Underground Guardians BOX SET: Includes 'Protector' and 'Healer'

by Lisa Renee Jones

  She belonged with him. Period. The end. He’d be damned if he was letting her out of his sight. Danger was too close. His hands slid around her waist, his jaw tight with the sudden tension lacing his body. “You’re in danger. You stay with me.”

  Her eyes locked with his, and then to his surprise, she set the receiver down, leaning over him and pressing her lips to his. Then, her eyes full of affection, she trailed her fingers down his cheek. “I feel your concern. I’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”

  His fingers laced into her hair. “You’re right. You will be. Because you’re staying here with me.”

  “Diego—” He reached for the phone, shuffling her off to his side. “What are you doing?”

  He glanced at her. “I’m calling your aunt.”

  “What?” she gasped. “No! Give me the phone.” But it was too late. Marcella could hear her aunt’s voice. “Hello,” she said in a worried voice. “Hello. Marcella?”

  Diego looked at Marcella, handed her the phone and then spoke to her through their mental connection. You tell her or I will.

  * * * * *

  Marcella’s eyes narrowed on Diego, hot with temper. She wanted him to see and feel the anger he’d inspired. With gritted teeth she grabbed the phone from him. “Yes, Aunt, it’s Marcella.”

  “Oh thank God. I’ve been worried sick. David is searching the hotel. Where are you?”

  “I’m safe,” Marcella assured her, eyeing Diego. A hint of a satisfied smile played on his too sexy lips. She gave him a warning look but spoke to her aunt. “I’ll explain later. Well, tomorrow. Not tonight. Aunt, I’m not coming back to the room tonight.”

  Silence. She could almost visualize her aunt’s jaw hanging open. “David won’t like this. He’ll demand you return.”

  Marcella felt the rise of Diego’s irritation without him so much as blinking. He had a cool exterior, but it hid nothing from her. The realization came with surprise. She had never felt another’s emotion with such ease.

  Suddenly, Marcella was both afraid for David and surprisingly warmed by Diego’s possessiveness. Delicately, she cleared her throat, feeling a bit overwhelmed with emotion. Something about Diego felt like home. It frightened her how much she wanted to be with a complete stranger.

  “Tell David I’ll be fine,” she said, and in a softer voice, “I will be. I promise. I’m safe.” And she knew she was. Diego would protect her. “I’ll call in the morning.”

  A promise wasn’t enough. Very worried, her aunt continued to press, desperation slipping into her voice as she pleaded for Marcella’s return. Giving her Diego’s room number was the final outcome of the conversation.

  With a heavy sigh, Marcella hung up the phone. Diego lay on his back, hands behind his head. Oblivious to her nakedness, she crawled over him, straddling his hips and flattening her palms on his chest, fingers nestled in the dark hair. “David’s harmless. He’s just doing his job.”

  Diego’s eyes lingered on her breast, his hands settling on her hips. “I don’t like him or his intentions. The man wants you, Marcella.”

  She didn’t like when he said things like that. Her hands covered his. “Must you be so blunt?”

  “If putting the cold hard facts bluntly is what it takes to get your attention, then yes. David’s desire for you is blatant yet you choose to ignore it.” He slid his hands up her back, pulling her towards him. His fingers slid behind her neck, pulling her lips towards his, their breath mingling. In a softer voice he said, “I protect what is mine.”

  She tightened her lips, fighting the urge to press her mouth to his, trying to ignore the play of his chest hair on her nipples. “Yes, let’s talk about this ‘mine’ thing you keep saying. I belong to me. If I choose to be with you it’s because I choose to be with you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And do you choose to be with me, Marcella?”

  Chapter Five

  The way he said her name, with a sexy little Spanish accent lifting the last vowel, made her stomach flip-flop. His dark eyes locked with hers and held. After several spellbound seconds she looked away. “This is crazy. We’re strangers.”

  He moved then, and she found her back on the mattress, his hard body on top of hers, his legs pinning hers as if he was afraid she might escape. “I know you need time to accept who and what I am to you. As much as I want to demand you accept me, I know I cannot.” He brushed his lips across hers in a gentle caress.

  She wasn’t quite sure what to say. “This is very confusing.”

  “I must return home with you by my side.”

  Her eyes went wide. “What? When?” Her mind raced. “Where?”

  “Nevada.” No hesitation. “As soon as you heal the girl.”

  “Nevada?” she half gasped. Had she not been trapped under his big body she would already be standing. “I can’t just leave. No.” She shook her head, feeling a tiny bit of panic.

  “You have to, Marcella.”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t have to do anything.”

  His eyes flashed with something dark. “Your life and that of many others could depend on you. We feel you can help us in ways no other can.”

  “How can I help? My healing abilities? I won’t heal as a part of war. You’ve picked the wrong woman.”

  “You are the right woman for many reasons. One of which is our leader’s wife. She is with child. It will be the first time a converted human gives birth. She must live. She is the light that keeps our leader focused.”

  “Are there complications?”

  “Not yet, but I’m not prepared to enter the unknown unprepared. Too much is on the line. I need someone by my side. I need you to be that someone.” His voice was possessive. Low. They stared at one another a long moment before he added, “This is not about war. It’s about peace. Good versus evil. Myself and the men like me, we have abilities we don’t know how to fully utilize. The enemy does. It’s rumored they actually had an alien race training them. It is quite possible the originator of the DNA used for our enhancement is joining in their battle.”

  “Why?” she asked, fearing she knew the answer. “Do you know the Arion’s motivation?”

  “The Arion leader wishes to rule the world. Perhaps he aspires to rule the universe.”

  She blinked. It was hard enough to think with Diego both naked and on top of her. Add to it a story too wild to conceive, and her head felt clouded. “This is crazy. I feel like I’m in the twilight zone.”

  “You of all people should understand the realm of possibilities. You have powers others don’t. Some believe you’re evil. Others say you’re simply make-believe. My point being, you are very real and very gifted. What I’m telling you may be hard to comprehend but it is nevertheless quite real.”

  He was speaking the truth. She could do things normal humans could not. If she possessed such unique skills, how could she reject what she couldn’t conceive? Marcella believed Diego. In her heart and soul she trusted him as well. She reached up, her finger tracing his bottom lip. “Tell me more,” she whispered.

  He smiled, his eyes saying he knew he’d received her acceptance. “We need your help.”

  “Then I’m right,” Marcella said. “It’s my healing power you desire?”

  “Ah, my sweet,” he said, desire suddenly alive in his words, lips brushing her cheek, her jaw, her lips. “It’s your body and soul I desire…and your heart.”

  Her eyes felt heavy, her body warm. His cock was hard, pressing between her thighs. Her body responded, dampness gathering from the need to feel him inside her.

  “Diego,” she whispered. “Please. I need to understand.” His lips brushed hers, his tongue sliding past her teeth and stroking, sucking her into a whirlwind of passion. Marcella forgot for a moment what she was going to say. A pause. Another kiss. She tried to focus, needing answers. “I can’t think like this.”

  His hips moved, sliding his length along her mound, following the trail of wetness. A moan escaped her lips. “Diego.”

  “I need yo
u, Marcella.”

  She felt his hands travel her body. No, his mouth. Both. He touched, kissed, nipped. All with sweet, passionate love. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Where he had pinched her nipple before, he stroked it with his warm tongue, making her arch her back. Her hands went to his amazing hair. She loved how it felt. How he felt.

  The burn where he wasn’t, but should be, made her squirm. “I want you inside me.”

  His head lifted from the nipple he suckled, his eyes dark. Mesmerizing. She stared into them and lost her breath. It was as if he had crawled inside her and wrapped himself around her very soul. She felt an inner touch. An invisible connection. A pleasure of a new kind heated her inside, potent with the impact. His eyelids were heavy and she knew he felt it as well. The words he spoke not long before came to her, “your body is binding to mine”.

  It was as he said.

  They were as one.

  His mouth closed down on hers, hungry with its demands, and she moaned against his lips. And then gasped as his cock slid into her body. “Marcella,” he whispered.

  She felt her name like a caress.

  Her body arched, her butt lifting as she pressed her hips against his. All she could think was closer. Harder. More. He moved in slow, sensual strokes, in and out of her body. One of his hands playing with her nipple, palming her breast. And then a hard thrust injected her with a rush of pleasure.

  “Diego,” she rasped.

  He held himself above her, palms pressed into the mattress, and slowly, inch by inch, slid backwards, his cock positioned with only the tip inside her. His eyes met hers. For long moments they stared at one another, her breath caught in her throat. Her heart pounding at double time. The room faded away with the force of their joining.

  And then, in a slow, sexy progression, he slid back inside her, giving her not just his body but also something beyond. Still holding her stare, she felt his mind open to hers. He buried himself to the hilt and then his face went to her neck. Images rushed through her brain. Flashes of events. Battles. Diego doing surgery. Monsters battling men Diego called friends. A human woman bonding with a man she knew to be the Black Knight’s Leader. And then her…naked in Diego’s arms as she was now.

  Where she belonged.

  Suddenly his mouth was on hers, the images replaced by red-hot desire. His hips beginning to move. His long, hard cock stroking her inner walls with back and forth motions. Lost in everything he was, her body reached for his. Her hips lifted from the bed, driven by an absolute need to feel complete. And he was her only hope of making it so.

  Diego’s lips were like a silky caress, touching her with sensual tenderness, tasting lips, her neck and her shoulder. And then his teeth scraped her shoulder. Sharp but erotic. The pinch of pain she felt somehow only made the next thrust of his cock more amazing. She called out his name, her neck tilting backwards. Her fingers sunk into his back as the pleasure burst and then splintered like a million pieces of bliss shattering through her body.

  She shook with the potency of her release, feeling Diego’s teeth on her nipples and then his tongue. The touch of his mouth seemed to make another ripple. And another. Until slowly…she stilled. Diego brushed hair out of her face, leaning on his elbow and staring at her with dark, passion filled eyes. “You are so damn beautiful,” he murmured.

  Her hand went to his fingers, bringing them to her lips and kissing them. “You didn’t come,” she whispered. “It’s your turn.”

  “I wanted to watch your pleasure,” he replied, his voice heavy with passion.

  Her body was still squeezing and stroking him, the aftershock of her orgasm intense. “I want to watch you.” She suckled his finger into her mouth, her eyes locked with his, begging him to take. Mimicking him, her teeth scraped his finger and then his wrist, hands gliding up his arms.

  A low moan escaped his throat just before his mouth claimed hers, and he thrust with power. Yes, she whispered to him in her mind. More.

  She felt the animal in him roar, and she seized the beauty of awakening it. In her heart she saw the wilder part of him, and thrilled at his more animalistic urges. For some reason it made her hot. Burning beyond belief. The more he gave her, thrust after thrust, the more she wanted. Something about this man and all he was charged her with a sexual high she’d never known.

  His head lifted, dark hair falling forward, eyes wide. She stared at him, her gaze feasting on the magnificent male perfection that was him. Her man. Her soul mate. She knew it to be so. Wanted it. Accepted. Even burned to feel all it could be. The low groans he made as he thrust echoed in her head and made her press her hips into him, now taking and giving.

  But her eyes stayed on his face. She was watching the moment he exploded. The moment the wild roar of complete pleasure ripped from his lungs. “Oh God,” she whispered, so completely shaken by what her body, both inside and out, felt. A flutter in her stomach, and then to her utter shock, her body rippled with yet another release. “Diego, I…” Words were lost to pleasure.

  They shuddered and shook. When finally they stilled, they lay intimately wrapped together, naked, body and soul as one. And they slept.

  * * * * *

  A loud pounding on the door made Marcella jump.

  Diego raised his head, his body tensing. She could feel the readiness ooze from him. “Marcella, are you in there?”

  David.

  Marcella’s eyes riveted to Diego’s face, her hand snaking out to his arm, shackling it with anticipation. He started to get up, anger rolling through him like a part of the very air. She felt it in her mind. And in her body as if it breathed for her as well. “No,” she said. “He’s just trying to protect me.”

  David’s angry voice bellowed again, the pounding getting louder. “Marcella.”

  “Just a minute,” she called across the room, afraid David would wake the neighbors. It was a moment of distraction Diego took advantage of, pushing off the bed in a quick, agile move. Her hand fell away from his arm despite her best attempt to control him. Something raged within him, dark and dangerous.

  “Diego,” she said, a plea in her voice. He stood above her, ready to charge the door, naked as the day he was born.

  The broad muscles of his chest expanded as he sucked in a deep breath. “This is between me and this man.” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “You go into the bathroom.”

  “What?” she gasped, lifting her body onto her knees. “If you think for one minute—“

  “Marcella,” David called through the door. She frowned. Now she was hot. At both of these two fools. “Shut up and wait, David!” she yelled at the door, and then refocused on Diego. “You better get one thing straight, mister. I’m not some wimpy woman you can boss around.”

  Diego stared at her, not moving, his eyes locked with hers in silent challenge. “And I’m not sharing my woman.”

  “Your woman?” she demanded. “Is that what I am?”

  “You wear my mark.”

  “I don’t know anything about a mark. But if I am your woman—and right now the way you’re acting—it’s if,” she warned, “then you need to believe in me.” She paused and then softened her voice. “Trust me. I don’t want David, but I do appreciate him looking out for me and you should too!”

  His lips tightened. “He has motives.”

  “David is an honorable man. He’s never acted out of line with me. I’m getting dressed and answering the door. I am begging you to stand by my side and support me. You’ve asked for a lot of trust from me. I need the same from you.”

  He reached for her hand. “I will always stand by you.”

  She looked up into his eyes and knew it was true. For reasons she still didn’t fully comprehend, she belonged with him. “Prove it now. Get dressed and meet David. Treat him like the man who protected me until the day we came together, you and I.”

  “Answer one thing first.”

  “All right,” she whispered.

  “Are you my woman?”

  “
You know the answer.”

  His mouth came close to hers. “Say it.”

  “Yes,” she said a bit breathlessly as his mouth closed down on hers.

  * * * * *

  Diego stood next to Marcella as she opened the hotel door. He reminded himself of the need for control. The possessiveness he felt for Marcella was new, his way of dealing with it far from defined.

  David looked from one to the other, and then his eyes locked and focused on Marcella. Anticipating his move, Diego’s hand shackled his wrist, as it was about to claim Marcella’s arm. “Don’t touch her,” he warned and then released his grip.