Free Diamonds and Dust (Lonesome Point, Texas) by Jessie Evans

from her,” Pike growled into Chad’s ashen face. “If you so much as look at her sideways, I’ll personally pull your head through your ass. Do you understand me?”
    Chad’s breath rushed out. “Listen, man, I didn’t know you were here, I—”
    “You’re a piece of shit, Cutter.” Pike released his grip on the other man’s suit coat with a rough shove. “You’re not worthy to lick her feet.”
    Pike looped his arm around Tulsi’s waist. “Let’s go, Tulsi.”
    He hustled her out of the office and across the waiting room to the door, fighting the urge to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out of the building. He ignored the primal voice in his head that insisted Chad should suffer the beating of his life for daring to talk to his woman that way. It didn’t matter that Tulsi hadn’t been hi s for years.
    All he could think was— mine .
    Tulsi was under his protection and no one was going to hurt her, not as long as he had breath left in his body.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    Tulsi
     
    Under normal circumstances, Tulsi would have still been reeling from the nightmarish meeting with Chad. But with Pike’s arm around her, gluing her to his muscled body as he practically carried her across the street, all she could think about was how incredible it felt to be close to him. It was almost too much to wrap her head around.
    Pike was touching her, holding her. Her body was pressed tight to his for the first time since he’d kissed her behind the barn at his parents’ house seven years ago, the afternoon everything had gone to hell, and her body was on the verge of a spontaneous meltdown. She tried to tell herself this didn’t mean anything and Pike would have responded the same way if it had been any of Mia’s friends being harassed by a creep. But she’d never heard him sound so angry and the possessive way he’d swept her out of the office had her stomach fluttering and her body aching to get even closer to him.
    By the time he charged up the stairs into the Blue Saloon, pushed open the swinging doors, and lifted her onto a stool with an ease that made her viscerally aware of the powerful man he’d become, Tulsi had to sit on her hands to keep from wrapping her arms around him and holding on tight. She wasn’t ready to let him go. She needed more time, just a few more minutes to memorize the way they fit together, to give her something to replay over and over in her mind while lying alone in the dark for another seven years.
    “What the hell were you thinking?” Pike braced his palms on the bar on either side of her, leaning in until he was so close his Pike smell—still familiar after all these years—rushed through her head, making her racing heart beat even faster. “There’s no point in trying to reason with a prick like that. You should have been out of there five minutes ago, the second things starting going south.”
    “I know…I just…” Tulsi swallowed as she forced her gaze from Pike’s lips, knowing she’d never be able to form a sentence if she kept thinking about kissing him. Unfortunately, looking into his eyes only made things worse.
    Their gazes connected and Tulsi’s breath rushed out even as a fire whooshed to life inside her.
    God, she wanted him. She wanted him as much as she had when she was eighteen and every nerve in her body ignited with desire when they touched. She wanted to be skin to skin with Pike, to breathe his breath, to feel his pulse echoing in her chest and feel as safe and treasured as she’d always felt in his arms. She wanted to make love to him until all the walls were down and all the hurt had been healed because she had never stopped loving this man, no matter how much she’d wanted to, no matter how hard she’d tried.
    The charged silence thickened the air between them, broken only by the tinny notes of a country song playing on the jukebox in the corner. Slowly, Pike’s gaze slid from her eyes down to her mouth, and