Hell or High Water

by Julie Ann Walker

  She smiled. She couldn’t help herself. “I was going to say the same thing about you.” She lifted her face for his kiss, reveling in the molten press of his tongue into her mouth, the eye-crossing pleasure of his hands on her breasts, plumping, callused thumbs circling, circling, until she couldn’t hold back a gasp of pure, aching pleasure.

  He smelled fruity and clean, but still amazingly like Leo, all sun-drenched sand and coconut oil. And maybe she was being whimsical. But in Syria, anytime he got near, she was reminded of tropical islands and frosty boat drinks. Maybe it was because he’d spent his whole life rubbing on sunscreen that his skin just naturally smelled like good times and lazy days at the beach. A golden god from a golden land.

  Catching her top lip, he flicked his tongue over her teeth. “I love…” He let the sentence dangle for a bit, and her breath hitched, the hair on her scalp lifting. He loved…what? What? “Your crooked front tooth,” he finally finished. And she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. The first she assured herself, concentrating on the delightful feel of his beard stubble rasping against her lips and cheeks. His roughness against her softness. His maleness contrasting with her femaleness.

  She shook her head, pulling back to look into his eyes. This close she could see each striation of color meld into the next. The deep brown near his pupils turned into gold. The gold gave way to turquoise, then green, then deep sapphire blue at the very edge of his iris. They were gorgeous, mesmerizing, the most beautiful eyes she’d ever had the pleasure of staring into.

  “You love my crooked front tooth? Well, that makes one of us,” she admitted. But she could see by the tick of his jaw, feel by the insistent throb of his cock, that he really believed what he was saying.

  “I wanted to run my tongue over it the first time I saw it,” he whispered reverently, his voice a low rumble inside her chest and lower, in her belly. “When the station captain introduced us and you smiled at me.”

  “Oh yeah?” The thought enchanted her, charmed her. “Then what took you so long?” She grabbed his ears, pulled his mouth back to hers. She needed to taste him again. Taste him a million times more before she left him for good.

  “Hell if I know,” he admitted with a chuckle, kissing her to within an inch of her life. All the while, he kept up that constant assault on the tips of her breasts, plucking and caressing her nipples until she was so hot she thought she might die of heat stroke.

  Her womb was a persistent pulse of longing in her center, a deep, yearning void that needed to be filled. And Leo, ever perceptive, gave her what she wanted. He played briefly at her entrance, circling with two fingers, spreading her juices around, teasing her, tempting her, preparing her. And then he sank two fingers deep, making her gasp, making her head fall back against the tile wall. He pumped expertly, knowing just where to touch, just where to rub. When his thumb landed atop the bundle of swollen nerves to press and circle, she knew she better get her hands on him right now or she was going to climb that steep hill to orgasm all by herself. Again.

  Yeah. No way in hell. This time we both go.

  Wrapping her fingers around him as far as they would go, she marveled when they didn’t quite touch. Now it was her turn to pump, to stroke. To try to elicit from him another drop of silken passion. He didn’t disappoint. His erection pulsed and jerked in her fist, a hard, hot, living column of greedy flesh. And soon a satiny drop rolled over his head. She rubbed it along his thick shaft, coating him before fisting him again.

  “Christ, Olivia,” he growled, gnashing his teeth as he pulled back from the kiss. “You keep that up and you’re goin’ to make me come.”

  “Let’s come together,” she coaxed, licking the tiny tip of his flat, brown nipple into her mouth. And she’d wanted to do that since the first time she saw it, when he’d peeled out of his combat gear after a particularly hot afternoon of training with the Syrian rebels.

  “Ah, hell,” he growled, using the hand that wasn’t busy pleasuring her to cup the back of her head, to hold her to him while she suckled and played, flicked and licked. The little bud was hard as a rock and sweet as sin. The hair on his chest tickling her lips and cheeks.

  He was so unbelievably hot. So unbelievably good at…everything. Absolutely everything. As if to prove that point, her channel pulsed around his fingers, clamped down on his knuckles. She needed more. Just a little…

  He let go of her head to place his hand low on her belly, pushing gently while pumping harder, faster. Oh, holy SHIT! Her womb contracted into a hard ball. The walls of her vagina spasmed as if they’d received an electrical shock. Her whole sex lit up with sensation, with pleasure. She’d never felt anything like it. Never knew her body could—

  “Leo!” His name was a hoarse cry torn from her throat as waves of intense, mind-numbing bliss rolled through her, rolled over her, radiating out from her womb in bright golden swells. She’d never come so hard, so fast. Never experienced rapture so intense that she lost track of time. Of place. She was floating in an endless ocean of sensation that bore her up, holding her aloft. She was blind. Deaf to everything but the buzz of her own blood rushing through her veins like raging, flood-swollen rivers.

  She didn’t know how long she stayed there in that alternate universe of liquid ecstasy. But she knew when the cosmic blip was over, when the rip in the space-time continuum repaired itself, because her ears started working again. She could hear Leo breathing hoarse encouragement in her ear, “That’s it, darlin’. That’s it. Ride it out.”

  An aftershock of rapture raced through her, making her shudder, making her moan. She realized at some point she must have released his cock, because her hands were gripping his shoulders. As if she’d had to anchor herself to him. And maybe she had. Maybe her death grip on him was the only thing that had kept her from getting lost in that other plane.

  He slowly, reverently removed his fingers. Her body instantly missed his presence, her walls closing tight around the void he left behind. She opened her eyes to find the world just as it was before she’d left it. Warm, steamy, filled with Leo’s overwhelming sexual hunger. She was dizzy, panting. She got even dizzier when he lifted his hand and licked his fingers, closing his eyes so he could savor the taste of her.

  Just the sexiest man alive. And still violently, hugely aroused. Damnit, Mortier!

  She blew out a breath, dragged in another. And when she was steady enough, grounded once more in this universe, on this plane, she sunk to her knees. Determined to give him as much ecstasy as he’d just given her…

  Chapter Seventeen

  6:31 p.m.…

  “Ah, hell,” Leo growled, his stomach muscles clenching, his dick jumping up and down like it was doing some sort of happy dance. Which it was. The happiest of dances. Because Olivia, beautiful, beloved Olivia was on her knees in front of him, licking her lips like she was preparing to taste.

  He held his breath when she grabbed him by his base, curling her fingers around him and pulling him down because he was standing damn near vertical. He looked huge in her small hand. A rod of angry male flesh stretching the capacity of her feminine grip. She must have thought so too, because she hesitated, catching her bottom lip between her teeth.

  Lack of oxygen made him feel faint. The room was tilting on its axis, his heart was racing, and he was hotter, hornier than he’d ever been in his entire sorry life. Her orgasm…it’d been immense, unabashed, completely explosive. Her silky channels had become a molten vise around his fingers as she pulsed again and again, whispering his name, eyes squeezed shut, completely abandoned to the pleasure he gave her.

  He’d almost gone off right along with her. Even after she’d released his cock to grab his shoulders and ride out her orgasm, it’d taken everything he had not to lose it. Just watching her, head thrown back, gorgeous nipples tightly furled and pointing toward the ceiling, breasts jiggling as she shook from rapture had been enough to have his balls buzzing for release. She was an amazingly erotic woman.

  A
nd now she was kneeling like a supplicant before him. The posture spoke to his basest instincts, to the animal in him. He wanted her to surrender to him, to service him. To submit her sweet feminine desire to his hot male dominance. Because he might be in love with her but, by God, he was no saint. Still a man with a man’s wicked, uncompromising needs.

  She licked her lips again, her pink tongue an instrument of torture. Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes. If his cock had a voice, it would have been howling for joy and begging for mercy. Oh please. Oh please. Oh please.

  “Where to begin?” she said after a beat, grinning up at him, her blue eyes sparkling through the haze of steam.

  He blew out the breath he’d been holding and realized his knees felt weak. It was a rhetorical question, but he answered it anyway. “I’ve…um…I’ve always heard it’s best to start at the top and work your way down.”

  She chuckled, the sound deep and throaty, making the hair over his body stand stick-straight. Then she sobered as she glanced at his raging length, tilting her head this way and that as if she was truly wondering how she would manage. Her wet hair fell over her shoulders, one strand getting caught on her tight nipple and curling lovingly around it. “You realize this thing is completely intimidating, right?”

  He wanted to feel her mouth on him so badly, but… “You don’t have to do it if you—Fuck me.” She swallowed his head in one gulp. “Olivia…” Her name was a hoarse moan, her mouth a hot, wet haven as he clenched his jaw and screwed his eyes closed. He panted, fisting a hand in her wet hair to hold her steady, to give himself time because that’s all it took, her mouth on him and he was close to losing it all over again.

  She accommodated him for one second, two, keeping her lips and mouth motionless while he burned, while he ached, while his blood turned to lava and he fought for control. Then, as if she couldn’t stand it any longer, she flicked her tongue over his swollen head, bathed him, traced the weeping, tender slit, and he couldn’t have stopped her had he wanted to. For the record? He didn’t want to.

  With a groan, he gently flexed his hips, careful to push in only a little further, mindful not to go too far, too fast. She hummed, the sound one makes when they’ve tasted something delicious, and he was able to unscrew his eyes long enough to glance down. Oh shit. The sight of her pink lips stretched tight around him was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, made sexier by the fact that their eyes clashed. She was looking up him, watching his reaction as she applied suction, her cheeks hollowing out.

  A jolt of electricity shot up his spine until he shuddered, growled. And then she was working him over, sliding her fist along his shaft, bobbing her head, alternating sucking and laving.

  “I won’t last long like this darlin’,” he warned, the muscles in his ass and thighs spasming with his fight to hold off.

  With a strong suck that made a popping sound, he came free of her mouth. He thought he might die, just expire on the spot. And the urge to grab his glistening dick and shove it back between her wet, succulent lips was overwhelming.

  “I don’t want you to last,” she said, eyes like sapphire lasers shooting up at him. And then she was the one to grab him and shove him back into her mouth. Sweet. Christ!

  He gritted his teeth, tried to find a reason to stop her. And there was something…a little voice whispering at the back of his brain that said something to the effect of but this wasn’t the plan. Unfortunately, most of his brain cells and all of his blood had migrated south, which made thinking impossible.

  He hissed when she cupped his testicles, massaging gently as she made love to him with her mouth, reverently, expertly. Too soon a telltale burn flamed to life near the base of his spine. His dick jumped in reaction, and that was all she wrote. He was done for.

  “I’m goin’ to c—” He didn’t manage more than that before his orgasm burst from him, sending fingers of decadent fire along his shaft. “Olivia!” It was a roar of sound.

  * * *

  6:32 p.m.…

  His name was Bran. And Maddy couldn’t make heads or tails of him.

  On the one hand, he seemed warm and affable. He’d listened to her jabber about anything and nothing most of the afternoon—her usual MO, just as she’d admitted—and he’d withstood it all stoically. Never telling her to can it. Even joining in with that whole movie trivia contest, smiling and laughing and teasing her until his chocolaty brown eyes glinted with laughter. On the other hand, he epitomized the phrase “cold as ice.” Not only had he taken out Lead A-hole with one pragmatic shot, but she was pretty sure he hadn’t given the matter a passing thought since.

  A man of contradictions.

  And she didn’t know if that turned her on or scared her out of her gourd. She was beginning to lean more toward the latter. Of course, that could be due to the fact that the sun was setting, and the adrenaline that had fueled her overconfidence all day long was now sliding out of her ass as surely as the glowing orange ball was sliding into the ocean in the west, leaving a cold, eerie void in its place.

  It had begun to sink in. All the things she’d seen. All the things she’d done. A chill whispered up her spine like the frosty breath of a wraith. She rubbed her hands over the goose bumps on her arms and tried to maintain her brazen front.

  “I feel like I should be cryin’. Or screamin’. Or pukin’ my guts out,” she admitted, almost to herself.

  “I wish you were,” he muttered.

  She turned to stare at him, frowning. “Now why in the world would you wish for that?”

  “Because then you wouldn’t be alone when it finally happens. I’d be here to help you through it.”

  “Oh.” This time she didn’t attempt to hide the shiver that shook her from head to toe. Even so, Bran missed it. He was too busy handing over the metal suitcase to one of the six mysterious, mean-looking men who’d suddenly appeared in a fifty-foot ocean cruiser. The new arrivals had been short on time and even shorter on words, apparently, because no introductions had been made.

  They’d simply thrown a couple of bumpers over the side of their boat before tying up to the Black Gold and asking Bruce for some tools. After fixing one of their motors, they’d demanded to be given “the package,” and now they were on their way, untying, pushing back, the two giant motors on their cruiser coughing to growling life.

  She couldn’t be happier What’s-in-the-Box was off her father’s yacht. She hadn’t the first clue what was actually in the box—glory be and praise Jesus!—but given that it seemed to be the source of today’s hullabaloo, she knew she wanted absolutely no part of it. My mama and daddy didn’t raise no fool.

  “So what can I expect?” she asked him when he turned back to her.

  “What do you mean? When everything that’s happened today finally hits you?” The sky played jazz behind him. It was a cacophony of colors shooting this way and that, and the low light turned the tops of the waves silver, the tips of his dark-brown hair golden.

  “No.” She quickly shook her head, not wanting to go there. Not yet. Even though, according to him, it would be better if she did. “From the interrogation…er…debriefin’ on Key West? What can they expect?” She motioned over her shoulder to where the crew of the Black Gold stood at the railing, watching the cruiser get up on plane, twin jets of water rooster-tailing out behind the boat as it roared away from them.

  “You’ll have to answer a lot of questions and probably sign a bunch of forms promising, upon pain of death, that you’ll keep your traps shut about what happened here today. But then I figure you’ll all be on your happy way to Houston with nothing more than a grazie for your trouble.”

  “And that’ll be the end of it?” she asked. “No tapped phone lines? No mysterious visitors showing up and telling me the snow this year is better in Innsbrook?”

  He smiled. And it gleamed over his features like a full moon on a cloudless night. All big and bright and beautiful, reaching up into his eyes, warming them, chasing away some of her burgeoning fear and doubt. “James Bond.
For Your Eyes Only, right?”

  She nodded.

  He squeezed her arm. “It’ll be like it was a dream, Maddy. I promise.” When he released her, his touch left behind a ghostly imprint. A phantom tingling sensation in the exact shape of his hand.

  “Nightmare,” she corrected, covertly covering the spot with her hand, as if to hold in the sensation. Okay, young lady, you’ve done gone off the deep end.

  “Probably more accurate,” he conceded.

  She searched his face, and something there had her blurting, “And will I ever see you again?” She realized how that sounded—exactly like she’d meant it—and quickly corrected herself. “Any of you again?”

  He got very still, his expression turning enigmatic. “Probably not,” he admitted after a couple of interminable seconds.

  She blew out a breath. “I reckon I should be grateful for that, huh?”

  “You’re not?”

  She curled her upper lip, feeling…something. Traumatized, maybe? Exhausted, certainly. With a big-O side helpin’ of stupefaction and a bizarre-O attraction to a stranger for dessert. “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I guess so.”

  And then for a long time they just stood there, staring at each other. She had the weirdest urge to reach up and brush back the whorl of Superman-esque hair that had fallen over his brow. Just to test its texture. Just to see if it was as soft as it looked.

  “Maddy…” he finally whispered, his tone dark, beckoning. She took a step toward him before making the conscious decision to do so. “Would you…”

  “Yeah?” She held her breath, leaning forward.

  “Happen to have a pen and some paper?”

  She was so cantilevered over the centerline of her body that his words had her stumbling. She didn’t know what she’d expected him to ask, but it wasn’t that. “I…uh…yeah.” She brushed an imaginary piece of lint from her yoga pants. “Sure. No problem.”

  Except it kind of was a problem, because she’d wanted…something.