Wild Card (Elite Ops)

by Leigh, Lora

  The door opened as he neared it, and Rick Grayson stared at him with narrow-eyed displeasure from across the room as Ian stepped back and allowed Noah to enter the house. Amusement glittered in his commander’s eyes and tugged at his lips. Damn. Noah didn’t need this.

  And there they were. Sabella was sprawled out on one end of the couch, Sienna on the other. Kira was reclining on the love seat. They all stared at him.

  “Oh Sabella,” Kira drawled mockingly. “I disagree, he looks like a very shady character.” She looked at Sienna. “Has your husband run his background check yet? I bet he has a record.”

  “Twice. He’s clean,” Sienna announced blithely, peeking over the back of the couch as Noah winced. “You know who he reminds me of?”

  “A thief?” Kira answered quickly.

  “No.” Sienna frowned. “You know . . .”

  “Do you think his ears are big enough to pull?” Sabella peeked over the back of the couch, narrowed her eyes, and stared at his ears consideringly.

  The three women erupted into gales of laughter.

  “I should arrest you,” Rick muttered to Noah. “This has to be your fault.”

  Noah grunted, strode across the room, and picked his wife up gently from the couch.

  She stared at him in surprise, but she didn’t fight him.

  “I can walk,” she assured him.

  “Of course you can.” He nodded seriously. “But Rory has a date, so we’re in a hurry.”

  She thought that was funny. But as she laughed she laid her head against his chest and her little hand rested over his heart.

  “Night, Rick. Ian. I’ve had fun,” she called out as they passed the two men.

  “Stay out of trouble, Belle,” Rick grunted before shaking his head as Noah passed.

  “Everyone thinks you’re very sexy, you know?” Sabella piped up as he carried her to the truck.

  “Really?” He glanced down at her. She was watching him, drowsy, a little too tipsy.

  “Really.” She sighed. “Do you know Gaelic, Noah?” she suddenly asked.

  His heart clenched. It actually hurt, as though spikes of steel had been dug into it.

  “Should I?” he asked her, moving to Rory’s truck as his brother headed around to Sabella’s car. Thankfully, there had been a spare key to the car at the garage.

  “Maybe not,” she mumbled as he opened the truck door and slid her across the seat before getting into the truck, sliding it into gear, and heading home.

  She was silent then, staring out the window as though she were interested in what they passed. As he pulled into her driveway, she stared at the house silently, her expression somber.

  “Sometimes, I’m very lonely here,” she suddenly said as he cut the motor and clenched the steering wheel furiously.

  “You didn’t have to stay alone,” he told her hoarsely.

  “Yeah, that’s what Kira and Sienna seem to think.” She sighed deeply, still staring at the house, as Noah winced.

  “Why did you stay after he died?” he asked.

  She didn’t turn to look at him, just stared at her home, the grief on her face twisting his soul, wringing it dry.

  Finally, she said, “It’s home.”

  Shaking his head, he got out of the truck and strode to the door she was pushing open. He lifted her from the truck, steadied her, and helped her to the house.

  “You can’t come in,” she told him.

  “Sabella, this is the wrong damned time to push me.” He’d just about had enough. He’d had enough of the hollow grief raging inside him, and the hunger ripping him apart.

  “I’m drunk. Are you going to take advantage of me?” she asked him blithely as he unlocked the door and led her inside.

  “Not tonight. Maybe I’ll take advantage of you tomorrow night instead.”

  He caught the little pout on her lips as she gave him a glare.

  “You’re being very mean to me, Nathan. I think you should know that.”

  He almost flinched as she used his real name in her tipsy state. She couldn’t know what she was saying. A slip of the tongue, he reminded himself. A ragged, pain-filled groan nearly tore from his chest though. She said it so easily as she stumbled against him. Just as she would have years before when she was put out with him. As though she knew, or sensed the truth.

  He lifted her into his arms again and carried her up the stairs, but his throat was tight with emotion. The hollow emptiness that had filled him for so long now seemed to overflow with feelings, with emotions. With grief.

  He laid her in their bed, watching as her head settled on the pillow, her lashes fluttering drowsily.

  He untied her boots and set them carefully by the bed. He pulled her jeans from her, and because he knew she hated sleeping in a bra, he unhooked it and removed it from beneath her shirt.

  She stared up at him. “You can take advantage of me. I promise not to get mad.”

  “Later,” he promised her as he sat on the bed beside her.

  “Would you hold me?”

  Hold her? When everything inside him was screaming for so much more. But it wasn’t so little to give her, when he had taken so much from her.

  He pulled his boots off, moved to his side of the bed, and lay down beside her before pulling her into his arms.

  “I have nightmares,” she whispered as he tucked her against his chest.

  “I know, baby.” He undid her braid, worked her hair loose.

  “I see blood,” she told him. “My hands are covered in blood. And you’re crouched in front of me. You are. Then Nathan is. Then you. Then Nathan is drifting away and you’re still there. And suddenly I’m you, and the pain is so bad. And all I feel is you thinking about me. Begging me to save you as I dance in front of you and tempt you to take me. But it’s not me. And it’s so frightening, Noah.”

  He flinched. God, she had seen into that hell. The temptation Fuentes had brought him in the women that so resembled Sabella. He was pumped on the whore’s dust, so aroused it was a clawing pain, but knowing. Knowing the women brought to him weren’t his wife.

  “I didn’t save him,” she murmured as she slipped off to sleep. “He begged me to save him, and I couldn’t.” Her voice thickened with tears and with sleep. “I couldn’t save him.”

  She finally relaxed against him as he bent his head over hers and held her tight.

  “You saved him,” he whispered into her hair. She had no idea how she had saved him. The man he had been didn’t exist any longer, but the man that loved Sabella, that ached for her, that had endured hell because of his vows to her, had survived.

  He rocked her when she whimpered in her sleep, comforted her, and held her. He stared into the darkness and wished he could cry himself. Because she had suffered when he had thought she could go on. Because Grandpop had been right. He had loved her until at times he swore he could feel the beat of her heart next to his own. But he knew Grandpop had been right about the eyes. Because in the memories of the hellish existence he had lived, he had remembered seeing images that weren’t there. He would be in his bedroom, staring into the mirror, staring at Sabella. And it seemed his Sabella had stared through his eyes as well. Straight into hell.

  His arms tensed, tightened around her. He tilted his head back and forced himself to breathe through the pain. To hold back the agony welling inside him.

  “Sabella.” He whispered her name, breathed her in.

  She shifted against him. Sleeping, sensual, tempting. “I missed you, Irish.”

  And he ignored the single tear that fell from the corner of his eye. The pain. The loss. She knew. Deep inside where she refused to see who he was, she knew, because that bond was still there, those vows were still there. By staying away from her, he had left her drifting between reality and hell. Still bound to him, yet alone, facing the nightmares without him by her side. Enduring, even when she had glimpsed the horror he had lived through.

  And he had thought his wife wasn’t strong enough to face what
had happened to him. Hell, he had a feeling his wife was far stronger than anyone knew. Perhaps, in her heart, in her soul, she was stronger even than him.

  She was warm. Sabella shifted in the bed, almost moaning at the sense of warmth that surrounded her. Noah’s arms were wrapped around her, holding her close, his head tucked above hers just like Nathan used to do. It must be a male thing, she decided. Nathan had been her only lover, so of course she would notice it. One leg was thrown over hers, her head rested on his arm, the other arm was lying over her waist, holding her to his chest.

  She couldn’t escape him if she wanted to. And she so didn’t want to. She wanted to luxuriate in this warmth. Hold on to it. But something prodded at her mind, nipped at her, wanting her to awaken.

  She shifted against him, trying to escape it. She wanted to stay here, right here. No matter how much she ached for other things, she didn’t want to lose this feeling of incredible peace.

  Then his hand shifted, moved beneath the hem of the shirt she still wore and pressed against her stomach. Sabella stretched, moved, pressing more firmly against the warm male body behind her, her breathing hitching, half sob, half moan as she realized it wasn’t a dream.

  She was weak. She needed.

  What had Kira said, get rid of the sexual crisis and everything else would clear itself up? It made sense to her. Right now, enfolded in his embrace, as his hand moved to the band of her panties, it made sense.

  “Stay still.” Hoarse, guttural, his voice rumbled in her ear as she tucked her butt closer to the iron-hard length of the heated cock pressing against her.

  He was naked. Sometime during the night he had undressed and gotten under the blankets with her. She shivered at the thought. She could feel the naked length of his body behind her, powerful and hard.

  Her lashes lifted. It was still dark. Dawn hadn’t yet begun to lighten the room and she didn’t have to face what was and what wasn’t. All she had to do was feel.

  Her head turned until her lips could press against his neck beneath his chin. The abrasion of his beard was erotic, sexy. She hadn’t known a beard could feel so sexy.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered.

  He stilled behind her. His hand pressed against her stomach, moved to her hip, and tightened to hold her still.

  “Don’t tempt me, Sabella.” His voice whispered through the darkness, wrapping around her as she let it stroke her senses.

  “I want you.” She hadn’t wanted since her husband’s death. She wanted now. She wanted with a strength she knew she would have to face later, but not right now. Right now, she would experience it, revel in the pleasure of it.

  She felt the tension that whipped around them, that filled the air and heated the room.

  “Do you want me?” he growled then, turning her, the shadow of his broad shoulders suddenly filling her vision as he leaned over her. “Is it me you want, Sabella? Or your husband?”

  Her hands lifted to his shoulders, smoothed over them. Her nails bit into his flesh, tested his muscle.

  “Does it matter?” she asked him, feeling the clench of both needs suddenly filling her. She hated that confusion, that sense of being so off balance she didn’t know who or what she was reaching for. “Does it matter to you?”

  He was silent for so long that she wondered if he would answer her at all.

  “It doesn’t matter to me.” A snarl filled his voice. “I would take you, Sabella, and when you cried out my name I wouldn’t give a damn who you were crying out for. But if you expect me to take you as your husband would have, you’re in for a sad surprise.”

  “You don’t know how my husband took me,” she told him then, lifted her head and let her tongue stroke over his chest, rubbed her face against the crinkle of chest hairs. “Take me, Noah, however you want to.”

  He wanted to take her hard and rough. She could feel that. She had known it, even before now. He wouldn’t be an easy lover, but it wasn’t an easy lover she wanted. She wanted to still that dark, furious need that had built up in her over the past years. A product of the dark, sexual dreams that mixed with nightmares and tormented her, on nights like this. Dark and indolent with the need for sex. For touch.

  She was tired of fighting. She didn’t want to fight him. She hadn’t wanted to fight from the first day he had walked into the garage and tempted her with his wild arrogance. Her body ached for this touch. Her heart, so torn, so ragged now, wanted ease. Just a little bit of ease. Just for the time it would take to still the arousal burning through her.

  “Sabella.” He whispered her name as his forehead lowered to hers. “Do you know what you’re asking for?”

  “I want you.”

  She had to be asleep. Here, in Nathan’s bed, in the bed where he had taken her as his wife, and she wanted another man.

  “Make it go away, Noah,” she whispered desperately. “Please, make it go away. The nightmares. The need. Stop torturing me. Take me or get the hell out . . .”

  His lips took hers. They slanted over hers, and she was waiting, parted and desperate as she met him with a wild, hungry moan.

  Noah could feel the dark need pressing at the edges of his vision, consuming his senses. He kissed her, pausing only long enough to jerk her T-shirt from over her head and to rip the panties from her body.

  He was torturously hard. His cock was furious, determined, his balls tight with the need for greater release than what he had found in the past with only his hand for ease.

  He was fighting for breath, his hand sliding between her thighs, finding the soft curls there wet, saturated, slick from her need. Slick and hot. Like honey.

  Pressing his fingers closer, sliding between the swollen folds of flesh, he found the entrance to her pussy. It was tight, flexing around the tip of his finger as it had done the night he took her virginity so long ago.

  He pushed her legs apart, lifted himself between them. Foreplay would come later, he promised himself. So many years. Ah God, so long. Nineteen months of that time spent in the horrific grip of a drug so powerful that the need to fuck nearly drove him insane.

  And standing between him and the crazed need had been his wife. Her gray eyes staring at him, stark with longing, her voice whispering in his head, holding him back.

  “Damn you.” He jerked his head back from the kiss, stared down her, barely seeing her face in the darkness that surrounded them. “Do you know how bad I want you?” He clenched his teeth, fought back the words.

  “Then take,” she panted. “Take me, Noah. Take me how you need me.”

  How he needed her.

  He shook his head. He tipped it back on his shoulders and wanted to howl in rage.

  He wanted to love his wife. He wanted to touch and kiss and taste every inch of her body. He shook, shuddered. He pressed the furiously tight head of his cock against her entrance and groaned at the heat, the slick sweet essence of her.

  He pressed forward. Just for a moment, he promised himself. He had waited this long to take her again. He could wait long enough to pleasure her first.

  As he wanted to pleasure her the day Rick Grayson had interrupted them. As he had meant to pleasure her the day before when she took his seed and left him twisting on a rack of arousal that nearly destroyed him.

  She wanted him, as he had been. All he had to give her was who and what he had been made into. He pressed inside. He caught her wrists as they slapped against his chest, pushed them to the bed as he came over her, poised at the gates of ecstasy, only the tip of his erection feeling the pleasure.

  “Say no now,” he bit out. “Say it now, or you’ll not say it at all. Do you hear me?”

  She lifted her head, her sharp little teeth nipped his lips.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered roughly. “Kiss me as you take me, Noah.”

  So she couldn’t ask him to stop? So she wouldn’t scream one man’s name and mean another’s?

  “Ah Sabella,” he groaned. “Ah God, baby.”

  He covered her lips, took them with h
is own, and let the hunger tear through him.

  It had been too long since he had felt his wife beneath him. Too long since he had felt the fiery pleasure of her pussy stretching to take him, heard her cries beneath his lips and known she was riding the same wave of pleasure he was.

  His hips jerked, his cock pushing, thrusting, plunging, working its way inside her as she tightened and arched beneath him.

  His lips took her cries, his tongue filled her mouth, thrusting inside it as he pumped his erection inside the sweet bliss between her thighs.

  He was pushing, penetrating, and when he couldn’t stand the torture any longer he jerked his head back, released her lips and her wrists.

  His hands caught at her hips, held them to him as he straightened on his knees, lifted her ass to his thighs and began the hard, driving rhythm he needed.

  He heard the sounds coming from his throat, and they didn’t matter. Deep, hoarse growls of need as his eyes closed, sweat beaded his body, and the tight, hot clasp of her pussy convulsed and rippled around him.

  He was driving inside her. Unable to stop, relishing, loving every stroke that damned his soul forever as he gave his wife every furious inch, every agonizing ounce of lust that raged inside him.

  Sabella felt her fingers tighten in the comforter beneath her, fought to hold on to something because she was losing her mind with the pounding strokes filling her body.

  She had never been so ready. Foreplay wasn’t needed. His kiss, the almost brutal strokes of his erection filling her were ratcheting the pleasure, the dark, seductive call of something she had never had rising inside her.

  This. She had never had this. Pure, desperate hunger. Lust in its richest form. The rapid-fire strokes digging into her, stretching her, burning her, sending racing, flaming arrows of sensation tearing through her body.

  Noah took her hard, without apology. He took her like a man riding the edge of insanity, the only thought the release she could give him. Just her. No one else. Just this, taking her, melting with her until she was screaming his name. Screaming, begging, then erupting beneath him as she felt her orgasm explode in a brutal wave of sensation.

  It was cataclysmic. As though the foreplay had gone on forever, when actually there had been none. As though he had teased her unmercifully, pushed her higher and higher, and she was flying. Arched tightly to him, feeling his release spurting inside her as he continued to thrust, to push for more, his hungry groan filling the air as she jerked beneath him.