Dangerous
Page 26
She laughed at that, the throaty sound vibrating completely through him. Still, he made good on his proposition by insinuating a hand between their bodies. Taking his thumb and forefinger, he caught up that sensitive bud of her flesh between them and rolled it into a tugging pinch in time to her next slide down his shaft. She jerked hard enough to send water sloshing and her inner walls clamped down on him in her surprise. Liam groaned, feeling his coming climax threatening to boil over. Regardless, he dragged on her clit again until she gasped, then soothed her in quick and slow circles. He kissed her open mouth until they were both moaning and sighing against each other’s tongues.
“Oh, yes,” Devon gasped, her hips jerking in a quicker rhythm over him. Now all Liam could do was hang on for the ride and pray he held on long enough for her. He gripped her so hard he probably left bruises, but he couldn’t help himself as he was lost in her luscious tongue and divine body. Her cries increased, rasping into his mouth as everything about her began to tighten up. It was too much, more than he could handle, and he burst over the edge in wild, gutting release. He heard his grunted shouts echoing off the tiles, felt her riding him for all she was worth, her back snapping into a sudden arch as she followed him in detonation.
When Liam became aware of himself again it was to find his forehead buried against her breastbone and her arms wrapped around his head and shoulders. Then the strangest thought crossed his mind and he laughed aloud before he could check the impulse. She pulled away to look into his eyes with a satiated smile in her eyes.
“What?”
“It’s not important,” he said dismissively.
“It is to me,” she countered.
Liam smiled at that and reached up to cup her face in both hands. “It’s just that, when my parents were alive, they’d have these terrible rows. Or so it seemed. Loud and Irish, more bluster than anything. I once got very upset and I remember my mother comforting me. She said to me, “’Tis not the fighting that matters, darlin’, but what comes after!’” He chuckled along with Devon. “I never understood what that truly meant until just now.”
“It was a good lesson,” she sighed in agreement, hugging him close again with a little shiver.
“Yup. And now it’s time to get out of here. You’re cold.”
“I don’t get cold,” she denied, shivering again as she lay heavily in his arms.
“Yeah, right,” he snickered. Liam anchored her slippery body as best he could and hauled them both out of the water. He impressed himself with the feat, considering he could barely feel his legs after such a devastating orgasm. She aided his efforts by wrapping wet legs around his hips and her arms around his neck. He managed to step onto the bathmat without slipping and breaking both their necks. He grabbed towels and halfheartedly covered her and himself with them as he walked her into the bedroom.
“I think I might keep you a while,” she sighed. “You’re very handy to have around.”
“Thank you,” he chuckled, smacking her bottom lightly, the wet sound echoing loudly. But she hardly budged.
Liam dumped her onto his bed and she went willingly. He wrapped her wet hair and then took his time drying her warmly glowing body. Devon’s sighs and blissful movements began to arouse him all over again as he ran the soft towels over every inch of her skin. Her flawless, unbruised skin. No one who walked in and saw her would know she’d been beaten viciously just under an hour earlier. Liam was going to give himself a passing once over with the towel, but she suddenly came awake and took a fresh towel from him in order to tend to him herself.
He remained standing and she easily came to him to brush over every hard muscle and delightfully furred inch of skin. She stroked him everywhere, slowing her pace so she could enjoy every inch and every discovery. She was aware that he was becoming more and more excited with every passing second. Men made it easy for women to know these things, she thought with a smile as she dried his thrusting penis too. She kneeled before him to run the towel down his legs and she heard him try to cut back a groan as his fingers pushed away the towel around her hair so he could tangle them into the wet strands.
There was something about having a beautiful, highly sexed woman kneeling before him that just sent a man’s brain into sexual overload. Especially when he knew the highly sexed wench was well aware of her effect on him. Had she been ignorant, she wouldn’t have nuzzled her face against his rigid member and subsequently licked him. Not once, but several times.
“Forget it!” he growled suddenly as he jerked her to her feet and threw her back onto the bed. “Before you start in on me again, woman, you are going to have at least three orgasms. Got it?”
She got it. At least four times before he let her come anywhere near him to return the favor.
It wasn’t long after that she crashed utterly and completely. The spikes and falls of adrenaline finally caught up with her, allowing him to extricate himself from her without hands of protest trying to pull him back. The moment he had clothes on his back he was in contact with his people. In the morning the guard on Devon’s home would be doubled, though perhaps not so obviously to her. In the wings, he was mobilizing a few other things.
Devon’s war with the Morphates had just grown to a new level. They’d become so bold as to stroll into her property. How they had gotten past his people was an issue to be dealt with and examined later. Otherwise, there was nothing more he could do until daylight, when he could interview her a bit more thoroughly about her attack. The devil would be in the details, he knew. And the best way for him to craft a force at her right hand would be to understand the tactics and nature of the beasts they were dealing with.
For a couple of days further into the week they fell into a strangely quiet sort of routine as Liam trained his team to use Devon’s new weapons. Every night Devon would fall asleep exhausted in the arms of her human lover, always more and more aware that Liam satisfied her in ways she had never experienced before. In the mornings she would be awakened by a soft kiss and whisper before he got out of bed to begin his workday. Then he would roll her over and tuck her in warmly so she could fall back to sleep. The routine developed a familiarity that brought her the first comfort and security she had felt since it became clear to her that Ambrose Clan was gunning for her.
She would spend the day at work, just as she always had; only now she looked forward to closing the day’s business. She knew that soon Liam would supervise the shift changes and then come spend the evening with her before securing the house for the night. At sunset every day she would open the drapes to her office and watch the dogs, or the ‘pups,’ as Liam called them, exercising on the south lawn with their trainers. Liam would always be there, within sight, and he would always look up and see her there watching for him.
While Devon was feeling comforted by this routine, Liam was unsettled. He was disturbed by how easily he was falling into a pattern that bordered on domestication, he who had thrived on the challenges every day brought him. He ought to be more resistant to it, but he was happily panting after Devon like a well-trained puppy. Every smile, every kiss became a reward. His main crew had slowly but surely become aware that something was going on between the boss and the client. It had somehow become a quietly accepted fact. He’d been a little obvious about it, he supposed. Also, he was working a bit out of character. Normally he’d have sent his original insertion team on to secure her other offices, starting with the first one on her travel agenda. But this time, he’d refused to send any of his key people to secure the London office, keeping them close for obvious reasons. Usually he sent his own people because they were the ones he trusted best to get the job done, but instead he kept the entire primary team on Devon, disliking the idea of anyone else being responsible for her. Still, they had accepted his decision as if he did it the same way every time. Besides, her jet needed securing for the upcoming trip to London. Or that was the immediate excuse he had used to try to explain his reluctance to part with Kellen, Inez, and the others.
Yet, how could he correct the problem when he was the most comfortable of them all? He hadn’t slept in his own bed almost since the night he’d arrived there. Even the realization made him smile when he shouldn’t be at all happy about his own deportment. On the plus side, Devon hadn’t left the estate for any more ‘business meetings,’ so he hadn’t had to deal with that danger.
Liam watched her office window.
The sun was setting earlier every day, but like clockwork, at the point where the last true moments of full daylight still lingered, she pulled open the drapes. Still, he smiled when he saw her appear as usual. He ought to discourage anything that smacked of routine, but he’d come to enjoy seeing her like this every day just as he was winding up with one shift and about to debrief another. Autumn was digging in. The trees around them would grow bare and make it ever harder for a would-be assassin to sneak up on the property. A normal assassin, in any event. Devon’s description of her attacker had been notification of a game changer. He’d been brooding for days on how to see an assailant that could blend into its background. Were there more like her? Devon didn’t think it was likely. She explained a little more about the Morphate generations, spinning a wild card into this whole mess that he frankly could have done without.
He could see she was wearing a rather conservative outfit of a business skirt and matching cream-colored blouse. Conservative by her standards, at least. It was a mid-thigh miniskirt, showing off her incredible legs, and with the sunlight hitting her just right, the silk blouse showed the shadows of her skin color and the fact that she never wore a bra. He had a running fantasy involving that window, a whole lot fewer men and animals around, and a striptease under glass, so to speak. She was already a tease, always looking so damned desirable without trying, and then each night when she saw him at last, he would see a change ripple through her. Then she would be trying, and it would show. Everything about her body would tune toward him, tempting him until he checked his damned watch to find out how long before he could secure the shift change and get up to her.
And tonight was no different. Her hands slid over her hips as she zeroed in on him. His body was becoming too readily trained to respond to her, he thought with a wince as it began to do just that. Pulse and breath, heat and rushing blood, all of which were out of his control. He had never known such lust in his entire life. It was almost what he would describe as all-consuming. He found nothing tiring, mundane, or routine about sex with Devon. Quite the opposite. She knew tricks he’d never heard of to stimulate a man. Others he’d heard of, but had never found anyone uninhibited enough to actually use them. Devon had no shame and no inhibitions. If there was one thing he could call predictable about her, it was that she would never complain about his being too rough, too big, or too anything. The more he was exposed to the bestial Morphate inside of her, the more he was discovering his wild side. He hadn’t realized it before, but when the partner was as willing and enthusiastic as Devon was, all sorts of things began to come to mind.
Not that her mind wasn’t working overtime as well, because he knew it was. Last night he’d had a fast, hard and primal lesson in just how little control he had over his own body, should she decide to take command. Liam smiled wolfishly when he recalled giving the lesson back to her rather handily.
Now, he watched her lay her palm against the glass, as though she wished she could reach out to him. He’d noticed that she was looking tired. Between work, playing most of the night, and the incessant thinking and fretting she was doing, he shouldn’t be surprised. He didn’t need as much sleep as most people, but it was beginning to wear on him too. He was a human trying to keep up with a Morphate’s stamina and wildness. Of course it was going to wear on him. But he’d be damned if he was going to roll over and cry ‘uncle.’
And though she glowed with her usual energy, Liam could tell something was not right with Devon. What he ought to do was leave her alone for a night. He could sleep in his own room for a change, give her peace and rest.
“You’re weak, Nash,” he muttered aloud when he realized that he wasn’t likely to follow his own advice. How could he? He looked forward to seeing her all day long, to touching her and hearing her voice.
“Talking to yourself again, bro?” Colin asked, giving him a smirk before following his gaze up to the window. “Ah, the lovely walking distraction. You know, everyone else might be afraid to point out the obvious to you, but there’s a reason why we don’t get attached to our principals, Liam. I seem to recall you beating those reasons into me at every opportunity.”
“I am not going to discuss this,” Liam said shortly, turning his attention away from Devon and shocked to find just how difficult it was. He didn’t need Colin to tell him he was in trouble. He knew it every moment of every day.
“I kind of think you have to,” Colin pressed. “You’re going to get killed, Liam, if you don’t get your whole head back in this game you’re plotting.”
“And just what do you think I’m plotting?” he asked his brother sharply. “I’m doing what I was hired to do. No more, no less.”
“Now that’s a big fat pile of bullshit if I ever heard one,” Colin snapped off. “I’ve been working under you for enough years to know you don’t call up our reserves for a single job. You’re arming us with these fancy new weapons of hers slowly but surely. You haven’t hired any of us for our stupidity. Although the lot of them are a bunch of cowards for making me be the one to come and confront you like this. Guess they figure you are less likely to fire your own flesh and blood. I know differently, but I figure I better risk it or risk losing my brother altogether. Feel like clearing the air for some of us?”
Liam looked up over Colin’s shoulder and saw all the members of both shifts lingering a short distance away instead of moving into their positions as they ought to be. He supposed this was their idea of an intervention. He couldn’t be mad about it. They were only watching out for him. They understood the dangers in what he was doing, even if he couldn’t force himself to listen to them.
“What would you have me do, Colin? Leave her out here exposed? Let her get killed by the next assassin to come through?” Not that they’d been much help on this last attempt. He had gone back through the video and searched for the point of entry the intruder had taken. Only watching extremely closely had he been able to see her; her progress was nothing more than a ripple along the walls as she seamlessly blended with her environment. It had prompted him to add more sensitive heat vision to the cameras. She’d been cool-blooded, whoever she was. She’d barely shown up on their previous equipment. But Roni had created something much more sensitive and though it hadn’t been through full test trials yet, he’d seen no other option than to test it live in the field. He wouldn’t let another one of those reptilian-based Morphates get past him again.
That would be unacceptable.
Liam looked back up to the window, seeing her there, standing with such beautiful perfection like an impeccably dressed mannequin. Only she could never be so cold and lifeless. Not even if she tried. And he understood there w
ere very few things she tried and failed at. The way she was standing, her legs braced but curving up out of the heels she wore, the straight strength of her shoulders but the way her back curved at the lower spine so her backside was so distinctly rounded. So temptingly exaggerated. So begging for his hands on that flawless ass…
Perhaps an intervention wasn’t such a far-fetched idea, Liam thought with a grim little smile. He was afraid he was quite addicted to her. But did it follow that the addiction was something harmful and dangerous for him to be indulging in? Well, it certainly wasn’t safe, he admitted gravely to himself.
“I don’t want you to leave her unprotected. However, I think you need to hand over your command.” Liam’s attention snapped back to his brother ferociously, his anger at the thought quick and hot. Leave her safety to someone else? Absolutely not. But Colin was anticipating that reaction from him and so had a calming hand raised between them. “Jackson White Feather. He’s wrapped up his present job, or close enough to it that he could make himself free for this. You trust him, don’t you?”
Of course he did. Otherwise Liam wouldn’t have entrusted him to manage his own security details. But …
“I’m not leaving. Get used to the idea.” He snapped it out like the badass drill instructor he had once been for the Secret Service and the Federated Special Forces. It was a part of himself he only tapped into when he wanted to frighten others into submission.
“I didn’t say leave. I said have Jackson take over the teams. Do I look stupid to you? I know you’re too much of a control freak to put her safety entirely into the hands of someone else. Plus, I kinda think you’re sweet on her,” Colin dared to tease him. He held up a hand again to stay the threatening growl that bubbled up out of his brother. “I’m saying you can focus on being one-on-one with her while Jackson takes over the big picture. You know he’ll take any and all input you want to add to the detail work. But you said yourself you were pissed off that you were downstairs closing windows when she needed you to be by her side. She needs a one on one. That much is very clear. Make yourself a one on one. Let’s keep you right on top of her … officially as well as … well, far be it from me to assume what you two like to do position-wise.”