But none of those things made it less true.
She pushed off the tree and stepped back into the rain, headed for the rocks that would lead her back to the house. Back to Braden and all the unanswerable questions that stood between them.
31
Braden peered out the wall of windows over the beach for the hundredth time, scanning the sand for some sign of Nora. Twice he’d made it to the door with his coat and an extra one for her.
Twice he’d forced himself back into the house.
She’d walked out for a reason. She wanted to be alone to sort through her feelings about everything she’d learned about him. About everything he now knew about her. She was a strong, capable woman. A woman trained in the art of keeping herself and others safe. He would give her another half hour. If she wasn’t back by then, he would turn the island upside down to find her if that’s what it took.
He cursed, then resumed pacing the room. Fucking Locke. He should have known the other man would dig deeply into his life. All that bullshit about Nico vouching for him only went so far. Locke had a lot to lose, was letting Braden into both his business and his home. Was making him privy to details that could cost Locke his freedom. He would have been foolish to take everything Braden brought to the table at face value, even with Nico’s backing.
He ran a tired hand over his face. He should have come clean with Locke, told him about Nora from the beginning. The rational part of his brain told him he should have held off making a move on Nora too. Waited until he knew where things would go with Locke. Until he could have been honest.
But he couldn’t bring himself to regret a moment he’d spent with her. Of all the reckless things he’d done in his life, loving Nora Murphy was the best.
He knew now that it was true; he loved her. Had loved her for years. He’d told himself it was friendship, a product of the family that was the Bureau. It had been a lie. His feelings for her might have started out friendly all those years ago at Quantico, but it hadn’t been all friendship for a long time, and there was nothing familial about the way Nora made him feel.
Not unless you counted the fact that she felt like part of him.
He should have waited to tell her he knew about her brothers. It hadn’t come out right, had seemed like a card he was playing to guilt her into forgiving him. But he didn’t want her to forgive him because she felt ashamed of her brothers, because she felt ashamed of herself for looking the other way.
He wanted her to forgive him because she understood.
It was a lot to ask, especially of someone like Nora who prided herself on honesty, on playing it straight and narrow.
Then there was the added complication of Shields. Braden had told Locke about his second run-in with Cletis and Locke had promised to do more digging on Mike, but Braden had seen the look on Nora’s face when he mentioned Mike, knew how hard it would be to get her to consider that he was a traitor. The Bureau’s organizational structure was designed to create a cohesive unit. It wasn’t unlike the military that way. Both organizations forced you into close quarters, stressful situations, and long hours with the same people day after day. It made it nearly impossible to turn your back on each other.
To betray each other.
Or it was supposed to anyway. Apparently, Mike had no such reservation.
The possibility that Shields had been lying to Nora, playing her, made him angrier than the possibility that Shields was a traitor to the Bureau.
Braden thought about Nora’s brothers. There were three of them according to Locke’s information, all of them managing partners in an umbrella company whose organizational structure was so complex it would take years to unravel, which was undoubtedly the idea. Two of them had law degrees — all the easier to navigate the legalities of their situation — while the third seemed to be a bit of a black sheep, had even been incarcerated shortly after the death of Nora’s sister, Erin.
Braden didn’t hold it against the guy. Apparently he’d given Erin’s boyfriend a beating that had almost killed him. The boyfriend was obviously an addict who needed help, but Braden couldn’t blame Nora’s brother for his instinct to take a pound of flesh from the man who’d gotten his sister hooked on heroin.
The melancholy that had dogged him since his conversation with Locke grew inside him. Nora had returned to the living room right after he’d gotten off the phone. Then he’d had to come clean, tell her everything. He hadn’t had time to process most of what Locke told him.
Now it was all beginning to dawn on him — all the pain in Nora’s eyes, the weight she carried on her slender shoulders, the way she avoided talking about her family in Boston. Before they'd slept together, he’d assumed she wanted to keep things professional. Afterwards, everything had moved so quickly. He assumed they would get to all the personal stuff eventually. It’s not like he was eager to spill his own guts.
She’d been in an impossible situation. He saw that now. She was on the side of the law every day, and every day her brothers were breaking it. Every step she took toward justice must have felt like nothing more than a balancing of the scales her brothers were tipping the other way. Every victim must have been a reminder of her sister, every perp who was cut loose another blow to her sense of fairness.
And then he’d joined the other side. Another betrayal.
He resisted the urge to punch the wall, throw something. He’d fucked it up, positioned himself as her enemy when he’d never met someone who needed an ally more. Even backing off his decision to join up with Locke wouldn’t undo it, and he wasn’t sure that was an option.
He had to live with himself, too.
He was pulling his phone out of his pocket, hoping thirty minutes had passed so he could go after her, bring her back, if only for one night, when the door opened. He hurried to the foyer, looked toward the front of the house.
She stepped inside, shut the door. He was paralyzed for a moment, terrified by the sight of her nearly-blue lips, her soaking hair, wet clothes sticking to her body and making her seem even smaller than she already was.
Then he was moving toward her, pulling her into his body, wrapping his arms around her. Her body shook against him, and he was surprised to feel her arms fold around his waist. He kissed the top of her hair, tasted rain and salt and wind. He saw her as she must have been when she was outside, looking for shelter, weathering the storm alone.
But she wasn’t alone. Not anymore. He would show her.
Lifting her into his arms, he turned toward the stairs. She leaned her head against his shirt as he climbed to the second floor, made his way through the bedroom suite that was his and into the big bathroom, glad for once that it was far too elaborate for an island house.
He set her down, then stepped toward the shower, turned the water on, adjusted the temperature until it was hot enough to warm her without burning her skin. The room began to fill with steam, and he walked back to where she stood, arms at her sides.
He smoothed her hair back from her forehead before sliding the sweater, heavy with water, from her shoulders. It fell to the floor, and he touched the hem of her T-shirt.
“Lift.”
She followed his command, raising her arms so he could peel the wet fabric from her body. Her skin was rippled with gooseflesh, and he knelt at her feet, put his hands on the waistband of her leggings, wondering if she would stop him now. Tell him to leave. Tell him she could undress herself.
Instead she rested a hand on his shoulder to balance herself while he pulled the pants down her hips, then lifted her legs one at a time so he could free them from the leggings. He was kneeling at her feet now, looking up at her body, clad only in a tiny scrap of white lace between her legs and a satin bra.
He’d never been so conflicted looking at a nearly-naked woman.
He wanted her. There was no denying it. Even now, he wanted to scoop her into his arms and lay her in bed, warm her not with a shower but his own body, bury himself inside her until she forgot everything that wa
s between them. Until she remembered that nothing mattered except the fact that they’d finally found each other.
But there was something else, too. A ferocious protectiveness that was entirely new. A primal need to shelter her not only from danger but from pain as well.
He stood, not wanting to take the liberty of stripping her the rest of the way. Not wanting to take advantage.
“Let’s get you in the shower,” he said. “You need to get warm.”
She reached behind her, unhooked her bra, let it fall to the floor. Then she slid her panties from her hips and walked toward the shower, stepping inside the marble enclosure.
He was turning to go when she spoke.
“Braden.” He turned back, saw that she was standing in the door, holding out a hand as the water streamed down her back. “Stay with me.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure?”
She met his eyes. “I’m sure.”
He walked slowly toward the shower as he stripped off his clothes.
32
She watched him strip, his glorious body revealed a little at a time: the sculpted chest and corded abs as he removed his shirt, the muscled thighs as he slid the jeans from his hips, the big cock springing free, already hard for her.
She shouldn’t want him like she did.
He hesitated at the shower’s entry and she reached for his hand, took a step back to make room, brought him with her as she leaned into the warm spray, letting it wash away the cold and doubt and fear.
He seemed paralyzed, unsure what to do. Unsure what she wanted him to do.
She brought his hand to her chest, pressed it against her breast. “There are a lot of things I don’t know, but I know that I want you. I need you.”
She didn’t know if it would still be true in the harsh light of day. If she would look at him and see the man she’d loved almost since the first moment he’d swaggered into the room at Quantico, already head and shoulders above every other man there.
But she knew it was true right now. Knew that her body was already calling for him. Already throbbing for him.
She touched her lips to his and a groan escaped his mouth as he backed her up against the shower wall, kissing her with a ferocity that stole her breath and caused a rush of wet heat to rush between her legs.
He cradled her head in his hands, angled his mouth over hers, his tongue sweeping her mouth slowly, navigating it like an explorer in a new land, seeking discovery in every corner.
His cock was rigid against her belly. Its proximity to her pulsing center sent a ripple of electricity along her skin, his touch a match to the lit fuse of her body. His hands slid down her neck, across her collarbone, back down to her breasts. He rolled her nipples between his fingers as he took possession of her mouth, and she let her hands travel down the peaks and valleys of his chest, across his flat stomach, down to the enormous cock between his legs.
He moaned when she took him in her hands, stroking him from base to tip, relishing the feel of him lengthening in her palm, imagining how he would feel pushing into her, filling her until she couldn’t take any more of him.
He kissed his way across her jaw, lingered at the sensitive spot just below her ear before nibbling on the fleshy lobe. It was surprisingly erotic and she moaned as he bit down hard enough to send a pulse of electrical current to her center.
He continued down her neck to one of her breasts, flicked his tongue against the bud of her nipple before closing his mouth over it. Then he was sucking and lapping as she stroked him faster, oblivious to everything but the feel of his hot mouth on her skin, his hands kneading her other breast, the throbbing in her pussy growing to a fever pitch until it was almost painful.
Until she thought she might die if he didn’t fill her.
“Braden…” she gasped. “Please.”
“Please what, Nora?” he murmured against her skin.
Please make me forget everything that’s happened. Everything sad and scary and uncertain. Please remind me that we were meant for each other. That nothing between us matters in the face of this.
“Please fuck me.”
He straightened, kissed her long and deep, spoke against her mouth.
“I am going to fuck you,” he said. “But first I’m going to lick your pussy until you come on my mouth.”
The words were like gasoline on the already-raging fire of her body, and she tipped her head back against the marble as he nudged her legs farther apart and knelt at her feet, seemingly oblivious to the water cascading from her body onto his back.
He nuzzled his face against her inner thigh, his hands stroking her feet, making their way up her calves, continuing to her thighs. Then his hands were on her ass, spreading her from behind as he ducked his head deeply between her legs, licked his way from her ass through the folds of her sex all the way to her clit.
She moaned as he closed in on the tiny pearl at her center, gently sucking on it as his fingers slipped inside her. She was slippery with desire for him, her body more than ready for the moment when he would drive into her. Complete her.
She slid her fingers into his hair, tugged until he growled into her, lapping at her clit like a ravenous animal, his fingers tunneling through her swollen channel, pulling back slowly through it only to push into her again as his mouth brought her close to the apex of her need. To the moment when she would lose her grip on everything but the sensation rocking through her body.
She moved her hips against him, matching the rhythm of his mouth, his fingers. It was a sacred dance, one that felt as familiar to her as the rhythms of her own body, as primordial as the tide.
“I’m going to come, Braden.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when she felt him slide one of his fingers, already slippery from her sex, down her perineum, into the lip of her ass. The sensation was overwhelming, his little finger putting pressure on the most intimate part of her while his other fingers moved inside her pussy, his mouth closing around her clit, sucking as he circled it with his tongue.
She barely had time to register the unbearable pleasure of it before she tipped into the fire, her skin alight with flames as she shuddered against his mouth, clamped down on his fingers as she came and came and came. His face was buried in her, his fingers occupying every inch as his tongue worked her in a frenzy, lapping up her desire like a man dying of thirst who finally found the water that would sustain him.
She expected to be limp when it was over. To be wrung dry.
But the hunger at her center was still there.
An undercurrent. A promise.
She tugged on his hair. “Fuck me now, Braden. I want to feel your cock inside me.”
He stood, positioning himself between her legs, his head hitting her still-sensitive clit as he swooped in on her mouth, the taste of her sex thick on his tongue as he took possession of her mouth.
She hooked a leg around his thigh, tipped her hips toward him, pushing his cock into the slick folds of her pussy until he groaned into her mouth. He reached down, grabbed her ass and lifted her against the shower wall until his cock was poised at her entrance. She wrapped both her legs around his hips and thrust into him at the same time he drove into her, pushing her against the tile, his cock so big, so far inside her that she cried out. He was so big, so deep, it almost hurt.
But not quite.
He lowered his head to the hollow of her throat, licked the water that had pooled there while she stretched for him. Then her body was moving, her hips grinding against him, riding their rhythm again as he dragged out of her, thrust back inside her heat with a groan.
“Nora…”
Her name was a prayer on his lips, a mantra that worked in conjunction with the motion of his body inside hers. Sensation washed over her like a wave: the water beating down on his back and trickling onto her body, the slide of his skin on hers, the friction of his cock hitting her clit when he reached the top of her womb, the vacuum he left when he pulled out, the perfect completion of hi
m filling her yet again.
She rocked her hips against him, reaching for her own orgasm as he swelled inside her, grew harder and thicker, filling her wall-to-wall until there was no room for anything but the explosion building at her epicenter.
But she wasn’t coming alone this time. She was going to bring him with her.
She opened her eyes and was surprised to find him already looking at her. “Come with me, Braden,” she gasped. “I want you to come inside me.”
He spread her ass cheeks wide, sank deeper inside her, the motion putting even more pressure on her clit. It cut loose the last vestige of her control, and she tumbled into the orgasm all at once, her cries echoing against the marble before he closed his mouth over hers. He groaned as he spilled into her, his movements furious as he took possession, left no corner unoccupied by his cock in her pussy, his mouth on hers.
She let herself get lost in it. Let herself forget that there was still something between them. That there might always be something between them. Tomorrow that would be true, but tonight there was only them.
Only him.
33
He slid from bed, careful not to wake her, and pulled on his jeans. Seeing her on the bed, her ripe ass barely covered by the sheet, hair spilled out on the pillow, made it hard to leave. He wanted to stay here — on the island, in this room — with her forever. Wanted to pretend there was nothing waiting for them in L.A.
But that would be to deny the truth, and he couldn’t do that anymore. He’d denied the truth when he’d pretended he was doing any good at the Bureau. He’d denied the truth when he’d simultaneously joined Locke and made Nora his. All of those things had only delayed the inevitable.
He made his way from the bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen. The rain had slowed to a patter, the waves rushing onto the beach more gently than they had earlier in the night. With any luck, they’d be clear to leave in the morning. He was surprised to realize he was ready. Ready to figure out what the fuck was going on with Shields and the Bureau. Ready to find out what Nora would do about him now that she knew his plans.
Rogue Love (Kings of Corruption Book 1) Page 13
