Free Ultimate Sins by Lora Leigh

Sweetrock, and the Ramsey Ranch in Pitkin County, Colorado.
    Then they had all but surrounded the house Amelia had lived in during her marriage years before, next to her father’s property, searching for her. It hadn’t taken them long to learn she had moved back into the main house after her husband’s desertion five years before.
    Amelia’s life had gone from bad to worse when the media arrived. As if it could have gotten any worse after her father had kidnapped and almost killed her weeks before.
    Like he had killed so many other young women. Like he had killed her mother.
    â€œAdmitted serial rapist and murderer,” the reports always stated.
    Wayne had admitted to his atrocities as he spoke to Crowe and Archer, just before going over the cliff. He had admitted to years of murders in an attempt to destroy the Callahans, steal their land, and recover a treasure that had been hidden for generations.
    Wayne hadn’t had to admit to it, though.
    She had known it was Wayne and Amory the night she was kidnapped. The night he’d attempted to kidnap and kill Crowe’s sister, Anna. Not just because his partner, Amory, had mentioned Wayne’s name, but because she had heard his voice herself. Because he had stood over her that night as she lay drugged and helpless, stroked his hand down her arm, and in that low, deep tone that always sent fear racing up her back assured her it was going to hurt when he allowed Amory to kill her.
    It was all she could do to swallow back the bile that rose in the back of her throat at the memory. God. How had she not known—how had she not at least suspected him for the monster he was?
    When the car exploded on the television, the fireball reaching nearly to the top of the canyon wall, Amelia’s fists clenched as a sense of satisfaction filled her.
    And a sense of trepidation.
    And suspicion.
    â€œToo easy,” she muttered, covering her face with her hands as she fought the panic building in her chest. “There’s no way he would have ‘let’ that happen.”
    â€œWhere did you see him let anything happen?”
    Amelia was on her feet, swinging around as adrenaline surged through her system. Coming face-to-face with Crowe was a shock to her senses, she realized. It always had been. Her heart beat faster, her body became primed, her mouth dried out—but farther down, that sensitive flesh between her thighs became far too wet.
    She had been expecting him, yet still the effect he had on her was instant. From the moment she heard that the chase was occurring, she had known he would be there soon.
    That didn’t mean she had to like it. It didn’t mean she’d known when to expect it.
    She clasped her hands in front of her, preparing herself to weather this meeting as she did every other meeting with him. Without fracturing from the inside out with the pain of what she had lost over the years.
    Those predatory amber-flecked brown eyes followed the movement, the hard line of his lips quirking with some unspoken humor.
    He really had changed since the night she had helped him steal that file from Wayne, she noticed again. The dark, hard planes and angles of his face had matured and hardened. The compassion and warmth that had once filled them was no longer apparent. His wolf-colored eyes blazed from within his face, giving him the appearance of a warrior while his hard body assured her he had the power to be just as lethal.
    There were a few lines at the corners of his eyes. Life lines, she liked to call them. The unsmiling curve of his lips, the hard, strong line of his jaw, his stubborn chin.
    He was tall, nearly six and a half feet, without so much as an inch of fat on that hard body. Dressed in jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved white shirt under a black leather jacket, he could have been a gunslinger or a Native American chief from decades past.
    And he never failed to steal her breath, making her heart race and saturating