by Terra Little
“Elise, are you listening?”
“Yes...y-yes. I’m l-listening.”
“Liar,” he said, dropping to his knees behind her. He dragged her jeans down to her ankles as he went and then promptly pushed his face into the valley between her naked butt cheeks. Inhaling deeply, he palmed her flesh, separated it and then plunged his long, stiff tongue into her pulsing sheath from behind over and over again until her knees buckled. When she began sinking to the ground this time, he let her go, guiding her into the kind of free fall that flattened her palms on the wet grass in front of her and bent her knees at just the right angle to allow him full access from behind.
Elise’s eyes rolled up into her head and a primal scream shot out of her mouth. The exquisite clamp of Broderick’s lips and tongue around her twitching clitoris was nearly too intense to withstand, especially when he tugged on it gently once, twice, and then three times, and sent her blasting off into orbit.
* * *
Elise was asleep.
Dead to the world asleep.
Which was good for her because Broderick was wide-awake, his cock was bobbing in the air like a Louisville Slugger and the woman currently snuggled up with at least two pillows and a mountain of twisted, tangled covers on the king-size bed was completely and utterly irresistible to him. She was much safer asleep.
He caught himself prowling around the perimeter of the bed for the tenth time, hoping that she’d wake up soon so he could ride her right back to dreamland, and told himself to chill out. After the night they’d had, she was exhausted. Letting her sleep in peace was the right thing to do, particularly since he was mostly to blame for her present comatose-like state. Not that he felt even a little bit guilty about it, but there it was—a sliver of the single ounce of humanity that he’d managed to hang on to despite it all. A willing sacrifice just for her, because they hadn’t stopped off at just one place on the way home, but more like three, counting the suite at the Hilton, and he still had yet to deliver her to her doorstep.
Naked except for the Audemars Piguet watch on his wrist, which he’d put on out of habit after rolling out of bed a while ago, Broderick decided to retreat from the bedroom and the sleeping temptress within it. He grabbed his jeans from the floor by the bed on his way out of the room and pulled the door closed behind him. In search of food, he hopped into his jeans on his way across the sitting room to raid the leftovers on their room-service lunch cart. Finding only fruit, he placed the cover back on the serving dish, settled for a beer from the minibar and picked up the television remote. He dropped into a chair across from the flat-screen television and switched it on, frowning when Dr. Phil’s face filled the screen.
Was it any wonder that his thoughts immediately started wandering?
You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Hearing his own breathless, shuddering voice say those words aloud as he was slowly bouncing Elise up and down on his throbbing cock had been every bit as exciting for him as hearing them clearly was for her. He had no sooner finished whispering them in her ear, when her pulsing walls suddenly clenched his shaft in a velvet choke hold and her throaty moans had grown louder. With her eyes narrowed to slits in her flushed face, her head lolling sideways on her neck and her mouth hanging open in a perpetual O of surprised pleasure, she looked like an addict in the throes of a rhapsodic high. Shh, he had whispered into her mouth between long, deep strokes. You’ll wake up the owner of this barn and get us both arrested. Or killed, he remembered thinking as his eyes slid closed, his tongue uncurled against hers and every muscle in his body stiffened.
Her bra and sweater were hanging from one of her wrists because that was as far as they’d gotten before patience with them had run out, and her pants and underwear were dangling from one of her ankles because that was as far as they’d gotten before patience with her second shoe had run out. They were in a random stranger’s dark, deserted barn, one they’d passed en route back to the interstate, and his own pants were pooled around his ankles. He was buried so deeply inside her tight sheath that she was anchored to the wall and the sounds coming out of her mouth were getting louder and louder by the second. Theirs was definitely not a good look for a suspicious and potentially trigger-happy farmer to stumble upon in the middle of the night.
Broderick blinked out of his pornographic thoughts just in time to see that Dr. Phil’s guest was the one and only Dr. Ruth. He swallowed a mouthful of beer and grinned, wondering what the renowned sex therapist would think about two responsible adults ducking into the back row of an all-night movie theater and necking throughout the entire foreign feature, subtitles and all. Her with as much of his penis as possible wrapped in her fist and him with both of her cloud-soft breasts in his mouth damn near at the same time. The theater was sparsely populated, with only a handful of other viewers filling a small cluster of seats down front, and, after discovering that Elise had never made out in a movie theater, it couldn’t have worked out better for them if he’d planned it.
He chuckled into his beer and then tilted the bottle again, drinking long and deep.
It was almost dawn when they had finally stumbled into the Hilton’s lobby, and well after seven in the morning when they fell into bed, still wet from a shared shower and too sleepy to care about food. And even then, at least another hour had passed before they had actually gotten around to sleeping.
So, yeah, Elise deserved some uninterrupted rest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any himself, but she wasn’t him. She led a charmed, organized life, both personally and professionally. He, on the other hand, had been known to go days without food or sleep when he was on assignment, depending on where he was, whom he was keeping company with and whether or not it was safe to partake in either. Regardless of what the pretty Miss Carrington made her luscious mouth say, her brand of private investigations was galaxies away from his. She was normal and she needed rest. He was not and could not recall the last time, before today, that he’d enjoyed such a luxury.
He glanced at his watch. Dusk had come and gone, though, and, except to eat lunch, Elise had slept the day away. If his own stomach was rumbling nonstop, which it was, then hers had to be, too. Room service was always an option, but he was aroused again and suddenly restless. He needed something, anything, to do with himself that didn’t involve prowling around a hotel room, lusting after a sexual neophyte who had somehow given him the best fling sex that he’d ever had.
As if in solidarity with his thoughts, his cock twitched. Determined to ignore it, he set his beer on a side table and glanced at his watch. To hell with it. He’d give Elise fifteen more minutes, and then he was going to wake her up by any means necessary.
The sound of his ringing cell phone rolled him to his feet and sent him hurrying quietly into the bedroom to answer it before it woke Elise. Relieved to see that she hadn’t stirred, he snatched it from the nightstand, silenced it and took it back into the sitting room with him.
“Cannon,” he barked into the phone as soon as the bedroom door was closed behind him.
“Cannon, it’s Leahy. Hold up a sec, while I scramble the line.” The line went silent for several seconds, and then Leahy was back. “Well, well, well.” His deep voice drifted through the phone. “Looks like the dead has finally risen.”
“Funny,” Broderick drawled, grinning as he resumed his seat and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Not that I owe you any explanations, but I’m sure I told you I’d be off the grid for the next couple of days. What’s up, Leahy? You miss me already?” Patrick Leahy was the very first field agent that Broderick had recruited when he first started Cannon Corp. After being wounded during his fourth tour in Afghanistan and then honorably discharged from the army, Patrick had come through physical therapy with flying colors and been anxious to get back to work. Not only were his credentials rock solid and his references impeccable, but he was an exper
t marksman and a ride-or-die soldier. Broderick had gambled on him and somewhere along the way, he’d become as indispensable as Broderick’s right hand. That didn’t mean he wasn’t an occasional pain in the ass, though.
“Hell, no,” Leahy shot back. “Do you know how many parties we’ve thrown since you’ve been gone? Dude, please. I just thought I’d make sure you were still breathing, that’s all. Plus, somebody had to call and tell you that it looks like you’re going to have to cut your couple of days off the grid short. Delgado’s already called twice today, requesting that you get in contact with him as soon as possible. Seems he’s ready to talk extraction and he needs you to make it happen for him.”
“I could’ve sworn that I assigned Morganford and Delaney to Delgado’s situation.” Delgado, an Argentinian Federal Court Judge, had recently been appointed to the bench and his political career looked promising. Then he’d had the misfortune of presiding over the trial of a high-ranking member of a notoriously violent drug cartel out of Buenos Aires. Unfortunately for him, the judge’s views about mandatory sentencing for drug offenders were some of the harshest around. But the abduction of his wife and eleven-year-old son this morning, shortly after the defendant learned of his guilty verdict, was forcing him to reconsider his views before he and the other two presiding judges handed down a sentence. If he wanted his family back, the defendant’s freedom was the trade-off.
The sentencing hearing was scheduled for less than two weeks away, and, naturally, Delgado wanted his family safe and out of the country long before it all went down. Once it did, Broderick would close his case altogether by facilitating Delgado’s secret relocation, as well. For Delgado, trusting his own government to keep him safe wasn’t even an option, especially since the other two judges involved were shaking in their boots, too.
“You did, and that’s exactly what I told him. However, he doesn’t want Morganford and Delaney. He wants you to lead the team going in and coming out.”
“How soon is he ready to move?”
“Yesterday, so what should I tell him?”
Movement in Broderick’s peripheral vision caught his attention, and he turned to watch a sleepy-eyed, rosy-cheeked Elise emerge from the bedroom wrapped in a bedsheet. Noticing that he was on a call, she stopped short, pointed to her tummy and then rubbed it in a universal “I’m hungry” sign. He smiled at the picture she made, with her hair flying wildly around her face in a frizzy golden halo, the sheet dragging the floor behind her and an utterly feline gleam in her eyes. She looked like the proverbial cat who’d eaten the canary.
He shifted the phone away from his mouth. “What are you in the mood for?” he asked Elise.
“What?” Leahy asked in his ear.
“Not you,” he growled.
“I don’t know, maybe something light, since we had pasta for lunch?”
“Tell you what, you have something light, while I have a steak. I thought maybe we’d go out to dinner. Is that okay with you?”
“So that’s why you’ve been missing in action,” Leahy said as if he’d finally just solved an elusive mystery. “You suddenly got a woman stashed away somewhere, Cannon?”
“Uh, no, and shut up.”
Leahy chuckled.
“What?” Elise asked, looking confused.
“Not you, gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous?” Leahy sounded suspicious. “You have a pet name for her, too? Interesting.”
“Oh.” Elise looked even more confused. “Why don’t I just wait for you in there?” Elise asked, pointing to the bedroom doorway behind her.
“I’ll be right there,” he called after her. As soon as the bedroom door closed, he turned his attention back to his cell. “Contact Delgado and set up a follow-up meeting with him for tomorrow evening. We’ll take the jet and go to him.”
“Wait a second, we?”
“Hell, yeah. You didn’t seriously think that I was about to infiltrate Argentinian drug cartel territory with my ass hanging out, did you? If I go in, I’m taking you and Rodriguez with me.”
“Did you forget that Rodriguez is out on maternity leave until the week after next?”
“Shit.” Amelia Rodriguez was a master at kicking asses first and taking names later, exactly the kind of agent that you wanted watching your back when it counted. “I did forget, though I don’t know how since I was at her daughter’s christening.”
“And you’re the baby’s honorary uncle. Damn, if I ever have kids, remind me not to ask you to do anything except change crappy diapers.”
“Whatever. Pull Johannes off of the Libertine assignment and bring him in. I’ll be back at headquarters by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. We’ll take the jet from there.”
“Got it.”
“Later,” Broderick said and ended the call. It was time to get back work. That was a good thing, right?
Chapter 11
The pickings for gourmet dining in Columbia, Missouri, were slim, but Elise and Broderick lucked out when they strolled into a dark, sophisticated little cave of a place called Sophia’s. Against the backdrop of edgy music, exposed brick walls and dim lighting, white-shirted servers navigated the sea of tables in the main dining area seamlessly. For a Wednesday night, the crowd was sizable and lively, but they were still fortunate enough to snag a corner booth near the bar without having to wait very long. Which was great, because Elise was starving. Her original plan to have something light for dinner went right out the window as soon as she inhaled the mouth-watering aromas wafting in the air and spied the array of artfully arranged entrées on a passing server’s loaded-down tray.
“I think I know what I want,” she said, setting aside the leather-bound menu that she’d been perusing carefully for the past several minutes and meeting Broderick’s eyes.
“It wouldn’t be the pan-seared ahi tuna, would it?”
Elise’s face dissolved into a pleased smile. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” Broderick said, staring at her as he picked up his water glass and sipped. “Plus, your lips move when you read silently. Did you know that?”
God, he was a beautiful man. Did he know that? “No, I didn’t.” She felt her face heat up and cursed herself. “I always tease Olivia for doing the same thing. No wonder she just laughs and flips me the bird every time.”
“She’s a character,” Broderick commented, flashing her a smile that immediately tightened her nipples.
She smothered a sigh of relief when their server appeared at the edge of their table, granting her a temporary reprieve from having an audience when she blushed, yet again, like a sixteen-year-old. She sipped from her water glass while he ordered pan-seared ahi Tuna and a glass of Riesling for her, and a brandy-cream filet mignon and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon for himself, and hoped that her face returned to normal before their server moved away.
“So, what was it like growing up with a twin?” he asked when they were alone again.
Elise set her glass down slowly, thinking carefully about the question and how best to answer it. “For me,” she began thoughtfully, “I guess it was a little bit like growing up alongside my own personal idol. While I was studying, Olivia was watching the clock, waiting for our parents to fall asleep, so she could borrow one of their cars and sneak out to an all-night party somewhere. I followed the rules and she made up her own as she went along. And there wasn’t a punishment on the table that she couldn’t negotiate favorable terms for herself within or talk herself out of completely, depending on how many hours of sleep she’d had the night before.”
Broderick laughed. “She sounds like a real badass.”
“She was,” Elise agreed, laughing, too. “I sort of lived vicariously through her, you know? She did all the stuff that I was too afraid to do, and then she shared every last detail about it with me, so it was like I was there, doi
ng it, too. Except I didn’t have to suffer the consequences of her actions.”
“But you suffered anyway, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” she conceded with a giggle. “I felt sorry for her, so I kept her company during her many, many, many groundings. That’s how she met Joel, actually. My parents were out of town for New Year’s, and she snuck out to a New Year’s Eve party at a club downtown. Joel was there and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“Wait a minute, Joel and Olivia were an item?” He was incredulous, staring at Elise with wide eyes and his mouth hanging open.
“Oh my God, yes! They were madly in love and almost got married. Joel didn’t tell you?”
“I was the one who introduced him to Heather in the first place, so I don’t remember the topic ever coming up.”
Elise pretended to scratch her head in amused confusion. “Hmm, guess not, huh?” she said and they both cracked up. “If you ever tell her I said this, I’ll deny it with everything in me, but I’ve always envied her complete and utter disregard for other people’s opinions, mine included. Take Joel, for instance. When they first started dating, I hounded her for days about him being too old, too advanced for her, too...everything. What if you get pregnant, I said? What if his parents don’t like you because you’re black, I said? She listened for a while and then she said ‘Elise, you’re my sister and I love you. But this is my life. That’s all the explanation you or anyone else needs.’ After that, I couldn’t figure out whether I wanted to strangle her or be her.”
“So she carried the pitchfork and you wore the halo. Did you switch places for tests and final exams, the way twins always do in the movies, too?”
“Oh, no. I was way too serious about my academic career to risk getting caught doing something like that,” Elise said, sitting back to make room on the tabletop for her wineglass when she spied their oncoming server. “Thank you,” she said as a linen coaster and then a tall glass of chilled white wine was placed in front of her.