by Nikki Duncan
“Are you kidding? Messenger of the Greek gods? God of travelers.”
“God of commerce, thieves and sports. I know who he is.” He knew very well who Hermes was. “What’s with the T-shirts and the lapel pin?”
“I’m Greek. My brothers and I have this joke where every birthday and Christmas we see who can come up with the most outrageous shirt dealing with the gods.” She tugged at the hem of the one she currently wore. The move pulled it tighter around her breasts. “This isn’t even one of the bold ones.”
“I take it Hermes is your favorite.”
She shrugged and skimmed her gaze over him. “Are we gonna have sex?”
He swallowed. His dick jerked. “Excuse me?”
“You’re here. You’re hot. I’m in the mood.” As easily as that she was offering him the completion he hadn’t taken earlier.
“Really? What are you up to?” His skin hummed and his gut trembled at the idea of joining her in body and mind. Of driving her to orgasm with his hands on her.
“Men aren’t the only ones capable of no-strings-attached sex.” Ava shrugged and traced her fingers along her collarbone, sending him a come-and-get-it look. “I have a feeling you’ll be good.”
His brain stalled, as if a reset switch had been hit and he wasn’t booted back up. He wanted to figure out her secrets, and sleeping with her was a guaranteed way to slip behind her barriers, but he couldn’t justify it. He couldn’t view her as simply a means to an end. She appealed to him on the most basic level.
“I’ll show you good.” He stepped forward, tangling his gaze with hers. “I’ll take you to heights you can’t even have imagined.”
She scanned his body again, hesitating at the erection pressing against his zipper before moving her gaze up his body. “I have a pretty vivid imagination.”
“Not vivid enough.” He took a few more steps. She backed into the room. Her throat bounced. The pulse at her temple thundered.
Crossing the threshold of the room he’d seen in her mind, he barricaded himself mentally deep inside the walls surrounding his ability. He didn’t want to influence her feelings. He wanted to know the desire she felt was her own for him.
He would see how far she could go before her mind sought his again. He would test firsthand the connection between lovers.
Ava ran her hand over his arm. A fire bolt of arousal surged through him, radiating from the spots she touched. His skin shrank, thirsting. He forced a swallow past his dry throat.
He stepped closer, bent slightly and swept her into his arms.
Her breathing stalled. Her pupils flared as she gazed up at him.
No woman had ever aroused him with a look or a simple touch. He somehow knew the same was true for her, just as he knew no man had ever attempted to sweep her off her feet.
She wasn’t other women. He wasn’t other men.
He carried her across the large room, set her on her feet beside the bed and knelt before her. Intensity thickened the air as he flattened his hands against her legs before edging them up to grab the waist of her exercise shorts.
He’d planned on seducing her. He hadn’t counted on the wanton part of her making it so easy. She surprised him, just as she’d surprised herself a short while earlier.
He didn’t talk or rush or touch her beyond the gentle pressure of his hands brushing her legs as he lowered the shorts.
He knelt where she’d laid earlier, wriggling and pleasuring herself while thinking about him. Some of her body’s warmth soaked into his legs and spread through him. His cock jerked. His palms burned with the itch to hurry.
Ava stepped free of the shorts and brushed her inner thigh along his arm before putting her foot back on the floor. For a brief moment lasting no longer than a long, warm breath—his long, warm breath—her crotch was close to his mouth. He could have swiped at her, tasted her.
He dropped the first of his mind barriers to feel her.
Aroused and wet, her legs trembled with the power to wait for whatever he had planned next. Her control wavered. Her desires charged free. She’d expected him to taste her. She’d wanted it.
He stood, trailing his fingertips over her skin and grabbing the hem of her T-shirt on the way. Aware that his eyes were pulsing an electric blue, curious to see how she would react, he locked his gaze with hers until the shirt easing over her head broke the contact.
He glanced at the shirt and shook his head before tossing it to the carpet. He didn’t need an admission or a peek into her mind to know she’d worn her Hermes gear to goad him with something she shouldn’t know. At the moment, he didn’t care what she knew or how.
Nude and vulnerable and aroused to the point of trembling, Ava swayed before him. Her nipples stood erect, begging for his mouth. Her boobs bounced lightly with her nervous shifting. The few treasures she’d hidden beneath the bikini scraps were now his for viewing. For touching.
His vision brightened as a shield slipped for a second. A groan rumbled up from deep in his chest, but his touch remained as soft as a whispered caress.
Her tummy rippled with her breaths. She closed her legs and shifted a little. He nudged his knee between her legs to stop her from rubbing herself. He ached. She ached. He’d waited. She could wait.
“You’re still dressed.” She cleared the huskiness from her throat and reached for his shirt. One quick shake of his head halted her.
She dropped her hands to her sides, fidgeting, needing something to touch.
He eased his shirt over his head and dropped it on top of hers. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth as she looked at him.
She’d touched his body that morning. An exploration in the buoyancy of the water would’ve been…spectacular. Even there he preferred more privacy. And a bed.
That they’d been snuck up on when his shields had been lowered had been a reminder that no place was entirely secure. This was a better bet though.
He slipped the button of the shorts loose and lowered the zipper. His shoulder muscles protested the tension he’d been holding in as he pushed the cotton to the floor.
Ava hadn’t shown up with plans to hurt him, but more supremely than a pane of sliver-thin glass dropped from three stories high shattered, his belief that he’d been safe erupted. Janus and Eston White weren’t his only dangers.
Lean and sculpted, she stepped forward. H shook his head and pointed to the bed. “Lie down.”
She swallowed and did as he commanded. The mattress dipped lightly beneath her weight as she moved onto the bed and settled against the pillows. Intent, he scanned her body until she shifted and her hands fluttered at her sides beneath the weighty instinct to cover herself.
“I have condoms. In the drawer.” Her hand fluttered above the bed. “You never know when you’ll have… Not that I… I’m not some kind of…”
He raised a brow and smiled. Sexual freedom didn’t make her undesirable. Hell, her experience meant he didn’t have to deal with bashfulness.
The fun part was watching her unravel more from his silence than his touches. When he did finally begin exploring her, touching her and tasting her, she would be defenseless.
“What are you going to do?”
Yes. The mystery would nag at her. She didn’t need a blindfold to heighten her awareness of him. Her mind was taking her there.
He reached for the drawer, watching her, pulled it open and reached inside. Finding more than condoms, he grinned. It was his turn to play with toys.
Her stomach collapsed and froze as she sucked in a nervous breath. Fear and anticipation and excitement thrilled through him. Her fear and anticipation and excitement.
When he lifted the condom, she breathed a sigh of relief, but a touch of disappointment whispered over him.
She’d been worried he would find her toy, but she’d wanted him to also. He grinned and moved to join her on the bed.
He knelt on his knees at her side and imprisoned her with his gaze while he sheathed himself. He wouldn’t rush even now,
but neither would he take unnecessary risks.
With a finger flick her toy sprang to life. A light buzz incited their temperatures. Her passion rose in his blood as surely as his own. Her hips thrust upward, begging him to hurry. He brushed his vibrating hand over her boobs.
Her eyes snapped to his. Ferocious excitement gleamed in the tan depths. She closed her eyes, but they immediately opened and returned back to his. Self-preservation instinct urged him to close his eyes before he lost control over his shields and revealed more than was safe.
He was captivated. Mesmerized.
H compelled her with a look to obey him. He ratcheted up her desire to a fevered pitch by running her toy down an erogenous path to the destination she’d shot straight for.
He skimmed over the top of her clit, not quite going there for her. Her legs fell open. She writhed.
Moisture ran from her body soaking the bed. She dug her head into the pillows. Her hips bucked upward, rotating, seeking him out. His cock surged forward, burning to answer her beckoning call.
He ran his vibrating hand down a leg to her knee and then back up the inside of her thigh before skating across her quivering center to repeat the path on the other leg.
Over and over, with his eyes locked steadily on her, with his mind battling for control over his abilities, he took her higher and higher until her body bucked. Her lids drifted closed and the chorded lines of her neck stood out with her exertion to hold herself back, but an almost strangled moan vibrated free.
He knelt between her spread legs. When he finally rubbed the nubby over her sex, he slid his fingers through her dripping arousal. He licked his lips, eager to taste her.
His pupils flared. The blue shroud over his vision intensified and electrified in an unnatural blue. He battled the slipping barriers back into place, reclaiming control and minimizing the blue glow in his eyes.
Finally, with her body begging and weeping and clamoring for completion, he slid up the length of her and thrust home.
“Ahhh!” Her body quaked. She grabbed his shoulders, digging her nails into his skin as her inner muscles pulsed seeking a fast relief.
Hell no. Not happening.
He ignored the gripping tension at the base of his spine, embraced the tightening of his balls and awarded her two quick, hard thrusts that hammered her g-spot. She cried out again and simpered when he slowed his pace.
His scalp tingled and his vision blurred. His body thrummed with the predatory need to conquer. To take the offered completion. Not yet.
“Please let me come.” She groaned and raised her hips, thrusting when he slid away gently. Desperation thickened her voice and echoed through him. “Please.”
He retreated, almost to the point of withdrawal. He grunted and drove home.
She arched off the bed, her body going flush with his. A pleasured scream ripped through her. She contracted her muscles and milked him until he threw his head back and moaned with his own release.
Hermes.
His name, the name he’d long ago given up, whispered through his mind.
Chapter Eight
H stared at the back of Ava’s head while she sprawled across his chest. Tenderly he pulled her heavy hair away from her marred temple. Their breathing had long ago settled and his shields were solidly in place, but his mind replayed the repercussions of their rapturous connections. He’d allowed her too close, and whatever physical threat she posed, the biggest was to his emotional security.
She made him wonder.
She made him yearn.
She made him desire the things he’d accepted as dead.
She awakened long-forgotten dreams.
Ava shifted against him, her silken body sliding against his. She traced invisible patterns across his chest. He bit his lip and calculated how long they’d lain quietly. Seduction had been his plan, but he’d miscalculated the depth of her impact on him. She’d nearly pulled him into an abyss of impossibilities he’d battled his way out of once before already.
He needed to put distance between them, but cuddling a little longer would prevent their lovemaking—damn if he could call it anything different—from turning into a badda-boom-gotta-vroom bedroom hit and run.
“You confuse me.” Satiation slurred her voice.
“How so?”
“Different ways.” She brushed a patch of his chest hair down, her touch reawakening his desire. “Why do you only go by H or Dr. H?”
Pained regrets gripped his lungs in a vice grip. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the necessity of drawing air into his lungs. Little by little they expanded and forced the agony to loosen its grasp. Each time he’d allowed himself to think back, to draw forth the lightness he’d felt with his parents, the more desolate he’d felt. His heart trembled, a fearful shell of the little boy he’d been. The shadows of his memories darkened.
“My name reminds me of pain and loss.”
She shifted and propped her chin on his chest to look at him. “Will you tell me if I guess?”
“I don’t like games.” He searched her gaze, but found only sincerity and curiosity. Still, she could be laying a trap.
“So the H does stand for something.”
He almost lowered his shields to read her, but this close and without the excitement of arousal humming through her body, she would realize the shifting colors of his eyes wasn’t a trick of her mind. No. This would be handled as a man, not an empath.
“Come on. Let me try to guess.” She wiggled against him. He gripped her shoulders and stopped her. “Dr. H is a little formal. Even H is formal for certain situations.”
“You won’t guess.” At least he hoped not.
She grinned, her perfect teeth flashing behind her tantalizing lips. “Sounds like you’re worried I might.”
“No.” Hell, yes. “Not worried.” Disturbed. Profoundly disturbed.
“Interesting.” She rolled away and scooted off the bed.
“There are far more interesting things to do in bed than play twenty questions.” He pulled the covers up to his waist and leaned against the headboard. The entire situation was still more intimate than he’d have chosen for this trail of conversation.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I hardly know you.” She grabbed her T-shirt from the floor and slipped it on. Hermes mocked him. Her unspoken knowledge mocked him. “But I know that sly tone of voice shouldn’t be trusted.”
“Why not? This isn’t like a pool game where you can be hustled.” Ava flipped her hair over her shoulder.
“And yet, it feels remarkably so.” He’d been hustled from the beginning, but had been too blinded by figuring out her abilities and pinpointing why she intrigued him so intently. “Fine. You get three questions.”
She jerked back, clearly surprised he’d conceded. “What’s the catch?”
The lady got points for being sharp. “I get three questions.”
“About what?”
He smiled.
She narrowed her eyes and considered his proposition. If she agreed he could ask her anything. He had so many mysteries surrounding her begging to be solved he struggled for the best starting place.
“Deal.”
“Ladies first.” He didn’t want his name out there. Not even between them.
The implications she might actually know who he was… He hoped like hell that anything she knew ended with his name. There were more deadly things for her to learn about him.
“Are you a real doctor, or is that a nickname?”
“Technically two questions, but yes. The diplomas on my wall are real.” Money and politics were powerful tools. Thanks to Eston White’s string pulling he’d been granted credit for his life studies. Who better than the test subject to become an expert on empathic studies?
H watched her, cataloguing her every move and gesture. “Did you know Channing personally?”
She lifted her chin and jutted it out a fraction. She paused for so long he was positive she’d lie. “No.”
Not the answer he’d expected. Whatever he’d picked up from her mind about Channing and the contacts hadn’t come from an association with Channing.
She folded her legs behind her and pulled at the hem of her shirt. It barely stretched past the curve of her hips.
“Do you have any family?”
That was hitting close to home, but unless she went farther on her next round, or had a magic mirror showing the past, he could be safe. And whether or not he had family wouldn’t get her closer to guessing his name or his reasons for dropping it. “People define family differently, but yes.”
“Hmm.” She rubbed her fingers along her jaw and chin.
“Tell me, Ava, your role in my lab… Are you really there as a regulatory auditor?” He’d almost asked about sex, but passing up the chance for real truths… He couldn’t do it.
“If I didn’t know better I would think you saw a conspiracy everywhere.”
Ava’s gaze scanned his body. Her tongue wetted her lips, teasing him.
With her penchant for blatant and raw approaches, she expected him to be easily distracted. She came close. “Answer the question, or the game’s over.”
She shifted, hunching her shoulders forward a little defensively. “Yes. I was sent in as an auditor.”
“Interesting choice of words.” An expert evasion.
“If you say so. I have one more question before guessing your name.” Her mouth widened in that flirty smile capable of setting his stomach fluttering. “Do you have a caduceus?”
Clever woman. “As in the recognizable symbol of medicine? No. I don’t own one.” She knew. She knew his name and was using the symbols of the Greek god to taunt him.
Her chosen questions were carefully selected to confirm he was who she thought him to be. But why? Who was she? Why did she need confirmation of his identity? If General Scott or Janus had sent her in there would be no mystery on her part.
An icy chill sliced through him, reminiscent of the one he’d felt during the shooting.
“It’s your turn, H.”
“Yeah.”
She was going for the shock factor with him, hoping to catch him off balance. It wouldn’t work. She’d miscalculated, as had he in regards to her. It was a mistake he would not repeat.