Navy SEALs Complete Series: 3 Books + 3 Novellas (Tempting Navy SEALs) (118 page)

She needed to get up, maybe shower. Instead she let her eyes close and felt herself slip into sleep.

I
AN CLEANED HER WITH A
damp cloth. With another he wiped away the drying sweat. Starting at her forehead and working his way down, a smile tugging at his lips as she shivered softly.

He dried her, pulled back the blankets, and tucked her beneath them as the first full rays of the sun speared through the slats of the shades over the balcony doors.

He’d been up more than twenty-four hours, but hell, so had she. He needed just a few hours’ sleep, to recharge before he forced Sorrell into the confrontation that was coming.

He should go downstairs, meet with Diego and fill him in. He wanted him in on this, didn’t he? Both of them in the same place. It would be like leading the lamb to the slaughter.

Later, he told himself, ignoring the warning little cringe that tightened his guts at the thought. Diego was no lamb. He had made his own choices and those choices had led him here, to this final confrontation.

He brushed the hair back from Kira’s face as he slid beneath the sheets with her. She turned into his arms naturally, for the first time seeking him in her sleep rather than maintaining distance between them.

He kissed her lips softly, because he couldn’t help himself. She had given him something he had never known before, the chance to love someone who knew the fires he walked within.

She wouldn’t be pacing the floor and crying while he was on a mission. Hell, he’d probably be the one pacing the floor and cursing whenever she wasn’t within sight. Because he knew her.

He frowned at that. Something would have to change
after this. Neither of them would be able to go back to their old lives. Their old lives wouldn’t exist now. Neither of them were the same people they had been when this operation began.

He smiled though, realizing there was no regret in the thought. There were other ways. There were always other ways, other jobs, and damned if he wouldn’t be ready for a change, if they survived this.

If they came out of it alive.

His arms tightened around her as he sent up a prayer. Just protect her, he thought. Nothing more. Nothing for him, because that would be selfish. He never prayed for his own survival, but now he prayed for Kira’s.

H
E SLEPT THREE HOURS; HE
thought Kira would sleep longer. Ian slipped from the bed and made his way to the shower, mentally and emotionally preparing himself for the next few hours.

He would spill blood today, and he would spill it again before the night was over. As he stepped beneath the shower’s spray he braced his hands on the wall, leaned his head into it, and breathed in roughly.

He hadn’t lost enough sleep yet to weaken him, and he’d make certain once this morning was over to find an hour for a nap. He’d learned to sleep where he could, when he could, if it meant only a few minutes propped against a wall. Or a few hours curled around Kira.

His arms ached to return to the position he had awakened in. Clenched to hold her against him.

Hell, he was dangerous to himself in this shape. This was a mission, not an excuse to screw his head up. Or his soul. But that was exactly what he had managed to do where Kira was concerned.

Suddenly, he was questioning plans that had been fact for two years. Questioning his own motivations and wondering about his reasons for getting involved. Honor, glory, and the American way were wonderful surface excuses, but
when a man set out to kill his sire, there was more to it. It was personal, it had become personal in a desert twenty years before, and he realized with a vague sense of disgust that it had shaped his life, even after the danger had passed.

She was changing him. Or perhaps that was the wrong word. It wasn’t a change, so much as a revelation. She had made him realize why so much of his soul had seemed empty for so long. He hadn’t even realized what he was missing, what he was searching for, until Atlanta. And even then he had tried to deny it, tried to push it away.

He was the worst sort of male chauvinist, yet he had allowed her into the mission, he had kept her at his side. The logical part of his brain, which worked only rarely when it came to her, assured him she was a capable agent. The emotions though, those had blindsided him, ambushed him.

And now he was in emotional hell.

More blood would stain his hands this morning, and even more once the meeting with Sorrell commenced. He was sure she was no stranger to bloodshed, hell, he knew she wasn’t, but he didn’t want to kill in front of her. He wanted her to keep that vision of a white knight that she seemed to have convinced herself he was.

Ian shook his head before lifting his face to the stinging water and mentally kicking himself for the fool he was.

Son of a bitch. She had a way of twisting his guts into knots and he couldn’t seem to stop it, no matter what he did or how many times he told himself he was doing the right thing.

As he stood there kicking his own ass for his weakness, he felt her. Hell. He lowered his head to the spray again. He hadn’t heard her slip into the bathroom, but he felt her. Not just a presence, her presence. Soft, smelling of his possession, warm and willing.

He turned his head as the shower door opened and she stepped inside the large cubicle.

She didn’t speak, and his tongue was paralyzed as her hands slid down his back.

“You should be sleeping.” He cleared his throat, certain
his already ruined voice sounded like a monster’s growl as a smile flirted at her lips.

“I got cold.” She blinked against the drops of water that splattered to her face.

He knew better. The temperature was controlled, she couldn’t have gotten cold. Hell no, she was hot, burning inside the same as he was, even after the rapture that had claimed them hours before.

His arms went around her. Trapping her against the side of the shower wall, he stared down at her intently, watching the passion that clouded her eyes and feeling the response clear to the engorged, painfully hard length of his dick.

Hell, he shouldn’t be this hard. He shouldn’t be bending his knees and rooting it against the slick, hot folds of her pussy.

He had work to do. He had killers to take care of, a drug cartel business to run. He had to play the game until the minute he put a bullet in Sorrell’s and Diego’s heads. That required planning, not fucking himself blind.

“I need to be downstairs.” His head lowered to the ripe, plump bead of her nipple and he heard her gasp as he fought to make sense of the thoughts and emotions jumbled inside him.

“Okay.” Her hands tunneled into his hair though and held him to her breast.

Ian surrounded her nipple with his lips, drew it into his mouth and let his tongue play with it. He stroked it, lashed it, sucked at it with firm draws of his mouth.

“You’re a wild man.” A thread of satisfaction filled her voice as he moved his lips to her neck, licking along the smooth column and taking nips of her with his lips.

God, he loved tasting her flesh, loved immersing himself in her scent.

“Horny man,” he muttered.

She laughed, her hands flattening against his shoulders as she pushed him back and went to her knees before he could stop her.

Ian stared down at her, unable to move now, unable to form a coherent thought at the sight of his heavy shaft aimed at her soft, pink lips.

Her tongue peeked from between those perfect lips, curled along the underside of his cock and had him gritting his teeth at the wild pleasure that ricocheted up his spine.

Now, if she had given him a chance to recover his sense, he might have pulled her to feet, lifted her until her legs could circle his hips, and his cock could burrow into the paradise he found between her thighs. But she couldn’t keep it that simple.

Her mouth surrounded the crest, took him deep, and began a long slow suction as her hands wrapped around the shaft and a groan tore from his throat.

“Ah yeah.” He gave himself over to the most wicked, heated head job a man could ever know.

Sweet lips surrounded him, a tight hot mouth stroked him, and that tongue of hers was a curling, lashing little demon of ecstasy.

“Deeper.” His hands slid into her wet hair, his fingers tightening in the strands as he braced his legs firmly beneath him. “Take it deeper, Kira.”

Slumberous, erotic sensuality transformed her features. She was beautiful. Exquisite. And she was sucking his dick like a favorite treat. He loved it. Loved her.

God help him, he loved her.

His cock slid farther along her tongue as he felt her moan vibrate along the shaft.

“Deeper,” he urged her, his voice so thick, so rough he could barely understand the words himself. “Come on, baby, you know what I want.”

Uncertainty flickered in her eyes, causing him to pause. She had never . . . ? At least not like this. Not deep, not to the point that a man knew he would lose his mind buried inside her mouth.

He smiled down at her. “Just relax. Let me show you.”

His fingers tightened in her hair, tilted her head back just
a bit, aligning the head of his cock with the soft inner depths of her throat.

“Breathe through your nose, relax. It’s good, Kira. So good.”

He watched her nostrils flare as his eyes narrowed and he began to move again. His hips shifted, nearly pulling his cock free of her mouth before he moved inside again, going deeper, just a little deeper, feeling her tighten on him.

“Relax.” Ah God, he was desperate, burning for that final depth where he would feel the exquisite clenching at the back of her mouth, feel her tongue rippling along the undershaft.

He pulled back and filled her mouth again, touching that final portal for the briefest instance before retreating. It was so fucking hot, blistering, destroying him.

“A little more,” he panted. “Just a little more.”

Ah hell. He was dying, burning alive. His balls were drawn so tight against the base of his cock that they felt constricted to the point of pain. The need to come was like a burning lance shooting straight up his spine and sizzling through his brain.

Her long black hair flowed down her back, her exotic face was filled with hunger, and she sucked his cock like a woman starving for the taste of her man.

Ian clenched his jaw tight with the effort to hold back, pushed through her lips again, and swore he was going to die before he managed to come.

It was perfect. It was a haven in the middle of a storm, the center of the hurricane, the depths of a volcano. It was white-hot heat and a pleasure he knew he couldn’t live without now.

He felt the back of her mouth relax, though it rippled against the head of his cock. The muscles of her throat spasmed, tightened, and before he realized he’d lost it, his semen was jetting from the tip of his dick and filling her mouth.

Her throttled cry was another ripple along his cock, her
stroking hands, her rapturous mouth. His head fell back on his shoulders as a harsh, guttural shout filled the steamy shower and he pumped his release down her throat.

Damn her. She was still there, the muscles at the back of her mouth spasming and rippling, extending his pleasure until he forced himself to jerk from between her lips. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t stop thrusting. As good as the release was, as exquisite, as fucking hot, he needed more now.

Ian pulled her to her feet, clamped his hands beneath her ass, and lifted.

“Wrap around me,” he snarled.

Her legs went around his waist, her arms around his shoulders, and his cock nudged into the fierce, honey-slick folds between her thighs.

He didn’t ease into her, he couldn’t. Bunching his thighs, he held her in place and with a harsh cry pushed into the swollen, slick portal of her clenching pussy.

“Son of a bitch.” He locked his teeth together as she cried out against his shoulder, her teeth sinking into his flesh.

He was buried in fire. Lightning clashed and burned through his nervous system as sweet, wicked spasms of hunger rippled over his erection.

He was buried to the hilt, balls deep in rapture and sinking fast.

He pushed her against the shower wall, tightened his grip on the cheeks of her ass, and pulled back before impaling her against it with a deep, desperate lunge. He was groaning, whispering her name, his face buried in her neck as her cries echoed in his ears. And he couldn’t stop.

Fucking her was imperative, stripping away reality and filling it with the pleasure, the erotic sense of belonging that only came from possessing her. That need filled every particle of his being.

She was a part of him. He filled her body and she filled his soul, and God help him but the thought of losing her was destroying him.

“Hold me,” he whispered, knowing he had whispered those words before, knowing he had needed her like this all his life.

“Always.” Her voice shattered his control. “Always.”

He plunged inside her, thrusting hard and deep, feeling her explode around him as his semen jetted inside her, filling her, marking her, a part of him held forever inside her.

Even as the last shudders of release rippled down his spine, he couldn’t let her go. The water streamed over them now, washing along their bodies, steamy, relaxing, but the thought of easing his flesh from hers had him clenching in denial. He wanted to hold her like this forever. Right here. Hold the world at bay and deny the knowledge that anything existed outside the two of them.

“Water’s gonna get cold.” That Southern drawl was lazy, relaxed, filled with satiation.

Ian grunted in response, his face still buried at her neck, his tongue stroking across her flesh occasionally just to feel the little ripples of response beneath her skin.

She didn’t say anything more, just held on to him, her hands stroking along his neck as he fought to gain the strength to pull away from her.

His head lifted and he stared into her eyes, holding on to her as she found her footing on the shower floor. Deep, dark gray orbs ringed in ocean blue. Like a fairy, or one of those damned pixies his mother had been forever telling him stories about when he was a child.