"I didn't know that, no, but I do know I feel that way about you. You're this incredible man, so amazing, treating me like the princess you call me, and I can't help but love you. So much, Gino. You're the first person I think about when I open my eyes in the morning and the last one I think about before I fall asleep. I know it sounds so silly, but just in the few weeks we've known each other, I think I've become obsessed with you. I think about you all the time." She gave him that little smile of hers, the one that always made him want to kiss her. "All those fantasies I have would make you blush."
"No, baby, they'd make you blush. I'd be happy to carry them out for you." He kissed her again because every time he kissed her, she got a look on her face. Dazed. Beautiful. Her lips a little swollen, her eyes dark with desire. When he lifted his head, he caught her hand and brought it to his cock. Already, he was stirring. That was the power of what her kisses could do. He watched her closely for signs she wanted to stop. There were none. Her gaze jumped to his face a little awed. He liked that look a lot.
"Already?"
"Your fault, baby. You're lying there all laid out in front of me like an invitation to a feast. My body can't resist yours." He shrugged his shoulders. "Gotta admit, I did work damned hard. Tired myself out."
Her eyes lit up. "Did you? I guess you did, poor man. I suppose you're deserving of a rest, although now that you've mentioned the possibilities, I'm kind of hungry."
She rolled over, giving him a good view of her very fine ass. He was partial to that part of her anatomy. Who was he kidding? He was partial to every part of her anatomy. He sat up, his back to the headboard and watched to see what she would do.
She crawled up the bed to him, looking so sexy it took control to keep from flipping her over and taking her again. As it was, his cock grew. His fist curled around the long, thick length. Her gaze dropped to the sight and just the way she looked had his lungs feeling raw, burning for air. She licked her lips, and his cock jerked in his hand.
Her fingers curled around his with one hand while the other slid under his heavy sac to roll and caress his balls. He let go, his eyes on her. Unblinking because he didn't want to miss one second. The sight of her as she lay down and stretched along the bed was almost too much. Her touch was an added bonus at that point.
She circled his shaft at the base with one fist and her tongue did a lazy slide up the heavy vein. The tip of her tongue delved into the spot just under his crown, licked and teased. Then her mouth engulfed him, and he lost the ability to breathe. Both hands went to her hair, his fingers curling in the silky strands, two tight fists.
He let her work him, her tongue dancing and teasing, her mouth hot and wild, a small sound vibrating right up through his shaft. It was beautiful to see, to feel, adding to the scorching pleasure. All the while that dark hunger in him spread. He transferred his hold in her hair, bunching the strands at the top of her head in a knot around his hand while the other curled around her throat.
He pushed her head down over his cock, thrusting gently at the same time, driving deeper into her mouth. She didn't fight him, but relaxed even more, relaxed her throat to give him that. God, he loved her. He loved the way she took him no matter what he asked of her. He held her there a moment and then let her take a breath. "Again, princess," he whispered. His voice came out husky. Dark. Compelling.
Her mouth clamped down over his cock, swallowed him down as he thrust upward. At the same time, he pushed her head down over him. She took him deeper. He stroked her throat gently with his fingers. His cock swelled even more.
She was tight and hot. Wet. The constriction felt like paradise, but more, it was what she did for him. The way she did it. One of her hands stroked caresses over his balls and then along his thighs. She didn't tense up. She trusted him to bring her up for air, which he did, although it was with reluctance.
"You have no idea how that feels, baby," he said, needing her to know.
"Good?" She licked the leaking drops from the crown.
"So good. Can you take me deeper?"
She sent him a look that told him of course she could, or at least she would try. She was willing to do whatever it took to please him. "I want this, Zara." It came out more of a command than he intended.
Her mouth was on him again, swallowing him whole, taking him deep. He began to move, thrusting gently, over and over, each thrust taking him a little deeper. That fast, he knew if he let himself he'd be out of control, but he didn't want it to end. He pulled her off of him, gave her air and repeated, each thrust a kind of paradise. It wasn't just her mouth and throat, it was the fact that she gave that to him. That she gave him her trust and that she wanted to please him. He wanted this, so she wanted it for him.
"I'm going to blow, baby. You don't want me feeding you, you've got to stop." He let go of her hair, making it her choice.
The suction never stopped, and then his body was an impossible rocket again. So much more than he could have conceived. She took it all, and when he was done, her tongue was very gentle on him, just as he'd taught her. She rolled over and smiled up at him, looking angelic when she'd just given him something sinful and so much better than he'd ever had.
He slid down in the bed to lie beside her. "I'm going to give you an hour of sleep, baby, but we're nowhere near done tonight."
"I'm not certain I'll be able to keep up with you."
He laughed and stroked her breast. "You'll keep up." There was no question she'd keep up. She was made for him.
*
"It's got to be Bluetooth," Trap said. He paced back and forth frowning, his eyes on Zara's head, as if he might cut it open just to see if he was right. "I've developed a prototype, a device that is able to store vast amounts of information beyond anything the government or any private sector can imagine. It seems Whitney has done the same, otherwise the SSD couldn't hold that much data."
He pulled what looked like a regular cell phone out of his pocket, his fingers moving over it, giving commands. "I'm searching for all Bluetooth devices in close proximity." He muttered the explanation, but his tone was one of annoyance, as if having to explain irritated him beyond belief.
"There's several, which I expected--the cars, the house, the lab--but we've got one here called Fiore Brillante." He looked up, his gaze meeting Zara's.
She swallowed hard. He was intense. She glanced at Gino. He was watching Trap carefully. They all were. Not carefully, expectantly. She found herself doing the same.
"It's Italian," Trap murmured unnecessarily.
"Brilliant Flower," Gino interpreted.
Zara knew languages and she knew what it meant. She didn't know how knowing the name of the SSD could help other than the fact that Whitney had an obsession with flowers.
Trap continued to stare at her until she was afraid he'd burn a hole through her skin with his laser-sharp gaze.
She leaned close to Cayenne. "He doesn't have an axe handy, does he?" she whispered.
"An axe?" Cayenne's frown matched Trap's. "Why an axe?"
"I'm pretty certain he'd like to see my brains spilled out on the table so he could go picking through them and find what he's looking for."
Cayenne choked back her laughter and sobered when Trap glared at the two of them.
"Do you have to be so distracting?" he demanded.
"Well, yes," Cayenne answered, clearly unafraid of her big, bad husband.
"You're losing control of that woman," Wyatt pointed out a little too gleefully.
Trap's expression darkened. "I never had control." He circled Zara and Cayenne like a shark, his gaze glued to Zara's head. Cayenne might not be intimidated, but Zara was. She knew exactly where Gino was, sitting back in the shadows right by the door. When he'd taken that position she'd thought a little hysterically that he was the guard, preventing her from leaving. She hated being under scrutiny, and all four men were staring at her as if she'd grown two heads. It threw her back to when she was a child in Whitney's compound and was under guard for
one reason or another.
Now, she needed Gino. She felt very vulnerable and when that happened, she knew she could look to him and immediately the feeling would ease. He did that for her--made her feel safe. It was silly to think she would be feeling apprehensive and insecure when she was surrounded by GhostWalkers, but she did. She accepted that part of her a little more now. She might always have moments when she was under scrutiny that she panicked a little, but that was just part of who she was.
Her eyes met Gino's across the room. A faint smile touched his mouth. He looked tough. Intimidating. Just as intimidating as Trap, only in a different way. It was significant that he had taken up a position there by the door. Gino was all about guarding others to keep them safe. He kept her safe.
Heat slipped into her veins. God, he was sexy. He just sat there with that faint smile on his face, and all she could think about was the things he'd done to her the night before. All night. In the morning. She'd hardly slept and she knew he hadn't.
"You've tried to connect with the storage unit yourself?" Wyatt asked.
Zara forced her mind back to the main problem and the men determined to help her. She looked around the room. There was Trap, Wyatt and Ezekiel surrounding her, looking at her like she might explode any moment. Joe sat across the room, very still, very quiet, making certain not to disturb the others. Gino guarded the door. Cayenne sat on one side of her and Bellisia had taken the other. They were in the middle of the room, sitting on slightly uncomfortable high stools, like ones that might be in a bar. The seats twisted from side to side and it was difficult for Zara not to swivel nervously when the men stared at her.
"Yes, all the time. Whitney has it password protected. I can't access the data in it. Whitney didn't want me to run and then give whatever information I had to someone else."
Wyatt nodded. "We've tried the various passwords he's been known to use and none of them have worked. I think he's made this simple for himself. You've got a permanent SSD that he never planned on removing. He injects you with something light, just enough to keep you from seeing him extract the files so you don't know where the SSD is located or how he gets the information. It's fast and you're not under more than a few minutes."
"The soldier pointed his gun right here," Gino said, pointing to the spot on his own brain.
"The where wouldn't matter if it's Bluetooth," Trap said. "And password protected. We know it is and the device is named Fiore Brillante." Again, the last was said speculatively, as if he was turning something over and over in his mind.
"Why make it difficult?" Ezekiel asked. "Whitney knows she can't get away. He has the virus. He has the other women. She's not going to give him any real trouble."
Gino added his assessment of Zara. "She's the gentle soul. The one that wants the best for the other women. She follows the rules."
"She didn't," Bellisia objected. "She brought us contraband and spent weeks in solitary."
"He would expect that. Those small rebellions were nothing to him. He wanted her to break the rules that didn't matter to him so he could punish her," Wyatt theorized. "Did she ever do anything that caused him to hurt her physically?"
Zara's stomach clenched hard. She pressed her hand there and once more looked to Gino. Of course she had. Once. One time. She looked down at her hands. It had only taken one time of Whitney inflicting real pain on her and she'd never gone so far again. In fact, she'd stopped bringing in contraband for the girls for nearly a year--until her anger at Whitney for his injustices and at herself for letting him make her a weakling overcame her fear.
"Zara?" Wyatt prompted. "I'm asking for a reason. He put the device in your head. This all centers around you. The more we know about you and your life there, the better the chance we have of figuring out Whitney's password."
She kept looking at Gino, eyes unconsciously pleading with him. She'd told him. That one time she'd rebelled against Whitney's authority.
Gino cleared his throat, got up casually, in that fluid, catlike way he had that always made him look more dangerous and lethal than ever. "The girls wanted pictures of a real college party. They wanted photographs of the college boys." He stalked across the room, his body moving in very close to hers. He stopped right behind her, one hand sliding up her back, under her hair, to curl around the nape of her neck.
The hold felt claiming. Possessive. It also felt protective. The moment he was close to her, Zara felt safe and almost comfortable in spite of being under such scrutiny. She wanted to wrap herself around him, melt her body right into his. Be that close. Maybe others wouldn't like the way he took care of her, but she needed it and he gave it to her.
"She was young, only fourteen, but she snuck out of her apartment, right past three of Whitney's supersoldiers. At that time, she always had guards around her."
Gino leaned down and brushed the top of her head with a kiss. Zara knew he did it because he could feel the tension rising in her. "At fourteen, she was already outthinking her guards. She got past them just after midnight, snuck into the party and took lots of pictures, using her phone. She went through the rooms until she found a computer open, sent the pictures to her email and then stored them on a very small thumb drive. She wiped them off the computer and from her phone and snuck back into her room. She thought she was safe."
"I should have known better," Zara whispered.
Bellisia put a comforting hand on her knee. "You did it for us, honey."
"I know."
"Whitney, of course monitored everything. He knew she had pictures. She refused to give them up, telling him she didn't have them, but it didn't matter. He had the three men who had failed in guarding her punish her."
"They used hoses," Bellisia said, her voice very low. "He made all of us watch."
"After," Gino took up the story, "he forced the girls to watch as he had each of the soldiers killed for failure to ensure Zara's compliance." He slipped both arms around her.
"So, you never defied him like that again," Ezekiel said.
Bellisia and Zara exchanged a long look. "I never got caught again," Zara clarified. She glanced over her shoulder at Gino, leveled her gaze on him and told the absolute truth. A warning. "I follow someone's lead until they prove to me they aren't worth it and then I don't."
"I got that," Gino said. "I'm crazy, baby, not stupid."
"Whitney's lulled into a false sense of security with her, thinking she'll obey his every directive in order not to get punished. So, he uses Bluetooth," Trap mused aloud. "Easiest way. He just knocks her out, puts his device near the SSD and types in his password and they connect. He keeps her under just long enough to extract the information and he's got what he wants. You didn't ask him questions, did you? By that time, he'd intimidated you enough that you wouldn't go against him."
She licked her lips, hating that her mouth was dry. "I didn't. Never. Not once." Mostly she hated that she hadn't even tried to figure it out herself. She was smart. She should have.
"So, we need the password," Wyatt said.
Trap continued to pace back and forth. He fascinated Zara. Everything about him. The way he moved. The total concentration. He was absolutely silent. Zara became aware of how the room stilled. The clock seemed very loud as it ticked out the seconds. She held her breath, the beating of her heart overly loud in her ears. Gino's arms remained around her, but he also was barely breathing.
Trap moved with unbelievable precision, almost as if his brain was moving so fast, his body had to try to keep up and had become a machine. Trap passed the three barstools sitting in the middle of the room several times. He circled them and came to stand in front of Zara, using his long fingers like two rakes, shoving them through his hair until he looked wild.
"Simple. Simple," he repeated under his breath. "Fiore Brillante." He muttered the phrase over and over, looking directly at her. "Zara. Your name has several meanings. Gino calls you princess. He's Italian, but in Russian, Zara means 'princess.'" He looked to Gino for added confirmation.
Gino nodded.
"In Hebrew, it means 'seed,'" Trap said. "I'm not going there. Don't want to give Gino any more ideas than he already has. In Arabic, Zara means 'flower' or 'star.' In this case, I would say flower. It's spelled differently sometimes--Zahra."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Ezekiel asked. "Enlighten us and maybe we'll be able to help you with this line of thinking."
Trap shrugged. "I'm not certain myself yet. Just mulling things around in my head."
"In Italian, it would be spelled differently but it means 'orange flower,'" Gino said.
"That's a possibility, if he actually paired the two of you. He might go with that ..." He broke off to look straight at Gino. "You think Whitney paired the two of you?"
"Yeah," Gino said, shocking Zara.
She whirled around on the barstool to stare at him in total astonishment. "You do?"
"Babe, we light up the world when we go at it. Been with a lot of women, no one does it for me like you. Might be the emotion, that's probably a good part of it, but"--he shrugged like it was no big deal--"chances are good he created a pairing."
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