Saved by a Bear (Legends of Black Salmon Falls Book 2)

by Lauren Lively

  Only when he was sheathed inside of me fully did he gasp. We kissed with fire and my body exploded in sensation as I began to rock my hips, moving up and down on him. Luca's hands were in my hair, pulling it gently. He pulled my head back and kissed my neck as my pace atop him began to quicken just a bit. I slid myself up and down his thick shaft, reveling in the sensation of having him fill me up so completely.

  He cupped my breasts with his hands, leaning forward as he sucked and licked my nipples. I shivered as he traced the tip of his tongue around my breasts, teasing them, biting them. Luca slid his hands down to my hips and began to move me up and down on him. He groaned as he thrust his hips upward to meet me, driving himself even deeper inside of me, making me cry out.

  We moved in a steady rhythm, moaning and calling each other's names as I rode him. The first time we'd slept together, the feeling had been more raw. Animalistic. It was sex fueled by desire and need. But this time was different. It was slower, more tender. It was every bit as passionate and intense – it was simply more intimate.

  We looked deeply into each other's eyes as I moved on top of him, relishing the feeling of having him so deep within me. The pressure built up low in the warm, wet center of me and I knew I wasn't going to last much longer.

  He looked at me with a small smirk playing upon his lips. “Let go,” he said softly. “Lose control, Olivia.”

  As if he needed to tell me. I rocked myself up and down on his thick, beautiful shaft harder. Digging my nails into his shoulders, I thrust myself down on him one final time. The dam of my control crumbled and I was flooded by sensation. My body shook and trembled and I cried out, my breathing ragged and my heart hammering within my breast. Luca kept thrusting his hips, driving himself inside of me as I came, making my orgasm last even longer.

  My skin felt like electrical currents were still surging through it, but my orgasm finally subsided. I looked into Luca's eyes and kissed him. He picked me up like I weighed nothing and laid me back down on the couch. Climbing on top of me, he kissed me again as he thrust himself back inside of me.

  I cried out and clung to him, my nails digging into his back as he began to move inside of me. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he pumped his hips, thrusting his cock deep within me. He kissed me, making me feel every last shred of fire and passion he had for me burning inside of him. I moaned and it very nearly took my breath away.

  Our eyes were locked on each other as he continued to move in a slow, steady, deliberate rhythm inside of me. Luca drove himself into me again and again, making me cry out, call his name. I bit my bottom lip, wishing that this feeling he inspired within me could last forever. He plunged his cock deep into the velvety folds within me with genuine passion and desire, the look in his eyes deeper than simple lust. I saw something more within them and it quickened my pulse once more.

  Luca kissed my neck as his rhythm and pace began to increase. His breathing grew shallower and his moaning became low and urgent – I knew he was getting close. I arched my back and thrust myself up to meet him as he drove himself into me. Squeezing his shaft with the muscles inside of me, I made Luca groan wildly, his eyes nearly rolling into the back of his head.

  “You're going to be the death of me,” he gasped.

  “But what a way to go,” I teased.

  “What a way, indeed,” he said and smiled.

  Luca began to slow his strokes, driving into me deeper and with more force. Like a wave building, I felt my orgasm begin to crest once more. And with a very hard thrust, that wave broke against the shoreline inside of me and I cried out Luca's name.

  My body shuddered and shook violently, my screams becoming more like stutters and grunts. My orgasm was powerful – more powerful than the first one, and it left me reeling and lightheaded.

  Luca thrust himself into me one final time before he lost control. He groaned loudly and his body tensed as I felt his cock begin to pulse inside of me. A moment later, I felt the warm, wet, sticky flood of his come as he filled me up with his seed.

  Slowly, our breathing began to return to normal and the trembling in both our bodies subsided. Luca collapsed beside me on the couch and I curled my body up against his, planting a line of soft kisses upon his chest. He stroked my hair and kissed me softly on the forehead.

  We looked into each other's eyes as we basked in the afterglow, each of us smiling at the other. The connection we'd felt that first night we met had only grown stronger, more intense. And the look we shared confirmed that we both felt it. Words weren't even necessary – we just knew.

  I laid my head back down on his chest and he went back to stroking my hair. Content. Happy. Satisfied. It wasn't long after that though, as the afterglow finally began to fade, that exhaustion pulled the warm, dark blanket of sleep over both of us.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Luca

  Sex with Olivia was amazing. Breathtaking. Incredible. And any other number of exclamations I could think of. She made me feel things emotionally that I never thought myself capable of. In the short time I'd known her, I'd come to care for her a great deal – and I was sure she felt the same way. And as I looked at her, I couldn't help but feel that tide of warm emotions washing over me again and again.

  But as we sat in Asher's office, I knew that it wasn't the right time to indulge in those feelings. We'd have plenty of time to explore them later. In that moment, we had to plan a battle and a rescue mission. If we were successful and everything went according to plan, it would give us some breathing room. Some freedom. We could stop looking over our shoulders and simply live our lives.

  If we failed though – I didn't even want to think about it because it would be bad for us all. Really, really bad.

  “Okay, so we think we've come up with a plan that will work,” Asher said. “But it's going to take some serious coordination and nerves of steel.”

  “What do you have?” I asked.

  “Olivia's idea about the bus was a stroke of genius,” he said. “And that's one prong of our attack. We're going to have to hijack the bus en route. That's going to get our strike team into the building.”

  “That's one prong?” Olivia asked. “What's the second prong?”

  “That's where you come in,” Asher said. “I had our tech team work up a little something.”

  He held up a thumb drive and handed it to Olivia. She looked at it like it was a bomb ready to go off.

  “On that drive is a program that will disable internal security within the building. Or at least, it will give our tech guys remote access allowing them to disable it,” he said. “They'll be able to remotely hack into the locks on all of the doors – including those in the holding cells you saw – and everything will go offline. In fact, once you give them remote access to the system, they'll make sure that every security measure will fail. Permanently.”

  I nodded. “Shut down their security defenses. I like it,” I said.

  “But it's going to take Olivia getting into their server room and plugging it into their system,” he said. “Which, obviously carries some risks.”

  “I'm in,” she said. “I'll get it done.”

  I looked over at her, concerned. “Are you sure?” I asked. “If you're caught –”

  “If I'm caught, I'll suffer the same fate as you all if you're caught,” she said. “I'm no better than any of you. I have just as much skin in this game as all of you, meaning I'm going to make sure I'm risking just as much as you are.”

  I looked at her a moment longer and then nodded. She was feisty and courageous. I could really, really love this woman.

  “Basically, it's going to go down like this,” Asher said, “our strike teams are going to be on the bus. The bus goes into the facility and just like the Trojan Horse, we come pouring out of it and take the fight to John and his army. They won't see it coming, will never expect it, and maybe, that'll give us the advantage.”

  “After that,” Mariana said, “once Olivia has the security measures down, reinfo
rcements will be coming in along with the demo team. They'll get the place wired to blow, so once the fight inside the building is over and we have the prisoners safely out, we'll pull the trigger and boom – no more military facility in our backyard.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” I said. “Solid.”

  “When do we go?” Olivia asked.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Asher said. “You said you are on duty?”

  She nodded. “I'm on duty at six a.m.”

  Asher nodded. “I've had our scouts clocking the buses the last couple of days and we can hit the one we've been eyeballing at six-thirty,” he said. “That puts us to the facility at seven. Which means, you've got thirty minutes to find the server room and plug that thumb drive in.”

  Olivia nodded. “Consider it done.”

  “Excellent,” Asher said.

  A moment of silence stretched out in the room as we all considered the enormity – and the danger – of the task before us.

  “Well, I don't know about you guys,” Mariana said, “but I'm feeling really good about this. In fact, I'm pretty excited about it all. This should be a blast.”

  I looked over at her. “We really need to talk about your definition of fun.”

  “Luca, Mariana,” Asher said. “I need you both to pick ten fighters to join the strike team on the bus. Have them report to me at five tomorrow morning. I'll go over the plans with them then.”

  We both nodded and nobody spoke again for several long moments. What really, was there left to say? The mission was dangerous and there was no way of knowing if any of us would be coming back out again.

  Despite my admonishing Mariana though, I began to feel a small tingle of excitement in my belly. It was going to be exciting, if nothing else.

  “Okay then,” Asher finally said. “I guess that's it. If you have any questions, call me right away. Otherwise, take the rest of the night and have a little fun. Enjoy yourselves. I'll see you and your teams at five tomorrow morning.”

  Take the rest of the night to have a little fun and enjoy ourselves. The translation, of course, was, have some fun because this could be your last night on the planet. I looked over at Olivia and hoped against all hope that it wasn't.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Why are you here?” I asked Mariana. “Why didn't you just send your team?”

  “Sexist pig,” she said. “I have as much at stake in this fight as you.”

  “That's not what I meant,” I replied. “I just meant that things could get rough. Dangerous. I – I don't want anything to happen to you.”

  “Awwww, that's sweet, Luca,” she said. “But you're still a sexist pig. I'm the Chief of the N'gasso. My people need to see a real leader – that's what you and Asher both told me, right? Well, a real leader has to be willing to do those things they ask of their people. I'm asking my people to go into a fight – a fight I have to be willing to get into as well.”

  I nodded, impressed as hell with her. She'd grown so much, so quickly. She really did seem like she was becoming the leader Asher had hoped she'd be when he helped save her clan.

  We stood hidden in the treeline at the edge of the woods next to the road – the road our bus would be coming down any moment. In the middle of the road, we'd staged an accident. Two cars had been banged up and left there, a couple of “victims” lying on the pavement.

  There was a nervous, yet excited tension in the air all around us. It wasn't often we were all called into battle like this, and knowing what the stakes were made it all the more nerve-wracking and exciting all at the same time.

  “Target inbound,” came the voice over our comms. “Three minutes out.”

  “Listen up, people,” Asher's voice sounded next over the comms, “I want this bloodless. Non-lethal force only. Use the flash-bangs and gas in the buses. We will round them up as they come out of the bus, sedate them, use zip-ties, and hide them here in the treeline. We'll call in their location later. Just to be clear, lethal force is not authorized. Period.”

  There was no doubt the announcement disappointed some of our team. A lot of the guys wanted some payback against those abducting our people and experimenting on them. They grumbled, but ultimately, I knew they'd obey Asher. He was the undisputed King of the clans and his word was law. If somebody broke his law, they'd pay the price for it.

  “One minute,” came the voice over the comms.

  In the distance, I could hear the rumble of the bus’s engine as it powered toward us. A minute later, it came around the bend and slowed down quickly as it approached the scene of the “wreck.” The bus stopped and the door opened, the driver running out to check on the victims lying in the road – the victims being Asher and one of his Q'lapa fighters.

  As Asher and his man subdued the driver, I watched as two of Mariana's guys who'd been hiding on the other side of the road came around the bus. They tossed in two flash-bangs and two smoke grenades before quickly moving to the side and waited. A moment later, two muffled explosions sounded in the bus – a noise that was quickly followed by the sound of screaming and coughing as smoke filled the cabin of the bus.

  Men and women in plain black uniforms came pouring out of the bus, coughing, hacking, and rubbing at their eyes. Mariana and I led our team out of the treeline and quickly subdued everybody. It was only a matter of moments before we had all of them undressed and in zip-cuffs, their near naked bodies gagged and hidden among the trees along the side of the road.

  It had gone like clockwork and with a near military precision. I was almost in shock that the first part of our plan had gone off without a hitch. In my own personal experience, that was almost unheard of. I only hoped it was an omen of things to come – that hopefully, the rest of our mission would go just as smoothly.

  Asher and his guy got the two wrecked cars off the road, pushing them off onto the shoulder. After that, they jogged over to where the rest of us stood.

  “Okay,” Asher said. “Great job, everybody. Now, grab a uniform, get dressed, and get on that bus. We're on a time schedule, so we have to get moving.”

  Most of the uniforms didn't fit quite right – we were, after all, large, bulky men and the people wearing the uniforms we'd taken were thin and not necessarily in the best of shape. The bus we'd hit had been the tech team, rather than one of the buses that carried the fighters. Given that Asher wanted to eliminate casualties, he thought taking a bus of people not trained to fight would be best. But, we had to make it fit as best we could.

  Once we'd finished dressing and I'd gotten our team loaded onto the bus, Mariana and I stood outside the door with Asher and the driver – who looked both angry and terrified at the same time.

  “I was just telling Darren here that we need him to drive us into the facility,” Asher said. “He doesn't seem inclined to do so.”

  “That so?” I asked.

  “Go to hell,” the man named Darren replied.

  I leaned close to the man until our noses were practically touching. “We need to get into that facility and you're going to drive this bus into it for us. You don't, you die. It's that simple.”

  “I know what you are,” he hissed. “You're monsters. And I'm not about to –”

  “Boys, boys, boys,” Mariana said, stepping forward. “Allow me?”

  I looked from the driver to Mariana and shrugged, taking a step back. Asher stood to the side, a bemused grin on his face. She stepped closer to the man who was watching her with wide eyes. Mariana, a flirty smile upon her lips, ran a hand through his hair.

  “Do I look like a monster?” she pouted.

  He hesitated for a moment and then shook his head. “Well, no, not at the moment, but –”

  “That's good, Darren,” she said. “Because normally, I'm not. And I'm not going to kill you. Nobody is going to kill you. I won't let them.”

  A small sigh of relief escaped his lips and although his eyes darted nervously between Asher and I, he seemed to relax before Mariana. Which was his first mistake. With a
flick of her wrist, the dagger she'd had concealed up her sleeve appeared in her hand and she pressed it hard against the man's crotch. Asher and I winced in sympathy.

  “I won't kill you,' Mariana cooed. “But if you don't do what we say, I will cut your little prick off and feed it to my dogs. You'll have to live out your hopefully very long life without a pecker, Darren. And you really don't want to live like that, do you?”

  His eyes were wide and he looked between Asher and I again. We simply shrugged. The choice was his to make. His lips trembling, he finally looked into Mariana's eyes and nodded.

  “Good boy,” she said. “Very good boy.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Olivia

  I checked my watch and saw that it was six-thirty-five. If all was going according to plan, Luca and his team had the bus – or were in the act of taking it. Which meant I had twenty-five minutes to get the drive installed that would bring down the electronic defense systems.

  The first thing I needed to do was find out where the server farm in the facility was. I thought about plugging it into one of the terminals, but there was no guarantee it would work the same way. Asher had been very specific about getting it into the servers.

  I walked over to what passed as the employee lounge in the corner of the building. It was a few tables, some cabinets stocked with goodies, and a counter that housed a coffee pot and a cooler with soft drinks and water.

  It was there that I found my way into the server farm.

  I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down at a table across from a man with thinning hair, thick glasses, pasty white skin, and a little bit of extra padding around the middle. He was a walking cliché for lonely nerds, and although part of me felt bad for what I was about to do, I knew I had no choice and it served the greater good.