictures of women you see after their town’s been flattened by war, and all their family’s been killed. She has this haunted look in her eyes that still makes me shudder to think about.”
He settled with his back against the wall of their room. “Go on.”
“The room isn’t much larger than this one. There are two windows.”
“Which direction do they face?”
“Since I wasn’t born with the built-in compass gene, I don’t know.”
“Where was the sun at the time?”
She pursed her lips when she thought for a moment, accentuating the plump pout that had him remembering her lips wrapped around his cock.
He stifled a groan. Why couldn’t he act professional around this woman?
“I think the windows face south.”
He gave a nod. “What else?”
“One door. I was given a key to unlock it.”
“Hell in a—”
“Next time I get it, I’ll try to pass it to you to make a copy. Make a mold or something.”
He pinned her with his stare. “There won’t be a next time. You’re not going in there again.”
“I have to! I told her I’d return.”
“Did you tip her off about us?” He pulled away from the wall.
Lauralee chewed on her lip. “I told her my husband’s the new guard. She seemed to understand.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Almost nothing. She’s so terrorized and stuck in her own head.”
He inflated his chest with a breath that burned. He’d seen some ugliness in the world, and this was climbing the ranks to the top of his list so far. What Lauralee told him left him feeling in over his head, something he hadn’t known since he was a young’un on the ranch and first learning to ride.
He’d overcome this too. If he could get control of his damn emotions where Lauralee was concerned.
The more she explained about her encounter, the higher the fury rose inside him.
“Why are you glowering at me? I thought I came here to help, and that’s what I was doing!” Her incensed tone only plucked at his desire.
He rubbed a hand over his face.
She planted a hand on her hip, jutting it outward. “Well?”
He closed his eyes and slowly opened them. When their gazes locked, her lips popped open at whatever she saw on his face. Right now, he didn’t have a clue either—he only knew that having Lauralee in danger felt wrong to his bones.
With her standing within grabbing distance, a groan rumbled through his chest. She dug in to tell him off some more, but he pressed his palm over her mouth, cutting off any smart comments about to project from her.
Over the top of his fingers, her eyes shot silver bullets at him.
“If you go in there, and something happens, I can’t protect you. Do you hear me? I can’t live with myself if something happens to you, Lauralee.”
Her eyes flared wide. Under his hand, her breath puffed out faster.
“Hell,” he muttered.
Slowly, he peeled his fingers off her mouth. She didn’t speak, only gaped at him as if he’d lost it. He damn well might have.
“I want to call in all the guns and choppers I have on standby and blast this place apart, free the woman and get you both out of this godforsaken hellhole.”
“You probably don’t want to know what the cook told me, but I think you should.” Her soft words filled him with