But she couldn’t resist having him in her life. Even against her wishes, he fought for her. That meant something to her, even through her anger.
He popped open the button of her leather pants and shoved them down, all without breaking the kiss. She undid his jeans at the same time, with one hand, still holding his face to hers.
Her leather pants fell to the floor, then her thong. His jeans were next, and she was pleased that he’d gone commando and was hard as steel, those piercings a promise for this to be good. He pulled her shirt off and the bra went across the room. She stroked him, making a groan leave his gorgeous lips. She shoved him back until he hit the bed and fell on it.
She straddled him, his legs going off the bed, and kissed him harder, their tongues warring for dominance like they always did. Nothing Sawyer and Zander did was soft. He flipped them over and pushed her higher on the bed. She thought he would start fucking her there, but she tossed her head back in ecstasy when he placed his mouth over her core and stroked her clit with his tongue. She ran her hands through his red hair and held him there as he devoured her. Zander hadn’t eaten her out yet, and she was glad he knew how. This was a skill she needed to remember he had. He shifted so her legs were over his shoulders and he shoved his tongue into her. He ate her out as roughly as they normally screwed.
“Oh, Zander,” she moaned, unable to take it. The fight. The anger. The argument. Aphrodisiacs for them. Every time they argued or fought, they had explosively great sex.
When he shoved in two fingers, she came. A scream of pleasure tore from her chest and her body clenched on him. He continued to rub the sweet spot and lapped up everything her body gave him.
“Perfection,” he growled once her orgasm had finished. She was panting softly as he crawled up her body and thrust into her, hard. He set a relentless pace and Sawyer just wrapped her arms and legs around him.
It was hard and fast. Brutal. There was nothing tender about it. Zander was braced over her, and she was captivated by green eyes as he drove into her like it was the last thing he would have before his death. Like the sex was a part of the argument they just had. The piercings he had were creating sensations in her that she knew she would never get used to. She could count each barbell of the ladder as he dragged them out of her and shoved them back in. The Prince Albert slid over her g-spot every single time he thrust.
He leaned back and picked her up with him, staying deep inside her as he did so. Her back hit his headboard and she relished in the small amount of pain from it. He pounded up into her and used gravity to get even deeper. She bit down on his shoulder but was unable to stop any of the noises that he was bringing out of her. This was fantastic.
His hands moved down to hold her ass, squeezing hard.
Sawyer felt like she was going to catch on fire. It was so much. His body grinding against her clit as he drove up and up into her. The pain on her back, the rough wooden headboard scratching at her. Her nerves were firing back every sort of sensation possible as he fucked her harder than she thought possible. She wondered if there would ever be a limit to how hard they could make it.
She shattered and took him with her. He groaned in her ear as he filled her. Sawyer was not of their world anymore. She could barely see. Her vision was blurred and focusing on anything past his pale, tattooed shoulder as they both rode out their orgasms was an impossibility.
Zander laid her down and she just curled into his pillows. Her body was blissfully boneless. He laid out panting next to her, neither of them getting under the blankets.
“Stay here tonight?” he asked her.
“I’m not moving, and you’re crazy if you think I am,” Sawyer answered, laughing softly. “You’re stuck with me tonight.”
“I’m never stuck with you,” Zander retorted, rolling to his side.
She looked over at him, feeling better. She was too tired to be angry. In this moment, she just didn’t care. He could go out and get himself arrested, and she wouldn’t be able to summon the energy to get even mildly annoyed. “I’m stuck with you,” she teased.
“I mean…” He shrugged. “I’ve made you sticky, but I don’t think it works like that.”
“Gross,” Sawyer groaned.
“Get the lights.”
“You get the lights,” she huffed. She sure as fuck wasn’t getting up at this point. The next time she was getting out of bed would be in the morning.
“Sawyer, please. I can’t feel my legs.”
“Neither can I, and it’s your fault!”
Twenty minutes later, Zander got up and turned the lights off.
7
Sawyer
New York. Sawyer walked out of the airport and smiled at her city, glad to be back. After the great sex with Zander, they had woken up and left for the airport. The flight had been quiet: a simple rundown of the itinerary, then everyone took naps since they had left for the airport at three in the morning. They didn’t need to be at the main office until Monday, and it was Saturday afternoon.
“Are you going to see Charlie?” Jasper asked, walking next to her to their rentals. They both threw their bags in the trunk of the little Ford Focus and slammed it closed. They needed to wait on the rest of the team, whose bags were late getting off the plane. The team had been forced to fly commercial for this trip.
“I am, tomorrow,” she answered. “I called him earlier in the week. He and I are going to get lunch then do my class together. I can’t wait to see all my kids.” Sawyer was thankful for this trip for that reason. Her old life. She fucking missed it sometimes. Other times, she was glad that those kids now didn’t have her darkness around, and she was getting a real chance to find her own salvation.
“One of us will need to go with you,” Jasper reminded her. “We’re lax at home, but here in New York, you can’t go anywhere alone.”
“Yeah,” Sawyer sighed. “I remember the warning you’ve already given me ten times before we got off the plane. Stick near you guys. No going off alone. Don’t talk to other agents, or anyone else, without you guys. Do nothing that could possibly get me in even the whiff of trouble.” She took a deep breath. “And nothing about any undue personal relationships.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, looking down at his feet. “I know you’re listening - I’m just worried.”
“Be worried about Zander. He tends to punch everything and get into fights,” she commented, throwing a side-eye at her red-headed lover.
“So do you,” Jasper countered.
“I am smart enough to decide not to fight when it’s not necessary,” she rebutted.
“Sure,” he said, a smile coming over his face. “Until you punched that guy without warning.”
“He shoved Vincent. And I had warned him. I told him he didn’t want the fight. So did Elijah and Vincent.”
“Would you punch someone like that for me?” His smile turned into a bashful grin.
“I would do it for any of you,” she replied.
“Without our permission? Even if we asked you not to?”
“Oh, damn it.” Sawyer smacked his stomach. “Yeah, I get it. Can’t get mad at Zander when I would do the same thing. I understand.”
“I just heard the argument last night,” Jasper whispered, keeping his voice low enough that Zander couldn’t hear them. “I noticed he didn’t call you out on it, but I’m going to. You don’t get as angry at me as you do him.”
“I expect this kind of thing to come from Vincent,” she muttered in annoyance, crossing her arms.
“He’s preoccupied with this trip and this date I hear he’s taking you on.” He chuckled.
“Do you know anything about that?” she inquired. She didn’t. Vincent was close-lipped about the entire thing.
“More than you,” he informed her. “It’s on Tuesday. He’ll tell you more tonight.”
“Ah.” She nodded slowly. He’d better. “What’s taking them so long?”
“I don’t know,” Jasper said, shrugging. He leaned on the car
and Sawyer decided to kill the time and have a smoke. It wasn’t a smoking section, but she couldn’t wander off to find one, or smoke in the rental, and she’d just gotten off the plane. She was having a cigarette, fuck the rules.
Jasper tried to take it from her as she lit it and she jumped out of his range.
“Don’t mess with me,” she warned him. “I’m going to smoke this cigarette.” She even had breath mints for after it.
“If someone comes over to tell you to stop, you will,” he ordered.
She nodded. If some security guard said anything, she would put it out, but not for Jasper. He knew she wanted her post-flight smoke. She was doing good at not smoking as often since Jasper and Zander didn’t like it, but she wasn’t ready to completely quit the habit. Plus, she knew she was smoking more often than she used to before they caught her. She needed to cut back in general.
“We’re here,” Elijah said as he led the rest of the team over. Quinn and Zander were pulling a cart that had three large wooden crates with holes. Kaar, Shade, and Scout were inside them. “These our rides?”
“Yeah, they gave us some cheap shit this time.” Jasper groaned. “Normally we get better.”
“Yeah, but we’re still in the dog house, so this was expected. They gave us a nice hotel, though, and James is waiting on us there. He texted and said he needed to tell us something. Like why Quinn was forced on this trip.” Vincent took the keys for the second Focus from Jasper and popped the trunk.
Sawyer watched them load in bags and put her smoke out when everyone else was ready to go. Kaar, Shade, and Scout were freed from their crates and she saw that the wolves were wearing collars, something she’d never witnessed before. Shade had red and Scout had blue. Kaar immediately flew into an open door to one of the cars. The bird didn’t ever pay any attention to her. She barely saw the damn thing.
“Quinn was forced to be here?” Sawyer asked Elijah quietly before loading in with Jasper and Zander.
“Yeah. He’s never been asked to come to New York.” He looked concerned. “This time, they demanded he and, in turn, the wolves come. He wouldn’t leave them in Georgia by themselves, so they had to come.”
“Then they put us on commercial?” Sawyer was pissed. She pulled out her mints and threw one in, crunching down on it, making it explode in her mouth and taste too strong. “Kaar, Shade and Scout had to ride in crates. Quinn was uncomfortable as hell with all of it, and Vincent wasn’t very pleased either. Are they trying to be assholes?” She would have never put Midnight in cargo on a flight. Ever. She felt for her guys, knowing the pain of having an animal bond that couldn’t be treated right due to other circumstances.
“Yeah,” Elijah answered. “They are. You’ll meet them Monday.”
“Fuck,” she muttered and jumped in the car. Scout was next to her, split from his brother and Quinn in the other car. She wrapped an arm around him and he leaned into her. “I got you, boy.” She scratched through his thick fur, behind his ear, and relaxed him enough to lay down and put his head in her lap.
The drive to the hotel was a slog. Saturday traffic in New York was flooded with tourists, locals out and running errands, and taxis doing whatever they wanted. Sawyer stared out the window, taking in her city. They wouldn’t pass by her area, the Bronx and gym, on the way to the hotel, but she knew she would see her New York home soon enough. Tomorrow.
It was almost too soon. She was a little nervous in a way that she never had been about seeing her friends in New York. Her family.
Liam still refused to talk to her, and that was something she hoped to work on. She talked to Charlie every couple of days, finally convincing the old man to text her and send her pictures of her kids at their lessons, now run by him and Liam.
They pulled in front of the hotel and Sawyer released Scout before getting out. Scout ran for Quinn, who was already out of that Focus, and she didn’t like how he shook. Both wolves looked uncomfortable and upset. So did Quinn. He was wary and anxious, his back straight. Sawyer walked to him and gently touched his arm.
“Are you okay?” she whispered, keeping it low enough that other people walking by had no idea she even said anything.
“I hate…big cities. New York is…”
“Bigger than most,” she finished for him. “You weren’t like this in Dallas.”
“We weren’t in Dallas very long,” Quinn said, looking down to his wolves. “We were just passing through. We’re going to be here for a week. In this big hotel, no escape. No space. I had to collar my brothers so no one shoots them.”
She watched his nostrils flare and his eyes grew a little panicked. She just kept rubbing his arm as Elijah walked over and did the same on Quinn’s other side. She knew why the wolves had to have collars. She had always thought of it as practical, marking them as a Magi’s bonded animal and not a wild one running through the streets.
Now she hated it. Those two shouldn’t be wearing collars. They weren’t fucking house pets.
“Valet will park the cars,” Vincent told them as he walked over. “Everyone get their bags?”
“I loaded them up,” Zander called out, pushing one of those luggage carts over, ignoring the bellhop next to him. “We’re good.”
“Perfect.” Vincent led them inside, Kaar perched on his shoulder - a clear sign the raven belonged to him.
Sawyer stayed with Quinn and Elijah. They flanked the feral Magi, and she could see and feel just how tense he was. She wondered how much, or how little, it would take to set him off in the massive, crowded city. She remembered how Quinn hadn’t been with the team when they caught her. Now she understood why he’d been left in Georgia.
The hotel was gorgeous: dark marble, gold accents. Lush furniture was placed about for anyone who wanted or needed to sit down. Sawyer particularly liked the pillars throughout the high-ceilinged lobby. It was regal and enchanting, but also dark and elegant. Deep blacks, brilliant golds, exquisite detail, statues around the room and other expensive art pieces. She could glance at them and know they were unique and authentic.
There had been a time in her life that she would have stayed at a hotel like this. This place had money and rich clientele. There was nothing fake about it. She would have picked easy marks during her off time while she had been just a thief - that first year or so with Axel.
Vincent checked them in, passing out keys. Quinn was going to room with Elijah this trip, and they gave the team rooms made for Magi with bonded animals, with beds for them, bowls for water, and access to the roof, where they had built a garden for the animals to go on walks or out for a fly.
“You and I both have our own rooms,” Vincent explained on the elevator. “Quinn needs Elijah with him. Zander and Jasper can bunk up. You aren’t allowed to room with any of us, though.”
“Boss’ orders?” she asked, frowning at her key.
“No,” Vincent sighed. “Mine. I don’t want anyone to think there’s something going on. You could room with any of us and nothing would happen, not this close to the WMC, but I don’t even want them looking in our direction over it.”
“I get that. I appreciate my own room.” Sawyer stepped off the elevator the moment it dinged and went straight to her door. Room seven eighty-nine. It was close to the end of the hall. Turning, she saw that Elijah and Quinn would be across from her. Vincent would be on her left. Jasper and Zander were on Elijah and Quinn’s right, diagonal to her. She memorized that. If she needed anyone, she could walk through a wall to get to Vincent, and it would be fast to get to anyone else. Did she expect trouble in New York? No, she didn’t, but she was going to be ready for it anyway.
Which was why she’d still tried to sneak out of the house in Georgia with her knives. Vincent hadn’t been okay with that.
She threw her bags on her bed in the large hotel room, and immediately walked back out of the room. Vincent was walking out of his room at the same time, having done the same thing. “Weren’t we meeting James?” she asked.
“In the
hotel’s bar,” Vincent replied, chuckling. “Once everyone drops their bags and Quinn gets the wolves to settle for a nap up here, we’ll go.”
“What’s he need?”
“I don’t know,” Vincent admitted. “He probably just wants to check in. He hasn’t seen you since the Atlanta incident. Probably wants to check up on you before the madhouse of the WMC and the IMPO digging through your head to make sure you’re stable, like they will the rest of us.”
“We’re good,” Elijah declared, walking out of his room.
Quinn followed him, looking just a fraction calmer than he had. “They should be comfortable. The hotel had food ready for them,” he mumbled, looking back inside the room quickly.
Sawyer’s heart broke a little. He was so not okay.
On their walk to the elevator, as Jasper and Zander jogged to catch them, Sawyer wrapped her arm in Quinn’s for a moment. “They will be okay,” she whispered gently to him.
“I know,” Quinn responded. He held her arm tightly, like a lifeline. She was okay with it. The fact that he was letting her touch him was big. Touching him to comfort him? That was out of their world.
Down at the lobby again, Sawyer let him go before the doors opened. They passed through people wandering around the lobby, ignored anyone asking for their help, and just followed Vincent straight to the bar.
“The WMC paid for a place like this?” Sawyer mumbled to herself.
“They all stay here,” Jasper explained, having heard her. “James must have convinced them to do something nice for us, since they fucked with us about the flights. With Kaar and the wolves, we can’t just stay at a regular hotel. We needed one that catered to Magi.”
“How much does it cater to Magi?” Sawyer asked as they entered the bar.
“The walls are enchanted so people can’t walk through them, to permanently harvest Source as it bleeds off us and keeps energizing shields between the walls,” Jasper continued. “It’s insanely complicated. Probably expensive to have done. This is the only place I’ve been where it’s done.”
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 72