The Bane Affair

by Alison Kent

  Anything two consensual adults find pleasurable, she wanted to say. Instead, she chewed at her lip for a moment be­fore giving him an answer. "Honesty." She moved her hands to his chest and pushed back, looking up at him but seeing no more than the shadows of his face. "Answers."

  "To what questions?"

  "Anything I ask you."

  "That's right. A mutual give and take."

  "I have nothing to hide."

  He laughed at that, but she sensed uneasiness more than humor. "So you keep telling me."

  "Ask me anything." She reached for her squeeze bottle of shower gel, trailed a line across his collarbone, and went to work with her sponge. "Anything you want to know."

  He remained silent, his body tensing as she worked the lather in ever widening circles, over his pecs, his shoulders, down to the flat of his abs. When his penis bobbed, the swollen head tickling her hipbone, she grinned. And then she washed him, taking his breath away when she enclosed his shaft in the glove of her joined hands.

  He sucked in air sharply. "You keep that up, I won't be ask­ing you anything but to bend over."

  She stroked him once, twice. "That doesn't sound so bad, you know."

  He gave a strangled laugh, raised his arms, and laced his hands atop his head. "You think I'm kidding."

  "Not at all," she said, finding the sponge she'd tucked be­tween her thighs and scrubbing it up over his arms. "Though I do hope you brought condoms."

  "Plural?"

  She found herself smiling. "Did I mention that a shower al­ways seems to wake me up?"

  "Apparently," he responded, groaning when she dropped to her knees and took her sponge to his legs. As hard as it was to resist, she avoided wrapping her mouth around his begging cock. Instead, she ordered, "Turn around."

  He did, allowing her to make her way north again, even spreading his legs when she reached her soapy hands between. She fondled his balls as she bathed them, loving the hard ridge of flesh that had risen behind. Loving the way touching him brought her own body to life.

  The response was sexual, yes, but it was more about know­ing that she pleased him, that he enjoyed her touch. That he had the patience, the control to stand still while she played— even when she took her playtime higher, sliding the soapy length of an index finger upward between his cheeks. He shud­dered, and she got to her feet, her own breathing harder than his.

  She washed his back and his shoulders; he felt amazing be­neath her hands, taut and fit and so beautifully smooth she wanted to touch him forever. Instead, she reached for the sham­poo, squirted a circle into her palm, and scrubbed her hands over his short-cropped hair.

  It tickled her fingers and palms, much as his beard had tick­led her chin when they kissed. Had tickled her thighs on the balcony when he'd pleasured her with his mouth. Oh, but she wanted him.

  Holding both of his elbows, she stepped back into the water, pulling him with her to rinse. Once under the spray, he turned to face her, his shadowed form advancing, looming, his arms rising, head lowering, breath blowing like a bellows as he struggled for control.

  She didn't want him controlled. She wanted him wild and untamed. She wanted him to let himself go. She wanted him in ways she'd never before wanted any man.

  And she wanted him now.

  Fourteen

  He didn't take her until they were in bed.

  He'd been thinking about her all day. Hearing her voice on the tapes he'd listened to, wishing perversely that he could have known her in another time and place. Though they'd eas­ily guessed the truth, he hadn't wanted Tripp or K.J. aware of the fact that he'd slept with her, because what he'd been feel­ing while listening to her talk wasn't about the sex.

  It was about a fantasy he hadn't entertained for seven years. A woman wanting to be with him, wanting nothing from him, wanting only the pleasure they made together, the chance that pleasure might grow into more, into something worth fighting for, worth living for.

  And that's why he didn't take her until they were in bed.

  That and the reality that the shower was barely larger than a cage. Hell, the entire bathroom was barely larger than a cage. The fact that he'd been able to breathe, that he hadn't panicked and run, that he'd been able to get it up at all in such close quarters, said more about her effect on him than he'd had time to process.

  The fact that he hadn't even realized it until he was out of his clothes scared him half to death.

  She lay on her back in the center of the mattress. The pil­lows had long since been tossed to the floor, the top sheet and comforter, too. He liked the simplicity. Nothing but the two of them, their bodies warmed by the shared heat of skin-on-skin contact. No tangled snarl of limbs and bedclothes. No cush­ions to soften their joining.

  Palms flat on either side of her head, he loomed above her, rotating his hips and pressing upward, grinding hard against her with the base of his shaft. She whimpered, her head tossing right then left, her arms thrown out to the side, her fingers clutching handfuls of sheet for purchase.

  She was so gorgeous, so uninhibited, caught up in sexual abandon. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He was too close, wasn't ready, had to stop. His cock throbbed, his balls ached, and he sat back on his heels to center himself.

  The room was dark. Light from the street lamps shone through her sheer curtains, casting the room in an eerie blue-green glow. It wasn't much, but enough so that he could see her. Her body, which glowed with perspiration. Her face, which glowed with bliss. Her sex, which glowed with her slick musky juices that smoothed the way for his cock. She wanted him. And he groaned at the truth of how much.

  She raised up on her elbows and smiled. "You okay?"

  Her voice was breathless, the question strangled. She was doing better than he was; he wasn't even sure he could talk. He nodded, then braced his hands on her knees and forced out a harsh, "Yeah. Maybe."

  She laughed. A sexy guttural sound that turned him to putty. "We can take a break, you know."

  "I am taking a break."

  Shifting her weight to one elbow, she slipped her free hand down into the heat where their bodies were joined, sliding the vee of two spread fingers around the base of his cock. "I don't want to wear you out."

  The only thing here being worn out was his self-control, but damn if he was going to come before he was ready. He let her play, grinding his jaw until he swore he felt a molar crack, and deciding then to get even. His slid his palms from her knees over the soft skin of her thighs to her center, stopping only when he could part the lips of her pussy with his thumbs. Exposing her, spreading her wide, rubbing the skin stretched taut at the entrance to her sex where he filled her.

  She moaned, fell back on the bed, and arched her hips until the head of his cock hit her womb. He throbbed, pulsed; his balls tightened and drew up into his body. He wanted to come, ached to come, needed to come. But he continued to play, strok­ing the soft outer skin she'd shaved bare then back through her slick inner folds.

  He loved touching her, the feel of her flesh beneath his fin­gers, loved hearing the tiny sounds that she made. She amazed him, her unbridled response, and he rubbed upward in circles, working the hard knot of her clit between the press of his thumbs. She cried out, thrust her hips upward.

  It was then that he let her go, guilt slicing through his gut like a razor. He owed her. For all the ways he would soon be destroying her life, he owed her now. He pulled out, knelt be­tween her legs and, before she got out more than a whimper, settled his mouth over the mound of her sex, sucking her be­tween his lips lightly, then with more force, easing two fingers into her gorgeous cunt, fingering her, stroking her.

  She was so hot and so tight and so wet. She smelled like the sea, tasted salty and warm and alive, and like he'd known her taste forever. He ate her, he fucked her, he drove her hard and fast. She came then, convulsing around his fingers, tearing the sheet from the bed, sobbing as she thrashed side to side.

  He stayed with her, ignoring the hammering puls
e in his ears as he tendered his touch, bringing her down slowly from her orgasm's high. She was all that mattered. Her completion, giving her what she wanted here and now because this was real, this moment, this joining. Nothing about their being here together was a lie, he realized, struck hard by the reality of what he was feeling in the mangled knots of his gut.

  "Why did you do that?" she finally whispered, strands of hair clinging to her damp forehead. "Why didn't you stay with me? I love to feel you come."

  He crawled up over her, pushed himself inside; she wrapped her legs around his hips, her heels pulling him deep. "I'm with you now." She gripped him. Her muscles tightened around his shaft until he wanted to die. His balls ached fiercely, yet he didn't move except to lower his weight to his elbows and push her hair from her face.

  "Do you know how beautiful you are?"

  "Right now?" She smiled, shook her head. "I don't think so."

  Again with the self-deprecation. Who in the hell had con­vinced her that she had to be neat and orderly and perfectly put together all of the time? "If I didn't have to move the both of us, I'd smack you on the ass for that."

  She thrust her hips upward; he sucked in a breath and held it. "You have a thing for my ass, did you know that?"

  He pulled back slowly, eased back in until she shuddered. "No. I have a thing for you."

  "And here I thought it was all about the body parts," she squeaked out when he shifted up onto his knees and crushed their lower bodies together.

  With Peter Deacon, it would've been. And Christian was beginning to chafe beneath the weight of this masquerade. "I like your body parts a lot. But you're a lot more than tits and ass and a pair of long legs."

  "True." She moved her hands to his shoulders, massaged his muscles there. "But this is all you know of me."

  He had to be careful here. He knew so much more, very lit­tle of it that he'd learned from her. "It's a good place to start, don't you think?"

  "I do think, though a lot of people would say we got it backwards. Intimacy before friendship."

  "Do you agree?"

  "No. Not really. It's just that starting here"—she rotated her hips, pushed up to grip him, to pull him down with her as she pressed her spine to the bed—"tends to get me in trouble."

  Christ almighty, but he'd never seen this kind of trouble be­fore. He bit back a curse, his neck aching with the strain of his reach for control, and finally managed to ask, "You start here a lot, do you?"

  The more intimate details of her love life had never been part of his investigation. He hadn't needed or wanted to know about the men she'd been with. It was bad enough to have her think he was Peter Deacon, to not be able to tell her about Christian Bane.

  And the fact that he wanted to, that he desperately wanted to, was proof positive insanity was rapidly closing in.

  "I wouldn't say a lot." She shuddered at the shift in his hips. "It's just that I love intimacy. I love sex. It's when I feel closest to a man. It's probably the time I feel closest to my­self."

  He was crazy, mad. Insane in ways he'd never before been. Not even . . . then. He refused to think about then, to allow that time in the jungle with Malena to invade the present. That time meant pain and betrayal. Yet now he was the betrayer, Natasha the betrayed. God, what was he doing here?

  He couldn't allow her to feel close to him. He needed dis­tance, to keep his head straight, to keep her from getting hurt. But it was too late. There was no distance between them. Not physically. Not emotionally. They had both reached that place of vulnerability from which there was no turning back.

  He pulled out, pushed in, slowly, rhythmically setting up a pace that seemed so right, so perfect, he knew this was it. He wasn't going to stop. He couldn't stop. He wanted her and needed her in ways as vital as they were dangerous.

  His speed increased, as did the force of his thrusts and the intensity of Natasha's response. She drew her knees to her chest, held her ankles to her sides, giving him access to what­ever he wanted to take. He pumped harder, struck by the strength of her trust, her willingness to share her body while finding her pleasure in his.

  "God, I could fall in love with you so easily."

  She hadn't meant to say it; he knew that. He could tell that she'd spoken to herself more than to him. It didn't matter. He didn't want to hear the words. Couldn't hear the words. They were Malena's words, the words of his betrayal. And, like the flip of a switch, they spurred him to seek revenge. He reared back, held her ankles, moved her feet to his shoulders before driving himself home.

  She cried out, and he listened, but she didn't tell him to stop. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to stop. He thrust into her, hammered her, used her. This wasn't about love. It was re­venge and atonement, penance and duplicity—all the things he'd kept bottled up for so long.

  When he came, he swore he was being ripped in half, that he was pouring out blood and guts along with his semen. What should have been pleasure was pain, a fierce ache that burned from belly to balls. And then Natasha came again, cry­ing out, and he continued to pound her, his mind and his body no longer working in tandem, his soul torn to shreds.

  Eventually he finished, so drained he collapsed to the bed at her side. He lay there without speaking, without moving, lis­tening to her suck in a sharp breath and groan as she got to her feet. She showered again, no doubt washing away the very idea that she'd allowed him to ever touch her while bathing the skin he'd abused.

  And then he felt it come over him, exhaustion that wiped all cognizance from his mind, stealing his awareness of his sur­roundings, robbing him of conscious thought. It was the ex­haustion he'd learned to welcome, to embrace, to give himself up to instead of giving into the long torturous months of pain. He had no idea if Natasha planned to return to bed and order him out; if so, she'd have to shovel his ass to the floor.

  He knew only the bliss of sleep.

  "How did you come to live with Dr. Bow?" Christian asked, dodging Natasha as she exited the kitchen, cup of coffee in hand, and headed back toward the bedroom.

  She'd slipped out of bed twenty minutes before. Lying still, he'd listened as she'd made her way barefoot across the hard­wood floor to the bathroom, opening one eye only when she tiptoed past him again on her way to the living room.

  Once he heard the hiss and steam of the coffeemaker, he'd rolled up to sit on the side of the bed and grabbed his pants from the chair beside it, buttoning and zipping and slipping into his shirt before leaving the room.

  He'd never been a man to use a woman. Not for sex. Not for getting what he wanted. Not for anything. Ever. Period. Peter Deacon, on the other hand, wouldn't think about it twice. The bastard deserved an eternity of rotting in hell—for Natasha, yeah. But for Christian, as well.

  He was tired of living in the other man's skin, tired of living a lie bigger than any Malena had ever perpetrated during those weeks before literally selling his crew up the river.

  He'd been working in Thailand a year when he'd met her. He'd been assigned to a military detail guarding a Doctors Without Borders humanitarian team. The relief workers had been dodging bullets and malaria to bring medical aid to im­poverished villagers caught between rival warlords in a guerilla-warfare zone. Malena had been the liaison between the locals and the doctors who arrived in the villages looking much like guerillas themselves, armed to the teeth in camouflage gear.

  It was only later, maybe the fourth trip that year up the Mae Kok river, that he learned of her true affiliation with Spectra IT. He'd learned it while he and two of his men stood at gunpoint, while three others from their squad bled out onto the ground, their throats slashed by village elders under the di­rection of the man who'd been Deacon's predecessor.

  Malena hadn't been assigned to liaise by the Thai govern­ment at all. She hadn't fallen in love with him at all. She hadn't needed him at all, meant any of the promises she'd made when they'd slept together on the hard-packed ground and counted the stars in the sky. She'd simply been playing a
part, using him as a means to an end, the same way he was using Natasha now—only not.

  Because he wasn't getting her hopes up about the future, painting pictures of the life they'd live together once their tour of duty was complete. And he wasn't leaving her to stand in a pool of blood shed by her closest friends, a fate he'd wished for months that he'd suffered instead of being tossed into a dung heap and forgotten.

  "It was after my father died," she said when she finally re­turned. "The month before graduation." She set her coffee on the circular table in the small dining area, dropped a stack of clothing into a chair, gave him a raised brow. "But having in­vestigated me so thoroughly, surely you knew that."

  He did, but he liked hearing it firsthand, listening for the nuances of voice, tuning in to the feelings behind the facts. "Only that your father was deceased, and that your degree is in economics."

  She shook out a pair of folded khakis and tugged them on beneath her robe. He swore it was one of the sexiest things he'd ever seen, her dressing without revealing but the barest amount of leg. "Fifty bucks says you know more than that."

  He sipped his coffee, watched her hook her bra around her waist and pull the straps over her shoulders, never showing a bit of skin but the strip above her waistband until her bra was in place. Only then did she shrug out of her robe, tug her slip­like nightgown over her head, and pull on a high-necked, long-sleeved dark brown sweater that hid everything even while hiding nothing.

  Fifty bucks, hell. He'd pay ten times that right now to bury his face between her breasts. He took a sip of coffee before he answered. "Watching you dress is worth far more than that."

  She rolled her eyes. "That's only because you're a perv."

  Right now, he wasn't sure he could argue. "I'm only a man, Natasha."

  "Same thing," she said, snorting playfully and grabbing up her socks and boots that looked like brown suede high-tops from the chair before sitting. "Don't forget, Mr. Know-It-All, that I grew up in a house full of your kind."