Return of the Assassin (All the King's Men) (29 page)

But she liked
his
hands right where they were. With a moan, she writhed in his arms, reached around, and dug her fingers into his hair.

The air in the room shifted and charged with mutual affection and sexual energy. With no more secrets between them, their hearts and souls opened, and a lightness invaded her senses that yearned for him to brush away the crumbs of her past and cap off the moment by showing her what lay in her future.

His fingers tickled their way lower until they parted her, and then his palm slicked all the way down as his finger slid inside.

"You're so wet for me," he whispered against her neck, grinding his erection against her bottom.

All she could do was nod and part her legs so he could explore deeper.

"How did I refuse you for so long?" He dipped his head against hers and inhaled as if trying to breathe her in. "I was insane."

"So was I." Making love to Malek was just that. Two people in love, sharing themselves in a mutual dance of passion and respect. Never had she felt anything like this, and she never wanted it to stop.

He rocked behind her with light, easy thrusts. His actions spoke more fluently than words about how he felt for her. He wanted her, but he wouldn't force himself on her, either. She dictated the pace.

She looked over her shoulder, pulled his face to hers, and fused her mouth to his. He lavished languid tugs against her lips. "I love a female with a gun," he said between kisses. "It's so sexy." He nipped playfully at her chin.

Only Malek could make her laugh at a time like this, after she had just confessed her darkest secrets, and while he was putting such sweet moves on her, no less. But this was why he was perfect for her. With a simple statement, mixed with a playfulness she hoped to see more of, he broke through what was left of her pain and pushed it away. Her resulting giggle felt therapeutic, almost like she had just awakened from a nightmare and realized she wasn't in danger.

"You're so different," she said, still giggling as he peppered small kisses up and down her neck.

"From…?" He licked her earlobe.

"Before."

"You mean when I was a moody bastard too hung up on the past to see what was right in front of me?" He tugged at her tank top. "Or when I sat dumbfounded and silent in your cell, too enthralled with you to do more than stare? By the way, you're still wearing too many clothes."

"Malek!" She burst into laughter as he wiggled his hand under her top and wrapped one leg around her hips, grinding against her backside as he pushed up her shirt. "Mmm." She moaned and laid her head back against his shoulder as he cupped her breast. "And both. You're different both from when you were a bastard, and when you watched over me in my cell."

"Mmm, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen." His hand slid to her other breast, causing her nipple to pucker against his palm. "Of course, that was before I went temporarily insane."

"Of course." She shimmied out of the tank top and tossed it aside.

"But now you're back." His lips brushed over the skin of her neck as he spoke, and his playfulness quickly transformed back into a desire so intense it wrapped around her like an erotic blanket.

She writhed out of Sam's pants. "Yes. I'm back." Butterflies lit in her stomach, the mood quickly intensifying as he shifted, reached down, and grasped the inside of her thigh then lifted her leg.

"My sexy assassin," he whispered against her ear. "And you're all mine." He grazed his teeth against her neck.

"And you're mine." Like him, she would never let him go now that she had found him.

The tip of his tongue danced up and down the side of her neck as he slowly rolled her to her stomach and lay on her back. "I'm going to buy you a different necklace for every day of the month," he said, thrusting into her, hitting her just right.

"Oh?" She gasped as he locked his fingers with hers, pushed her arms under the pillow, and drove farther inside.

He released her hands and glided his down to her hips, where he gripped her as he rolled against her again. Amazing friction burned between them as he breathed against her nape. "Yes. Ones that glorify this exquisite neck." He purred and pumped his hips forward and back in a series of gentle, shallow surges. "And when I make love to you, that's all you'll be wearing."

That was when the loving got serious. She kept her head on the mattress as he lifted her hips, bent over her, and took her in the most primitive manner since the dawn of man. And when she climaxed, he joined her and sank his fangs into the nape of her neck, shuddering behind her. As she broke into euphoria, she came again. It didn't matter that she couldn't give him a child. He loved her, anyway.

Armand was no more. She could finally send him to the trash bin of her mind.

She belonged to Malek now. And unlike Armand, Malek would take care of her, cherish her, and love her for a lifetime.

After a satisfying, if not bruising, day of hard fucking, Lorena's limbs felt as loose as slack rope.

Mmm. How lovely.

She slithered against the red satin sheets in Bishop's private suite in the Underground and closed her eyes to revel in the tight soreness of her thighs and shoulders, the dull throb in her neck, and the luxurious sting of dozens of scratches down her back. And her breasts felt like they'd been cranked through an antique clothes wringer, shoved between two rollers meant to wring the water out of freshly laundered clothes.

Searcy lay on his stomach to her right, and Vaydon sprawled on his back to her left. Her two virile Dacians could fuck. They had held her down, choked her, brutalized her body to within an inch of delirium. Oh the things they had done to her! She had never felt more satisfied. Not even with Bishop. But wouldn't he make a fine addition to the games for three on one. The thought made her giddy.

With her eyelids barely parted, a drunken grin splattered on her face, she rolled her head to look at Searcy. What an innovative fuck buddy he was. Vaydon was exceptional, as well, but Searcy held a slight edge in the hardcore department. The two had used her until they finally collapsed in exhaustion, impressed that she still wanted more.

She was insatiable, but she could only milk a cow so long before the udders emptied and there was no more milk to give. And she had milked Searcy and Vaydon dry.

No matter. There would be another day to ride them like the broncos they were. Besides, the three of them had a big night tonight. They had a bitch to kill. Getting a few hours of sleep in the afternoon had been a wise call. That way, they could be good and frosty on the hunt. She didn't think they would have a problem finding Gina and taking her out. Malek appeared too weak to protect her against two Dacian warriors and her. She couldn't count herself out. She wanted a piece of this action. The look on Malek's face alone would be worth the effort of tagging along.

What had she seen in Malek? Because now that she had found two prize stallions who effortlessly gave her everything she needed and more, Malek seemed so much like small potatoes. At least one good thing had come from her brief interlude with him. He had given her a powerful bargaining chip to dangle in front of Searcy: Gina. Without that, Lorena might not have won them over, and if she hadn't won them over, she would be in Lucan's bed right now. And while Lucan was an adequate lover, he didn't even compare to these two. She looked between Searcy and Vaydon, and an almost demented sense of joy bubbled inside her belly like it was Christmas Day and she had gotten everything she had asked for and more.

Stretching like a large feline, she groaned quietly, relishing the residue of pain in her body. Then she pushed herself up and slid to the foot of the bed between her two male suitors, pushed herself to her feet, and padded barefoot and naked to the bathroom.

Mascara-smeared eyes stared with satisfaction at her from the mirror, and her mahogany hair was a tousled disaster, tangled and strewn about like she had just spent a month in a jungle with no comb. Bruises in the shape of fingers ringed her throat and stamped her shoulders and arms like faded tattoos.

Brands. Like the ones ranchers burned into the hides of their cattle. She was branded now. Theirs. Searcy's and Vaydon's. And she caressed the marks with adoring fingers, gazing at them with hooded eyes. Heat flooded her saturated core.

Searcy appeared in the doorway behind her, his silver eyes sleepy but alert. He met her gaze in the mirror, and one corner of his mouth ticked upward with the devil's smile. Without a word, he stepped up behind her and quietly shut the door.

"You will take me to Gina tonight," he said, slowly raking his nails down her raw back.

She trembled, and wicked, lusty fire shot through her. "Yes." She would do anything for him. Anything at all.

He licked his lips and his quicksilver eyes flashed like mercury, deadly and poisonous. "But first…" He pushed behind her and spread the cheeks of her ass. "A little wake-up call."

He breeched her tight opening, raw from the day's savagery, and thrust sharply inside. She cried out, slapped her palms down on the vanity, and nearly fell into rapture from the pain.

She didn't need a wake-up call, but she sure felt like she was dreaming.

* * *

Malek stood on the balcony of Micah's apartment. Spring was in the air, and just as with the seasonal new beginning, a sense of newness ran in his veins. Had this been how Micah felt when he met Sam? As if the proverbial planets had aligned and the heavens had opened to rain God's light down on him?

Man, he so had to eat crow for Micah now, didn't he? But so what? He had what he needed. What he wanted. He chuckled to himself. He and Micah had gone at each other like brothers fighting over the top bunk…times one hundred. And, as usual, Micah had been right. He was always right. At some point, Malek would have to stop doubting his oldest friend, who had been with him through just about everything a guy could go through, both good and bad. Now that he was sane again, trusting Micah would be a lot easier, because there were no more voices in Malek's head to contradict Micah's wisdom.

His hands rested on the banister, and he gazed out over the city, a perpetual smile on his face. What a difference a day made. Just one day ago, he had still been fighting his feelings, trying to justify why he was no good for Gina, even after admitting to himself she was indeed his mate. And now he had fully taken her in, joining with her in body and blood. He lifted his hand and ran the tips of his fingers over the almost imperceptible mark where Gina had taken his vein. The tiny indentations felt good on the side of his neck, like they belonged there. Which they did. She owned his body as he owned hers, and she could bite him wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted to.

A day.

Hell, not even a day. He had relented and accepted his station by her side in an instant. When he realized back at his home that she had formed a biological link to him, as well, the camel's back had broken. There had been no way he could resist her another second. And when he arrived here and set eyes on her, and then witnessed the fire of her wrath against him as she unleashed her anger at what he'd done, every doubt and fear faded away. All that mattered in that moment was to take away her pain.

Would the vampire phenomenon known as mating ever make sense to him? To any vampire, for that matter? A mated male, especially one who was newly mated or without his mate, was like a damn pinball, completely at the whim of biological forces he couldn't see. And those forces shattered his entire being, body and soul. They fractured his mind, knotted his sanity, and thrust him beyond rational thought…all to force him to either take his mate or die. Then as soon as he claimed his mate, all the fallen, scattered dominoes of his psyche shifted in an instant back into order to leave him scratching his head at how he could have been so stupid.

Malek wasn't the first male to behave like an idiot times ten while in the throes of mated need, and he wouldn't be the last. He was just thankful he had awakened from his dance with mated insanity in time to make the connection that Gina was his future, while Carmen—may she
now rest in peace—was his past. For the first time in more than ten human lifetimes, Malek was at peace and whole again.

Sure, Carmen still hummed in the back of his mind, but she was a pleasant presence now, not a painful memory. Guilt no longer jarred him, and he no longer fooled himself about where she was. She wasn't washing his clothes in the stream in the woods, and she wasn't tending to the fields or sleeping. She was dead. And although her death was tragic, she had passed over into the other realm a long time ago, where her spirit lived on, and where she no doubt watched over him.

In the distance, lightning flashed, still too far away to worry about, but close enough to know a storm was coming. Not that he needed the lightning to tell him that. The low clouds racing to the north and east, along with the unseasonably warm, humid gusts that blew out of the south, told him as much.

The wind blew his hair off his face, and he breathed in as he closed his eyes, refreshed in body and spirit. Cleansed. Ready to move into his future with his new mate.

The pain and suffering were over. No more fractured voices or split personalities haunted his mind. Just that quickly, Gina had glued his broken spirit back together. Malek was ready to live again. No, that wasn't exactly right. It wasn't that he was ready to live. He just simply craved life. A life with Gina.

He sighed and gazed out at the dark horizon beyond the lights of Chicago as another flash of lightning faintly lit the sky. A finality and sense of peace settled over him. "Good-bye, Carmen," he whispered. "I can finally say good-bye to you, but I'll never forget you."

His past was over, and as Gina walked quietly up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her lips against the back of his shoulder, he placed his hands over hers and pressed against her, feeling his future in her embrace.

"I want to take you home," he said quietly.

"I am home." She squeezed him harder. "With you, anywhere is home."

He smiled as he looked down at her slender hands, her fingers curled into his shirt against his abdomen. She had such small, delicate hands for an assassin. "Good point." He caressed the backs of her fingers, and she opened her loose fist so he could glide his fingers in between hers. "I'll clarify. I want to take you to my
house. Our
house, if you'll have it."

She rested her cheek between his shoulder blades. "Yes. With a little decorating, of course."

He chuckled. "Of course." His house definitely needed a feminine touch to make it a warm, cozy space. "And we'll need lots and lots of bookcases."

He felt her smile against his back. "Yes. Lots of bookcases."

"And the kitchen needs to be remodeled." He liked this, the two of them talking about their plans for the future.

"Your kitchen isn't so bad," she said.

"But there's nothing of you in it. I want you in every room, Gina. So that when I'm home, everywhere I look, I'll see a little piece of you."

She remained silent, but her arms tightened around him as if she refused to ever let go, both physically and mentally. She had claimed him as her mate as much as he had claimed her, and both of them silently acknowledged they were in this together, through thick and thin, more tightly bonded than two pieces of steel welded together.

After a moment, he turned his head to the side and said over his shoulder, "Is that all right with you,
piccolina?
" Somehow in the past several hours, waxing poetic in various languages while making love to her, he had nicknamed her after the Italian word for petite, and she had instantly taken a liking to it.

She nodded. "It's perfect,
tesoro.
" And she had nicknamed him after the Italian word for treasure, an Italian term of endearment.

He was
her
treasure. That's what he would be from now until eternity claimed him.

"Mi hai salvata,"
she whispered. You saved me.

If only she knew, she was his savior as much as he was hers. Without her, he would have died within the week. He had been on the fast track to a coffin six-feet under, just as Micah had predicted. Gina had saved his life.

"Non più di quanto tu abbia salvato me, amore mio."
No more than you saved me, my love.
"Piccolina mia."
My petite.

She pulled back as he turned and wrapped one arm around her. With his other hand, he caressed the backs of his fingers over her cheek.
"Sei tu a tenere il mio cuore, adesso."
You are the one holding my heart, now.

She smiled up at him and kissed his fingers.
"Ti amo."
I love you.

"Ti amo. Adesso andiamo a casa e perdiamoci l'uno nell'altra."
I love you. Now let's go home and get lost in one another.

She nodded once, and her cheeks flushed as she smiled and took his hand then led him inside. He still had to get his truck from where it was parked across the street from Four Alarm, but after that, he was taking Gina home, where they would stay tucked away for a few days. No one but them, lost inside each other.

He had a lot of time to make up for.