Between Faith and Fear

by J. A. Dennam

  Melanie’s troubled eyes grew wide. “She hurt you while...”

  Derek’s look turned grim. “Mostly because of my mouth.”

  Understanding dawned and she softened with a mixture of pride and sadness. “I love your mouth.”

  Time was running out. This certainly wasn’t the place, but when she looked at him like that... He drew her in and kissed her soundly. “I love yours, too,” he whispered.

  “Really?” she breathed, waiting for him to do it again.

  “I thought I already made that clear.”

  “I thought you were just scared.”

  “Terrified.” And he kissed her again.

  But, they were no longer alone. Derek heard them closing in on the other side of the conference room door. They had only seconds before their location was discovered.

  As they continued to gaze at each other, he popped open the window. “Do you trust me?”

  Melanie’s brow creased in an apparent tug-of-war between faith and fear. “Completely.”

  He nodded once. “Then don’t look down.”

  Chapter 17

  “Where are we now?”

  Derek entered numbers on a keypad, which was followed by a muted click. Melanie was still shaking from their quick four-story descent. Buildering IGP headquarters with no safety gear and a woman on his back was certainly dangerous, but she’d clung to him with the strength of an octopus.

  The knob turned easily in his hand. “Our next rendezvous point.”

  “It looks like storage units to me,” she said as they walked into a long, climate-controlled hallway lined with numerous blue rolling doors on each side. “Why here?”

  “It’s next door to IGP. We wait for Rena to bring my drugs and if she doesn’t show, I’ll know she needs me.”

  “Tell me you wouldn’t go back there.”

  He found the unit Ty mentioned and tackled the numbered padlock. “I won’t abandon her.”

  “Did you know she was Sophie’s daughter?”

  The rolling door slid upward and he found the light. “Yes. It’s what drove me to help her. Anyone with a mother like that doesn’t need enemies.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He pulled the door closed behind them, which meant they were officially hidden inside a box of corrugated metal. The unit was essentially bare with the exception of a full-sized cot complete with bedding, card table and chairs, cell phone, first-aid supplies, food and a few amenities. He threw the extra uniform onto a chair. “Because you didn’t need to know.”

  “Or you were afraid your relationship with Sophie would come out.”

  Now that they were out of sight, he pulled his hood back, turned and faced her. “Would you want to broadcast that you were forced to be someone’s whore?”

  Her face was hidden beneath her hood as she contemplated what he said. “Wow. Now I have this strong desire to fire up the wood chipper.”

  An image of Melanie with protective eyewear and a high-heeled severed leg in her hand came to mind. “Leave the killing to me,” he said amusedly and found her chin beneath the black cloak. “Little ghost.”

  The hood moved with her as she looked up at him, hesitated. “It’s creepy, but I can see why you like to wear it. I feel... hidden. Sort of like an ostrich. Didn’t they have a Small?”

  His heart tripped. The sight of her all bundled up and curious only made him want to get her naked again. It didn’t help that his balls still ached from the brutal reminder that he no longer owned them. “That is a Small,” he answered roughly, moving the hood back to expose her tangled crown of blond hair. Her hastily tied knot had loosened from activity and the ragamuffin look did something to him.

  She rubbed her sleeve between two fingers, completely focused on the clothes. “And it’s surprisingly cool. I’m not even sweating.”

  “I’m beginning to.”

  “I’d totally be one of you, especially if I didn’t move.”

  Never. She was simply too small and clumsy. Amusement lit up his eyes and he brushed his knuckles across her jaw. “But I can still see you trembling.”

  Her spine straightened bravely. “Your sister gave me a fear of heights, but a few deep breaths will take care of that.”

  And she inhaled largely, exhaled softly. God, she was even more beautiful when determined. “Then you better keep breathing, because you’ll need to be brave for me one last time.”

  Melanie’s look turned wary as he backed her toward the cot. “Why, what are you going to do to me?”

  “I have a variety of things in mind.” One of them she wouldn’t like, but he’d do his damnedest to soften the experience as much as possible. He reached for a folded black bandana Ty had put with the medical supplies and told her to close her eyes. When she hesitated, he circled his finger in the air, indicating she turn around.

  “I thought you said you trust me.”

  With a sigh, she obeyed. “I let you shove me out of a fourth-floor window, didn’t I?”

  He smiled and grabbed the hem of her top. “Lift your arms.” When she did, the hoodie came up and over her head.

  “Are you still experiencing symptoms?” she asked when his hand came around and cupped her breast.

  Brushing his lips against her neck, he replied, “Not a one. I feel like myself again and all I want to do is take advantage of that cot in front of us.” And then his tongue followed suit. “Make gentle love to you before the beast comes back.”

  “Beast?” The word was coupled with a shuttering breath.

  “The one who humiliated you in the garage earlier.”

  She reached back and cupped his neck, angled hers for easier access. “That beast made me come twice as I recall.”

  That’s when he took the bandana and carefully positioned it over her eyes, wrapped it around her head and secured it tightly. “Are you just going to let me blindfold you without asking why?”

  “I told you I trust you.”

  “Hmm. My brave little ghost.” And her black, oversized pants came down. She stepped out of them, completely naked now. “There, that’s better. Lie on the cot and don’t move that blindfold.”

  He led her in the right direction and turned her around. She reached behind her, carefully lowered herself to the blankets. He simply stared at her bared body, marveling at her slender curves and how bravely she’d taken him the last time.

  His hand gently traced the side of a rounded breast. The bruises were painfully visible and he swallowed back the crippling lump of regret. “I tortured myself at nights. Staring up at the ceiling imagining you this way except without the bruises. Imagining a day I’d actually have the chance to make love to you the way I want to.”

  Melanie answered on an entirely different level. “I thought you’d need a little recovery time after your encounter with Sophie’s hand.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Do we need to bring that up now?”

  Her bottom lip came out. “She really hurt you.”

  “Yeah, it hurt.” He grabbed the other bandana and put it on the blanket beside her for the moment. “But having just come inside you helped more than you could possibly know. And I want to do it again.”

  His hands skimmed down her belly. He parted her thighs and her breathing began to quicken.

  “I’m going to tie your hands to the corner of the cot. Okay?”

  Full lips stretched into a smile. “Since when were you into bondage?”

  He wasn’t. The thought of having his wrists bound to anything was terrifying. “I don’t want you hurting yourself,” was his only explanation. Before she could ask why, he stretched over her and cleared the thought from her head with a heated kiss. While her lips were beneath his, he wrapped the cloth around her wrists in figure-eight fashion and effectively tied them down.

  “How do you feel?” he asked when his mouth began to travel down her naked torso.

  “Vulnerable,” she replied in a shaky whisper. “At your mercy.” Her breath hitched as his fing
ers parted her labia. “Really... really good.”

  The corner of his mouth curved up as he flicked his tongue over her clitoris. She reared up slightly and he held her down. “Be still.”

  She released a pent up breath. “That’s asking a lot.”

  Before he went any further, he took his clothes off. When he stood naked by the cot, he asked if she could see anything while he reached for some supplies on the table.

  “I can’t see a damned thing and it’s driving me crazy.”

  Her response, spoken so piteously, made him chuckle. Once he had everything he needed, he grabbed her legs and angled her body diagonally across the cot. Now her left foot touched the floor while he shoved her right leg outward over the blankets, spreading her wide open. “I need you to relax, okay?”

  “Why? What are you about to do?”

  “This...” And his tongue delved between her lips again, finding the soft, pink flesh between them. Her gasp of pleasure echoed against the metal walls. God, he’d missed her taste so much. His tongue delved deep inside her, seeking as much of it as he could. It was like experiencing a favorite, savory dish he’d been deprived of for a decade.

  She opened wider for him, moaning his name. Hot juices flowed like a molten river and he feasted like the starving man he was. “God, you smell...” he buried his nose and inhaled deeply, “so good.”

  But when she begged him for more, he grazed his teeth along her inner thigh and took a small nibble.

  “Oh!”

  A quick look showed she was still in a good place, so he stayed his course. His teeth once again gently pinched her delicate skin. To soften the sting, he rubbed his fingers over the spot. She was breathing quite heavily now, so he gently bit her one more time.

  “God, Derek!”

  One more stroke with his fingertips and he located what he’d been looking for. Derek took up the small, sterilized scalpel in his right hand and touched her clit with his left. As he stroked her, she opened even wider. He pressed his lips to the spot he’d found just before replacing their touch with the razor-edged tip.

  The violent reaction he expected didn’t come. She only squirmed against her bonds. Blood trickled down her thigh and slowly dripped to the concrete floor.

  “I love you, Mel,” he whispered, and squeezed her flesh between his fingers. While she absorbed his words, he somehow managed to extract the small tracking device without much effort. How long she’d had it, he could only guess. But it was the only explanation for their inability to outrun their ghostly pursuers.

  Her blindfold began to show signs of moisture. It took some time, but she finally managed to say it back. “I love you, too, Derek.”

  The reality of what he’d just done hit her as soon as the stream of cold antiseptic wash did. He watched her face slacken with shock. She said nothing more as he covered the small wound with an adhesive bandage. “You’re an amazing woman, Melanie Parker,” he murmured as he stretched upward and loosened the tie around her wrists. Once her hands were free, she lifted the blindfold and blinked at him apprehensively.

  “Don’t,” he commanded, tossing the thing aside and taking up where he’d left off. “I’m sorry that was even necessary, but all I want to do is move on from here.” And he kissed her tenderly until she softened. “I’ll never touch you that way again,” he vowed.

  “I can’t believe it was me.” She swept the tears from her eyes. “I’m the reason we were followed.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “How could I not? Someone implanted that thing between my legs!”

  “You would have thought it was a bug bite. Easily forgettable. But it’s gone now.”

  Her brow creased with worry as she gazed at him. “They could have tracked us here.”

  “No. Rafferty was too preoccupied with his own problems and the signal was lost as soon as we entered this metal building. We’re fine.” He smiled to lighten the mood. “And now I’m the only thing between your legs you have to worry about.”

  Their skin-to-skin combined warmth did much to rekindle the mood. He moved hair away from her face and gazed at her as her troubled expression melted away. “I want to make love to you.”

  Her mouth quirked. “What’s stopping you?”

  “That lingering hint of trepidation in your eyes.”

  She wiped all traces of it clean. “Derek.” Her hands came up and caressed his back. “This just means we’ve taken another step toward eliminating IGP from our lives. It’s what I want more than anything.”

  Her words reignited a fierce longing within him for the same. “If I survive this,” he murmured, “I want to be with you always. Take care of you and DJ. Make you my wife.”

  Her expression morphed into one of utter shock. “What did you just say?”

  “You were all that kept me sane these past two years and all I’ve thought about today is how much I want to know my son. I want to be a father to him. Raise him. Make love to his mother every night. Step out on the porch in the mornings with my coffee and watch the Purple Martins rid my kingdom of mosquitos. You know... be a normal man.”

  Fat tears rolled down her cheeks and she cupped his face in her hands. “You’ll never be a normal man, Bennett. You never were.” And she pulled him down, devoured his mouth as his desire for her raged between her thighs.

  But Derek didn’t want to rush this time and he pulled away before he lost control.

  Bathed in the yellow light of the bulb overhead, he cast his shadow over her face as he stared. He wanted to just look at her for a minute in case this was his last chance. She seemed to know what he needed and did nothing more than graze his arms with her fingertips as she stared back. Then he lowered his lips to hers and kissed her slowly. Evocatively.

  When they parted, her tongue wandered along his whiskered jawline. “You don’t taste as sweaty as you should,” she whispered.

  She was referring to his sweat-soaked withdrawal. “I hosed down to make it look convincing.”

  “In front of Rena?”

  He smiled against her skin. “She wasn’t looking.”

  Her return smile called him a liar. “I guarantee she was looking.”

  His mouth left a trail of moisture from her neck down to one breast. As he cupped them both in his hands, he swirled his tongue around a hardened nipple and suckled with hunger.

  When he stopped to inspect the results, he compared the two rosy, puckered nubs. “I used to be able to tell what mood you were in by the color of your nipples,” he whispered, moving to the other one to make it just as dark and distended as the other.

  “They’re still tender from before,” she breathed, taking her bottom lip between her teeth. “I like it.”

  Crap! So much for going slow. He groaned and moved down to resume where he’d left off before. Her body arched with desire as he licked her belly, tasted the only bare hint of evidence on her that she had ever been swollen with child. “So, you still like it rough, huh?”

  “When you touch me, I get...” she gasped when his mouth moved down, closed over that sensitive place and worked its magic. “Energetic.”

  As he sampled her for the second time, his tongue stroked from the bottom of her opening to the top, then delved inside. Melanie squirmed beneath him, moaning his name. She was so slick. So swollen. He inserted an index finger deep into her vagina, found the spot inside her that never failed to please. Her lower half came off the mattress and her cries of ecstasy rang against the metal walls. The view from there was spectacular. The undersides of her breasts gleamed white against her ribs. He reached for one with his free hand and pinched a nipple as he feasted, knowing what would happen when he did.

  “No!” she gasped. “Not yet! Please!”

  “Just ride it, Mel,” he said as his fingers worked inside her. “And then I’ll make you come again like this before I take you for myself.”

  Her body began the telltale convulsions that signified an earthshattering orgasm. It was all she could do not to scr
eam, he knew, since she’d always been a screamer before. That’s right. Nobody else will ever know your body the way I do.

  And she wept with the force of it.

  When the tremors died down, Melanie went limp from exhaustion. But not for long. He turned her over and lifted her onto her knees. Her breasts hung heavily in the palms of his hands. Her eyes were closed, but her breath was growing unsteady once again.

  His penis wedged between her lips, stroking as he coated himself with her juices. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but he refused to enter her just yet. There was a promise he needed to keep. His lips trailed kisses down her spine until he reached her tailbone. Bending low, he spread her cheeks with his palms and buried his tongue between them.

  The contact awoke her with a gasp and her breasts lifted off the mattress. His fingers stroked, traced, outlined and invaded as he licked. Her bottom began to move with him until she was riding out another wave of ecstasy.

  “Oh, Derek!” she screamed into the pillow. “Oh, God!”

  It was almost too easy to make her come. “Something tells me you’ve been needing this for quite a while,” he said, rolling her over again.

  “I had no idea,” she panted heavily as she recovered. “I’ve been so consumed with other things, I... I...”

  “If you have them in your sleep, it’s a pretty good indication.”

  She opened her eyes a little, studied his face as he hovered over her. Her hand came up and combed through his hair. “I was dreaming of you,” she whispered. “And now you’re real. At least... I think you are.”

  He adjusted his position between her legs and slowly slipped inside her. Her walls closed around him, tightly sheathing him in her slick warmth. Their bodies arched together and it was then he realized he was truly home.

  Thank God. He pulled out and slid smoothly back inside her. Her eyes closed beneath him and her mouth parted in wonder. He shared her sentiment as they both reveled in the overwhelming pleasure of their combined physical and emotional bond. He kept it slow, savoring the moment as long as he could and angled his mouth over hers in a passionate, lingering kiss.

  The kiss only made it harder to hold back the burgeoning need to blow, but he couldn’t seem to stop. His pace quickened. Her hands closed over his buttocks and she angled her hips in time with his for the deepest fit possible. She attempted to roll him over and when he let her, she took him in her hand and guided him back inside her. Now she was in control, arching back, using her legs to lift and lower over his sensitive shaft.