by Lara Adrian
“You’re overdressed,” he murmured. He should be grateful for her clothes, probably the only thing keeping him from slamming his cock home inside her heat where it wanted to be. Even so, his hands were already moving to remedy the situation.
Reaching around to the front of her, he unbuttoned her jeans and tugged down the zipper. He pushed the faded denim off her hips. Her panties went with them, down her long, gorgeous legs to her slender ankles. Duarte skimmed his palms over her soft skin. Her naked backside was a thing of indescribable beauty, firm and round and enticing. He caressed her, squeezed her possessively in his greedy hands.
On a ragged breath, he slid his hands to her inner thighs and guided them wider apart. Her ass thrust higher with the shift in her stance. The seam of her body glistened with her juices. The scent of her arousal was honey-sweet, and far too tempting to resist.
His hands on her hips, he crouched down behind her, holding her steady as he moved in for the first taste. The instant his mouth made contact, her body jerked in response. He held fast, pushing into her satiny flesh and licking a slow path up the full length of her core.
“Oh God,” she bit out, hissing as he dragged his mouth lower and opened her folds to his questing tongue.
“I’m not gonna go easy on you, baby,” he warned as he continued to lick and suckle her. “Not after your little power play with me.”
She didn’t seem worried. Her pleasured moan vibrated into his bones, rocketing straight into the pulsing stalk of his erection. He reveled in the way she writhed and rocked against his mouth. He strummed her clit with his tongue, flicking the swollen bud mercilessly, just to feel her shudder with pleasure and need. Her juices felt like liquid velvet against his fingers as he brought his hand up to her sex and teased the delicate flesh.
With his mouth still busy on the tight bundle of nerves at her core, he delved inside the wet heat of her sheath, penetrating her with one finger, then another. Her walls clamped down on him as he picked up his pace and thrust deeper, mimicking what he wanted to do with his cock.
“John...” She gasped his name, her spine bowing.
Oh, yeah, she was close. He smiled against her quivering little bud. Pure male satisfaction surged through him when he felt the first tremor begin to shake her. “No mercy, sweetness. I meant it.”
She swayed with his building rhythm, her small pleasured sounds filling the air as he caressed her into a thrashing, whimpering madness with his hands and mouth. Her orgasm boiled out of her on a hoarse cry. Violent shudders traveled over her limbs, but he steadied her, held her and petted her as she crested the peak of the wave, then began her spiral back down to the here and now.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered brokenly, her slender arms locked in front of her, hands gripping the veranda’s railing.
Duarte stood up, his naked body still fiercely aroused as he pressed himself against the back of her. Guiding her face to the side to meet his, he took her mouth in a long, claiming kiss. He shifted until he could slide his fingers back into her drenched sex.
Tiny spasms raked her at the invasion, but she didn’t deny him. Not this woman. She was still hot and wet, still ready for more. Ready for him.
His cock jumped in eager response, blood coursing through him with the hard beat of a drum. “I’ve got to be careful here,” he told her, his voice rough, thick with desire. He broke their kiss and held her dark-lashed, sex-drowsed eyes. “I’ve got to be real careful, my sweet, beautiful girl. Because what I want more than anything right now is to bend you over this railing and fuck you under the stars. I want to be inside you, fuck you until you shout my name across those dark waves when you come for me again.”
Her gaze glittered in the moonlight. A small smile spread over her lips. “That’s what you want?”
“Fuck yeah. More than I should. More than you can know.”
The smile became a grin. “Okay.” She backed away and pulled off her T-shirt. Unclasped her bra and let it drop to the veranda floor.
“Lisa, wait.” Did he actually have the strength of will to deny her? To deny himself? “We can’t—”
She put her finger to his lips. “I’ll be right back.”
Before he could ask where she was going, she darted back into the guest room, stark naked. The bathroom light flicked on. Rummaging sounds and the clatter of small items rolling across a countertop filtered out to the evening air.
The bathroom light went out and she strolled back out, holding her prize between her thumb and forefinger. “It was in the bottom of my makeup bag. It’s been in there for a while...Well, a long while... but I think it’s still good.”
Duarte gaped. Then he chuckled, marveling at this woman and her endless ability to surprise him. Guess she had plans of her own when she told him not to worry about the protection he left behind in his room. He shook his head as she joined him on the veranda. “Look at you, solving problems like a boss.”
She laughed, then tore the packet open with her teeth.
Duarte reached for her, snagging her by the arm. He swallowed her quiet shriek with a long, unrushed kiss. Then he hauled her back into his embrace to make good on his threat.
11
The nightmare woke him before dawn.
Duarte sat on the edge of the bed, his heart hammering, a sheen of cold sweat coating his naked back. Breathe. In, out. In, out. Simple task, but it was always a struggle after the terror of the vision.
Feet planted on the cool floor tiles, head braced in his shaking palms, he blinked into the predawn darkness of the guest room, trying to purge the horrifying images from his brain. The stench of burning flesh. The shock of a searing, mass obliteration that engulfed everything in its path.
Just a dream. A vision, not reality. Not yet, anyway.
He worked to concentrate on reality. On the quiet tranquility of the here and now. Not the hellish premonition of fire and decimation that had been haunting him for most of the past three years.
Behind him on the bed, Lisa slept soundly. He glanced back at her, thankful that he hadn’t disturbed her. She rested so peacefully, so innocently. The urge to return to bed and gather her in his arms stirred inside him, but he tamped it down hard. He’d be damned before he’d put the terror and ugliness of his premonition anywhere near her.
Being with her last night had been a vision of its own kind, too. A far too pleasant one. It had coaxed him into believing there might be a future for them somehow. That he might actually be able to have a normal life.
With her.
Christ, with Lisa in his arms, he could almost believe anything was possible.
The nightmare vision had been a wakeup call in more than one way. His life would never be normal. And this vision only made him recall the other disturbing premonition he’d had—the one that had left him equally shaken.
Lisa at the business end of a SIG semi-auto held at the side of her pretty head.
A chill washed over him at the reminder. He’d die before he let her stand in harm’s way. And he would kill anyone to ensure her safety. Including her brother, if his actions had put Lisa in danger from Phoenix’s enemies.
Duarte stood up and got dressed in his jeans, careful not to wake Lisa as he stepped out onto the veranda. It was quiet, and it was early. The first pink hues of dawn were barely a glow on the watery horizon. He headed down toward the beach, in need of fresh air and space to think.
He wasn’t the only one up early. Alec stood outside the main house, talking casually on one of the decks with a couple of the island’s armed guards. All three men glanced in Duarte’s direction, Alec giving him a nod of greeting and a salute with the steaming mug in his hand.
If it was an invitation to join them, Duarte wasn’t taking it. He’d never been the most social person in the best of times. He sure as hell wasn’t up for the morning’s drug dealer coffee klatch, no matter how much he could use the caffeine.
He strode to the water’s edge and took a seat on the cool sand. It didn’t take lon
g before Alec came over to meet him. He’d brought a second mug, and held it out to Duarte.
“Thanks.” Duarte closed his eyes and inhaled deeply as he drank, letting the black coffee aroma chase away the ghosts of the smoke and ruin that still lingered from the fiery premonition. It almost worked.
Alec dropped onto the beach beside him, elbows draped over his bent knees. “I don’t sleep for shit either. Too much time on deployments, grabbing shut-eye in twenty-minute increments between engagements, probably. Can’t remember the last night I slept all the way through. What about you?”
Duarte grunted, recalling much too vividly the deep sleep he’d been enjoying the past two nights with Lisa. Or rather, after Lisa. Amazing what sexual depletion could do for insomnia.
Alec took a drink of his coffee in the silence. “’Course, the nightmares don’t help either.”
“You, too?” No need to ask if his former Phoenix comrade was talking about combat terrors or something else. The grave look on Alec’s face said it all. “The explosion?”
“More like a fucking annihilation.”
Duarte nodded. “I started seeing it within days after Phoenix went dark.”
“Yeah, me, too. It’s always the same vision, always in the form of a dream. I know how it’s going to play out, but I can never make it in time to stop it.”
There was little comfort in that confirmation. If either of them had wanted to deny the nightmare was attributable to their precognitive gifts, that hope evaporated now.
“The vision, the outcome... it’s always the same,” Duarte murmured. The images were still fresh in his mind. They replayed now in rapid speed, like the flickering frames of an old projector film. “The building. The heat and flames. It consumes everything.”
Alec listened in knowing silence, his head bobbing faintly in agreement with everything he was hearing. He exhaled a curse under his breath. “It’s the sight of those kids that shreds me the most. Even more than when I feel my own face melting off my skull.”
“The kids?” Duarte’s thoughts ground to a halt. He turned a confused look on his friend. “What do you mean?”
“The ten kids playing basketball when the explosion detonates.”
“No. That’s not right.” He set his coffee down in the sand beside him. “There aren’t any kids in my vision.”
Now Alec was staring at him in doubt. “I try to warn them to get out of the way, but they don’t seem to hear me. So, I start running toward them. And that’s when everything blows apart.”
Duarte shook his head. “The explosion goes off right after I find the guns in the cabinet. There are three of them—military rifles. I grab one, but then I realize it’s all fucked up. Rusted, corroded. Useless. When I reach for another one, I hear the first rumble in the building outside. It’s already too late by then. I run out to try to stop what’s going to happen, but it’s too late...”
Alec said nothing, but then he didn’t have to.
“No guns in your vision.” Duarte rubbed his hand over his forehead. “So, the premonitions aren’t exactly the same—”
Alec’s expression was grim. “Other than the end result.”
Death. Destruction. Mass-scale obliteration.
Duarte stared out at the Atlantic, and the muted light now reaching over the horizon. “Do you think we’re the only Phoenix operatives having this vision? It seems odd—too coincidental—that it started after the program went down.”
“You think there’s a connection?” Alec blew out a short sigh. “Jesus Christ, Ranger. If that’s true...”
“Then the past three years that all of us have been on the run and in hiding was only giving Phoenix’s enemies the chance to grow stronger. To make plans.” A curse erupted out of him. “They drove us underground when we needed to be on their asses, hunting the bastards down instead of looking over our shoulders.”
“They knew we’d scatter after Sheppard was killed,” Alec murmured. “Somehow they had to know what his instructions had been to all of us if the program was ever compromised.”
“Assume the worst. Cut all ties. Run and hide.” Duarte recited the founder’s orders, fury beginning to boil in his veins. “Trust no one. Not even one another.”
Alec nodded soberly. “If they knew how to get us out of their way, then someone had to tell them. Someone who’s been working from the inside for a long time. Maybe the entire time.”
Duarte didn’t want to acknowledge it. The possibility grated, not only because Kyle Becker was Lisa’s beloved brother, but because he’d been a close friend. Duarte’s best, most trusted friend. Alec’s too.
“He’s got more honor than that,” Duarte said. “Christ, let him have more honor than that.”
Alec stared at him. “I know what I saw, man. He’s on the wrong side of this.”
“And all I know is what you’ve told me. You say you had a premonition Talon’s turned. Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t.” He searched the face of his former comrade, looking for cracks in the friendly facade. “How do I know you’re not on the wrong side, too? Spying on Lisa, following her up to my place, hanging around with drug dealers and their armed thugs like they’re your fucking family? Far as I can tell, you’re nothing but suspicion and secrets, Stingray.”
“They are my family.”
Duarte felt his brows crash together. “What?”
Alec shrugged. “Diego Zapata owns this place. He deals in weed mainly, with the occasional side-deal in guns. He operates out of Miami, and before you ask, yeah. I’ve done a few jobs for him these past three years. I’d kill for the man... have killed for him. And he would do the same for me, because he considers me a son. Son-in-law, to be exact.”
The news was unexpected to say the least. “You’re telling me you’re married—”
“Was married,” Alec said quietly. “To his daughter, Maria. She died eleven months ago. Inoperable brain tumor.”
“Fuck... I’m sorry.” He couldn’t even imagine that kind of loss. Didn’t want to imagine it. “How long were you together?”
“Not long. Three months.”
Not long at all. Duarte never would have taken Alec for the whirlwind type, but then again, all bets were off when it came to the right woman. He’d only seen Lisa a handful of times at the base before she eclipsed any other woman in his eyes.
If she hadn’t been Kyle’s little sister, Duarte would have put the move on her right away. Instead, he’d played it cool. Played it safe. Told himself she was off limits and no matter how much he wanted to look, he’d never touch.
Until the night of that stand-in wedding date and subsequent trip up to his cabin.
And now?
He didn’t want to acknowledge what she meant to him now. Nor how much it would wreck him to lose her. But to lose her to death as Alec had lost his wife?
He didn’t think he could survive that.
Alec stared out at the ocean, contemplative. “I knew she didn’t have long when I asked her to marry me. We’d been messing around in secret for a few weeks, flirting with each other for a lot longer. When I realized she wasn’t healthy, I didn’t want to just keep playing games with her. She deserved better than that, you know?”
“When you say you knew she wasn’t healthy...”
“I knew about the tumor,” Alec confirmed. “Thanks to my so-called gift, I watched her die in my arms twice. Once in the premonition, then again on the day I lost her.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Duarte murmured, staggered by what his friend had done, and by what he had endured. “Sorry for the way I pushed you to tell me about her, too.”
“No apology needed.” Alec lifted his shoulder, gave a mild chuckle. “No one ever counted on you for your diplomacy, anyway. Asshole.”
Duarte smiled at the light jab, relaxed immediately. It felt good to look at his old friend—his brother-in-arms—and think maybe he wasn’t alone in this fight anymore. Risky or not, he believed Alec Colton. He trusted him—with his own life and with Li
sa’s.
As for her brother?
“Tell me again about the vision you had about Talon. What was he doing?”
Alec cleared his throat. “I saw him sitting in a room, telling someone about the program and the file he had with intel on the operatives. Giving them names and location information. Real names, John. Not just our codenames. He was giving them everything they asked for.”
“Fuck.” Duarte scowled. “Did you see who he was talking to?”
“No.”
“Kyle’s ability was off the charts, always has been. Easily the strongest of the three of us, anyway. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was one of the strongest of all the operatives. If Phoenix’s enemies have him on their side, they couldn’t ask for a more powerful tool to use against us.” At Alec’s nod of agreement, Duarte exhaled sharply. “For all our sakes, I hope to hell you’re wrong.”
“So do I. But if I’m right?”
“We have to find him,” Duarte said. “We need to have that answer, no matter what it is.”
“Agreed. Because when we find Talon, we’re one step closer to finding the murdering bastards he’s working for.”
“Assuming Kyle’s still alive,” Duarte suggested. “That text he sent to Lisa seems like the act of a desperate man. A terrified man. You first saw him in your vision two months ago. He may have outlived his usefulness.”
“If he hasn’t, and we find him first, he’s gonna wish he was dead,” Alec growled. “If he’s turned traitor, we can’t let him live. You know that, right?”
Hard as it was to consider it, much less deal the punishment should the time come, Duarte nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, I know. There’d be no coming back from that kind of betrayal. No forgiveness.”
Alec was quiet for a moment. He pitched the last of his coffee into the surf. “What about Lisa? You tell her anything about this?”
“No.” Duarte felt a stab of guilt for that. “Not yet. She’s been through a lot these past two days. Hard to find the right time to drop that kind of bomb on her.”
Particularly when he’d been too busy losing himself in her body, in her sweet smiles and tender gazes. He’d been lost in the fantasy, letting himself imagine they could ever have something real and lasting when he’d never had roots anywhere for long. Even now, he knew there was no going back to his cabin again. He was without a home, so what did he have to offer her, even if she wanted to be with him?