by Marie Harte
“Mmm.” She spread her legs wider and watched him watching her.
The naked fascination on his face captivated her. He seemed so concentrated on her. No man had ever given her so much loving attention, and it was loving. She could feel his affection in every soft touch, in the care he gave to satisfy her first.
He moved slowly, at first slightly stretching her, then pushing farther in, while giving her body a chance to accommodate him.
He played with her for a good while, letting her ease around him. But he didn’t stop there. While he stretched her with first one finger then two, he tormented her pussy with his mouth.
“God, I want to fuck you so hard,” he groaned and looked up, his eyes bright with desire. “This is going to be unforgettable. Hell, everything with you is.”
She should have felt scared or at least nervous about her first time. But Rafe didn’t let her feel anything but aroused. He brought her close to orgasm again with that talented mouth while he readied her for him.
“I want you inside me,” she whispered.
“Slowly. I don’t want to hurt you.” He rose to his knees and straddled her.
His cock was wet, his slit moist with his own desire. He reached across the bed into his bedside drawer. Quickly ripping open a packet, he rolled a condom over his thick cock. Then he withdrew a tube of lubricant and used it to make himself nice and slick.
When done, he shoved her legs wider, tilted her pelvis and positioned himself for penetration.
“I need to see your face when I fuck you, to watch you take me inside for the first time. You’ll feel tight, stuffed with my cock. All mine.”
He pushed at her anus slowly, and at first he felt good. But as he slipped past her sphincter, the burn jolted her.
“Easy,” he whispered and stilled, letting her feel him. “Just push out and I’ll slide inside you a lot easier.”
She tried, but it was a slow process, even with his preparation. And then, suddenly, he was in.
He looked to be in pain, his face tight, his eyes closed. “Oh fuck, I want to move. I need to come inside you. Baby, you feel so damned good.”
Growing excited that she’d brought him to such a state, she teased him by stroking his thighs.
He trembled and gently withdrew from her until only the tip of him remained inside her. The pain wasn’t as bad as she’d expected.
Even when he slowly thrust back inside, she didn’t hurt so much. Because he moved with care, and he’d lubed up so much beforehand, she didn’t have as much a problem taking him as she’d thought she might.
Rafe stared into her eyes as he took her, and the pressure began to build. She’d never thought to make love to man this way, especially not face to face, but she felt so open, so exposed as she lay under him, accepting him.
He gradually increased his pace. His thrusts grew harder, more forceful. “Touch yourself. Bring yourself off while I come inside you,” he rasped.
She didn’t need much. The sexuality inherent in her lover must have rubbed off on her, because she’d never been able to find satisfaction so easily with a partner. It didn’t take her but a few circles of her finger to come.
She tightened around him, taken with the foreign fullness in her ass, and moaned his name as her climax obliterated all thought.
“Fuck, yes. Yes, Storm.” He groaned as he surged into her once more and stilled. He shuddered and clenched her hips, his face a picture of carnal bliss.
Minutes or hours later, he withdrew and left for the bathroom. He returned without the condom, carrying a damp towel that he used to clean her. While he took care of her, he kissed her tenderly, a strange emotion clouding his gaze.
“Storm, baby, you are so damn giving. I’ve never… You felt so good. So damn perfect.”
She ran her fingers over his cheek and smiled, lost in his eyes, in the feelings she imagined existed just for her. “Better than my blowjob?” she teased.
He tossed the washcloth to the floor and chuckled before he kissed her again. “I don’t know about that. We’ll have to experiment some more. I’ll definitely need to compare.” He lay beside her and pulled her close. “I didn’t hurt you too much, did I?”
She sighed. Handsome, intelligent, psychic, an amazing lover…and a considerate one? Oh man, I am so in love with this guy. “No, you didn’t. Did I hurt you?”
“Yeah. Not coming in you right away nearly killed me. But I love eating your sweet pussy,” he whispered and nipped her earlobe. “Almost as much as I like coming inside you. Too bad that condom was in the way. I love filling you up, baby.”
She shivered, caught in a web of lust and affection.
He drew the covers over them. “Here. Between the covers and me, you’ll keep warm.”
She nodded and prayed her feelings for Rafe didn’t tear her apart. They’d paired together out of necessity, initially to solve a case. But their forced intimacy had flourished into a deeper connection, a physical—and, she believed—emotional one as well. Part of her wanted badly to tell him how she felt. But the sane part of her held off.
They had a bad guy to put away. Her love could wait long enough for Rafe to catch up. She hoped.
Chapter Eleven
Rafe slept like a baby and woke the next morning still basking in the afterglow of such incredible lovemaking. Much as he wanted to label his time with Storm as an amazing fuck, he couldn’t. Every time with her, he’d made love. The softness, the tenderness he felt when he touched her couldn’t be ignored. Just being near Storm shot his adrenaline sky high. His instincts clamored for him to keep her.
Forever.
He should have been focused on finding what that bastard Glass had to do with their troubles, but he had a hard time thinking beyond Storm. Not good. Not good at all. She was a distraction he didn’t want to resist.
She murmured something in her sleep and turned to him, still in his arms. Had he ever waken up holding a woman? Not even with Lydia had he felt this complete. And suddenly the burden of his past was too heavy to carry alone.
“I was almost married once, but Lydia wasn’t right,” he whispered.
Storm relaxed, but he didn’t think she’d awakened. Still, the words flowed, a release he’d needed for a long time, though he hadn’t realized it until now.
“I met Lydia at a time when I needed family. A connection to someone, something more than a job. But you know, now that I think about it, I don’t think I wanted to marry her, not really. I thought I was in love, but mostly I wanted someone in my life.”
Storm’s breathing remained steady and even.
“When I found out she was sleeping with my lieutenant, I was more angry than hurt. I felt like a dupe, and I was pissed at myself for not having seen the truth right there in front of me. Then, to have that same asshole set me up and nearly get me killed made me a victim. I didn’t like that.”
“I wouldn’t either,” she said in a soft voice.
He kissed the top of her head, oddly gratified she’d heard him. “It all worked out in the end. My lieutenant got canned. He and Lydia married after I landed a plum job with Westlake. Last I heard, she was cheating on him too. And here I am, in bed with a woman who can’t work her mental mumbo jumbo on me, no matter how hard she tries.” If she only knew. She crooks that finger and I’m practically drooling with the need to please her. “But I still don’t get you. You’re beautiful, sexy, intelligent. Sexy,” he repeated and felt the curve of her smile against his chest. “Why aren’t you with Hank or any of the other idiots camped out on your doorstep? I mean, I’d think a guy who does whatever you want him to do would be the perfect man.”
“You could handle a woman never disagreeing with you? Would you really want to live with a woman who never surprised you or stimulated you?”
“No, you have a point.” He paused, wondering what the hell Storm wanted out of a man. “So you’re looking for a challenge, is that it?”
She sighed. “Yes and no. I don’t need thrills to keep my a
ttention. Some good sex, a trustworthy friend and a guy who can say no to me.”
He rolled her over onto her back, lost in the light gray eyes that glinted with some deeper emotion he wanted like hell to call love. “I think you’ve got a few things wrong. One, you should hold out for great sex, not good sex. Incredible sex, like the kind we share. Two, you need more than a friend. You need a lover, a protector, a keeper. And three, no.”
He plastered his mouth to hers.
“No.”
He kissed her again.
“No.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung.
They didn’t speak again for hours.
Thorne Buchanan lingered in the doorway of Jennifer Barne’s office. “That’s right. I’ll be staying at the Royale. Look for my name. I look forward to seeing you, beautiful.”
He turned, bumped into J.D., and stuck out his hand. “Oh, excuse me. I’m new here. Sean York.”
J.D. shook his hand. “Nice to meet you. Sorry, I don’t have time to talk. Jennifer, if I could have a moment?”
Thorne left the logistics floor and took the elevator to the lobby. Once there, he walked down the block and took his rental car to their appointed meeting place—the parking lot of a large retail store.
J.D. met him a half hour later. He parked right next to him, got out and entered Thorne’s car looking grim.
“I got it,” Thorne said with a tired nod. “The minute I mentioned Richard Glass, it all came pouring out of her mind. She’s in deep. She thinks she’s helping him on some stupid undercover mission, that his rumored death was just a cover Jurek put out to protect his agent. I also saw an image of the guy. It’s him. Your dead guy is alive.”
J.D. drew a PDA from his jacket pocket. “Shit. I just knew you were going to say that.” A blue spark shot from his fingertip into the device.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Equipment issues, never mind.”
J.D. texted a message and waited. After a ping, he swore again. “Jurek and Max want us to proceed as planned.”
“Hell.”
J.D. sighed. “You got that right.”
Richard stared at himself in the mirror, watching his dark eyes flare with grief. He hadn’t wanted to do this yet, but he only had so much time before Jurek’s men closed in on him. Everything had to be perfect or the plan wouldn’t succeed. Already he was having second thoughts about Jennifer. She had eased his body but she continued to worry his mind. If only…
A crow outside shattered his attention, cawing at him as if to say get on with it. He left his car, the slam of the door overly loud in the empty quiet.
The cemetery was deserted and the night sky dark, the moon obscured by passing clouds. He walked to Richard Glass’s gravestone and raised the pickaxe over his shoulder. He brought it down with such force that the ground gave considerably under him. For hours he attacked the earth, striking the hard ground and shoveling the dirt out of the way.
Consumed with rage and pain, he worked like an automaton. As he did, he fanned his hatred to a slow burn. He dug and thought about those who would pay dearly for their transgressions.
Much later, he found what he’d come for. After stowing his tools, he returned to take what belonged to him. When he had everything settled, he drove out of the cemetery toward his home.
“His home, our home. We are one, in life and in death, aren’t we, brother?” He glanced up and grinned. His brother’s corpse smiled back at him from the rearview mirror.
Once he’d reached his destination high in the mountains of northern Georgia, Richard did what he’d promised. He laid the corpse of his brother upon a great wooden platform. He didn’t move when the first spark of flame blazed into an all-consuming fire. As in life, his death was magnificent. No matter that a bullet had long ago stopped his heart. This death, this great burning conqueror that ate at decaying flesh and bone, had been expected and even anticipated.
Richard watched the orange flames pierce the black darkness just before dawn. As children, he and his brother had shared everything. Every waking moment had been a dream of togetherness. Two bodies, one mind. The experiences one twin felt were automatically processed by the other, making their limited entities a combined, infinite one.
“Unto glorious death, brother. But not until what was stolen from us in life has been avenged.” A solemn tear fell down Richard’s dirt-streaked face. Though a year had passed, it seemed like only yesterday when the wrenching emptiness had torn through his soul. One minute he’d been sleeping, and the next he’d been jarred awake by bloody images and the solemn echo of his heart.
Richard’s delirious excitement in finally replacing Rafe Savage as the top agent at Westlake Enterprises had come to a grinding halt. Jurek’s prodigy had always been a thorn in his side, as great a pain as the one delivered by Storm Buchanan, the only woman to ever reject him.
His brother had nearly ended Savage’s life. Except, instead of killing the bastard in that dirty little alley, his brother had bled to death, killed by Savage’s gun. And now Savage had the woman Richard had longed for when alive. The injustice of it all burned like acid in his gut.
He waited and watched as the fire cleansed his brother’s body of its impurities. “Soon, I will finish our task,” he murmured. He continued to stare into the flames, searching for the peace he’d lost with his twin’s passing.
They’d shared everything. Sentences, thoughts, their very lives. Through school and college, the pair had enjoyed one persona. While one of them engaged with life outside their home, the other remained secreted, protected. Their guardian had always been too drunk to realize he had two, and not one, nephew living with him in his rundown house outside of Clayton.
The golden boy at school, Richard had earned accolades and awards, scholarships and notice as the best and brightest. Men wanted to be him, women wanted to fuck him.
And then Jurek had come along and truly appreciated his hidden gift, a psychic tendency to avert trouble. When Jurek had offered him a job at his elite firm, the twins had been overjoyed.
Richard Glass had been the sole agent, but in actuality both twins completed every assignment and shared every tribute. Sometimes they even worked simultaneously to bring down the vilest of criminals. But no matter what they—he, Richard reminded himself—did, it was never enough. Rafe Savage continued to outshine them.
Jurek liked Savage best. Jurek Westlake, the father he’d never had, preferred a dumb cop to the genius of twin minds so connected they could act as one person. It didn’t matter that Jurek didn’t know the two existed, his love should have been there regardless.
Instead, Savage had taken most of Jurek’s time and energy. It grew worse when Savage’s stupid friends followed suit, sucking up to Jurek, demanding his attention with first this then that. That miserable J.D. Morgan, with his amateur computer hacking, thought he had what it took to become a field agent. And Hunter Greye, an animal with little regard for rules and regulations, started watching him a little too closely.
Those problems he might have handled, but Storm Buchanan’s rejection had cut to the quick. Richard had experienced an immediate obsession with the woman, despite the fact she worked for that little nothing investigation agency. The fucking bitch had the nerve to say no. To him.
As the funeral pyre dimmed, Richard blinked up at the dawning sun. Not far away sat the deserted cabin he’d inherited when his uncle died. Set high up in the mountains on twenty acres of land, away from prying eyes, the cabin afforded the privacy he needed to reconnect with his brother. He felt some small peace that part of him was now at rest.
“Don’t worry, brother,” he said to the smoldering husk atop the ebbing flames. “Once Savage and the woman are dead, I’ll come to you. Then we’ll never be apart again.”
Storm felt warm every time she thought about making love with Rafe. Even as they sat with the others in the conference room at Buchanan Investigations, she couldn’t help dwelling on her lover.<
br />
When in private, he continued to make references to places he wanted to take her, things they’d do next week or next month. She didn’t know if he realized the impact of what he’d said, but she couldn’t ignore that he implied a future for the two of them. What scared her was how much she didn’t want them to end.
“Jennifer Barnes, our logistics coordinator, is behind most of our problems,” Jurek was saying. “Thorne found our mole. And thanks to J.D., we now know Richard Glass had a twin.”
Rafe leaned forward, his eyes wide. “The bastard had a twin? How did we miss that?”
Jurek shook his head. “The Glass brothers’ birth records were either entered incorrectly or purposely falsified. I’m still not sure how J.D. found it, but he located documentation that Mary Shannon Glass gave birth to identical twins thirty-seven years ago—to Richard and Jonathan Glass. Oddly enough, there’s only ever been record of Richard Glass, no mention of Jonathan throughout their growing years and schooling.”
“Creepy and psychotic. Great,” Storm murmured, remembering how much Jonathan Dasher had disturbed her.
“How is Jennifer involved, exactly?” Rafe asked.
Thorne answered. “That woman has some major issues. One, you never gave her the time of day. She has a real thing for Agent Savage. Two, she wanted a promotion someone named Katy received.”
“She is totally out of her league with Katy,” J.D. muttered. “Jennifer’s got a screw loose. Promotion? Katy’s been with us longer and does a hell of a better job.”
“Yeah, and supposedly Katy’s a good friend of yours,” Thorne added. “She thinks you’re biased. Jennifer’s also into whatever Richard wants to do to her.” He coughed to cover what Storm suspected was discomfort. “She sleeps with him and tells him stuff, thinking he’s still a legitimate agent.”