Dirty Dare: The Rescue (Sexy Suspense) (Part 1, spin-off to the Dirty and Dare Me series) (7 page)

“Tell me why Dante picked you,” he insisted, surprised he could still form a coherent thought.

She tucked in her knees. His brain cells popped like fireworks on the Fourth. He wanted answers. He wanted to explode. He wanted to stay here, forever, with her, until his skin disintegrated in the water.

He slipped his hand between their bodies and pressed hard on her clit—with just enough pressure to take her to the apex, but tight enough to keep her from falling over.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“He picked me,” she confessed, her breath ragged and harsh, “because…I…owe…
you
.”

Unable to hold her still for another second, he loosened his fingers. Her orgasm struck in force.

He could not stop from rocking upward, harder and faster, until he joined her at the edge of infinity. “Why do…you…owe me?”

Her fingernails dug into his flesh. She cried out his name, and the animalistic sound knocked his final question out of his mind.

He’d lost this battle. Lost it big. Lost it hard.

And for the first time in his ultra-competitive life, Sean didn’t give a damn.

Eight

“Why do you owe me?”

Sean supposed he could have waited until their bodies had stopped thrumming from long-needed and wholly satisfying sexual releases before he pushed his agenda again, but he wasn’t that guy. Never had been. And had the roles been reversed, he was fairly certain she would do the same.

She’d seduced him to delay his departure. She’d succeeded. Someday, he’d thank her. But for now, he needed answers. To that end, he’d made sure she wasn’t in any mood to deny his request.

“Do you really want to talk about this now?” she crooned, but without any real resistance.

After they’d had their fun in the pool, Brynn had slid off of him and, on unsteady legs, had sauntered to the double-wide chaise lounge on the deck and collapsed. Bare-assed and beautiful, she laid motionless while the sun evaporated the water from her flesh. He watched every drop disappear, and then marked his own recovery with a couple more laps in the pool. Once certain that he had no more energy left, he’d practically crawled onto the cushion beside her.

He should have passed out. He’d wanted to, forcing him to accept that his recovery wasn’t quite as miraculous as he’d initially thought. But if he couldn’t get away from this gilded cage or his seductress jailer, the least he could get was answers.

“I need to know,” he replied.

She turned onto her side and braced her cheek on her hand. “You might not like me very much once I tell you.”

“How do you know I like you now?”

She lifted her eyebrows, and despite his intention to tease her, he decided against it. The woman had just blown his mind.

He liked her.

A lot.

“I promise not to hold anything against you,” he said. “Except my body, of course.”

Unable to resist, he splayed his hands over her delicious derriere and tugged her closer.

She licked her lips, and for an instant, he wanted her to use that sweet little pink tongue of hers for anything other than talking. Unfortunately, information needed to be exchanged, sooner rather than later. Up until now, Dante hadn’t sent in additional security—at least, none they could see—probably because Brynn Blake had done a capable job of spiriting him away and keeping him in check. The spymaster had likely counted on Sean remaining too weak to cause damage to whatever operation he’d inadvertently become a part of.

But if Dante had someone watching his and Brynn’s poolside escapades—and Sean had no reason to believe he didn’t—then the time of lax security was about to end.

“Why do you owe me?” he asked again.

She tossed her head back in frustration. “Can’t we just leave it as it is?”

“Have we met before?”

“No,” she answered.

“Have we worked on a case at the same time, maybe on opposing sides?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did you pick me up in a bar once and forget to call me after you promised you would, because
cher
, chances are real good the number I gave you was bogus.”

He expected her to laugh, but instead, she rolled away from him, grabbed the jacket she’d discarded earlier and slipped into it. The hem barely came to her thighs, and though pulling the lapels together only created a triangle of fabric that framed her pussy so that he started to salivate, her entire aspect changed back from brazen lover to elegant businesswoman.

“Tell me about your family,” she said.

“My…what? You’re not my secret sister or anything, are you?”

Brynn quelled his attempt at a joke with an effective glare.

“My family. Okay. There’s not much to tell. My mother was a bartender at a dive in the Quarter. My father was a rich bastard from some New England state who knocked up my mom during Mardi Gras. When he found out she was pregnant, he sent a half-dozen lawyers down to the bayou with the one and only child support check we ever saw, which was more than enough for her to buy a house and put me in Catholic school. Seems the old man already had a wife and kid and didn’t need some Cajun whore and her bastard kid fucking up his life. That’s about all I know.”

“His name was Devlin?”

Sean grumbled, holding tight to the string of curses he reserved for his mother’s decision to saddle him with that name.

“My mother had some schoolgirl fantasy that someday, he’d come claim me. Never happened, of course. He died before I turned eighteen.”

“So you have a sibling.”

Sean forced his body off the chaise lounge. With a kaleidoscope of color flashing behind his eyes, he experienced pain from every injury he’d ever sustained—some during his captivity but some from a long time before.

He walked closer to the edge overlooking the beach and spat into the wind. “A half-brother, but he’s dead, too. Got his brains blown out in a home invasion.”

“Do you know when? Or by whom?”

Sean shrugged, not wanting to think about the sordid mess. He’d never even been in the same room with the only other human being who’d shared his blood, but he remembered the day he’d learned about his half brother’s death with weird clarity. He’d been working a case in Dallas, following a tech analyst for an energy firm that was suspected of corporate espionage.

Just like with Jayda, it had been Dante who’d broken the news. Hell of a coincidence. At the time, Sean hadn’t asked how his former boss had known about the brother Sean had never met or why he’d known about the guy’s murder. He’d assumed the first piece of information had come from an agency background check and the second, maybe, because his brother was wealthy, influential and, by all accounts, as dirty as a French Quarter back alley. If the CIA had put him on a watch list, then Dante, as Sean’s superior, would have been notified when he’d bitten the dust.

None of it had mattered to Sean. He was too surrounded by danger and death of real American heroes to give a shit about some prick who probably wiped his ass with hundred dollar bills.

But Brynn cared. Judging from the way she was biting her bottom lip, she cared quite a bit.

“Did you kill him?”

She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “No.”

Sean narrowed his gaze and strode back across the patio.

“But you know who did,” he guessed.

“Yes.”

“And you’re not going to tell me who it was.”

She started shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. Protective walls flew up around her like a science-fiction force field.

“I can’t,” she said. “Not without betraying a trust. But that’s why I owe you, even though I had no idea who you were until after we retrieved you.”

“Would you have still rescued me if you’d known?”

She hardly hesitated, which made Sean smile. “Yes. I might have even done it quicker. Not because your brother was a good man. He wasn’t.”

He supposed, in some alternate reality, he should hold her part in his brother’s death against her, but he was too focused on the present and the future to worry much about the past. What was done was done—and if her actions bound her to him, then he could use that to his advantage.

And unlike her, he wouldn’t feel guilty about it.

“He’s coming for us now, you know,” he said.

“Who?”

He smirked. “Not my brother,
cher
. My people might be descendents of voodoo priestesses, but even I don’t believe in ghosts. Not like that, anyway,” he clarified, thinking about Jayda and how she continued to haunt his life even after she’d left without a word. “I’m talking about Dante.”

She waved his concerns away. “He hasn’t even answered my multiple requests for updates. We’re clearly not a priority. But for all we know, you’re still in danger from those goons who kidnapped you. The last thing he told me was to keep you here and make sure you recovered. That’s what I intend to do.”

“I’m recovered,” he said, dropping onto the chaise as the last of his strength deserted him. He needed sleep. Even the risk of sunburn wasn’t moving him off this spot anytime soon.

She slid onto the cushions next to him again. “You’re in the fast lane of recovery road, Sean, but you’re not healed yet. And you know it. We’re both better off waiting for Dante’s instructions.”

He shielded the sun out of his eyes with his hand. “Are you normally so…submissive?”

“Are you normally so forgetful?” She leaned in close and grazed a kiss over his temple. “I don’t recall showing any signs of submission in the water.”

“No, you didn’t,” he agreed. “But you’re still doing Dante’s bidding without knowing anything about what you’ve gotten yourself into. Don’t you worry about what you’re in the middle of?”

Again, she ran her teeth over her lip. It was a tell—one she must have realized she’d revealed since she tried to cover it with a seductive smile.

“Why don’t you fill me in? We have plenty of time on our hands, and though you should be too tired to move, you seem to have no problem with talking.”

As she spoke, she ran her hands across his chest, tweaking his nipple and then following the path of his chest hair down his pecs, over his abs and past his navel.

“This isn’t fair play,” he groaned as her fingers wrapped around his cock. Though lax only moments before, his sex awoke at the sensation of her exploratory touch. Whatever blood had returned to his brain rushed back to where it was needed most, leaving him dizzy and glad he was lying down.

“Who agreed to play fair? I didn’t,” she said, tightening her grip. “But relax. You’re exhausted and I’m simply intrigued by the wonderful instrument of torture you have here. Look how long it’s getting. How thick. The skin is so tight. Silky, even. I wonder if it tastes half as delicious as it looks.”

He mustered enough energy to grab her upper arm. Their eyes locked and he strangled out a desperate, “Don’t.”

She grinned. “This isn’t a power play, Sean. This isn’t a bid for information or even me avoiding answering your questions. This is just a woman who wants to suck a man off as he drifts to well-deserved sleep. It’s a gift,” she promised. “Nothing less.”

Without the strength or will to fight her, he relinquished the last of his control. She spared no time in kissing a blazing path down the same route her hand had taken. When she lifted his dick into her mouth and started to softly suckle him, skimming his head with her tongue then shifting to the side so that she could take him entirely into her mouth, he couldn’t remember if they’d been talking before, much less what they’d been talking about.

Sean had never known surrender. Not when he was an agent working counter-intelligence. Not when he’d been tied to a chair, having the crap beaten out of him.

But now, he knew what it felt like to let go.

And under Brynn’s lips, teeth and tongue—it felt like heaven.

This pleasure she gave because she wanted to, because it pleased her to please him. That’s what she’d said, and he had no reason to doubt her. Not now. Maybe not ever. She hummed as she sucked. She groaned with appreciation as she took him deeper, harder, cradling his balls in one hand while the other worked in tandem with her mouth, jerking him closer and closer to ecstasy.

He mustered just enough strength to tangle his hand into her hair and breathe out a sweet oath as he came. The rush was hot like a lazy summer day, the release something like soaring above the clouds on a glider. And she didn’t stop. She kissed him, caressed him, soothed and petted until he gave in to his exhaustion and followed the fantasy of his orgasm into the realm of sleep.

And in his dreams, she started all over again.

Nine

Falling into a routine with Sean proved seamless and comfortable. When he woke up, she brought food. Once they’d filled their empty bellies, they worked off the calories in bed, against the wall, across the couch or, once, splayed over the kitchen table.

When his injuries got the best of him, she climbed on top. When she was sore, he soothed her with cool compresses and his wicked tongue. After he’d surprised her in the shower while she was washing her hair, she’d blown his mind by suggesting he get her off with the detachable showerhead before she reciprocated by sucking him dry until the water heater cried uncle and the icy shards sent them scrambling for the warmth of the blankets on her bed.

Then they slept. When he woke, they started over again, though by the time forty-eight hours had gone by, sex had turned into cuddling, then back to touching, exploring, manual pleasuring and infinite sessions where they did nothing but kiss and kiss and kiss.

Brynn had no idea if keeping Sean in a state of constant arousal was helping or hindering his recovery, but by the morning of their third day as lovers, they finally started doing the one thing she’d been trying to avoid—talking about her standing orders to keep Sean where he was.

“I think I’ve finally cottoned on to your evil plan,” Brynn confessed, her breath ragged and her body still quivering from his amazing experiment with ice cubes and olive oil. The results had been so dizzying, Brynn was shocked she had the mental acuity to figure out anything.

Sean emerged from beneath the sheets and settled in beside her, his half-mast erection pressed softly across her thigh. “What’s that?”