Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4)

by Campbell, Nenia

  She shuddered violently.

  “Do you want me inside of you?”

  “Oh God, yes,” she choked. “I want it.”

  I want it. Those words would give me fuel for nights to come. “Do you trust me, then?”

  Christina's voice faltered a little and I wasn't sure if it was because of arousal or doubt. Her eyes squeezed shut and she rasped, “Yes.”

  And then there was no more time for second thoughts. I sealed my mouth against hers, tangling my fingers in her thick, unkempt locks of hair and I pulled her forward until she was bowing off the desk.

  Her hands went to my chest. To push me away, I thought, until I felt her fingers undoing the buttons of my shirt in quick, trembling movements that made me think of something with wings. Her soft hands on my skin almost undid me. I felt a drop of pre-cum drip down the head of my cock like a bead of ice, and shuddered as it rolled down the shaft.

  “Hurry,” I growled.

  She pushed my shirt down to my elbows. I struggled out of it, uncaring of where it fell. I was more interested in the lines where her jaw met her throat, the sudden swell where her collarbone yielded to her breasts.

  I trailed kisses down her jaw, all the way to the neck of her nightshirt. She was wearing far too many clothes and it was driving me out of my fucking mind. I took the collar in my teeth and tugged, hard, hard enough to startle her into saying, “Michael!”

  I released her shirt, closing my teeth around the sensitive skin where throat and shoulder met. Her fingers curled into the belt loops of my pants, grazing my ass. They needed to come off.

  I tugged at the hem of her shirt. It needed to come off, too. “Take this off,” I said hoarsely.

  Now she squirmed. “What —” Her mouth was swollen from kissing me, and I found that pleased me more than it should. So did her breathlessness, and the flush in her face. “What if I don't want to?”

  I twisted my hands. The seams of her nightshirt split with a pop as the material reached its breaking point. She stared at the patches of skin revealed where the rip had arced down her shoulder. “What are you doing? I like this shirt.”

  “Better take it off then, darlin — or I will. Piece by piece.”

  She tugged on her arm, which I was still gripping. I shook my head slowly. “I don't think so.”

  “Let me go.” She sounded plaintive, and a little afraid, and still so breathless. I knew the ritual well by this point, but that didn't mean it wasn't trying.

  “Is that really what you want me to do?” I tugged her shirt down, baring the tops of her breasts with a few more popped stitches. I started to duck my head, letting her feel the warm puffs of air coming from my mouth, and heard her draw in a ragged breath of her own in anticipation. “You want me to let you go?”

  She closed her eyes and did not answer.

  “Christina.”

  Her shoulders shook.

  “Don't play games where no doesn't mean no. Not unless you've got another word that does.”

  Christina opened her eyes slowly, face looming before mine, close enough to kiss. I saw her throat contract as she swallowed. She smiled bravely, in a way that came damn near to breaking my heart.

  “Please don't let go.”

  “What do you want me to do to you?” I asked raggedly. My insides constricted, tight enough I could barely draw breath, could hardly think.

  “So much,” she whispered. “Everything.”

  Sweet Jesus. My mouth went dry as she gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head, baring herself to me. Quickly—to get it over with? To hide out of shame? I rolled her back against the mattress, so she was spread out beneath me.

  “You're beautiful.”

  She flushed.

  I caught her wrists when she tried to shimmy away, kissing the pulse point cradled between her sparrow-thin bones. Then I lowered my head and took one of her hard little nipples into my mouth.

  I kissed her until she made a small, keening cry, and then I lifted my head to look her full on. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright in the darkness.

  “I fucking love this,” I said. “I fucking love you.”

  I tugged her panties off her hips. They were damp, and I knew that sliding into her would be like sliding into smooth, wet silk. I slid my fingers inside her cunt in one fluid movement. Her head tilted back, eyes squeezed shut as I began to slowly massage her clit with my thumb.

  “You rearranged my entire world, forced me to live by an entirely new set of rules. You almost got me killed, but I survived, and then I got stronger. And so, cher amour, did you.”

  Christina

  I could barely concentrate on his words. I felt as though I were slowly being unwound, being undone by pleasure: as though the very act of experience somehow mitigated my existence. Maybe that was why the French called orgasms “las petites morts”: because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses and kill us as ruthlessly, and efficiently, as any drug.

  Somehow, I managed to say, “I love you, too.”

  Michael unzipped his pants and slid off his boxers. He was fully erect, and the tip of him was as flushed as his face. My panties were still hanging limply around my knees and he tugged those the rest of the way off, letting them fall to the floor as he climbed onto the mattress to settle between my legs.

  He whispered things, then. Soft, illicit things in his Cajun patois as he reached into the back pocket of his pants so he could get a condom from his wallet. He whispered things that made me blush and squirm, which, from his laugh, seemed to amuse him.

  I knew Michael well enough to know when he was acting out of character. He was a selfish lover, taking everything I had to offer, but all too often leaving me precious little in return. Because reciprocation was something, along with empathy, that had never been something he'd needed to learn. Now I was drowning in him, struggling to stay afloat as he threatened to overwhelm me with the sheer intensity of his undivided attentions.

  I thought I knew why, too. He was trying to distract me. He didn't want me to ask him any questions about Suraya. Maybe he was even trying to distract himself from what he had to do. There was a beating heart somewhere inside that chest, and even a cold and damaged heart can still ache with the pangs of a vestigial conscience.

  Was Michael's?

  I slid out from under his arm, swinging around so I was on top of him instead. The way he liked it. He grabbed at me, putting his hands on my waist to keep me in place—as if he thought I'd run.

  Overcome as I was, I wished he hadn't done that. Wished he wasn't so quick to use force. I leaned down and kissed him hard enough that his breathing broke stride. Broken breaths, from a broken man.

  I straddled his waist, compressing his muscular thighs with my own. He was breathing quickly now, the pupils dilated so that they swallowed up his iris, turning them a dark, dark green. “Fuck, Christina.”

  “Yes,” I said, in as flip a tone as I was able. “Fuck Christina. I think she'd like that.”

  “I love it when you talk filthy, you dirty girl.”

  “I learned from the best.”

  He smacked my rear at that, his laughter choking off as I grabbed him by his wrists and held them over his head as I slid down him, taking him in. I dug my fingers into the supple skin of his arms to grasp at the unyielding metallic core beneath. He liked that even more than the biting from earlier; the sound he made — low, inhuman, halfway between the animal and the mechanical — caused the hairs on my arms to bristle with the same kind of electricity that happens on a hot stormy night.

  Sexual desire gave his face an intensity that bordered on rage. I would know. I'd seen him during both. Through hooded eyes, he looked up at me. His lips were parted in what was almost a grimace. He said, “And I thought you wanted me to let you go.”

  “Shut up,” I said breathlessly. “Stop talking.”

  Because I knew that even if he did — if one day the tw
o of us wised up and realized that parting ways was best — my heart wouldn't let me; I was his, and he was mine. What we had was twisted, but inevitable: like two broken magnets, we would come together again and again, until separated.

  I forgot almost everything when I was with him — my worries, my concerns, my regrets. All that mattered was in the here and now. Beneath our collective armor, we were both scored raw. It was only when we were both cracked open that any semblance of pleasure could seep through.

  Together, we were like an island in the eye of a hundred-year storm. We were alive and full of the kind of fire that can light an entire sky up with brilliant streaks of neon flame even as civilization burns to a smoldering ash below.

  The consequences would come later. For now, we would wreak our own brand of chaos.

  Chapter Six

  Reparation

  Christina

  It was dark in the basement, cold. Fear tore at me the way the child cruelly tears at a captive insect's wings with its hands. And there were hands on me. Hot, cruel hands claiming my body as their own.

  Where am I?

  I couldn't struggle. I couldn't even move my arms. I was paralyzed: a not-person. Nothing.

  No! This isn't real, wake up, wake up—

  But it was real, wasn't it?

  (“You got me all excited.”)

  Because I had been through this all before.

  Eyes as sharp as broken bottle glass, slicing my soul to ribbons. Yes, I knew this place. This feeling.

  This fear.

  (“Now you'll never leave this place alive.”)

  Only one person could make me feel this way.

  But my heart still thudded with panic, and that buzzing sense of wrongness didn't leave. It wasn't until I caught a glimpse of the face of my captor that I realized — the man standing over me wasn't Adrian.

  It was Michael.

  I awoke with a gasp, covered with sweat and unable to move, to think. Fear surrounded me in a chilly haze, seeping deep into my bones the way only old wounds can.

  Michael stirred beside me. “Christina?” His voice, thick with sleep, was completely different from the one in my dreams, and yet — so very much the same. I felt his eyes on me in the darkness. “What's wrong?”

  I looked at his face, which I could only just make out. As cliché as it sounded, he was beautiful; his cheekbones were delineated in a way that reminded me of chiseled sandstone cliffs, and the harsh geometry of their carved-out silhouettes. His face provided the perfect frame for his slanted green eyes, and his mouth — the only spot of softness in that hard and otherwise intractable face; it was the mouth of a seasoned sinner, just as cutting as the rest of him, but with a sting that could be mistaken for sweet.

  I could feel his every heaving breath. I could feel his heartbeat. He was a weapon — a living, breathing weapon. Beautiful in the way that a sword or a gun can be beautiful, and terrifying for the same reason: the inherent power of his body was described in each line of corded muscle in his sleek, streamlined frame. He could kill; he had killed — and by his own admission, he would do it again.

  I knew this better than most. But it was still hard to believe. Especially now. What was it about us, as humans, that drove us to make apologies for beautiful things? Did being in a perfect body make a corrupt heart any less corrupt?

  “Christina?”

  I whispered, “I had the dream again.”

  I saw him withdraw from me; his face, as he pulled away, was like a slamming door, and that hurt me. It hurt me, and it angered me, because what right did he have to take offense? I hated that I could carry the memories of what he had done with me, and yet still feel bad that my mentioning them would cause him grief and me, guilt. That I should feel responsible.

  Being a victim is supposed to set you free; it acquits you of any agency, any sense of responsibility to the person who did you harm. It's not your fault, they say. Leave him, they say. Nobody ever tells you what to do if leaving isn't an option.

  They just call you stupid. A dumb bitch.

  Sympathy is only meted out if you follow all of society's rules for how a victim is supposed to behave.

  I traced the scar on Michael's cheek. He had so many. Two scars on both sides of his chest — one from a knife, one from a bullet. He had another scar on his stomach that coiled around his abdomen like a snake, corkscrewing below his navel. There were quite a few shallow scars on his arms, as well, grazing wounds, and I supposed that they were from those instances when those he had been hired to kill had managed to fight back. I tried not to think about that, though, because it only reminded me of what I was trying so hard to forget.

  He turned his head away, and I let my hand fall to the mattress. “You have changed.”

  Michael wrapped his fingers around mine, stilling them. “Don't.”

  “I'm sorry.” I was startled into apologizing. It was instinctual, as was so much else I did. Growing up, my mother had been quick to take offense: an apology for whatever imagined transgression I was guilty of had staved off many unpleasant arguments.

  But Michael was not my mother. “Don't fucking apologize,” he hissed, so full of fire that I flinched. He felt me recoil, and his hand tightened over mine, briefly. “Don't,” he said again, softer. “Not for that.”

  “It's because of Suraya.” I felt compelled to explain, as if I could suck all the emotions out of my thoughts by condensing them to impartial words and logic and then taking a few mental steps back. “I have these … dreams when I'm anxious or afraid.”

  Because you still make me anxious and afraid, and the unresolved conflict of my days in captivity still resides somewhere deep in my subconscious.

  “I'm worried about what will happen to her. That whatever does happen to her will be my fault.”

  I hate that who I want to be and what I want to be seem so far removed, and I hate that part of that is your fault. I hate that more of it is my fault.

  “She volunteered.” Rather than easing him, my words appeared to have the opposite effect. And I couldn't help but notice that he had said “she volunteered” with the same self-assured hostility as the men who say, “she was asking for it.”

  “We threw her to the wolves,” I said.

  He arched an eyebrow. “Why?” he said, “did you have someone else in mind?”

  I didn't answer right away and he sat up, jostling me from his lap. The muscles in his stomach contracted with his change in posture, highlighting the ridges of his abdomen, and the deep V of his pelvis. My mouth went dry: it was the body of a capable man, a dangerous man. And his face — his face was even more dangerous, because of how easily he could take you off guard.

  “I don't know.”

  Michael studied me intently. “For a moment, you looked like you had someone in mind.”

  “I would never — ”

  “What?” Michael asked, leaning over me. “What would you never do?”

  When it came down to brass tacks, what wouldn't I do to survive? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Two and a half years ago, I was a naive senior at an all-girls' Catholic school. Never in a million years could I have envisioned myself standing where I was now, doing what I was now. Doing who I was now. Making jokes like that. I, too, had changed.

  And not necessarily for the better.

  Michael was still looming over me. The heat of him, the smell of him, it was overpowering. I leaned back, sucking in a breath when he used one of his arms to keep me barred in. “Don't do that,” I said. “Don't use your body to intimidate me.”

  He moved a fraction of an inch. “You still haven't answered my question.”

  I met his gaze levelly. Slowly, he moved his arm and leaned back, giving me more space. The heat of him vanished, and as the cold rushed in to fill the place he'd occupied so did my ability to breathe.

  “I guess I don't know what I'd do under the right circumstances — or the wrong ones.”

  “No, you don't. You can't.” Michael rolled over to res
t on one side, propping himself up on one arm. “People reveal a lot about their true nature when their lives are in danger. It's often a helluva lot less flattering than they'd like. Selfish and willing to do anything to survive — that's mankind for you.”

  “That's a terrible way to view the world.”

  Michael shrugged his shoulders. “Tell me you would happily switch places with Suraya, given the chance. That you weren't secretly relieved that you weren't chosen to prostitute yourself for our cause.”

  My breathing faltered. Had I been that obvious? “You son of a bitch — ”

  “Tell me,” he said, “without lying.”

  My shoulders sank.

  I couldn't. He knew it. We both knew it.

  Michael snorted. “That's what I thought.”

  I decided right then and there that he couldn't have the last word. Not on this. “When she agreed to this mission, she wasn't thinking clearly.”

  He'd started to close his eyes, but at that they opened. “You'd be the expert on that,” he said.

  Asshole. “She was letting her emotions cloud her judgment. You said yourself that emotions make people stupid.” I struggled to keep my voice calm. Inside, I was seething: a rattling pot of emotions left to boil. “You heard her in the conference room. She wants revenge; it's all but blinded her to the potential consequences of her actions. She is delusional.”

  “I debriefed her myself,” he said. “Are you saying I didn't do my job right? My job, which I've been doing for the last ten fucking years?”

  “There's a difference between knowing the consequences and realizing how they apply to you directly,” I told him, knowing my words would cut because one of Michael's weaknesses was that he could, in fact, be too impulsive. Predictably, his eyes narrowed. “The way Suraya is now, she might take some dangerous risks. She might get herself killed.”

  Michael was silent for a few beats. “All right,” he said at last. “You done? Now here's what I think. I think you feel guilty that you didn't volunteer. I think you've probably tried to rationalize the situation to yourself. Tell yourself that you're not qualified, that you wouldn't have been able to do the job, that I wouldn't have let you go — which are all true, by the way, although probably not for the reasons you believe. I think you're bringing this up now because you want me to validate you. You want me to tell you that you're a good, selfless human being.”