Redeeming Jenna

by Kaely Steel

  He felt it too!

  My breasts grew heavy as if they were engorged. My central core burned. Prickles of need raced along my arms and legs and lodged deep in my belly. I happily inhaled the pure alpha that Wulff exuded, doing further crazy things to my hormones.

  I heard a crackling voice from the radio to his headphones. I couldn’t discern what was said but, judging from his reaction, it was good news. He reached across and caught my hand in his. “We’re going home.”

  I turned my hand over and twined my fingers through his. Home. Never had the word sounded so sweet to my ears. He held my hand the entire way back to the ranch as the warm tones of twilight engulfed us and the sun sank from view in the west, splashing a rainbow of pinks and reds and oranges across the evening sky. Upon our approach, the hangar roof retracted and we landed inside, safe and together as the roof closed above us.

  When I moved to open the chopper door, Wulff’s hand on my thigh forced me to stop and turn toward him.

  “We have to wait for the rotors to cool down.”

  “They don’t do that in the James Bond movies.”

  “They don’t have precious cargo.” Then he leaned over and kissed me.

  His lips were cool, like a refreshing glass of Perrier on a hot day. His short beard brushed against my cheek, stimulating dormant nerve endings. As his tongue mated with mine, his hand tunneled through my hair, massaging my scalp into a million prickles of awareness that chased up and down my neck to the base of my spine.

  I whimpered a little when he pulled back, ending the kiss but staying close enough that our breath mingled, his forehead pressed against mine. I put my hand on his chest and felt the accelerated beat of his heart in tandem with mine. And because I wanted to know everything, deep down into the darkest regions of his soul where the nightmares lived, I asked, “What happened to your family?”

  Chapter 7

  JENNA

  Wulff stiffened and pulled away. “What do you know about my family?”

  “Nothing. Ledger told me you five had all lost what mattered most. I saw your tats and took a guess those names were near and dear to you.”

  He was silent for so long I thought I lost him, afraid he’d drifted away, forever out of reach. I linked my fingers through his, happy when he didn’t wrench his hand from mine. With my free hand I traced the edges of each scarred knuckle. I sensed he’d had a rough life, my protector. Fights that had been both physical and emotional.

  I all but held my breath, worried a sudden move might startle him away from me on every level. He turned toward me, his eyes filled with anguish. “I flew private clients into the bush, hard to get to places wherever the clients wanted to go. I never questioned where they were going or why. Figured that was their business. But every time I returned home between jobs it became obvious something was wrong. My family wasn’t thriving. The twins were sickly. My wife was lethargic. My parents aged faster than they should have. People were leaving in droves. It felt like the entire town was dying slowly.”

  I said nothing, simply held his hand, transmitting without words the love I felt. It overwhelmed me; I couldn’t not share, could only hope he felt it too. That he felt as safe as he made me feel.

  “I eventually found out from a client that the town site had once been a toxic waste dump, supposedly cleaned up, but obviously not. I started to make noise. I got others involved. The noise got louder. Politicians got nervous. I was off on a job when I heard about the fire. The entire town had been destroyed. No survivors. No more noise.”

  He sucked in a breath at a memory that would never be banished. “One of my clients belonged to The Group. G Force was being created and needed a pilot. I had the chance to be part of justice served. I had nothing left, no reason to say no. My suicide was faked; I was officially dead. And now I get to see justice served. Over and over again.”

  I rested my head against his chest, recognizing the demons that haunted his soul. His breathing was slower now, soothing. His arms circled me. I felt like we were inseparable, his grief and pain forged with mine.

  I had no idea how long we sat like that, two lost souls in one cocoon, but eventually the radio squawked. Wulff stirred, the spell broken. He disembarked and rounded the helicopter to open my door and reach inside to help me out. His hands were warm and sure around my waist, cinching me close to his strong, solid chest. I felt drained, as if I had given him everything I had to give.

  He glanced down at me, concern clouding his handsome features. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded and placed a gentle hand against his cheek. I wasn’t, of course. I needed him to refill me. My entire body ached with longing to be one with him. Possessed by him. Redeemed by him.

  I sighed as we started toward the tunnel, my hand clasped within his. “Do we ever fully appreciate what we have at the time?”

  He hugged me close, his arm around my shoulders. “I know I didn’t.”

  LEDGER

  One look at Wulff and Jenna when they returned, and I knew something momentous had happened between them up in the sky. It was easy to read their body language, to witness the furtive, exchanged glances, the way their features softened on each other when their eyes locked. I had a feeling whatever had happened had been a good thing. I’d seen it before, the gift Wulff had for making a woman feel safe. Cherished. Once they broke through his outer shell of reticence, that is. We were all protectors, but Wulff possessed a special something.

  “We got some blood drops,” I told Wulff. “Dare is down in the lab.”

  “We didn’t see anything from the air,” Wulff said.

  “There were at least two. On foot. We’re hoping the DNA results tell us more.”

  Jenna glanced from Wulff to me and back to Wulff. I couldn’t help but remember her ripe, hot readiness when we were together in the gym. The way she thrived on being worshipped and pleasured. Everything in me surged to readiness. I vowed that next time I’d have her on my own.

  “Any idea who was out there?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Whoever it was, they were careless.” I swaggered up to her, mating my intent. I pulled her close, ran my hands up and down her arms and felt her shiver in reaction before I whispered in her ear. “Next time it’s you and I, it will be in private.”

  She melted against me. I felt her heat, smelled her womanly juices. Wulff looked the other way.

  JENNA

  OMG! I was feeling so close to Wulff after everything he shared with me, but when Ledger touched me I melted. I couldn’t help myself. I loved that he knew me well enough to not only pleasure me, but to share me and heighten my full enjoyment.

  I wondered again who had joined us in the gym. If they all liked to watch and to share, would I get the chance to be with all of them at once?

  Hart joined us in the great room and I extended a hand toward him, happy to see him. His gaze roved with interest between the three of us and his smile widened as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. I felt awash with contentment, a pleasant tiredness tugging at my limbs. I smothered a yawn, sated in body and mind.

  Pierce joined us and scrutinized me closely. “You look beat, Jenna.”

  I gave a happy, sleepy nod. He read me so well. And he cared. They all did.

  Before I knew it, I was caught up in his strong arms and carried upstairs like a small child. I curled in against him, clutching the front of his shirt, my head resting on his shoulder. He set me down on the bed in my room and gave me the gentlest of kisses on my lips. Then he removed my clothing, item by item, his touch gentle and reassuring. He covered me with a cloud-soft duvet. My eyes fluttered closed. Warmth enfolded me.

  They were all in my dream. Blond Norseman Ledger with his yummy accent. Silver-eyed Wulff. Knowing Pierce with the emerald- green eyes. Charming Dare-Devil and Handsome Hart. They were all there; loving me, serving me, protecting me. My body rocked in need as I reached to each one individually. My inner core was throbbing and damp. Needing their touch. Needing release.
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br />   I woke with the duvet snarled around my legs and kicked it aside. My entire body ached and throbbed. I touched my breasts. My nipples were pebble hard and I almost cried aloud with the sheer pleasure flooding to my V Zone. I reached between my legs to touch myself. So sweet.

  I was so wet, so on the brink.

  I heard the muffled sound of nearby movement. Moonlight caught Wulff’s profile as he made his way to me. He knelt between my open thighs, lifted my hips and buried his face in my welcoming warmth as his lips explored my moist inner contours.

  I bucked beneath his touch and sobbed out my pleasure, unable, unwilling, to stem the tide of my orgasm.

  He sipped and soothed the tremors that rocked me, lapping and laving my on-fire inner chalice. Worked me into one slow-building, soul-shattering orgasm after another.

  When I finally settled, spent beneath his touch, he moved to lie next to me and pushed a tangle of hair back from my face. He kissed me and I tasted the exotic juice of my recent orgasms.

  His words were soft, knowing. “Do you want the others?”

  My breath fanned over him with my whispered response, loving how he knew his way into my soul. “Not this time.”

  I reached for his cock, hard and thick and engorged with blood, a dew-like drop of pre-cum on its divinely shaped helmet, and positioned him where I needed him most.

  His breath hissed as he rolled on a condom and drove into me hard and fast. I clung to his broad shoulders as he took and gave in equal measures. We crested together, my legs wrapped tight around his hips, his lips taking full possession of mine. I was home!

  We made love so many times that night I lost count. Each time one of us stirred, the other awoke and our bodies fused. It was as if neither of us was able to move or function without the other. We were meant to be one.

  My dream was interrupted by an insistent knocking on the bedroom door. I rolled over to find the other side of the bed empty, the duvet twisted around me as if I had done gymnastics in my sleep. The second pillow was fluffy and firm, cool to the touch. Had I imagined my joining with Wulff?

  When I sat up, I felt a tender pull between my legs and smiled, knowing I hadn’t imagined a thing. “Come in.”

  The door opened and Ledger entered carrying a steaming mug of coffee. He set it on the night stand and perched next to me on the bed. I scooted over to make room, tugging the duvet up over my breasts.

  His green eyes were alight with laughter. He bent over and gave me a gentle kiss on the lips. “Who spanked you when you misbehaved?”

  “You’re incorrigible,” I said, deliberately loosening the duvet as I reached for my coffee.

  He palmed an exposed breast as he rose. “And you, my dear, have intoxicated all of us. Now drink up and hurry down for breakfast.” He paused to open the window on his way out. “The room reeks like sex.”

  I snuggled back against the pillow with a sleepy smile. “I’m sure it does.”

  I would need to be blind, deaf and dumb not to pick up on the tension when I walked into the kitchen later that morning. On the stairs I heard the over-animated rise and fall of their voices which only accentuated the abrupt silence the second I appeared. Had they been talking about me? Comparing notes?

  The sting of betrayal burned deep within me. I loved them, scars and all. I thought they loved me. I choked down a sob and went running from the room to the front door. No destination in mind except away.

  Pierce caught me before I’d gone more than a few steps. I flailed, trying to break free from his grasp, but he was stronger and kept me safe within his arms until I quieted. In the kitchen behind us I heard the conversation resume.

  “It’ll be at least twenty-four hours before we get an ID on that blood sample I found yesterday,” Pierce said. “We’re used to sitting around waiting, always on call. But it can’t be easy for you.”

  I pulled back on my emotions. “I’m quite capable of amusing myself. I thought you knew that. Pretend like I’m not here.”

  Pierce turned me so I was facing him, green eyes wide and serious. His burnt-sugar hair was divinely messy, as if he’d been disturbing it with his fingers. I longed to smooth it down. “Do you really think that’s possible? For any of us?”

  “I’m not altogether sure how to take that.”

  “You’re a force, Jenna. You’ve touched each of us on some previously untouchable level.”

  I tilted my head way back to meet his gaze. “I haven’t reached you yet.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  My heart thrilled to his words as he leaned close and caught my mouth beneath his. My blood sang. I breathed into him as the kiss deepened and I wound my arms around his neck. I knew this mouth, this kiss, this body, as intimately as I knew my own. For all that I knew, I needed to know more. I needed to know all.

  PIERCE

  The woman in my arms was like no other. Special. Precious. Totally giving and loving. I wondered how she would feel when she learned I had been the second man in the gym with her and Ledger the other day. That I had been there to double her pleasure and heighten her experience. So moved by her, taken with her, that I had been too impatient to wait to brand her mine.

  Through G Force I had learned to be neither possessive nor singular. We were one unit, one entity, strengthened by our solidarity.

  I wish the lesson had hit home sooner. It had been too late by the time I learned my possessiveness of my wife and children had been a flaw, a sign born of weakness, not love. In the end my wife won, wrestled control from me in a way that could never, would never, be matched. Losing my family taught me that controllers never win.

  Jenna stirred in my arms and smiled up at me in that enchanting way of hers. “Tell me your story. Not the finances part. The real story.”

  Chapter 8

  JENNA

  One thing I had learned about my G Force men was that If I demanded honesty, they responded in kind. I knew Pierce the least. He appeared to be the most carefree of the five, all light and frothy. I wasn’t fooled. I knew his fake persona for what it was, a mask to hide the real Pierce. His scars were every bit as real as Hart’s, they just weren’t visible to the naked eye.

  He glanced over his shoulder to where the other four were huddled around the table. “Not here. Meet me out back in ten minutes.”

  I had yet to explore the back of the house. A flagstone path circled the house and wound through a lush variety of native and domestic plants. The backdrop between us and the mountains was mostly fir and pine, and I took a deep breath of their fresh, spicy, green fragrance. I felt so at home here, totally at peace. Growing up in boarding schools, and then following the party circuit from resort to resort, meant I’d never really experienced a sense of place the way I did here.

  The pathway led me past the covered pool and ended at an intriguing private garden, surrounded by a high hedge. Tucked into a cut-out in the hedge was a high wooden gate that was topped by a sunshine-shaped peep hole. I stood on tiptoe to look through to the other side and caught my breath. The garden inside appeared to be a magical oasis. Water, shimmering with sunlit airborne rainbows, sprayed high from the center of a pond. Built into the nearby hedge was a bench that looked as if it were sculpted from greenery.

  I sensed Pierce before I heard him. “It’s our special place when one of us needs to get away.”

  “Can we go in?”

  He opened the gate. “After you.”

  I took a breath, feeling like Alice stepping through the looking glass into a whole new Wonderworld. “Do you come here often?’

  “No. I mostly leave it for the others.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “They deserve it more.”

  I turned and laid a hand alongside his clean-shaven cheek where a nerve pulsed in his jaw. “What happened that you don’t feel worthy?”

  “In my former life I was a lot of uncommendable things. Not a very nice person. A workaholic. A controlling husband. An impatient father. An uncooperative co
worker. No one liked me very much and I didn’t care. I was driven by a need to succeed. To have it all. Then one day everything was taken from me.”

  I tugged him down onto the bench with me, loving the way our bodies melded into one as I lay my head on his shoulder. “So now you’re bucking for Mr. Congeniality?”

  His muscles tensed as he spoke. “I had to learn to be part of the team. That it’s okay to need and be needed. The five of us all had things to learn that weren’t easy. We do things that aren’t easy. But they’re right.”

  “I envy you the camaraderie you all share.”

  “We share everything. That’s the only way this can work.”

  We sat in silence, taking in the soothing sound of the fountain, the occasional chirp of a passing bird.

  “You said everything was taken away. What happened?”

  His Adam’s apple clenched as he cleared his throat then drew in a long, jagged breath. “I was a stockbroker. On top of the world, piling up the wins. Something happened, I don’t really know fully what. They do. I went from the top to the bottom in one dark day. I called my wife with the news as I drove home.” His green eyes clouded with pain at the memory.

  “She left you?”

  “I wish.” He sighed a painful sigh. “She couldn’t face a future with no money. She smothered our two young children before she took her own life. Home sweet home was never sweet again. Somehow, The Group knew before I did. A follow up story about my own grief-stricken suicide was created and widely accepted, leaving me free to start over. Free to be a different man. Free to make a difference where it matters.”

  “Do you miss him? That man you were?”