by Lora Leigh
Her lips parted as a weight that filled her soul seemed to lift from it.
“The boy that I was loved Tansy,” he whispered then. “The man I am is bound to you, Emily. The thought of losing you has me tied into so many knots I left a meeting downstairs with your father to make certain you were safe. To see for myself. To touch you. God help me, to just touch you.”
His hands slid around to cup her face, to hold her in place as his lips lowered to breathe a kiss over hers.
“I remember the sight of those stockings beneath that dress,” he growled. “Weapons strapped to your thighs, and I thought I was going to come in my dress uniform. My cock has only gotten harder tonight, Emily. I’ve only grown hungrier.”
Her hands covered his, her gaze searching his as erotic pleasure began to tingle through her bloodstream. He lowered his forehead to hers and stared back at her with that damned sexy quirk to his lips.
“I should be downstairs. I should be plotting and planning. Instead, I’m torturing myself with the scent of you, the remembered taste of you.”
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Stay.”
“Leave you?” His thumbs smoothed over her cheekbones. “Emily, it’s all I can do to think when I’m around you. Leaving you would tear the soul from my body.”
Before she could find the words to speak, to make sense of the emotions suddenly flooding through her, his arm lowered, slid around her hips then jerked her close, angling her body so his cock pressed against the aching mound of her pussy.
Her lips parted. A hard breath tore from her lungs at the heat and anticipation that rioted through her.
“I need you. Now.” His voice was a sexy rumble of erotic heat.
Emily could feel the desperation in him, the steel core of determination as he lifted her closer, drawing her off her feet, and turning her, only to back her into the wall.
His lips covered hers, his tongue sliding past them to devour the need that rose inside her. It shouldn’t be so good. She was angry with him. She was mesmerized by him. The taste of his kiss was as wild as the wind, his hands a force of nature as the skirt of her gown suddenly cleared her thighs.
She had disposed of the weapons, but she still wore the stockings. Stockings that slid over his thighs as he drew her up and her legs wrapped around his hips.
“Yeah. Like that.” He groaned, his hand making short work of the snap and zipper of his pants, pushing them to his thighs as the engorged length of his cock slid free.
He was hard. Thick. Hot.
The sound of a foil pack tearing barely caught her attention; the knowledge that he was sheathing the heavy erection with a condom brought an edge of regret. But it lasted for only a second.
Silk covering iron and suddenly plunging forcefully inside her as his lips caught her scream of incredible, ecstatic pleasure.
She could feel the heavy wedge of flesh stretching her pussy, the fiery ache of the penetration blending with the sensitivity of suddenly exposed nerve endings and clenching tissue.
“Sweet God, you’re tight,” he snarled. “I could die happy fucking you, Emily. Buried inside you. Just like this.”
His hips jerked, drawing another desperate cry from her lips, as the zipper at her back suddenly loosened and he drew her breasts free of the silk covering them.
“Perfect nipples.” His tongue stroked over one then the other as a heavy thrust inside her had her fighting for purchase, both physically and emotionally.
“Sweet tight nipples. A perfect innocent pink and hard as ripe, sun-drenched berries.” His lips covered a peak, drew it inside then began to suck with deep, heavy draws as his hips set a hard, driving rhythm between her thighs.
“Sweet Emily.” The accent was back. “Ah chère, hold me tight. Just so, bébé.”
She whimpered as her legs tightened around his waist, feeling his hands palm her rear, fingers clenching in the mounds as he shoved inside her, hard and deep.
She was so wet her thighs were growing damp. So close to climax she could feel it peaking, swelling her clit, burning in her womb, only to have him ease. His thrusts grew gentler as she writhed against him.
“Don’t tease,” she cried out, her hands gripping his shoulders, her nails pressing into his flesh.
“No tease,” he gritted out. “Sweet chère. Let me feel you. So tight and sweet on my dick. Sucking so sweetly at me.”
Her breath caught as the air became saturated with the scent and the sound of sex, of pleasure. His erotic, explicit words shocked and titillated. They pulled at the eroticism rising inside her and fed the hunger that only he could sate.
If he would let her orgasm. If he would just stroke a little harder, a little faster.
“Ah bébé, tha’ sweet pussy likes it slow and easy, eh?”
She shook her head. It was as though the dark, predatory male inside him had suddenly been loosed, had been given freedom.
His gaze was sharper, hotter. His lips were hungrier. His cock teased and cajoled and shafted inside her with irregular thrusts that had her trying to scream his name with the burning need. Trying, because she didn’t have the energy to do more than reach for orgasm, to withstand the unbearable pleasure tearing through her.
“Kell. Please.” She arched in his arms as she felt sudden space at her back, felt him moving her.
She expected the bed. She didn’t expect the floor. He sank to the carpet, coming over her, his erection still buried inside her as he stripped off first his pants, then her dress.
The material was jerked over her head, taffeta and silk rustling as he tossed it aside, leaving her clad in nothing but the black stockings and high heels she had worn with the dress.
“Fuck. Yes.” Satisfaction thrummed through his voice as he leaned back on his knees, drawing her legs over his thighs before his hands clenched at her hips.
Hard. Her hips jerked as he plunged inside her hard. Deep. Once.
“Oh God, you’ll kill me, Kell,” she whimpered, her hands reaching for his wrists as he held her hips in place.
“I’ll love you, chère.” His expression was erotic, filled with a heavy sensuality and male pleasure that pierced her womb.
“Will you love me?” she gasped breathlessly, staring back at him, feeling not just the need for the steadily rising pleasure, the heavy thrusts of his cock, or the touch of his hands. But the touch of something far less defined. The touch of his heart.
“Ah chère.” He came in closer, bending over her then, his hands gripping her hands to anchor them to the floor as his lips touched hers. His tongue stroked over them. “Don’ you know? You own my soul, how could I help but love you?”
Three hard, furious thrusts of his hips followed his words, splintering the pleasure inside her as she began to chant his name, to fly, to fracture with ecstasy.
And still he was hard inside her. Brutally hard. His cock throbbed inside her as her inner muscles clenched around him with a force that had her straining back from the bruising pressure.
“Hold still, sweet sugar,” he groaned, rearing back once again, holding her hips in place as he pierced her to the hilt.
She whimpered. Pleading, desperate sounds as tremors raked over her nerve endings, pleasure tearing her apart as the orgasm seemed never-ending.
If he would just hold still long enough. If he would stop those slow, gentle pushes against her, stroking her internally, building her pleasure again even as the final pulses of her orgasm eased.
She was rising again. She cried out, her voice trembling at the feel of the pleasure rising inside her.
“There, chère. Let it have you.” His large hand settled on her stomach, fingers outstretched, pressing against the flexing muscles as her head thrashed on the floor, her nails digging into the carpet, clawing at it as she fought to anchor herself amid the sensations beginning to tear through her once again.
Let it have her? It was destroying her. She could feel the fire whipping through her body again, tightening her muscles as he began to move again.
Emily arched beneath him again, pleasure overtaking her, throwing her into another brutal orgasm as a hard male groan echoed around her, and the feel of his cock pulsing violently inside her as his release swept over him had his name gasping from her lips.
She was clenched so tight around him that she could feel the flex of his cock. The jerk of his balls against her rear, the throb of his erection inside her, and the sound of her name pulled from his lips.
“Chère. Sweet, sweet Emily . . .”
Eighteen
EMILY WAS DRAPED OVER HIS chest hours later, exhaustion making her a limp damp weight as his arms surrounded her. The dark flames of her hair cascaded over his chest as her soft breaths tickled the hair on his chest.
He glanced at the clock beside the bed and winced. Two hours. Two hours filled with the tight grip of her pussy and the soft cries that tore from her lips each time he touched her.
But there were things to complete this evening. Plans to be made before they headed back to Georgia. The team would separate again in the morning and Kell wanted to make certain he had all the information involved before he left.
As he lay there, the memory of his grandparents wavered through his memory. His Mamère, so slight and frail now. She had once ruled the Beaulaine mansion with a steel hand. Or she had thought she had. Until his maman had married the Krieger heir and systematically begun to pull that power around herself.
And Papère. He breathed out heavily at the thought of him. He had been closest to his Papère. They had gone fishing and hunting. He had tried to teach Kell the art of catching a vixen and laughed in affection with each failure.
So many memories. He had fought them for so long, and now they came tumbling down around him like a Bayou downpour. Hard, fast, drenching his emotions in sadness.
He had lost his parents not long after Tansy’s death. Kell had grieved for his father, and for the mother he had believed existed, rather than the one who had betrayed him.
Unlike his parents, who hadn’t come to Tansy’s funeral, Kell had shown up at theirs. He had stood carefully out of sight, watched the sealing of the crypt with a heavy heart, and reminded himself that he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t bring Tansy and their child back, and he couldn’t return to the memories of the mother he had cherished.
His love for Tansy had, as he told Emily, been a boy’s love. He had been determined to save her, filled with passion for the exotic, beautiful young girl, and certain of his ability to protect her. He was a Beaulaine-Krieger. He was invincible. Wasn’t that what his mother had taught him?
Instead, he had learned how very powerless he truly was, and his child had paid the price.
His child. Innocence. Blood of his blood. A defenseless being who would have looked to Kell as he had looked to his own father for nearly eighteen years.
Some nights, he dreamed of that child. Dreamed it had survived that night. That he laughed up at him with green eyes and a vibrant smile. And sometimes he dreamed that the boy watched him with tear-filled eyes as he tried to reach him, tried to save him.
Shaking his head he eased Emily from his chest, almost smiling at her grumpy little sigh before she settled against her pillow and slipped back into slumber.
He brushed her hair back from her face and leaned closer, breathing in the scent of her before kissing her forehead gently.
His eyes closed as his lips lingered.
God help him. She was becoming more important to him than anything else had ever been in his life. She wasn’t just invading his soul, she was becoming his soul.
He had to force himself to draw back from her, to leave the bed before pulling his dress slacks back on, gathering the rest of his clothes, and slipping back into his own room for a shower.
He needed to talk to Reno and the team before morning. Returning to Georgia wasn’t something he wanted Emily to do. She was too vulnerable there. Her assassins too certain where to find her. As he had been shown earlier in the night, bullets could get past him.
The thought had his guts tightening in rage. God help the Fuentes assassin if Kell managed to get his hands on him.
Getting out of the shower, he dressed quickly, pulled on his lace-up steel-toe boots and secured them, then clipped his holstered weapon to his side and went into his bedroom to meet with his visitor.
He’d heard Ian come in minutes before, alone. The other man was slouched in the easy chair that sat in a corner by a reading lamp and small table. His long legs were stretched out in front of him and his dark blond brows were lowered heavily as he watched Kell come in from the bathroom.
“I could have been someone else.” Ian’s voice was low and brooding, almost angry, as Kell took a seat on the side of the bed, watching him curiously.
“Then you would have been dead.” Kell shrugged.
Ian didn’t snicker at that as he usually did. Instead, his expression seemed to grow darker.
“What’s doin’?” The Creole flavor of his accent was getting harder to disguise, harder to hold back.
Ian’s lips quirked at the sound.
“She relaxes you,” Ian remarked. “That’s a good thing, bro.” He sighed heavily then leaned forward in his chair. “Reno and the team just left with the senator. He has an early meeting in the morning to clear the way for that bill that the Fuentes spy so obviously doesn’t want to pass. With the new information Macey received while we were at the party, I thought I’d update you before we head to bed.”
“He received something else from Judas? That boy sure is taking an interest in this.” Kell snorted.
Ian’s gaze flashed dangerously. “Macey managed to trace the transmission from inside the mansion. Whoever Judas is, he was there.”
An image flashed in Kell’s mind. Kira Porter. There had been something he had seen in her face, her eyes, for a second across the dance floor, that had reminded him of someone.
“Porter?” he asked.
Ian shook his head, a smile tipping his lips as humor lit his odd hazel-blue eyes.
“Our delectable Miss Porter is Homeland Security,” he drawled. “She’s also the daughter of one of the senator’s best friends from his SEAL days.”
It clicked into place then. He had seen her twice, once in Russia where she had been a blond sex kitten working a cocktail party for the American ambassador, and then a few years later in South America where she had carried a lethal automatic rifle as easily as other women carried a purse. Her hair had been nut brown then, her eyes a matching color and a razor-thin scar had marred her downy cheek.
“They call her the Chameleon,” Ian mused. “She has a different look for every job. The scar in Bolivia was real, by the way. Homeland Security paid to have it put in place and they paid to have it repaired after the mission. She’s low-key, normally in watch position only, but the file the senator showed us on her is scary, dude. Real scary.”
Ian’s tone wasn’t in the least intimidated. It was—anticipatory.
“Any suspicions which guest at the party was Judas?”
Ian stared at the wall across the room, his gaze thoughtful. “The message he sent says the spy was there. Macey is working through the guest list looking for our friendly mole. He’ll tackle Judas later, I suspect.”
Ian crossed his feet slowly. “We head back to Atlanta in the morning, as per the senator’s orders. With the Porter girl in place, me on the other side, and you in the condo with Emily, he believes she’ll be safe enough at home. I think he’s a fool, but that’s just between the two of us.”
“The only way to eliminate the threat is to run with her,” Kell said thoughtfully.
“Reno pointed that out.” Ian nodded. “But, as Macey said, that will alert the Fuentes mole that we’re closing in on him. And Macey is closing in. That boy is a whiz on the computer.”
&
nbsp; Ian’s ruined voice, dark, serrated, was filled with mockery.
Rage beat at Kell’s head before he forced it back. He forced himself to think logically. If he ran with her, they would always be running. Fuentes saw it as a sign of weakness, as cutting out of the game, and it would be sure to enrage him. At this point, they had no choice but to use the hand dealt to them and make certain he didn’t win.
“If we catch his spy, then the threat against your woman is gone.” Ian shrugged. “That’s all that matters.”
“I want things in place so I can run if I have to,” Kell gritted out. “Fuentes isn’t touching Emily, Ian. I won’t let this happen.”
Ian nodded slowly as he rose to his feet. “Get some sleep, dude. We’re taking a Navy flight back to Georgia and a secured SUV back to the condo. Her last party is in three days’ time and Judas’s message reported that all players will be in place there as well. If we find him, we save your woman, and we find Nathan.”
God, Nathan. He hadn’t thought about that. The information none of them could believe, but it had come with a picture, with proof. Nathan Malone, the SEAL believed killed during Emily’s rescue, was alive. Alive but near death and under the control of the spy known as Mr. White.
“Arrange a meeting with Kira when we get back to Atlanta,” Kell ordered. “I want her information and I want to know her backup plans.”
Ian nodded before pausing. “I saw you talking to your grandparents,” he said then.
Kell froze. “I have no grandparents.”
“Whispers were sweeping around the party. Interesting little rumors about the New Orleans Beaulaines and their missing grandson. An heir to two of the largest fortunes in the nation. That would be a hell of a position for a SEAL to be in. We live a dangerous life.”
“Drop it.”
“Blood is thicker than water, my friend,” Ian murmured. “Sometimes, a man has to own up to the past and everyone’s mistakes within it. Some things, you don’t just throw away.”
Kell stared back at him silently, coldly.
Ian lifted his shoulder dismissively. “Just thought I’d mention it. Catch you at daylight, bro.”