Claiming the Runaway by Emma Bray

Chapter Four

Hadley

Damon letsme ride with him to the auto shop he works at the next day. He tells me to go next door to apply to Tony’s for a job, that he’s pretty sure they’re hiring.

I’m thrilled when I’m hired right on the spot. It’s not a super fancy joint, but it’s not a total dive either. They sell more than just pizza. It’s more of an Italian restaurant than just a pizzeria. I spend the entire day training, and after work Damon takes me shopping so I can pick up the appropriate type of clothes for the job. I need a white button-up shirt, black pants, and some black shoes since that’s what they want their waitresses to wear there. I grab a few white camis and bras too since I can’t wear the colorful sports bras Damon bought me underneath a white button-up.

Damon gives me a wad of cash and waits outside the store on one of the mall’s benches, giving me my privacy. The bench is facing the store, though, and every time I look up, his eyes are watching me and flicking around the store, taking in everyone coming and going. It makes me feel safe, like he’s guarding me.

When I finish, he drives us back to his apartment where we both take showers, and then we wind up watching TV together on the couch while eating turkey sandwiches.

And that’s the routine we fall into. I ride with Damon to work every day. It’s perfect since I work right next to him. He comes over and eats lunch at the diner, and he always leaves me tips that are way too generous. More often than not, I take my lunch break when he’s there and eat lunch with him. That way I keep him from giving me humongous tips that I don’t deserve.

True to my word, when I get my first paycheck, I pay him back for all the clothes and necessities he bought me. He acts like he doesn’t really want to take it, but when I insist, he does. When I offer to pay for half the rent, that’s when he puts his foot down. He tells me he’d be paying the same amount regardless of whether I lived there or not, so I finally let it go, recognizing that it’s a battle I won’t win.

I’m happier than I can ever remember being in my whole life. I have a job and a place to live where I feel safe, and Damon is nothing short of amazing to me.

I realize that I’m probably becoming too attached to him. Sometimes when I look at him, I get this tickly feeling deep in my tummy, especially when he smiles at me or when he’s walking around bare-chested with all his tats and muscles showing.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like for him to kiss me. I thought he was going to that day we were sitting on the couch together and he told me he’d been in prison, but then the pizza guy had shown up, and I figured I must have just imagined it all since he hasn’t so much as laid a finger on me since then.

He’s been respectfully distant. A true gentleman. The closet Damon comes to touching me is with his eyes that seem to caress every inch of me, but that’s probably just my wishful imagination too.

Damon is my friend and roommate and nothing more.

And really that’s probably for the best. We don’t need to complicate things since we’re living together.

I’m just grateful for the break I’ve been given after running away from home in the middle of the night after what my stepdad tried to do. I shudder remembering his body on top of mine. I realize things could have turned out very differently for me that night if I’d run into someone besides Damon. Damon might be a felon, but he’s the most honorable man I’ve ever known.

I know I’m safe with him.

* * *

Damon

It’s the sweetest torture being around her so much and denying myself, but it’s worth it. She’s worth it.

I tell myself day after day that this is enough. Sitting on the couch with her after work and watching a movie together. Eating lunch together. Riding to and from work together. Seeing the way her nipples pebble when she gets chilled while we’re watching movie. Those goddamned sports bras I bought her don’t do anything to hide them.

I made sure she got a job at Tony’s. Fortunately, I know Tony. He went to school with Rick and me, and he was more than willing to take her on after I put in a good word for her.

I’d have been okay with her not working and staying here in my apartment where I knew she was safe, but there was no way Hadley would have ever gone for that. She has this fierce desire to prove herself and make her own way as much as she can, and I have to respect that—no matter how tempted I might be to lock her up and never let her leave.

There was no way in hell I was going to chance her getting a job across town where I wouldn’t be able to check on her as often I want. Although I drop by Tony’s every day for lunch, she has no idea how many times throughout the day I also walk by to glance in the window at her and make sure she’s okay.

I realize I’m completely fucking obsessed with her, but god help me. I can’t stop. I need to look at her a hundred times a day—at least.

My entire apartment smells of her. The scent of the rose shampoo I bought her follows her everywhere and clings to every surface. I jack off every night with her scent in my lungs and the vision of her sweet face in my mind.

And that’s just it. I don’t even have to picture her body to come. I can come just remembering her smile or her laugh. Fuck, everything about her has me ready to blow at a moment’s notice.

She’s reduced me to a goddamn animal through no fault of her own. No, she’s so damn innocent she doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing to me.

And fuck if that doesn’t make me want her even more.

She’s the light inside my darkness, the sunshine that brings warmth to my dreary world.

I mean it. Even if she never wants to be anything more than friends with me, I have to have her in my life. She’s like a drug that I’m addicted to. Every glance at her is a hit that sends a high throughout my system.

Of course, I know it’s selfish, but I know there’s no way I’ll ever be able to let her be with another man. It would destroy me if she let another man touch her.

Not that I touch her. I’ve been careful not to touch her because I’m afraid that with my growing obsession if I do I’ll lose control and won’t be able to stop.

I content myself with drinking in every bright smile she throws my way, every ripple of her hair, how she chews on her bottom lip when she’s in deep thought, the sexy little moans she makes when she’s eating something she really likes.

I’d do anything for her.

That why when I suddenly hear screams coming from her bedroom, I’m up in a flash, my heart pounding in my chest and rushing to her room.

“Hadley!” I burst into her room, my eyes flicking all around the dim area checking for any threat or danger before I see her small form thrashing in the bed. Her eyes are closed. She’s in the throes of a nightmare.

She screams again, and I hurry to her side, sitting on the edge of her bed and leaning over her to grip her shoulders and pull her up, gently shaking her to try to awaken her from whatever hell she’s reliving.

Her panicked eyes flutter open. Her breathing is ragged as she stares up at me unseeingly. “It’s just a nightmare,” I pet the side of her hair soothingly and my god, her raven tresses are just as silky as I imagined.

"Damon?” she speaks my name, and the wobbly, choked way she says it is like a punch to my gut.

Tears form in her eyes, and in the next instant, she launches herself at me, her arms clinging tight around me, burrowing her head in the crook of my neck.

I allow her to crawl onto my lap where I settle her sitting sideways, loving the ways she clings to me, looking for protection and solace.

“Ssh,” I murmur against her hair, stroking my hands gently up and down her back like I’d pet a frightened kitten, “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

Her tears wet my chest as she cries against me, but eventually she quiets and stops trembling.

I’m hyperaware of the curve of her ass sitting in my lap, and I don’t see how she can’t feel my hard-on. I feel like an ass for getting hard right now when I’m just supposed to be comforting her, but I’m a man goddammit, and she feels so soft and warm in my arms.

I feel the featherlight pressure of petal-soft lips against my neck and jump like I’ve been electrocuted. Christ, she kissed me.

I pull roughly back from her and look down into her blue eyes that are still watery from her tears, and I begin drowning. “Hadley,” my voice comes out strangled.

She moves her hand up to cup my face, and I see her hand shake as she lifts it. When her palm meets my cheek, I turn into it like an affection-starved dog, closing my eyes and reveling in her touch.

“Damon,” she says my name all breathy, and my arms tighten around her, my control waning thin. It’s taking everything within me not to lay her back on the bed and fucking ravish her.

I start to pull back from her, but she clambers to sit upright on me, straddling me with her sweet thighs draped around me, her pussy sitting right on the bulge I know she has to feel, nothing separating our sexes but my sweatpants and her short pajama shorts.

God, what I want to do to her. But she just had a nightmare, and I can’t take advantage of her like this. I can’t.

I start to move her off me, but her arms tighten around my neck and she whimpers, “Don’t you want me?” She wiggles innocently on my bulge, and I groan.

“You don’t know what you’re asking me, Hadley,” my voice is dark and strained with the effort it takes me not to crush her to me.

She hesitates a moment, looking unsure of herself, before she leans forward and presses her lips to mine.

It’s a soft, chaste kiss, just the barest brush of her puffy lips against mine. Shit, I don’t think the girl has ever even been kissed before, and the thought that she might want me to be her first kiss detonates something off inside me.

I grasp the back of her neck, anchoring her to me as I crush my lips against her. I suck at her bottom lip, eliciting a gasp from her, and I take advantage of the opportunity to slide my tongue into her mouth, seeking out her own tongue. She tastes sweet, like berries, tearing a moan from deep within my soul.

She mewls into my mouth and melts against me, sending fire licking through my veins. My suspicion that she’s never been kissed before is confirmed when her tongue tentatively moves against mine in an unpracticed rhythm, but that’s okay because I’m more than happy to teach her and lead her in the dance.

I can’t fucking think. All I can do is taste. I’m running off primal energy. With one hand still behind her head, I move the other to her waist and hold her as I lift my hips, pressing my hardness up against her softness.

She whimpers, and I somehow manage to tear my lips from her, leaning back to put some distance between our chests.

Fuck, I can see her hard little nipples through her tank top and the thin sports bra. Her lips are wet and swollen, her hair falling around her shoulders in dark, messy waves. Her eyes are sinfully lidded at half mast until they go wide as she looks up at me with such a look of stunned, curious innocence that I don’t know whether to laugh or weep.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asks.

I bark out an incredulous laugh. “Fuck, no, sweetheart.”

When she continues to look up at me, endearingly worried and self-conscious, I run a finger along the side of her flawless cheek. “You’re perfect,” I tell her honestly. “Why would you think you did anything wrong?”

Her cheeks color, “Because I’ve never…” she trails off, her eyes glancing away from me.

Fuck, I’d already figured out she was a virgin but to hear the confirmation from her own lips…

I try to set her mind at ease. “You have nothing to worry about, Hadley. I would never take advantage of you.”

She chews on her bottom lip for a moment before she whispers, “What if I want you to?”

I make a strangled sound, every muscle in my goddamn body tensing. The beast inside me is snarling to come out. She’s unknowingly baiting him and working him into a frenzy.

“You can’t say things like that to me, Hadley,” I croak out, pulling her closer to me against my good sense. It’s dangerous to hold her like this when my control is so close to snapping, but god, she feels good. So good.

“Why not?” her question is little more than a whisper.

“Because if I lose control with you, that’s it. I’ll never be able to stop, sweetheart.” My eyes blaze down into hers, trying to communicate with her just how serious I am. If I fuck her now, she’s mine. There will be no going back. Ever.

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, why I’m holding back. This is everything I want. Hadley is basically offering herself to me.

Maybe it’s because I’m afraid she’s offering me one night out of the curiosity of a virgin who needs comforting, and I know that will never be enough for me. She’s already under my skin, but once I get inside her, it’ll be game over. She’ll be mine whether she likes it or not.

She reaches out and skims shaky fingers over my chest, causing all my muscles to bunch and ripple.

I grab her hand, capturing it in my own, and she looks up at me with a gasp. “You’re playing with fire, little girl,” I warn her.

She continues to gaze up at me with those fuck-me eyes, and I feel like I can’t breathe. I’m surrounded by her scent, painfully aware of the heat where our bodies touch, and I’m trying to remind myself of why I’m so careful around her. She’s my angel, and I’d never do anything to hurt her or scare her. I need to keep her safe from everything—including me.

But what she says next shreds the tattered remains of my reasoning.

“Then burn me.”

And I lose it.

I fucking lose it.

Game on.