“You did no such thing.”
He laughed. She was nothing if not fiery, and God, he loved it. “Can you throw me a bone here, sweetheart? I’m trying to be romantic. The least I can do is take you to our bed and seduce you properly now that you’ve agreed to marry my ass.”
“Oh.” A provocative smile curved at the edges of Isabella’s mouth, and she looked up at him through the dark sweep of her lashes. “Well, I’m all for being seduced by you.” She proved it with a slow thrust of her hips that brought his cock to full attention. “But I kind of like this spot right here.”
“You want to stay here?” Kellan asked. He was all for spontaneity, but… “We’re in the middle of our living room.”
“Have you forgotten that the first time you ever seduced me was in this living room?”
They’d had incendiary, adrenaline-fueled sex standing up in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, hidden by nothing but shadows and streetlights. He’d have to be dead and buried to forget that. “No. And for the record, you seduced me that first time. That dress was a fucking menace.”
Isabella laughed, a throaty sound that he felt like a touch. “You may be right. But I love that memory of how we started, so please. Can we stay right here?”
“Yes,” Kellan said, loving the way her pupils flared at both his answer and the way he returned the favor of her thrust. But rather than leaning in to kiss her, or even reaching in to slide off either of their clothes, he pushed up from the floor to find his feet.
“That’s not quite what I had in mind.” Isabella’s voice was all sass, but he shook his head.
“Patience. I promise, this will be worth it.”
With quick motions, he dimmed the overhead lights until they were at their lowest setting, glowing like candlelight. Despite the fact that it was the end of May, he flipped the switch for the gas fireplace, the flames dancing to life with a soft whoosh. The golden light played on Isabella’s features, making her hair glint and her eyes shimmer as she turned to one side to watch him. The ring—which he’d known was perfect for her the second he’d seen it even though the words “emerald cut solitaire” and “platinum band with tapered setting” had never been in his wheelhouse—threw off glimmers and sparks, and he grabbed the thick, oversized throw blanket from the back of the chair beside the couch as he returned to the spot where Isabella lay stretched out on the plush throw rug.
He unfurled the heavy fleece in front of the fireplace. She didn’t waste any time relocating, and between the throw rug and the blanket, they had a pretty nice cushion against the hardwood floors. Propped on her side with one hand behind her ear, the firelight outlined the silhouette of her curves, making her simple T-shirt and jeans sexy as sin.
“You are so beautiful,” Kellan said, lying on his side to face her. A scant inch separated their bodies, the anticipation sending goose bumps over his skin even though he was far from chilled.
“You make me feel beautiful.”
From anyone else, the words might have seemed over the top. But Isabella delivered them with nothing more than undiluted honesty, and Kellan answered the only way he knew how. Knotting his fingers in the warm brown fall of her hair, he pulled her close, coaxing her lips open with his own. A noise drifted up from her throat, caught somewhere between a sigh and a moan, growing deeper as her tongue searched for his. Kellan kissed her deeply—he was never anything other than all-in with this woman—licking, giving, taking, until finally, he pulled back on a ragged exhale.
“You’re overdressed.” He ran a finger beneath the hem of her T-shirt, and fuck, even the friction of cotton on skin turned his cock to steel.
“So are you,” Isabella pointed out, brazenly reaching for the button on his jeans.
A dark, dirty urge shot through him, and he watched as his hand leaped out of its own volition to stop her progress. “No.”
Her brows kicked up, but Kellan held strong. “I’m going to strip you naked,” he said, letting his gaze do the job before lifting one corner of his mouth in a half-smirk. “Then I’m going to taste every part of you until you’re hot and wet and begging for more than just my mouth.” His tongue edged over his bottom lip, his smile picking up intensity at the sound of her hot little moan in reply. “And then I’m going to fuck you until you forget everything other than how good I feel inside of you.”
“Kellan.” Isabella’s whisper was all plea. Hooking his hands beneath her arms, he tugged her up to a seated position, pulling her T-shirt over her head in one sweeping movement as she kicked her way out of her shoes. Her lacy, wine-colored bra nearly smashed his resolve—really, the hint of her tawny brown nipples peeking through the fabric was just fucking unfair—and the matching panties he discovered upon removing her jeans sent a heavy breath past his lips.
“Jesus, baby. You’re perfect.”
A rare blush spread over her skin, and hell if that didn’t turn him on all the more. Kellan took a few seconds to drink in the sight of her kiss-swollen lips, the swell of her breasts, and the gorgeous flare of her lace-clad hips before lifting his T-shirt over his head and sliding between her knees. Although he felt a small pang of remorse that Isabella’s bra and panties had to go, he was nothing if not a man of his word. With only a few methodical moves, she was finally bare, and Kellan eased her back against the softness of the blanket.
“Mmm.” Her lips vibrated beneath his slow, lazy kiss. If she felt the least bit uncomfortable at her sheer nakedness when he was mostly dressed, she didn’t show it. In fact, the nuance seemed to make her that much hotter, her body beginning to rock under his weight in a rhythm that left nothing to the imagination. Kellan parted from her mouth, stringing a trail of wet, open-mouthed kisses on a path over her neck, then her shoulder, before capturing one brown, beaded nipple between his lips.
Isabella’s fingers found his back and dug in hard. “Ah,” she cried out, arching into the connection.
A provocative thrill uncurled low in his belly at having drawn such a wanton sound from her. “Don’t hold back, sweetheart. I want to hear how bad you want it.”
She didn’t. Kellan went from the barest brushes of his lips on her body to hard pulls of his lips and tongue, tasting and teasing and sucking her nipples until she ground her hips against his in hard, fast thrusts.
“Please. Please make me come,” Isabella murmured, her voice thick with need.
Kellan pulled back, her frustrated groan nearly wrecking him. But then he kissed his way lower, and her breath coalesced into a throaty sigh.
“You want to come?’ he asked, although the damp spot on his jeans and the way her hips rose to meet his mouth answered the question far before she could speak.
Isabella nodded, her hair sending the sweet scent of coconuts into the air. He kissed lower, over the expanse of her belly, before darting his tongue out to taste the top of one hip. Kellan’s restraint waned at the sight of her in the firelight, her bare sex slick with desire and her thighs parted in clear invitation to the very spot he wanted to be.
And he was powerless to resist.
“Then let me give you what you need. Let go and come for me, baby. I’ve got you.”
He lowered his mouth to her pussy, tasting her with a long, slow slide of his tongue. A guttural sound broke from her throat, and he smiled against her skin. She tasted musky and primal, her body trembling even as she begged him not to stop. Kellan forced himself not to rush, teasing her with deliberate flicks of his tongue over the seam of her body before closing his lips over the rigid knot of her clit.
Isabella’s hips jerked upward, her hands spearing into his hair as he palmed her luscious ass with both hands. “There. Oh God, there.”
She held him in place, pumping her sex against his mouth, and the taste and sounds of her arousal made him dare her to the edge just so he could push her over. He suckled her clit in firm pulls, adding in strokes of his tongue, then a thrust of his fingers inside her hot, wet pussy. Her inner muscles clamped down as she arced up even highe
r, and she murmured filthy encouragements in both Spanish and English that Kellan followed to the goddamn letter. He fucked her with his fingers, then his tongue, thrusting in and out until her body quickened beneath his touch.
“Yes. Kellan…”
The rest was lost on the tide of her orgasm. Her body pulsed against his fingers and mouth, his cock aching fiercely in jealousy as Isabella came undone on his tongue. He worked her through every wave, softening the contact between them with each touch and sliding back up her body to give her space to come down.
Which, as it turned out, didn’t take longer than a few breaths. “So, now do I get to have my way with you?” she asked, a sly smile hooking at the corners of her mouth.
Kellan’s belly tightened in anticipation, his balls a close second. “I suppose turnabout is fair play.”
“Good.” In less than a heartbeat, she’d hooked one leg around his waist just above his jeans and guided him firmly onto his back. Isabella shifted to straddle him, splitting her weight between her knees and his thighs as her fingers made quick work of the button fly on his jeans. He helped her as best he could, shoving at both the denim and his boxer briefs until both articles of clothing hit the floorboards a few feet away.
Isabella moved back over him, this time straddling his waist. Her fingers trailed across his skin, her eyes following suit. Her gaze hitched when she got to the jagged scar on his shoulder, but he refused to let the what-ifs of the night he’d received it ruin the moment now.
“Hey. Look at me,” Kellan said. Something in his voice must have told her he was serious, because she did what he asked without pause. “I’m right here. I’m never going to leave you, okay? Ever.”
She nodded slowly. “I know.” Leaning forward, Isabella pressed a kiss over his mouth. The gesture started out reverent, soft and sweet, but all too quickly, it deepened into something altogether sexy. Brash, greedy strokes of her tongue combined with the friction of her tightly beaded nipples over his chest. The feel of her, skin on skin, made his cock throb, the sensation turning to full-blown need as she broke from his lips to sit all the way up.
“Do you want to be here?” she asked, skating her fingers over her breasts, then her belly, before her left hand dipped between her legs. Her ring glittered in the ambient light, as perfect as the rest of her. She circled her forefinger over her clit, and a near-growl vibrated in the back of his throat.
“Isabella,” he warned, and she moved back, settling the cradle of her hips right against his cock. The friction, hot and wet, sent his breath through his teeth, and fuck—fuck—he wasn’t going to last much longer like this.
“I want you, too, Kellan.” Another glide, the head of his cock disappearing in her folds. “I want you forever, baby. Right here with me.”
With a firm push, she pressed back and down, letting him fill her in one seamless stroke. Kellan sent up some lightning-fast thanks for birth control pills, because Christ, he loved being inside Isabella without barriers. Her inner muscles squeezed him from every direction, the pressure so intense that it skirted the dark edge between pleasure and pain. She lifted up an inch or two, only to erase the space she’d created a heartbeat later, rising and releasing in a purposeful rhythm.
“God. You feel so good.” Her breathing grew heavier, along with her lids. She rolled her hips, leaving Kellan to watch as she fucked him in a slow grind. The sight of his cock disappearing into the slick tightness of her pussy made him harder still, and he gripped her hips, urging her not to stop.
“There. That’s it. Take what you need.”
“What about…you?” Isabella asked, trapping her bottom lip between her teeth without slowing her movements. “What do you need?”
Kellan levered up, aiming for that spot hidden deep inside that would make her scream.
“Just you, Isabella. Just you.”
The words seemed to loosen any inhibitions she had left. Throwing her head back, she began to move faster, rocking against him again and again. He drank in everything—the raw pleasure on her face, the heat of her skin as their bodies came together more forcefully now, the erotic sight of her fingers returning to her clit to bring her over the edge again. The squeeze of her sex triggered a tingle in his balls that grew like an avalanche, and he arched up off the blanket, filling her to the hilt as an explosive orgasm razored all the way up from the base of his spine. For a minute, Kellan couldn’t move, couldn’t think or breathe or even see. But Isabella was right there with him, sprawled over his body, inhaling as he exhaled, carefully extracting their bodies so she could snuggle in at his side, and that was when he knew.
He might be tough. He might have survived multiple tours in the Middle East, more blazes than he could count, and enough terrifying situations to fill a football stadium.
But without this woman, he couldn’t survive.
Chapter 3
Six and a half months later
“I cannot believe that in exactly seven days, you’ll be married.”
Isabella looked up from the clutter and chaos of her desk in the intelligence office to meet Addison’s dreamy gaze. Her friend-slash-fellow-detective had gone all-in with her girly side regarding her impending wedding, a fact that Isabella would have teased otherwise-tough Addison about relentlessly if not for the fact that the woman’s girly side involved not a small amount of help with the last-minute details. Isabella opened her mouth to reply, but before she could eke out so much as a syllable, her partner, Liam Hollister, threw down with his two cents from the desk next to hers.
“What I can’t believe is that in exactly nine days, you’ll be in Fiji on your honeymoon while the rest of us are stuck here, freezing our asses off and regretting all the eggnog we drank at your reception.”
“Actually,” interrupted their tech and surveillance guru, James Capelli, from his work station along the far wall of their open office space. “With your track record, what you’ll likely be regretting is all the liquor in the eggnog. Although, nutritionally speaking, that stuff is pretty much cardio-thoracic napalm.”
Hollister lifted one corner of his mouth in a smirk, and Isabella bit back a laugh at the memory of him doing the Electric Slide—complete with exaggerated hip swivels and thrusts, thank you very much—at last year’s Christmas celebration at the Crooked Angel. “For the record, I can’t be held entirely accountable for my shady past with adult Christmas beverages. How was I supposed to know Kennedy spikes that stuff with cognac, bourbon, and rum?”
“Damn. Sounds like I missed out.” That from Matteo Garza, who worked with the intelligence unit from time to time and was helping out with their case load while Isabella was on her honeymoon.
“Don’t worry,” Isabella said with a wry smile. “Kennedy’s already handed over her recipe to the catering staff for the wedding reception. I’m sure plenty of people will follow in Hollister’s footsteps as soon as Kellan and I tie the knot on Sunday.”
Addison chimed back in. “Fabulously boozy eggnog or not, I think it’s great that we get to replace our annual Christmas gathering with your wedding. It’s so romantic.”
Isabella paused, her throat growing tight. She didn’t want to admit that she and Kellan hadn’t chosen the date so much for the romance of a Christmas wedding, or even the fact that the holidays were a great time for their families and friends to gather together. No, she’d wanted a Christmas wedding for a far more bittersweet reason, one that only Kellan knew.
This Christmas would have been her cousin Marisol’s twenty-seventh birthday. And even though twelve years had passed since a deranged criminal had kidnapped her, raped her repeatedly, then strangled her and left her body in the basement of an apartment complex in downtown Remington, Isabella still missed the cousin that might as well have been her sister as if it had happened just yesterday.
Heart panging, Isabella sat up straighter against her creaky old desk chair. Breathe deep, girl. “Yeah, well, it’s not going to be romantic if I don’t make it to the church on time because I�
��m buried underneath all this paperwork. I still have a week’s worth of kicking crime’s ass before I get to walk down the aisle.”
She pinned the words with just enough humor to slide them by as a carefree joke, and not one that was entirely unfounded. Between the string of robberies they’d just kicked to the D.A. and two separate assault cases that had unfolded over the last twenty-four hours, the intelligence unit had definitely seen their share of pre-holiday action. Isabella turned back to the arrest report on the guy they’d nailed for the robberies—you had to be a special sort of scumbag to steal from church donation boxes the week before Christmas—and re-channeled her focus. There were nasty criminals out there, people she could put away in the here-and-now. She owed it to the people they’d hurt to get justice for those crimes. To keep everyone else protected. Safe.
God, I miss you, Mari.
“Moreno?” Addison’s partner, Shawn Maxwell, poked his shaved head into the intelligence unit’s main work space from the hallway leading to their sergeant’s office. “You got a second? Sinclair wants to see you.”
With his nearly black eyes, tough-as-spikes demeanor, and gruff attitude, Maxwell was never easy to read. But the unspoken tension knotting up both his request and his expression? Yeah, it wasn’t lost on Isabella.
“Sure,” she said, not surprised when Maxwell tilted his head toward Sinclair’s office in an unspoken signal of right now. Four sets of brows lifted just slightly as she stood, but she ignored the eyeball code being slung around by her co-workers. Sinclair could want to talk to her about one of nearly a billion things, and anyway, while she might have had a tendency to go rogue and fracture the rules in the past, last year she’d learned all too well to trust her team and her boss. This was probably just some routine thing that had to do with an old case or her being out for two weeks after the wedding.
Maxwell led the way to the threshold of Sinclair’s office, shocking her when he closed the door behind her rather than following her inside.
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