by Lora Leigh
“He raised her,” Logan said softly. “Years ago. That’s why she takes over the house while he’s gone. We don’t let anyone know she’s anything but a wild wolf, that way our enemies don’t target her. He found her, barely alive, her eyes not even open, when he first moved into the cabin. He kept her alive; hell, he even house-trained her. She’s wilder than hell, but when she walks in that door, if Crowe’s here, and conscious, she’s tame as a puppy.”
“Wish Crowe was conscious,” Skye sighed as she laid her head back on Logan’s chest. “We gotta problem.”
“Yeah?” He kissed her forehead gently.
“Yeah.”
“What is it?”
“I think I’m concussed.”
His chuckle was rough. “Ya think, babe?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I bet it’s bad for the baby too.”
That shut him the fuck up.
“It’s not been long enough.” He sounded strangled.
“A woman always knows.” She burrowed deeper in his chest. “We always know.”
“You can’t be pregnant.” His voice still sounded strangled. It also sounded about half panicked.
“Bet me.”
The sound of sirens and an approaching helicopter could be heard. “And Ivan the Terrible is arriving. Bet he tries to boss me. Bet me.”
“I don’t bet against a sure thing.” Yep, that was a strangled-sounding voice.
“Will you take up for me?”
“Not this time, baby,” he sighed, holding her closer. “Not this time. I think we both need to go. Just to be sure.”
“Just to be sure.”
She could hear shouts. The wolf was snarling, snapping, about to go ape shit over Crowe until he tried to lift his hands and he whispered something. She bounded from the room, but she didn’t run outside. Skye watched as the wolf went as fast up the stairs as her heavy body could go, disappeared through the rounded hall, and a few minutes later—hell, the sound of a door closing.
Crowe was struggling to sit up, his hands and feet bound, his gaze a little uncomprehending as he stared back at the scene spread out in his living room.
“I have a feeling this is going to be a hell of a story,” he muttered.
Then nothing else could have been heard. Ivan’s men were rushing the house, automatic weapons drawn as they began to secure the lower rooms, their eyes hard as Ivan swept into the room along with Rafer.
Skye watched as Ivan propped his hands on his hips, the scar on his face seeming to pulse, whiter than she’d ever seen it.
“Had to have all the fun yourself, did you, little girl?” He finally knelt beside her and Logan and gently, very, very gently, brushed back a mass of curls that had fallen over her shoulder.
“You know what, Ivan?” she said querulously when Logan didn’t protest.
“What is that, my little Skye?”
“I need a big brother.”
To that, Logan groaned as though in pain.
Ivan tipped his head to the side. “I was bargaining for husband, remember?”
“I would have shot you,” she told him somberly.
To that, he nodded rather seriously. “I would have expected that.”
Was Logan laughing at her? His shoulder was shaking a little, making her head worse.
“Make the ‘brother’ offer and I’ll take it,” she suggested.
He glanced at Logan, but whatever look they shared, she wasn’t lifting her head to decipher it. Finally, Ivan turned his gaze back to her, the blue of his eyes incredibly gentle and really rather brotherly.
“I have need of a troublemaking, bossy, gun-toting, calculating, manipulating little sister,” he stated with the utmost seriousness. “Would you like the position, Ms. O’Brien?”
“I believe I would, Mr. Resnova,” she said, hearing her voice grow weaker. “Yes, I believe I would.”
“And I will make an excellent uncle,” he declared smugly.
“How do you know?” Her head felt as though it were reeling.
“It’s too soon.” There was that strangled sound again.
Ivan shook his head before looking at Logan, his gaze concerned now. “We need to get her out of here now, my friend. Her pulse is weak and thready, her eyes too dilated, and she’s slurring.”
She didn’t hear anything after that. Logan shifted and she cried out in agony as pain exploded in her head again. She heard them cursing, Ivan was barking out orders, and then everything went blessedly black.
And she missed the single tear that ran down Ivan Resnova’s face as he touched the blood that smeared her neck from her rapidly swelling nose and the gash down her cheek.
But Logan didn’t miss it.
Just as he didn’t miss the complete, truly brotherly love that filled Resnova’s gaze.
It wasn’t sex he’d wanted from Skye, Logan guessed as the other man beat him to threatening to kill the men strapping her down on the flat board to transport her to the hospital. It hadn’t been a wife Ivan had needed. He had simply wanted to protect the delicate, too-caring, too-soft-for-her-job little FBI agent who had stolen Logan’s heart.
No, not just his heart.
She had stolen his soul.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The young woman a hunter had found in Riker’s Ravine was Jenny Perew.
Two days after the attack on Crowe, Logan, and Skye, they were finally released from the hospital, but still carrying several of Resnova’s shadows, whether they liked it or not, when Logan arrived at the sheriff’s office to give him a statement concerning his involvement with her.
Skye stood beside him as he stared at the pictures, his gaze heavy, bleak, as he saw the damage to the young woman.
“One night,” Logan stated harshly as Archer watched him sympathetically. “And it was months ago. I’m guessing six months. Has anyone checked on Ellen Mason?”
Skye and Logan both knew someone now had her in hiding so deep only God could find her. Resnova could be frighteningly efficient. Ellen had always wanted to see Greece, and Ivan just happened to have several contacts there.
“We can’t find her,” Archer sighed heavily as he shook his head. “I sent two deputies to her apartment, but it had been cleaned out. Completely.”
“Then she’s on the run?” Logan looked up, as though surprised.
“So it would appear.” Archer nodded. “I’m sure we’ll find her, though,” he sighed. “I just wish someone had managed to convince Miss Perew how serious you were of the danger when you called.”
As had he.
Rising to his feet, Logan put his arm around Skye and led her from the sheriff’s department. “We’re heading home.” He spoke into the earbud he wore, so tiny it was impossible to detect beneath the long cut of his hair.
“House is secure,” Resnova’s man reported. “My partner will remain inside until you arrive, then he’ll head to the basement.”
Privacy wasn’t going to be easy to maintain.
Returning to the house, Logan stepped inside with Skye and stared around the rooms silently as she leaned her head against his chest.
It wasn’t over by any means, and they were no closer to finding the Slasher now than he and his cousins had been when they first returned.
At least, they had some help now.
“I have a few days I could spend out of town,” he told her as he led her to the upstairs bedroom he’d arranged to have set up. “We could disappear for a while ourselves.”
“What’s a few days? And where would we go?”
He let his hand smooth over her rear as she moved ahead of him and he locked the door carefully behind him.
“Wherever you want to go, baby.”
Carefully, with the utmost gentleness, he undressed her then.
She was bruised in multiple areas, though thankfully the attacker hadn’t gone for her vulnerable stomach.
Where his baby lay.
Laying her back on the bed, Logan quickly tore his own clothes off, watc
hing as her knee lifted and bent, her little foot resting comfortably on the mattress. The position gave him the briefest glimpse of her lush, already wet pussy. The folds glistened in temptation, flushed, swollen for him, awaiting his touch.
Coming over her, he couldn’t help but kiss her first. Feeling her lips open to him, her tongue touch and taste his as he touched and tasted was much more erotic than it should have been.
It was perfect.
As his tongue penetrated those pretty lips, Logan settled between her thighs, felt her legs grip his hips, and the wet heat of her pussy as the folds parted for the thick, blunt head of his cock.
There would be few preliminaries.
The need flying through both of them was too hot, too hungry to allow them to go slow this time. Maybe later he’d be able to take her with all the time she deserved.
Maybe in fifty years or so his hunger for her would allow him a little control.
As he pressed inside her now, feeling the heated muscles of her pussy clamp on him, he knew he was lost.
*
Skye arched back, her eyes closing as pleasure slammed through her system and the stroking, hardened length of Logan’s cock began to fill her, to stretch the tender depths.
Sensitive nerve endings blazed to life as her vagina stretched to accommodate the full length and width of the shaft burying inside her. Pleasure screamed through each one, then throbbed through the rest of her body and sent out an imperative demand for release.
It had been too long since he had touched her.
Forty-eight hours in a hospital bed under observation hadn’t left much privacy for them. And Ivan had simply been an ass when it came to ensuring they had no privacy.
Now, as his lips slipped from hers and moved to the tender tips of her breasts, Skye cried out for him. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders as his hips began thrusting, sending his cock shuttling deep into the heated depths of her.
It was like having a warm, overly hard length of iron filling her. Stretching her. Pushing inside her with the slightest rasp and stroking her with so much hunger that within minutes she was crying out, arching, her release striking at her clit, her womb and rippling through her with destructive force.
Within seconds, Logan was following, his semen spurting inside her as her spasming pussy milked around the hard flesh. Logan buried his face in the crook of her neck, groaning her name, whispering his love as the heated pleasure seemed to rock through them for long moments after their release swept through them.
“I love you, Skye,” his voice, tortured, filled with the hopes and fears that loving her brought as he held her close, his body shuddering above her. “God help me, I love you.”
Her lips pressed tenderly to his hard, muscular shoulder.
“I love you,” she whispered. “Forever, Logan. No matter what. I’ll always love you.”
No matter what tomorrow might bring, no matter what the future held.
They loved. And they could only pray that when tomorrow came, that love would survive a murderer intent on destroying everything they held dear.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by
Lora Leigh
SINS series
MIDNIGHT SINS
DEADLY SINS
ELITE OPS series
LIVE WIRE
RENEGADE
BLACK JACK
HEAT SEEKER
MAVERICK
WILD CARD
SEALs trilogy
KILLER SECRETS
HIDDEN AGENDAS
DANGEROUS GAMES
FORBIDDEN PLEASURE
Anthologies
LEGALLY HOT
MEN OF DANGER
RESCUE ME
Praise for bestselling author Lora Leigh’s Elite Ops series
“Has everything a good book should have: suspense, murder, betrayal, mystery, and lots of sensuality. So rarely do you come across a book that you can lose yourself in and Midnight Sins is definitely one of them. Lora Leigh is a talented author with the ability to create magnificent characters and captivating plots.”
—Romance Junkies
RENEGADE
“Leigh delivers … erotic passion. This is a hot one for the bookshelf!”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
“Smoldering romance, suspense, and mystery. Add to that the cast of interesting characters—and their pasts—and you have the perfect recipe for one amazing novel.”
—Night Owl Romance (4.5 stars)
“Will have you breathless … gets your blood running hot with the physical attraction.”
—Romance Reviews Today
BLACK JACK
“Overflowing with escalating danger, while pent-up sexual cravings practically burst into flames.”
—Sensual Reads
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DEADLY SINS
Copyright © 2012 by Lora Leigh.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 978-0-312-38909-3
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / March 2012
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN 978-1-4299-5281-1