by Terra Little
Any paper trail that Brandy Cannon might’ve left behind had dried up shortly after her disappearance and so had any viable leads. Three years later, tips into her disappearance were so few and far between that getting laid should’ve been the last thing on Broderick’s mind now that a new one had finally popped up. He had busted up human sex-trafficking cells all over the globe and brought countless women and girls home to families who feared they were lost forever. Smuggled hostages out of hostile foreign territories and strolled onto hundreds of playgrounds, two steps behind absentee parents who had stolen their children and relocated halfway across the world with them. But none of his specialized training or years of field experience was doing a damn thing to help him find the only family he had left.
The last time they had seen each other was at the reception right after his parents’ funeral, where, rather than mingle with the other grieving attendees, they’d spent most of the time holed up in the kitchen of their parents’ house, arguing about the man Brandy intended to marry. Broderick had taken one look at Dennis Dortch and pegged him for the oily businessman that he was, but she was completely under the man’s spell. Possibly he’d said some things to her that he shouldn’t have and wished he could take back, and possibly she had, too. But they hadn’t sworn each other off completely.
Kicking off from the wall again, Broderick reminded himself once again that it was just a matter of time before he found Brandy. There wasn’t a rock that she could hide under that he couldn’t find and overturn. He just hadn’t yet stumbled upon the right rock. Yet.
Which was why he needed to be focused on finding the rock, not toting one around in his boxers. He got to his feet in the shallow end, swiping water out of his eyes and willing the rock that was currently trapped inside his shorts to cease and desist.
“You know the pool’s closed, right?” Elise’s voice broke the silence abruptly, forcing him to quickly shift mental gears. Just like that, he was off course again and careening toward a conscious wet dream.
“If that’s true, then you aren’t supposed to be here, either. So why are you, Miss Carrington?” He turned his head slowly to the left and found Elise standing at the edge of the pool in her bare feet. She’d showered earlier and changed into black, knee-length leggings and a blue T-shirt before lying across one of the beds for a power nap. Now she looked rumpled and well rested, ready for round two. “Are you here to pick up where we left off fighting earlier or to start a new fight altogether?”
She surprised him by dropping into a seat at the edge of the pool and lowering her calves into the water. “Neither. This time, I come in peace. The water looked tempting, so I thought I’d join you, that’s all.” Her feet drew circles below the surface.
Broderick could think of a few things that looked even more tempting to him, but he kept his mouth closed. Thoughts of Elise had followed him into the shower, turning him into that guy—one who stood underneath the spray for a ridiculously long time, stroking his straining erection like a horny teenager and fantasizing about her. He had cum twice before running out of hot water and finally getting out, and his cock was still dangling between his thighs in the chilly water like a lead weight. So, yeah, keeping his opinions to himself was definitely his best bet.
“In a few hours, it’ll be dawn,” he said. “You should still be asleep.”
She slipped into the water with him like an eel. “I just woke up and I’m wide-awake now.” He watched her swim a circle around him and then pop up out of the water less than a foot away from him, swiping water out of her face. He took one look at her dripping hair, at the droplets of water clinging to her eyelashes, at her see-through T-shirt, which was now molded to her unencumbered breasts, and his throat went dry. Her nipples jutted from her full breasts boldly, topping the jiggly globes like ripe blackberries. His mouth watered.
They were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.
“Elise...” Chuckling incredulously, he massaged a wrinkle out of his forehead with tense fingers and prayed for patience. Was she trying to kill him? “If this is your idea of revenge for offending you earlier, it isn’t very nice.” She reached up and swept her hair back from her face. The action caused her breasts to sway from side to side hypnotically.
His nostrils flared.
“Revenge would’ve been walking in, in the middle of your ‘shower,’” she said, putting up air quotes and cocking a brow suggestively. Broderick howled with laughter. Blushing to the roots of her hair, she looked down at the water and cracked a smile, then back up at him for the briefest of seconds before her gaze skated away and her face burst into flames. “Believe me, this isn’t that,” she said quietly.
Broderick tipped his head to one side and searched her eyes. “What is it, then?”
Her cheeks burned, but she didn’t look away from his penetrating stare. She wanted him to see what she was thinking, to see all of the things that she couldn’t bring herself to say aloud. To put them both out of their misery and seduce her. Wondering if she was aware that she’d been seducing him ever since he’d first laid eyes on her, he reached out and slowly filled his hands with her butt cheeks. Her eyes widened when he began drawing her closer to him and she gasped when he snatched her up out of the water. Face-to-face and chest-to-chest, she wound her arms around his neck and pressed a whisper-soft kiss to his lips. That was his first clue into what was going on in that mysterious mind of hers. His second was the soft glide of her tongue across the seam of his lips and the throaty moan that tumbled out of her mouth when he ground his cock into the V of her thighs.
She quivered from head to toe when he pushed his hands inside the back of her pants and gripped bare skin. Silent complicity. But he still needed to hear her say the words. “Cat got your tongue?”
“I don’t know what this is.” He swallowed her gasp. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t figure it out. We’re at each other’s throats most of the time. We can barely stand each other, so...”
“Why do we want to screw each other’s brains out?” he finished, dipping his tongue into her mouth and toying with hers lazily.
“Exactly. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“Does it have to?”
“Shouldn’t it?”
“Not necessarily.” He held her eyes as his fingers wandered into the secret valley between her thighs from behind and underneath. Her eyes slid closed, and she bucked against him. He parked his lips next to her ear. “Chances are that, after this case is closed, we’ll never see each other again. It’ll be like we never met.”
“Like time that never happened,” Elise agreed breathlessly. “Untime. Except that we’ll both know—”
“That it did. Imagine how many times I could make you cum between now and then. In untime.”
“I have been imagining it.” He rewarded her tortured-sounding honesty with a soft kiss on the lips. “I can’t stop imagining it. That’s why I came out here—” She sucked in a sharp breath. His fingers were on the move. “T-to extend an olive b-branch.”
“You came out here to call a truce?”
“It’s the professional thing to do, don’t you think?” The pads of his fingers glanced across her clit and she started violently. “Oh, God, this is s-so unprofessional,” she panted next to his ear. “But it feels so...g-good.”
Licking his way past Elise’s parted lips, Broderick buried his tongue so deeply in her mouth that it was a wonder she didn’t choke. His tongue lapped against hers in perfect sync with his adventurous fingers, skillfully manipulating her flesh until an orgasm was humming in her throat and her slack mouth could no longer participate in the kiss. She wilted against him, resting the tip of her nose onto the bridge of his and staring at him through a cross-eyed haze of lust. Seeing but not really seeing. He was close to cumming himself, just watching her.
“This is untime, remember?” His lips
found the shell of her ear and the tip of his tongue flickered against it suggestively. “A time that really isn’t time, when both nothing and everything is exactly as it seems, and there’s no such thing as rules...or professionalism. In untime we make love, not war.”
“I s-suppose we could always go back to f-fighting...later.”
“We could...later. Any suggestions for what we might do in the meantime?”
She dipped her head and tongued his neck softly, almost shyly. Tasting him as if she was satisfying a long-held curiosity. Licking him like his flavor was her favorite thing in the entire world. He drew in a shaky breath and released it a moment later, buried in a throaty, helpless moan. The clock was ticking on what little restraint he had left. “Elise...”
Her moist lips were suddenly at his ear. “I thought maybe that we could start counting...in untime.”
“I see.” Without warning, Broderick hiked Elise up in his arms, banded an arm around her waist and cupped her sex with his free hand. “Why didn’t you just say so?” The pads of his fingers swam around in her juices, finding her clit and working it frantically as her startled cries grew louder and louder, and she rode the friction like a jockey. “One,” he growled into the valley between her bouncing breasts as he sank one long finger into the midst of her pulsing walls and triggered an explosion.
* * *
Elise didn’t recognize herself or the sounds coming out of her mouth. She didn’t know how to process the hot licks of pleasure heating every inch of her skin from the inside out. In some distant corner of her mind, she heard the crudely uttered gasps, high-pitched shrieks and breathless pants lighting the air nonstop, and saw herself spread out on the bed underneath Broderick’s powerful body, bucking and writhing uncontrollably, and cringed at the helpless picture she made.
She wanted to run her fingers along the hard muscles in Broderick’s arms, fill her hands with the smooth, brown skin on his broad chest and touch her fingertips to the deep ridges in his chiseled abdomen. She wanted to be wide-eyed and alert for the moment that he finally peeled off his swim trunks and she saw him completely naked for the first time. But every muscle in her body was suspended in anticipation, waiting with bated breath to see where his hands and mouth would land next, what they would do when they got there and how delicious it would feel. Weightless with arousal, she grabbed a handful of the bedsheet on either side of her and watched him through slitted eyes.
Done feasting on her mouth and neck for the moment, his head descended and his long pink tongue darted out from between his lips to lap at one puckered nipple. As if it were dripping honey, he sucked at it delicately, hungrily, drawing it deeply into his mouth to dance with his tongue, and then biting at it lightly with his teeth. Every nip, flicker and tug from his masterful mouth set off a corresponding pull in her groin that nearly brought tears of delight to her eyes.
Her hips bucked off the mattress and then began rocking in time with his lapping tongue. “Oooh, that feels so good.” Her mouth fell open and her eyes slid shut.
“You like that?” he murmured between licks.
“Oh, God, yeeees.”
“So do I,” he said, as he turned his head to pay equal homage to the other nipple.
Elise had never seen anything like the mesmerized look in his eyes when he tossed her on the bed and stripped off her leggings and then whipped her dripping T-shirt over her head and sent it flying. She’d never before witnessed the rapturous look on his face as he stretched her mouth wide for his tongue and kissed the breath out of her. She felt sexy and alive. Powerful.
Broderick wanted her; she’d always known that. He hadn’t exactly made a secret of it. But why had no one ever told her what it felt like to want just as badly as you were wanted?
His fingers combed through the small patch of heart-shaped hair at the apex of her thighs and she trembled. Instantly craving more, Elise welcomed his mouth when it sought hers again and opened her legs even wider for his searching fingers. “Look how wet you are,” he growled against her lips, his fingers gliding into the slick folds down below and swimming around leisurely in her warm honey. Her breath caught in her throat and she writhed on the mattress. A frustrated cry shot out of her mouth when his fingers just barely missed colliding with her pulsing clitoris once again.
“Please,” Elise begged when the pressure between her thighs had built to a feverish level.
“Please, what, Elise?” he murmured soothingly against her neck. “This?” he asked, slowly sinking one long finger into her tight heat and stroking her rhythmically. She shrieked and he chuckled wickedly. “Or this?” He wanted to know, as he trapped her pulsing clitoris beneath the pad of his thumb and worked it slowly, deliciously, until she wilted into the mattress and orgasmed so hard that she blacked out. “Aww,” he crooned as he slanted his mouth over hers. “That’s a good girl. That’s right, cum for me, baby.”
That was the last thing Elise heard before his tongue invaded her mouth and sucked her up into another dizzying kiss.
“Open your eyes, Sleeping Beauty.”
She did, slowly and languidly, feeling as if she was waking from a deep and satisfying sleep. Finding Broderick hovering over her, she reached out and touched him for the first time since leaving the pool, and hummed with satisfaction. His skin felt like velvet-covered steel underneath her roaming hands. She skimmed her fingertips along the length of his torso and giggled like a femme fatale when he shuddered violently, traced the elaborate SEAL Trident tattoo on his right forearm with the tips of her fingers and felt the sheer power of him vibrating underneath his warm skin. “Feels like someone could use a cold shower,” she teased, staring up at him through the mess of her lashes.
“Not quite,” he drawled before protecting himself then coming fully on top of her and bracing himself on his elbows on either side of her head. “But let me show you what I do need,” he said as his hips surged forward and stretched the entrance to her throbbing canal in a shocking instant that popped her eyes and snatched her breath.
Faces less than an inch apart, they stared at each other.
“Am I hurting you?”
“N-no.” The breath Elise had been holding trickled out of her mouth in short, choppy huffs as she shook her head. Hurting her? My God, the man was huge, stretching her wider than she’d dreamed possible. It was all she could do not to let her eyes roll to the back of her head in sheer bliss. “Y-you feel s-so good.” He sank a little more deeply inside her and gritted his teeth, trembling with the effort to restrain himself. “So...oh, God...so g-good.”
Just when she thought that she’d taken as much of him as she could, he slid his large hands underneath her and palmed her butt cheeks, tilting her hips upward and surprising her with one last, mind-numbing thrust. Elise swore she could feel him in her belly.
* * *
Broderick’s self-control was slipping away by degrees, replaced by the overpowering need to plunder and possess. A sigh that was part defeat and part surrender whistled out of his mouth when Elise’s walls collapsed around him from tip to base, and then his eyes crossed in his head. He was seeing two of her when he caught her hands in his, took them up and over her head and anchored them to the mattress.
“You’re so tight,” he hissed in her ear. “Like a virgin,” he confessed as his hips began to move and she began to sing off-key to the rhythm they set.
Before long, his hips were dancing against Elise’s erratically, wildly, with a mind of their own, seeking access to her silky heat from any and every angle possible. It seemed as if he couldn’t stroke her deeply enough or quickly enough to satisfy the insatiable hunger building inside him. When the headboard started tapping against the wall behind it and her cries grew alarmingly loud, he told himself to pull back and pace himself. But the deeper he plunged, the more her walls quickened and pulsed around him, the tighter she closed around him like a slipp
ery velvet fist, milking him mercilessly.
He wanted to prolong the experience, to make her cum a fourth and fifth time before finally seeking his own release, but she was electric beneath him. Her heels dug into the small of his back, spurring on his strokes, and, after he freed her hands, her nails dug into his shoulder blades hard enough to make him grit his teeth. He found her G-spot and stroked it again and again and again, and she began chanting, “Yes...yes...yes...” breathlessly in his ear. She greedily tongued his neck and shoulders until he could no longer fight himself. Defeated, he reared back, pressed his contorted face into her pillowy breasts and roared like a fallen Viking warrior.
Chapter 8
His cell phone was vibrating. Or maybe he was. Still.
Every muscle in his body groaned in protest as he slowly lifted his head from Elise’s chest and searched what he could see of the rumpled bed around them, looking for his phone. Making love with Elise had completely drained him, putting him right back at square one—in a state of sheer exhaustion. He had cum so hard that the muscles in his arms had damn near liquified and his heart was still racing. And now his cell was ringing and he had to move in order to answer it. Shit. If it hadn’t been for the fact that they were supposed to be working, he would’ve let the damn thing wear itself out.
Half-asleep, Elise started when his weight shifted on top of her, but she didn’t open her eyes. Purring like a kitten, she rolled onto her side and blindly reached for a pillow. Taking pity on her, he handed her one as he unfolded himself into a sitting position on the far side of the bed and put his cell to his ear. “Cannon,” he said, trying his damnedest to focus on the voice buzzing in his ear, instead of the bobbing of his cock. Turning his back to the enticing scene on the bed, he scrubbed a hand over his face and forced himself to tune in. “Where?” he asked, silently bidding farewell to the idea of crawling back into bed with Elise and waking her up with his tongue in her mouth and his fingers between her thighs. Tamping down his irritation, he listened for several more seconds before walking over to the desk and hitting a button on the laptop’s keyboard. The screen lit up, displaying a real-time map. “There’s a commercial landing strip about a half-hour’s drive north of here,” he said into the phone. “Looks like it’s part of an old dairy farm outside Columbia. Lock in my location and find it based on that, and then get landing clearance.”
