The Missionary

by Jack Wilder

  “Tell me how you feel. Tell me what you’re thinking. Do you feel the same way? Do you really just see me as just a friend? Or just a student? If so, I’ll drop this. But I don’t think you do. I think there’s more.” Her hand, till now resting on his chest, slid upward, touched his jaw.

  Stone swallowed hard. “Yeah, there’s more.”

  “So what do you want to do about that?”

  Her hand on his jaw was soft and delicate and warm. It made it hard for him to think. “I’m not sure it’s right to do anything about it. I—I’m not…I’m not good. For…you.”

  Wren didn’t answer right away. She just stared at him, into him. “I think your problem is you don’t think you’re good, full stop.”

  “I’m not.”

  “What if I don’t agree, and don’t care if you are or aren’t?”

  “You should.”

  She groaned in frustration, rolling away from him. “God, you’re so stubborn.”

  “Wren, it’s not a matter of desire. That’s exactly the problem. I do desire. I just—I’m not sure it’s okay to let it happen.”

  “Shouldn’t I have some say in that?” She wasn’t turning back to him.

  “Maybe. But…right now?”

  “All I wanted was another kiss. Just…to see how it felt again. To…distract myself.”

  “Distract yourself from what?”

  She finally rolled back to face him, and her eyes were wet. “All this. Everything. Being here, in Manila. I…can’t let myself cry about it, or I won’t stop. And…the withdrawal is driving me crazy. I hurt. I’m tired. I’m scared. And I can’t even begin to think about the things I’ve seen. Those girls getting raped. Almost being sold for sex myself. Men being killed in front of me. You getting shot. I just…I want to pretend, even for thirty fucking seconds, that it’s just you and me in a hotel room, alone. Nothing else to deal with. Is that so wrong?” She wiped her eyes with both hands. “I just…I want to feel something else.”

  Stone let go, then. He couldn’t help but draw her to him, wrap her in his arms. This time, she turned her face up, eyes closed, and he let it happen. He let his lips touch hers, gently, gently. Hesitantly.

  He’d wanted it too, after all. Ever since the first time he’d walked in to his high school buddy Nick’s church and saw her for the first time. Now here she was, basically begging him, and making a pretty damn good case for why it was okay to do this. To kiss her like this.

  It was magical. The macho guy in Stone hated how girly that sounded in his head. But it was the truth. All the girls he’d kissed, on base and off, on deployment and on leave, none of them compared to the way this kiss felt.

  Her lips touched his, and at first they merely touched. Soft, wet, and warm. And then her mouth moved, and she was kissing him, moving her lips against his, seeking, searching, opening, and he wanted more. He let his tongue slip out and she tasted it with her own. Her palm touched his face, lay flat against his cheek and she was writhing against him, lost in the kiss.

  He was lost, too. He couldn’t have stopped the kiss if he’d wanted to, and he didn’t want to. He wanted to let it go on forever, just kiss her like this. It was just a kiss, but it was more. It was him giving in, letting the things he’d felt for so long, wanted for long, rise to the surface.

  Stone’s hand curled around her back, pulled her tighter against him, and then slipped back down to the small of her spine, rested and hesitated there, and then she pulled his lower lip into her mouth and sucked on it, and Stone’s hand moved down a few more inches to cup her backside over the towel.

  Wren moaned into his mouth, let his lip go and kissed the corner of his mouth. Her hand clutched the column of his neck, and she kissed him, deeper than ever, with complete abandon. Stone felt the male need in him take over, and he moved his hand beneath the towel, touching bare skin, holding the supple globe of her ass in his hand and kissing her, trying to hang on to the last vestige of control. Gunshot or not, he couldn’t keep kissing her like this for much longer, or it would go where he couldn’t hold back.

  He was already nearing that place. He moved his grip to the other side of her ass, marveling at how firm yet soft she was. She kissed him voraciously, as if she couldn’t get enough of him. It was primal, the way she kissed him, at odds with the sweet and innocent persona she gave off the rest of the time.

  Stone’s other hand brushed her hair out of her face and held the back of her head, and now he opened himself up even more to the kiss, to the feelings she engendered in him.

  Finally, Wren broke away, and she was panting. “Stone…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know we’re both tired and hurt, but…stop holding back. Stop holding out on me.”

  “If I don’t…this will—”

  “You think I don’t understand exactly where it will go?” She supported her weight on one elbow, then hissed at the pull on her ribs, and moved to lay on him once more, but angled so she could meet his eyes. “What if that’s where I want it to go?” She still had the towel clamped closed around her chest, but she let go when she moved to lay against him, and Stone felt the fabric loosen.

  If she moved away from him, the towel would fall open.

  Stone knew his body had responded to the heat in her kiss, and she had her leg draped across his hips, so he knew she could feel the evidence of it. “Wren…” He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, or what to say. His reasoning, his logic, his resistance was riddled and tattered and fading.

  “Stone.” She took his hand in hers and threaded their fingers together. “Stop trying to protect me from you.”

  “I’m just trying—”

  “I know. But…I’m a grown woman, okay? Sure, I’m young, but I’m adult, and I can choose for myself what I want. And this is what I want. Whatever we have, whatever we can have, wherever it goes. I want that. All of it. All of you. Whatever you’ll give me.”

  “But what if—“

  “And don’t say it’s just because you saved me, or because we’re going through this whole running from killers thing. It started before this, and will continue after it.”

  “You’re assuming there is an after.”

  Wren squeezed his hand. “Yes. I am assuming there’s an after. If I hadn’t assumed there would be an ‘after’, I wouldn’t have had the courage to get away from Cervantes in the first place. Not like positive thinking will solve every problem there is, but it goes a long way towards it.” She touched her lips to his chin, and then placed another kiss on his jaw line. “Stop trying to distract me.”

  “I though distracting you was the whole point?”

  Wren frowned. “You know what I mean.”

  Stone laughed, but couldn’t hold the humor for long; her kisses were drifting from his jaw to the shell of his ear, her breath tickling, her hands skating oh-so gently across his bare chest. Warm hands, warm mouth, soft body, soft skin.

  He knew he should resist. It probably was at least partially the after-effects of adrenaline and danger driving them both to this. But, then again, he’d wanted her, desired her before any of this had ever happened. Their relationship had definitely been pushed beyond the student-staff model. It was something else, now. They’d witnessed death together. Stone had killed for her. That brought two people closer than anything else ever could, or would.

  She was kissing the corner of his mouth and caressing his chest, his shoulders, letting her fingers explore his stomach—careful to avoid his wounded left side—and her touch was a drug all its own, pushing away the pain and the exhaustion, filling him with the burning energy of desire.

  He still had his hand on her ass, and he explored the taut muscles, then found her bare thigh. She breathed a moan as his touch slipped up the back of her leg, from the crease of her knee to just beneath her ass. He hesitated there, but Wren’s body writhed under his hand, silently begging him for more. His fingers pressed into the firm flesh, driving them both wild with need. She attacked his mouth with her own
, devouring him, pleading with him.

  Stone brushed a lock of black hair away from Wren’s mouth, grazed her cheek with his knuckles, and then bent down to capture her mouth with his. He held nothing back, this time. His hands found their way to her shoulders and back, just above the towel, his touch loosening the wrapped fabric. She shivered at his touch, clutched his shoulders with fierce fingers.

  And then she pulled away again, but this time, her gaze remained locked on his as she released her hold on the damp cotton of the towel. With a deep breath, Wren pulled the tucked-in end of the towel free. The fabric sagged, then fell away from her body to pile on the floor around her feet.

  And just like that she was naked in front of him.

  Stone felt his chest constrict at the sight of her. She was all tan skin and dark hair and endless curves, her brown eyes half-seductive and half fearful. She stood still, one leg bent at the knee, black hair cascading over one shoulder. He let himself really look at her, finally. Full breasts, high and heavy, bell-curve hips and strong legs, hands at her sides and lips pressed together. She was nervous, but refusing to cover herself, he realized. She was waiting for his reaction, for his approval.

  * * *

  Wren was barely able to contain the trembling. She was hot, and then cold, and then hot. Her skin itched, crawling with invisible bugs. Her knees knocked, threatened to buckle. Part of it was the withdrawal, part of it was sheer nerves. She’d wanted this with Stone for so long, and now it was happening.

  She could barely focus on him. She was on fire. She was ice. She felt every moment as if she was on the verge of throwing up, nausea boiling in her stomach like magma beneath the Earth’s crust.

  She needed the heroin. It was the oddest sensation, needing something she didn’t want, had never wanted. But yet she needed, somewhere in her bones, the heady, forgetting rush of euphoria. It was all she could think about. For as much as she wanted Stone’s mouth on hers, for as much as she’d dreamed of Stone taking her in his arms and making love to her, all she wanted was to crawl into bed and hide from the sick need in her gut.

  But Stone was waiting. She’d started this, approached him, forced him to face his desire for her. She couldn’t let the drug control her. She wouldn’t let it stop her from taking what might be her only chance to be with him.

  She shivered as the cold hotel room air hit her bared skin. She felt her nipples pucker and go erect, both from the cold and from Stone’s gaze, hot and molten brown and rife with lust. She fought the inclination to cross her arms over herself, and instead let Stone stare at her. He wanted her. She saw it in his eyes, saw in the way his fingers clawed into his biceps until his short-clipped fingernails left crescents imprinted in his sun-darkened skin.

  Keep going, she told herself. She fought down the withdrawal-induced nausea and tried to focus on the memory of his kiss, his hands on her butt, his fingers caressing her skin. Chills overtook her, and she couldn’t quite stop the chatter of her teeth.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Stone asked, his voice suspicious.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m just…excited. And a little nervous. It’s been awhile.”

  “It’s been awhile for me too,” Stone said. “Look, we don’t have to rush this. We’ll go home and take this at our own pace. It doesn’t have to be now.”

  Wren closed the gap between them so the rigid tips of her breasts just barely brushed his hard, hot chest. “I want to. I want it to be now. Besides, you’re the one who said we may not make it out of this alive. Now may be all we have.”

  His hands circled her arms, slid up and down twice, and then moved to her shoulder blades, down her back and to her waist. “I know what I said. But I don’t want you think I’m saying we won’t make it. We will. I promise you we will.”

  Wren lifted up on her toes, clutched the back of Stone’s neck, and kissed him. In a book, the kiss would erase all of her aches and doubts and fears and sickness. In a book, she would be able to forget it all and lose herself in the taste of his mouth. He really did taste wonderful. But this was reality, and she couldn’t simply forget the blazing heat of chemical addiction. It was alive within her, boiling her blood in her veins, sending armies of crawling things itching under her skin.

  She kissed him anyway, until she had to stop for breath.

  His hands scoured her skin, scraped and stuttered over her hips, cupped her ass and squeezed it, tickled her thighs. His lips moved from her mouth to her neck, to the hollow of her throat and the delicate curve where neck became shoulder. Then, to her breastbone, and she shivered, hot all over and shaking, knees quaking. She couldn’t breathe, and now his lips were touching the upward slope of her breasts and the nausea stomping in her belly was nearly forgotten in the sweet ache of arousal.

  She felt his mouth close over her right nipple, and the tug of his lips was matched by a tug between her thighs. She held on to him, focused every ounce of her attention on feeling him, only him. One of his hands slid over her skin just above her aching core, and the other remained behind to cup the weight of her buttock. She wanted to gasp his name breathlessly, but she couldn’t summon even that. She could only hold on to his neck and shoulders and give over to tactile sensation.

  His fingers delved between her thighs, grazing the crease of her pussy with his long middle finger. She let her thighs move apart, clinging to his neck, pressing her lips to the warmth of his throat, kissing and nibbling and then giving way to gasps as his fingers slid inside her and began to explore.

  He seemed to know exactly where to touch her, how to stroke her. Within seconds, she was unable to stand up on her own at all, and Stone was lowering her to the bed and kneeling over her, never slowing the slow sweep of his fingers, or the suckling of his lips on her nipple.

  Wren bit her lip and tried to ignore the roiling of her stomach, tried gamely to focus on the raw fury of her building orgasm.

  She moaned, scratching at his shoulders as he moved his mouth to her other breast. He shifted position, and she felt the hard bulge of arousal against her thigh. She lifted her hips into his touch, moving with his rhythm, seeking release from the ache. His fingers inside her accelerated and his teeth grazed the sensitive, erect nub of her nipple. She couldn’t move or think or feel anything but the blasting pulse of heat low in her belly and the tugging in her breasts as he released her hand to gently twist and flick her nipple.

  And then, just as the heat and pressure became too much to bear, Stone’s fingers slid upward inside her and his thumb rolled over her throbbing clitoris and Wren came apart, crying out and clawing his back with her fingernails, pressing her lips to his throat and whimpering as the orgasm blasted through her.

  She clung to Stone, shaking and quaking, heat raging in her veins, every ounce of strength within her leached away, now.

  Wren felt herself going under, slipping beneath the surface of consciousness. She fought it, forcing her eyes open, rolling in place to face Stone, who was on his side now. His eyes were hooded, heavy-lidded, burning. Wren extended her hand, fighting the weight of her own limb, to touch his chest, tracing the outline of his pectoral muscle, the tan, hard flesh hot beneath her fingertips. His gaze raked over her, soaking up her body, then returned to meet her eyes.

  “You’re so beautiful, especially when you come for me like that.” Stone’s voice was pitched low, barely a murmur, rumbling like distant thunder.

  “Stone.” She carved a path down his chest, following the grooves of his cut abdominal muscles. “That was…incredible.”

  “It was a start.”

  “You finished me off, Stone. I can barely function.” Wren struggled with her drowsing eyelids, forcing them open. “But you…I’m not done with you.”

  She touched the tightly rolled and tucked cotton of his towel, which he’d somehow managed to keep around his waist the entire time. The front of the white cotton was tented by his straining erection.

  He tensed as she hooked her index finger under the towel at his waist, loo
sening it. “It doesn’t have to be equal, Wren. I’ll be fine.”

  She shook her head floppily. “It’s not about equality. I want…this. You. More.”

  His lips quirked in an amused smile. “You’re falling asleep as you talk, babe.”

  “Then I should save my energy, shouldn’t I?” She smiled at him, but it was a soft, faint curve of her lips.

  She tugged at the towel gently until the ends came apart and he was bare to the air and to her gaze. Wren couldn’t stop a surprised gasp at the size of him, but quickly recovered, closing her fingers around his silky hardness. He gasped, then, as she slid her fist down his length.

  Wren marveled as she touched him. Stone had always seemed larger than life to her, massively muscled yet as lithe and graceful in every movement as a lion, rugged and rough-hewn. And now, naked, she could barely fathom the raw power of the man. There was no spare fat on him, no imperfections in his muscular build.

  She slid her hand around his cock, exploring him, and each stroke of his taut skin took an absurdly long time to complete. He was watching her with hungry eyes, still, letting her touch without moving, without trying to get more from her.

  Sliding closer to him, she tucked her head against his chest and took her time stroking him. She used her fingertips to trace his length, then her fist to squeeze his thickness, now setting a rhythm of achingly slow strokes, thumbing his tip at the apex of the stroke and twisting her hand when she reached his base. He pressed his lips against her hair and kissed, tightened his grip on her shoulders, but otherwise remained completely still. The only sign of arousal was his increasingly ragged breathing. Then, as she began to increase the pace of her hand on him, he bucked his hips, meeting her hand.

  A groan escaped him, and then another. “Wren, I’m not going to last much longer.”

  “Good,” she murmured. “Let go.”

  “All over you?”

  She only quickened her pace, until he was gasping and writhing. Wren watched him, gauging. She watched the tip of him leak as he pushed into her fist. Wren was aroused again, turned on just watching him grow frantic, savoring the growl that escaped him when she slowed down, and then let go of him.