Dark mission 04 - Sacrifice the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  He was too much. Too much man, too much aggression. Frightening and awe-inspiring and sensual.

  He stared down at her, his jaw rigid with something she couldn’t read—control or anger or determination. All of the above. His knee dipped the mattress by her hip, his other still planted between her legs. The position put her so close to his bare skin that she could feel the heat radiating off him.

  Fever?

  Of a sort. The same kind that infected her. Stripped away her barriers and left her needy, desperate for more.

  For Simon.

  Raising her chin, she met his glittering stare head-on. “Prove it,” she told him. It trembled.

  His nostrils flared, as if he were an animal. Starving, hunting. Fresh on her trail.

  Without grace, without patience, Simon stripped her of her shirt, transferring her wrists to each hand to get the white material off. Her bra followed, unclasped expertly. And all at once, she knelt half naked in front of a man who was supposed to be her subordinate.

  She was his boss.

  The ice bitch of the Mission.

  Not anymore. Those rules had been thrown out the instant they’d fled from her home. The instant that all-call had gone out.

  Now she was just Parker Adams.

  Needy, vulnerable. Aroused.

  His gaze slid over her like a physical caress. Traveled over the line of her shoulders, her collarbone. Her chest rose and fell too fast to hide, and she was sure he saw her pulse hammering at the base of her throat.

  He didn’t touch her but for the fingers at her wrists. Just looked at her. Lazily. Slowly. Taking his sweet time. As his gaze lowered to her breasts, full and tight, Parker’s cheeks flooded with heat as her nipples obviously beaded beneath his scrutiny.

  His slow, sexy smile ripped the bottom out of her stomach.

  “I dreamed about this.” His voice filled her senses, dark and dangerous. “You’re going to come for me, Parker.”

  Her throat dried. Parker held his gaze, squirmed as he only stared at her. Waiting.

  One dark eyebrow rose, supercilious as hell.

  He knew. Damn him, he knew what she wanted. What he did to her. But only waited.

  She looked away. “I—”

  “Yes?”

  Parker licked her lips. It didn’t help. “I don’t . . .”

  “Look at me, Parker.” Gentle. Coaxing. But no less an order.

  She did.

  Simon’s eyes narrowed. Slowly, he reached behind her, found her braid and pulled it over her bare shoulder. The ends tickled the top of her breast, tickled and stroked and added another layer to the complex sensations already twisting her up inside.

  His fingers brushed the same spot, and Parker shuddered. He pulled the band off, stroked those fingers through her hair until the braid unwound and most of the cool mass slid down her back.

  “You don’t have a choice,” he said, even as he wound a lock of her copper hair around his index finger. Lust pounded through her body, wicked and wanton. “This is about what I want. Isn’t that right, Director?”

  She flinched. But he wasn’t wrong.

  The hair tightened around his finger, pulling harder and harder until she had no choice but to lean forward. Where her arms were beginning to shake, his seemed rock solid over her head. A taut line of muscle and strength, patience incarnate.

  “Say it,” he whispered, his eyes bottomless.

  “I—” Parker took a long, slow breath. Felt it flood her chest, her belly.

  Felt it burn away into nothing as he tugged on her trapped hair.

  “Please,” she managed, her eyes wide. Her heart pounding so hard, it overwhelmed fear. Shame. All those things she’d spent so long avoiding. “Please touch me. Take me, Simon, make me come.” Her back curved, unabashedly thrusting her breasts to him. Needy, an offering she desperately wanted him to accept. “Come with me.”

  Every breathy word caused his eyes to darken. The smile left them. Left his mouth, drained from his features until Parker could only shiver as he studied her from a place she didn’t recognize. Something not cold; God, he was too vivid, too intense to be cold. Not detached, not judging by the lust shaping every hardened muscle of his beautiful body.

  Something . . . strong. Something immovable.

  “You’re mine,” he said softly.

  Oh, God. That sounded . . . so permanent. So . . . So dangerous. She wanted it.

  Parker nodded. He pulled on her hair, hard enough to force a small sound from her throat. “Say it, Parker.”

  “I’m yours,” she gasped. “Damn you, make me yours.”

  His eyes banked hard. The fingers around her wrist tightened near to pain. Letting go of her hair, he curled his hand around her throat and crushed his mouth to hers.

  As if he knew. Knew how the dominant edge in him stroked something feminine and sultry and soft in her. As if he could sense how much his aggression turned her on.

  Parker moaned as his tongue slid between her lips, found hers and stroked it, tasted her. Let her taste him. Finally, letting go of her wrists, he dragged his hand up her ribs. Filled his hand with her breast, stroking. Molding, shaping. It freed her to touch him in turn. His muscles were hard and defined under her searching hands, leaping to her touch as if she were a live wire laid against his skin.

  He made a rough sound in his chest as her fingers stroked over one flat nipple, returned the favor in kind as his found her left nipple and pinched it tautly between thumb and forefinger. She cried out, throwing her head back and wrenching her mouth away under a flood of wild demand. Him, inside her.

  Now.

  He tugged her arms back, slid a hand behind her back and lowered her to the bed, springs squeaking faintly underneath him as he shifted over her.

  “Grab the headboard,” he commanded.

  Parker’s hands stilled, half outstretched. “But I—”

  He twisted her nipple, hard enough to draw the breath from her lungs. Just this side of pain, so delicious that her shoulders flattened, back arching. “The headboard, Parker.”

  Shaking with need, she raised her arms above her head, fingers interlacing around a metal rung of the sturdy headboard. It left her exposed, open to his study.

  “If you move your hands,” he warned, stretching out beside her like some kind of pagan god at a feast, “there will be trouble. Am I clear?”

  The man stole her breath. Her logic, her rational thought. With his jeans riding low on his hips and his chest bare to her hungry gaze, he looked every bit as decadent, as sinful, as everything the Church warned against.

  She could have gone her whole life without feeling this. Him. His hands on her, his rough aggression surrounding her.

  She nodded. “Clear.”

  “Good.” Simon bent, very slowly, and drew her right nipple into his mouth. Parker groaned with the pull of it, with the exquisite torture of his damp, hot mouth encircling her breast. Tongue flicking across the tight bud, he bit down gently. Just enough.

  Her groan shuddered to a gasp for air.

  Was this the right thing to do?

  God help her, it didn’t matter now.

  His fingers found the clasp of her jeans, and with the same easy effort, Simon unsnapped the front. The zipper hissed.

  He drew back, teeth tight at her nipple, pulling it. Sending streaks of lightning from breast to belly and lower. She could feel the hot, sticky fluid between her legs, wetter than she’d ever been for any man. She wasn’t a stranger to sex, but whatever Simon was doing to her transcended just sex.

  He played her. Played her body like a well-oiled instrument. As he shifted his mouth to her other breast, Parker gritted her teeth, fingers clamped on the metal rung until she was sure the edges would score permanent lines into her skin.

  But as his teeth closed on her skin, his fingers slid beneath her jeans. Found her warm and swollen, slick with need. The sound he made only pushed Parker higher, stripped her of inhibition and fear as her legs fell open.


  “God, you’re wet,” he breathed against her skin, damp from his mouth. “Is this for me, sweetheart?” His fingers brushed against her, slipped between the folds of overly sensitized flesh until she was all but writhing against him. Desperate to be free of her jeans, to feel him fully inside her. When he stroked against her clit, Parker jerked, sobbing out a word that she’d meant to be encouragement but didn’t make it past a raw sound of need.

  Simon’s laugh, his breath, ghosted across her breast.

  His fingers eased out of her jeans. He pulled away, leaving her keenly aware of the loss of his body heat, but only groaned, “Oh, God, yes,” as he peeled the material from her hips. Slid them down her legs.

  Parker clung to the headboard, her eyes squeezed shut. She could only imagine what she looked like. Her hair tangled around her shoulder, her pale skin pink with exertion and embarrassment and arousal.

  “Don’t move your hands,” Simon warned. The denim cleared her feet, rustled as her jeans hit the floor. “No matter what.”

  “Got it,” she whispered.

  The bed dipped, squeaked as his weight settled on the mattress. Parker didn’t dare open her eyes.

  “You’re unbelievable.” She jerked as his lips brushed the sensitive skin just above her knee. “Sexy.” They moved over her thigh, tracing a line higher and higher. “Strangely obedient,” he added in lazy amusement.

  She shook her head.

  Bracing both of his hands beside her hips caused her weight to shift. Parker opened her eyes, frowning in concentration.

  Only to gasp as he met her gaze. Like a god, she’d thought before. Indolent and confident and carved from perfection. His swarthy skin gleamed in the lamplight, muscles in his shoulders and arms bunching as he slowly lowered himself to her.

  He didn’t look away.

  “Trust me,” he said. Ordered. Another demand.

  She trembled, fingers aching around the headboard. “Why?”

  As his elbows locked around her thighs, one hand flattening over her belly, Simon smiled. “Because you need someone to trust, Parker Adams.”

  She shook her head, her hair sliding over her cheek as she swallowed hard.

  “And you need someone to take care of you.”

  “I can’t—”

  “At least for as long as I’m here.” He blew against her flesh; a tease. “And you need to hold on tight,” he added, just before he buried his mouth into the soft flesh between her legs.

  “Oh, God,” she managed. It was all she knew to say as his tongue dragged over her clitoris, stroked around the tiny nub of tangled nerves. His lips pulled at it, tugged, left her gasping and twisting as he pulled away to slide his tongue deeper. Only a taunt, a torment compared to what he could fill her with.

  But it was enough to raise her hips from the bed. To force him to push against her stomach, hold her still as he feasted at her wet flesh. He licked her so thoroughly, so deeply that her breath came in pants, gasps, pleading.

  Simon shifted, and as Parker writhed beneath his mouth, he eased two fingers into her body.

  “There’s no shame in wanting to be taken care of,” Simon said, his voice rougher than it’d been moments before.

  Parker shook her head, over and over, but she couldn’t look away. Not from his eyes, smoldering. Not from his mouth, damp from her own body’s arousal.

  He’d tasted her. He approved of her.

  Her hips jerked, bucking even without her order as his fingers stroked through the ring of nerves already pushed to breaking from his tongue. They dragged over a particular spot, curved into her inner flesh.

  “You’re a strong woman, Parker.” His mouth curved up. “You’re strong enough to fight even when you don’t have a chance in hell of winning. Giving up control doesn’t make you less.” In and out. His fingers played her as skillfully as his tongue had, twisted inside her. “Give me everything you have, sweetheart. I want it. Every last secret.” He lowered his lips once more to the tight bud of her clit.

  Her mind shattered an instant before her body followed.

  Parker’s denial never made it through her scream.

  Un-fucking-believable.

  She humbled him. Rocked him down to his shredded soul. The caliber of her response, the sweet way she gave in to his demands and let herself go stripped Simon of any words he might have said to reaffirm distance between them.

  She was everything he’d fantasized. More.

  As her body clenched around his fingers, twitched in aftershocks of her orgasm, Parker panted for air. Her eyes squeezed shut, a trick he was learning she employed to keep from engaging him.

  It was cute.

  The lovely bloom flushing her chest and cheeks fascinated him. She climaxed unapologetically, as completely as he could have hoped.

  But it wasn’t the way her muscles remained clamped on his fingers that knocked any last good intentions he had out of the running.

  Her hands remained wrapped around the metal rungs, tight on the headboard. Exactly as he’d commanded.

  Slipping his fingers out of her sent her body into a shuddering gasp.

  “Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he said huskily. He couldn’t help it. Parker Adams knew how to dress herself for maximum impact, but naked, makeup worn away, stripped of every piece of armor she carefully cultivated, her beauty outshined anything else he’d seen in his life.

  Her hair spread out around her, vivid against the dark burgundy comforter. He liked redheads as a rule, but she was something else entirely.

  Something he didn’t dare explore.

  You’re mine.

  What the fuck had possessed him to demand that?

  Parker’s feet flexed, toes pointing in a stretch he watched shape every soft line of her body. His blood hammered, erection pulsing painfully behind his restraining zipper.

  “Simon?”

  “I’m here,” he said. Although God knew why. She was dangerous.

  This was dangerous.

  Her mouth curved as her red-tipped lashes lifted. Her eyes, still hazy, met his. Challenge. “You are missing a minor yet crucial step,” she pointed out, her voice smoky. And so similar to his own taunting drawl that he couldn’t help his grin.

  “Minor, huh?”

  “I did add crucial,” she replied serenely. One foot slid over her other shin, an absent caress that shouldn’t have been as sexy as it was. But she didn’t let go of the headboard.

  And that was enough.

  She might not realize what it was about him that elicited her gasps and moans and panting for more, but he knew.

  For now, he could pretend it was enough.

  “Are you ordering me to fuck you, Parker?” His crudeness widened her eyes, but not in shock. She’d spent too much time around missionaries to worry about language.

  Instead, embarrassment filled her features. She glanced away. Then back. “Is it an order if I say please?”

  “Begging has its charms.” Simon unsnapped his jeans, his gut twisting with it as he watched her gaze fall to his hands. To the vee of skin he exposed as he pulled his zipper down. He didn’t deal with boxers or briefs; his cock sprung free of the confining denim, thick and so sensitive that he gritted his teeth.

  The unadulterated wanting in her face, in the way she licked at her lips as if he were a five-star meal, thrilled him.

  “Just keep looking at me that way,” he said roughly. He shed his jeans. “Like you’re going to eat me alive.”

  “Any chance I get,” she whispered. Her legs opened, one knee upraised. It bared her to him, let him admire the tuft of reddish-brown hair between her legs. The slick pink flesh beneath.

  His blood pounded through his dick.

  That was his. She was his.

  At least for tonight.

  “Please,” she repeated breathlessly. “Simon—”

  “Easy, sweetheart.” He climbed over her, his erection heavy between his legs. His need elevated into desperation. Her legs opened on either side of his, her hi
ps tilting up in obvious demand.

  “No,” she said, her lips curving into a smile miles beyond wicked. Her elbows bent, but she didn’t let go. “Not easy. Anything but easy.”

  As his cock nudged her soft flesh, Simon’s breath caught on something between a groan and a chuckle. “Insatiable.”

  “Not done screaming,” she managed, her hips lifting, arching, doing everything in her limited power to force him inside her body. As she coated him in her own body’s juices, Simon felt the last, lingering confines of restraint slip away.

  He didn’t have a condom. He didn’t need one. He wasn’t so much of a slut that he didn’t take care, and he knew without having to ask that she did the same. Pregnancy wasn’t an option; all the normal missionaries were given birth control shots at every physical. He didn’t have the same physicals, but she did.

  Grasping her hips in both hands, Simon stilled her body. Met her gaze, held it. “Look at me,” he commanded harshly.

  She bit her lip. A whimper escaped as his fingers tightened.

  But she didn’t look away.

  And as he slid into her wet, welcoming flesh, as she took him in, inch by gleaming inch, Simon lost himself. In her body, so fucking tight and wet and welcoming. In her eyes, deeply blue, wicked and fogged by desire. In her hitched breath, her broken pants as he slid out of her, and back in. Slowly. Forcefully. Nothing easy about it.

  She cried out, body twisting.

  Simon caught her leg as it curled over his hip, heel digging into his back. He stroked inside her, every push, every thrust ratcheting his climax higher, faster, harder.

  She moaned, timed with every pump of his hips. So beautiful. Color swept her face, her body clenched around him, massaged his cock and shoved every last thought from his head.

  There was just her. Just him, inside her. Her voice surrounding him, her body, her cries of ecstasy drawing him in. Erotic as hell.

  “More,” she sobbed. Her back arched, and Simon let go of her hips to brace his hands on either side of her shoulders. “Simon, there, oh, God—”

  His name and God’s in one breath. He chuckled, the sound hoarse as he buried his lips against her shoulder. Her skin tasted faintly salty, smooth as silk under his mouth as he licked a trail along her collarbone. As his hips pumped against hers, as she raised her own to grind with every thrust, his teeth sank into the muscle between her shoulder and neck.