Which suggested Brodie hadn’t told him to do it and had elected to act on his own. “You chose to do it yourself?”
“I had to. She wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
All the elements of her internal war came to a deafening halt. “She?”
“Like you said to me so many times, the CEO goes missing, someone notices. I called on an old friend who knows everything there is to know about running a multinational.”
Zara might not have the qualifications but she’d been doing fine at CI and had needed the distraction. Although she’d avoided going into Grant’s office so far. But Brodie had called someone who was going to take everything away from her?
“You called another woman?”
“To take the weight off your shoulders, yeah,” he said, dipping to slant his mouth on hers. “You’re Kindred, not a corporate flunky. I need you beside me.”
Answers were more important than amour. “She’s not Kindred?” Zara asked, ducking back from his next attempt at a kiss.
“Never made the final cut,” he said. That implied to Zara that there had been a time it was considered.
He tried to kiss her and she leaned away on a gasp as she recalled a conversation she’d once had with Art. “What is this woman’s name?”
“Mischa Corvi.”
“Cuckoo,” she exhaled the word. Instant heartache and jealousy didn’t last long, disappointment became anger, and she smacked his chest. “You called your ex-girlfriend?”
Examining her, he reeked of skepticism. “How the hell do you know about Meesh?”
Brodie didn’t hang onto her, Zara read surprise and anger in his expression before he let her go and retreated. He might doubt what she knew about the woman he’d called or maybe he was worried that she knew too much. Art or Tuck were the only ones who could’ve given her any details, it wasn’t like Brodie kept a secret diary she could’ve snooped in.
But dealing with his dubiousness was secondary to making her own point. “If I called my ex-boyfriend and invited him to stay with me while he bailed me out—”
“She won’t be staying with me,” he said. “You know the rules of the manor.”
Setting her weight on one leg, she folded her arms. Doubting his intentions, she found it a stretch that he could have a personal relationship with the woman and call her up in his time of need, but not secure her a place to sleep. “So you’ll stick your dick into her, but you won’t invite her over for dinner?”
Snide was a much more comfortable reaction for him. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think I will be sticking my dick in her this time.”
“You don’t think?” she said. The rumble of irrational anger let her express some of the emotion she hadn’t been able to vent in the last month. “If you’ve already figured everything out then why did you bother to come here? Is the spunk in your balls weighing you down? You need me to empty them?”
Without waiting for his retort, she spun to storm away from him, but he lunged forward to grab her upper arm and haul her back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
A torrent of rage made her breathe in deep. But before she screamed out at him, her desire for an argument vanished and she sagged. It wasn’t his fault that she felt like shit every minute of the day. It wasn’t his fault that she didn’t know who she was anymore. Punishing him because her complicated thoughts were muddling her would drive him away. If he abandoned her now, she would have nothing left to live for.
“My mind is all over the place,” she said, touching her temple with the heel of her hand. “And my feelings… I don’t know what I feel.” Swinging wildly one way then the other, she couldn’t get a handle on thinking straight.
“You don’t know what you feel?” he asked. Yanking her to him to grab her other arm, he forced her body against his. “I’ll tell you what you fucking feel. You’re my girl. You love me and I’m not letting you go fucking anywhere, hear?”
“B—”
“Don’t you fucking turn your back,” he growled. “Don’t you even think about it for a second. If you dare try to walk away, I’ll hunt you down and make sure it won’t happen a second time. I won’t let it.”
The ferocity of his anger was fueled by his love. She knew what it was to fear losing the object of love. Opening her hands on the chest he pinned her to, she moistened her lips but lost her breath when he whipped her around and tossed her down to the bed where she bounced.
“I’m gonna remind you where we started and where we’re going, and it’s damn well not separate ways.”
Moving in to the side of the bed, he widened his stance and folded his arms, glaring down at her as he waited for her to comply.
The strange thing was, Brodie’s commands gave her direction. She didn’t need to think or make decisions. All she had to do was focus on him. Without sitting up, she unbuttoned her shirt and opened it out, then spread her arms.
“Expose them,” he said, nodding at her chest.
Arching up, she finagled herself out of her shirt, then unclipped her bra. Brodie leaned over to snatch up her clothes. When he had them, he threw them in the direction of the door.
“Close your eyes,” he said and she let her eyelids grow heavy and slide together. “Don’t open them, stay quiet, stay still, and don’t move an inch.”
Not being able to see him was arousing, her own breathing sped up, but she tried to keep each breath shallow so she could attempt to decipher where he was and what he was doing.
Tensing, she struggled to relax, and curled her hands until she had fistfuls of the comforter beneath her body. The bed moved and his hot palm stroked its way from one breast to the other. The horizontal rubbing grew more insistent until he was squeezing and pinching each soft mound in turn.
Sucking her lips in over her teeth, she fought the urge to moan or move into his caress. Being still allowed her to feel the texture of his rough palm and the weight of his hand while not being able to see him, was almost like he was violating her in her sleep. But the idea that he might be overcome by the urge to fondle her when her body was naked beside him heightened the sensations of his entitlement.
Belonging to this man, loving him, of that she had no doubt. Telling him that she didn’t know what she felt wasn’t an indicator that she had doubts about their relationship as he had taken it to mean. It meant she didn’t know how she felt about Cuckoo coming into their lives to take over at CI. Instinctive emotion made her want to oust the woman who’d once been intimate with her man. But Zara didn’t want the burden of carrying CI alone. Brodie would never adopt Grant’s position and without a steering hand, the company would flounder.
The hand caressing her chest was joined by its partner, doubling his ability to tease her breasts. With no other contact between their bodies, she could only focus on this act while being unaware of where Brodie was or what he had planned for her next. If she had to guess, she’d say he was kneeling beside her. But what he was doing felt so good that location didn’t matter.
When he stopped groping, he skimmed his calloused palm down her belly and she rose into that caress, hoping to encourage him and to highlight her delight, but he used his strength to force her down and hold her still for at least half a minute.
After releasing his pressure on her abdomen, he unzipped her skirt and moved from the bed to pull it off with her underwear. He picked up each of her legs to separate them, then he parted her folds with two damp fingertips and began to rub her clit.
Damming a whimper in her throat, her toes pointed and her legs tensed because glittering arousal was sending her muscles into spasm. He hummed when he slid one long finger into her and her mouth opened to gasp in the oxygen she’d been denying herself.
“You just can’t do it,” he murmured and his address gave her implicit permission to release the moan that was lodged in her chest. Another escaped in reaction to the second finger he probed her with.
“I love it when you touch me,” she whispered. “I feel amazing. You kn
ow what I need.”
His being left hers, and she relaxed her eyelids enough to get a slit-high view of him grabbing his tee shirt behind his neck and pulling it off.
“Tonight, you need to feel, not think,” he said and dropped onto his knees. Lifting her knees to his shoulders, he leaned in to kiss the button between her thighs that he’d heated up. Writhing under his tongue, she stroked her body, experiencing the ticklish flesh beneath the upright hairs stimulated by Brodie’s attention.
Just before the rush of adrenaline that hailed the onset of orgasm, she gasped and rubbed her hands over his soft, short hair. It wasn’t yet long enough for her to take handfuls of it, but that didn’t stop her from trying when the gush of climax clenched each inch of her inside and out.
With strong hands on each of her inner thighs, he forced her legs wide. As he stood to unbuckle his jeans, she scrambled back to give him room to get on the bed with her.
He climbed aboard, pulling one leg his way so he could get between them. Focused on linking their bodies, he glanced up at the last second and reading his intent expression made the slippery slide of his shaft plundering her all the more potent.
“You won’t be going anywhere after this,” he said, grinding out the words as he pumped faster.
It felt like months since she’d smiled, but she did it as she propelled her fingernails into his pecs and marked their route up to his shoulders. “I love you, beau,” she said, cupping his face and scratching his shoulders to his upper arms until he growled at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s cute that you think you have a choice,” he said with a half-smile that widened hers.
Tightening the grip of her legs around his hips, she panted out the words, which were punctuated by his plunges.
“Yes! More! Harder!” Variations on each of these got louder and his grunts got closer together. Another shower of pleasure stretched her bones and tightened her muscles until none of her nerves or limbs seemed to connect.
Pushing so hard into her that her pelvis was crushed by his, Brodie swore once, then twice and kept on going until every drop of his gift was soaking into her cervix. Products of their agitated pulses and overworked sweat glands, their hot, sharp breaths mingled, but he stayed with her, on top of her.
“How do you feel now?” he asked, proud of his ability to claim her.
Leaving him would never have occurred to her, Brodie gave her reason. “My feelings for you were never in doubt,” she said, stroking his stubble. “I was never going anywhere.”
As her hand drifted from his face, he rolled off her to lie beside her. “You’re grieving, that’s why you feel so screwed up inside.”
Grieving, like Brodie had done after losing Art. She had grieved for the mentor, too, but the label reminded her of losing her mother and that was a memory she liked to ignore as much as she could. Without classifying the cause, she recognized that some of the difficulty she faced at CI was because she knew the truth of what had happened to Grant. People there asked about him every day, but she couldn’t tell the truth and had to keep smiling. Grant was gone and she still had questions. But that wasn’t the whole truth.
Her vision blurred and her chin fell toward her chest in time with the balls of moisture that rolled off her lashes. She didn’t want Brodie to see her crying, but it was too late. Brodie was with her, pulling her forward until she was in the grasp of his solid arms.
Brodie had lost his parents. His guardian. And now his brother. Since she’d come into his life, he’d lost person after person and yet he wasn’t the one falling apart. She was the one sobbing into his chest, clawing at him, clambering for the reassuring chill of oxygen in her lungs. But her breaths were so short they got only as far as her throat.
“I got you, baby,” he whispered, tightening his hold.
She hadn’t cried for Grant, no one had, and that in itself was sad. This wasn’t the first time she’d lost grip of her emotions in front of Brodie and despite his aversion to being too emotional himself, he always managed to comfort her in the cocoon of his arms. All she needed was his embrace. It could protect her from all kinds of pain, even the imaginary kind.
With reddened eyes and damp cheeks, she pushed back and blinked up at him. “You make everything better,” she murmured, brushing her thumbs over his lips when she squeezed her arms up between them.
“I don’t know how,” he said and his grimace made her smile. “When you’re upset, I want to shoot the shit out of something.”
“That’s how,” she said, rising to rub her cheek on his and kiss his lips. “You feel what I feel… in your own way.”
He searched her face and was as confused as she was certain, but that only made her kiss him again before yielding his hold and putting some distance between them. There were things she had to say and if she stayed in his arms, they’d either relax into sleep or divert their energy into more sex.
She shifted onto her side and stuffed a pillow under her head to support it. “I had to stay away,” she said, trying to explain why she hadn’t returned to her allies this week.
“You didn’t. Who told you to—”
“I’m of no use to you anymore, no use to the Kindred.” Her love for Brodie hadn’t been in question, but her place in his ranks was because she felt like a fraud. She’d done her piece and didn’t see how she could be of use to such a clan anymore. “Yes, you’re right. I probably am grieving Grant, and there’s some part of me that wonders why you’re not more affected by it. We didn’t get to say goodbye to him or to Art. There was no ceremony, you took him away, and put him straight into the ground.” She kept on going before he could respond to what he’d consider an insult. “But I’ve been worried about my place in the Kindred. I don’t have special skills like the rest of you do. Sutcliffe’s gone. Grant’s gone. Game Time is under our control, and now you’re bringing people in to take CI out from under me too.”
He was on his back with his hands resting on his abs. He just laid there scowling at the ceiling, and she hoped that he wasn’t going to ignore her insecurities.
“Do you want CI?” he asked, turning his head and loosening his expression. “If you want it, it’s yours. It didn’t occur to me that you might want to take over running things. You’d have to stay at the manor and if the Kindred are working overseas we’d be apart—”
“This isn’t about CI,” she said, covering the back of one of his hands with her palm. Physical contact anchored them both, the feel of his skin grounded her, and she regretted putting a wedge between them this week.
Brodie needed a reason, he needed to understand and with her offering no answers, he was forced to speculate. “It’s about us? Do you think I’m replacing you?”
If only it were that easy. “No,” she said, rubbing his hand. “This is about me figuring out who I am in this setup. Before we lost Grant, I could gather intel for the Kindred, I always had a purpose. I’m just feeling a bit useless and that’s not your fault. I just have to figure out how to adapt.”
Obviously, he still wasn’t satisfied. It was tough for her to explain what she didn’t fully understand herself. “Did you think I wanted you out of the way at CI?” he asked. “Or are you determined to be there because it makes you feel closer to Grant?”
She’d often stopped and stared at the CI walls wondering why she was there. Sad as it was, she knew the reason. “It’s comforting.”
“Comforting?”
Taking a deep breath, she explained what she knew. “When I feel lost or confused, I can lose myself in work. Having strict policies and procedures gives me structure that saves me from having to make decisions on my own when my head is screwed up like it is now.”
Brodie wasn’t panicked. He never panicked. Reassuring her was something he was getting better at and that he made the effort meant something to her. His patience endured longer with her than anyone else. “There will always be a place for you in the Kindred,” he said.
Except what he didn’t
know was that her insecurities lay there and they seeped back in as sought reassurance. “As more than just your whore?” she murmured, arching a brow. She didn’t mind that role, but it wouldn’t help on missions. It wasn’t his view that she questioned, it was her own. If she was useless to the group in any practical capacity then all she could be was Brodie’s mate. Leaving him wasn’t even close to an option, but she wasn’t sure if she could adapt to being homemaker rather than active participant in the Kindred. “I appreciate that you want me around and I promise I’m not even thinking about leaving you. I just have to figure things out.”
“Meesh will need your support for the transition to new management. You’re still vital to CI.”
Something she liked to be. He turned his hand to curl his fingers in hers and took her knuckles to his lips. Brodie didn’t have the same affinity for the McCormack family firm that she did. In fact, she’d guess he was a bit affronted that she got her solace there rather than with the Kindred. For her, it wasn’t about choosing sides. Kindred missions meant patience, long periods of waiting, especially in the case of Leatt when they had no solid leads thus no solid plans.
CI was a distraction. It wasn’t one that would last. She’d do what was needed to ensure the place didn’t go to ruin, but she couldn’t see herself buddying up to Brodie’s ex, Cuckoo and working under her in the same way Zara had worked under Grant.
One point needed to be asserted without equivocation though. “You should always consult me before calling an ex, just for future reference,” she said.
He put up no argument and picked up her hand to kiss each of her fingertips. “Noted and understood. Now, are you gonna tell me how you know about Mischa?”
Zara told the truth. “Art told me that you worked with her father,” she said. Amusement contorted his lips causing her to peer closer and scoot toward him some more. “You didn’t?”
Kissing her fingers, he was calm as he admitted, “I didn’t work for him, I worked him over.”
With a shallow shake of her head, she frowned. “I don’t—”
Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) Page 4