So he kissed her. Sweet and warm at first, he took her like it was the first time he’d ever put his mouth to hers. But the taste of her was better than a good dose of that med they’d fed him for pain in the medevac. Serenity was addictive and he needed all of her. He kissed her again, this time with one hand to the curve of her spine and the other to her nape. He took a long sweep of the wet cavern of her mouth with his tongue and she answered with the same kind of probe. She was so easy to love.
Lifting her in his arms, he took the few steps to her bed. Big and broad as the bed was, he noted the counterpoint of the fragrance of lavender floating around them. He set her down and crawled over her. “I’ve never made love to anyone like you. You’re always so willing, so giving.”
“You’re sure?” she asked, her voice rough, her eyes questioning.
“Very.” He flicked open the top button of her jacket and his lips followed the curve of her neckline. Her hands flew over him, his throat, his chest. One of her hands drifted lower and covered his zipper. His cock jumped, loving the tenderness of her caress.
He pushed back on his haunches and unbuttoned her coat in a flash. The skirt came next and he slithered it down her legs. God. Her legs, long and slender, cut from the yoga and jogging she did, were prizes. He wrapped his hands around her calves and slid them up her thighs to the v of her plump mound. The lace of her panties he dispensed with in a smooth glide. His mouth watered at her sleek nakedness. Parting her thighs and her heavy lips, he licked her musky flesh with a greed that made him tremble.
She slapped one hand to his shoulder and tilted up her hips in offering. He smiled and opened her wider, finding her little clit and sucking on it until she groaned his name. That’s what he wanted. That’s what made him feel like Paris and like a whole man. Again.
He whipped off his shirt in one stroke and put his feet to the floor to drop his slacks. She reached over to slide her fingers up his naked thighs and cupped his cock. Leading him to her by his very hard member, she leaned over to take him in her mouth.
He moaned, hands on his hips, head thrown backward as she worked him like an expert. He’d forgotten this. How she could put her mouth around him and make the world stop spinning. How she would take all of him between her beautiful plump lips and make him roar with fulfillment. He tensed with the knowledge that she could induce him to lose it all if he didn’t pull way.
But he did. He crawled up between her legs. He’d show her he had patience. Patience he’d lost with his head trauma. Patience, enduring and potent, like he had in Paris. Like he had for years when he’d put her off, telling himself a bullshit line about how he wasn’t meant to love any woman. His life was too chaotic, his profession too dangerous to think of love or even marriage. But she’d been the one constant in his life. The woman he compared all others to.
He cared for her. Even if he’d been led to her this time by his job. He’d show her all she meant to him.
His arms quaking, he hovered over her and kissed her pretty mouth. “You are my sweetheart. You’ve always been.”
Tears appeared in her eyes.
He gave her a luscious kiss, sampling every bit of her scrumptious lips. When he tore away, she cried out. “Not going far. Just here, honey.” He grasped her legs at the knees and kissed the insides of her kneecaps. She giggled and he laughed. He held one leg up in the air and licked her from her toes to the flesh of her inner thigh. And he nipped her.
She gasped.
“Got you. Never fear. Got to taste all of you.” And so he grabbed her other leg and pinching her toes, he licked the luscious length of her other limb. But at her center, he paused to admire how she had opened wide for him. Had she always wanted him so openly, so trustingly? His mind did a couple of clicks. Sure, she had. And he’d been too blind, too self-possessed to see the real her, the fullness of her. With gentle touches, he parted her wet folds and admired how richly pink and creamy she was.
“Sweetheart,” he crooned, inhaling the fragrance of her musk. “You are all mine.” And so he set out to prove it to her, sending his tongue along her frilly length, down one side and up the other. Into another charming depth and over another. With two careful fingers, he claimed the inside of her, sinking in her thick juicy desire for him. His eyes slammed close and opened. Christ, she was so sleek, so tight. She grasped him with her inner walls and he moaned, urgent, mad, to get her so high, so hard, she’d never leave his care. Watching her lovely flesh respond to him made him shiver. He nudged her open with his tongue and there was his slick little prize. Plump and pearly, her clit was the prettiest little nub and it just begged to be eaten. He flicked it with the tip of his tongue and she bucked. He smiled and tapped the tip with one finger. She moaned. He leaned forward, swirled the circumference with his tongue and she whimpered.
He sucked her clit into his mouth and she dug her nails in his shoulder. This was the heaven he’d missed. To rock her up and out of her earth, and take him with her was all he wanted now. Forever. “Please, baby. Come for me.”
She groaned in objection.
“Oh, no. You need this.” He swirled his tongue over her hard nub. “Take it. Do it.”
She arched beneath him and off she went, her hips rocking while he hovered over her and watched her in her flight. Her eyes squeezed closed, her arms thrown over her shoulders, she gripped the iron rungs of her headboard and groaned. He’d never seen a woman lose herself so utterly.
He vowed he’d watch her, give her this over and over again, if she’d have him, till he died.
Pride ripped through him. He’d given her that…and there was so much more of her he had to sample yet, too.
He grinned. His cock jerked, and rightly so, too. That part of him needed his due.
And so he crawled up over her as she drifted back to her earth.
She sank her fingers around his nape and leaned up to seize his lips.
“Taste good?” he asked her with the arch of a brow.
“Oh, yeah.” She rubbed her breasts against his chest.
“I need more.”
“Take all of me.”
He hooked his hands under her knees once more but this time, forced them back. Wide open to him, she lifted her hips in offer. And he smiled, nudging her swollen flesh and darting inside only a fraction of an inch.
She groaned. “Oh, you will drive me nuts.”
His breath rampant, his cock throbbing, he ran the tip of his nose down the length of her own. “I want this perfect so you never forget.”
She pushed her hips forward so that she took more of him inside her tight sheath. “I won’t. Promise.”
He surrendered. Sinking deeply, deeply, to his full length, he opened his mouth, his breath caught. She was hot, solid, safe. And he could not hold back any longer to sway into her and take her, pound her, give her all of himself, seed and all, and cry out when he’d filled her at last.
He dropped on top of her, panting. Conscious he could crush her, he rolled to his side and hauled her close. “Don’t want you far. Give me a minute.”
He tangled his legs with hers, his limp cock nestled in the hollow of her thighs. But as Mike cupped her breast, kneaded it and bent to suckle her hard nipple in his mouth, every cell in his body sprang to electric life.
She moved like a boneless creature against him, her arms enfolding him, her skin smooth, flawless, her hands in his hair, urging him on. “God, you’re fabulous. You make me want and want.”
He laved her nipple, round and round. Hard, rosy flesh that it was, her breast was a gorgeous bit of her that he treasured as much as all the other parts of her. “Let me do the other.”
She rolled to her back, arms out flat to the mattress. “Anything.”
Chuckling, he leaned over and took her other breast with his lips. Then he bit her and she bucked.
She was the most sinuous creature, sculpted as the priceless statues she sold, more lovely than the beauties whose portraits she admired. Her breasts, even as she lay flat on
the mattress, were high and rounded and firm. Her waist trim. Her hips shapely. Her pubic hair a dark brown and waxed in a cute little landing strip.
“You make my mouth water.” He looked her in the eye, his hand at her mound, parting her lips, teasing her, stroking her. She was half-lidded, her face lax with desire. And then he grinned at her. “I can’t get enough.”
She nodded, tightening her thighs around his hand. “Then don’t stop.”
He parted her, played with her with his fingers, nibbled at her clit again, sending her up up up where he could watch her and thrill to her. And when he was able, he joined his body with hers again and took them both to mindless places.
They slept.
The sun slanted ruby red through her translucent blinds when he felt her jiggle the mattress and rise from the bed. Naked, she stretched in artless elegance and turned to consider him. Their gazes locked. She smiled, her eyes clear.
He hoped her heart was untroubled by what they’d done. He wanted to go farther than sex this time. And he wasn’t fixed on what he was offering.
He’d just started with Omega two months ago. Based in Tampa, with job assignments anywhere in the world to execute, he couldn’t count on being in Washington often or for long periods of time. Because of his PTSD, he’d even worked an arrangement with Grey Holden that was based on a kind of ad hoc employment. If Grey thought he could do a job well, he’d give it to Mike. But if Mike thought the task too complex—or if he were feeling squirrely, beset by irrational thoughts or dreams, Mike could refuse or even excuse himself mid-job. What kind of life would that be to offer her?
Here today, gone tomorrow. She knew that was how he had lived. He wasn’t interested in that this time. Not by a long shot. But he needed time to think. Plan.
She held out her hand. “Care for a shower?”
He rolled to his knees, took her hand and pulled her toward him. “Only if you let me wash all your nooks and crannies.”
She arched a brow, stroking his cock and cupping his heavy balls. “What’s good for the goose, Lion…”
He had his hands full of her sweet ass cheeks, while he rubbed his chest against her pebbly nipples. “I’m your gander, baby.”
“Prove it,” she said, her gaze riveted on his.
Okay. He got it. Proof that he was hers meant he had to show her more than just a swell time between the sheets. He pinched her taut butt.
Squealing, she broke away and he chased her into the bathroom. There with the hot water beating on them in her huge shower, he sat on her marble bench, slid her up over his thighs, settled her luscious core over his straining cock and took them both to paradise and back.
She rested limp in his arms for long minutes until the shower turned tepid. In a rush, they both soaped up. He washed her everywhere and shampooed her too. She returned the favor and minutes later as she stood before her full-length bathroom mirror and blew-dry her hair, he kissed her shoulder and whistled his way back into her living room.
While she finished dressing, he called Grey Holden for an update. Sure enough, the perp who’d gone wild at the corner of M and Wisconsin checked out as a disgruntled teenager armed and in need of money. No more, no less.
But Grey had other news. “I did a check on this Vincent Mayhew. Quite a guy. Selling all kinds of artifacts to anyone. No criminal record. Not even a hint of misconduct. Not even a DUI. Until now when Coldwell suspects him of fencing forged Cassatts.”
“Okay. Rebecca told me about his father and grandfather. My question is where would they warehouse stolen Nazi art that they could access it without any law enforcement finding any of it for seven decades?”
“Obscure locations. Maybe they switched every few months or years. Keep police off the scent.”
“I need info on Vincent Mayhew’s personal life. Friends. Love interests. Finances.”
Grey laughed. “We’re on the same wave length, Lyons. Net worth about two point four million. Owns the condo he lives in at the Watergate. Has two servants, both French. In their seventies. Both clean as a whistle. Have worked for him and his family for fifty-five years. All their lives.”
“Anyone else you’ve checked? Becka and I are on tap for a party at Mayhew’s tonight so I’m eager to hear about anyone else you may have discovered.”
“As a matter of fact, dear old Vincent has two pals you need to know about.”
“Names?”
“William Rolinson and Mario Garcia. Rolinson, African-American, forty-one, graduate of Penn State, lives in Dupont Circle, accountant. Been doing Mayhew’s business books and tax filings for six years now. He has other clients, all seem on up-and-up. But he has ties to New Jersey mob bosses. We’re trying to get a look at Mayhew’s tax records but it’s taking us a while. Sorry.”
Mike hated tax dodgers. No way some should get to scam the government while others bled for their country. “No problem. And what about this other one, Garcia?”
“Yep. Garcia is a piece of work. Miami boy, ran with a drug-running gang in his hood until he got religion of sorts and went to Florida State.”
“That’s a leap,” Mike said. “What convinced him he was wasting his life with his homies?”
“Money from Vincent Mayhew’s father.”
“Nice,” Mike said with disdain. “Any ideas why?”
“Athena called a buddy of hers in Miami PD.” Athena Madero was Grey’s partner in Omega. A former member of the police force in Tampa, she had connections and used them to Omega’s benefit. “Her friend suspects that Garcia caught wind of something illegal happening on the Miami docks years ago. Took his knowledge to Mayhew and used it to get in tight.”
“Garcia blackmailed the family?” Mike asked.
“Or he knew something else useful to the Mayhews.”
Mike told him what Becka had related to him about the Mayhew family history. Then he asked, “Do the Mayhews have warehouses in Miami?”
“Two large old buildings. Massive security.”
“Do you have a man in Miami now?”
“We think alike, Lyons,” Grey said with a chuckle. “As we speak, I’ve got my man applying for a vacancy as a guard. We’ll see what gives there. In the meantime, Athena knows a little lady who has a talent for climbing walls.”
Mike laughed. “Whoa, Holden. That I don’t want to know.”
“I copy that, Lyons. I copy that.”
“Text me if you get anything. We’re on our way to a party tonight at Mayhew’s.”
“Search and destroy?”
“Search and collect,” Mike corrected Grey.
“Good. Both of you use the fingerprint proof gloves.”
“Check.”
“And if you’re looking for data to copy—“
“Rebecca will be. What she got before is useless to us.”
“So give her one of our own USBs with our embedded virus. That way, she doesn’t have to copy anything. Plug it in and we’ll download all straight from Mayhew’s computer.”
“Got it.
They said goodbye.
Minutes later, when Becka emerged in a slinky cherry red cocktail dress and snappy high-heeled sandals, he was buttoning his shirt. He licked his lips, the sight of her kicking up his eagerness to get the night over with and take her home. “Pack a bag, honey. You’re coming to my house.”
“Yeah, but—“ She gazed at the dog.
“We’re bringing Fido with us, so don’t worry. I need to give you a few little gadgets. Collect some for myself tonight. Besides, my house is safer. Security is tighter.”
“I like gadgets.” She strolled forward to stroke her hands down his shirt. “And feeling safe with you.”
“Feeling is being,” he said and tipped her head for a solid kiss of reassurance. He wasn’t about to lose her now. “I am your man for this—and for all else. So get a bag. And Fido’s leash.”
“Roger.”
“Roger that.”
Chapter Five
As he drove from N Street to the
Watergate, Becka sat beside him and twiddled her thumbs. Her special sign of nerves. She was thinking. Always thinking.
Mike had to get profiles of Mayhew’s guests. “Tell me about anyone here tonight I should check out.”
“A friend of Vince’s. A historical consultant to a few art dealers here and in New York. He comes to the shop often. More often than any other of Vince’s friends.”
“Name?”
“John Corman. Tall, dark, wears his hair in a ponytail. Very charming. Maybe too charming. Thirty-five-ish. Kind of a Washington walker.”
“A walker? An escort for older, single women going to society parties? I didn’t think that type existed any more.” Mike laughed.
“They do. He’s it. Worked at Christie’s auction house for more than a decade. He also paints.”
“Do you think he’s your forger?”
She rolled a shoulder. “I have wondered. He’s sold a few landscapes but they’re more late Picasso than Monet or Cassatt.”
“Ever met a William Rolinson?”
“Yes. Vince’s accountant. He might be there tonight.”
“Nice guy?” Mike asked.
“Suave enough for D.C. I have no idea how he is as an accountant. You know his name because Grey Holden is on the job?”
“He is. Ever met a guy named Mario Garcia?”
“Oh, yeah.” She shivered, rubbing her bare arms. “Mario thinks he walks on water. Especially with women. Big, brawny, brooding. A Latin lover, you know the type. Good looking but dangerous. Reminds me of a rattler. I think he’s Mayhew’s muscle.”
“He might be.”
“Swell. Just what I needed to hear.”
He reached for her hand. “I can handle him if I have to.”
“You look fit. But are you? Recovered, I mean, to fighting ability?”
“I can’t live in the jungle and eat snakes for a month, but I can still catch one and kill it.”
“All I needed to hear.” She escaped his touch. “Give me some air, Mike.”
“Sure.” But he was not done. “You have to tell me what you plan to do here tonight.”
“Going with the flow. Acting easy. Seeing if I can find his home computer. Access it.” She glanced at him, her gaze running over his duds. “You’ll fascinate the ladies and watch out for the men while I do.”
The Omega Team: The Lion (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 6
