Something caught his eye as they grappled, something shiny in the man’s hand and Cedric immediately recognized a military-style syringe, aggressive and clinical looking.
A substance of some kind or another glinted at the tip of the syringe and Cedric felt his gut catch on fire with rage.
Either that substance was meant to subdue Cedric or it was meant to kill him. Either way, it didn’t matter. What if he’d used it on Elena? Cedric slammed the man’s arm hard enough to feel something in the man’s elbow crack against the cement ground. The syringe rolled away as the man howled in pain.
Cedric didn’t care. He hit the intruder in the face. And then he did it again. The man grinned in pain, blood seeping between his teeth. Cedric felt something blunt hit him in the arm but he barely paid attention. He hit the man again and again. The intruder was limp on the ground when Cedric dimly registered shouting.
He felt two familiar hands grab at him, words were loud and in his face but he couldn’t make sense of them. Rage burned through his veins as he was dragged off the intruder. The man who’d come for Elena.
Cedric fought Atlas’s hands while Sequence crouched over the intruder, checking his pulse and then slapping handcuffs on him and speaking into a cellphone. Cedric breathed so hard and so fast his vision was starting to telescope.
“Jesus, man. She’s all right! She’s safe, Swift. She’s safe. You have to calm down or you’re going to hurt yourself even more!”
Finally Atlas’s words started to filter through to him but he couldn’t get himself to calm down. “I’m not hurt,” Cedric gritted out through clenched teeth.
“Wanna bet?” Atlas shouted in his ear, still pinning him back.
Then it was Rook’s face that filled Cedric’s vision. “Swift, I’m going to tranq you if you don’t calm the fuck down right now.”
Cedric felt a searing pressure in one of his arms and gasped at the unexpected pain. A moment later he saw that Rook was holding a four-inch knife, blood smeared on half the blade.
“That fucker stabbed me?” Cedric was just now putting the pieces together. The blunt pain from when they’d struggled against one another.
“Unless you stabbed yourself, I’d say that’s affirmative,” Atlas responded, grabbing a wad of gauze from Rook and jamming it into the freely bleeding wound on Cedric’s shoulder.
“I got it. I got it,” Cedric mumbled, staunching the bleeding by himself, his eyes narrowed in on the knife in Rook’s hand. It was yet another weapon that could have been meant for Elena. Cedric’s mind raced him back to the state of her apartment. How perfectly destroyed every single thing had been.
The man on the floor lay in a small puddle of blood, his eyes closed and his breaths shallow. There was no punishment cruel enough for scum like that.
“He had a syringe,” Cedric grunted out, leaning his back against the wall and letting himself slide down to a tense sit. “It flew over there.”
Cedric nodded his head in the general direction, closed his eyes, and let his team take care of the rest.
***
Four days later, Cedric deemed the stab wound well worth it when Detective Mortell leaned hard enough on Jake Clint, the intruder, to get all the information they needed to crack down on the smugglers. The Rook Securities team watched in suspended glee as the local news covered the bust in great detail.
Elena sat on the couch next to Cedric, her chin on her folded knees and her eyes dark and inscrutable. She’d been desperately quiet since the break-in. There’d been no more tears, but she’d held Cedric even tighter every night, her fingers finding his every second that they were alone together.
That very second, they were not alone together. The team was sprawled out in the TV room, all of them leaning toward the television. Atlas was reading NYPD official tweets about the bust aloud and Sequence was doing the same for the texts he was getting from Mortell.
But Cedric didn’t care that Rook’s eyes were mere feet away. If Elena curled in on herself any tighter, she was going to crack a rib. Cedric let his big palm land on her back. He started painting slow circles on her back the way he’d done so many times.
She tipped her head to the side, away from the TV and toward him. Her cheek on her knee, her eyes filled her face. “Is it over?” she whispered to Cedric.
“We don’t know yet, baby,” he whispered back. “It’ll take some time to understand whether or not you’re really safe.”
“It’s getting late,” Rook said suddenly from the other couch, his eyes firmly on the hand that Cedric had on Elena’s back. His gaze slowly landed on Cedric’s face. “Maybe it’s time for bed, Swift.”
Cedric understood what Rook was telling him. Elena didn’t need to see any more of the sensationalized local news. She needed rest. And she needed answers. But the answers weren’t going to come tonight.
He patted Elena’s back gently. “Let’s head up.”
She nodded and got to her feet. Atlas reached up and squeezed her shoulder as she passed, Geo tapped their fingers together. It made something swell inside Cedric’s chest to see his team comfort her in this way. Every client who they went dark for ended up having a special place in the team’s hearts. It was hard not to forge some kind of connection with someone you were trapped with for weeks on end.
But Cedric knew that Elena had grown on everyone in a special way. He could see it in the way they laughed at her jokes, the way they charged forward to protect her, the way they looked out for her health and comfort. They loved her.
And that just sort of did something to him. It was kind of like bringing home your girlfriend to meet the family, he figured. And Elena was currently getting, like, forty thumbs ups from every member of his chosen family.
Elena filed out into the hall but Rook grabbed Cedric’s good shoulder and held him back. Rook’s eyes were on the TV screen as he spoke in a low tone. “See if you can’t find some way to calm her down.”
Cedric froze, certain he was misunderstanding the implications here. Rook couldn’t possibly be implying that… “Um.”
Still looking at the TV, Rook spoke again. “I’m not saying you should cross any lines that can’t be uncrossed. That wouldn’t be ethical. But—” His eyes flicked meaningfully to Cedric’s and he calmly held his gaze. “I’m saying that she needs you in a way she doesn’t need the rest of us. And maybe you take it upon yourself to…calm her down.”
Cedric cleared his throat and nodded. He was pretty sure he understood what the hell was going on. He hadn’t just gotten the green light for sex. But… his boss had maybe just told him to get his girl off?
Huh.
Food for thought.
Cedric strode out into the hallway and took Elena by the hand, leading her to her room.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking up at him with her black hair tumbling everywhere and her eyes big and serious. “You look a little wild eyed.”
“Oh.” Cedric cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
She nodded and began to worry her lip between her teeth and Cedric internally wilted. She was stressed and anxious and he wanted nothing more than to just soothe her. Take her mind off all of this. A few moments later, he was locking her door behind them and Elena had already disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the sounds of her brushing her teeth.
Cedric deliberated for a moment and then followed her in. Her eyes caught his in the mirror as he came to stand behind her. He slid his hands over her stomach and clenched her to him.
“You know you’re safe, right?”
She nodded immediately.
“You know I’d never, ever let anything happen to you.”
This time she leaned forward to spit out her toothpaste. She caught his eyes in the mirror as she wiped her mouth with a towel. “It’s not me I’m worried about, Ced.”
His brow furrowed as he mulled over her words. “You’re worried about me?”
Her eyes flicked to the white bandage on his shoulder that was visible as a matt
e square underneath his white button down. “You got stabbed for me.”
“Baby, that was nothing. Not even five stitches.”
“It was a two-inch deep wound in your shoulder!”
“Elena, I’d lose the arm if it meant that you were safe.”
“That’s exactly my point!” She threw her arms up and eyed him through the mirror. For some reason, not having to face one another was making this argument easier to have. She didn’t try to turn in his arms and he didn’t try to turn her.
“How can I possibly live with that, Ced? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not self-castigating here. I don’t deserve this. All I did was try to make the world a better place. Did David deserve to die for that? Hell fucking no. Do I deserve to be holed up in this bunker while a man with a syringe and a knife and god knows what else tries to sneak up and get me? No. Absolutely not.” Now she did turn, and when their eyes clashed, the dark burn of her gaze made him catch his breath. “But you don’t deserve to get stabbed in the arm either, Ced. Even if it’s your job, even if you can handle it, even if other, more terrible things have happened to you. I don’t care. It kills me that you got hurt because of me.”
She was gorgeous in her passion. Her chest rising and falling, her eyes sparking, her lush lips open as she panted. Her hair tumbled everywhere as she leaned her weight back on the counter to stare up at him.
Cedric had never, in his life, needed to kiss someone so freaking badly. But he knew what would happen if he got even a small taste of her. He’d drown in her. He wouldn’t be able to stop. Just like if he allowed himself to touch her heat, her wetness, he’d certainly sleep with her. There would be no stopping it.
But there was also no stopping what was thrumming between them.
So, his eyes on hers, Cedric firmly put his hands on her hips and hoisted her up onto the counter. He spread her legs and stepped in between, pressing his pelvic bone firmly against the heat he could feel even through her yoga pants and his slacks.
Elena’s inhale cut off sharply as her eyes dilated hard and fast, like she’d just gone over the cliff of a rollercoaster. Her hands had already found their way into his auburn hair and Cedric relished the burn as she couldn’t help but yank at him.
Cedric tangled his own hand in her hair, tipping her head back so that their mouths were a whisper away from one another. But he didn’t kiss her. He just breathed her in.
His other hand was planted at the base of her spine where he slowly, inexorably pushed her hips toward his.
Cedric rubbed her up and down on his pelvic bone and groaned when she gave him the full weight of her head and locked her feet behind his back.
For a minute, he held his hips perfectly still, just working Elena up and down an inch or two against himself. But then he couldn’t help it.
The first roll of his hips had Elena outright moaning. He watched in tortured fascination as her nipples pressed against her shirt. He rolled against her again and her breath started to come out in gasps. He was definitely hitting her in the right spot so he allowed his measured pace to pick up.
“Oh god,” she gasped, biting her lip and looking up through her dark lashes and suddenly, Cedric couldn’t abide.
No way was the first time he ever made her come going to happen in a brightly lit bathroom.
He lifted her and took two steps out into the main room. But she was just so gorgeously shadowed in the dark bedroom and panting so prettily that he found he had to press her against the wall and thrust against her some more. Her fingernails were tangled up in his shirt and he relished the scratch of it.
“Please,” she begged him and he would have given her anything. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for her, no matter how dirty the job. But given the fact that she was begging for pleasure, Cedric was all the more happy to oblige.
He was panting too by the time he laid them down on the bed, still fully clothed and clinging to one another. She was underneath him, her legs around his waist and trapped under the protective cave of his body. He balanced his weight on his elbows and thrust against her like he was making hard, demanding love to her.
Every grinding push of their bodies against one another made his eyes want to roll back, but he wouldn’t let them. He tightened his own leash and forced himself to stay there, in the moment with her. He wouldn’t miss a single fucking second of the first time that Elena Vasquez came for him.
“Please, Cedric,” she panted.
“Anything,” he replied in a low voice. He couldn’t kiss her, but she’d been on to something with the whole biting thing, so he let his teeth nip along her intricate collarbone. He bit firmly into her shoulder and had her shuddering against him.
“Don’t stop.”
“Never.”
He could feel her chasing her pleasure, trying so hard to get there. He couldn’t give her the expertise of his fingers or the acute willingness of his mouth right now, all he could give her were his hips, but he wanted her to get there so badly. He’d get her there any way that he could.
Cedric put his lips to her ear and started talking. “We’re naked,” he told her, constructing an alternate reality where there were no boundaries between them, where they could do whatever they wanted with one another’s bodies. “My chest hair is scraping against your nipples, our skin is slipping against each other.”
She moaned and adjusted the grip of her legs around his waist.
“My tongue is in your mouth, Elena. I’m tasting you and tasting you. I’m tonguing you in the same rhythm as I’m making love to you. I’m inside you, Elena. I’m deeper than anyone else has ever been. You can feel me everywhere. I’m filling you up and making you say my name.”
“Cedric,” she panted, her fingers in fists on his back.
“You’re riding me from below. Because you want it as badly as I do. You’re greedy for it, aren’t you, baby? You want it. You want me. You want everything that I can give you. Just like I want to give it to you.”
His words were starting to jumble and his eyesight was spotty as he tried to fight off his own pleasure. He wanted so badly for her to come, so he kept going, but there was no fucking way he was going to let himself come in his pants with Elena Vasquez.
“Let me give it to you, Elena. Let me give it to you.”
“Yes,” she panted. “Yes! Cedric!” And then, in a perfect moment, the most perfect of his entire life, she arched against him, frozen. Her mouth fell open and her breath stopped in her chest. Her hair tumbled across the bed as her eyes went completely black. She shuddered, hard, her entire body jumping with pleasure and sensation as she held him tighter than anyone had ever held him before.
And then she collapsed, breathing hard and turning into liquid gold, heavy against the sheets.
Cedric lowered himself down over her, carefully giving her a good amount of his weight while he brushed her hair back, stroked her thigh, nuzzled his nose under her ear.
Slowly, she came back to herself. “Oh my god,” she mumbled, still fighting for breath. “What the hell was that?”
He laughed, pained and exhilarated. “Um. I’d hoped it would be pretty clear what it was.”
“Did you just dry hump me into orgasm? Like we were teenagers in the backseat of a car?”
“You have a problem with this?”
“God, no!” She tipped her head back and laughed. “I just didn’t expect it. I’m pretty sure that was the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“It’s definitely the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Cedric collapsed over onto one side, unable to stop petting her. Her pretty shoulders, her hair, the curve of her hip. He wanted her so badly, but now that she was coming down from her own pleasure, he couldn’t help but feel like a bear trying to cuddle a kitten. He felt too big, too clumsy, like his desire for her might just crush her. So, he stopped moving and just jammed his face into the crook of her neck and breathed.
“Cedric.”
“Hmm?”
“But you didn’t…”
“What’s that?”
Elena sat up and her hair tumbled forward as she leaned over him, studying his face in the dark. Her hair was so long, that it tickled his neck as she leaned over him. “You didn’t come, Cedric.”
Suddenly finding his equilibrium again, somewhere in there with her firm tone of voice, her demanding dark eyes, Cedric propped one arm behind his head and shrugged. “That’s all right.”
“That’s not all right! It’s terrible etiquette to leave your partner hanging!”
He grinned. She was mad at herself for not returning the favor to him and it was so damn cute he could barely stand it. “Elena, you just gifted me with the most incredible experience of my life. Seriously, you don’t owe me anything.”
She frowned at him, bringing her knee up for a place to rest her chin as she so often did. “We are not normal, Cedric.”
He laughed and this time it wasn’t pained at all. It was content. “That’s true.”
“Seriously, we are so weird. High-school-almost sweethearts who re-meet under these crazy intense circumstances and then aren’t allowed to sleep together but obviously need to sleep together so badly. God.”
Cedric tucked his fingers into the crook of her bent knee and just grinned. “You need to sleep with me?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t you need to sleep with me?”
They were joking with one another, but in a very Cedric way, he somberly considered her question. “I want to, so badly that I pretty much have a perma-boner these days.”
She laughed and he continued. “And if I knew I was never, ever going to be able to sleep with you, this would probably be a different situation. But I’m a patient man, Elena.”
“I’ve noticed.” There was a note of teasing in her tone, but it was overlaid with affection.
“I think…” Cedric trailed off, gathering his thoughts. Elena waited, obviously understanding what he needed in that moment. He propped himself up on one side, his head resting on one hand. “I think that most people who want to sleep together but aren’t, I think it’s because they can’t or won’t show each other how they feel. But that’s not our problem.”
Rook Security Complete Series Page 17