by Angel Payne
“You’re going to be okay.” That, along with the doting strokes he keeps running along my forehead, will land the guy a walk-on nurse gig in some soap opera but doesn’t answer my question at all. He lowers me to the cliff wedge between the dam and the spillway before finding a crag to lean my head and torso against. While the view is better—I’m able to watch as he efficiently removes my boots and sends me reassuring smiles—it in no way relieves the alternating waves of hellfire and ice torture continuing to play chicken with my blood.
“St-Still doesn’t f-f-feel all right,” I spew back.
“I know.” And in all the lower registers of his voice, I hear that he really does.
“C-C-Crap,” I manage to get out. “Is…is this what you go through all the time? Every time you p-p-put down assholes, this is how karma pays you b-b-back?”
He ticks up a lopsided smile. “It gets easier. I promise.” And then adds to his irresistible spell by rubbing the balls of my big toes, nearly making my eyes roll back in my head from bliss. I’m so fast and far-gone to the bliss, I nearly don’t hear him adding in a quiet growl, “Just not the first time.”
I nearly don’t hear.
Thank God enough of my psyche does that I jerk my head back up, spearing him with a glare and then charging, “And what does that—” But I’m slamming my skull back against the rock just as fast, as I comprehend everything he’s been trying to prep me for.
Everything.
The war of my mind and logic, needing some semblance of normalcy again, battling the violent protest of my blood and instincts for exactly the opposite. Somewhere in the middle, my body tries to make them all talk nice to each other but pays the price with another blast of painful heat. A raging, blistering need that refuses to go away, incinerating my system in a frantic search for something—someone—to decimate without destroying. To conquer without killing. To take over without taking out.
And for the first time, I really understand why Reece did it all in the first place. Why Bolt had to happen. Why he looked the way he did on the night we first met, giving off the energy of an animal barely tethered…of lightning hardly harnessed.
“Oh, my God.”
I turn my head. Reach out toward the beautiful face somewhere above mine. I need to tell him all of this—right now. I need to tell him how I finally understand and finally know…
But words aren’t happening. Only the heat is. More and more of the insane, infuriating heat, like a parasite on fire inside me. Only Reece makes the ordeal a little more bearable. Thank God for him. He’s my sanity, my guide, my partner. And yes, he’s the superhero who kneels over me, serving me, still pressing his magical thumbs into the balls of my toes. He’s also the man who gazes back at me with those all-knowing, all-seeing silver eyes. He comprehends so much…and because of that, offers me everything he is without fear.
I love him so damn much…
“You’re going to be okay.”
Now he’s the leader who tells me that again and again and again, as sure as assuring me the sky is blue, even as the netting between my fingers sets the air aflame. Even as that fiery energy keeps hissing and snapping at the air like a wicked, starving beast. Even knowing that if I touch him with my hands in this condition, I could burn him…permanently mark him. He tells me that, knowing that if he doesn’t, I might go insane from the conflict in my blood—
And the need inside my body.
He tells me that, knowing how deeply and fiercely I need him.
In so many damn ways…
Chapter Two
Reece
I’m not afraid.
Fuck. I should be. Her solar-strength finger nets, likely manifested by her adrenaline surge from the obstacle course, are an astonishing new development. Clearly as much for her as for me. I knew it from the second she made the cutout disappear. Witnessing the shock on every inch of her face through that newly transparent space was nothing short of a revelation for my heart and triumph for my spirit.
And regrettably, a shock I could only indulge for all of two seconds. After that, every thought and instinct retrained on her. Only her. It had to be that way because I recognized all the signs of the power surge in her—the dilation in her eyes, the drop of her jaw, the sheen across her skin—and knew what was coming.
Knew it because I’ve been there before.
The first trip to hell.
The trip I’d desperately prayed she would be spared.
Even as the days after her transformation turned into weeks and then a month. And then two.
Throughout it all, I’ve pushed her harder in the training sessions, confident that I could. Knowing that I need to. Knowing she needs me to. Witnessing the growing regret in her eyes with every replay she runs of her confrontation with Faline and kicks herself for letting the witch get away. Flogs herself for not delivering a larger blow to the Consortium when she had their key leader in her grip, despite the fact that it was her first time ever with another person’s life in her hands.
Despite the fact that everything she did that day had saved my existence.
Despite the fact that in doing so, she’d permanently changed her own.
So yeah, I’m going to fucking be here for her, no matter what direction the fallout takes. Though if the surge hits her as it did me—and that’s a big if when messing with a person’s bloodstream—then this “sacrifice” won’t be a horrific one.
But Emma still doesn’t believe that. Her eyes are wide and crystalline with dread. She battles to fold her fingers and shocks herself with her own searing currents. Plus and a minus for me there, since I know how much pain she’s deliberately delivering to her system—though at the same time making her body writhe against the cliff’s edge in gorgeous, flawless ways.
“It—it won’t shut off,” she cries. “D-D-Don’t come near me, Reece. I—I can’t—”
“Ssshhh.” Okay, so I sound ridiculous, but aside from outright ordering her to calm down—an impossibility, if her power is backing up and building up as I think it is—it’s the closest pacifier I can think of. The nearest thing to a timeout I can secure, for the few seconds I’m going to need to verbally walk her through this process. At least as much as I can while we’re perched on a hundred-foot-high wedge of rock in the middle of Malibu Canyon. “Don’t talk, Bunny. You need to just listen to me, and we’ll get you through this, okay?”
“No!” she spits at once. “Not okay, damn it!” She bucks her hips. Coils and uncoils her fingers. Even tries blowing on them, though her desperate air just fans their heat like a forest gust on campfire embers. “It—it burns. It hurts. It—God, it—”
“Aches?” I supply it only because I need her to focus on my voice instead of hers—on a force other than the one attempting to rip her apart from the inside out. But I also say it because I need to watch her reaction. To gauge the intensity of her fire.
“Yes. Yes. Aches!”
And as soon as she punctuates it by flinging her back, exposing the taut and sweat-drenched V of her neck and cleavage, I have my answer.
She’s past fire.
And right on to lust.
No. She’s bypassed that too.
The woman is thoroughly entrenched in need.
Well, shit.
I go ahead and mutter it aloud, though it’s hardly the timeout I was hoping to grab this go-round. The truth is, there’s no more time here. Certainly not enough for thinking, assessing, and mapping out a worthy action plan. My incredible woman clarifies that point with astounding efficiency—in the form of a long, erotic moan that careens everywhere it can in my cock.
“Reece! Oh holy crap, I’m burning up!”
She undulates so passionately, I have to dig a hand into her waist to prevent her from sliding off the rock. “Emmalina. My brave Bunny.” The endearment doesn’t do a damn thing to calm her. “I know, sweetheart. I know it’s bad.”
But do I? I scour my memory for the first time this happened to me. It was after I’d li
fted a whole car with a steady pulse. It’d been around three a.m., off the Main Street Bridge in downtown. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, run off the road, and landed in the dry river bed. The sedan pinned a bunch of runaway teenagers camped there for the night. It’d been the first solid Bolt did for the world that made me feel great instead of grungy—until the backup surge hit. I felt like a dozen lightning bolts lap danced for me at once. If they’d been tangible, I probably would’ve screwed all of them too. Ruthlessly. Consecutively.
“You don’t know.” Emma’s scream banishes even the wind from our clifftop. “If you knew, you’d—” She slides her hands, still sizzling, down to the space between her legs. She spreads them wide before stroking herself, burning away the leather, nearly turning her training leathers into a pair of chaps. Except that underneath, she’s not wearing jeans. She’s not wearing anything.
“Jesus,” I croak, partly from bewilderment but mostly from raw arousal. At once, I collect my composure enough to grab her wrists, preventing the woman from burning herself down there with a second grab, though I’ll be damned if I can look away. Her pussy has never looked so succulent, swollen, and sweet. It’s never smelled so lush, fruity, and delicious.
“Don’t need him. Only you. Please, Reece…”
Her husky entreaty exacerbates the pounding pressure between my thighs.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Oh, holy fuck.”
The woman of my dreams is spread, bared, and begging for me to plunge inside her…
Atop a hundred-foot crag.
In the middle of Malibu Canyon.
In the middle of the afternoon.
But as I’ve so clearly reminded myself, I can hoist at least a couple of tons with my hands alone. And if I shift Emma just to the left, so just her torso hangs over the side of the rock, I can anchor my knees into the natural indents here…and here…
“Holy. Christ.” My snarl erupts from my nose as much as my lips, watching as the center of her body is angled up courtesy of the rocks on the crag. As she moans in obvious pleasure and opens her legs even wider, her sex is turned into an offering fit for a king: a red, delectable fruit with the richest, rarest pulp on the planet.
“Already told you. Tell him to clock the hell out.” Emma issues it with a sultry expression, come-hithering me through the thick fan of her lashes while using her incredible obliques to keep her upper body raised in midair. My Wonder Woman. She isn’t one speck afraid of the fact that she’s dangling a hundred feet up in the air, her gaze glimmering as bright as the sun rays on the reservoir waters as she reaches to melt away the top button and zipper of my crotch. “Just you, my beautiful Zeus.”
“Unnnhhh.” Yeah, it’s exactly how I answer her. Yeah, because right now, it’s all I can manage. Because all I can comprehend or care about is how goddamned good it feels when my erection springs free from its leather confines, growing and hardening as it stretches for the treasure for which it was supremely created.
The moment Emma lands her gaze on my flesh, the brilliant threads between her fingers are joined by the bold glow beneath her skin. Even the strands of her hair turn lighter, flowing on the wind like blazing white feathers as every exposed pore of her skin becomes a blazing phoenix in its own right. She lights up even brighter as I settle between her legs, jostling the glowing drop at the tip of my sex into the pulsing folds of hers.
“Oh, holy ssshhh…” And she’s lost to a high, delirious scream as the electricity in my juice seeks out all the receptors in hers, giving her a front-of-the-line pass for the climax coaster. It’s only the first of many I plan on giving to her breathtaking body, her magnificent mind, her cosmically perfect spirit. Now more than ever, her pleasure is my everything…her ultimate desire my destiny.
“That’s it, baby,” I coax. “Ride it out. Soak all of the pleasure in. Everything I have for you. Everything I am for you.”
Emma shudders, finally relaxing her abdominals and letting her head and shoulders fall backward over the crag’s edge. “And everything I am…for you.” Her sigh matches the limp abandon of her body, though I’m positive the little minx knows exactly what she’s doing. Precisely how her new position raises her most tender parts even more. How thoroughly I can see every dazzling trickle on every layer of her spread blossom, surrounding the plum-colored depths at her slickest, tightest core.
“Soon, Little Velvet.” How I summon the composure for the murmur might remain a mystery until the day I fucking die. “Soon. I promise.”
She erupts into an impatient snarl, helping and hurting her cause at the same time. If the matter was up to my eyes and imagination, I could crouch here and savor the sight of her wet, quivering pussy for at least another hour. On the other hand, my cock has all but disowned me out of pure frustration. Emma is ready to fully side with the bastard, even after I stretch out my fingers and pulse the air beneath her, straightening out her body.
As she lifts her head, aligning our stares once again, she grits, “You’re a teasing son of a bitch, Reece Richards.”
I extend my other hand and pulse again, lifting her head and shoulders a little higher. I need to see more of her. More of her incredible breasts, still respectably covered by her leathers but straining their confines. Higher up, the cords in her neck glow like polished gold ropes, consumed by her aroused gulps. Even higher and best of all, her gaze is a pair of liquid flames, blue and gold intensity that captures and conquers me.
“And you’re my perfect little sun flare, Miss Crist.”
The flames in her eyes grow hotter. “Maybe I am.” She juts her jaw higher, defiant and radiant, while nudging the center of her body closer to the raging rod at the middle of mine. “But you know what they say about flying too close to the sun, don’t you?”
“I’ll take my chances.” It’s nothing but a grate on my lips—because she’s nothing but fire around my cockhead. Fuck, fuck. Just the outer edges of her intimate walls feel so good…
“Even if you might get burned alive?”
“Worth it.”
A tiny tremor overtakes her lush mouth. We’ve traded the expression back and forth since the beginning of our love story: two simple syllables that have grown to represent so many more. It’s our version of “shut the hell up,” “you’re not talking me out of this,” and “do you want Faline Garand taking me out instead?” all rolled into one. But there’s one expression it stands for more than all those others combined.
I love you more than my own life—and this is me proving it.
I’ve lost track of how many times she’s already demonstrated it to me the last fifteen months—not just in the obvious ways, like moving in with me and letting me beat up shitheads for her. There are the ways no one else has seen yet. The day she climbed into a shower stall with me despite how I’d turned the whole thing into a miniature electrical storm. The night she went to a Paris soiree with my family, not knowing if the whole party was a secret trap orchestrated by my father. And a night barely three months ago, when she followed me out to a canyon a lot like this and nearly died in the name of giving me pleasure to ease my pain.
Offering herself to me.
Giving herself to me.
Risking so much for the mutant she fell in love with…and continues to keep loving with so much of herself….
And yet now, asking if I’m afraid of catching on fire.
Doesn’t she know I’m already on fire? That I have been from the moment I first saw her?
Or maybe we’re past the words.
And it’s simply time for action.
“Reece!” The word erupts from her in a high, breathy sigh as I slide into her. The friction of our bodies creates a visible glow, even in the bright golden ribbons of late-afternoon light. My senses shine just as brightly, infused with the ecstasy of being part of her…one with her…set on fire by her. “Oh, God. Oh yes…”
“Damn.” I cut her off with the growl emerging from the depths of my gut as I roll my hips, ordering myself to dr
aw this heaven out a little longer. If we’ve learned any lesson together, it’s to venerate every moment we possibly can, and fuck, is this one worth venerating. I focus on everything about it—the wind in her long ponytail, the desire in her azure eyes, the way her torso flows along on the air, controlled by the nuances of my pulses—before husking, “You’re so beautiful. My fiery, fuckable angel…”
“Yours,” Emma cries out. “Yours, my perfect god.”
Every note of her voice is a new burst of flames through me—bubbling through my blood…fulminating through my mind…swelling in my cock. I’m a goddamned forest fire, and I’ve never loved the conflagration more. “Again,” I demand from tight lips, feeding myself into her a little deeper. “Say it again, baby.”
“Yours.” She knows what I need—and the desperate, throaty declaration I need it in. “Always, forever…yours.”
“Yes. Yesssss.” The ache in my thighs becomes the pressure in my buttocks and balls. I’ve tried so damn hard to draw this out, to give her a string of climaxes before blowing my wad, but she’s too goddamned delectable, riding the air above my energy as she rides every throbbing inch of my erection. It’s so good. It’s too good.
“Oh, Reece!” She flings her hands back as if punching them into pillows, only the cushions beneath her are stitched by electricity. My electricity. Because of that, something incredible happens every time her luminous knuckles land atop my pulsing bolsters.
The jolts zing straight to my blood.
Then my balls.
Then up my shaft.
“Holy Christ!”
Which has now, I swear to fuck, turned into a slave to the demand to mate with her. To fuse with her. To fill her and rut with her and worship her and fuck her. To take her as hard and as deeply as I can, helping my cause by hooking my energy around her shoulders and yanking her body back over mine in fast, brutal strokes. She throws her head farther back as I continue the rhythm, as old as the cosmos and as savage as the stars, panting and moaning in time to the flashes that erupt from our primal poundings.
