by Dawn Ryder
No. He opened his eyes and went back to work without another thought for Carl Davis and the fate he’d earned.
Honestly, a quick injection was better than the bastard deserved after all the lives he’d tried to take.
And then, there were the ones he had killed in his ambition.
At least there would be a moment when Carl would realize he was dying. Maybe that sounded cruel but Bryan called it justice for the two hundred people currently locked down in his underground laboratory facility. Right then, they were praying. Clenching their teeth against the fear no one in their right mind could dismiss.
No, the only thing his people could do was buckle down and hold fast to their courage. Something Bryan expected of his people and still hoped they’d never have to employ.
The fact that they were doing it now for a selfish bastard only made it that much easier for Bryan to return to his workload without another thought for Carl Davis and his date with death Bryan had helped arrange.
Sometimes, you got exactly what you deserved.
And every now and again, you got to play a part in serving up a richly deserved helping of karma.
* * *
Dunn was hiding in his office at the back of the private plane.
A week ago, she’d have let him deal with his demons in his own way.
Now?
Now, they’d taken their relationship to another level. He was hurting and she couldn’t dismiss it.
Maybe he doesn’t want you around right now …
It was possible.
Thais stood and walked toward the back of the plane anyway. She gave Dunn a single rap on the door before she pushed it open.
Guess she’d find out just how close he truly wanted their relationship to be.
He looked up, closing off his expression as she pushed the door closed.
“I’m trying to get above this workload,” he offered before he looked back at the screen.
She understood …
What made her go forward was the fact that she didn’t want the walls between them anymore.
“You ripped down my walls, Dunn,” she stated as she slid right along the side of his desk and between him and his keyboard. “So yours aren’t allowed, either.”
“I’m only working.”
“You’re hiding,” she stated firmly. Close enough to see his eyes, she felt her confidence wavering.
He was on guard.
“I never pegged you as a high-attention type, Thais.”
She let the stab slip off her.
“Hiding in your work,” she said softly. “And striking out at me because you’re pissed and stuck with no outlet until we get to where your mother is.”
He shoved his chair back. Which wasn’t very far in the tight confines of the plane.
“Thais,” he growled at her.
She surprised him by following him and grabbing the front of his shirt. “I’m not taking your shit, Bateson,” she growled. “You wanted all of me, well, I demand all of you in return.”
She watched understanding flash through his eyes. He covered her hand with his, starting to pry her fingers loose.
“I am pissed,” he offered in a tone coated with frustration. “It’s not your problem.”
“Wrong,” she answered as she released his shirt and pulled her hand from his grip by doing so. She reached down and cupped the bulge of his cock. “If I’m yours, you’re mine … completely.”
“Thais,” he growled. “Miranda is my only blood. I’m not just pissed—”
“You want to kill,” she said as she rubbed his cock through the fabric of his pants as she pressed up against him and put her mouth a single inch from his. “With your bare hands.”
His eyes narrowed as his lips thinned.
“Yes,” he hissed.
His cock was hardening. She nodded, holding his gaze with hers. Understanding flashed in his eyes as she felt like something passed between them. The need to face him down, even at his worst, consumed her. She sent him a hard look before she slid down his body and opened the front of his pants.
“Thais—”
He didn’t get the chance to argue further. She pulled his cock free and took it inside her mouth before he got past her name. His flesh was already rock hard. She drew her lip up his shaft until she was licking through the slit on the head of his cock.
He shuddered and then he was gripping her hair. It was a hard grip but she’d known what she was getting into.
There was part of her rising up to enjoy the moment. The interaction wasn’t going to be soft. But she wasn’t planning on being nice, either. She sucked his cock hard. Milking him with her fingers as she rubbed her tongue on the underside of his cock’s head where the skin was soft and ultra-sensitive.
“Yes … yes…,” he said, encouraging her as his grip tightened enough to send little prickles of pain across her scalp. “Suck me … harder…”
She wasn’t acting on his demand.
No, she was pulling his words from him with her actions. Ripping away his facade and letting him unleash the pulsing energy threatening to drive him insane.
There were times when you just needed to fuck.
Hard and without boundaries.
She sucked him a moment longer before pushing up and turning around. She heard him let out a rough sound of pleasure before he was pushing her skirt up and pulling her panties down.
“Not until you’re ready, baby…” He pushed her across the desk, spreading her thighs as he reached between them to rub her slit with his cock.
“I’m going to fuck you … but not … before you’re quivering.”
His words were intoxicating. They sent her arousal spiking, the feeling of his cock slipping between the lips of her slit making her clit pulse with need. She wanted it hard and felt her folds growing wet as her lips parted and she panted.
“There it is…,” he muttered with victory. “So wet … so … ready…”
He leaned down across her body and growled next to her ear. “So … mine…”
He thrust into her, sliding easily into her body because of how wet she was. He made a sound of male satisfaction before he was rising up and gripping her hips. A little jolt of awareness went through her pelvis. A crazy twist of excitement and anticipation.
She wanted to be taken.
Hard.
And she wanted to give as much as she got.
He didn’t disappoint her. She gripped the edge of the desk as he pumped against her from behind, penetrating deeply as she felt her body taking every plunge with pleasure. Her clit was pulsing. Each thrust pushing her closer to the edge. Dunn’s breath was raspy, his hand growing hot against her skin.
He was holding back.
She could feel him fighting the urge to spill his load, pumping against her, filling her with a cock that was rock hard until she gasped. Pleasure was snapping through her. Hard and bright, it was like a whip cracking. The effect was like being hit by a wave crashing, a moment of instant connection while you absorbed the force of the impact.
Dunn snarled with victory a moment before he pinned her against the edge of the desk with his final thrusts. They were hard, savage motions that sent a second ripple of satisfaction through her belly before she felt him losing his seed.
He collapsed back into his chair, his breathing harsh. She wasn’t ready to have the connection severed. She crawled up onto his lap, enjoying the way he closed his arms around her and buried his face in her hair so he could inhale.
“It was too much…,” he rasped out.
She didn’t really want to talk but she realized she needed to learn how to with Dunn. “I don’t think there is such a thing between us. You give me something I’ve never encountered before. Something so very … much more.”
There it was … an admission she’d never thought to ever make. Somehow, knowing he needed it, made it so much more important for her to say.
He stroked her nape for a moment before he raised her face so t
heir gazes could meet. The naked fury was still there in his green eyes. But now, it was controlled. She reached up to tap his lips with her fingertip.
His eyes narrowed as she stood, allowing him to get to his feet and right his clothing.
“Now we can get down to the business at hand,” she muttered.
The door was closed and she reached for the handle as the plane engines droned on in the background. Dunn caught her wrist.
“So much more?” he demanded softly. “Explain, Thais.”
She turned and stared straight back at him. “It was about giving you what you needed emotionally.”
She was suddenly uncertain. The word “relationship” was flashing through her brain, leaving her feeling unsure how to proceed. Her damned knees actually felt weak.
“Not that I’m any expert on…”
He let out a little grunt before he was reaching past her for the door handle. He pulled it open and reached back for her uninjured arm. The aisle was narrow and he pulled her through to the bedroom that was on the opposite side. The bed was set against the side of the aircraft.
“You’re doing better than me,” Dunn said as he ripped the bedding back.
He took a moment to kick his shoes off before he scooped her up and cradled her on the way to the surface of the bed.
He framed one side of her face with his hand, locking gazed with her. “We’re well-matched, Thais.”
It was a compliment.
But it was something else as well.
She searched his eyes and felt something shift between them as his green eyes glittered with pure intent.
A moment later he was kissing her. Slipping his hand up into her hair to cup the back of her head while his mouth claimed her. It was a demanding kiss, the anger she’d come into his office to help defuse only taken down a few notches.
The knowledge made her tremble. He chuckled in response, lifting his head and offering her a grin.
“My turn,” he said, before he pulled her dress up and over her head. His gaze landed on her, his expression tightening with male approval. “Definitely my turn, baby.”
Her lips were suddenly dry and she rolled them in to moisten them. His gaze targeted the motion, his eyes narrowing. Thais rose onto her knees, leaning forward so he was afforded a perfect view of her cleavage.
He cupped her knees, slipping his hands beneath them and pulling hard. She flipped right onto her back, the bed cushioning her fall.
“You’re not distracting me this time, Thais,” he promised as he pulled her underwear off. “It’s your turn to be at the mercy of my instincts.”
He pressed her thighs wide, rubbing the inside of them with firm, slow strokes.
“I like the way you smell.” He slid his hands all the way to where her thighs ended but not quite far enough to touch her sex. Leaning forward, with one knee on the bed between her thighs, he hovered over her for a long moment, arousal making his eyes glitter. “The scent of your body drives me insane.”
He drew in a deep breath before he aimed a hard look at her. “Btu I can’t be alone in this, Thais. I have to know you’re just as susceptible as I am.”
She was. He read it right off her face before he was slipping down and hovering over her spread sex. Arousal had already coated the folds of her slit in fluid that his breath teased.
She shuddered at the first touch of his tongue against her delicate skin. Sensation raced up her passage and made her belly clench. Sex had never been as necessary as it was with Dunn. It had also never delighted her so very deeply before.
Intimacy.
He was stoking her inner thighs again. “Do you understand, Thais?”
She nodded but that frustrated him. He wanted her to voice her feelings.
Complete exposure.
“We already fucked,” she said. “It wasn’t enough.”
He moved his hand back up to her slit, rubbing her clit as he nodded.
“You drive me insane, Thais,” he muttered as he gauged her growing arousal level. “I have to have you in the same position.”
She caught the look of determination in his eyes before she surrendered and let her eyelids shut. Sometimes actions spoke louder than words. He made a soft sound of male approval before he applied his mouth completely to her slit.
She cried out.
She withered.
She gripped the bedding beneath her so tightly, it might have ripped.
Not that she cared.
No, there was only the pleasure he was sending through her body with his tongue and mouth. Teasing her clit with soft laps before sucking it until she was lifting her hips up in an effort to gain enough pressure to climax.
Dunn wasn’t going to allow her to gain that zenith so quickly. He lifted his head up and used a single fingertip to circle the entrance to her body.
Her passage ached, clenching in an effort to tighten around that fingertip.
Dunn denied her the penetration. Rimming her for a time that felt endless because she was poised on the edge. Caught so completely in the grip of need that she was actually desperate for release.
“Dunn!” she said. “Stop teasing me.”
She caught a flash of smug male victory on his face before he was pushing two thick fingers up into her. She gasped and arched, lifting her hips up to take his thrust.
She was so close …
The need so acute.
“Now…,” she rasped out. “I need … it … now!”
He didn’t deny her. She felt the way he handled her, with a confidence that sent her over the edge. Pleasure ripped into her, bursting with an intensity that shattered the need gnawing at her insides. It was hot and bright enough to burn everything away, leaving her in absolute bliss.
Dunn rolled onto the bed and tugged her toward him.
She ended up in his arms, cradled against his side as he pulled a blanket over them and threaded his fingers through her hair.
“Does this mean your work can wait?” she asked.
She heard him chuckle. Her lips curved in response and she found that bubble of happiness lodged in her chest once more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Decontamination wasn’t fun.
The process was long and drawn out, allowing Damascus Hale plenty of time to imagine signs of symptoms that she didn’t have.
She let out a little huff, which brought the overhead lights on.
“Is there a problem, Dr. Hale?”
The voice came from the control center, where there was a three-person team assigned to observe her while she was still in isolation.
“Just my mind playing tricks on me,” she explained.
She should have been out like a light. Cassy hadn’t settled into nursing very well, which might be Damascus’s fault more than her infant daughter’s. But sleep had been in short supply for the last few months.
But no, Damascus was wide awake, even though she was locked in the room, which was surrounded by a containment unit. Sleep was the only thing she could do for the next seventy-two hours.
“Since you are awake, your mother is here.”
Damascus sat up. She reached over and turned on the daylight lamps. “I’ll see her.”
It didn’t take long before Miranda was in front of the triple-pane glass that made up one side of the containment room.
“Baby,” Miranda exclaimed as her eyes swept Damascus from head to toe. “I’m so worried.”
“So am I,” Damascus answered. “But about you. Don’t let this distract you from campaigning.”
Miranda sent her a look full of reprimand. “There is nothing more important to me than my children.”
“I know and I’m so happy to see you but I’m stuck in this containment unit for at least another three days.”
Damascus flattened her hand on the glass separating her from her mother. Miranda pressed her palm against the opposite side of the glass.
“Go, Mom!” Damascus insisted. “I’m fine. Cassy is fine. You’ve given me too much
of your life. You need to be focused.”
Miranda hesitated but nodded in the end. “I’ll call you. And I will be back once you’re out of containment.”
* * *
Miranda wasn’t stupid.
Oh, she played the sweet, charming personality very well, and she preferred it over being difficult.
But she knew how to be someone’s worst nightmare.
Her daughter was in a cage.
And her son had almost lost the woman he loved.
It was time to strip off her gloves. The hallways of the underground lab where her daughter lived and worked irritated her because she knew Damascus had chosen them in order to escape her father.
That was Miranda’s failing.
She’d bent to the demands of her family in order to safeguard Dunn and it had placed Damascus in a situation where she needed to find a haven.
Miranda turned a corner but she didn’t enter the apartment where Vitus and her granddaughter were.
Damascus was very correct. Miranda had business to attend to.
Her car slid up to the curb the moment she made it to ground level. The door was shut firmly before she pulled out her phone and searched for a contact. Her husband, Jeb, might have believed she didn’t know how dirty he was in his dealings, and she’d enjoyed duping him. After all, Jeb had been so proud of her being a Delacroix and his little obedient wife.
Carl answered after a couple of rings.
“Hello, Miranda,” he cooed.
“I received your message, Carl,” she answered.
Her fingers tightened on her phone as Carl allowed a silence to stretch out. He really was the most insufferable sort.
“However, if you’re tongue-tied,” she offered, “I can get on with my day.”
Carl snickered at her. “You’re not in control, Miranda. I am.”
“As you say,” Miranda responded in a very practiced sweet tone. “I can’t imagine you enjoy speaking to me, so I will ask again, what do you want of me? This is, after all, about getting me to come to terms with you.”
“That’s right,” Carl stated firmly. “You’re going to heel like a good bitch. A well-trained bitch. My bitch.”
“I see—” Miranda responded.
“Shut up,” he said, interrupting her. “Save your little display of confidence and poise. I know you’re scared,” Carl growled into the phone. “You should be. I know your weakness.”
