Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3)

by Scarlett Finn

With his fist still locked in her hair, he forced his mouth onto hers. Just a few seconds ago, he’d been sleeping, and now he was alert and firing her to be ready for anything. Tugging one nipple, he stroked her abdomen and over her clit to press his digits into her opening.

  “You gonna wake me up this way every day, plaything?” he asked, sucking on her lip and neck, near to the spot he’d already branded as his. “Get that hot, hungry mouth wrapped around my cock to suck me awake?”

  If that was what he wanted, then that was what he would get. Grabbing her inner thigh, he pressed it to the bed and let go of her hair to grab his dick. Watching their joining, he forced himself into her, pushing in and sliding back until she’d expanded to fit around him. The wicked twist of his smile flashed to her, and she crunched up to drive her nails into the pec she’d been kissing minutes before.

  Brodie grabbed her by the throat and thrust her down, pinning her there while he fucked her body with the cock she’d worshipped awake.

  “Beau—” His other hand landed on her mouth, and she couldn’t speak a word, all of her concentration went to breathing through her nose because his weight was concentrated on two vital parts of her body.

  “I love fucking this body. I love playing with it, watching how you heat up the faster I go. You love taking my cock. You couldn’t keep your damned dirty hands off. Soon as you get close to my dick, you can’t keep your mouth closed or your legs shut. You let me fuck you any way I want to.”

  Whimpering behind his silencing hand, she wriggled and bucked. He was so hard and long inside her and was moving so fast that her insides were burning in carnal friction. Her body clenched, orgasm tore through her, and took over her senses with concentrated pleasure. She couldn’t relax, just clenched again at the second spasm that impeded his speed.

  “Relax,” he demanded, wearing a frown. “Relax that pussy. Take my cock like a good little plaything.” But she was struggling to control her own body. The weight of orgasm was forcing her body to close around his. “Feels like I’m ripping you in two, it’s so damn tight in here.” He grit his teeth and when he lifted his head, it felt like he grew, enlarging the passage he was fucking. One whispered curse became a hiss, then he fired into her all the spunk he cooked up just for her.

  Letting her go, he flopped to his back beside her and exhaled. “You took that one hard, baby,” he said, resting an arm over her abdomen so his hand came to rest over her core.

  Taking his fingers from between her thighs, she squeezed them together and purred in the shocks of pleasure still thrumming through her. Bending his elbow, she brought his hand to her mouth. “Sex with you is incredible,” she panted. “You turn me on so much.” Her whole body was still hot, trembling, and conscious of every touch of his flesh and the fabric of the bed she lay on.

  Rolling over, she thought nothing of lying on top of him, and she closed her eyes. “I’m obsessed with your pussy, my dick can’t get enough.”

  “You’ll sleep better now,” she said, because she could already feel the change in his breathing. “Can I sleep with you?”

  “That’s a crazy question, this is your bed and I’m your guy, where else would you sleep?”

  She laughed and twisted onto her front so her breasts were squashed into him and her lips were on his sternum. “I meant, did you need me to do anything? It’s the middle of the day. You’re my chief, too, so if there are any orders…?”

  “Orders,” he said, bending enough to grab her ass so he could shunt her higher. He licked her lip, and she opened for the invasion of his tongue. Parting her legs over his hips, she squirmed against his pelvis. “How about you tie yourself to this here bed so you’re always available when my dick needs a distraction?”

  The implication that he might have wanted her here when he first got into bed was an ego boost. “After this mission, I might just do that.”

  “After this mission, I’m taking you somewhere hot and relaxing.”

  “You wouldn’t be happy just lounging around on a beach all day. We could go sightseeing in cities or hiking somewhere if you like.”

  “Hiking?” he asked. “You’re into that?”

  His definition of hiking and hers were probably two different things. “I have endurance, so as long as we start off with something easy, I should be OK. No Everest on my first day.”

  “OK,” he said, gathering up her hair to hold it in a bunch at the back of her neck.

  Considering the possibilities for where they could go and what they might get up to on this global trip they’d discussed before, she realized it wouldn’t always feature five-star living. “I’ve never been camping, but I should be fine with it. It’s just sleeping outside, isn’t it? You’re not going to make me eat a snake or anything?”

  “Only the one you can’t chew,” he said, elevating his hips to grind his dick on her. She laughed and stroked his face. “You’ve never been camping? I have a lot of work to do with you.”

  To get her up to speed with his life experiences would take decades, but she wouldn’t shy from the challenge. “Art taught you well.”

  “He did,” Brodie said and kissed her again.

  This time was supposed to be for sleeping, for recuperating for what would come next. She had his attention and given that they were alone, she decided to take the opportunity. “What would you do if you walked in and saw another guy having sex with me?”

  Tightening his hold on her hair, he drew them apart enough that he could frown at her. The question was unexpected, but that didn’t stop him from answering it. “I’d cut off his dick and make him eat it. I’d cut off his hands and skin him alive while he was screaming his apologies, then I’d slit his throat to shut the bastard up. Why do you ask?”

  His matter of fact words were concise, like he’d given this some thought, or it was something he’d done before. She mustered one word. “Wow.”

  “If you were getting fucked by another guy it would be rape, and any man who dares hurt my pretty baby doesn’t get a quick, easy out.”

  Such graphic words, yet her heart sang and she had to kiss him again. He was right, of course, that she would never screw around on him. Brodie would be the last man to have the pleasure of her body. The question had been a reference to what Cuckoo had told her about Caine, and she’d thought it was a way to ease him into finding out that she knew about his past.

  “I love you so much,” she said and dug her teeth into his jaw as she scratched her nails into him.

  “I’d never let anyone hurt you. You don’t have to be afraid of being hurt by—”

  “That’s not why I brought it up.”

  “So why did you bring it up? Did someone proposition you? Was it that fucking lawyer from CI? He’s been slobbering to get into your panties for months. I’ll give him the scare of his life, we’ll get Tuck to hack his address and I’ll—”

  “No. I have to tell you something,” she said, running her hands up over his jaw to tempt his eyes to hers. “And I think it’s going to shock the shit out of you… I’m not quite sure how to say it.”

  “Just say it,” he said, and the stiff suspicion in his eyes made her wonder if he suspected her of infidelity, and that was something she wanted to dispel quickly.

  “It’s about Caine.”

  “Fuck! Did that bastard touch you?” Thrusting her body away from his, he leapt out of bed before she got her hair out of her eyes. “I promise, baby. I’ll make the fucker suffer, I should’ve—”

  Leaping to her knees, she clambered over the bed and caught his shoulders before he could walk away from her. “He’s not obsessed with you,” she said, searching the confusion in Brodie’s features. “It’s not him who’s been stalking you. I mean it is, but…”

  His scrunched expression betrayed that he wasn’t following her, and she didn’t blame him. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “It’s Cuckoo, Corvi, Mischa, whatever you want to call her. She’s the one… she’s been directing him, since the beginning i
t’s been her.” He still didn’t seem to get it. “She told me, today in Grant’s office. She told me how she used Caine to get to you and about how he got his scar after he found you and her in bed together. She told me that after you dumped her and took off with Art, she went to Caine. She makes him report your every move to her. She told him to come to me in Purdy’s. She told him to call Grant to insinuate himself into our lives. She’s the one who made him bring me to Sutcliffe’s compound, everything he’s done… he did it for her.”

  Her chest moved with the heaving weight of every panting breath. Brodie gave nothing away, just stood there absorbing her words for so long that she thought he might burst. For years, he’d accused Caine of being a nuisance and had ignored him because Caine had always been on his tail, even since the early years of their association when Caine idolized him.

  “She’s in love with you,” Zara said, moving her palm to his cheek. “The reason she came to CI was to rekindle your romance. All this time… she’s been in love with you and using Caine as a stenographer. He sends her reports, pictures, anything she wants. In return, he gets sex… or at least sexual contact, and a pat on the head. He’s not obsessed with you. He’s obsessed with her.”

  This was a lot to take in and she knew that, so she gave him some quiet time. Reading Brodie took work, and she used past experience with him to interpret what he was feeling. But there was no frame of reference this time. No way to judge his reactions to what she was saying because she’d taken what he assumed was a given fact and disproved it in one rush of conversation.

  If Art was here, she could’ve taken the information to him, or they could’ve delivered it together to give Brodie some kind of support. At the moment, it was just her and she didn’t know what he needed.

  “I’m sorry, beau,” she said, soothing him with a caress. “I’m sorry that I—”

  He turned around so fast that she wobbled and fell to sit on her feet to prevent herself from tumbling off the bed. His hand rose to rub the nape of his neck, and she gave him some more time to process. She didn’t know what was more shocking to him, that Caine wasn’t the enemy they thought he was or that the ex-girlfriend he’d thought was a part of his past had never given up hope of reviving their romance.

  When he did speak, his words were quiet but deliberate. “I brought her here because I thought it would force Caine’s hand. I thought he’d be angry. Thought he’d come for me and then I’d have the opportunity to end him.”

  But eliminating Caine wouldn’t necessarily change anything. Cuckoo had plenty of friends and could manipulate men with her body, she’d asserted that before. Just one look at her would tell any rational person that Cuckoo had the goods to support her flirtations. Getting Caine out of the way would be getting rid of the devil they knew. Cuckoo’s next errand boy may not be as restrained as Caine had been.

  “What are you thinking?” Zara asked when silence stood between them for more than a minute.

  “That I have to get rid of the disease not the symptom,” he said and followed it with an exhale. “Art always told me Cuckoo was crazy.” Moving in a half circle as he said the more upbeat words, he fixated on her. “How the hell did you get her to tell you that?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t go in with a game plan or anything. She asked me about Game Time. I told her I wouldn’t tell her anything and I could see that she was pissed. I guessed that she’d asked you and that you hadn’t told her about it either. It got to her that she couldn’t manipulate you into giving her what she wanted.”

  “She’s good at that.”

  “With other guys, sure. But you recognized her tricks, or you weren’t interested in taking advantage of her incentive. Whatever it was, it pissed her off, and it only got worse when I called it right. She told me you two were meant to be, that I was temporary and that she’d have you again. Then she went into the whole history lesson. She plans on asking you to kill Caine just as soon as you’re back together, by the way.”

  He took a step toward the bed. “You didn’t—”

  “Of course I didn’t believe her,” Zara said and stretched her arms toward him.

  He came to her but sat on the bed instead of walking into her arms. Moving upward, he propped himself on the headboard and pulled her over between his thighs to hold her. Brodie wasn’t going to go into a speech about how this changed things because she wasn’t sure that it did. Caine had still been a bug in his ass for long enough that Brodie probably wanted rid of him even if he was innocent. Except now that they understood the extraneous circumstances, she felt a bit sorry for Caine.

  Warmed by the embrace of the man she loved, she was pleased he had accepted the news without flipping out. It was a shock but didn’t change their lives. Caine would keep on following them and reporting for as long as Cuckoo needed him or until someone killed him.

  Cuckoo was a problem, and Brodie had said he needed to take care of the disease. But the CEO was a woman Brodie had once been fond of. Zara didn’t know if sharing a bed with Raven exempted a person from facing Maverick’s wrath.

  Caine had caused trouble in their lives, and she had no plans to become best friends with him now that she knew he was being manipulated. But Zara did feel awful for him, she pitied him, for being so in love with a crazy bitch who was using him for her own ends. He’d lost years of his life to her cause, and he had to believe there would be some reward for him at the end.

  Maybe it was just habit now, he’d been doing it for so long that he didn’t know any other way to be. Still, it was sad and spoke volumes about the truth of Cuckoo’s character. Art had warned Zara about Cuckoo’s psychopathic tendencies, but her pathology ran much deeper than the enjoyment of watching Raven work. Cuckoo could torture a person for years, use and manipulate them, without any remorse. She was a piece of work.

  The warmth of her love’s flesh was a comfort, and this piece of news made her appreciate the honesty of their relationship even more. “She’s been using him for years. She spoke about him like he was nothing, like he was a piece of shit. He has all this love for her, and yet she’s plotting to have him killed if her plan comes together.”

  “She’s making him think it’s about revenge,” he said. Caressing her upper body, he brought his knees up to settle them on her, providing a reassuring cocoon. “That by chasing me around all over and harassing you that they’re punishing me for what I did, for ripping their relationship apart.”

  “What they had wasn’t a relationship,” she said, tipping her chin up though she couldn’t see his face. “A relationship requires respect and compromise. She told me that the reason she hooked up with him in the first place was because she had heard he knew you. Caine probably doesn’t even know it.”

  “He started out crazy,” Brodie said, wrapping both of his arms around her shoulders. “He was a regular pro at stalking me even before she came into the equation.”

  When they were all younger and stupider. Chances were that Caine’s obsession with the sniper would’ve worn off when he found something else to worship. The trouble was, the next obsession in his life was Cuckoo, who commanded him to stalk the man he’d previously revered.

  “But that was harmless, he was a pain, but he didn’t mean to hurt you. He just wanted to be in the club. She sought him out because he knew how to track you down. She didn’t go back to him for love, she went back to manipulate him.”

  “Everybody has to be good at something.”

  Slanting her body, she tried to peek up at him. “You better not be making excuses for her.”

  To pacify, he ran a hand up and down her arm. “Not a chance,” he said, kissing her head. “We’ll have to take CI out from under her. She’s too close now, she could do real damage if—”

  “Julian is tracking down Winter Chill.” Brodie’s breathless silence made her hurry to explain. “He appeared in Purdy’s while I was waiting for Kahlil. He doesn’t know he’s tracking it down, but he knows Grant’s accountant. He’ll hav
e the records sent to me later. It might not turn anything up, but getting into the personal paperwork might be the way forward. Did you find out anything by following Kahlil?”

  She ran her fingernails up and down his forearms that were crossed over her upper chest. “Turns out that beneath that tanned exterior, his blood runs Russian.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said, pausing. “He went to meet Sikorski?”

  “Yep,” Brodie said. “He’s a real sick bastard, maybe the worst sadist we’ve seen. But he doesn’t care where results come from. Kahlil probably went looking for him after he got booted by his last employer.”

  “At least Kahlil hasn’t told anyone else about Game Time, Sikorski already knew. How come Kahlil’s old bodyguards are running Sikorski’s errands?”

  “Kahlil probably employed those guys himself the first time, and when he got fired, he had no more need for them.”

  “And somehow they ended up with Sikorski?”

  “Yep,” he said. “Vermin like that work for whoever ponies up the green,” Brodie said. “We saw something else too.”

  “Leatt,” she said, resting her arms over his. “He came to the meeting in Purdy’s.”

  “We saw. What did he say?”

  “That Kahlil recruited him while he worked for Sutcliffe and that they killed Grant because he’d served his purpose. They searched the compound for clues about Game Time ‘cause they weren’t sure we had it. When they were, they cooked up the latest deal. This is all one big mess. We can’t let them have Game Time, but we have to know. How are we going to figure all this out?”

  “We always get answers,” he said. “Sometimes it takes time, but the truth doesn’t want to stay hidden.”

  As her morning had proven. Brodie slid down the bed, taking her body with his, and she sat up just enough to reach the blanket he was hooking upward with his foot. Covering them both up, it was time for them to rest. Given all that they’d learned and the prospect of what could happen if they failed, sleep wasn’t going to be an easy get.

  Caine wasn’t what they thought he was, neither was Cuckoo. Sikorski had hidden in the background and had risen up when all parties were at their weakest. Kahlil had a story that she was desperate to know because it would bring peace to the man she loved.