Because he couldn’t have both.
Not without Van going back into the suit and using whatever mojo he possessed to link up with Derek and that… couldn’t happen.
At all. Ever.
Not just because it’d out Bravo to Chase and put Laurel back in danger, but because it would fry Derek’s mind.
And considering Derek’s talent to read people’s minds and Sinclair’s second favorite line—knowledge is power—she couldn’t imagine the Machiavellian master would be willing to sacrifice the needs of the one for the needs of the many. Or his agenda.
But it was Sinclair. So anything was possible. Which meant that she needed to make sure her equations were right, contained no typos, and that Caliv had a heads up on what potential future use looked like and would mean to Delta team.
Decision made, Maddie saved everything to a separate file, then forwarded her notes and equations to Caliv for a peer review.
Fingers flexed on her hip. “Got your answer?”
Maddie glanced at his hand on her hip. “Not the one I was looking for.”
He moved against her. “That mean you’re done?”
“Yes, I—” Maddie’s mouth snapped shut as sensations in the form of subtle energy rippled across her skin, under it, down her leg, back up the inside of her thigh. Her eyes widened. She couldn’t see it, but she felt the energy moved from Van’s hand on her hip through her body to ping off every erogenous zone she had. Her breath caught in her throat. “You’re… projecting.”
His mouth pressed against the base of her neck. “Not well enough if you’re still able to think.”
There was no mistaking his intent or the sizeable erection pressing at her backside. “You want sex.”
He moved up her neck, kissing, nibbling, licking, tasting and she arched back letting him continue his sensual assault. “Not sex. More.” His other hand moved from her hip, down her leg then to between her legs. “Sex is easy. Sex is my hand moving in here. Down your front… opening you to my touch.”
She moaned. “That’s… definitely sex.”
His fingers teased her, lightly touched and stroked her. The heat of his palm cupped her, pushing her back towards him as he pressed his hips forward. “Want more. Want you hot, wet… so fucking wet I can’t stop… sliding into you.” Breath of pause and a finger, one, then two circled her entrance. “Deep into you.”
“Still sex,” she panted.
He slipped a leg between hers and opened her further, dipped into her, shallow, right at the edge of a place that made her a little crazy. “More than sex.” His finger dipped deeper, further, in, out, in strong, confident strokes that echoed the rhythm his hips set against her backside. “More than physical. You focused solely on me… things I’m doing… my hand, body moving with you, touching you… filling you… loving you.”
He played her like an instrument he’d studied for years. Bringing her to the edge of orgasm, then backing off and making her groan in frustration.
“That’s it, baby. Tell me what you need.”
Again he worked her to the edge where she was incapable of forming words.
His breath was hot at her ear as he whispered, “Want inside you. Need to feel you wrapped around me. Sliding on my cock. Up, down, pressing your sweet ass against me as you take me in… pulling me into your sweet heat. No barriers. Bare. Inside you. Filling you with me. With everything I have. My body. Soul. Touching yours.”
Energy rippled off him and zinged along her skin. Pulsed with an erotic melody that had her tugging and shifting to get her underwear off and out of the way. “Yes,” she moaned. “Want. That. Now.”
His other hand slid up her bare thigh and held her open to him. “Take it.” His voice was soft steel. “Slide down onto my cock. Yes, like that.” His teeth bore down on her shoulder, sucking, biting gently, and marking her. One hand played with her clit, stroking the entrance where his shaft slowly moved deeper into where she craved it.
“More,” she whimpered when he stopped, barely the tip inside and then pulled out.
“Feel me, baby. Feel me taking you.” He pushed forward, slowly driving inside her. His hips rotated up pressing against the flat of her ass. “Moving inside you. Claiming you.” He yanked back, then gently gliding back in.
Maddie gasped as every fiber of her being lit up with want and need.
“Slow. Easy.” Out. In. Deeper. “Until you know… never doubt… You. Are. Mine.”
“Yes, yours,” she breathed as she balled her fist in the sheets in front of her and braced herself for what was about to happen. “Fuck. Me.”
He reared back and slammed into her. Hard. Unapologetic. “Mine.”
He gripped her legs, held them wide open as he yanked her back in time with him and pommeled her from behind, scorching her body with energy. His energy that he projected onto her. It ricocheted throughout her making her feel everything. His heartbeat, throbbing between her legs, in her chest, throat, down to her spine to all points in between. His need to bond with her. To wrap himself around her. His desperate need to claim her as his and protect her and coat her insides with his seed and make a baby and… a dam unlocked inside her.
She was hungry, for all he had, for all he could give her, for all she’d missed while apart. He was the other half of her soul. Monster, savior, man—it didn’t matter. He completed her. Made her whole. Made her soul soar with every slam into her ass and stroke of the bundle of nerves his cock delivered. He was cracking her code. Ratcheting up the tension in her body until… until… click, ripple, shudder, kaboom!
Her orgasm hit with a ferocity that had her screaming into the mattress, then biting down on the sheets and groaning as lights exploded behind her clenched eyes and her body moved with a mind of its own. Increasing frantic gyrations intended to keep the moment, extend it and milk the hoarse shout and seed straight out of his body and into the center of her universe. Deliberately, she clenched her muscles down on him, pulling, sucking, and clutching at him to follow her to Nirvana. To the blissed out space between time and space where nothing mattered and everything was perfectly perfect.
He followed her, caught her as she floated down from the stars and heavens into his arms and struggled to catch her breath.
“That was…,” he rasped.
“Amazing,” she finished on an awe filled breath.
He chuckled. “Was gonna go with not sex, but like yours better.” His arms wrapped around her. “Fucking amazing.”
She turned her head and looked at him. “I could feel you projecting onto me.”
“That good or bad?”
She smiled. “Good. Really good. Better than… could you feel me?”
He grinned. “Every damn flicker, flutter, and ripple.”
She melted back into his arms, laid her head on his shoulder. “So…,” she started then deliberately trailed off.
“So…?” he prompted.
“I might need to repeat this experiment again.”
“Anytime,” replied with a grin in his voice.
“But it appears to me that whatever special ability you have can absorb and project energy from one vessel to another.”
“If you say so.”
“I do and considering that I now know and feel how much of an ass man you are—”
His cock still lodged inside her pulsed with life. “You’re gonna finally give in and let me have it?”
“No,” she drawled. Then she smiled and looked back over her shoulder. “Well, maybe. If you’re good.”
“Baby, I’ll be so good, you’ll fucking melt with how good it feels.”
His words were accompanied by an electric pulse that skittered along her front down her stomach, between her legs, around the space his cock held and beyond to virgin territory. “Ohmi… Van. That’s… cheating.”
“Not cheating.” He chuckled. “Playing to win.”
“Well, dial it back a notch before you….” She gasped. A ripple, a flutter, a flock of ripples and shutters
and… her eyes clenched shut as an aftershock orgasm washed over her. “Ohmigod.”
“We can do this all day,” he murmured against her ear. “Want to do this all day.”
“Ohmigod,” she gasped again as she rode out the orgasms. “Not if you… want to live.”
“You’re sexy when you’re growly.” He eased off on the energy surge and let her catch her breath and float back into this hemisphere. “Better?”
“Much.” She drew in a deep breath, then another as she muttered, “Damn, Van, why in the world… did I not know… you could do that?”
“Baby, that, this part of our lives and my gift of… enhancing the sensation has never been something I held back on in the bedroom. If you didn’t know, it’s because you were right where I wanted you. Brain off and fully focused on me and what we were doing.”
“I was focused alright. No doubt about that. No wonder the thought of getting with anyone else never interested me.”
He growled in her ear. “Better not have interested you.”
“You know it didn’t.”
He grunted his acceptance of her words in a way that made her think of a caveman harrumph.
“And even though you just thoroughly rocked my world and could go ahead and lower my leg so I can have some hope of being able to walk normal and not need about six pillows to sit on when we get out of here—”
“Leg stays put.” His hand slid up and cupped her belly. “Need more time to commune with my sons.”
She tensed. This wasn’t a subject he should be joking about. “I may not be pregnant.”
“You are.” He said it with such certainty that she could almost believe him. “I can feel them. Like little buzzes in my head. Growing, dividing, safe and snug in here.”
Something in Maddie shifted at the softness of his voice and the depth of emotion pouring out him. It wasn’t a certainty and it wouldn’t be for weeks, but she could feel how much he wanted her to be pregnant and it terrified her. “Don’t say things like that. Please, Van, don’t make me believe. I can’t… not again.”
His arms tightened around her. “You won’t lose them.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispered.
“I do.” His voice was full of certainty. “Believe, baby. Believe in this.” His hand tightened on her stomach. “Believe in me.”
“Believe in you?” Maddie tried and failed to turn around to face him. Frustrated, she slumped back against him. “How can I believe you, Van, when I know you’ve held so much back from me?”
He flinched at her back and she felt it. “If I didn’t tell you, it was done to protect you. No other reason than to protect you.”
She reached for the first innocuous thing in her mind she could think of that he’d withheld from her. “Oh, really. So you not telling me about your childhood or your parents was done to protect me.”
He stiffened. And not in a sexual way. “My parents have nothing to do with this, us, or our children.”
His denial was like waving a red flag in front of her face. “You shutting me down like that is a guarantee that there is something to it.”
“Bullshit. I didn’t tell you anything about my parents because they have nothing to do with us.”
“Then why won’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s not important.” He slipped out of her and rolled away. “Telling you about them won’t change a damned thing.”
“Except make me love you more, because I’ll know more of who you are.”
He sat up and shoved his legs over the edge of the bed. “You love me enough as I am. If I’m happy with it, then it’s enough.”
“Van, don’t shut me out. Please.”
He stood, facing away from her, but didn’t walk away. He stayed put, his head looked up, then down to his chest as he sighed. “I’m not shutting you out.” He took a step towards the bathroom. “Shutting them out.”
“Who,” she called as he entered the bathroom.
He stopped as he breached the threshold, half turned toward her. “My parents.” He swallowed visibly, looked over her head for a long minute as if he were debating saying anything else, then his gaze snapped to her. “The ones I killed to get my fucking freedom.”
Her jaw dropped and before she could respond, the bathroom door shut and he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tango turned on the shower, then uncaring if it’d had time to heat up, stepped under the spray. He knew his Maddie well enough to know that he needed to hustle if he had a prayer’s chance in hell of having more than a minute alone in the shower to lather, rinse, and get his head together. Any second she’d barge through that door and demand he explain the bomb he’d dropped. She wouldn’t give an inch and would no doubt step right into the luxurious shower then proceed to steal more than half the nozzle spray action to use the half dozen bottles of girliness cluttering the shelves.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about his past with her. He just didn’t want her to know the truth. The things he’d done. Worse, the things he couldn’t remember having done. The things he’d been told, by the cops, that’d he’d done with his bare hands. To the people who’d supposedly been his biological parents.
Right on time, the door burst open and Maddie stood there, furious, hands on her hips. “You do not get to drop a bomb on me like that and walk away. Move over and start talking.”
He scrubbed the lather on his head and made room for her. “Not much else to say.”
“You said you killed your parents. Start there and begin with why. Were they bad, evil people?”
He ducked under the spray and washed the suds away while he thought about his answer. Answer was simple really. Too simple. He pulled back and wiped the water from his eyes. “Yes.”
She stepped under the spray to get her hair wet. “How bad and evil?”
He shrugged and reached for her shampoo. “Fuck if I know.”
“How can you not know,” she demanded as she held her hand out for the bottle.
He shook his head. “Turn around. You know the drill.”
She did as he asked then let him work the shampoo into her hair. “Tell me, Van. Please. I want to understand.”
He sighed. “I don’t remember much of them. Of my childhood. Other than snippets of images. Most filled with pain. Shitload of pain. Beatings. Hunger. Yelling. Anger. It was hell. A hell I… I remember knowing would end with me dying.” He took a long pause as he fought back the surge of whatever the fuck was rolling around in his gut. “My father… had me by the throat. Was squeezing the fuck out of it. Out of me. Shaking me. Smashing my head against the wall.”
His hands stopped moving in her hair and she turned around under the spray. Tears in her eyes. Innocent, heartbroken tears. “Your mother was there, too. In the room, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah.” A shaky breath and he said, “She was behind him, yelling at me to give it up. Egging him on to beat until I expressed whatever it is that I am.”
Hair rinsed, Maddie stepped forward and sliding her hands up his chest and around his neck, hugged him. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
The cork was out of the dam and the rest came tumbling out. “I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see for the blood running in my eyes and the pain of my skull being bashed repeatedly against the trailer wall. Damn thing gave way and… my head hit a live wire in the wall and then…I died.”
Her arms tightened around him and she murmured something against his cooling skin.
“Classic textbook died. Darkness and then walking down a tunnel toward a light and… gates. Right up to the Pearly Gates.” His eyes stared unfocused on the tiled walls. “Never told anyone this part. Figured they’d think I’m crazy. Hell, I know I’m crazy.”
“You’re not crazy,” she assured him.
“Not even if I tell you the gates opened and a… an angel—he didn’t look like a textbook angel. More like a biker with a grudge and a sword. Nice as hell, gleaming sword that I couldn’t take
my eyes off. It spoke to me. Heard it in my head, calling me home, telling me to touch it.”
“You touched it.”
“How could I not?” Tango shook himself out of the memory and reached for the conditioner. The water would stay warm for only so much longer. “So yeah, I touched it. Said the few words it required. Swore my loyalty and then bam, back into my body I went.” Pause as he set the conditioner back on the shelf. “Sword and all.”
Maddie pulled back and looked at him. “The sword was real? Tangible real?”
He worked the conditioner into her hair. “Real enough that I skewered those that needed skewering and… then poof. It vanished like it’d never been. Cops showed up shortly after, couldn’t find the murder weapon, sent me to the hospital to get treated, and next thing I knew I was packed off to Dory and Beau’s foster home. That’s where I met Ben and Black.”
Her jaw dropped and she stared at him. “That’s it? Nothing else.”
“Pretty much. Turn around.” He grabbed the loofah spongy thing and her body wash then loaded up. “Can’t tell you much about those two, not because I don’t want to, but because I swore to keep their secrets as they swore to keep mine. But we were close. Enough so that Dory often accused us of being long lost brothers.”
“Brothers by choice. Not blood,” she half said and asked.
“Not blood,” he confirmed. “Far as I know I have no siblings.”
“Given how crappy your parents were that’s a good thing.”
He grunted his agreeance and went to work on scrubbing her back.
“So how did you go from a foster kid to getting picked up by Sinclair?”
His hand stilled on her hip. “You would have to ask that.”
“Yes and if I weren’t such a warm, generous, forgiving person who adores getting an all over massage in a warm shower by a sexy, naked hottie, I’d totally be bitching you out for not telling me you worked for that smarmy Machiavellian puppet master.”
Devil's Tango (Running with the Devil Book 1) Page 20