He kissed her head. “Then you’ve definitely picked the right guy.”
Burying her face in his chest, she breathed him in. “I don’t doubt that.”
His fingers coiled in her hair. “I can’t believe you did it… you put the fucking Point on Opal… I’m still in shock.”
She laughed and kissed his ribs. “Good. It’s nice to know I can surprise you… in a good way.”
“The way I did it wasn’t good?”
Leaving her tied to a bed and running off? She bit him. “No, that wasn’t a good surprise. Cupcakes and coffee are good surprises. Abandonment and betrayal, not good surprises.”
“So, your plan… does it extend to what we do next?”
Rising to prop herself on an elbow, she looked at him. “You don’t have a plan?”
“I have plenty,” he said. “But I want to hear what you’ve come up with.”
“Well,” she said, trailing a finger across his chest. “One thing I wondered about was letting them destroy each other… What if we led Burke to the Black Jewel, let him destroy her, then we hand over Torres or threaten to blow the whistle. We’ll have the processor and the Point, and the world will be at peace again.”
“And we’ll be together.”
It felt so freeing to give in to her need for him. If playing with the Point was what her man needed to be happy, then it was her job to support him in the pursuit of his dream… and she had to have faith that he’d respect her reservations about using or bartering it.
“We will be together, my flame. I love you.”
Both corners of his mouth rose, but even his smile was sinister. “You’re something else, Miss. Maguire.”
“I want you to be happy,” she said, trying to kiss him again. “I need a rock, I need someone I can rely on no matter what. I thought that man was you before the Point came between us. Without that, I have no reason not to trust you. And if I’m wrong, I’ll put a bullet in my head and be done with it.”
“I told you that you had your one.”
He seemed so inspired by her act that he was almost in awe of her and that was what she wanted. Rora wanted him to be proud of her. She’d told him that she would never judge him and that was why she needed him so badly because he would never judge her either, even when she wasn’t following the rules.
“You told me there was still a place at your side,” she said, taking that risk Junker had told her about. “Now you have the tech, you don’t need me, but I’m asking you… can I be your one and only Queen?”
“There’s nothing else you were destined to be.”
She kissed his chest again. “Promise me you’ll remember that while you’re with her.”
“Her,” he said, tugging the strand of her hair he had coiled around his finger. “I’m not going back to the Jewel, Ro. No fucking way.”
She didn’t like to see him annoyed with her, and she couldn’t think of anything she’d hate more, but their options were limited. “Junker has screwed everything up,” she said. “Setting Burke after the Jewel could work, but what if it doesn’t? What if Bella wins? And now we have Junker out there making alliances with God knows who, he knows Torres is here, and what he’s told us. We need an inside man.”
Rora was forced to move when Strike pulled his arm from around her, she lay down while he sat up. “You want to send me back to her?”
“Want to? No,” she said and tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away. “But you’re the only one I trust to make sure she doesn’t get near Leandra.”
Letting him think about it, she hoped he could come up with a better suggestion. They’d just found each other again and she’d handed him some pretty enticing temptation. Sending him off to Bella with Opal and the Point, he’d have the chance to retrieve the processor and then he’d have no reason to come back to her.
Funny, Rora had gone from one extreme to the other. This was another test, but it was real, and if he failed it, she wouldn’t only have her heart broken, but the people of the world could be at Exile’s mercy and it would be all her fault.
TWENTY-TWO
Shaking thoughts like that from her mind, she recalled all those moments that had made her sure of their love, including the ones where he fought their craving for each other.
“What is it you want, Flame?” she whispered. “Talk to me.”
Snapping out of his thoughts, he grazed a knuckle beneath her chin. “I want my toy back.”
The processor, which could have so many more uses than just facilitating the Point. “Ok,” she said.
“Ok?” She nodded. “If you don’t want to—”
Boosting up, she grabbed his neck to pull him down for a kiss. When the weight of his body rested on hers, she didn’t want to move for fear she’d lose him all over again. They were still enjoying each other’s mouths when Torres called out from the other room. “Hey!”
There was a snarl in Strike’s voice when he ripped his mouth from hers. “That fucker’s got a death wish.”
Stroking his face, she lifted her head to kiss him again. “Was I too loud?”
Some of the ire left his eyes when they met hers. “No, baby,” he said and kissed her. “Bastard’s probably jealous.”
Next time he bowed to kiss her, his lips met her smile. Sliding her hands around his head and into his hair, she parted her legs, twining them around his, begging him to own her again.
“Hey!” Torres called out.
Strike’s irritated groan made her laugh. “Maybe he needs to pee or something,” she said. “We were driving for a while.”
“I don’t give a fuck what he needs,” he said and kissed her chin then descended to begin feasting on her breasts. “If I fuck off back to Bella, what are you going to do with him?”
“Torres isn’t going to hurt me,” she said, moving beneath his mouth as he skimmed his lips from one nipple across to the other. “And unless he can convince us otherwise, we have no use for him.”
He lifted his head. “You want to cut him loose?”
“Or take him with you, a prize for Bella, barter for Burke.”
“And leave you alone?”
“I can take care of myself, baby,” she said, letting her fingers run through his hair. “I’ll go to Leandra, get her out before Bella can get to her… then you bring Bella.”
“You want me to bring Bella to Leandra’s location?”
“I’ll make sure she’s out before you get there,” she said and licked her lips, watching her fingers move through his hair. “Leandra’s place is isolated… very isolated.”
His mouth relaxed. “The perfect place for a little payback.” She smiled. “What would you do with Leandra? Where would she be safe while we dispose of Bella?”
“I thought maybe your friends could help us with that.”
“My friends? I don’t have friends, baby.”
So he liked to say, but she knew that wasn’t exactly true; he had friends, whether they were willing or not. “Before you go back to Bella, will you get me some backup?”
“Build you your own posse like I did for her?” he asked. “I don’t know that we have time—”
“I had something more specific in mind,” she said, and his head tilted in question. “X.” Slowly, he tensed. “When we went to visit Shula, she said that that guy Thane was—”
“No,” he said. “We’re not getting them involved. We’re not asking for their help… Thane wouldn’t kill federal agents anyway.”
“We don’t need him to kill anyone. I meant we could ask them to protect Leandra while we deal with Bella and Burke. I’m not worried about the feds, but they do have access to manpower and I think Bella will pull out all the stops. Whether she gets to Leandra or not, Bella isn’t going to stop until she has no more options. We need to limit her options.”
“And you want me to find out what those options are? Bella’s not going to let me waltz back into her life after I told her I was in love with you. She was fucking livid, Ro. She didn�
�t care who I fucked, but finding out we were in love—”
“I know,” she said. “But I trust you’ll be able to convince her. Tell her it was a ploy. That you wanted to get my trust back so I’d give you the Point, and when Junker took off with it, you dumped me too.”
“Isn’t that what you thought when I first stumbled into your motel room? That I was playing you?”
Yes, that was what she’d thought, and it was what she’d feared up until she decided to surrender to her feelings for him. “I’m trusting you, Strike. I’m trusting that you love me more than you love her.”
His expression hardened. “I don’t love that witch. I want to put a knife in her eye for what she did to you.”
“I know,” she soothed, stroking his face and rubbing herself against him. “I know, baby. But let’s not worry about that. The Point is out of play, all we need to do is get our hands on the processor and protect Leandra. I’m worried that when Bella finds out she can’t have the Point, she’ll lose what’s left of her sanity… we could all get hurt. I trust that you and I can take it. And I don’t care about Burke and Torres; they have their own safety net. But Leandra doesn’t deserve any of this.”
“So that’s your plan? You just want to send me off to Bella with Leandra’s location? You trust me enough to—”
“You are my love,” she said, picking up his hands to kiss each of them. “If you betray me, if that’s your plan, I can’t stop you. But I’ve already told you, I don’t have anything to live for but you. So if I’m being naïve, if you’re playing with me, so be it. I’ll take care of my own fate.”
An angry look of sympathy crossed his face and rose up to brush his thumb across her cheek. “I’ll keep you bound if you threaten to hurt yourself one more time, Cupcake.”
“You don’t hurt me, I won’t hurt you,” she said. If he didn’t betray her, she wouldn’t have any need to take her life. “Deal?”
“Deal,” he said and lowered to kiss her. “But that works both ways.”
In a moment of clarity, she understood the gravity of being responsible for another’s life. If she hurt herself, Strike would do the same. But if he hurt himself… she wouldn’t be able to take another breath; the pain would overwhelm her.
But it wasn’t only Strike’s life that she had in her hands at the moment. “We’re going to need help,” she said, threading her fingers into his hair again. “Someone has to protect Leandra, and I can’t do that alone… Your X friends are the only ones I can think to ask. They have the manpower, right?”
“I can’t endanger Shula, Ro.”
“Do you love her?” she asked.
He’d said Shula wasn’t an ex and that Thane would kill him for thinking about making a move on her. But he’d never explained his connection to the couple.
He shook his head, rising to sit between her legs. “It’s not like that. I’ve known Thane a long time. I met him and his brother overseas while they were training with their father… We got involved in some shady shit together. Emeritus, that’s Thane’s father, he wouldn’t let the boys come back until he was sure they were ready. Thane asked me to come back and watch over Shula, she’s his Beloved, it’s a thing in their cult.”
“X,” she said. “Shula said it wasn’t a cult.”
“To-may-toe, to-mah-toe,” he said. “They say it isn’t, I say it is. They have a council of ten men who make decisions for those below them. Their mission is to keep the city safe. Thane is the First, the guy in charge.”
“So if you ask him—”
“He owes me. If I ask him to watch over my beloved, he will… but Leandra isn’t my girl. If we ask him to endanger his men, out of his city limits, as a favor… there’s going to be a price. You know how I feel about working under other people’s purview.”
“And if I know it, Thane knows it too,” she said, but her thoughts wandered back in another direction. “Did you ever… think about it?”
“About what?”
Pushing her fingers into her thigh, she avoided looking at him. “You said Thane would kill you if you touched Shula… but you didn’t tell me if you wanted to touch her.”
“You think I’m harboring some hidden desire,” he said, deadpan. “If another guy had been our problem, we wouldn’t have had a problem. If I’d wanted to fuck Shula, I’d have fucked her. Thane would be worm food.”
Feeling that there was something else he wanted to share, her chin rose to search for what it was. “You’re not attracted to her?” she asked. “She’s beautiful.”
The look in his eye was sure, but hesitant. “She’s my cousin.”
“Oh my god. Your cousin?”
“Sort of. Her biological father and mine are half-brothers. Same mother, different fathers.”
She sat up to grab for his wrist. “Does she know?”
“No,” he said, pulling his arm away. “No one knows. It was no coincidence that I met Thane overseas. I found out who Shula was and that she’d been claimed by this guy, but she was still a kid…”
“You went to find out who he was,” she said, understanding his thought process exactly. “You couldn’t just walk up to the woman you’re actually related to and try to form some kind of connection with her to ask about her relationship with Thane. Your way of showing your love was to track down her boyfriend and spy on him.”
He wasn’t contrite, in fact, his mouth slanted. “You know me, Cupcake. I got to know him and what his cult was all about. Thane sending me back to watch over Shula was just sort of… accidental.”
“But it worked out because you did get to form a bond with her… even if you couldn’t tell anyone the whole story… until me.” Sentiment welled within her. “I love when you confide in me.”
“You’re the only one,” he said, not resisting when she took his hand.
Much as she’d love to appreciate him for his faith some more, they had to deal with business first. “Do you think we can take Bella down alone? We don’t need an army with us… do we? X could protect Leandra in their city, if I took her to them, maybe.”
“Bella doesn’t worry me, and I’m not worried about avoiding the feds or even fending them off if I’m alone… But you’re asking me to leave you out there unprotected,” he said.
It was obvious from the way his jaw moved, he didn’t like the taste of that plan.
“If there’s even a shred of truth to what Torres said, Burke won’t have an army at his disposal. What did you find out about Torres?”
“Burke put in a report,” he said. “Said he and Torres got into an altercation and the latter left. He’s accusing him of going rogue… I don’t know what his game is… I think it’s a con, that it was put there for me to find. I’ve known Torres a long time and yeah, he bends the rules, but he also likes the protection of his home.”
“Like I do,” she said, sitting up to scrunch her hands in his hair to draw him in for a kiss. “I love you, Strike. I want both of us to keep loving each other for a long time… You have to make Bella think you’re on her side, it’s the only way we’ll know what she’s doing.”
And if he was with her, he could make sure the Jewel wasn’t close to catching Rora as she secreted Leandra with Strike’s X friends.
“And if she wants to have sex?” he asked.
Easing back, she stopped nuzzling his mouth to search his eyes. “If you fuck her, you won’t be fucking me.”
There was a twist to his lips as he took his eyes to the side. “Remember how you reacted when you saw her make me bleed.”
The memory of what happened in that Wonderland bedroom sickened and angered her at the same time. She yanked him close. “If she makes you bleed again, I’ll skin her alive… Remember that if she starts to get close to you. Now, are you onboard, or do I have to find myself a man with the balls to be bad with me?”
Grabbing her hips, he hauled her against him, pressing his erection into her. “This is why you’re my Kero.” Because her actions set him alight. “I’m your sl
ave, baby. Whatever you want, you get.”
TWENTY-THREE
They made love again, ignoring Torres’ calls and surrendering only to each other. While Rora was so boneless that she was sure she’d never move again, Strike inhaled and vaulted off the bed, striding out into the living room in his full naked glory.
There was no one out there to see him, but she rolled to the edge of the bed to admire the view for as long as she could. When he came back into the bedroom, he didn’t get on the vacant side of the bed. He put Opal on the nightstand and with his phone in his fist, he pushed her to the other side of the bed and then got on beside her.
“What are you doing?” Rora asked, tracing a fingertip up the front of his naked thigh.
“Shh,” he said, wrapping his hand around her finger to hold it still while taking the phone to his ear. He listened for a few seconds before he spoke. “You secure?” His brow was set hard and it was funny to see how he switched from Strike to Exile mode so fast. “I’ve got work for you… You still First over there, Thane? Maybe I should be talking to your daddy or the woman who keeps your balls in her purse?” Rora rolled onto her back, but Strike didn’t give her back her finger. “Yeah, she told me, just ‘cause you’re not fucking her doesn’t mean she doesn’t own your ass… Yeah… That’s right, man. Simple as…”
Strike looked down at her, loosening his grip. Rora tipped her head back assuming he was going to tell her something, but he was admiring her chest instead. She guessed if Strike was talking to Thane that the woman they were referring to was Shula.
Rolling over to her chest again, she didn’t bother with his thigh and instead ran her finger up the length of his dick then opened her hand beneath it to stroke his balls. If he could rib Thane about his need to keep Shula happy, Rora was going to remind him of just how close she was to his most sensitive parts.
He caught her hand in a fist and held it on top of his dick that was enjoying her attention. Smiling at the reaction, she wriggled closer and kissed his thigh.
Kiss Chase Page 20
