by Megan Hart
He shook his head. Silent. Tears brimmed in his hazel eyes and he blinked hard, dashing them away. She wanted to take a merciless satisfaction in knowing she’d made him cry the way she was trying so hard not to, but she couldn’t. Even now, seeing his suffering, she wanted to take it away from him.
“I knew you’d hate me, once you knew,” Ewan told her.
She didn’t hate him and probably never would. “That’s the worst part of it, isn’t it? Knowing we’d found something brilliant and watching it burn to ash.”
Ewan let out a strangled noise. “You can leave, if you want. I’ll terminate the contract.”
Of course he would. She could walk out of here without a second glance. “I could have done that the second I saw it was you, and sued you for breach of contract, hiring me under false circumstances. I could have caused a scandal. It would have cost you a lot more than you paid me.”
“You didn’t.” He scrubbed at his face, eyes still red, but his expression hopeful.
Nina sighed and shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
The answer to that was complicated, and it was late. She was too exhausted to think about it right now, or to make sense of it. Anything that came out of her mouth would be garbled and nonsensical, unless she pushed her body to fight off the tiredness. The tech was meant to keep her going in extreme circumstances, and this hardly counted as that.
“It’s late.” Her jaw cracked with a yawn. “I really need to go to bed. We can talk about it in the morning.”
“Why didn’t you immediately terminate the contract, Nina?”
The tone of his voice, while vaguely threatening, wasn’t scary. Still, the slant of his mouth and his clenching fists, the low fury in his voice, all pushed away her fatigue. Her heart rate stepped up. Her breathing quickened. Ewan Donahue got Nina’s motor revving, and it had nothing to do with her enhancements.
“Because I’m a professional,” she lied. If anything, her choice to stay had been entirely amateur.
They stared at each other.
“You know what? This was a mistake.” Ewan shook his head, tossing his hands outward as though trying to push her away. “I thought if I brought you here, if I showed you that I was sorry—”
“That what? You could bend me over and ravish me, and all would be forgiven? Just have a little bit of the old in-out, in-out? You think making me come gives you some kind of power over me?” She demonstrated with a hand gesture far more rude than walking away had been. She crossed the room to him, standing so close she could feel the whisper of his breath on her skin, although they weren’t touching. “Is that what you want? To control me?”
Ewan didn’t answer.
Spurred on by inclinations she didn’t want to stop and explore, Nina slid her hands up the front of Ewan’s tux jacket. Her fingers tightened in the material. She tugged. He moved. Her lips parted as he leaned closer. Her tongue flicked his mouth.
She bit him.
Hard, but swiftly, her teeth snipping his lower lip. She didn’t draw blood, but the sharp intake of his breath showed so clearly that she’d hurt him. Still, she didn’t kiss him. She let her mouth hover over his. Waiting.
Ewan groaned something that sounded like her name. Like a plea. The sound of it hit someplace inside her, somewhere deep. Nina could run faster, harder, longer than normal people. She could go without sleep, without food, endure tortures that would make someone else pass out.
She could control her body in a hundred enhanced ways, but she could not stop herself from giving in to the urge to kiss Ewan.
Nina’s mouth slid over his in a slow, slick glide. His tongue stroked hers. She shuddered, her nipples tightening against the smooth fabric of the dress he’d bought her. Her breasts, bare beneath the clinging material, ached for his touch.
“This onedamned red dress,” she muttered into his mouth. “I never should have let you talk me into wearing it.”
His hands moved up and over her hips to curve around her ribs, right below her breasts. “Why? You look amazing in it.”
“That’s exactly why. You can’t resist me.” She growled, rasping, when his palms moved upward to cup her through the dress’s thin material.
Ewan flicked his thumbs over her nipples. “I don’t want to resist you.”
He pulled her closer so his erection pressed against her through his tuxedo pants. When he tried to kiss her mouth, she turned her face and gave him her cheek. He countered with a low, wicked chuckle and ran his lips over the curve of her jaw and down to her throat, nibbling. Each tiny nip sent arcs of electric arousal through her.
“Resist me, Ewan.”
His mouth traced the curves of her breasts bared by the gown’s scooped neckline, his reply muffled. “ . . . No.”
Nina gasped out a curse when his lips captured her nipple through the fabric. With a swift, smooth motion she was behind him with his wrist in her fist and his arm twisted. She pressed herself against his back, not pushing hard enough to break his bones, but hard enough to get him to move forward a few hesitant steps toward the bed he’d bought for her.
She let him go just as they both reached it. Ewan bent forward, hands flat on the soft comforter. Nina was still behind him, her hands on his hips. Her crotch nudged his ass as Ewan looked at her over his shoulder. She’d thought he might be smiling. Smug. Instead, his gaze on hers was open and blazing. Without a word, he rolled onto his back, shifting easily so that she ended up standing between his legs at the side of the bed.
“I’m not resisting you,” Ewan said and put his hands up as though she were holding a gun on him.
It was not about the heat flaring between them. She’d gone without sex for longer than this. It was not about lust.
Nina loved this man more than she thought she’d ever be capable of loving anyone. She was the one who could not resist. She was the one who did not want to.
The dress opened down the front with a simple slide of her fingertips along the hidden seam. She tossed it to the side and stood before him wearing only the sheer red lace panties that she’d found waiting for her in the drawer earlier today when he’d told her she’d be accompanying him to the party. No stockings. No bra. Only the transparent crimson panties she knew he’d been imagining her wearing every time he looked at her.
Ewan’s fingers curled, but he lowered his hands and gripped the comforter on either side of his hips instead of reaching for her. His eyes never left hers. His tongue swept along his lower lip, leaving his mouth open, wet and inviting.
“I’m not resisting you,” he repeated in a lower voice this time. Rough, harsh, and full of longing. “Do whatever you want.”
Nina straddled him, her breath hitching as her heart pounded fast and hard. She didn’t try to slow it the way she would have while fighting. She wanted to endure this throbbing ache in her chest, the base of her throat, her wrists. Between her thighs. She wanted it to overwhelm her.
Ewan was rigid beneath her as she rocked her body against his. Nina ran a hand up the front of his tux. Her fingers curled around his throat. Ewan tilted his head back a little to give her complete access, still keeping his gaze locked to hers.
“If I want to hurt you?” she whispered.
“Even that.”
Instead of gripping his throat, she yanked open his bow tie. Whipped it free of his shirt. She bent to undo the buttons, and when they blocked her, she tore his shirt open down the front. Her nails dug into his chest beneath, lightly at first. Then harder.
“Maybe especially that,” Nina said, watching his pupils dilate. Feeling his cock thicken as his hips nudged upward, pushing his hardness against her, she couldn’t hold back her sighing groan of pleasure. “Oh. . . .”
He rolled then, taking her with him and moving them both on the bed so he was on top of her. She didn’t turn her face this time when he kissed her. She gave him her open mouth, her tongue, the clash of her teeth. Her nails dug into the spare flesh of his belly. The crisp da
rk hairs there brushed her knuckles.
She arched under him as he dragged his mouth from hers and found her neck. The slope of her breasts. Then, moving lower, Ewan took her nipple between his lips and sucked gently until she gave a low cry and dug her fingers into him again.
He lifted his head to look into her eyes. “I can’t resist you, Nina, I don’t want to, and I’m not going to. I want to taste you, everywhere.”
“Oh yes, that. Now. But I need you naked first.”
She wriggled out of her skimpy panties easily enough. They moved together to get him out of his clothes, a struggle compared to how little effort it had taken for her to strip down for him. She started laughing first, and he joined soon after until they were both chortling as they worked him free of the tuxedo.
It felt so good to laugh with him.
Better, almost, than the heat of his lips and tongue returning to her skin, better than the stroke of his fingers between her thighs and his touch on her through the lacy panties. Even if her guffaws did choke into a series of hitching breaths as her throat closed and scalding tears stung her eyes at the sudden rushing force of her emotions.
If she let herself be swept away now, she wouldn’t recover. She would drown in her love for him, in her grief. Her fury would shred them both, unrecoverable.
Nina focused instead on the physical pleasure. Ewan’s touch. The weight of him as he lowered his full nakedness onto her. His breath, scented with red wine. She lost herself in the taste of his kisses and the flavor of his skin when she moved her mouth over his chest.
Nina shifted, and Ewan slid inside her without warning. Both let out a startled cry. He tried to pull out, but she hooked her ankles over his calves, holding him there.
“No,” she said. “I want you.”
“You have me,” Ewan said into her ear as he began to thrust.
She muttered an invective at the rush of ecstasy coursing through her when he moved. Then an order, also muttered, for him to hush, and when he seemed like he meant to talk again, she covered his mouth with her hand. His eyes looked amused over the rim of her palm, but he went quiet except for the low groan when she used her heels on his ass to get him moving harder. Faster.
“Deeper,” Nina said.
She wanted to block out everything else and succumb to this desire. If she could run faster, jump higher, in this post-enhancement body she could also climax with less effort—and with Ewan, she already had discovered her capacity for arousal was more than it had been with anyone else.
He slowed. Nina protested, but Ewan kept his pace steady and even. He rolled his hips to press against her where she needed it the most. When she urged him again, he shook his head and kept the same smooth, slow strokes.
It was exactly what she needed to get her there, and how could she keep hating him for knowing so well how to bring her pleasure? It made her helpless against the rush and throb of it all through her. Nina didn’t want to refuse it. Orgasm built and let her block out all the rest; it made her greedy and selfish, but she didn’t care. She gave up to all the sensations, but she closed her eyes and would not look at him as she shook with the tremors of her climax. She bit back his name.
She also bit him, sinking her teeth into the closest place she could reach. The skin of his upper bicep, slick and salty with sweat, gave beneath the pressure of her mouth. Ewan shouted hoarsely, at last moving faster. The harder she bit, the deeper he thrust inside her. He buried his face against the side of her neck. Her arms went around him, pulling him closer. She bit him with ever increasing fierceness until he cried her name and shuddered. Spent, he fell forward onto her, and Nina blinked away another round of tears, despising herself for them but as helpless against them as she’d been against the orgasm.
Only half a minute passed before Ewan shifted to keep his weight off her. He didn’t let go of her, though. He kissed her shoulder. His breathing softened and slowed. He would fall asleep soon, and she didn’t want him to do it in this bed, next to her.
“In the hospital,” she said finally, loud enough to rouse him out of dozing, “I learned to focus on my body. It was mostly pain, then, of course. But I figured out if I was able to concentrate on the actual, real physical sensations I was experiencing, it helped.”
“Helped what?”
She cleared her throat, staring at the ceiling. “Helped me to keep from thinking too much. Stopped me from feeling. And then eventually, I couldn’t feel at all.”
Ewan tensed. He pushed up on an elbow to look down at her. “I see.”
“You don’t,” she told him without looking at him. “I don’t think you can. You can’t understand, Ewan, what it’s like to reach so hard for something and have it simply not be there. To have blank spots in your memories. You can’t understand how it feels to know that anyone could, at any time, strip you of your past.”
“You feel now,” he said in a low voice. “I know you do. It came back to you.”
Nina shook her head. “At what cost? You can’t answer that, because you don’t know.”
“I’ve fought hard to make it so that not just anyone can do anything like that to you. At the very least, that it would be done only with your consent ahead of time, and in a limited framework . . . it’s not much better, I know that.” He coughed lightly. “But I tried to make it the best it could be.”
She shook her head. “You would think that knowing you could lose your memories would make you more likely to hold onto them as much as you could. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. I think so.”
Nina kept her gaze on the ceiling, concentrating on keeping her voice steady. “But you don’t, really. You learn tricks, ways to control what you think about so that . . . well, so that sometimes, you simply don’t have the memories to begin with. Or if you do, they’re nothing you care about losing. You focus on the things your body is doing. Your mind holds onto that, the physical part of it. Not whatever you’re feeling about it. That way, if you lose those memories, what have you forgotten, really? A series of sensations, not emotions. Because they’re so linked. Memories and feelings. It’s hard to separate them.”
He didn’t say anything this time. His body tensed next to hers, and in the next moment there was a distance between them. Chill air made her shiver, and she didn’t counter it by raising her temperature. She let herself be cold.
“Is that . . . what you were doing now? With me?” Ewan asked her.
She looked at him then. “Yes.”
He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. His shoulders hunched for a moment before he straightened them. “I see.”
This time, she thought he might.
She waited for his anger or frustration. For accusations. All she got from him was a small sigh that barely moved him, as though the breath he’d taken in had stayed locked deep in his lungs.
“Why?”
“You know why,” she told him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ewan had never been one to sleep late, but this morning he’d woken even earlier than normal. Actually, he hadn’t really slept at all. The sex last night had been phenomenal, but it had left him wishing he’d done exactly what he’d told Nina he wasn’t doing . . . resisting.
It had taken him less than an hour to finalize the dissolution of the contract. All it needed was the signatures from him, Nina, and ProtectCorps, and she would be free to walk out of his life. This time, Ewan thought, it would truly be forever. He saved the updated document without sending it.
In the kitchen, he cracked eggs and toasted bread as the coffee brewed, knowing the scent of breakfast would lure her down. She came in through the back door, not from the hallway, surprising him. She smiled at his expression and glanced at her clothes. Instead of her usual uniform of black leggings and shirt along with a harness of equipment, she wore a pair of butt-hugging shorts and a matching tank top. He’d seen her in much less than that, but somehow the outfit was almost sexier than nakedness.
“I got up early for
a run,” she said. “That smells good.”
“It’ll be ready in a minute. Sit.” He eyed her as he scooped up scrambled eggs and cheese and put it on the table in front of her. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a baby.” Nina’s voice was serene and she didn’t look at him as she snagged a piece of toast and crunched it with a happy sigh. “Oh, real butter is so much better than fake. How about you?”
“Not like a baby,” Ewan answered.
Nina looked up at him. “Uh-huh.”
“Are we going to talk about last night, or just pretend it didn’t happen?”
“Let’s pretend,” Nina answered. “It’s probably best that way.”
It was not the answer he’d been hoping for. Ewan took the seat across from her and pushed the coffee carafe in her direction. “Right.”
“Anything special on your agenda today, boss?” Nina poured herself a mug of steaming coffee and sipped it with another of those happy sighs he hated himself for finding so attractive.
“Work. I have to go into the lab a bit later,” he added, watching her face for any signs of curiosity, but she was so good at making her expression unreadable when she wanted to. “The security system was tripped a couple of times in the night. I should go in and make sure everything’s okay.”
She nodded. “All right. I assume I’ll be going along?”
“There’s no sign that it was anything other than random vandalism. Everything else has been very quiet, no reports of anything out of the ordinary. Nobody’s actively tried to kill me in months,” Ewan said, trying for a joke.
Nina used a fingertip to wipe some glistening butter from the corner of her mouth. Her voice low, she said, “I’m glad for that.”
“Makes your job easier.” Again, the joke fell flat.
“Yes.” She frowned. “But that’s not why.”
Ewan swallowed his own coffee without tasting it. He cleared his throat. Leaned forward. “Tell me why, then, Nina. Please. Because I sure as hell don’t understand. I mean last night—”
