Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (8 page)

Amen
.

Sometimes it was hard to believe in God when the world was filled with so much cruelty. They say the devil is everywhere, yes, but isn't also God? Goodness should not be so hard to find in a place ruled by one who is so benevolent. Either he's not as powerful as he's supposed to be, or he's not as good. Either way, it's depressing to think about, because religion used to be such a constant in my life, and now I often felt as though I had nowhere to turn.

Religion had become habit, rather than devotion. Michael's jadedness was rubbing off on me.

Or maybe
, I thought,
maybe it's all my own.

I reached over to turn off the light — and saw a large, familiar figure looming through the gauzy ribbons of smoke that still lingered in the air.

I sucked in a breath.

Michael
.

Chapter Five

Liaison

Michael

A shot of whiskey burned in my gut like a small sun. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten. That wasn't important. My cognitive resources were finite and I divvied up the load accordingly.

Jesus Christ, this job is going to kill me.

Christina was in her office, as I'd known she would be. I could hear her talking to herself. The door was standing ajar and I silently nudged it open.

The stereotype of the jaded mercenary seeking solace from his mistress is heavy-handed and trite; but like all stereotypes, there's some truth to it. I had told myself I only wanted to address her concerns but when I saw her in that nightshirt, which might have been made of clingwrap for all it did for my peace of mind, even I had to admit that I was a liar.

It took her a long time to notice me standing there. Too long. Long enough to get her throat slit. She made a small, startled sound, reaching beneath her pillow for something that glinted in the half-light.

“Is that a knife? Or are you just happy to see me?”

“It's a knife.” She retracted the blade, put it back under her pillow. “Can't be too careful these days.”

I took that as permission to enter. “No,” I agreed. “You can't.” She watched me shut the door. I heard her breath catch when I locked it.

I reached her in three long steps, already half-hard. Christina's unbrushed hair swirled around her face like a cloud, framing the smooth column of her throat. She swallowed, directing my attention lower, to her full breasts, and curvy hips and ass.

I opened my mouth, paused. “What's burning?”

She pointed at a smoking votive candle.

“Knives and candlelight.” I stepped closer, until our toes almost touched. “How romantic.”

Her erect nipples were hard enough to make indents in the fabric. I thought about how they would pucker in the cold air when I tore that shirt off her, how they would soften from the warmth of my lips and tongue as I took her into my mouth.

I could almost hear her breathy moans. See her fingers digging into the sheets as I slipped my fingers inside her slick, sweet cunt to get her ready for my cock. How she would moan when I stroked and squeezed her clit, how she would
beg —

My cock throbbed painfully. But before I could touch her she said, “How's Suraya?”

Another ache, searing into my belly. I ignored it as best I could. “She seems confident. Ready to go.”

“You're really going to let her do this.”

“You said it yourself. What choice do we have?”

“Those weren't my exact words.”

I cupped her breast through the shirt, squeezing gently. I looked at her face, rubbing my thumb over the nipple. “Oh?” She didn't tell me to stop.

“If there was another way….”

“There isn't.”

She winced. I'd backed her against her desk, and the sharp corner had jabbed her backside. I put my hand on her thigh, rubbing and massaging, until I'd reached her ass, and then I squeezed, crushing her lips against mine, delving my tongue into her mouth to taste her as I'd been aching to since that plane ride.

“No,” she panted, as our lips broke. “I guess not.”

I moved her underwear aside, parting her with a nudge of my fingers. She moved her thighs without my asking and I exhaled through my nose.
Fuck.
She was just as wet as I'd imagined.

“You're so tight,” I said, brushing my lips against her mouth. Her eyes had a glazed look as they sought mine out, and I saw her fingers were white where she was braced against the table. I adjusted my rhythm, gentling it, intent on bringing her to her knees. “You need to relax, sweetheart.”

Christina nodded. She was trembling, and she was tense enough to snap.

I pulled out my fingers to toy with her clit, and her moan caught, fragmenting deep in her throat. The sound made my balls throb. The effort it took to hold back was starting to cross over into pain.

With my free hand, I pulled her hair back from her ear, leaning in to whisper, “If you don't relax, we can't fuck.” I rubbed against her cheek, pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “And that would be a damn shame, don't you think?”

She shuddered violently.

“Do you want me inside of you?”

“Oh God, yes,” she choked. “I want it.”

I want it
. Those words would give me fuel for nights to come. “Do you trust me, then?”

Christina's voice faltered a little and I wasn't sure if it was because of arousal or doubt. Her eyes squeezed shut and she rasped, “Yes.”

And then there was no more time for second thoughts. I sealed my mouth against hers, tangling my fingers in her thick, unkempt locks of hair and I pulled her forward until she was bowing off the desk.

Her hands went to my chest. To push me away, I thought, until I felt her fingers undoing the buttons of my shirt in quick, trembling movements that made me think of something with wings. Her soft hands on my skin almost undid me. I felt a drop of pre-cum drip down the head of my cock like a bead of ice, and shuddered as it rolled down the shaft.

“Hurry,” I growled.

She pushed my shirt down to my elbows. I struggled out of it, uncaring of where it fell. I was more interested in the lines where her jaw met her throat, the sudden swell where her collarbone yielded to her breasts.

I trailed kisses down her jaw, all the way to the neck of her nightshirt. She was wearing far too many clothes and it was driving me out of my fucking mind. I took the collar in my teeth and tugged, hard, hard enough to startle her into saying, “Michael!”

I released her shirt, closing my teeth around the sensitive skin where throat and shoulder met. Her fingers curled into the belt loops of my pants, grazing my ass. They needed to come off.

I tugged at the hem of her shirt. It needed to come off, too. “Take this off,” I said hoarsely.

Now she squirmed. “What —” Her mouth was swollen from kissing me, and I found that pleased me more than it should. So did her breathlessness, and the flush in her face. “What if I don't want to?”

I twisted my hands. The seams of her nightshirt split with a pop as the material reached its breaking point. She stared at the patches of skin revealed where the rip had arced down her shoulder. “What are you doing? I like this shirt.”

“Better take it off then, darlin — or I will. Piece by piece.”

She tugged on her arm, which I was still gripping. I shook my head slowly. “I don't think so.”

“Let me go.” She sounded plaintive, and a little afraid, and still so breathless. I knew the ritual well by this point, but that didn't mean it wasn't trying.

“Is that really what you want me to do?” I tugged her shirt down, baring the tops of her breasts with a few more popped stitches. I started to duck my head, letting her feel the warm puffs of air coming from my mouth, and heard her draw in a ragged breath of her own in anticipation. “You want me to let you go?”

She closed her eyes and did not answer.

“Christina.”

Her shoulders shook.

“Don't play games where no doesn't mean no. Not unless you've got another word that does.”

Christina opened her eyes slowly, face looming before mine, close enough to kiss. I saw her throat contract as she swallowed. She smiled bravely, in a way that came damn near to breaking my heart.

“Please don't let go.”

“What do you want me to do to you?” I asked raggedly. My insides constricted, tight enough I could barely draw breath, could hardly think.

“So much,” she whispered. “Everything.”

Sweet Jesus
. My mouth went dry as she gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head, baring herself to me. Quickly—to get it over with? To hide out of shame? I rolled her back against the mattress, so she was spread out beneath me.

“You're beautiful.”

She flushed.

I caught her wrists when she tried to shimmy away, kissing the pulse point cradled between her sparrow-thin bones. Then I lowered my head and took one of her hard little nipples into my mouth.

I kissed her until she made a small, keening cry, and then I lifted my head to look her full on. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright in the darkness.

“I fucking love this,” I said. “I fucking love
you
.”

I tugged her panties off her hips. They were damp, and I knew that sliding into her would be like sliding into smooth, wet silk. I slid my fingers inside her cunt in one fluid movement. Her head tilted back, eyes squeezed shut as I began to slowly massage her clit with my thumb.

“You rearranged my entire world, forced me to live by an entirely new set of rules. You almost got me killed, but I survived, and then I got stronger. And so,
cher amour
, did you.”

Christina

I could barely concentrate on his words. I felt as though I were slowly being unwound, being undone by pleasure: as though the very act of experience somehow mitigated my existence. Maybe that was why the French called orgasms
“las petites morts”
: because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses and kill us as ruthlessly, and efficiently, as any drug.

Somehow, I managed to say, “I love you, too.”

Michael unzipped his pants and slid off his boxers. He was fully erect, and the tip of him was as flushed as his face. My panties were still hanging limply around my knees and he tugged those the rest of the way off, letting them fall to the floor as he climbed onto the mattress to settle between my legs.

He whispered things, then. Soft, illicit things in his Cajun patois as he reached into the back pocket of his pants so he could get a condom from his wallet. He whispered things that made me blush and squirm, which, from his laugh, seemed to amuse him.

I knew Michael well enough to know when he was acting out of character. He was a selfish lover, taking everything I had to offer, but all too often leaving me precious little in return. Because reciprocation was something, along with empathy, that had never been something he'd needed to learn. Now I was drowning in him, struggling to stay afloat as he threatened to overwhelm me with the sheer
intensity
of his undivided attentions.

I thought I knew why, too. He was trying to distract me. He didn't want me to ask him any questions about Suraya. Maybe he was even trying to distract himself from what he had to do. There was a beating heart somewhere inside that chest, and even a cold and damaged heart can still ache with the pangs of a vestigial conscience.

Was Michael's?

I slid out from under his arm, swinging around so I was on top of him instead. The way he liked it. He grabbed at me, putting his hands on my waist to keep me in place—as if he thought I'd run.

Overcome as I was, I wished he hadn't done that. Wished he wasn't so quick to use force. I leaned down and kissed him hard enough that his breathing broke stride. Broken breaths, from a broken man.

I straddled his waist, compressing his muscular thighs with my own. He was breathing quickly now, the pupils dilated so that they swallowed up his iris, turning them a dark, dark green. “
Fuck
, Christina.”

“Yes,” I said, in as flip a tone as I was able. “Fuck Christina. I think she'd like that.”

“I love it when you talk filthy, you dirty girl.”

“I learned from the best.”

He smacked my rear at that, his laughter choking off as I grabbed him by his wrists and held them over his head as I slid down him, taking him in. I dug my fingers into the supple skin of his arms to grasp at the unyielding metallic core beneath. He liked that even more than the biting from earlier; the sound he made — low, inhuman, halfway between the animal and the mechanical — caused the hairs on my arms to bristle with the same kind of electricity that happens on a hot stormy night.

Sexual desire gave his face an intensity that bordered on rage. I would know. I'd seen him during both. Through hooded eyes, he looked up at me. His lips were parted in what was almost a grimace. He said, “And I thought you wanted me to let you go.”

“Shut up,” I said breathlessly. “Stop talking.”

Because I knew that even if he did — if one day the two of us wised up and realized that parting ways was best — my heart wouldn't let me; I was his, and he was mine. What we had was twisted, but inevitable: like two broken magnets, we would come together again and again, until separated.

I forgot almost everything when I was with him — my worries, my concerns, my regrets. All that mattered was in the here and now. Beneath our collective armor, we were both scored raw. It was only when we were both cracked open that any semblance of pleasure could seep through.

Together, we were like an island in the eye of a hundred-year storm. We were alive and full of the kind of fire that can light an entire sky up with brilliant streaks of neon flame even as civilization burns to a smoldering ash below.