Fast (Raw Heroes Book 3)

by S. R. Jones

  She looks at me, and her face is relaxed a little. Less hostile. “Me too, when I first saw you on the deck of Nancy’s boat.” She blushes and looks down.

  I use my knuckle to tilt her face up and make sure she’s looking at me. “For the record? No that scene did not turn me on. It turned my stomach. I can’t fucking stand anyone who takes something from a person without their consent, and I have a personal reason for that.”

  “What reason?”

  I hesitate, and she looks away. She’s closing up again. I’m losing her once more.

  Sighing, I sit heavily on the bed. I’ve never talked about this. Not even with Reece, who was there. Now I need to. I owe her this much.

  “In my time in the Special Forces, I did some seriously off the books stuff. At one point it got me and a…colleague into a tough situation. We were captured, along with an intel analyst we were trying to get out of Ukraine. After four days some extremely fucked up individuals came to interrogate us. They started with the analyst. Most likely because they knew he’d be easiest to break, and he was the one who had the info they wanted. It was the reason we were getting him out of there.”

  Christ. I pause and swallow thickly. This is hard to discuss. “They started with the usual stuff, and he held. I mean, this is a civilian, no training in interrogation techniques and he didn’t spill. They moved onto water boarding, and he still didn’t spill. At that point, I started to panic because he can’t have known what we thought he did. He’d have been spilling his guts at this point if he had, trust me.”

  She’s watching me with big eyes, and some of her shaking has subsided. “Why did it make you panic?”

  “Because, Abi, if he didn’t know, then they’d keep on torturing him, and he couldn’t give them what they needed. He was going to die. The next day a new man came into the room, and he gave off a vibe I’ve seen before. Something I suppose you might call evil, if you believed in it. He smiled from the minute he saw the analyst, and it made me sick because cold fuckers, they’re one thing, the ones that enjoy it? They are way worse.”

  For a moment, I stare at the carpet remembering what happened next. Part of me doesn’t want to tell her because she already has enough bad shit in her head, but if I want her to trust me at all, I must. “This evil shit, he took the analyst into the corner of the room where they’d been doing the interrogating and they…”

  Fuck, it didn’t even happen to me. Why is it so hard to talk about?

  She doesn’t say anything. Simply watches me, waiting. “It’s okay, Liam.” She puts her hand on my arm. “You don’t have to.”

  But I want to now. Now I’ve started, I need to get this out. “They stripped his clothes off, bent him over a chair and raped him. Well, the sick fucker raped him. I’m not going into details, but it was brutal. The man screamed and screamed. The bastard did this five times over two days. I still can’t get his screams out of my head. And I knew, I knew they were coming for us next. For me and Reece. For those two days I sat there, heart hammering, feeling sick to my stomach as this poor, poor bastard was raped, and I couldn’t do anything except wait my turn.”

  “Oh my, God,” she whispers.

  “The night of the second day of this, we were dozing. Neither of us could sleep, and the fucking place erupted in gunfire and small explosions, and a team of Australian Special Forces soldiers saved us. They’d worked with us before on a join training exercise, and I’ve never been so happy to see their ugly mugs in my life. To this day though, I feel guilty as hell for what that poor man went through. His life will never be the same, and though his physical wounds will heal, his psychological ones won’t. I’m the person sent to get him out. I’m the person who let him down. So, no, I didn’t get off on what Nick did to you. It turned my stomach. And yes, what we did together was wrong, officially. But we wanted one another, and I don’t think it can be compared to what Nick has done, or what this guy went through. At least…I truly hope you don’t genuinely feel that way, because if so, I’ve fucked up way worse than I thought.”

  I’m done. I shut up and sit back, finally able to meet her gaze. There are tears in her already red eyes, and she’s looking at me like no one has before. It unsettles me. It’s as if she can see right into my soul. If I had one.

  “You didn’t fuck up way worse. I did want you…do want you. I didn’t have all the information, but the stupid thing is, now I do…I still want you.”

  She looks away and stares at the floor, where she rubs one painted toenail over the worn carpet.

  I want her, too, but we are already in far too deep, far too fast, and my head isn’t right when it comes to her. As clearly shown by my actions earlier.

  “Come on.” I pull her up. “Let’s get you into bed. Here.” I dig into my bag and pull out one of my t-shirts. It will fit her like a nightdress “Put this on.”

  She pulls it over her head, dropping the towel as she does and giving me a glimpse of her gorgeous, nubile body.

  Then she’s getting under the sheets. I strip off my clothes and climb in after her, keeping my boxer briefs on. Once I’m under the covers, I act on instinct and scoot up to her. She’s still shivering ever so slightly, so I put my arm around her and pull her into me.

  “Is this okay?” I ask.

  She nods and snuggles farther into me. Pressing her cotton-covered bottom into my crotch I bite back a groan. This isn’t about that. This is about me giving her comfort, something I think she’s had hardly any of in her life, and something I want to offer her. The fact doesn’t even scare me, like it would have done a few days ago. We’ve known one another a very short time, but in some ways, we probably know things about each other that no one else does. We’ve shared secrets, willingly, and knowingly or not. It binds us in a sense.

  As we lie in the dark, she starts to speak and she’s sharing another secret with me. “I hate myself,” she whispers. “I think I’m so damn weak. I should have left him ages ago. Should have left my mum before I did too. But I was always scared of where I’d go. In the end, both times I left too late. I’m ashamed. So ashamed, and that’s why I can’t bear the thought of you seeing.”

  I sigh into her hair, which smells of some cheap, fruity shampoo, which I decide is my new favorite scent.

  “You shouldn’t be the one ashamed. He should. You’ve done nothing wrong except try and survive in an abusive situation. I don’t know much about what happened with your mum, but I did see your file.” Time for more honesty. “And I know you didn’t have a good childhood, so you didn’t get a good start in life, and you’ve been on your own pretty much your whole life. I think you’re brave.”

  She sighs but she doesn’t argue with me.

  Then I decide to spill some more. “I haven’t had sex more than four or five times in many years, and the majority of those occasions it was in a swingers club my friend runs. I tried hook ups, but when I got down to it, all I could hear were the analyst’s screams, and although I could go through the motions the experience was empty. I found casual sex horrible, but every now and again, when the urge got too much, I headed to my friend’s club to scratch the itch. It was rare though, and the rest of the time I’ve lived like a monk. With you, the other day, that was the first time in forever I’ve really let go and let myself feel.”

  She sighs again but this time it has a different tone, and she burrows further in.

  “I hate Nick so much I wish he’d die.” She says her confession into the dark, and my arms tighten around her.

  “I go to an underground fight club and get the shit beaten out of me, or beat it out of someone else. All to recreate the weird high of being in a warzone.”

  I hold my breath to see if there’s any judgement from her, but she doesn’t stiffen in my arms, or move away.

  “I tried to be a Buddhist for a while,” she says. “Part of a long search for some meaning, but I gave up when I found out you had to say a sort of penance every time you took a life, any life, even an insect. I kill a lot
of spiders.”

  I laugh into her fruity hair, and then give in to my instincts and kiss the back of her head. She wriggles in my arms and turns around to face me. I can’t see her. The room is too dark, only a faint outline, but then her fingers find my face and she traces me.

  “I think you’re the sexiest man I’ve ever met. The first moment I saw you on that dock, your presence struck me.”

  I kiss the tip of her nose. “You’re the most vital woman I’ve ever met. I swear, Abi, there’s something inside you, and it shines out. You light the place up. Wherever you are, you light it up.”

  She sniffs, and then warm soft lips find mine and I’m lost. We shouldn’t do this. I swore I’d not touch her again, not in this way, but I’m weak, and fuck if I can say no to her in my arms.

  I groan into the kiss and deepen it, and she is right there with me. Her lips part and I sweep inside, tasting her. Last time we did this it was hard and fast, now I want nothing more than to take it slow. Her legs part and she takes my hand in the darkness to guide it between her thighs. Underneath my t-shirt, she wears no knickers and she’s already wet.

  Wanting to give her pleasure I begin to stroke her there, gentle at first, not actually touching her clit but circling around it, but she’s already reaching for me. Taking hold of my rock-hard cock, she pulls me toward her, on top of her and guides me to her core.

  “Abi. Let’s slow this down. I want to make it good for you.”

  “I just want you inside me,” is her answer. “Now. I need to feel you in me.”

  Fuck me if I’m able to say no to her. I’m right at her soaked core, and she hitches her hips and I slide inside.

  We might not be doing the foreplay thing, again, but I’m determined to take it slow and gentle. I move in her in measured thrusts, and she meets me in kind. Soon though it’s not enough. I need to be deeper, nearer. I gather her in my arms, and pull one leg up so I can angle myself to penetrate her right to the hilt. She gasps and moves up to meet me, her groin pressing right into my lower stomach.

  Soon we’re hardly moving at all. I’ve never had sex like this. We aren’t fucking. Hell, we aren’t even thrusting, we’re simply pressed together, hitching our hips, trying to crawl inside one another and get ever closer.

  She’s mashing her core against me, and I love how she knows what she needs and takes what she wants. Soon little huffed gasps are escaping her mouth and I want to taste them, so I take her in a slow, wet kiss.

  We’re mirroring what our bodies are doing with our mouths. It’s slow, sensual, but the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced. With a deep moan, she starts to come, her wet pussy contracting around me and setting my own orgasm off. As I spill inside her I realize with a moment of shock that I haven’t gloved up.

  Holy, fuck, I forgot the condom.

  When it’s over and we’re pressed together, me still inside her, I kiss her neck and whisper another confession. “I forgot the condom. I’m so sorry.”

  She kisses my cheek. “I realized about half a second before I came.” She giggles. Then her tone turns serious. “I’m clean and I’m on the pill, for all the good it did me living with the perverted freak.”

  “I’m clean. I always use a condom, and I haven’t had sex in months, and was tested quite a while after the last time.”

  “Well then, we don’t need to worry, do we?” She snuggles against me, seemingly in no hurry to move.

  Maybe we don’t have to worry about STD’s or pregnancy, but I’m having a mini freak out. I’ve just made love to a woman for the first time in my life. I can’t pretend this was anything else. I’m falling for her. Nothing, not even our hot and heavy fuck the other day, has come close to this experience for me. She’s blown me away.

  “I enjoyed that so much, but now I need to pee.” She gives a soft laugh and I move off her, and out of her. I immediately miss her warmth as she gets out of bed and walks across the room to the bathroom.

  When she comes back, she takes the same place under the covers, snuggled into me. I close my eyes and hold her tight.

  ****

  The next morning, I awake to my phone going crazy on the bedside table and Abi still wrapped in my embrace.

  Grabbing my phone, wanting to let her sleep a little longer, I look at the texts. There are three from Reece, all updating me on the situation.

  It tells me how Nick is now trying to call the Russians off as it seems he’s realized they won’t exactly be bringing Abi back to him in one piece. He’s now reached out to a couple of bounty hunters who do off the books work and asked them to find her. Reece tells me that Howard, who is still to all intents and purposes in charge here, wants to send a team of two or three guys to meet us mid-way and fly back with us. Reckons she’ll be safe with an escort of four trained men guarding her.

  I see Don’s name mentioned as one of them and the memory of him salivating over what Nick did to Abi hits me and makes me murderous with rage. Yeah, I’ll be telling Howard not to send him. He’s not Special Forces trained either, and I know because I’ve already dug into his background. He’s some ex-spook, and that doesn’t sit well with me at all.

  I fire off a text to Reece, telling him where I am and to let Howard know, but to tell Howard to hold off for now until I can decide what the best plan of action is. As far as I am concerned Abi won’t be safe if I take her back in before the Russians’ involvement with Nick has come to full light. Preferably with both they and Nick behind bars awaiting trial.

  Undecided whether to spend another night here, or move on, I figure we can kill a few hours while I think things through. I need another perspective on this and decide to call Ethan once it’s a more reasonable hour in the UK.

  Sliding out of bed, I go to the coffee maker and turn it on, then I make a coffee for us both, adding creamer, but no sugar, and take one to Abi. I waft the cup under her nose, and she twitches the end of her cute little nose, like the woman used to do on that old TV show about a witch. It makes me smile. Her eyes blink open and she stares up at me then pushes herself into a sitting position and takes the mug from me.

  “Do you fancy getting out of here for a few hours?” I ask her.

  “Sounds good. I feel all cooped up, and Boo needs a walk.”

  The little beastie has been so well behaved. We fed him some canned dog food last night, and I let him out and he slept through the whole night on the motel room carpet near Abi’s side of the bed. He hasn’t eaten this morning yet, so I go and spoon some more of the dog food out into the cheap plastic bowl we bought for him.

  He wolfs it down as if it is gourmet, organic beef, and I smile. He’s a cutie and I can understand how he stole Abi’s heart.

  “I hope the change in diet doesn’t upset his stomach,” she says on a yawn. Then she scratches her head, mussing her short hair and something flips about in my belly. The sort of feeling I get before a mission, or before a fight, but gentled somehow. The sort of feeling I’ve been chasing for years.

  It’s not quite a rush of adrenalin, but it’s a rush of something. I’m just not sure what. Something I’ve never felt before, that’s for sure.

  Getting out of bed, stark naked, she walks across the room and my eyes follow her. She’s utterly gorgeous. Slender, small built, with delicate long limbs, and a tiny waist, she’s not my usual type. I kind of like them busty normally, curvy, and blonde, too, but her small, pert breasts, slender hips, and dark hair, are the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen. She turns to me and there is such a vulnerability in her gaze as she sees me watching her.

  “You’re beautiful,” I say.

  She flushes and starts to shake her head. Walking to her, I tip her chin up. “No, don’t do that. Don’t put yourself down and deny it. You’re fucking beautiful and you need to know it.”

  “I’m going to use the bathroom and throw some clothes on, so we can go out.” She deflects, and I let her.

  “What do you want to do?” I’m second guessing my plan to go out, looking at her per
fect arse as she walks away from me. We could stay in and make our own entertainment, but then she looks at me with those big eyes of hers all lit up.

  “Can we go and watch a movie? I’ve not been to the cinema in years. Get popcorn and everything?”

  She’s like a kid and I love it about her. The way insignificant things like a good cup of coffee, or a visit to a bookstore make her happy and giddy. Then she frowns. “Oh, of course, we can’t. Boo.”

  “We can,” I tell her. “Put him in your big bag, we’ll sneak him in and then take him out, and you can hold him while we watch the film.”

  “What if we get caught?” Her eyes go wide.

  “I’ll do some bad-ass ninja move to distract the ushers while you get away. Do they even have ushers these days? I haven’t been to watch a film in years either.”

  “It’s a date.” She claps her hands together and then her cheeks go red. “I meant that jokingly, I know it’s not a date. Not a proper date. I know we’re...you know…we’re aren’t dating. I mean, we’re on the run, which isn’t dating. We’re not a thing, and I know you—”

  “Abi.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a date, babe.”

  “Oh, okay. I think I like that.” She smiles and carries on into the bathroom, while I make a superhuman effort not to follow her.

  I fail. And it takes us an hour to get out of there. Cheap shower gel is slippery, and that and water together make for some interesting fun between two naked people. Now we’re sat watching some mindless action movie, and it’s fun but I’m super aware of Abi next to me. Her arm resting on the armrest next to mine. The rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. The scent of her hair. I’m a fucking addict. She’s got me addicted, and soon I’ll have to go cold turkey.

  The thought throws a bucket of ice water over me.