But she didn’t want to stop him, just to hear the words. He might think that he was trying to warn, or threaten her, but she wasn’t afraid. “Tell me the truth and we can spend the night in the darkness together.”
Curling his hand around her skull, he pulled her mouth onto his, consuming her with the power of his crushing kiss.
“Aurora,” he whispered when she pressed her forehead to his, breaking their kiss.
“Do you? Do you love me, Strike?”
“Yes,” he said, squeezing the back of her head, pressing her face to his. “I love you, Aurora.”
Relief and ecstasy filled her, bleeding from her heart to spread throughout her body. He laid her on the mattress, taking her down carefully before rising to his knees to strip her and himself of their clothes.
Threading his fingers through hers, he laid over her, pressing the backs of her hands together forcing his own palms to merge with hers. With every nuance of his kiss, he squeezed and loosened his fingers between hers, moving his hips to use the thick length of his erection to stimulate her clit.
Moaning and writhing against the pleasure of how his naked body felt on top of hers, Rora kept her legs around his body, sliding them up and down his sides, letting her feet move over and around his thighs. She wanted him inside her, wanted him like this forever, the length of him protecting, soothing and stimulating all of her.
His hips rose and she loosened her legs enough to let him angle the head of his dick against her opening. Easing forward, he was just about to enter her, but she clenched her hands around his.
“Stop,” she said.
It took him a second, but he managed to recover enough to focus on her eyes. “Seriously?”
He wasn’t pissed, he was panting and incredulous, she blamed him for neither. “Once we do this, that’s it,” she said. “You can’t walk away from me ever again… and no other women.”
“For either of us,” he said, making her smile with his rough exhale.
“Strike,” she said. “Whatever happens, however this works out… I’m not temporary.”
“You’re not temporary,” he said.
Satisfied with his word, she was ready to be his in every way. “Then hurry up and fuck me.”
Thrusting forward he filled her up and she called out, arching into him. Well, she’d asked for it and he gave it to her, all the way, hard, and long. Moving inside her, he kept his eyes on hers. They didn’t kiss or talk, he just looked down into her, engulfing her with his devotion.
Time didn’t matter, there was no hurry to speed their way to climax, they just enjoyed being joined, their bodies learning what would become their new normal. Coiling her legs tighter, she used his endurance, his strength, to move with him. Lifting her hips to meet his, she took him into her body and begged for his heart.
Strike bowed to kiss her, slipping his tongue between her lips, giving his trust to her. Releasing her hands from his grip, he kept kissing her when he slid them down her body to take her hips. Guiding her leg around his hip, he rose higher over her, pumping into her harder and faster.
When he pressed his thumb to her clit, she exploded and bucked up, screaming her approval. The sinister smirk on his face when she opened her eyes made her sit up to hit his chest, but he grabbed her wrist, pulling it high to steal her mouth in another kiss.
His other hand scooped around the back of her head and he directed their kiss, keeping their mouths in contact when he moved to his back and put her on top. Taking her time to enjoy the new position, Rora moved her hips, and maintained their kiss. Reaching to the back of her head, she slid his hand from her hair down her body, closing it around her breast.
He massaged her and pushed her hair from her other shoulder, gathering it into his fist and bunching it at the back of her neck. Rocking and rising, she stimulated his dick inside her, doing her best to squeeze and roll, moving herself around him, but she wanted to feel more of him. Grabbing his shoulders, she stroked his chest, his back, and down his powerful arms, unwilling to forget a second.
Drenched with the dedication of her desire, she leaned back on her next climax, gritting her teeth to try not to make too much noise, but when he held her ribs and bowed to kiss her cleavage, Rora couldn’t keep his name from her lips.
Strike flipped her to her back and propelled himself into her so hard and fast that she couldn’t keep up with the power of his hips moving on hers. The beating force brought her to another climax on the back of the last one. On her next, she felt the bite of his fingers gripping her hair tight, pulling her scalp with stinging force. She hissed and a burst of endorphins made her open her mouth in a scream.
Spots were dancing in front of her eyes when he released her. She flopped onto the bed. The chill of the night swept over her damp body, but she just lay there, panting in recovery, wondering what had just happened and if she’d ever be the same again.
Pressing a hand to her heart, Rora blew out a breath and lifted her head, which was at the foot of the bed, and found herself alone on the mattress. Well she had told him that she didn’t want him to change, now she had to prove it.
Sitting up, she reached for her panties on the top of the pile of clothes next to the mattress. Hooking them onto her feet, she lifted her hips up to pull them on and then stretched to snag her bra.
She became aware of Strike on the other side of the bed before he sat down in the middle, against the chest that formed a kind of headboard. Smiling, she wondered if he slept that way, sitting up, not that he regularly slept.
“Didn’t take you long to bring another woman to bed with us,” she said, staying on her back when she threaded her arms into her bra.
“Hmm?” he asked, looking over the top of Opal, who he had propped on his drawn-up knees.
“Nothing,” she said, shimmying over the bed to snag the end of her shirt.
“You’re getting dressed.”
She stretched her neck while trying to uncoil her shirt. “Figured I should get back to Buddy, poor guy’s probably freaking by now. You should’ve seen the look on his face when the cops put me in the back of their car.”
While she could smile about it, Buddy probably didn’t find it so funny.
“Bud knows I have you,” he said, his fingers moving over the keyboard.
“You didn’t…” When she didn’t finish, he looked over the lid of the laptop at her. “You know… hurt him, did you? It wasn’t his fault. He was talking about Chinese food and I just… snapped.”
He didn’t assuage her concerns about Buddy’s well-being. “Fixing that mess came out of your funds, Cupcake,” he said and went back to typing. “I routed it through a few dummy accounts first, but your bad, you pay.”
“Ok,” she said, “I can accept that.” Rising onto her knees, she crawled toward him and knelt facing him, dropping her lips to his shoulder. “Are we teaching me a lesson?”
Seemed while their verbal communication wasn’t always up to par, they could sure show the other how they felt, and what they thought, through their actions.
“You’re a quick study,” he said and opened his hand. “Give me your hand.”
Without hesitating, she put her hand on top of his. But when he turned it and lowered it toward Opal, she tensed and tried to pull back.
“What are you doing?” she asked, panic kicking up her heartrate again.
Her worried eyes landed on his calm ones. “Trust me,” he said and she relaxed.
She gave him her trust and let him lower her fingertips to the keys. Rora expected pain and squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation of it. But there was no pain, though it took her a few seconds to recognize that her hand was on the keyboard, all the way on the keyboard, with his above it.
“She doesn’t hate me anymore?” she asked, relieved and kind of overjoyed.
“She’ll protect you,” he said. “If you’re in dire straits and I’m not around.”
Rora didn’t want to think too much about why he wouldn’t be around and
chose to keep the mood light.
“Does this mean I can check my emails when I stay over?”
Letting her go, Strike pushed her hand away from the keyboard so he could begin to type. “You never get anything except junk,” he said.
“Sometimes junk is interesting,” she said, sliding down to rest her head on a pillow.
“No, it’s not,” he said. She smiled, exhaling her disagreement. Strike stopped typing to frown down at her. “What does that noise mean?”
“It means that not all your assumptions are accurate,” she said and traced a fingertip up and down his thigh. “Can I ask you something?”
“You don’t answer my questions, why should I answer yours?” he asked and was already typing again.
“That’s sort of what I want to ask about,” she said. “There’s one particular question that you’ve stopped asking. I think… I thought you’d come back to Buddy’s for me because you didn’t have your answer. Why didn’t you demand I tell you after we left Wonderland?”
“I didn’t hold up my end of the deal,” he said. “The deal was, I get you and Benjamin out alive, and you’d answer my question… I didn’t follow through.”
Propping her temple on her fist, she let her hand drift between his body and his thigh. Strike caught her wrist and put her hand on her own hip, never taking his attention from Opal.
“That wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known what Benjamin planned to do.”
“Did you?” he asked.
Rolling onto her back, Rora gazed up at the ceiling, running her hands up and down her stomach. “I did that day. I mean, I didn’t know he planned to do it that night. But I knew he would if he felt cornered… I didn’t mean to be the one to force him into it.”
“Why’d you get into bed with Bella? You thought you could make her fall for you? Bella isn’t wired to love that way.”
“I didn’t care about love,” she said, tipping her head toward him. “I had to buy time. You said she’d play with me. I figured if I was sleeping with her, she wouldn’t be thinking about asking the question.”
“And you thought I’d be ok with it?”
“I didn’t know what you’d think,” she said. “You’d be a hypocrite if you had a problem with it. You’d refused to sleep with me and were sleeping with her.”
“When was I sleeping with her?” he snapped, offense in his tone and his eyes when they jumped to hers. “I didn’t fuck her in Wonderland.”
Pulling herself up, she straightened an arm to take her weight. “Oh yeah? Then what was all that pretty dolly stuff about?”
He returned his focus to Opal. “She likes to play dress up and be admired,” he grumbled.
Resting a hand on the back of the laptop, she eased it down. “You were kissing her when we got there,” she said. “And that night I was out… I don’t know what you were doing with her.”
He gave her his attention to reassure her. “My relationship with Bella was ugly,” he said. “Rotten through to the core… I don’t want to go back there.”
“I understand that,” she said, appreciating his attempt at comfort when he scooped a hand around her jaw. “But you still cared for her… she wouldn’t have been able to do what she did without her crew. You gave them to her.”
“The guys?” he asked. “Yeah, I got them for her. I wanted out. I needed to be away from her. Her poison was too much for even me to swallow every day. But I don’t know if you missed the part where I killed her whole family, I couldn’t leave her alone. It was that or kill her—guess I should’ve just gone with the latter from the start.”
“So, her crew was a substitute for your relationship?” He shrugged and tried to open Opal again, but Rora caught his hand. “Do you think she’s dead?”
“I went back up there,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot left, but Bella… I don’t know.”
“You went back to Wonderland?” she asked. “When I was with Buddy? What if she’d been there? What if something had happened to you?”
“What does it matter? You were safe.”
This time when he tried to open Opal, Rora took the computer away from him. After closing it and setting it on the floor with great care, she climbed over his leg to kneel between his thighs. “I can’t be safe without you.”
Holding his forearm between them, he pointed to the back of his wrist. “You remember the chip?” he asked and she nodded. “If I flatline for more than a minute, Opal gets a signal, and she sets off a chain of events.”
“What kind of events?” she asked. “Another global financial crisis? Nuclear winter?”
“Let’s just say it’s my life insurance policy; good for beneficiaries, not so good for those who owe me.”
Reaching past him, she gripped the top edge of the chest to lean in and kiss him. With her body suspended over his, she could enjoy the flavor of his mouth, the texture of his lips, the slick warmth of his tongue.
Strike unhooked her bra and she let go of the chest to pull it from her arms as he scooped her onto her back and lay down on top of her.
Conversation was over, business was done, now it was time to appreciate the kind of action she’d been craving since she first made eye contact with the man she planned to dedicate the rest of her life to.
twenty-one
Yawning, Rora sat up, running her fingers through her hair. Snagging her nails on the knots caused by Strike’s rough grip last night, she opened her mouth in a silent scream and winced. Smoothing a hand over it instead, Rora twisted and stretched her legs to the floor at the side of the bed.
Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled at the sleeping man lying on his front, his arm stretched out toward her. She hadn’t known that love could be as deep-seated as this. Just looking at him provoked so much sentiment and such a rush of hormones that she didn’t know which to process first: love or desire.
Leaning back, she brushed the back of her fingers over his temple and sighed. When his hand shot up to grab hers, she gasped. He yanked her down onto her back, then he was up in a crouch beside her with a hand locked tight around her throat.
It took him a second to process who she was, but when he did, he let go. Releasing her, he sank back to bump against the chest at the head of the bed.
Rubbing her throat, she coughed. “Every minute with you is an adventure, Flame,” she croaked.
“I’m going to kill you one day,” he murmured, lunging over her to grab his boxers from the floor.
“Probably,” she sighed and began to gather up her own clothes.
Given his demons, she expected that he had some bad habits. Knowing what she did of his past, she guessed he’d probably picked up his routine of not sleeping through necessity because he’d lived under threat for so much of his life.
Since he was a kid, he’d trained himself to respond to danger, to expect it at every juncture. In time, she hoped he’d become accustomed to her touch and maybe then he wouldn’t lash out at her every time they woke up together.
But even if he didn’t, she wasn’t going to be scared away. Yes, he reacted on instinct like she was going to hurt him, but as soon as he regained his senses, he always let go before doing serious damage. In fact, he’d done more to hurt her when he was conscious and awake than he ever had in slumber.
“You can’t be ok with that. You know I’m capable of it.”
With her clothes on her lap, she twisted to look at him. Laying a hand on his face, she ran her thumb along his lip. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give up for you, Strike,” she said, but he didn’t look reassured. Tilting her head, she wondered. “Is Strike your real name?”
“Would you believe me if I said yes?” he said. “My mom called me Stryker, don’t ask me why, I don’t know. I never really had a last name, so I always just made ‘em up if I needed one.” Taking her clothes from her lap, he tossed them away and she thought maybe they were going to have some fun. But he pulled her onto her feet. “There’s a shower downstairs, the water runs cold
, but it’s there, and the toilet flushes.”
“Ok,” she said, rotating her palm on his to link their fingers and push her body into him. When she got this close, she had to tip her head all the way back to look up at him, but she liked to feel that she was worshiping him. “Come and show me. I might get lost and I’m all naked.”
“Opal would’ve told me if there was anyone else in the building. There are thermal sensors, which set off a silent alarm if anyone enters, and I’m sure you know not to go outside.” Pulling his hand out of hers, he went around to the other side of the chest to pick up the lid. Reaching inside, he tossed her a towel and a tee-shirt. “There’s soap down there.”
So, no fun in the morning, she could accept that. He’d shown her a lot of attention last night, and probably needed his time alone to catch up with whatever he and Opal usually did during the nights. But that gave her the perfect opening.
Holding the fabric to her chest, she hesitated, but narrowed an eye. “Look, I… I know last night I said that I wasn’t temporary.”
“You’re not,” he said, folding his arms and hardening his glare. “You’re not the only one who can cause trouble to get attention. Walking away isn’t an option for you. You had your chance.”
“I’m not walking away,” she said, smiling and pressing her toe into the end of the mattress they’d made love on. “I just need a few days.”
“To do what?”
“Just… personal stuff,” she said. His chin lowered, he didn’t believe her, or rather he wasn’t going to give her a pass. “It’s just personal.”
“You’re standing naked in front of me beside our spunk-stained sheets,” he said.
Yeah, ok, so they weren’t exactly strangers, and there was no doubt that she trusted him now. Busting up those cars and being arrested on the hope he’d fix her screw up was a pretty good indicator of how deep her faith in him ran.
“Nothing you have to worry about, Flame,” she said. “That’s what I mean. It’s nothing bad. Just… something I have to take care of.”
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