by Juno Rushdan
They tumbled onto the bed, rolling and kissing. Her head spun, her heart inflated with an unbearable lightness, but Castle anchored her.
All her previous sexual encounters had been a clumsy, hot mess of knocked heads, an accident of some kind, chipped tooth once, or premature blastoff on the guy’s part.
But this was smooth and fluid, not a beat missed.
His holstered gun hit the nightstand. She tore off his clothes, desperate to shed every piece. He licked and sucked wherever he pleased. Urgency bounced off the walls, their frenzied hands groping and exploring, their ravenous mouths tasting the buffet of exposed skin, had her ready to combust.
The heavy muscles curving his arms and torso were so chiseled and defined. His scars, even the lick of tattoos, were evidence of the hell he’d fought through and survived. Every inch of him was something from a fantasy. It was a pity more women didn’t get to experience his magnificence, but she wasn’t inclined to share.
She slid her hand past his stomach, lower. Her fingers found his enormous erection, hard and throbbing. Holy Christ. His size would’ve made any woman’s breath hitch. She cupped his thick shaft, filling her palm, and stroked him.
“God,” he hissed.
Running her thumb over the engorged crown, she watched his eyes roll into the back of his head as he groaned.
She relished having the power to excite him but couldn’t wait any longer. “Fuck me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He reached for his pants and fished out his wallet. There was the crinkle of foil when he tore open the condom wrapper. He pushed her legs wider with his body, settling on top of her. She almost asked him to wait, to let her taste him, but she needed him somewhere else right now.
Desire beat through her like an animate, breathing thing. The idea of being his, even only for a moment, fired up her blood and made her entire body quiver.
He was chiseled steel between her legs, hot as a brand. With a guttural growl, he eased himself inside her, giving her a chance to adjust. Then he withdrew just as slowly and rubbed the head of his shaft along the seam of her entrance, against her swollen clit, driving her wild.
A rush of slick heat spread between her thighs, a desperate cry dancing on her lips. He filled her with one heavy, hard thrust. She bucked her hips in urgent response, seeking friction. A carnal instinct took over. He pumped into her with a hard, driving rhythm—each intense stroke a question that demanded an answer.
Yes, she trusted him. Completely.
“You okay, Kit-Kat?”
Emotions tightened her throat. “Never better. Don’t stop.” The fullness, the closeness, was everything.
He pushed into her. Any discomfort distilled into a delicious, pulsing sensation in her core. The sweet, rolling friction was hot and smooth, letting the tension inside her build. Her muscles trembled. Her mind blanked. There was only Castle, this heat.
The man’s stamina was incredible, a testament to the effort he put into his honed physique. The only thing more remarkable was his self-control.
His features pinched like this was killing him. “You feel so good,” he said.
She hummed her agreement.
He crushed his mouth to hers, swallowing the sound from her. Their tongues tangled in a dirty, wet caress that had her wrapping herself around him, pulling him closer.
They were locked together. Sweat misted their skin. His eyes opened and captured hers, his pace increasing with each labored breath.
She usually hated eye contact during sex, preferring to forget whoever she was fucking and focus entirely on having an orgasm. But the intimacy of that look with Castle while he rocked into her as deeply as possible filled a hollowness inside her.
His hands dove underneath her. Castle lifted her leg, setting her ankle on his shoulder. His arm hugged her thigh and his other hand clutched her hip, holding her against his thrusts. He drove deeper, turning her mythical G-spot into reality, his pelvis grinding against her clit in a way that she would’ve paid for. She was losing herself, splintering around him.
The air thickened. Pleasure boiled over in violent, almost painful waves that she thought might kill her. Every muscle, every sensitized nerve coiled tight as a fist and she came, muttering gibberish.
His control snapped, all finesse evaporated, as if he’d been waiting for her. He pumped harder, faster.
Next time, she’d tell him not to hold back. She gripped his marvelous ass, urging him on.
He slammed deep, his powerful body stretched taut over her, and shoved his face in the side of her neck. She memorized the moment he surrendered and unraveled.
“Kit.” Her name was a strained whisper against her throat.
He settled on top of her, pinning her to the bed with his full weight.
Throbbing with sweet aftershocks, she could barely breathe with his body limp on her, but she didn’t want him to move.
First-time sex with someone was usually awkward and fast.
That was off-the-charts perfect. Best sex of my entire life.
“Wow.” He rolled off her carefully and tugged her body into the cradle of his arms.
“You took the word from my lips.” She nestled her head on his shoulder, her arm draped over his rock-solid abdomen. Even his sweat was sexy.
She always wanted to remember this, the satisfaction of being in his arms, like his affection was enough. So that when this thing between them ended and the loneliness gnawed at her in the cold darkness, she’d at least have the memory of his warmth to comfort her.
Or torture her.
God, she prayed for the former.
Either way, she got the sense this was going to change things. But she didn’t want to think about that. No man had ever made her come so hard, much less repeatedly. Once wasn’t enough. Then again, how much would be? One week of this? One month? A year?
She nuzzled his cheek, taking in the delicious scent of him, her knee propped on his thigh, her sex pressed to his hip.
Unbelievable. Simply being snuggled close to him had her practically on the verge again.
Smiling, she pushed herself up on an elbow. Her fingers traced the lines of sleek muscle on his abdomen, over his solid chest, up his neck to his incredible jaw.
“Did you get it out of your system?” she asked, staring down at him.
The look of contentment on his face shifted, his gaze shuttering as he considered her question for a protracted moment. She’d only been teasing him, but now she regretted letting her mouth somehow spoil things.
His brows furrowed like he was deep in thought, wading through a river of worry. “No. I’m afraid I didn’t.” He threw the covers aside and put his feet to the floor. With his back to her, he sat there for a few uneasy beats before he went to the bathroom.
Dread congealed in her throat. She sat up, bringing her knees and the sheet to her chest.
The toilet flushed. The water ran. Her mind spun.
Castle left the bathroom. He came to her side of the bed and sat on the edge, a someone-just-died look on his face.
A sickening sensation clenched inside her gut. “What’s wrong?”
“I care about you. And I still want you. More than I did before.”
That should’ve been a good thing, but she saw the conflict stretched across his face and hardening his eyes.
Every time he took a chance on her, chose to trust and protect her despite her mistakes, he’d made her believe in honor and chivalry. In the possibility of love. Each kiss and caress had healed a little of the damage inflicted by the men before, the Jaspers and Lennys.
All of them an overture to Castle.
She wasn’t foolish enough to think they’d have more than a few days together. Then he’d be done with this assignment, with her, and be off on another mission. But she wanted those days. The heat of his body tangled with hers
, soothing something inside them both.
She wasn’t ready to lose him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Kit slid an arm around his neck and pressed her lips to his. He didn’t kiss her back. Both with their eyes open, staring at the other.
For a few agonizing seconds, she was frozen.
But the look that surfaced in his eyes shredded her.
31
It caused Castle actual physical pain to pull away from Kit’s embrace, and that was the problem. He’d tried chalking up his affection for her to a little bit of pity and a whole lot of lust. Most times, he wondered if he simply reveled in being a savior. They were contributing factors to the hold she had on him, but now he knew this growing attachment was something much stronger.
“What I feel for you will make my job harder, the mission messy.”
Being with her had shifted his perspective, but game changers were always bad news.
“Do you regret it?” she asked. “Sleeping with me?”
“It wasn’t smart. I gave in to weakness.”
“That’s not a no.” She winced, the look cutting right through him, and bowed her head. “It was just sex, Castle.” Her voice broke. “Let’s not make it a big deal by talking about it anymore. Okay?”
“No, it’s not okay.” It was a big deal, and he wasn’t going to dismiss it and pretend. That wasn’t him. “Because it wasn’t just sex and I don’t regret it. What happened was inevitable.”
After the navy, sex had become a ritual of riding the buzz from a Gray Box mission. He’d been more connected to the thrill of beating death than to the woman. He’d convinced himself he was better suited alone and never opened up, never shared, never got close.
Everything before Kit had been superficial. She roused him on a soul-deep level, awakening something in him that he’d thought had grown cold forever. Touching her was like being drenched in sunlight. He was a sponge that needed to soak up every damn drop of warmth.
But with Kit, so much was at risk.
“I have a lot to lose by handing over a copy instead of the original hard drives. By protecting you, trusting you, sleeping with you,” he said.
She looked up at him, her liquid brown eyes filled with sadness. “I’m a full handbasket of trouble for you. Aren’t I?”
Unable to deny it, he blew out a heavy breath. If the only way he could have Kit, even for a little while, meant headaches and pain-in-the-ass trouble, then he’d take it.
“Did you tell your boss how many hard drives there are?” she asked.
“No.” Castle was straddling a dangerous line.
“What if you handed over two of the three? The only thing I need to protect is Ever Shield. I can copy everything else from the third drive onto one of the others.”
“The files are time-stamped. Willow will know they’re copies as soon as she sees them.”
“I may lack the talent of most hackers I know, but I’m not totally useless. I can alter time stamps. You can turn over original hard drives containing all the pertinent information.”
She flashed a little smile as she slid her hand along his thigh. His cock jumped in response, but seeing the desire rekindling in her eyes made his heart flip over.
Castle caressed her cheek, drawing her close. The memory of being buried deep inside her rolled through him. Hot, hungry sex that had ended explosively.
Holding Kit afterward had been the best part. It was the first time that, instead of being lonely with a woman, eager to get away from her, he’d felt right at home.
“This is ethically murky territory,” he said and that was putting it mildly.
“This is a compromise. You give Sanborn original hard drives and the information your team needs to stop Bravo. I keep Ever Shield.”
“Why would you give up the hard drives?”
“What can I say?” She shrugged. “You entice me to yield. You’re doing this for me. To protect me. I don’t want you to lose anything because of it. And the thought of you not touching me again because you resent me hurts too much.”
The sincerity in her voice caught him by the jugular and that beautiful, unguarded look on her face made him ache. He was torn.
He had spent half his life blocking out his emotions for his job, only to have the job rob him of his humanity. Now he’d found Kit. She was a storm tearing through him, a white squall drowning him in feelings, but he hadn’t completely lost his mind.
“One more thing,” he said. She stiffened in his arms and he stroked her back, not wanting her to get defensive. “Ever Shield. It’s dangerous. A serious risk to national security.”
“If I give the government Ever Shield, can you guarantee it won’t be used as a weapon against other countries?”
On the contrary, he’d bet his left nut that it would. “No.”
“Ever Shield is the Outliers’ legacy, the greatest thing Marty, Tim, Jeff, and Lincoln created. The point was for citizens to be able to protect themselves. Like the right to bear arms but for privacy and from a virtual perspective. Granted, it became bigger and more powerful than I imagined, but they’d never want it weaponized by the government. You told me to honor their memory with my actions.” She pressed a palm to his cheek and her forehead to his. “This is how I honor them.”
She was twisting the meaning of his words into something he hadn’t intended.
“Kit—”
“Your boss will use it as evidence to send me to prison.”
Taken aback, he gathered his thoughts. “I don’t think he’d do that.”
“Think? I admitted to being Steve Jobs. The only reason Ever Shield exists is because I came up with the idea, and I brought together the talent capable of making it possible. I’m supposed to hand over proof it exists. Can you assure me your boss won’t think I’m an even bigger threat once he sees it?”
Sanborn already considered her a menace to national security. Giving him Ever Shield, seeing it tested for its destructive potential, might only amplify his boss’s concerns rather than allay them.
Misguided talent could be rehabilitated and redirected. Persuaded into putting their skills to work for the NSA, CIA, the Gray Box. Masterminds whose sole motivation was to thwart the government in the name of privacy and civil liberties only pissed people like Sanborn off. Incarceration would be an easier, preferable fix. Otherwise, what was to stop Kit from becoming a Snowden if she worked for them or forming a new band of hacker rebels to produce something worse if they let her go?
Turning Ever Shield over to his boss wasn’t an option if it meant Kit might see the inside of a supermax cell. Castle wasn’t going to let that happen.
“I won’t give the government Ever Shield,” she said.
He couldn’t resist that gutsy determination packed in a lovely stick of dynamite.
Except something was bound to be blown to smithereens.
“That doesn’t change the threat it poses,” he said, holding her gaze, needing her to understand. “Help me make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
She took a deep breath. “How?”
“I don’t know what the long-term answer is, but for now, we can open a safety deposit box in both our names that requires two keys and dual authorization for access. Store it until we find a better solution. I’m with you until the end, no matter what. But I need you to agree to this compromise.” His voice was unyielding because on this, he wouldn’t bend. “For me.”
Kit mulled it over a moment and nodded. “For you.”
She brushed her lips against his and took his hand, guiding it to her breast, and then lower between her thighs, where he instinctively slid two fingers into her wet heat.
He bit back a groan as she rocked on his hand. “I only had one condom in my wallet.”
A naughty smile graced her face, setting him alight. “I guess that’s the perfect excuse to m
ake you come with my mouth.”
Ditto. He wanted to drop to his knees, throw her legs over his shoulders and make her cry his name as she came against his tongue.
Kit brushed her lips against his, their breath mingling. He couldn’t stop kissing her, couldn’t stop enjoying the slick softness between her thighs. His blood churned with need.
Castle always followed the rules. He relied on protocol and orders. Now, for her, again, he was violating all that he’d once held as sacrosanct. It was starting to become a habit.
He could do his duty to the Gray Box, protect Kit, and have her as well. Couldn’t he?
She lowered her head. Licked his stomach as she squeezed his erection, her silky hair brushing his thighs. She stroked his aching shaft from root to tip, rubbing her soft breasts against his thigh, then took him into her hot mouth and hummed. Stars burst behind his eyes and he was certain.
This wasn’t a zero-sum game.
No one had to lose to win.
32
Washington, DC
12:11 p.m. EDT
Lee’s headache was blossoming into a migraine and the searing pain in his stomach was a sure sign his ulcer was flaring up again. He considered canceling his reservation at Charlie Palmer. If it wasn’t a working lunch, he would have.
A brrr came from his breast jacket pocket. The only people who had the number to that encrypted cell phone were his direct action assets, heavy hitters he used for dirty work.
It had better be Randall Wheeler—that walking, talking hemorrhoid—calling to say he’d found Westcott. This was taking excruciatingly longer than advertised, despite the extra money he’d promised in exchange for the woman’s timely demise.
She was the last hole that needed to be plugged.
Nexcellogen, the bioengineering company, had been paid to lose all their archives regarding the illicit program. The handful of employees connected to the manufacture of the bioweapons were sipping daiquiris on the powder-soft beaches of Vanuatu, where there was no jurisdiction. Most Americans didn’t even know the place existed. The top secret unit at Fort Detrick had been dismantled, personnel records scrubbed and sanitized, promotions issued, enviable follow-on assignments given. Vials of toxins and amped-up viruses were locked away in a deep, dark vault until the dust cleared.