Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05]

by One for the Wicked

  Not her life at all.

  The small cylinder in her pocket pressed against her thigh.

  The door thudded as a weight pushed against it. Kayleigh’s head snapped up, comm falling from nerveless fingers as the door handle cranked and the panel slammed against the wall.

  Shawn filled the frame, his features worn and taut with a thousand different things—each as familiar to her as the faces of her own demons. Anger, frustration, exhaustion, accusation.

  “The Bishop is dead.”

  Kayleigh blinked, momentarily caught off guard. “What?”

  “Tell me you didn’t know,” he demanded hoarsely.

  She slid from the examination table as he strode inside, the door slamming shut behind him. Plaster rained down in a fine gray cloud. “What?” Sharper. Stunned.

  He didn’t stop, didn’t slow. His muscles rippled beneath his pale green shirt, stretched the fabric taut as he caught her upper arms in both hands, fingers tight in her flesh. “Tell me you didn’t know,” he repeated, gaze boring into hers.

  Her heart lodged in her throat as he lifted her to her toes, a casual display of such easy strength.

  She wanted that strength.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she whispered.

  His lips slanted into a hard line, gaze flicking to the ceiling for one brief second of reprieve. It didn’t last. “Good enough,” he said, and roughly pulled her against his chest. She staggered, braced herself against the broad wall of his chest, and electrical sparks shivered from fingertips all the way to the sudden pressure between her legs.

  She caught his shirt in both hands and didn’t stop there. Why should she?

  She dragged up the hem of that shirt, scraped her fingers across the hard contours of his abdomen, his chest. His nostrils flared as his head tipped back, an angry, rough sound caught in his throat.

  Stupid move? Maybe.

  Smart hadn’t gotten her anywhere. Logic hadn’t earned her any points.

  This time, this once, she was going to be deliberately stupid. While she could.

  He shrugged out of the shirt, let it fall to the floor, and reached for her again. This time, when his hands closed on her bare midriff, she didn’t gasp as he lifted her. Didn’t struggle when he placed her on the edge of the exam table and stepped between her legs.

  “What happened,” she panted as his palms splayed across her ribs, “to no unnecessary touching?”

  A smile, fierce as the rest of him, touched his mouth. “This is necessary.” Kayleigh arched as one rough hand palmed her breast over her lace bra. “So fucking necessary.”

  “Yes,” she groaned, senses shorting out until there was no clinic or tragedy or kidnapping. Until there was only him, only her, separated by a fine barrier of synth-leather and rapidly thinning oxygen.

  This is where she wanted to be. So similar to that exchange in her car—so different in every way.

  He hooked her tank top, tore it over her head with less finesse than urgency. It thrilled her to her toes. The desperate need on his face as he stared at her, as his gaze skimmed her mouth, her throat, the small shape of her breast beneath her bra, sent an answering flame to her belly. This time, it didn’t hurt.

  This time, she didn’t care that he was virtually a stranger. She knew what she needed to know. Expected nothing of him but what she demanded now.

  Shawn hooked the straps of her bra, pulled it down. The sound he made echoed an answering ache in her body, and she bent back, resting her hands behind her to thrust out her breasts for him to taste. To lick.

  He obeyed her wordless command. His tongue flicked one nipple, and she jolted. His lips closed over the hardened flesh and she bit back a wild sound.

  “No.” He seized her waist, jerked her to the edge of the table, fitted her so snugly against his erection that she couldn’t stop herself from crying out, head falling back. “I want to hear you. I want your voice.”

  Embarrassment filled her, heat climbed her cheeks, but he didn’t give her time to consider the demand. His mouth closed over one breast, nearly taking the whole of it into his mouth and suckling deeply. The sharp pressure, the pinpricks of near-pain, rocked her down to her soul, and she cried, “Oh, God!” as his teeth scraped over her flesh.

  He transferred to the other breast, licked and sucked even as he rocked hard between her legs.

  Sparks flew across her skin, across her vision.

  Her hips rolled and he gasped against her damp skin. “More.”

  With so much pleasure. Kayleigh locked her legs around his waist, caught the nape of his neck with one hand. The shape of his erection, thick and hard and perfect behind his zipper, only teased her. Tormented her.

  Tormented them both.

  “I want you inside me,” she whispered, pleading and demand and aching need all in one. She didn’t care if that husky sound came from her, didn’t care that the door was unlocked behind them. “Shawn, please, please don’t make me—”

  He kissed her. Finally, oh, God, finally, his mouth, damp from the attentions he’d laved on her, closed over hers. Took her lips in a kiss that demanded everything, held nothing back. Her lips opened for him, her eyes closed as his tongue swept into her mouth to give her only a portion of what she craved.

  His body in hers.

  His need fueling her own.

  Frustration warred with stark raving need; arousal turned her body into a liquid mass of nerve endings and wicked hunger. One hand speared into his hair, clenched hard as he drove his tongue between her lips, groaned deep in his chest as her tongue flicked out to meet his, slid against his own.

  His hands fumbled at her zipper. She almost laughed, but couldn’t tear her mouth away to do it.

  He wasn’t nearly so in control as he let on.

  The knowledge set off fireworks in her body. To think she drove him to this. Made his fingers shake as he tore open the button on her waistband and eased down the zipper. She wiggled when he pulled at the fake leather fabric, slid out of her flats with ease as he lifted his mouth away long enough to tear the pants off her legs. Her underwear went with, matching beige lace.

  He gave up when one foot cleared the fabric; Kayleigh didn’t care. Bared to his gaze, she stilled, sucking in a shaking breath.

  He stared at her like she was a treasure. Like she was some kind of fragile princess too delicate to touch. Too important to risk breaking.

  Kayleigh didn’t want that. Not from him.

  She spread her legs.

  His gaze locked on the blond patch of hair she revealed to him.

  “Touch,” she ordered huskily. “Touch everything.”

  He sank to his knees in front of the table, his features rapt. “Kissing first,” he whispered, his intent clear.

  Kayleigh fought the urge to snap her legs together as he braced both large hands at her inner thighs. This . . . this wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted hard and fast and unthinking. He’d already proven that he could make her come by herself; she wanted him.

  This was . . . “No,” she whispered, “I can’t. It’s too—” Her words ended on a shuddering cry as his tongue slid across her already-wet flesh. Her voice cracked, back arching, as his lips closed over the sensitive bead of her clit.

  Intimate. It was too damned intimate, and he didn’t care, dragging his tongue over her, plunging it inside, tasting her as thoroughly as if she were his favorite dessert. Over and over, he licked and sucked and bit so gently that her fingers clenched in his hair, urged him on until he bit harder and her orgasm spiraled sudden and turbulent. Her hips lifted off the table, her throat closed on a wild sound.

  He gave her no recovery time.

  A hiss of a zipper, the slick whisper of synth-leather rustled, and suddenly his erection nudged at her swollen, sensitized flesh. He bent over her, braced a hand beside her head.

  The other caught her chin, held her head when she would have looked away. “Kayleigh.”

  “Yes,” she gasped. She rolled her hips, shudd
ering as her flesh rubbed over his skin, tight and hot. So good. Her orgasm, eased on a teaser, coiled hungrily in her skin again. Eager. Ready.

  “Kayleigh,” he gasped again, cords in his throat standing out as his fingers tightened into a white-knuckled fist beside her. “Christ, tell me you’re safe.”

  Safe? Safe from— Oh. She nodded fast. “Every year.” Part of her health plan. It was good, sometimes, to work for a hospital. “Shawn. Now.”

  Her nails raked across his shoulders as she locked her ankles at the small of his back. His breath hissed out.

  His hips moved; the hard flesh nudging her own stroked across her clitoris. Kayleigh stopped thinking. Stopped breathing.

  The head of him pressed against her body. Slid in her wetness, teased so unbearably that she cursed; a harsh word that brought a surprised laugh from Shawn.

  A laugh that ended on his own repeated curse as she pushed herself up on her elbows, locked her lips around one flat nipple, and bit hard.

  He thrust inside her, a jerk of his body she didn’t think was entirely on purpose, but she didn’t care. He was inside her. Touching her in every way that mattered. He groaned long and loud, bent over her on the exam table, his elbows keeping his weight steady, and thrust again.

  Kayleigh lost her mind. She knew, somehow she knew it’d be good, but as he filled her, as he stroked inside her, sweat gathering on his skin, on hers, all she wanted was more.

  More him. More of his rough, whispered demands, more of the thick, full feeling inside her body as he slid inside her, over and over, slick flesh in flesh. The pressure inside her body built, so fast. Too fast. She wanted it to last, wanted to linger.

  Wanted to enjoy this precious, brief moment in time.

  Shawn shifted. His fingers dug into her hips, tilted her in a way that forced his erection to rub against the most sensitive spot inside her. Allowed his body to grind against her clitoris with every thrust. The cool fabric of his pants, pulled down at his hips, slapped against her flesh, a delicious contrast to all his heat.

  His eyes glittered, skin pulled taut over his cheeks, muscles in his shoulders and arms tight with the effort he took to control himself.

  To please her.

  She sobbed out his name, cupped her own breasts, fingers tight around her nipples. A flush grew across Shawn’s golden skin, his eyes flared. “Fuck,” he rasped roughly. His movements jerked, rhythm wild as she plucked at her own nipples, moaning. Encouraging. “So . . . fucking beautiful . . . Kayleigh!”

  Her name on his lips, on a ragged groan as he threw his head back and fucked her like she’d never dreamed, ended every hope she had of outlasting him. Her climax ripped through her, tore a sobbing note of pleasure and pain from her chest, her lips; the intensity arched her back, her neck.

  His hips pumped hard against hers, eyes nearly black as he watched her squirm, watched her shake. Teeth baring, his masculine growl underscored hers as his body gave, as his erection jerked and leaped inside her. He half collapsed with the force of it, hands splayed on either side of her on the table, sweat gleaming on his face, his shoulder. His chest.

  He was beautiful. Raw male, strength and aggression and possession.

  As Kayleigh’s heart thudded wildly in her chest, as her body wrung every last drop of pleasure it could from this moment, reality slowly settled in.

  It never took long.

  She closed her eyes.

  This was everything she’d hoped. Everything she’d never found in the so-polite men topside.

  Shawn was everything she couldn’t have. Shouldn’t want.

  His breath, hot on her shoulder, hitched.

  He raised his head, a question forming in his eyes, obvious as he took a breath.

  Kayleigh smiled to keep from screaming at the injustice of it all. “Pants,” is what she said instead, her voice raw. “Door’s still unlocked.”

  Amusement softened the somewhat shell-shocked shape of his rugged features. “Point.”

  When he withdrew from her, she sucked in a breath, vision flickering like a faulty lamp. God. She still wanted him. Craved more of him.

  He caught her face in one hand as she sat up gingerly, bent to press his mouth to hers in a kiss that wasn’t anything like the ones they’d shared before.

  This one, soft, gentle, lingered. His lips caressed hers, caught softly and made her breath lurch. Her heart picked up speed all over again.

  Kayleigh turned her face away. “Pants,” she insisted, injecting the word with more humor than she had it in her to feel.

  His chuckle tore at her heart as he bent, picked up his own shirt and allowed her to clean up, struggle back into the borrowed synth-leather hanging from one leg.

  Palm the cylinder inside the pocket.

  When she was dressed again, when she’d managed to keep her back turned to the point where she was sure her face didn’t betray her every thought, she turned to find him shrugging back into his shirt. His hair stood nearly on end, curly ends tousled from her own fingers.

  His muscles flexed as he pulled the hem down, gaze meeting hers across the narrow room. Tangling over so many words.

  He still tried. “Kayleigh, I—”

  She didn’t dare let him finish. “It’s okay,” she said quickly, an ache in her throat. She crossed the distance, wrapped her arms around his waist.

  To her dismay—to her shame—she took that moment. A fleeting breath, where everything was going to be okay. Where things were exactly as they should be. She took it and held it and filed it away.

  Later. She could cry over it later.

  But she had to know. And nothing down here would explain it. Not as her father could.

  As she’d force him to.

  Shawn’s arms closed around her, hands tight at her back. “It’s not okay,” he said against her hair. “Everything’s just—”

  “Messed up,” she whispered. Her thumb caught the cap of the small syringe. It fell to the floor.

  Plink.

  She felt the stillness in him. Felt his body tense as he straightened, as he looked down at her.

  As the needle slid home into the skin at his back.

  The question in his eyes banked. His fingers dug into her flesh hard enough to leave bruises, teeth bared, but the plunger depressed. “Why?” A thousand questions in one ragged syllable.

  How their roles had reversed.

  Kayleigh swallowed tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Within the space of that useless apology, she watched his muscles go slack. Caught him as he staggered, guided him to the clinic floor.

  His eyes were already closing as she knelt over him. His whiskers rasped against her palm, echo of the burn she could still feel between her thighs.

  He’d sleep. And she’d make sure that someone found him.

  It was the least she could do.

  She stood, her limbs like lead. Her thoughts, just as heavy. Numb, slow, she unsnapped the bracelet she’d thought a great souvenir. Dropped it by his shoulder.

  It didn’t belong topside. Just as she didn’t belong down here. She had questions to ask, people whose lives depended on her.

  She needed answers.

  Shawn Lowe would never let her go to ask them.

  As she reached for the door, her fingers trembling, the first of her tears—shame, bitter and hollow—slid over her cheeks.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The helicopter lifted over New Seattle, the whup-whup-whup of its rotary blades earsplittingly loud even through the headphones Kayleigh wore. Beside her, the pleasantly conscientious New Seattle Riot Force officer assigned to her for protection remained focused on the digital readout cupped in one hand.

  Whatever he was saying into his mic, it wasn’t on the same frequency as Kayleigh’s headset.

  Finding an NSRF officer hadn’t been that difficult. Her picture had been sent to every law enforcement agency from topside to the mid-lows; a fact that mollified some of Kayleigh’s helpless anger. Some.

>   None of them knew what was happening topside. No one could answer her careful questions.

  The fifteen minutes spent waiting for a lift back topside, tension thick as a blanket on her skin, and shoulders itching as they organized the effort, had drained what anger was left.

  Now, she pressed her hands against the window of the aircraft, staring down at a wide swath of destruction carved like a crescent into New Seattle’s silhouette.

  The quake fractured up the side of the layer cake, an offshoot from the Old Sea-Trench whittled underneath a portion of the city foundation. As the helicopter glided over it, rising higher into a sky slowly darkening from pale gray to oil, she watched lights bob and flicker along the newly formed crevasse. Lanterns, flashlights, generators sparking as they fueled electricity to the ravaged blocks.

  Somewhere down there, Shawn was . . . was what?

  Angry at her? Feeling betrayed?

  Relieved?

  She didn’t know him well enough to even hazard a guess. All she knew was that he’d never understand.

  The headset muffling the worst of the noise crackled to life in her ears. “Just a few more minutes, miss,” said the officer. His voice was kind, his demeanor had been nothing but courteous since he introduced himself.

  Officer Matthew Wilkinson. Probably a husband or father. He had that look; that kind of wary sympathy a well-trained man reserved for the opposite sex during times of stress.

  He treated her like a victim, she thought, nodding politely. Treated her like something fragile.

  She wasn’t. Her head hurt, she could have happily eaten a four-course meal by herself, and she was willing to threaten homicide for a cup of strong coffee, but she wasn’t made of glass.

  Most of her, anyway. Her heart felt a little brittle.

  Stupid, really. Too late, Kayleigh remembered why she didn’t date casually.

  She’d never really perfected the art of separating body and mind. If she had, she’d have long since conquered her ulcer and insomnia.

  She leaned back into the uncomfortable seat as the helicopter banked smoothly, pilot guiding it over the Holy Order quadplex wall as a spate of technical babble filtered over the headsets. The pilot offered a thumbs-up, and beside her, the officer leaned across the small gap to capture her attention.