Power Game

by Christine Feehan

  He moved over top of her, lodging the head of his cock into her, inching in slowly while he watched her face. Her eyes widened and she shook her head.

  "It burns."

  "I'm stretching you. You're small, babe. I'm not. We'll get there and it will feel good." He could feel her muscles still rippling from the aftershocks of her orgasm. The pulsing and squeezing on his shaft and sensitive head nearly were his undoing. He paused, taking a breath for himself. For her. "So fucking tight, Bellisia. And hotter than hell." He inched forward, feeling the way her muscles resisted but gave way for his invasion.

  Flames streaked up his cock and spread like a wildfire out of control, roaring in his belly and flicking at his thighs with hot licks. He actually had to clench his teeth the burn was so good, but he was beginning to lose her. Panic was on her face, and she began to writhe under him, shoving at his chest with her hands.

  "You're too big, Ezekiel. It isn't going to work."

  Fighting the need to surge into her and bury himself deep, he stopped moving again. "Wait, sweetheart. Relax for me. Breathe. You're holding your breath. Give your body time to adjust. It will." He used his voice unashamedly. He could pitch his voice low, almost a hypnotic tone, and he did so now. As a rule, he was careful using that tone with his friends, although not the triplets or his brothers. He'd discovered that particular pitch when he was young and his brothers were scared. It always worked, and it did so now. Her gaze clung to his, but she nodded several times and took in air.

  "That's it, baby. Keep breathing for me." He bent forward and took her mouth, needing her to stay completely with him, focused on him. One hand slid to her breast when he lifted his head, the other, his finger to her clit. "Feel your body relaxing around mine." He drew her nipple into his mouth, teasing with his tongue until he felt hot liquid gathering, surrounding his cock. "I love the way you taste. You smell like vanilla and orange and you taste the same. I could spend hours eating you up."

  It was the truth and he knew she heard the sincerity and liked it. She liked the way he talked to her. He slipped in more and met her barrier. His teeth bit down gently on her nipple, she gasped and he surged forward, taking her innocence and burying himself deep.

  "Ezekiel!" His name was a soft, panicked cry.

  "It's done, sweetheart. Just give yourself a few seconds to relax." He tried to breathe through the scorching heat. She was strangling his cock, her channel squeezing him so tightly he couldn't breathe. He had to move soon or he was just going to go up in flames, but he wanted her to feel pleasure. That mattered to him, and that meant being careful even though he needed to pound into her.

  It took a little longer than he'd hoped, but eventually her body relaxed around his and the panic in her eyes receded. He began to move again, the first two strokes slow and careful, watching every expression on her face for signs of discomfort. Then her fingers flexed on his hips and he felt the pressure to move a little harder and deeper. He obliged before she could change her mind.

  Holding her hips still, he surged into her with a fast, deep stroke, watched the heat flush her skin, turning her rosy. That was all he needed and he let himself lose control by degrees, surging into her again and again, letting the fire consume him.

  "Fucking paradise, sweetheart," he managed to get out between clenched teeth. His breath came in ragged pants, matching hers. He was grateful for the good shape he had to stay in as a PJ. It gave him stamina in spite of his need to empty himself in her. He didn't want it to ever end.

  He pushed her up higher than he intended. She said his name, that single word, the way she'd done before when she was scared and needing reassurance.

  "Let go for me," he whispered. "Just let it take you." He angled her body a little differently so he could hit that sweet spot as well as her clit with every stroke.

  She gasped and dug her fingers into his hips as the orgasm took her like a tsunami. He tried to hold out, but her release was far too strong, sweeping him with her, her body clamping down like a vise, her muscles dragging over him, gripping and milking with enough force to pull his boiling seed up like a rocket. Jet after jet splashed into her, coating the walls of her channel, adding to the heat and ripples, and then he collapsed over her, burying his face in her neck, fighting for air. It was only then that he remembered what he'd never once forgotten--that all-important condom.

  That knowledge wasn't enough to make him move. He stayed in her, buried deep, as he waited for his breathing to catch up with his racing brain. She was incredible. He lay there, letting her take his weight while he fought for breath. He knew he was too heavy for her, but he loved feeling her under him, all that soft skin, all that belonged just to him. She didn't protest, just held him, breathing shallowly. He realized she could breathe that way for a long, long time, the way she did underwater. Smiling against her neck, he took advantage and gave her a strawberry.

  Her lashes fluttered. "What are you doing?"

  "Marking you so everyone knows you're mine."

  "That's a little primitive."

  "I'm feeling primitive, baby." He pushed up a little on his elbows, but stayed buried deep, refusing to leave his sanctuary. "You need to tell me why you don't want to kill the two men Whitney sent after you, specifically the one claiming to be your husband."

  Her wide eyes blinked up at him. A hint of color swept up her neck, adding to her already flushed skin. He pushed back the wealth of hair tumbling around her face. In just that short time he'd forgotten the feeling of silk. She surrounded him with a silken clasp, still holding him tight. He doubted if he would go soft, not when her body was so hot and still calling to his. He leaned down and kissed her before she could start coming up with a line of certain bullshit. He kissed her until she was kissing him back just as feverishly. Only then did he lift his head and brush his knuckles along her cheek.

  "Tell me, baby. I can keep this up all night and I will. I love being in you." He began a slow glide, watching desire heat her eyes. "He isn't your husband, is he? Because if he is, you might find yourself a widow before the next sunset."

  Her lashes fluttered again and she shook her head. "He isn't my husband." She gasped as his cock thickened, pushing against the tight walls of her channel, stretching her all over again. "He was one of the few good ones. Whitney has a small army of supersoldiers. They're all rejects from the psychological or physical or even psychic programs. Men who didn't quite make the cut."

  He was well aware of that, although he had never heard the term small army before. "I didn't know there were any good ones. What does good ones actually mean? And be specific."

  "I can't think when you're moving like that." Her voice was breathless.

  He didn't want her thinking, only feeling and telling him the truth, not thinking too much before she answered his questions. "I can't stop moving, so you'll have to find a way to talk to me. I need the answers, baby."

  Bellisia sighed and lifted her hips to match his slow, languid rhythm at the urging of his hands. "Gerald and Adam both were from one of the Marine units, the Marine Recon unit. Gerald had the psychic ability and psychological profile, but he had been shot one too many times to pass the rigorous physical. Whitney has that in place to make certain his GhostWalkers can be genetically enhanced. Adam was able to pass the physical and psych evals, but not the psychic one. He has some small talent, and Whitney did enhance it, but it isn't as strong as the doctor wants for his GhostWalker program."

  He leaned down and rewarded her with a kiss on her throat and then he nudged her face to one side with his jaw so he could scrape his teeth over her pulse point. He loved how that sent hot liquid bathing his cock. She would be able to get off on his rough when she was a little more experienced. He was growing harder with each slide into her body, but he kept moving slowly.

  "Explain good."

  She had to catch her breath, and her hands went to his hips in an effort to get him moving. When that didn't work, she sent him a little frown but forced herself to keep givi
ng him what he wanted.

  "Good is a conscience. They were careful with all of us, unlike his other soldiers. Respectful. They went out of their way to protect us when they could. If they had to take us to the most hated room in the compound, the one Whitney used for his science experiments, they were extremely nice about it. They often risked his wrath by sticking up for us, telling him that was enough or he was going to permanently harm us. That always stopped Whitney."

  He didn't want to hear anything good about either man, but he'd asked for the explanation. He might have to kill them. Chances were extremely high that he would have no choice. They sounded like men he could respect. "Still, Whitney sent them to bring you back, and I'm certain that's what they mean to do."

  "I'm certain Whitney paired them to me," she blurted out. "I've never been attracted to either of them, not ever, and I don't think they were attracted to me either. But right before I escaped them in Shanghai, I heard Whitney tell them to bring me to Italy, where he's been sending women for breeding. Whitney felt that if he paired us, we wouldn't want to be away from one another. He talked about it all the time. He doesn't get that one can be physically attracted without any emotional attachment."

  He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers, pausing all movement. He stayed buried deep inside her, surrounded by that living silk as it grasped him in a tight, searing fist. "If you can't kill them, sweetheart," he said softly, "you do have an emotional connection."

  "I do have an emotional connection, but not like you think," she admitted. She wrapped her arms around his waist. "I didn't say I couldn't kill them, Ezekiel, only that I didn't want to have to. Would it be difficult? Yes. It would haunt me, knowing they're both good men, but if it was your life, or the triplets'? Nonny's? I would kill them."

  Her voice held such complete conviction it shocked him.

  "I didn't think it was possible to kill someone you were paired with. Look at Violet and Whitney. She went into a hangar where her brain-dead husband was and shot him in the head. She came out with Whitney, and witnesses swore she was all over him.

  "Violet hates him. I think she hates him for a number of reasons, but first and foremost because he began using reptiles and insects in his enhancement of the other women even though he paired them with GhostWalkers. She doesn't have those kinds of enhancements, so in her mind, we all have to go. She has to be the best, the one with the most power and the one sought after."

  "She's a treacherous bitch. She left women in Whitney's compound to be used as broodmares so he has more babies to experiment on." Ezekiel felt the familiar rising of darkness in him, that need for violence.

  "That she is, and she wants to be the only one. In order to do that, she has to be in a position to shut Whitney down and have him hunted until he's dead. She's already gathering her own army."

  Her fingertips began a slow, mesmerizing brush over his buttocks, tracing his muscle on the way up and sliding caresses over it on the way down. The feeling sent streaks of fire straight to his groin. Blood roared in his ears. His veins felt on fire. Just her fingertips, and he was lost in her all over again. Her fingertips and the scorching-hot fist surrounding him with silken fingers so tight he thought she was strangling him.

  "You're certain?" He could barely get the words out. Somehow she'd managed to turn the tables on him and distract him from his very important interrogation. No man wanted to know his woman was physically attracted to other men. He might have to kill them just for that.

  "Absolutely certain. She's visited Whitney on several occasions with them. Whitney provided them for her, thinking, I believe, that they would stay loyal to him, but he's forgotten just how powerful her voice is. Those soldiers were eating out of her hand."

  "If she wants him dead, why didn't she kill him right then?" Her fingertips were driving him crazy. She was going to kill him with the sensations she created. Need grew in spite of his resolve to let her rest. He needed his brain right now, but his body wasn't listening.

  "How could she? Whitney had begun to suspect that she was opposing him and he always had someone with a gun pointing at her head. He makes people disappear, she knows that." She raised her head a few inches and kissed his throat. Her lips followed a path down his chest and then she licked at his left nipple.

  "Baby, this is important." He didn't sound quite as desperate as he felt. They needed to talk about Violet, but mostly he wanted to talk about Gerald and Adam. "What exactly was Violet doing with Cheng?" There was no stopping his cock from growing thicker or harder thanks to her scorching heat. He moved a little faster, plunging into her, reaching for the ultimate ride that had sent him into another stratosphere.

  "Selling out the United States, the GhostWalker program, and your squadron in particular. It became clear to me why she chose this one once I met the triplets and Cayenne and Pepper. They are everything she despises. She'll come after all of them again. More than anything, more than hitting at you or Whitney, she'll strike against the children and women." Her breath left her lungs in a heated rush and her hands were back at his buttocks, this time urging him on.

  She had to be sore. He was large. It was her first time, but even that knowledge couldn't stop him, not with her fingertips sliding over his muscle, doing a dance that sent streaks of fire spreading through every cell in his body.

  He couldn't talk, couldn't do anything but sate the wild craving she'd set up in him. She was fast becoming his greatest obsession. He lost himself again, the vicious darkness in him, the need for violence was just as consumed by her fire as his body was. The storm was out of control. Wild. Sheer magic. He was gone, taking her the way he needed, the way her fingers playing on his skin demanded.

  He'd never lost himself completely before. She did that, took away every horrible place he'd hidden his brothers, every fight he'd been in to make money to feed them or to protect them from the bigger bullies and pedophiles cruising the streets looking for boys too young and small to protect themselves. She took away the battles and the blood and the many times he'd shot and killed human beings when he'd taken an oath to save them.

  Her soft cries and ragged little pants filled his ears like music. He buried himself in her body, over and over, feeling the tight clasp of her sheath. Hot and silky, a fist milking him, he never wanted it to end. Then she said his name. Ezekiel. Just that. And he knew she was there. Her body clamped down on his, a hot vise, so perfect he had never conceived it possible, the force taking him in that way she had, throwing him into a place he wanted to stay for a long, long time.

  He buried his face in her neck, giving her his full weight, absorbing the way her body, all silky soft, imprinted on his. He rested there, waiting for her to push him off. He was far too heavy and had no business squashing her, but he couldn't help himself, taking the time to just feel peace.

  Reluctantly, he pushed up on his elbows and was shocked to see tears in her eyes. Time seemed to stop. His heart jerked hard in his chest. "Oh, God, baby, did I hurt you?" He'd been rough. Really rough. He should have taken more care with her.

  She shook her head, but it didn't dislodge the tears clinging to her long eyelashes or the ones swimming in that wild blue sea.

  "I'm sorry, sweetheart, I just lost control. You're so fucking tight and . . ." What did a man say to his woman when he'd been so damned selfish he'd forgotten it was only her second time? And her first time had only been half an hour before?

  "I'm definitely sore, Ezekiel," she admitted, "but in a good way. I might not be able to walk properly for a couple of days, and I think I'll feel you inside me for a very long time, but I like that."

  His heart clenched. Damn but he was falling hard. "Why are you crying?"

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. "It's just so beautiful. I didn't know it would feel like that, or I would feel this way about you."

  He framed her face with his hands. "There's no going back from this, Bellisia." His thumbs brushed at the tears in her eyes. "I want this perfec
tly clear between us. I gave myself to you. All of me. Maybe I wasn't as gentle as I should have been, but that was the real me. I just put my heart in your hands, baby. Don't crush it. I've never given it to another woman and I won't again."

  "Ezekiel, what about Whitney? The threat to the children, Pepper and Nonny? If I stay . . ."

  "You're staying. We settled that, otherwise you wouldn't be lying under me with my cock still inside you. You want to be with me as much as I want to be with you." He used his voice unashamedly. Fuck being nice. She wasn't going anywhere.

  Bellisia laughed softly. "Sugar, I think you had better learn right now that, although I totally love your voice, I'm not susceptible to it like most people. I'm not to Violet's voice either. That's why Whitney always had me watching her. You don't need to use your voice on me. I want to stay. I gave you my promise I'd wait for you because I wanted to be with you."

  "Then stop thinking about leaving. You're my woman, and that means we--meaning my family; Nonny, Pepper, the triplets, Cayenne and all the men--will figure out together what we're going to do about any threat coming this way. Whitney and Violet both have sent soldiers. We sent them back in body bags. You get me, baby? Say you get me."

  She nodded, the expression in her sea blue eyes soft and loving as her gaze moved over his face. "I get you, Ezekiel. I'm not going anywhere. Well, except the bathtub again. I need to soak for an hour or so. I'm sorry, but I do better in water when I'm a little sore."

  Ezekiel brushed a kiss across her lips and then slowly eased out of her. She winced a little, obviously trying to keep that small movement from him, but of course he caught it. He saw everything she did, the slightest expression, every gesture. He was a hunter and there was little he missed. His mind recorded everything around him and played it back to him down to the slightest detail.