Leopard's Run

by Christine Feehan

  Lazily he replayed the images over and over in his head. She hadn’t stopped him when he’d gotten a little out of control, his hips pushing deeper. He knew he should handle her with more care and each time he thought about touching her, it was always with reverence. Then he actually touched her and it was like he went mad. Completely, utterly mad.

  His fist tightened, and he began to move his hand faster and faster. He felt his balls grow tight, his cock jerked and pulsed. He closed his eyes and imagined her mouth around him. He loved the way she sucked him. The way her tongue danced up and down his shaft, and she moaned, the vibrations driving him wild. His seed erupted, spurting like a geyser into the air and falling like white rain over his hand and down his cock.

  He knew the moment she entered the bedroom. She stood in the doorway looking beautiful, her hair wet. Little droplets clung to her body and ran between her breasts. Two dripped from her nipples and more ran straight down her belly to the vee at the junction of her legs.

  “Come here, baby.” His voice was a little hoarse. Very husky. Sensual from the way he had given himself pleasure.

  “I’m all clean and feel refreshed. She’s subsided, and I don’t want to wake her.”

  “I didn’t ask for a rundown of what was going on with you, now did I? In fact, Ashe, I took care of myself, which clearly isn’t my favorite thing, to give you a break.” He didn’t move his fingers from around his cock.

  “And you’re grumpy about it too,” she pointed out.

  “Get the fuck over here.”

  “Because you ask so nicely.”

  He opened his mouth to add to his sins when she took her first step toward him. When she did, her breasts swayed temptingly.

  “Why are you so grumpy, Timur?” She came across the room to stand at the foot of the bed looking down at him. “I thought you’d wake up all sweet and loving.”

  “I woke up as hard as a fucking rock and you weren’t here with me,” he groused.

  She laughed, and the sound was tantalizing. He didn’t understand how musical notes could stroke a man’s skin and dance along his thighs. He didn’t understand how the notes could be an arrow that pierced his heart. She owned him. He’d thought to own her, but there was never a question that it was the other way around.

  He couldn’t tell her that, so he acted like a dick. A fucking asshole. That was sure to earn him points. “I’m sticky as hell, baby. I need you to clean me up.”

  He expected her to tell him to go to hell. To order him into the shower. To, maybe, if he was really lucky, get a warm washcloth. Instead, she put one knee on the bed, reached with her hand and began a slow, sensuous crawl to him. He’d never seen anything sexier than the way her breasts swayed with every movement of her arms and legs. Her nipples looked hard and drops of water glistened on her skin. She looked like the leopard she was.

  “Keep your hands to yourself,” she warned. “I’m as sore as hell, and if you wake her and I go into heat again, I might be tempted to rake your face off with my claws.”

  Why did he find even her threats sexy? He put his free hand behind his head and kept the fingers of his other hand wrapped around his suddenly thick cock. Heart pounding, he watched her ease down on the bed. Her hair trailed over his thighs. He nearly jumped but held himself very still.

  Her tongue touched the back of his hand. A touch only. It was velvet soft and made his heart pound through his cock. He could feel that beat in the fingers of his hand. His breath left his lungs in a wild rush. She was like an angel sent from heaven to make him remember there were good things in the world. He was suddenly glad he was leopard and so was his woman. Oral fixations were normal for them, and he truly wouldn’t mind if his woman began an oral fixation with his body.

  Her tongue lapped gently at the back of his hand, slowly removing the sticky essence, the volcano that his body produced, over and over, for her. She licked the back of his hand clean and then took his cock from him and gently laid it across his thigh, so she could pull his index finger into her mouth. She sucked it as if it was his cock, her tongue sliding up and down and curling around it.

  He forgot how to breathe. It was a simple enough function, one every person in the world knew how to do, but he couldn’t remember how to take a breath. How to get the air into his lungs after it had all rushed out.

  Her mouth pulled his middle finger deep, her tongue flicking and licking, dancing up and down and then she was sucking hard again. His cock felt so heavy he wanted to reach for it all over again, but he held himself still, watching her face. There was beauty there. So much of it.

  She looked as if her entire concentration was on what she was doing, just as she had in the early morning hours when she’d taken his cock into her mouth. She’d focused on it completely, looking as if she was worshiping it with her mouth and tongue. Now, it was his hand.

  Ashe didn’t leave one speck behind. Not one. He knew because he checked the moment she released his hand and reached for his shaft. She cradled it lovingly in her hands. She was just as thorough there, her tongue lapping at him gently, until not only his cock, but his balls were thoroughly clean, and he thought he might burst with his need of her.

  His heart actually ached. His eyes even burned. He felt her love. She might not know she felt love for him, but it was there in the way she touched him. In every velvet stroke of her tongue. No one, nothing, had prepared him for the overwhelming emotions that rose in him for her. He knew he didn’t deserve her, he would never deserve her, and he didn’t understand how he’d gotten so lucky. He also knew, if, after having her, even for such a short while, he lost her, he wouldn’t survive it. None of his emotions had anything to do with his leopard.

  “I’m sorry I left you unattended, Timur. I’m really quite sore this morning and I was afraid if we …” She trailed off and looked up at him over the broad head of his cock.

  She looked miserable and that stopped the wild beating of his heart. He cupped the side of her face, his thumb sliding over her cheek and lower lip. “I want to wake up to your mouth on me, baby, but never at the expense of your body. If you hurt, we abstain. It’s that simple. Don’t apologize to me, not after what you just did for me.”

  She leaned over him again and kissed the pearl drops leaking from the wide head before rolling over and stretching. Her body was a miracle of softness to him. He could see and feel the firm muscles beneath the surface, but that surface was amazing. “Still, I should have told you, honey. I didn’t, I just tried sneaking away.”

  He splayed his fingers in the middle of her belly, taking in as much territory as possible. “You’re never going to get away with sneaking, no matter what, Ashe, so you may as well just start off by communicating with me.”

  She turned her head to look at him. Her lashes curled at the ends and they were thick and long, so feathery he wanted to touch them. Instead, he leaned over her and brushed a kiss over each eye just to watch them flutter.

  “You do know you’re bossy, right?”

  He laughed as he subsided back on the bed. He was bossy, and he’d probably get a lot worse the more time they spent together. He was already thinking of her safety and how best to keep her out of the public eye where his enemies might discover they could hurt him through her. Yeah, he was going to get worse.

  “I do know,” he admitted, a little too much complacency in his voice.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t say it like you’re all proud of that fact. I’m not a woman who takes to bossy men.”

  “You take to me,” he pointed out. “You like it.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe a little. But that doesn’t mean you’re getting away with anything. I’ll still make up my own mind about what I want to do.”

  “You do that, baby. Make up your own mind about what you want to do. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be doing it.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned over onto her stomach again, her eyes meeting his. Now there was laughter there. “I’m not listening to
you.”

  He smacked her ass. Not hard. Just a little teasing, playful smack that left an intriguing red handprint on her left cheek. He liked it. He bent his head again and pressed a kiss into the middle of the palm print.

  “Ouch.” She glared at him. “I’d repay you in kind, but I’m too hungry, Timur. You need to feed me to keep my strength up. Evangeline gave me a couple of days off, so I wouldn’t have all the security guards and their leopards going crazy.”

  He liked that there was laughter back in her voice. “That’s a good thing, because I wouldn’t like it if I had to cut out their hearts.”

  “You’re so bloodthirsty.”

  He laughed and sat all the way up, putting his feet on the floor. He had a few sore muscles himself. “Pancakes?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Absolutely.” She was up and off the bed. “I’ll go brush my teeth and join you in the kitchen. I can do prep work.” She was already heading toward the bathroom again. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “I told Evangeline that when I went back to work, I could handle the shop for a few days on my own to give her some time off.”

  His first thought was a resounding no. He kept his mouth shut. Evangeline looked as if she needed a few days off, and the reason she’d hired Ashe in the first place was because she needed her. Ashe had the experience, and he’d seen her in action. She was fast. He wouldn’t make up his mind until he’d taken the time to interrogate their prisoner, and he wouldn’t do that for a day or two. He wanted the hit man to have time to stress over his situation. To really think about what it meant to be taken to a place no one knew about. A place that was soundproof and far below the house where he’d come to kill the occupants.

  The man had been stripped, so there was no chance of his having a pill to kill himself while he waited for Timur to decide the time was right to ask a few questions. Timur had found the more time given, the easier the interrogation. Imagination was a huge tool in his favor, and right now, he couldn’t leave Ashe. Her female was in heat and that meant his woman needed him as much as her female leopard needed his male.

  He padded on bare feet to the guest bathroom and quickly showered. He found her in the kitchen making coffee. His woman made really good coffee. She looked good as well, dressed in a long flowy dress. It was a midnight blue. She turned away from the coffeepot and sent him a smile that raised his temperature by several degrees. Clearly, she wasn’t wearing a bra, and her breasts pushed at the tight confines of the dress’s bodice.

  “I thought I’d make you some coffee to get you going, Timur. They have everything in this guesthouse. Even an espresso machine, and it’s a good one. Guests aren’t going to want to leave.”

  “Would you rather live here, or in the house you’re staying in?”

  He wanted Evangeline’s house. He’d wanted it since the first moment he’d been in it. He’d broken in late at night when she was asleep. That was before he’d met her. Before he’d ever been to the bakery. He knew his brother was completely enamored with Evangeline and as his brother’s head of security, he’d investigated her.

  Evangeline’s house was perfect. There were the wide-open spaces he needed. He liked that he could be working in the kitchen and yet see all the way through to the living room. He didn’t need big, the way Fyodor did. He liked that the house was more intimate. He liked the location, the neighborhood with the huge park and rolling hills stretching out behind it. He could run Temnyy nightly and not put anyone in jeopardy.

  If Ashe preferred this guesthouse, he would accept that. He would be happy anywhere she was, and the estate had massive amounts of property to run his leopard. More, he’d be close to Fyodor at all times and that would mean less time spent away from his woman.

  Ashe perched on a barstool and watched him get the ingredients he needed to make her breakfast. He enjoyed spending time with her. He really liked the way she watched his every movement, as if he intrigued her the same way she did him.

  “Evangeline’s house is awesome,” she said. “The minute I walked in, I knew it was perfect. I understood why she bought it. She told me it took all her spare money, money she really needed for her shop, but she couldn’t resist it.”

  “Was she sad about moving?” He began mixing the batter, his gaze on her face. He liked watching the different expressions that flitted across her face when she talked.

  “No, not at all. She told me she loves it here. Fyodor let her take over his home and decorate it anyway she wanted. She likes going room by room and changing things to suit her style. She has lots of rooms to play in.”

  “And her house?”

  Ashe leaned across the bar to wipe flour from his chest where some had dropped when he’d stirred the batter. “She said she’d been considering putting it up for sale right before I showed up, so my guess is, that’s what she’s going to do.”

  “If you like it enough, we could ask her to sell it to us,” Timur ventured, watching her face carefully.

  Her eyes widened, and she sat up straighter. “I love the house, Timur, you know I do, but isn’t that moving a little too fast? We can’t just decide to buy a house.”

  He indicated the coffeepot with his chin while he worked. “Why not? Our leopards are committed, so are we. You’re not going anywhere. We both know that. If Evangeline is willing, let’s get the house while we can.”

  “You’re a distance from work.”

  He shrugged. “There’s a large yard, and the garage roof is large enough to land a helicopter on it. We can see about getting permission to keep one there.”

  “You can fly a helicopter?” She paused in the act of pouring him a cup of coffee.

  “Yes. I have my license here. I learned in Russia, in the military. The skill has come in handy at times.”

  She poured him coffee and brought it to the bar. “Do you think Evangeline would sell us the house?”

  His heart jumped in his chest. She wanted the house. He heard it in her voice. “Yes. I’m her brother-in-law, and most likely she’d sell it to me anyway, just to get me out from under her feet. It’s close to her bakery and she worries about that all the time. She loves that little shop.”

  “I could start inquiries about renting or buying the shop next to hers. I just need to find out who owns the space.”

  “Fyodor does. Well,” he hesitated. “We do. Gorya, Fyodor and me. The three of us. We have a business together and the business owns the entire block of buildings. Evangeline was getting shaken down …”

  “Shaken down?” She sipped at her coffee, a question in her eyes.

  “That territory is actually Emilio Bassini’s. He demands protection money from every storeowner in his territory. When his men came in to collect from Evangeline, Fyodor happened to be there. He shut that shit down and then went to Emilio to offer the money to purchase the buildings. Emilio struck up a deal with him. With us. I don’t think he wanted war and at the time, Fyodor was still a soldier for Arnotto. It was months before he ever admitted to himself or anyone else that he cared about Evangeline.”

  “This is fascinating. Even then he was crazy about her.”

  “Enough so that when he took over for Arnotto, we all told him he couldn’t go back to her bakery. That was the one place anyone looking to kill him would know he’d be. I think the world knew, at that point, that he had fallen for Evangeline. Certainly, if Emilio knew it, and he wanted to get rid of Fyodor, what better place to hit him? We changed our routes every day. His security was tight, but if he insisted on visiting that bakery, his enemies had only to wait for him to show up. And still he went.”

  He put three pancakes on a plate in front of her. She had the butter and syrup already out.

  “These look so good. Thanks, Timur. I really will take some cooking lessons. I know I could cook if I had an interest in it, and I don’t want you to have to do it every night.” She scrunched up her nose when she made the offer.

  “I don’t mind, but I won’t be home every night. When I’m working late, you cou
ld go with me and visit Evangeline and eat there.” Getting her in that habit would be good. Timur didn’t look at her when he made the suggestion, not wanting her to see that he was going to maneuver her into doing what he wanted no matter what. “Especially now, she could probably use a friend. I don’t like that she looks so fragile.” He wasn’t lying about that. Evangeline was very special to him. He knew Ashe could hear it in his voice. And the worry.

  Ashe nodded her head. “That’s a good idea. Even if she’s really tired, I could at least be in the house and read or something. I’m a huge book reader. I love stories.”

  “Your favorite?”

  “Anything Sherlock Holmes or like it,” she answered readily. “Mysteries, but they have to have romance in them. Even an action movie has to have at least a touch of romance or it’s not going to be a favorite.”

  “I see a theme,” he teased.

  She flashed him a smile that nearly stopped his heart. “Happy endings or I’m not a fan,” she agreed. “What do you like to read?”

  “My favorite was always Aleksandr Pushkin. I like classics, but of course Tolstoy and Pushkin. I consider Pushkin to be the founder of Russian literature. We had many arguments in my classes over this.”

  “A little romance as well,” she said.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I would never admit that, not even to you.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “Of course not, because you’re so tough. You worry about Evangeline, and yet you’re a tough guy.”

  He wasn’t about to admit that yes, he did worry about his sister-in-law, but he had ulterior motives when it came to making certain his woman was visiting her when he was there working.

  Ashe’s entire face lit up when she laughed. That laughter did something to his insides, turning him to mush, so he thought some of the ice that had frozen all emotions so many years earlier had melted and allowed her in deeper.