by Rie Warren
I fucked into her, sweat pouring off me, the curve of my cock hitting just the right angle inside her.
I felt her. Her heat. Her strength. Her swelling depths clamping down when a tight scream broke free from her throat and her body arched backward over the arms I clamped around her waist.
She came like an inferno that nearly set me on fire. Shudders wracked up and down her slighter frame. Her slick insides flooded my deeply entrenched cock.
I kissed her quickly while she froze in ecstasy before I took control. My braid whipped against my hip when I manhandled her to all fours, never once disengaging from her.
When she was in place, her head hanging low, I pulled out. She reached back to draw me in, but I split her legs wide and huddled against her. My thighs hit hers, and my cock rapped between her pussy lips, stretching up the length of her belly. I bent her slowly down with my hand gliding up the length of her sinuous back. Head down. Ass up. I kissed my way down her spine.
Arranged doggie style, Jade shuddered from head to toe. She looked over her shoulder and bit her lip. Reaching between her thighs, she peeled open the lips of her pussy.
“Fuck. Jade. I’m gonna come at you hard.” I gripped her hips.
“Do it.”
With a loud snarl, I rammed inside her. She screamed out, grabbing the headboard.
Pulling back, I reared up and lunged again. I jarred her across the mattress. My pelvis smacked against her ass. My weighty balls swung against her clit. Every fucking time I struck my cock into her, she bucked back with a high-pitched wail.
Her ass grew slippery, and our flesh squelched. Her cunt accepting my cock. Sucking it in. Milking and molding it. The hard hot raunchy sex turned animalistic.
My fingers squeezed her hips, and I gripped her so hard her skin turned red. Pulling her onto me, muscles bulging all over my body, I fucking cursed the need to come.
Wanted to stay inside Jade forever.
She bucked back, taking everything, taking all of me, begging for more, faster, harder.
I licked her neck and reamed her fast, halting with each womb-deep entry.
Her body whipped tight. Turning her face, she nipped my chin and bit my lips. Her mouth howled open, her body a hollow arch until the scream ripped from her throat.
Her stunning climax tossed me over the edge into the white-hot abyss where nothing existed except the harsh repeat of my roars and the fast refrain of my cock hammering into her contracting cunt.
Semen fountained out, my balls traveling almost into my body with each jerking spasm of come.
Christ.
I held Jade with my forearms crossed beneath her stomach, my breath beating against the nape of her neck as the sharp sting of my orgasm mellowed to deep, slow lunges where our wetness spread.
“I’m going to collapse,” Jade gasped out before her arms and legs gave way.
She lay on her stomach with me still plowed deep inside.
“You cannot still be hard. Seriously,” she groused from her crossed arms.
I gingerly dragged out of her, holding my breath as my cock throbbed in the cooling air. “Sorry.”
The fuck I was. She was leaking my come. She should do more of that.
“No, you’re not.”
“You got me.” Slipping down beside her, I kissed her lightly on the lips. “Knew you’d be a power fuck.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.” She peeked out at me.
“Hardly. No one else can handle me like that.” Pulling her into my arms, I caged her against me. “No one but you.”
Relaxing against me after token resistance, Jade hummed against my neck.
I stroked her silky skin from the round curve of her hip to the indent of her waist and back again.
Brushing my lips against her ear, I whispered, “I sure hope Madge has ear plugs. You made one hell of a racket.”
“Oh God!” Jade rolled away from me. “I forgot about her. I have to check and make sure—”
“Whoa there.” Leaning up on an elbow, I tugged at her hand. “I set the alarms, closed the Fort Knox of shutters. No one can get in or out without us being alerted.”
“Do you think we could get cleaned up then?” she asked.
“You mean like shower together?” Now she’d piqued my interest.
Suddenly a slight flush darkened her cheeks, and she nodded.
Damn. A blush? That was a first. And it made Jade look less fierce and so pretty.
A long slow smile spread across my mouth.
In the shower, we were much quieter. We washed each other, taking gentle care of one another with no subterfuge, no superficiality. Two bodies long hardened by wars we fought for others. Hardened by battles we lost inside ourselves. Hardened by scars inflicted on us. Coming together.
Afterward, I carried her to the bed, both of us covered in towels that drifted to the floor. She slipped in, and I followed after her. But when I tried to pull her back against my chest, she turned cold and stiff instead of the warm woman I’d just bathed.
My hand dropped between us. “What is it?”
“I can’t . . .” Jade abruptly sat up on the side of the bed, curled over with her shoulders shaking.
“Hey.” Inching forward, I tried to drag her around to look at me. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“I don’t do this.” She hopped up, quickly pacing away from me. “We can’t do this!”
I jumped up after her. “It’s a little too late, don’t you think?”
She whirled on me, punching me back. “Damn you, Walker! Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”
She kicked out at me, but I was going nowhere. I’d already proved that once tonight.
“You’re too much. Too close.” She swung another fist in my direction before her forehead puckered like a child’s, full of anger and . . . sadness? “You’re getting too close, and I can’t—” The hint of pain suddenly subsumed her, and she hunched over. “Don’t you get how bloody messed up this is?”
“You’re hiding something.” I reached a hand out to her, but she stepped back.
“No shit. So are you.”
“Aren’t we all?” Brushing the hair off Jade’s cheek, I cupped her face. “What happened to you that made you think you had to be so hard, so fearless?”
“I froze.” Her body stilled, her whisper broken.
“We all do.”
“I don’t know how much I can trust you, Walker.” Wary, wounded eyes lifted to mine.
I rubbed her cheeks with my thumbs. “You can trust me with everything.”
Suddenly it was true. She could trust me with her life.
Tears clouded her eyes, spiking on her lashes—the first time I’d even seen the woman break down. “I froze, and I lost an asset.”
“An asset?” I smoothed my hand to her neck, pulling her toward me. “You lost a person.”
“We were in Mexico.”
“We?” I asked.
“My team.” Her words tumbled out faster. “On protection detail. Guarding an important family who’d put a lot of money into cleaning up the streets, making the city a safer place to live. Get rid of the cartels. End the shootings.” She halted, swiping at her eyes. “We were with them, living on premises, for four months. You learn a lot about people after that amount of time. They become your own family. They had a daughter. Prettiest little thing. Bright, too. Four years old. She used to follow me everywhere she was allowed. And I . . .” Jade swallowed. “I played dolls with her. I never even played dolls when I was a little girl. I wanted to play with toy guns.
“Always pretended to work for Scotland Yard.”
I chuckled. I could just picture Jade as a child, making mischief everywhere she went. Sweeping my hand up and down her back, I held silent.
“She named a doll after me, her favorite one that had belonged to her mother. So old and well loved an eye had fallen off, and they’d replaced it with a black button. But she asked her mom to switch it to a green one.” Jade chok
ed on the words. “She took that doll everywhere.”
Twin streams of tears ran down her cheeks.
My heart wrung inside my chest. I picked up a towel from the floor and tenderly wiped it across her face, but the tears didn’t stop.
“What happened?” I asked, gravel in my voice.
“One of the big cartels attacked. In public. And maybe it’s my fault! Maybe I wasn’t prepared enough, because I’d gotten too attached.” She dropped her head and smudged her face against my skin. “We were at the movie theater when shots fired. No warning. They gunned down her parents right in front of her eyes. But I had her. I HAD HER!”
Jade punched my sides, and I stood there taking it.
“She was in my arms. I was running for exit. Staying low. But she wouldn’t leave the doll called Jade behind! She . . . she . . .” Terrible sobs ripped from Jade’s throat. “She slipped from my arms and ran. Before I could reach her . . .
“They shot her.” The thick wave of pain and guilt engulfed Jade as she yelled. “She died! SHE DIED!”
All her strength fled as she clung to me, those heartbreaking tearful sounds wrenching my soul. I was right there, right there with her. Rocking her side to side. Trying to take her pain away.
Finally Jade’s grief eased with a last sniffle and a long jagged sigh.
“How long ago?” I asked.
“Right when I started with the Ministry. My first mission. I thought I’d learned not to get attached anymore, Walker, but Majedah . . . and . . .” she whispered.
Me.
But she wouldn’t say it.
Her hair coiled over her shoulder when she glanced up, and tears shone in her eyes. “Have you ever lost a child, Walker?”
My chin dropped.
I stepped back.
I rubbed my chest.
She’d sparked a pain I’d hidden so deep inside I thought I’d buried it under six feet of dirt.
And Jade’s open, trusting expression closed up just like that.
She spun around, grabbed a pillow and a blanket off the bed, and marched past me as if the last couple of hours had never happened. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I’ll sleep with Madge.”
“You don’t understand, Jade.” I latched onto her wrist.
She stilled. “I understand perfectly well. And I’ll ask you to remove your hand before I break your fucking fingers.”
I didn’t doubt her for a second, but just because I couldn’t tell her about me didn’t mean I was ready to let her go.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the little girl.” Your pain is my pain. “You don’t get to freeze me out, Jade.”
I released her wrist just long enough to gather her in my arms. I carried her to the bed and laid her down.
“Too late for you to leave me.” Climbing in next to her, I kissed away the last of her tears, this time ones I’d caused her. “I won’t let you.”
“We’re enemies.” Her glistening eyes shuttered for one brief moment.
“We’re good together.” I linked our fingers together, drawing our hands to my chest. “We’re better when we’re together. You feel it.”
I felt it. The hard knocking beat in my chest. My heart that suddenly felt so attuned to hers.
“Walker . . .” She shook her head, but she grabbed onto me.
Her legs folded around my hips and the hungry way she sought my lips pushed down all the pain. Powerful unstoppable desire trumped everything.
“Tell me you feel it too.” I drove deep inside her with one hard stroke.
Jade arched, crying out into my neck. “No! It’s just sex.”
Her hips rolled with my every entry, guiding me so deep inside . . .
I took her lips with mine, setting my thrusts at a long slow pace. She was stripping me down, taking me apart with every single soft sound she made.
“Why do you have to fight me?” I grunted, scooping her ass in my hands, diving in to the hilt.
Her belly trembled between us.
She grabbed my hair and crushed her mouth to my chest. “Because when I’m fighting you I don’t have to feel you. Want you. I don’t have to be vulnerable.”
Her cries came faster as she clung to me.
“It’s too late. You’re feeling it.” Like nothing I’d ever experienced.
Soft and sweet and warm.
No hiding.
No running.
I pulled out and waited, waited with the tip of my cock barely breaching her. “Look at me when I make love to you, Jade.”
She shook her head tightly, burying her face against my chest.
I eased so slowly inside, the hot pressure sent a backdraft down my spine and my toes curled.
A woman to love.
“Look at me.” Stopping halfway inside, I pulsed inside her velvet vise.
Her head drifted back. Her eyes slid open, the jade so dark it was nearly black, and so full of emotion she couldn’t conceal it.
“Yes.” I drove the rest of the way into her.
“Oh, God, Walker!”
Jade was more than a worthy adversary. She was a woman of worth.
Our lips met as our bodies did, locked tightly together when the most extreme emotions, the most intense sensations collided into one excruciatingly blinding, binding release.
I came back to earth like I was fucking soaring on thermals. Sinking back into the bed, I drew Jade with me. She rested against me, her breath fanning across my chest and her fingertips tracing the Thunderbird tat that spanned my pecs.
“How’s the shoulder?” she murmured.
“Can’t feel a fucking thing, so it’s good.” I lifted her hand and kissed the heart of her palm. “So damn good.”
“We should immobilize it, don’t you think?”
“Shit. First time left shoulder. Stings but it’s okay.” I rubbed her hand against me. “We’re okay.”
“Walker.” Bracing herself above me, Jade swung the long black-and-fuchsia-striped hair over her shoulder. “You realize we’re in the center of the biggest international and Middle Eastern fuck up no one will ever hear about. Getting involved is the last thing we should be doing.”
“Yeah.” I dragged her back down so I could nuzzle into her sleek warmth. “You smell like flowers and gun oil.”
“Walker . . .” She released a breathy sigh. “What about you? Who did you lose?”
A piercing pain lanced into my heart. I shook my head. I couldn’t . . . just couldn’t. Not yet. No one knew. Not really.
Her hands framed my face when my eyes blinkered shut. “Walker?”
I shrugged away from her.
“You and I both know everyone in this business is running from something.” The covers rustled as Jade sat up behind me.
My shoulders slumped. I turned, the words I’d never spoken aloud on the tip of my tongue.
The very second my mouth opened, lights came on all over the place. Low-level LEDs lit along the walls and doorways so the interior of the warehouse resembled an airplane at night.
Jade stared at me.
There was no shrill alarm. No screeching noise. We didn’t need it. Any change in scenery was enough to raise our hackles.
I glanced at the remote controller I’d set next the bed.
The fucking thing started pulsing, flashing with bright colors.
I grabbed the nearest clothes and my pack. “High alert. HIGH ALERT, Jade!”
No doubt about it, the building had been infiltrated.
Chapter Fifteen
Daredevil
“WE’VE BEEN COMPROMISED!” I gathered Jade’s shit, slinging her bag to her after she dressed head-to-toe in black in five seconds flat.
Kicking the glowing control pad beneath the bed, I handled one of my sidearms and holstered the second.
We strafed through the apartment, black shadowy silhouettes on the wall, ghosts of images. Jade lead with her Beretta drawn, me as backup.
After a quick rap of her knuckles on the bedroom door, Jade open
ed the way into Madge’s room.
Our woman of the hour sat at the foot of her bed, her rucksack on her back, fully clothed and completely clear-eyed.
“Moving out,” I hushed.
She nodded.
Jade stood at the door, scanning all around the larger studio area.
Madge came to her feet and stared at me expectantly.
“Women,” I muttered. “Whatever.”
I gave her my spare revolver, which she caught with surprising single-handed ease.
“Necessary kills only.” I cautioned, taking point with my fist raised for them to follow me.
The warning lights blipped off, drowning us in darkness. What I wouldn’t give for a pair of night vision goggles, but we rarely worked with fancy gadgets like that. I figured Jade’s sight adjusted to the depthless blackness as quickly as mine. We moved in silent single file, Jade and me with guns raised and ready. With the electrics killed in the building, the elevator was out.
We stuck to the wall, aiming for the emergency stairs.
Plunged into pitch blackness, I unlocked and eased open the heavy metal door. The blue beams of flashlights shined from within the stairwell. I peered over the railing, spotting two units on the move toward us.
I signaled back to Jade with the numbers headed toward us, and she silently relayed the info to Madge. We could jump them first and take them by surprise or lie in wait.
Either way, the three of us were getting out of this.
Jade followed me into the concrete shaft where we watched the halo glow of flashlights gaining ground.
On my quiet count, we dropped over the railing to the platform below. I didn’t hear a sound as Jade snapped the neck of the man she landed on. She softened his fall to the floor before wheeling around, ready to come to my aid.
No aid was needed.
Unprepared, the man I slammed into pointed his gun at my chest two seconds too late. My KA-BAR cut into his jugular, precise and clean apart from all the blood that pumped out.
I grabbed his tactical flashlight and shined it on him and his partner.
Two dudes in black suits. No idea about true UC.
They were dead ringers for Feebs. A quick search for IDs solidified my theory.
