by Angel Payne
“Anytime, Daddy Grump.”
He halted as he cleared the couch for the third time and stared over the cityscape that stretched for miles. Everything was brilliant in the midmorning sunshine, another golden LA day. “What is this place, anyway? This is too nice to be a safe house.”
“But in a way, it is.” She stepped out of the kitchen and hitched a hip on the edge of the couch. “As you probably already know, Dan’s sister is Secret Service. But the ultra-down-low is that she moonlights on unique assignments from time to time, likely CIA Special Activities Division stuff.”
“Hmm.” It was a speculative grunt. “Wonder if I’ve met her.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged out of the bolero-style leather jacket she’d had on, which covered a pale-pink tank top. The color, lighter than the deep reds and purples she usually wore, lent her skin a glow he’d never noticed before. “Anyhow, Dan is convinced she’s going to be in a situation someday requiring her to disappear for a while, so he used a chunk of his stock dividends to buy this crib and make it nearly invisible—at least electronically—to the outside world.”
He turned fully toward her, drawn by curiosity. “Stock dividends?”
She tilted her head and flashed a little smile. “Colton Steel? Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Uhhh, yeah. If he’s one of those Coltons, why is he running around in bad suits, a worse haircut, and collecting a spook’s piddly paycheck?”
“Same reason they found Prince Harry on the front lines in Afghanistan. Believe it or not, a few of the privileged remember why they have such good fortune and want to give back.”
There was a hassock near the couch. He straddled it as he asked, “Is that the same story for his sister too?”
“Oh, no.” Her lips took on an amused slant. “Devyn just fancies herself as a keen little mix of Nancy Drew, Sydney Bristow, and Lara Croft and wants to eat bad guys for breakfast every morning, no matter what it does to her big brother’s blood pressure.”
He rolled his shoulders, battling the distinct green pang that joined the tumult of his senses. It didn’t mean anything that she knew all that about Colton’s sister. It also didn’t mean anything that every time she said the guy’s name, the silk in her voice wrapped possessively around the syllable. Dan. Shit. He wasn’t imagining it. Come here and cuddle with me, Dan. Will you zip up my dress, Dan?
“So how do you know about this place?” He tried to be civil about it. He probably didn’t succeed. If Luna noticed, she bypassed it.
“As soon as Dan’s team linked up with mine last week, he told me he was worried about the shit getting thick with Lor. He was also concerned that, as the unconventional agent, I had a place to go that was completely safe. Off the books, you know? He brought me up here and made me memorize the security codes, ‘just in case.’”
“Didn’t that work out hunky dory?”
He hated himself the moment it flew out. Jealousy was an item on his useless indulgences list, something he sure as fuck didn’t have time for, especially now. But even thinking of Colton in here alone with Luna just a week ago flicked that needle of tension deep back into his mental red zone.
Goddamnit, she was his.
He’d planned on standing and moving out to the terrace for some air. Fuck if that was happening now, with that thought locking his brain in its crosshairs. As if he had a choice to escape it. As if he could run from that chamber in his soul that the woman had occupied from the moment he’d held her in his lap all those months ago at Bastille and again in that palm grove a few miles away. The woman she’d shown only to him. The tender girl who hurt and ached, who cried for Mexican informants she’d never met and had a touch that turned his cocky-ass attitude into a smitten puppy at her feet.
He was certain if the woman had a newspaper with which to smack him right now, she would. With hands back on her hips and a new glower on her face, she charged, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” He looked away. “Nothing, okay?” Everything. Tension rushed his veins again, forcing him to his feet. The room swam, and he didn’t care. It wasn’t like he had anything to be solid for. “Goddamnit.” He raised both fists and pounded the slider to the patio. Even the fucking glass wouldn’t cooperate, only shuddering beneath the blow instead of joining his spirit in the whole shattering-to-pieces thing. “They’re all out there, being held somewhere, and I’m sitting here in a palace instead of helping them!”
Luna’s reply was filled with maddening calm. “You can’t do anything to help them with those assholes stomping through the city searching for us.” The crunch of her leather boots came closer. “You told me that Lor and Stock plan on using the guys as leverage for passage out of the country. They can’t do that with dead people, okay? Based on what Ethan told me this morning, everything indicates that their plan is somehow connected to the show’s live broadcast tomorrow night. That gives us tonight to try to figure all this out.” She curled her hands, long and gentle and tapered, around the fists he still had clenched at his sides. “And we will figure it out, Weasley.”
He shook with the effort of resisting her. Clinging to his rage was the last thing he had any control over in this giant goat fuck of a situation. “I can’t stand this,” he grated. “I need to be doing something. I’m a spotter for one of the best goddamn snipers in the world, and right now he’s been turned into a half-dead Sleeping Beauty who needs me to find him, wake his ass up, and—”
“I know.” She stepped in front of him. “I know.” She ran her hands up his arms and over his shoulders before flattening them to the sides of his face. “Look at me, Tait.”
He stiffened his jaw and shut his eyes.
No.
“Look. At. Me.”
No!
He hated her for this. Hated that this was the one damn moment he’d been craving for the last week, except for now. He hated her for the velvet compassion in her words, the soft strength in her fingers. He really hated her for stepping in with such surety, daring him to fill his arms with her. She was so close. Her scent, that heady clash of smoke and roses, wrapped around him. Her hands, steady and determined, moved up to burrow in his hair.
Her lips, perfect and pleading, grazed his.
“Then just take me,” she whispered.
It was so simple, like the tiny thread that yanked the whole sweater apart. And damn, did he unravel for her. He plunged his mouth on hers in a fever of need, lust, longing. When she opened for him, whimpering in passion, he pushed his tongue deep inside, demanding every flicker of the desire he’d seen in full bloom when monitoring the scene between her and Z those many months ago. He wanted all of it and more. Not just her submission but her desire. Not just her body but her mind. Not just her spark but her whole damn fire. It was nothing less than what she’d get from him in return.
The resolve surged through him, powering into his arms as he hauled her off her feet. Her gaze, dark and magnetic, was waiting when he opened his eyes. She smiled and cupped a hand to his face again, like some medieval princess thanking her knight for sweeping her from a dark tower. Didn’t she get it? She’d rescued him…
And now freely offered up all that power back to him. She knew he needed something to control right now and offered herself as that something.
He twisted his head to kiss her fingers. Like no other woman in his life, she moved him. Humbled him. And turned him on so much, he wondered if he’d get them to the bedroom without coming in his jeans.
Thankfully, he managed the feat. After stomping into the nearest chamber, he turned and let her fall to the mattress, following her down a second later. He didn’t give her a choice about what came next. Holding her jaw in one of his hands, he leveraged her for the deepest dive of his lips and tongue, possessing her mouth with the force of his. He didn’t let her go until she all but churned beneath him, bunching her hands in his shirt, mewling and sighing.
He yanked the cotton free from his torso and
grunted in pleasure as she trailed her fingers over his burning skin. That didn’t stop him from making her bend both knees so he could rip down the zippers on her boots and jerk both things off. As soon as he had her feet bared, he bit into the edge of one and then the other, making Luna laugh and sigh in the same breath. He let her legs fall as he kneaded his way from her knees to her waist and then made short work of unfastening her jeans but not removing them. It had been his intent, but he wasn’t opposed to switching a mission plan for a good cause. And right now, the sight of her lace-trimmed, powder-pink panties contrasted by her black jeans was too incredible to pass up. He jerked her pants wider to get a more complete view. Goddamn. Through the semisheer fabric, he could see the shadow of her close-trimmed pubic patch…a dark treasure veiled behind a color of innocence. He was going to claim that fortune soon, so soon…
But first, the thrill of getting to the bounty.
He caught one of her hands. Lowered it to the sweet triangle that captivated him so much. “Touch yourself,” he ordered. “Put your hand under your panties and stroke your pussy for me. Make yourself wet for my cock.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Fuck, that sounded good on her lips. It was even better because it was meant for him. Tait let out a long growl, telling her how much she’d pleased him with her trust, her vulnerability, and the courage it took to perform such an intimate act for his eyes. He watched, hands on her hips, as she slipped her fingers inside the pink covering and found her sensitive hub of nerves. As she rubbed, her head fell back, her neck strained, her body writhed. Tait’s ass clenched as his hips jerked forward from pure instinct, his body drawn to merge with hers.
Merge? Screw that. Goddamnit, he wanted to fuck this woman. In fifteen different ways. With her wild tigress screams filling the air as he did.
As the conclusion rocked his mind, it shocked him that his dick didn’t laser-blast its way out of his pants. He feverishly worked the button and zipper in order to save the denim and his sanity, groaning hard as his erection sprang free. He shoved the pants and his briefs to his knees before returning a hand to fist himself, loving the reaction in Luna’s eyes as he spread his precome down the length of his throbbing shaft.
“Something tells me you don’t want soup anymore, flower.”
Luna’s mouth swept upward. “No, Sir.”
“Maybe I can find something else to fill up your mouth.”
She grinned a little bigger. “Please, Sir.”
He didn’t return the look. Instead, with his face somber and his eyes steady, he told her, “Slide to the other side of the bed. Let your head hang back, over the side.”
She didn’t even bother with the Yes, Sir. Her eager compliance perfectly coincided with Tait’s need to unsheathe her body from the black pants. As she scooted away, he tugged down, letting the opposing forces work their magic on baring her long, smooth legs. And oh yeah…her gleaming, aroused pussy.
He kicked himself free from his own pants before circling the bed to where she dutifully waited for him. But before he knelt to align his erection with her lips, he stripped her from her top and bra too. Though he’d seen her completely naked before, the sight of her tits and nipples, now angled perfectly at him due to the drop of her head, made his knees feel like they’d been shot off. Good thing he was lowering to them already. Before he got fully into position, he had both hands on her generous mounds, fingers tugging their erect tips into stiffer attention. She cried out a little as he did, though her ass and hips ground against the bed, proving he aroused her in the midst of the pain.
“Someone a little sensitive?” he asked, watching the little grooves of her nipples become more pronounced as he flicked them with his thumbs.
Luna sighed. “Someone hasn’t had this in a long while…so yes. Ahhh!” Her exclamation came when he joined his forefinger and thumb and pinched hard.
“You want more?”
She moaned as he added twists to the pinches. “God, yes. Please, Sir.”
“Even while my cock is deep in your throat?”
“Especially then.”
He teased her with the slick knob of his erection, tracing the length of her parted lips. “I can’t tie you down, so if you need to stop, you safe word by rolling away and stopping. Understood?”
She licked his head with a provocative sweep. “I’m not going to safe word.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.”
She whimpered in approval of that—until Tait dominated her mouth with his penis in one commanding stroke. She choked a little, and he withdrew by an inch, only to enter her again a second later.
“Use your nose to breathe, flower. You know how to do this.” He shuddered as she obeyed, allowing him access to the deepest regions of her mouth. “Good Christ, you feel so good,” he praised, watching the thick veins of his body disappear inside the soft depths of hers. “Yes. Yesssss.”
His balls already surged and swelled, banging with his come, aching for release. To hold off the flood, he focused on giving Luna what she needed. He pulled relentlessly on her nipples, turning them into lush, engorged strawberries before alternating his approach to lightly slap her breasts, a torment that made her spread her thighs and swipe faster at the blood-filled ridge of her hottest need.
“Do it,” Tait encouraged. “Come for me, Luna. Show me how you’ll scream when my cock is in your gorgeous cunt instead of your mouth.”
She breathed harder. Sucked him in deeper. Stroked herself faster. Her back arched. Her muscles tightened. With a high, guttural shriek, she tumbled over the ledge into a paroxysm of bliss, using her free hand to grab the back of his thigh while the waves of orgasm washed through her again and again.
It took a Herculean effort not to sink into the back of her throat and shoot his seed into her then and there. Instead, gritting his teeth with the effort, he helped her up to the pillows and lay beside her while her equilibrium returned. He leaned in to kiss her, but tasting himself on her tongue didn’t help when it came to self-control. Not a hell of a lot was helping at this point—with the woman herself leading that brigade a moment later.
“You going soft on me, Weasley?” she taunted before biting his lower lip. “You told me you know what I need.”
“Damn. Damn.” His growled repetition came as she grazed his balls with her fingernails. “Luna…”
“You remember that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Shit, woman!”
“Well, it’s time to pay up,” she whispered. “Fill me, Tait—with every inch of you. Please.”
“Yes, Ma’am, Agent Lawrence, ma’am.” He kissed her again, fast and feverishly, before leaning to the nightstand and wrenching the drawer open. Nothing there except an old cough drop, a small LED flashlight, and a dog-eared Shayla Black novel. Great. If LA got hit by a major earthquake while he had a cold and wanted to read the adventures of Hunter and Kata, he was set.
“Doesn’t Colton stash condoms around here?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Her answer was a braid of good and bad news. Her perplexity proved that when Colton brought her up here last week, it had been strictly business. But now he was naked and horizontal with the woman of his dreams and couldn’t do anything about it—a dilemma that twisted its way across his face and made him wonder just how cold that eucalyptus wet room could get.
“Tait—”
“What?” He almost sliced her head off with the severity of it but made a mental note to apologize after breathing down his erection.
“I’m clean. They test us every other minute in prison.”
He gave her a sardonic smile. “It’s once a year in SOF. I just got my all-clear.” He added extra meaning to his stare. “But I haven’t touched anyone in months.”
Her own eyes darkened. She lowered back to the pillows, pulling him with her this time. “Hmmm. Imagine that. Neither have I. Which means if you don’t fuck me now, I’m liable to become crazy Luna for real.”
“Unnh-uh.” Somet
imes a guy had to let out his inner caveman in order to get the point across. But in case she wasn’t clear, he whipped the pillows out from beneath her head. The next moment, he had her wrists locked to the mattress on either side of it. “No cray-cray on my watch, beautiful.” He edged forward, letting the crown of his cock dance with her slick, hot folds. “Just well-fucked, very magical little witches.”
“Yes…” Her eyes fluttered closed. “Yes!” They flung back open as he thrust deeper. On the third lunge, his balls hit her ass as he seated himself all the way in. Heaven. He was finally in heaven.
She kept her gaze on him, mesmerizing as a twilight sky, as he retreated and plunged, rocked and slid, over and over again. In the work he did for this country, getting lost wasn’t an option—but right now, it was the only choice. Her eyes and her body pulled him into a wilderness of heat, of need, of beauty…and the magic of her submission.
“Raise your legs,” he ordered, not wavering his gaze either. How could he, when her face bore so many marks of his possession? Her cheeks, flagged by his stubble burn. Her lips, swollen from sucking on him. Her skin, glowing with the sheen of her arousal. She was a thousand times more breathtaking than anything his fantasies had conjured. “Now wrap them around my neck.”
As soon as she complied, a long moan spilled from her. As he suspected, the openly naughty position awakened the darkest side of her submissiveness, turning his jungle into hers as well. It also locked him closer to her, pressing his chest against hers, securing his stare into hers. He watched as she shook beneath him, the new angle ensuring that his cock filled every tight corner of her pussy.
He couldn’t hold out any longer. The wilderness rose up and surrounded him. Oh yeah, was he lost…yet had never been so found.
Everything turned silver and white as his senses spun and his cock exploded. Somewhere in that chaos, an inner voice shrieked that he needed to pull out, to cut the chances of planting his seed significantly, but Luna’s cries, climbing higher as another orgasm twined through her, kept him buried inside her pulsing walls. While her body wrung every drop of his seed, her face held every inch of his focus. With her dark hair tangled on the mattress, her forehead furrowed in sensual bliss, and her teeth digging into her delectable bottom lip, she stopped his heart and made him vow to imprint this moment on his memory forever. The first of so many he planned to have with her.