“Ok,” she nodded. “You’re right, I… I need to start thinking of him as the enemy, don’t I?”
“He’s sure not as great as you fucking think,” Brodie grumbled.
It wouldn’t be easy for her to switch her thinking because Grant had been her boss for so long. They had spent late nights together, sat in long meetings together, brainstormed, problem-solved. Now that part of her life was over and she had to realize that Grant wasn’t the unthreatening, easy-going CEO she believed him to be.
Except she was only here because she was connected to him, because she had access. If she couldn’t use that access then Brodie would have no further use for her.
“But Grant knows where the device is and we want to know,” she said. “I don’t want to get hurt, but I have to be able to help you.”
“Damn,” Brodie mumbled then righted himself to look at Art. “Maybe we should just lock her in one of the guest rooms. It’s a shame we don’t have Zave’s custom built suite.”
Horrified to hear that they knew a person who had a custom suite obviously designed to imprison people, she wasn’t going to let her aversion to the suggestion of being locked up go unregistered. “You’re not locking me in anywhere,” she said, sitting up straight. “Why does your friend Zave have a custom built suite?”
“To lock up women,” Brodie said as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
Drawing her eyes from him, Zara chose not to ask anymore questions when she wasn’t sure she could handle further revelations. “My suggestion makes sense,” she said. “I’m not going to tell Grant that we want to know. I can be… discreet. I know about this product and I know that Sutcliffe wants to meet him at midnight tomorrow, right? So I’ll just ask leading questions. I’m here, with you, in a safe place, no one can hurt me here.”
Brodie didn’t seem to be moved by the confidence she had in her powers of manipulation. “The last time you asked Grant about the device, he threatened you.”
Grant’s threat had shocked her at the time too. Despite the revelations about her boss’ character, she still couldn’t envision him actually putting his hands on her in anger. “He would never hurt me. I have worked with him for five years and he’s always been kind to me,” she said, sliding her hands onto Brodie’s sides. “He has a soft spot for me.”
Still not swayed, his brows stirred a fraction lower. “It’s not his soft spot that concerns me. It’s any hard ones he might be packing.”
He probably meant guns, but that wasn’t what Art heard. “Hard ones or hard ons?” Art asked, wearing a half smile. He folded his arms as his hip hit the counter. She’d wager that the manor’s few guests had been male, the “boys club” atmosphere was thick and Art’s jeering was probably just typical teasing. “You’ve seen the way Grant looks at her.”
Brodie’s lack of patience for his uncle’s teasing was very telling. Clenching his jaw, he wouldn’t even look at Art when he answered him. “Yes, I have and I told you not to talk about that again.”
“You’re both crazy, he’s my boss,” she said, coiling her legs around Brodie’s.
“I know you’re a small town girl, Zara, but you’re not that naive,” Art said. “You were hired at an executive level without previous experience in the company. You flew through the ranks quicker than anyone else has. Grant has given you almost unrestricted access to the systems. It’s called grooming.”
Forcing herself not to gape, Zara searched their features for a sign they were teasing her because she couldn’t believe Art’s claim to be true. “He’s not grooming me,” she said, but Brodie didn’t jump to her defense. “He doesn’t want to sleep with me.”
Though his expression didn’t betray much, Brodie seemed to peer deeper into her and Art almost appeared to feel sorry for her, except he hid it behind a veil of amusement. “I think his admiration for your morals might have turned his attraction to you into something deeper.”
“Which is why we’re never gonna talk about that again,” Brodie said to his uncle with a tone of finality, like a parent putting a full stop at the end of an argument with an insolent child.
Grant was nice to her, sweet sometimes, but he had never been forward. He had never harassed her or made her feel uncomfortable in any way. Staring at Brodie’s chest, she tried to remember any time she’d got an inclination that Grant might feel something more than professional toward her. But she couldn’t, then again, she hadn’t thought him the type to consort with terrorists either. It turned out that she didn’t know Grant as well as she thought.
Languishing in her ponderings, Zara almost forgot that she was in company. “I wonder what he’ll do when he finds out I’ve had sex with his brother,” she murmured without making a conscious decision to speak.
“He won’t be cracking out the champagne, put it that way,” Art said, not attempting to hide his laughter. “Take the girl to your room, kid,” Art said, hitting his nephew’s arm before he sauntered toward the door. “I’ll buzz you when Tuck gets in.”
Art left the room just as another thought struck Zara, one that made her perk up and make eye contact with her lover. “That wasn’t what this was, was it?” she asked, nudging Brodie’s chest. “Some kind of one-upmanship? Like a sibling rivalry?”
Now he lost his patience with her though he seemed to check himself before opening his mouth. “You keep trying to find deeper meaning in us having sex,” he said. Grabbing her neck, he tipped her head back and brought his nose down to meet hers. “Here it is: you’re hot as fucking hell and I’m gonna keep riding you until you tell me to stop. Because fucking you is the only thing I’ve ever done in my life that doesn’t feel amoral.”
Coming from him that was high praise, her heart bounced against her ribs in jubilation. She could tell that wasn’t something he confessed lightly. “What if I don’t tell you to stop?” she asked, tipping her chin to catch his mouth in a quick kiss.
“Then I guess you’ll be moving in, baby,” he said and stole his own kiss, which as always didn’t end in a hurry.
THIRTEEN
Brodie linked their fingers and pulled her off the kitchen counter. Zara reached for her purse when he began to drag her toward the exit, but she didn’t manage to snag it because he was moving at quite a pace.
Leading her through passages, he opened a door and ran up two flights of stairs without letting her go. When they got to the top, he opened another grand door and tugged her into a long hallway. Switching their course, he guided her through another door and then swung a left into a narrow corridor with only one door at the end.
Glancing back at their wake, she kept advancing headlong in the direction Brodie towed her in. “I hope there’s not a fire,” she said, knowing she’d be lucky to find a way out let alone the kitchen.
He stopped at the end of the corridor and pressed the print of his thumb into the center of a regal doorknob, which had the same fingerprint recognition pad on it that she’d seen in other parts of the building.
“If there’s a fire, we go out the window,” he said, before opening the door and drawing her forward to let her enter first.
The huge wooden framed bed was situated in front of a recessed double window. There were a couple of doors to the left and a seating area to the right, where there was an entertainment center done in the same finish as the bed.
She was about to turn and compliment him on his dark, masculine decor when the daunting snick of a heavy lock sliding into place made her comfort disperse into dread. When she whirled around, Brodie was within breathing distance, so close to her that the wall of his chest blocked her view.
“I said you were naughty,” he said. Scooping a hand under her hair, he twined his fingers in her locks and pulled her head back at an angle so harsh that it made her neck ache. “I was right… You disobeyed me.”
“Yeah, and look how great that worked out for you,” she said, matching his snarl.
“You made a big mistake coming here.” With a wide stance, he kep
t her legs between his and walked her backwards in the direction of the bed. He offered her no help when she lost her footing, so Zara had to grab on to him to keep herself semi-upright. “Everything in this house belongs to me, and now that includes you,” he sneered. “No one will look for you here. Haven’t you heard? The world thinks I’m dead and this place abandoned. This is the end of the world for you, baby.”
Something as solid and rotund as a log hit the dip of her spine and she exhaled her trepidation when she groped behind her and found she was pressed into the frame at the foot of his bed. There was no way to get away from this man, no way out of the room. She was his prisoner. Instead of being terrified, a quake of excitement tremored through her.
Brodie let go of her hair and began to unbutton her shirt. She clung to the timber at her back and held her breath, not uttering a word when he dragged her shirt out of her skirt and tore open the last two buttons to bare her torso.
She boosted herself up using the bed as a support and encouraged him on by opening her mouth on his jaw to rasp her teeth on his stubble. She wasn’t afraid of him. She wanted to provoke him. To unleash the truth of his darkness that he tried so hard to hide. But before her tongue could meet his skin, he grabbed her face and urged her away.
He scowled, aiming his hostility toward her mouth. “You’re my plaything now. My house means my rules.”
Shoving her jacket and her shirt down her arms, he twisted her elbows to yank the apparel off and cast it aside. Unsatisfied with what he’d revealed, he ripped the fabric strip connecting her bra cups to expose her breasts.
He bent his knees to collect up her half-naked body and closed his mouth on one breast while perching her on the frame of his bed. Hooking her feet on the plank that supported the mattress, she opened her legs around him to arch herself into his imploring mouth. He sucked and licked one breast, and took the other in his palm to fondle it. Then, sucking his mouth free of her bosom for long enough to lick his fingertips, he swirled and circled her nipples between them, alternating his fingers and his mouth, until the cramp in her belly made her hiss.
Massaging her nipples with the pads of his thumbs, he kissed the corner of her mouth. “Oh, she’s pretty,” he said with perverse pleasure. “Knows just what that hot body can get her.”
Her constricted lungs barely allowed words to seep from the threshold of her mouth. “There’s only one thing I want,” she ground the words out through her gritted teeth.
Zara combed her fingers into his hair as he moved south to kiss her chest again. When he snagged her nipple in his teeth, she coiled her digits tight against his scalp.
Pulling the taut peak in his mouth with him as he retreated, he only released it when it would come no further. “You think you’ll find it here?” he asked.
Sliding her hands through his tresses, to his jaw and up to his face, she compelled his head up, away from its task, so that she could look him in the eye. “I already have,” she said and wrapped her legs around him.
As her ankles locked, he reached around to grab them and wrench them apart. Using his hold on her limbs, he yanked her forward, forcing her to stand. One of his strong hands drove itself beneath her waistband and sent her skirt fluttering to the floor, before he stepped back to get a better view. Left in only her panties and stockings, she was fired up by being on show for him, and from the reaction in his jeans, she’d say he liked what he saw.
“She’s naughty,” he muttered as though to himself. “Do you like dressing dirty?” With one arm, he lunged forward to capture her. He yanked her body onto his so tight that she struggled to breathe. But she loved the way he held her, how his strength could overpower her. Despite what he was capable of, he could never use that strength or his lethal skills against her. Having immunity from him was a thrill in itself. “You dress to drive men wild?”
“I dress for me,” she said, trying to push away from his embrace simply because she knew she couldn’t.
Using his mass, he crushed her against the end of the bed. She was lost in the intensity of his eyes, but yelped when he snatched her panties and ripped them away from her fizzing skin before he let his other arm enclose around her.
When he bowed nearer, she tipped her head back to avoid his kiss, because riling him enlivened her. But he opened his mouth and sucked the neck she’d exposed for him.
The bite of power in that kiss made her yelp. “Oh, God, Brodie,” she said, throwing a hand up into his hair.
He pulled back wearing a sneering smile that wreaked of pleasure. “That’s better.”
Grabbing her hips, he picked her up and threw her over the footboard onto the bed where she landed in a bounce. He was already hauling his tee shirt up over his head and she scrambled away, going as far back as to settle herself on his pillows.
Seating himself on the edge of the bed, he bent to unlace his boots and in that brief interlude, a thought struck her. If so few people had been in his house, then Brodie may never have had sex here. The women he slept with overseas probably knew him as Raven and she wondered if he had ever slept with a woman who knew his real name.
When his boots were off, he stood up to unbuckle his belt and watched her as he pulled open the buttons on his jeans. Her eyes flicked up, she registered his scrutiny, and that was when she realized she was chewing on her bottom lip in anticipation of seeing this man naked for the first time.
“What you drooling at, pretty baby, huh?” he asked, pleased with himself for discovering her impatience.
Without denying her fervor, she changed her position. “This is home turf,” she said, crawling on all fours across the bed to reach for his jeans, but he caught her hand before she made contact and pulled it up.
“My rules,” he said, lowering himself to kiss her once. Zara lost herself in the sweet zeal of his rapturous tongue trying to mate with hers. “Open those legs for me, baby, real wide.”
She did as much as she could in this position high on her knees with her wrist locked in his grip, elevated above her head. While his mouth kissed and nibbled on hers, the heel of his free hand landed on her pubis and he curled his fingers around to rub them up and down the slit in her body, coating her in her own juices.
“Mm,” he hummed. “I think no panties should be a new house rule.” He pushed one finger into her and began to screw her with the single digit. “I’m gonna take what I want from you, baby… I want that tight fucking pussy dripping before it tastes my cock. You’re gonna get damn used to being naked and ready for me. This place is where you’ll worship my dick, ‘cause you’ve got a whole lot to learn about the consequences of disobeying me.”
Panting, a whine left her throat and she moved her hips in time with his hand. His finger slid all the way out and before she could object, two slid in slow. She gritted her teeth and tried to sink deeper onto him but he pulled her arm taut to drape it around his neck.
“Hold on to me,” he murmured, caressing the forearm he’d locked around his neck. He kissed her jaw then her neck and lifted his lips to her ear. “Rub your clit for me, baby.” Still hanging around his neck on one arm, she did as she was told with the other, clinging onto him tighter with every new burst of sensation.
As she pressed her fingers to herself and began to stroke, her fingertips made contact with his two digits, which were still fucking her. They made quite a team. Soon, she was tightening her arm and pulling herself closer, higher, using his body as an anchor for hers, which was so near the brink of oblivion that stars began to blur her vision.
“Stop,” she panted and pulled at his wrist, trying to get his digits out of her. “Oh, God, Brodie, if you don’t stop I’m gonna—“ but she didn’t have enough oxygen to breathe or speak. Throwing the other arm around his neck, her body bucked into his hand and she called out his name.
The sound had barely left her lips before he crouched and hauled her arms up over his head to free himself of her hold, then she was pushed onto her back and he hooked his solid arms under her thighs.
Zara didn’t realize he was on his knees at the side of the bed until his tongue plunged into her.
“Brodie!” she yelped, though she wasn’t sure if she was objecting to what he was doing, or encouraging him to continue.
Her engorged tissues were still trembling, but he licked through her, delving his tongue in deep and pursing her clit between his lips to flicker it with his tongue. Every time they’d been together, he’d showered her with attention. He got some kind of pleasure out of each orgasm he granted her.
The men in her past wanted only what she could give and didn’t care to give anything back. But she was beginning to worry that Brodie would think her selfish or ungrateful since she had never returned the favors he blessed her with.
“Wait,” she said, but her extremities were shaking, her fingers and toes had lost all feeling and every nerve in her body was on a quivering alert, preparing for the next deluge of pleasure he was working her towards with his mouth. Grabbing his hair, she tried to pull him back, but her breathing was growing more uneven with every second.
Pushing a hand onto the bed and using the other to pull his head, she managed to sit up. But when she looked down and saw him there between her thighs, with her legs over his shoulders, the sight was almost enough to finish her off.
“God, that’s hot,” she whispered. One of his arms curled around her pelvis and he massaged her tummy with the other.
“Lie down,” he said. “And we’ll see if I can get you to boil over.”
“No,” she said, stroking his hair and his face. “Come up here, come with me.”
Fixating on her stomach, he revealed his strategy. “I plan to come right here,” he said, trailing a moist fingertip from her belly button to her cleavage. The shimmer of pleasure it caused made her squeeze her internal muscles, that in turn made her thighs tighten, and his pride grew. “You like that? You want my hot spunk all over your horny body? You want it bad, baby, don’t you?” He began to rise higher on his knees. “You want my scent soaking into you?” he kissed her. “Want me to brand every inch of you as mine?”
Raven (Kindred #1) Page 19
