Extreme Measures

by Elisabeth Naughton

  He grunted at the first blow but caught her leg before she could nail him in the balls. Twisting quickly to her right, she swiveled out of his grip and landed on her bare feet.

  “You’ve been practicing.”

  She didn’t like the condescending tone of his voice. Or the way his hands felt against her skin. Warm. Electric. Alive.

  Tempting.

  Eve forced back the arousal and stepped to the right. Remember how you felt in that warehouse. Remember what he did to you.

  Her adrenaline pumped, and the blood roared in her ears, but she was focused solely on him. On his low-riding jeans, his chiseled shoulders, and that smug look on his scruffy, way-too-damn-handsome face. “And you’re about to get your ass handed to you.”

  He chuckled, and the sound was—fuck—it was sexy as hell. “You always did like my ass.”

  That was it. All she could take. She kicked out with her foot and nailed him in his bad leg. His knee gave, and he hit the ground with a grunt. Eve swung out with her arm to hit him in the side of the head, but he caught her wrist in his massive palm and yanked her down. She fell against him with a yelp, but before she could wriggle free, he rolled her to her back and pinned both arms over her head against the carpet.

  His chest rose and fell with his rapid breaths. His shaggy hair was a mess around his face. And his cheeks were flushed with both exertion and pain. But victory flared in his hazel eyes when she struggled and couldn’t break free. “Had enough yet?”

  She clenched her jaw. Both because he had her pinned and because—dammit—he felt so good against her, sinking his weight onto her, pressing his hips—oh shit—tight against hers. “Never.”

  She wrapped both legs around his hips, slid them higher to his waist, hooked her feet together, and squeezed as hard as she could.

  “Dammit, Eve . . .” His face contorted in pain. She knew she was hurting him, but she didn’t let up. She squeezed harder, both to get him to back off and because she couldn’t stand being this close to him again. Not after last night. “Gonna make you . . . pay . . .” His grip tightened on her wrists.

  She flexed her muscles on her right side, intent on rolling him over. “Try it, you son of a—”

  His mouth covered hers.

  Synapses misfired. The electrical message from her brain to her muscles shorted out. He dipped his tongue inside her mouth, and she tasted him, like she had last night. Except this wasn’t a drug-induced dream. It wasn’t a hallucination. And it wasn’t the least bit sweet and gentle.

  She froze. Thought was replaced by a hazy, thick cloud while he ravished her mouth, while he stroked his tongue against hers again and again and pressed his body down onto hers. Heat brewed in her belly and shot south between her legs where she held him tight, and she realized he was hard. Hard and thick and already rubbing against her in a way that brought every cell in her body to life, making her feel things she hadn’t felt in years.

  “Stop fighting me, Eve,” he whispered against her lips. “I’m not your enemy.”

  But he was. He always would be. The one person she didn’t want to live without and the one she’d never been able to fully commit to.

  He tipped his head to the other side and kissed her again. This time without the insane pressure. This time with long, slow, deep strokes that sent a shiver down her spine. She opened to him, took him in, kissed him back as the muscles in her legs relaxed around his waist, and slid to his hips.

  “That’s it, Evie,” he whispered. “Let me in. You have to trust me so we can help each other.”

  His words cut through the sexual haze coloring everything, and she suddenly realized what he was doing.

  Intimidating her hadn’t worked. Tying her up hadn’t either. So now he was resorting to using her stupid feelings against her so he could run the show and tell her what to do next. Well, she wasn’t going to let him. He thought he could use sex to manipulate her? He didn’t know what was about to hit him.

  She tightened her muscles, shifted her weight, and flipped him to his back. Then she pinned his hands above his head, pulled her mouth from his, and stared down at him. “Do you really want me to trust you, Archer?”

  Desire filled his dark eyes and flushed his cheeks. A desire she remembered well from Beirut. One she’d dreamt about seeing again on his face. But not like this. “Yeah, I do.”

  She leaned forward and brushed her breasts against his bare chest. The movement forced her sex into tighter contact with his erection. Tingles spread all through her lower body. Tingles she wanted to savor but couldn’t. “It takes a lot for me to trust someone. I need to feel something for them.” She did it again, and she knew he felt those tingles too by the way he sucked in a breath. “You made me feel once. I wonder if you could do it again.”

  “Eve—”

  She flexed her hips, this time intentionally rubbing against his swollen cock. “Do you want me, Archer? Tell me you want me.”

  “Eve . . .” His eyes rolled back, and he lifted his hips to meet hers. “Yes, I want you.”

  Anger pulsed through her once more. She tightened her grip on his arms and then pushed quickly off him. “Well, tough shit. In this business we never get what we want. And you just proved to me you’re a bigger liar than I am.”

  Zane’s blood ran hot. Before Eve could get a step away, he grasped her by the ankle and flipped her onto her back on the bed.

  “What the—?”

  Her surprised gasp met his ears just before he climbed over her on the mattress, straddled her hips, and pinned her arms near her head. “Stop, Eve.”

  She thrashed beneath him, but he was stronger than her, even with his injuries, and all her struggling did was shake the bed. “Let me go, you stupid son of a—”

  “Bitch. Yeah, I know. God, you don’t know when to quit, do you? I’m not lying to you. I do want to help you, but you’re too goddamn stubborn to see it. And if I didn’t still want you, I wouldn’t have had a hard-on these last twelve hours, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have spent the last year trying to track you down.”

  She jerked against his hold but couldn’t break free. “You tracked me down because you wanted to turn me over to the Feds.”

  “Partly. But I didn’t, did I?”

  “That’s your stupidity, not mine.”

  His temper flared. “You’re right, it is. Because I wanted to know if you felt anything for me or if it was all just an act. You cut me when you left me, Eve. Not because of what I thought I’d caught you doing, but because you turned your back on me without a second look. Like none of it mattered. Is that all I was to you? Just a job? Tell me the truth right now and this ends here. You want to go? I’ll let you go. Just tell me the fucking truth.”

  She stopped her struggling and stared up at him with wide amber eyes he couldn’t read. Eyes that had haunted him for way too long. Her chest rose and fell with her quick breaths, and the pink hue to her cheeks screamed of arousal—he just couldn’t tell if it was for him or for some stupid job that turned her on more than he ever had.

  “I . . .” She blinked several times, and her hands curled into fists against the mattress on each side of her head, but she didn’t try to wriggle free.

  “Come on, Eve. You’ve never been speechless before. Tell me the truth. Tell me I never mattered to you and it was all about the job. I’ll walk away and you’ll never have to see me again.”

  “The government—”

  “Fuck the government.” Why was she stalling? Because she liked torturing him? God, he really was a dumb fuck. For concocting this whole plan, for spending the last year searching for her, for thinking—after she’d finally told him the truth earlier—that she’d done any of it because she cared about him. “I know how to disappear and not be found. I did it this whole last year, and I can do it again. Just tell me the damn truth. Tell me you don’t give a shit about me.”

  “You’re a complete jackass,” she whispered.

  Zane stilled above her. The air caught in his throa
t, and his chest drew tight as a drum. Not because of what she’d said, but because of what he saw in her suddenly damp eyes.

  Fury—yeah, there was still plenty of that—but behind that, something else. Something vulnerable. Something hot.

  “I don’t care about you,” she whispered. “I really don’t. You don’t deserve it. I hate you. I—”

  He let go of her wrists, lowered his mouth to hers, and kissed her. But unlike when he’d kissed her before, when he’d been trying to distract her from crushing him to death, this time she kissed him back. Her tongue found his, and she arched up into him while she wrapped her arms around him, opened her legs, and made room for him between her thighs.

  The taste of her was something he hadn’t forgotten. Not even in the dead of night when he’d been plotting ways to string her up and torture the truth out of her. Sweet, spicy, so fucking forbidden. Her fingers slid up into his hair and fisted, pulling on the strands until pain shot through his scalp. Kissing her again and again, he tasted her deeper, drew her in even though he knew he shouldn’t. Even though he knew it would only fuck with his mind even more.

  “Evie—”

  “Shut up. Just—” She hooked a leg over his hip, flexed, and flipped him to his back in one smooth move. The mattress bounced. “Don’t talk.”

  She closed her mouth over his again. Kissed him hard. Tongues tangled. Teeth scraped flesh. Her fingers found the edge of her T-shirt, and she pulled away from his mouth long enough to drag the cotton up and over her head. It landed somewhere behind her, and she yanked his shirt off, then lowered her mouth back to his and kissed him until all thought—all reason and common sense—disappeared into the ether.

  He trailed his hands up her ribcage to the underside of her breasts, hidden behind the soft, nude-colored bra. Classic Eve. Functional, not seductive. But he liked that about her. There was something so damn hot about a woman who could rock a simple bra and panties and look like a Victoria’s Secret model, and Eve had the body to do that. Toned, muscular, so freakin’ perfect it made his cock throb with the thought of getting inside her.

  He flicked the front clasp of her bra and groaned into her mouth when her bare breasts spilled into his hands. His fingers cupped the soft flesh, and he dragged his thumbs over the sensitive nipples, already hard and aching for his touch . . . for his mouth. But before he could break away from her greedy kiss so he could give them what they desperately needed, he realized she’d already undone his pants and that her clever hands were inside his boxers, pushing them and his jeans down his hips.

  Cool air washed over his cock as it sprang free. Then her hand was there—hot, tight—wrapping around the base and sliding up the tip to squeeze and stroke his shaft until he couldn’t take it anymore.

  His hands fell against the mattress, and he gripped the comforter in a tight fist as he jerked his mouth from hers. Something way in the back of his mind warned this was a bad idea, but he couldn’t seem to listen. “Eve, wait, you have to—”

  “Shh. Don’t talk to me. Put your cock in me.” She shimmied away and came back. Her knees bumped into his hips. She hiked up her skirt. Then her mouth was back on his. Needy, aggressive, devouring his until she was all he could taste. Until a slick, hot vise closed over the tip of his cock, drowning out every other sensation.

  He groaned. Or maybe it was her, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that her tight, slippery sex was sliding down his aching cock, sucking him in, making him see stars.

  “Oh fuck, Sawyer.” Her palms landed against his bare chest, and her fingernails dug into his skin as she stretched around him, taking him all the way in. And he didn’t even care because she felt so fucking incredible. He loved that she was using his alias, that she was remembering what they’d once had.

  His reasons for trying to get her to stop slid to the back of his mind. He let go of the blanket and gripped her hips. Thrust up to get deeper inside her. She gasped, pressed against his shoulders, and lifted, the movement dragging his cock against her walls, making them both shiver. She clamped down with her sex as she did it again, and he helped her by squeezing the skirt bunched around her hips and lifting with his hands, by clenching his ass and thrusting up on her every downstroke.

  “Fuck . . . oh fuck that feels good.” Tiny tremors racked her body. Her eyes slammed shut as she lifted and lowered. As his cock pressed deep and then slid back out. Her hands slipped from his shoulders to the mattress, lengthening her body over his. Her hard nipples abraded his skin, and he knew by the way she was rocking, by the way her eyes were clenched tight, that she was grinding her clit against him. That she was close. “So big. So good . . .”

  Warmth infused his chest. Made his blood pump hot. The need to feel her release overrode every other thought. “Do it, Juliet. Come all over my cock.”

  She grunted. Lifted, lowered. He captured her mouth and thrust into her with his tongue just as he was doing with his cock. Grabbed her knees and slid them wider so she could rub her greedy sex harder against him with every deep thrust. Her hips picked up speed. She rocked against him faster. Harder. Wrapping both arms around her waist, he pulled her tight and met her speed. Then ravished her mouth and let his body take over.

  Thought dissipated. Need took over. He thrust deeper. Harder. Faster. Every muscle in Eve’s body contracted while he fucked her. While sweat slid down his temples and dripped onto the mattress. Then her sheath clamped tight around his cock, and she tore her mouth from his and cried out as her body jerked and shivered.

  Her orgasm made her even tighter than before. But he didn’t ease up. Couldn’t. He continued to drive into her again and again while the wave dragged her under. Continued to hold her tight so she couldn’t get away from the pressure on her clit. To plow into her with all the loss and frustration and sexual need he’d been saving this whole last year.

  More. Harder. Deeper.

  He grunted with every thrust. Heard her cry out again and didn’t know this time whether it was in pleasure or pain, but he couldn’t stop himself to check. Electricity raced down his spine, gathered in his balls, and then shot through his cock like a rocket. Followed by stars exploding behind his eyelids as pure bliss radiated down his legs and up into his chest.

  Eve’s body jerked, and she cried out again, her slick sheath tightening once, twice more, pumping him like a velvet fist before she collapsed against his chest. His own body quaked from her mini-orgasm, and tingles spread all along his skin.

  She was breathless, panting against his chest, and something sharp was sticking into his ribs, but he didn’t care. All Zane could focus on was that sweet, weightless feeling gliding through his limbs like a feathery soft touch.

  “Oh God,” Eve managed. “That was . . .”—her hand pressed into his good shoulder, and her hot breath ran across his neck, sending a shiver down his spine—”such a bad idea.”

  He trailed his fingers down her bare spine, across the skirt still bunched around her waist, and finally down her muscular ass, which he squeezed. A bad idea? He wasn’t so sure anymore. “For the record, I didn’t start it. Not that, at least.”

  “No,” she breathed. “You just pushed me up to the edge where you knew I’d go right on over.”

  She rolled off him and dropped onto the mattress at his side. The loss of her heat was like a cold blanket draping over his skin. She tossed a hand over her eyes as her chest rose and fell and she tried to catch her breath, but she didn’t sound pissed. If anything, she sounded . . . unnerved.

  Which didn’t help because he was unnerved too. He hadn’t planned that, but hell if he was about to regret it. His gaze ran over her nakedness, and as the dim morning light highlighted the curves and angles of her muscular body, his stomach tightened with the reality of what they’d just done, and her reason for being unhinged.

  “Shit. Eve. I didn’t mean for—”

  “Don’t say it.” She pushed up quickly to sitting, grabbed both sides of her bra, and clasped it around her breasts in front. “You may ha
ve pushed the matter, but I could have stopped it. So it happened. Big deal. It’s not like we never fucked before. Where the hell is my shirt?”

  She rose to her feet, glanced around the room, and then moved for her T-shirt, which was hanging halfway off the nightstand lamp.

  But it was a big deal. A huge deal. More so now when Zane thought of the consequences. His nerves strung tight, he tugged on his jeans and buttoned them. “I didn’t plan . . .” Shit. He raked a hand through his hair. This had never been anything he had to worry about because he was always safe. Except with her. She’d made him lose his mind more than once in Beirut. It was just worse now because he couldn’t tell where they stood. Or where he even wanted them to stand. “Look, I’m clean. You don’t have to worry about that. I—”

  She tugged the shirt over her head and whipped his way. “Oh geez, Archer. The Feds think you set off a bomb in the middle of Seattle and you’re worried about screwing me without a condom? Your priorities are really fucking twisted.”

  He stared at her, completely unsure how to take her reaction. Unsure of everything right now. Somewhere between the time he’d seen her on that Seattle street and now, things had changed, and he didn’t know what he wanted or what to do next. The only thing he knew was in that moment when they’d been locked together, everything had felt . . . right.

  “I’m clean too,” she said with a frown. “And I won’t get pregnant from this, so stop worrying. A woman in my line of work takes precautions against that kind of thing.”

  He watched her pick up her panties from the floor and wondered when she’d ditched them, but he was too curious about her statement to ask. “What kind of precautions?”

  She tugged them on and smoothed her skirt. “Nothing permanent, though not by my choice. My doctor’s sure I’ll regret something permanent since I’m still so young.” She huffed and turned away. “Right. Can you see me with a family? That’d be hilarious. I’ve got the whole birth control thing covered, so stop stressing.”