He put his hand over hers and squashed it flat against his chest. “You’re going to start something, Ava.”
“Who says I’m not trying to start something, Jason,” she retorted. “I’m just trying to get you to have a personality. You know?”
“I have a personality!” He sounded grumpy. It was cute but not particularly convincing.
She searched for the right words. “I can tell that you have a personality. I can. But I’m pretty sure nobody else can. You’re just all about the work. They talk to you about work, and they respect you, but they think of you as a kind of machine.”
“I’m not a machine.”
The way he muttered the words made him sound almost pouty. Was it possible that she had hurt his feelings? The thought made her smile. If he had feelings, then he could definitely be prodded into showing them more often.
She pushed her hand farther down his belly. He was naked. She let her fingers tug gently at the short hairs nested at the base of his cock. He groaned and stopped trying to stop her with his hand. Instead, he let it drop to his side and gave her full access to his erection.
His cock seemed to lengthen beneath her hand as she stroked him. He got harder and hotter as she explored the satin-soft skin covering his firm shaft. It felt so good to touch him. She explored every inch of his shaft before letting her fingers drift down to stroke his testicles. The first light touch of her hand to his balls made Nash curse loudly. Then he lapsed into silence and spread his legs just a little farther to give her better access.
Ava enjoyed the tightness of the skin here. She loved the tiny wrinkles and the texture of it. Carefully grabbing the loose skin surrounding the twin spheres contained inside his sac, she gave him a tug. His sharply indrawn breath told her he liked that very much. Soon, she gripped his shaft in her hand and gave him a squeeze. He groaned and thrust against her hand. She pumped him a few times and was rewarded with a spill of fluid from the tip of him. The silky stuff soaked her fingers. She spread it around the tip of him and continued to pump his cock as though she were going to give him a handjob right there in the bed.
“Ava, please,” he moaned. “I need you so bad.”
She had been so focused on Nash that Ava hadn’t noticed just how wet and eager she had been getting with all of this attention she was giving him. Her pussy was wet and aching. The insides of her thighs were smeared with her juices, and she wanted very badly to come.
She wasn’t sure where her next thought originated, but somehow, it didn’t matter. She got to her knees on the bed. Flinging one leg over his waist, she straddled Nash’s body. He made a low noise of satisfaction and put his hands on her hips. In moments, she was poised over the top of his cock. Reaching between them, she gripped him hard and held him steady as she slowly lowered herself down onto his shaft.
The slow penetration was heaven. Ava shut her eyes and gave a soft grunt and groan of approval. This felt good! It was exactly what she wanted and needed. And once she was full of his cock and sitting astride his body, she had full control of what she was going to get.
Ava put her hands flat on his chest and began to rock back and forth against Nash’s body. Each movement created friction inside her pussy, but it also pushed the spread hood of her clit against the root of Nash’s cock. Every single movement became just that much more intense, and Ava knew she was going to come very soon.
NASH HAD NEVER seen a sexier sight than Ava sitting astride his body. The sight of her breasts bouncing lightly against her body was a perfect counterpart to the soft curve of her hips and breasts. He cupped those breasts and thumbed her nipples into hard little points. She moaned and let her head roll back as she rode him in a long, slow rhythm that was guaranteed to drive him crazy with lust.
Moving his hands to her hips, Nash sought to increase her pace. She rocked harder against his body. Her inner muscles tightened around his shaft. He squirmed beneath her. It was pure torture to be unable to affect the depth of penetration, and yet he would not have exchanged this moment for the world. She was gorgeous, and she was in charge, and he was happy to let her be there.
She raised her hands to her hair and pushed it back away from her face. The tangled waves slithered over her shoulders and gently outlined the sides of her breasts. Nash touched the soft hair and gently twirled his fingers in the stuff. It was so damn sexy. He’d never seen a sight like this before.
He clenched his butt cheeks and thrust up into Ava’s body. Her eyes snapped open, and she gave a little gasp of surprise. He did it again. She ground back down against him. Then he did it again. With the suddenness of a train wreck, Ava convulsed and climaxed. She pressed her palms against his chest once more and bore down as she gasped and trembled on top of him. Her orgasm made her almost unable to keep rolling her hips to ride him.
Nash reached up and took over. He set a pace with her hips and encouraged her to ride faster. She moved against him. He coaxed and encouraged her to go faster. Nash bent his knees a little bit to give his balls some more room. He was going to explode, but he wanted to do it inside of her body.
Thrusting hard up into her pussy, Nash felt her meet him halfway. The heat and friction pushed him over the edge. He came with a shout. His hips began to flex involuntarily as he convulsed and spurted hot jets of ejaculate into her welcoming body.
She moved a little more after that, but her movements were jerky and uncontrolled. Finally, she stopped moving and flopped down onto his chest. She sighed. “I don’t know that I can get out of bed after that. I may need to just lay here until we do it again.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he murmured with a smile.
She wriggled a little to push her butt down his body before she lay down atop his chest. Nash wrapped his arms around her and held tight. Loving this woman would have been easy if it weren’t such a logistical nightmare.
“Ava!”
Someone was yelling from downstairs. Nash sighed. Apparently their little moment outside of time was over.
“Sounds female,” Ava commented with a yawn. “Probably Francesca.”
“Ava! Are you up there? Are you still in bed? You do know that it’s nine in the morning, right?” Ava heard Francesca’s footsteps on the stairs. Her sister-in-law was heading this way. “You need to get up! We can’t find Nash. Have you seen him?”
Ava couldn’t help it. She laughed. The giggle was enough to tell whoever happened to be with Francesca that she was upstairs. Unfortunately, the bedroom door was also open.
“Ava?” Francesca’s voice was getting closer.
Ava knew she needed to do something about their en flagrante position, but she didn’t feel like getting up. Moments later, she heard a shriek of surprise and the hasty sound of someone retreating along the hallway.
“Ava, that was rude!” Francesca sounded annoyed. “You could have warned me that you were naked up there with Nash!”
“Just go away,” Ava called back. “We’re still sleeping.”
“Oh, yeah, I can totally tell.” Francesca heaved a giant-sized sigh. “Quentin is out there unlocking the truck and looking for Nash. The man hasn’t been answering his phone. Have you been holding him prisoner?”
Ava glanced down at Nash. His expression was unreadable, but the way his lower lip was pouching out, she could tell he had no desire to rehash last night’s events. “I’m not holding him prisoner per se,” Ava told Francesca. “But I might have held him prisoner last night so that he forgot his phone back in the truck.”
“Uh huh.” Francesca’s feet trotted down the steps with a light thunk-thunk. “If you think Quentin is going to buy that load of crap, you’d better think again. There were cops here last night. Wrath saw them. That’s when they tried to get ahold of Nash.”
“Well, it’s been hours since that happened,” Ava pointed out. She drummed her fingers on Nash’s chest. Why wasn’t he saying anything? His expression suggested he had a whole lot to say, but he was being totally silent. Ava decided not to spill the beans. T
hat was Nash’s choice. “Just go downstairs and wait. We’ll be down in a few minutes. I’m sure there’s plenty to discuss after all the drama yesterday.”
“All right!” Francesca shouted. “But you two had better hurry before the guys call out the rescue squad.”
“I am never, ever going to live this down,” Nash whispered with a sigh. “They’re going to be bringing it up for the next twenty years.”
“Not if you just play it off,” Ava suggested. She nuzzled his neck and kissed his jaw. “They’ve all made similar mistakes. I promise. Don’t let them push you around just because you’re finally acting human.”
“Human?” He snorted. “That’s what you call this?”
“Yeah, and believe me,” she assured him. “It’s totally sexy.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ava stared around the table at everyone assembled. Apparently, just the thought of Nash doing something silly, like locking himself out of the truck without his phone, was enough to bring just about everyone out of the woodwork. In fact, the only people missing were Ralston and Analise.
Tegan and Wrath sat on one side of the table while Kayla and Carson took the other. Francesca and Quentin were perched at one end, and she and Nash were at the other. It was cozy and maybe a little crowded in her kitchen. But Ava loved the feel of having everyone in one place. This was her family. It was nearly noon, and there was a ton of food on the table. She had made sausage links and big slabs of ham steak. There was plenty of bacon on hand for Wrath and sweet biscuits for Quentin. She had made chicken salad and put a batch of fresh croissants from the nearby French bakery on the table. There was so much food that it was difficult to put a place setting out, but that was how Ava liked it. This felt like home.
“So.” Since Quentin was by far the quietest, they all paid attention when he spoke. “Now that we’ve all established that Nash was not kidnapped by Russian thugs and murdered. What’s next?”
Beside her, Ava felt Nash stiffen as he realized that they were sort of making fun of him. It was all good-natured though, and he needed to realize that. So, Ava pointed at Quentin. “Well, since you and Francesca went and found yourself a justice of the peace so you could make it all official, I think you need to fess up.”
“Hey!” Francesca said indignantly. She was in the process of ripping a biscuit in half with her fingers. Now she used the food to gesture at Ava. “I told you that in confidence.”
“Yeah? And now I’m feeling confident about sharing it with everybody else.” Ava made a face at Francesca. “It’s not like it would have been a secret much longer. The two of you are so into each other that it’s practically X-rated around here.”
There was a raucous round of laughter. Finally, Nash held up his hands. “I’ll admit it. Last night was not my finest moment. At least I didn’t get anyone killed.”
“You’re right, Nash.” Carson made a face. “That’s absolutely the most important part of any mission.”
Ava decided it was time to refocus. “I think we all need to consider what the really important thing is right now.”
“And what’s that?” Nash prompted.
Ava looked at each person around the table. “It occurred to me yesterday that we don’t really have a focus. We’re all running around collecting information, but for what? So we can chase Stedman in circles? I don’t think so.”
It was Francesca that answered. “I see what you’re getting at, Ava. We’ve been protecting ourselves from Stedman and trying to figure out what he’s up to. But we haven’t really declared what it is that we’re going to do when we get him in the right place.”
“Exactly!” Ava said triumphantly.
Tegan pursed her lips and spoke up. “I heard what you told him at the board meeting yesterday, Mother.”
“Who? Stedman?” Ava thought back to the meeting.
“Yes. You told him that you hadn’t had a goal but that you’d figured one out. You said that your goal was to put him behind bars.”
“How do you feel about that?” Ava asked quietly. She looked mostly at Tegan. He was her father. Of all of them, she was the one with the most to lose when it came to Stedman. Ava had never tried to come between father and daughter.
Tegan leaned toward Wrath. He put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. Tegan sighed. “Any hope of a real relationship with that man died the minute he chose to try and marry me off for the money.”
Ava hated that her daughter had experienced that sort of rejection. A mother always wanted to protect her child, but sometimes it was impossible to do. This was especially true when the person she was trying to protect her daughter from was the man who was supposed to love her most. But Stedman had never been that kind of father. He viewed his children as competition, which brought Ava to her next point.
She turned to Nash. “I want Ralston and Analise back.”
“We’ve talked about that,” Nash growled.
Wrath cleared his throat. “I think she’s got a good point, Boss. If we’re going to make a play to put Stedman behind bars, it’s probably going to be for a white-collar crime. That means Ralston will be vulnerable as an accessory.”
Nash did not seem pleased to have his men arguing with him. “Ralston is a grown man. He made his own choices, and so did Analise.”
“Yes, but we need to at least keep him apprised of the situation,” Carson suggested. “Maybe that will give him enough time to get out before the feds go banging on the door.”
“Speaking of,” Quentin prompted. “Has anyone heard yet how the body hunt went?”
“No.” Ava turned to Nash. “We should find out. If Stedman was truly on his way home to try and protect his crime scene, he might have stumbled right into a bunch of Russian’s digging in the yard and being arrested by the FBI.”
“As satisfying as that might have been,” Nash began, “I really don’t think it was going to go down like that.”
“Then, like what?” Ava demanded. “It feels as though we’re setting all these traps and trying to move the pieces in the right direction and nothing happens!”
Nash sighed. “It takes time. If you want to frame Stedman, that’s a different story. We can just fabricate something.”
“Why fabricate when he’s dirty?” Ava was practically shouting now. “We don’t have to fabricate! He’s already got a laundry list of things to be arrested for.”
NASH TRIED TO clear his head. Surely there had to be a way to just get Stedman Hyde-Pierson out of all of their lives for good. The man was not a god. He wasn’t a supervillain. He wasn’t even a particularly clever bad guy. He was actually inept in a lot of facets of his life. However, the one thing he was really good at was dragging people into his schemes against their will.
That thought alone gave Nash the sense of an idea. It was a complete shot in the dark, but it might be worth a try. He pressed his lips into a thin line and gently tugged the bottom one with his fingers. They had Ralston in place already. They would most certainly need someone on the inside for this to work.
Wrath perked up. He shoved another sausage link in his mouth and pointed down the table at Nash with his fork. “You have an idea. I can tell.”
“I do have an idea of sorts,” Nash agreed. “But it’s going to take all of us working together, even Ralston.”
“Keep going,” Ava urged. She looked eager—excited even. That gave Nash courage. “What if we have Ralston tell his father that he’s intercepted a message from us?”
Nash could see the others working this out in their heads. Kayla was the first one to respond. “What kind of message?”
“That’s the thing.” Nash chuckled. “We’re going to convince him that we’ve got evidence that could put him away for good.”
“You mean without actually having anything like that,” Ava mused. “Interesting notion. What sort of info?”
“Let’s say that someone is getting engaged,” he suggested slowly. The plan was just beginning to take shape in his head. “We’
ll make it Tegan. She’s decided to leave Wrath for the jerk her father wanted her to marry. She can say that she’s had a rough time since leaving her father’s employ and that she wants to go back.”
That seemed to be the only impetus the group needed. Within moments, they were all brainstorming pieces of the puzzle. Nash watched with a feeling of satisfaction as every single person contributed something unique and useful to the conversation. Ideas flew. They were discussed and either discarded or put into practice. It was satisfying in a very basic, fundamental way.
“You look satisfied,” Ava murmured in his ear.
She rested her cheek against his upper arm. Now he leaned over to press a kiss to her forehead. “I love it when my team shows their initiative.”
“They do it because you’ve trained them well,” she told him quietly.
“They do it because they’re smart and capable,” he added. “Sometimes, I think that in a few years this operation won’t need me anymore.”
“And how would you feel about that?” The way she asked suggested that she already had an opinion as to the answer.
“Mixed, actually.” Nash could be honest with himself about this for once. “Sometimes, I think it would be nice to not have to worry about what everyone else is doing at any given moment. The company could run like a well-oiled machine, and I could just sit back and collect a salary.”
“You would be bored,” she predicted. “Especially since you’re so determined to be by yourself.”
Her words stung. Was that really how she viewed him? Did she see some solitary figure that refused to connect with people and sat around all day inside the surveillance truck trying to establish a personal perimeter?
It was sad to say, but he could see why she might come up with such a viewpoint. “You’re poking at me,” he murmured. “Deliberately, I think.”
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