Point Blank Range

by Em Petrova

His balls drew up tight, so full after weeks of battling his own injuries and demons. “You’re so fucking wet,” he ground out, control fluttering away like smoke in a breeze. Hell, for all he know, they were surrounded by smoke and the elevator on fire. He didn’t care about anything but taking his ease and giving Nealy the biggest, most memorable orgasm of her life.

  Sucking her full lower lip into his mouth, he nibbled on it even as he skated a hand over her torso. Her breasts were on the smaller side but a good handful, and he wondered if she bore freckles over the tops of those as well as her nose.

  He moaned. She dug her nails into his shoulders and levered herself upward on his shaft. As her body tightened around him, he closed his fingers over her nipple. The bud pebbled at his touch, and he pinched it with insistence as he sank into her again and again.

  The elevator gave a jerk and fell another foot. She clutched at Linc, and he held her fast to him, breathing hard.

  “If we’re dying, I’m not letting you go out with anything but a smile on your face.” He spun from the wall and they tumbled to the cold floor. Instantly, she wrapped her thighs around his waist and he regained his rhythm. Her lips were driving him crazy, and in the dark he could almost forget she’d driven him crazy for weeks with her nonstop questions.

  Damn, he was close. He had to bring her off before him.

  Reaching between their bodies, he thumbed her clit. The slick nubbin was hard, the size of a pearl. If he had more time before they plummeted to their deaths, he’d go down on her.

  “Oh God…” Her quiver of pleasure boosted his ego, and he applied more pressure to her clit. Then he began the slow grind—the pad of his thumb working in a tiny circle, his cock sinking in and out in a rhythm he knew would drive her to the peak fast.

  He wasn’t wrong. Juices flooded him. The scent of her arousal hung sweet in the air, her breasts crushed to his chest and her mouth on his. She sucked on his tongue, and he almost came right there.

  Clenching his jaw, he took her the way she needed it—the way they both needed.

  Her first pulsation around his cock hit out of nowhere. She was shaking apart in his arms, head thrown back on a wild cry as she contracted on his length.

  He let go. The first jet of cum leaving him stole his mind, the second his sanity. He actually might have cried out her name.

  Long seconds of bliss passed over him, draining his strength.

  She pushed against his chest, and he realized he was crushing her with his weight.

  He rolled off, remorse already seeping in. Though he couldn’t see what she was doing, he heard a rustle of cloth. A garment hit him square in the face.

  The lights flickered. In the single flash before darkness settled over the unit again, he caught sight of pale legs. By touch, he figured out that he was holding his shirt and managed to yank it over his head, though it might be inside out and backward, for all he knew.

  A thud hit the floor next to his leg as she tossed a boot his way.

  The voice came on again. “We’ve almost remedied the problem, and the elevator will move to the nearest floor soon.”

  “Shit.” Nealy made a stomping noise as if she was shoving her foot into her shoe.

  Linc located his jeans with his boxers still stuffed in the leg holes. He pulled on the entire mass and zipped up. His sock was inside out, but he couldn’t care less and he managed to finish dressing. When the lights came on, he was bent in half tying his boot lace.

  A glance over at Nealy revealed she was standing with her back against a wall and hands pressed to it, fingers splayed, and her head drooped.

  She was fully dressed, and the only indication that anything had taken place between them was the way her hair swirled around her shoulders in disheveled waves and a flush over her cheeks.

  The elevator began to move in the smooth, rightful way of a well-operating machine. It only lowered a few feet before the doors opened. Without a glance at Linc, Nealy stepped off.

  She didn’t look back and simply walked away.

  * * * * *

  Nealy had five tabs open on her computer tablet as she searched for near death experiences, loss of judgment during stressful situations and the statistics surrounding elevator sex.

  Dear God, how had she let things go that far with Linc? She didn’t even like the man. He was rude, arrogant, annoying…

  And he had a very large cock she still felt the effects of. Even after a shower, she could practically feel him inside her, stretching her.

  If it happened in the dark, did it stay in the dark, like the saying about Vegas?

  She closed her eyes momentarily and then opened them and tossed her tablet onto the sofa next to her. Everything about the past few hours was outside her comfort zone, against her doctrine. She did not sleep with random guys, not even in college when anonymous sex was the rule.

  At the memory of Linc’s touch, her nipples betrayed her by bunching into two tight beads. She slapped her hands over them and groaned. This wasn’t okay—she had to shake him off and move on with her day.

  He was in the air by now, on route to Texas, and she probably wasn’t a glimmer of a thought in his mind. He probably did this all the time.

  Disgusted with herself, she got up and went to the kitchen. She wasn’t remotely hungry, but the only way to get the taste of Linc’s kiss out of her mouth was to eat something. She’d tried brushing her teeth, to no avail, but food would surely wipe it out.

  She yanked open the freezer door and grabbed a small tray that was microwave teriyaki. It’d give her just the bad aftertaste she needed. She slit the top of the tray and shoved it into the microwave.

  She leaned against the counter, tapping her foot and trying not to think of how she’d thrown herself at him.

  Like some sort of desperate woman.

  I am not desperate.

  He couldn’t hear her thoughts and wouldn’t believe her anyway. To him, she was one more notch on his bedpost, a conquest. Hey, guys, I had sex with an ATF agent in an elevator leaving the hospital. Funny, huh? She could hear his words now.

  Clenching her hands into fists, she fought back the feel of his hard muscles under her fingers and the warm steel of his cock gliding in and out of her. She’d been wet, he was right—wetter than she’d ever been with any guy or battery-operated boyfriend.

  It had to be the situation. They’d allowed their fears to manifest in bodily comfort and pleasure.

  God, the pleasure…

  Her pussy tingled again, and the microwave beep made her spin. She yanked open the door and removed the hot tray. The smell wasn’t great, a little like bad cafeteria food. She ate far too many of these after working late nights and weekends, and she didn’t enjoy going out to restaurants alone. She had her share of takeout as well, but fact was, she could use a fresh meal and didn’t care enough to bother preparing one for herself.

  Besides, she had little in the way of fresh food and lived out of her freezer.

  Okay, thinking about food wasn’t stopping the waves of memory crashing over her body, pounding at her core.

  Her orgasm, the way he’d ground his thumb into her clit… She folded her arms over her chest and stifled a shiver of want.

  Pathetic. She had to stop thinking of Linc and the way his callused hands had moved over her with a knowledge of her body that was beyond anything she had ever experienced before. And just how did he still have rough hands after lying in a hospital for over a month, doing nothing but pressing buttons on a TV remote and flipping pages of a magazine?

  She wished there had been even a spark of light in that elevator to have seen him by. The way he filled out his clothes spoke of muscle and bulk, and she had learned a lot by her sense of touch, but it left much to the imagination.

  She knew what the burns on his legs looked like.

  She bit down on her lip and grabbed a fork. She stood at the counter, hovering over her teriyaki chicken meal and picking through the vegetables, separating them into groupings of carrots,
peppers and broccoli. She devoured each food the same way. After the carrots were gone, she moved to the peppers, tasting nothing, not really.

  The worst about the entire situation was that she had cried out his name.

  He called mine too.

  A smug smile quirked up the corner of her lips. She chewed a bite and replayed the gritty tone of his voice as he gave up to his lust. And her name had been on his lips.

  Her smile widened. At least she wasn’t alone in this mistake—it had taken two, and hopefully he was sitting in a cramped airplane seat reliving their encounter and finding things to thrash himself for.

  It was only fair.

  In the other room, her phone buzzed. Her heart gave a hard flip-flop, and she dropped her fork with a clatter to run for her phone.

  It could be Linc.

  She didn’t want it to be Linc.

  Please don’t let it be Linc.

  It wasn’t. “Hi, Mark. What’s up?”

  “Hey, I just heard about your elevator ordeal. You all right?”

  Her mouth dried out. “Yes. Totally fine.”

  “Scary stuff. You hear of things like that happening, but you never think it will happen to you.”

  She never thought she’d be having elevator sex with a smoldering-hot special ops guy who she despised either.

  “Yes,” she said vaguely to her boss. “I’m fine and I’ll be working on analyzing some of this data tonight.”

  “You should knock off for once, Alexander—you overwork yourself.”

  “Not hardly.” She gave a short laugh, mostly annoyed. She wasn’t some pampered princess who required a lie-down after a jarring moment, and she wasn’t about to let her boss think of her that way.

  “Thanks for checking in on me, Mark. I’m fine.” She ended the call and collapsed onto the couch, her frozen meal forgotten.

  For a moment, she found herself staring into space, her mind pitch black, as black as the inside of that elevator. She’d never had sex where she couldn’t see her partner, and it had been kind of exciting, if she was honest.

  The danger of a plummeting elevator coupled with an unknown partner had amplified everything. Linc probably wasn’t that good in bed—her mind had made it into something it wasn’t.

  She sniffed and reached for her tablet again, clicking out of the windows and pulling up a database Homeland had given her access to.

  Throwing herself into the work she loved, she didn’t realize hours had passed until the neighbor in the next apartment came home from his late shift at work and slammed the door.

  Nealy blinked away the graininess in her eyes and closed out of the database.

  She didn’t want to think on it much, but it was inevitable.

  There was no hope for it. Her research pointed to one path.

  She had to go to Texas and talk to Ranger Ops.

  Chapter Four

  “Damn, this is what they send me on my first fucking day back?” Linc gripped his night vision goggles and did a sweep of the area. They had a hostage situation on their hands, and yet another relative of a certain Texas politician was fighting for his life.

  “You’d think this guy would throw in the towel and give up his position just to ensure his family’s safety,” Lennon said from beside him as he checked and double-checked his weapon.

  “You can’t back down against people like this.” Linc threw his brother a look. “Thanks for not leaving me out there, man. I haven’t said it yet.”

  His twin gave him an are-you-fucking-shitting-me look. “Thought about it,” he bluffed. “You’re a pain in the ass. And I don’t think you ever returned my favorite vinyl to me.”

  The vinyl LP of Lennon’s favorite 80s hair band was still on the turntable in Linc’s house. He had no intention of returning it to his brother, but now he was feeling some brotherly love, he might consider it.

  “On your eleven, Linc. You good to go?” Sully’s voice projected into his ear through the comms unit. The last time he’d heard from his captain in this way, he’d been jerked off his feet and woken in the back of a truck smelling pig shit.

  “Ready to roll.” He slanted a look at Lennon, who gave a nod.

  They ran forward in a burst of speed. In seconds, they had one of the guards on the ground. Then they hit the door. Linc stood back while Lennon shot the lock off using a silencer on his weapon.

  The door gave way, and Linc slipped inside, swinging his head right and left, weapon at the ready and his finger hovering over the trigger. He was relieved to know he wasn’t having any traumas from his last experience. Shaw had suffered for months after killing a youth who’d been about to shoot him, and Linc had been somewhat afraid of that after his ordeal.

  Of course, he wasn’t likely to be locked in a crate again. Though, he had known a moment of panic in the elevator—right before he and Nealy had gotten naked.

  “On your three,” Lennon breathed into the comms.

  Linc pulled up and took the shot. The guy hit the concrete floor, slumping over so it looked as if he might have fallen asleep on the job.

  With Lennon at his back, they breached another section of the building. Voices projected from behind a metal door. Suddenly, Linc thought of the crate and how everything had sounded like he was hearing it from under water. That brought him to thinking about Nealy’s relentless questioning.

  And how hard and wet her clit had been beneath his thumb.

  Focus, he told himself.

  “Incoming.”

  He spun in time to see two men bearing down on them, weapons drawn.

  He and Lennon were faster.

  Lennon stepped over one Linc had taken out. “Thanks, bro.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  They drew up to the door. Linc pulled out a camera to look through the crack. There, roped to a chair, was the politician’s loved one. A cousin or some shit, but one he was close to allegedly. The man’s lips were moving, but Linc couldn’t make out a thing he said.

  “Mic it,” Lennon whispered.

  Linc fiddled with a setting and had the sound in all the Ranger Ops’ ears. As the cousin blubbered about how his family had money and could drop it anyplace the kidnappers wanted, Linc silenced it once more. It was time to go in.

  Half an hour later, they walked out with the cousin in tow, put him into the front of an armored car and sent him on his way. Then they had to make a call to collect the bodies.

  Lennon clapped him on the back, and Linc pivoted his head to look at him. “You did good for your first day back. Any pain?”

  Linc shook his head. They stopped walking as an SUV pulled up. A window rolled down, and Linc stepped forward, thinking to see the politician.

  He drew up short as his gaze fell on the woman behind the lowered glass. Their stares connected, and lurid images flashed through his mind as a dark heat crawled through his groin.

  He pushed out a sigh. “Now you’re showing up on my jobs?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I need to speak to your captain.”

  Like hell, was Linc’s first thought. Suddenly, he realized Sully would be left with the headache and Linc wouldn’t have to deal with the annoying woman.

  She turned in profile and said something to the driver. Then she got out. Beside him, he felt Lennon go still as he stared at the woman.

  Oh hell no. His brother could not be looking at the ATF agent as a woman, could he? She was plain at best.

  Except Linc remembered very well how soft her curves had felt under his hands in the dark elevator.

  And how pretty he’d thought she was before stepping onto the elevator.

  She looked to his brother, and Lennon extended a hand. “You must be Lennon,” she said.

  He grinned and clasped her hand.

  “Yeah, my twin and the guy who doesn’t have time to stand around talking to you,” Linc cut in, shouldering his brother aside.

  Lennon and Nealy stared at him. At that moment, the rest of the guys approached, bulked out with gear
and grins on their faces as they ripped on each other.

  Linc pointed out Sully. “That’s the guy you wanna talk to.”

  He turned and walked away. A second later, Lennon jogged up beside him.

  “So… she have freckles?”

  “Shut up, Lennon.”

  “That’s a yes. Freckled everywhere?”

  “Dude, you’re about to get decked.” He continued on to the Ranger Ops SUV, peeling his sling holding his automatic over his head.

  “Another yes.”

  “Look, she’s an irritating woman who came by the hospital in DC asking me questions about the guys who took me.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah. I don’t have fuzzy feelings toward her.”

  “Sure looked that way when you saw her.”

  Fuck—just what Linc did not need. He hoped to hell Nealy hadn’t noted anything of the like, because it was false to the max. There weren’t feelings involved—it was sex in an elevator, and since then, he’d often wondered why he’d even done it. He liked women, but he wasn’t one to take advantage, especially if he disliked the woman. He had some moral code, after all.

  They reached the SUV, and Linc opened the back to stow away his weapon. After that, he made the mistake of tossing a glance over his shoulder—to see Nealy looking at him.

  * * * * *

  Great—Linc had caught her staring after him, and now she looked like a groupie or a lost puppy or something equally as bad. She bit off a mental groan and returned her attention to Captain Nash Sullivan. The big man was cordial enough, though she could see he wanted to hurry and get to her reason for wanting to speak to him.

  She rushed through her own introduction and then got right to the point.

  She only half took note of Linc approaching again.

  Okay, maybe a little more than half.

  “I have been given direct orders to join forces with Ranger Ops with the directive to bring down Operation X.”

  “Jesus,” Linc muttered. Nealy stared at him, hoping his balls shriveled up and fell off from her glare alone.

  “You know about this?” Linc asked his captain.

  Sullivan gave a nod. “I got the call from Downs this morning.” He directed his gaze to Nealy. “I haven’t heard a peep about Operation X for over a month. What makes you think they aren’t long gone, retreated to Mexico?”