Who was he to ignore that? The memory flooded back, but he wasn’t in a crate with her on the high seas. He was in his own apartment, in his own bed. He was more than half-naked. His body burned for her more than ever, and she was his. She offered herself to him in open desire.
God, was this really happening? Was he really raking his fingertips up her thighs to lift her skirts? Was she really gliding her heavenly form against him in molten passion?
She dropped her arm behind her, and her dainty fingers tickled up his leg to his shorts. His flesh stiffened to a throbbing, tingling rod inside his pants, and she darted underneath to touch it. He struggled to breathe. Yes, she really was touching him. She pulled down his shorts and stroked him to insanity. Oh, sweet Jesus, he couldn’t stand this. He needed her. He needed to get inside her, in the hot, dark, close embrace of her sweetness.
His pulsating member took on a will of its own. He bunched her skirts around her waist. Her stockings covered her legs, and her underwear concealed her magnificent flesh underneath. As badly as he wanted her, he set to work with that single-minded intent that got him to the top of the Falisa ranks in the first place. He unfastened every lace of her bodice and every button holding her dress on and peeled off her clothes one stitch at a time. He dragged out each step as long as he could to hold her in that quiescent readiness.
She sobbed and moaned in fervent arousal but didn’t try to hurry him. She quivered in anticipation and savored every slow, deliberate action.
He unlaced her corset, and she released a shuddering breath of relief. He lifted her shift over her head. Nothing remained but her underwear and stockings. He drew her ripe flesh close to him, her luscious skin pressed against his. He kicked off his shorts. They hadn’t been like this in the crate, but that didn’t matter now. So much had changed since then that they would never be the same. They could never do it like that again. They knew each other too well.
The centuries had taught him a few things about the opposite sex, and he’d had all the time he needed to imagine what she would feel like when he held her again. He took hold of her breasts and pulled her over onto her back to guide one of them into his mouth. He nibbled until she heaved off the bed to stroke her body against his chest. A patch of wetness sparkled where her hair grazed his hip.
He let go of her nipple. She lunged off the bed to try to snatch a kiss from his mouth, but he pushed her back down. This was his moment to take her the way he always wanted to. Her eyes stared at him, wide and surprised out of the dark, but she didn’t resist.
He lifted her arms above her head to arch her back. Her breasts swayed before his eyes, but he had something else in mind. He buried his face in her stomach and mouthed his way down to that dark patch where her juices called to him. His mouth watered to taste her.
She whimpered in desperation, but he refused to hurry this. She hadn’t waited three hundred years for this night the way he had. He would do this right before he let her go. He took one last mouthful of her midsection before he dove between her legs to smother his nose and mouth in warmth.
She opened to receive him. Her succulent goodness nourished the aching hunger that had consumed his soul for thousands of years. He burrowed into that slippery heaven where he could hide from all the dangers and loneliness plaguing his life all this time.
She combed her fingers into his hair and rubbed her flowery petals into his mouth. Her honey filled his soul to overflowing. He wanted to live inside her, body and soul. He never wanted to see the light of day when he could experience this joyous contentment instead.
She bucked and squealed against him. Her fingers tightened into his scalp, and she crammed him in deeper, but that could never fill her up, either.
He rose onto his hands and knees and crawled over her to kiss her ravenous lips. She smothered him in her arms and breasts and mouth. She took hold of his stiff tool and aimed him into her.
He collapsed against her, but he didn’t want her this way. At the last moment, he veered off and took his place behind her one more time. She shifted onto her side, tensing all over in excitement, and grabbed him behind his ass to haul him in.
His shaft found its way as she backed against him, and he slotted into the place where his soul rested from all care. He gave up the ghost to find his way back to that blessed garden one more time.
She snuggled into him, and her presence drove him out of his mind. He clenched her hips in white-knuckle fury. He scratched the simmering itch along his shaft against the quivering channel inside her.
She sighed in his embrace. Her insides swallowed him, and her sugary nectar smoothed the pathway to ultimate bliss.
Chapter 35
Vic woke up when Malcolm threw the curtains back. Sunshine flooded into the bedroom from a crystal clear blue sky outside. Golden Gate Bridge shone above a sparkling sea all the way up the Marin coast beyond.
Her hand flew in front of her eyes. “What are you doing to me, you brute? Can’t a girl get some sleep around here?”
“Rise and greet another day, sweetheart.” He crossed the room to the dresser where he busied himself putting on his cufflinks. He checked his shirt collar in the mirror and combed his hair. “Time to go to work.”
Vic rolled away from the window. “You go to work. I’m sleeping in.”
“Not here, you’re not,” he countered. “You can’t stay here alone. It’s not safe, and anyway, you have your own business to tend to.”
Vic flung her arm over her eyes. “No rest for the wicked.”
Malcolm chuckled. “That’s right.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry to get rid of me,” Vic shot back. “I thought you would at least want to prolong the time we have to spend together before we have to go back to pretending we don’t know each other.”
He whipped around to stare at her, then laughed. He jumped on the bed to land on hands and knees on top of her and bounced up and down on the mattress to shake her out of bed until she laughed along with him.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he chided. “You know I’d love to spend the rest of my life in bed with you, but we both have a job to do here.”
She peeked out from under her arm at him. “Do you mean it?”
“Of course.” He kissed her and pried her arm loose. “I’ve been waiting centuries to take you like we did last night. That’s why I’m anxious to get up and get working, so we can be together from now on.”
She draped her arms around his neck and pulled him down on top of her. She dissolved into his kiss, and the mounting passion of last night exploded through her. She couldn’t stop it. She rubbed one thigh against his pants and raked her fingernails down his back.
His bulk collapsed on top of her. He rolled sideways and yanked the sheet out of the way to expose her compact naked body hidden underneath. The next instant, they rocketed together in renewed ecstasy.
He pawed all over her at once, and the burning elixir steamed from her cleft for him. She tugged his shirt out of his belt and burrowed her still-warm arms underneath. His chest and stomach and back caught her in their magnetic pull. She needed him, just one more time before they parted.
He let go of her to unbutton his pants. In a flash, he pushed them down to his knees and his stiff member nudged between her thighs. She shoved him over on his back and mauled every inch of skin she could get hold of, ripping his shirt open and biting him down his chest. She jumped on top of him and straddled his hips.
He growled in pain and desire at her teeth tormenting him, but he grabbed her in equal ferocity. He circled her waist with one arm, heaved her up, and brought her down on his shaft.
She cried out and reared against his iron grip, but he held her in place to pump up into her from below. The next instant, mounting rapture took hold of her. She sat down heavily on every up thrust as he ruptured the veil separating her from deepest fulfillment. She rode his thundering rhythm, faster and harder than she ever thought possible. His hot tongue burrowed into her throat. She clawed his shoulde
rs for any purchase, but he held her in his grasp. He commanded her to respond, and she sizzled on the smoldering meat plunging into her deepest crevices.
He seized a handful of her hair and pried her head back, then gnawed her neck and breasts and her ears, but she felt no pain. His fullness burst her into a million shards of light. The mystical union of two bodies into one flesh converged to obliterate everything else. She flung herself at him in a frenzy and poured out her rapture in lusty screams that echoed off the walls. She screamed out all the yearning need from her time with him in Scotland and long before. She gushed around his length, and he covered her rising screams with his mouth.
She didn’t know she’d needed him long before she met him. She never knew anything was missing from her life. Now she saw it all in stark detail. Her heart and soul longed for the part of them they didn’t see or hear but that lurked just out of sight. He’d watched and waited for her all these years, and now he’d found his way back to her. They came together to make one complete whole, the way they ought to be.
In the ecstasy of their completion, he turned her away from him and plowed her apart from behind. She gyrated on his spike, and it stirred the magical elixir of her electric pleasure spots up and down her channel.
When they finished, Malcolm collapsed sideways on the bed with her still clenched in his mighty arms. She came to rest on her side in front of him, the way this all started. His powerful bulk folded behind her back, and he leaned his sweat-streaked forehead on her shoulder.
She nuzzled against him in the blissful delirium of delight. She didn’t want to get up or pry herself away, but this couldn’t go on forever. Much as she’d like to deny it, the real world outside demanded their attention—both of them.
She would only spend the rest of her life with Malcolm if they went back to work on the Prometheus formula. They’d made the breakthrough of identifying the tundra beetle. That success infected her with the natural curiosity that made her so successful at chemistry in the first place. Her destiny lay with this formula. She would leave this apartment, and she wouldn’t return to it until she drank the formula. She understood that in her cells now. Malcolm was hers in all his complexity, and he was a mole inside the Falisa. She could take all of him or none of him. There could never be any in between.
He bit her earlobe. “I gotta go. I’ve got a ten o’clock meeting.”
She nodded but didn’t move. “I know. It’s okay.”
He whispered in her ear, his voice breaking from some hidden strain, “Don’t forget. Don’t ever forget.”
She kissed his hands but dared not move. “I’ll never forget.”
He peeled his sweaty body off her and left her cold.
She couldn’t stay here. She had to get back to the lab. She had a slew of tests to run on samples of different ingredients, and she had to get Ree to order some June bugs for testing, if Ree hadn’t done it already.
Vic went into the bathroom and took a quick shower while Malcolm changed his clothes. When she came back, he handed her the Macy’s bag out of his closet. “Here. I kept these for you.”
She blushed. “Thanks.” She slipped into her jeans, buttoned up her shirt, and gathered her hair in a sloppy knot on top of her head. “By the way, I got the names of the interception teams Boyd sent.”
Malcolm whipped around from the mirror. “You did?”
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you before all hell broke loose back at the Guild House.”
Malcom’s gaze fell to the floor. “I hated sending you back again, knowing what we’d face, what you’d face.”
Vic sucked in a shuddery breath. “Yes. But it’s over now, and we know who the six are. We have to keep up appearances at least until we locate and deal with them. I got their names. Maybe you know some of them.”
Malcolm went back to fixing his hair. “They’re probably using different names.”
“I don’t think so,” Vic countered. “I overheard Boyd talking to one of them—I think he might have been their captain, or whatever you want to call it. He was definitely in charge, and he was the one who was going to cast the spell to send them here.”
Malcolm shook his head without turning around. “I don’t even want to know how you overheard them talking about that.”
“No, you don’t,” she muttered.
“So what did Boyd say?” he asked. “What makes you think they’re using the same names?”
“He told this guy to find the Guild. They supposed the Guild would still be going in three hundred years, and the teams were going to approach the Guild for shelter before they made their move against us.”
Malcolm frowned. “That means…”
“They could be hiding inside Allied,” she went on. “They would have used the same names when they applied to the Guild for protection. Boyd planned to leave word who the team members were, and the team leader planned to tell the current Guild Master who he was.” She cocked her head to peer at him. “Are you the current Guild Master?”
He turned back to the mirror, but the shadow never left his features. “I’m not Guild Master. No one is. The Falisa restructured about a hundred years ago. The Chapter Heads have more autonomy. We don’t answer to a Guild Master anymore. It’s more democratic, with the Chapter Heads working as equals.”
Vic made a face. “Charming. Sounds like the Sisters of Charity.”
“That doesn’t get us any closer to identifying these guys,” he countered.
“Well, why don’t you just check?” she suggested. “Maybe some or all of them are working for Allied. Boyd told them to go back early so they could position themselves in the right places to be ready for us. Maybe some of them are even—” She stared at him with wide eyes.
“Some of them are what?” he asked.
Vic launched herself off the bed, yanked her boots on, and jerked her arms into her jacket sleeves. “I was just about to say maybe some of them are even working for Primary Industries. I gotta go. I have to check the employment records.” She snatched up her handbag and rushed for the door.
“Hey!” he cried. “Wait a second. You haven’t even told me their names. How am I supposed to check if I don’t know who they are?”
She halted on the threshold and blinked. “Oh. Of course. Their names are Marcus McLeod, Muir Wiley, Reid Gunn…”
Malcolm whirled away from the mirror to glare at her, his eyes flashing.
“…Roy Fraser, Seumas Baird, Shaw Munro, and Stewart Gunn.”
“Stewart Gunn!” he thundered.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Do you know him?”
“Know him!” he boomed. “He’s my right-hand man. He knows everything I’m up to—well, almost everything. He’s in line to take over for me as Chapter Head if anything happens to me.” He punched his fist into his palm. “Son of a bitch! All this time, and I had no idea.”
“He’s stalking you,” Vic remarked. “Do you recognize any of the other names on the list?”
“Muir Wiley works in our tech department, but he couldn’t know anything about me. I noticed his name on the payroll. It stood out at me as being kind of unusual, but we’ve never met. He couldn’t know I was Angui unless Stewart told him.”
“Any others?”
“No.” He crammed his keys and wallet and phone into his pockets. He locked his jaw and growled through gritted teeth, “Come on. Let’s get out of here. You go check the Primary Industries employee records. See if you can identify any of these guys. The sooner we know where they are, the better chance we’ll have to head them off.”
“What are you going to do about Stewart?” she asked. “Are you going to fire him or…” She stiffened. “You’re not going to kill him, are you?”
“I’m not going to kill him, sweetheart. I have a policy of keeping my enemies close to me. That way I can monitor what they do, and they’re always close at hand when the time comes to slit their throats.”
Vic shuddered. “Don’t talk like that.”
; He wrapped his arms around her. “You know that better than anybody. This is all-out war. People die, and those people better be the enemy.”
Vic stared up into his sparkling eyes. Did he know about Boyd? Had he figured out over the centuries that she’d killed him and then two soldiers in a murderous spree?
He charged the door, but Vic caught hold of him. “Wait a second. You know, don’t you? You know I killed Boyd and the other two men before I found you and we fought off the Gunns?”
Malcolm turned and stepped close to her. “Well, of course. They blamed me, naturally, since no woman could have created such carnage. Men of that time had never seen what an Angui woman could do, would do to protect her own. And as quick as the Gunns and their men arrived in droves, it’s a good thing you acted when you did and then found me.”
Vic shook her head. “I have no idea where it came from. No idea how I could do such things. Those two men were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I feel horrible for murdering them.” She glared at the floor.
Malcolm tipped her chin up to bring her gaze to his. “You’re Angui, Vic. A warrior. You’ve always been a warrior. It came from deep within you, resurrected by the circumstances so you could finally become the woman you were meant to become. And thankfully so. Those two men might have made the difference in us escaping out that window later, you know. Survival of our people over the centuries could not be governed by the laws of man or we wouldn’t have made it to this century. Their laws will always seek to stamp out any power greater than their own or greater than they can control.”
Vic chuckled at the thought of even being able to tell if there were two more or less men corning them in that bedroom. After several long moments lost in thought as she stared into Malcolm’s eyes, she accepted that their future depended on living above man’s laws and growing beyond the narrow views of society she’d shared before finding her true self in the past.
She relaxed and leaned into him. “You’re not walking out of here until you kiss me.”
He pulled up short, his eyes widening in surprise before he smiled. He held her close, and she swayed in his endless kiss.
Spies of the Angui - Cipher's Kiss Book 3 Page 24
