by Angel Payne
At once, my world is right again.
Complete again.
Connected again.
“God. Reece!” Emma sets a pace of rolling, rutting intent, scoring my shoulders with her nails and filling my face with her she-beast breaths. “Need…this. Need…you.”
I lift my head, blazing the heat of my desire up at her. “This? Right here? This cock blazing into you? Fucking deep into your pretty cunt?”
Because I’ve never needed anything worse than this. Than her body. Her trust. Her passion. Our unity.
Those fascinating lips of hers quirk into a joyous smile of her own. “You’re a bad, bad man, Mr. Richards.”
“So I’ve been told, Miss Crist.” I seize her by the waist and flip her onto her back in one caveman move. My dick never leaves the torrid sleeve of her pussy. “But maybe I’d better show you, just to be sure.”
As I plant my knees, I let my hands glide down until I’m shoving at her inner thighs, spreading her wide for my deep, demanding thrust. As she bursts with an ecstatic cry, I croon, “That’s it, Velvet. Scream for me. Louder.”
She moans as if conflicted but scratches down my torso with such passion, I get an idea of which side of her will win. Still, she utters between breaths, “All the guys are awake. They’ll hear…”
“That’s the idea.” After giving her two seconds to gape at my wolfish grin, I lean forward to bury my face against her neck. With her knees over my shoulders and my knees positioned wide, I’m able to stab my cock deeper into her than ever before.
And she screams.
“Yes, Emma.”
Another thrust. A louder shriek.
“Yes, Emma.”
Yeah. Definitely loud enough for all the guys to hear now—though the final gotcha is actually on me. I don’t care if they hear anymore. For that matter, I don’t care if the whole West Side hears. All that matters is my body, buried inside this woman. My heart, held tight by this woman. My soul, kept safe with this woman.
With those weapons in my arsenal, even going after the Consortium doesn’t daunt me anymore.
Chapter Six
Emma
I look out the plane window to see the landscape below bathed in the dark-amber sunlight of a Southern California autumn afternoon, and it’s better than beholding any gilded castle in Europe.
We’re almost home.
I squeeze Reece’s hand to communicate my silent pleasure—almost shocked when all he does is smile, kiss my forehead, and return the pressure. Half of me expects the man’s command for me to scream about it, since that’s a lot of what I’ve been doing for him during the last seventy-two hours. But with every one of those occasions accompanied by an equally blinding orgasm, I’m the last girl on earth complaining about a purse full of throat drops and a face stuck in perpetual blush mode.
He did allow at least a few breaks from the lovemaking marathon. The first was our obligatory “faceoff with the firing squad” on that first night in the apartment, enduring the catcalls and mock applause from Sawyer, Lydia, and the rest of the gang when we’d finally stumbled out of bed for some sustenance and a fast debriefing about how things had gone down with Faline. The group consensus was that the woman hijacked the jet that almost became a murder weapon, taking the crew and the few henchmen who could limp aboard with her.
After that point, our team was divided about opinions. Sawyer, Kane, Mitch, and Lydia solidly voted that the bitch’s flight plan was anywhere except back to Spain and the Source and that she had a contingency plan in place for an alternative destination from which to scramble a new team to pursue Reece. But I’m siding with Reece—along with Ethan and Dan—in thinking the woman is a more important player in the Consortium’s universe, and she likely authorized her own mission in the name of “course correction” after Angelique’s fuckup at the battle of El Segundo three and a half months ago. And no, my mind wasn’t made up by mindless worship to my man. It was given in validated trust after everything Reece relayed from his experience inside the Source.
But while the group is split about where exactly Faline finally ended up, every one of us is thumbs-up about that landing pad being somewhere outside the States. For the time being, the woman has slipped away to lick her wounds in anonymity—giving us all a second to catch our breaths and formulate our own strategy in the war against the Consortium.
Because now it really is war.
As soon as our powwow at the apartment concluded, Dan Colton and Ethan Archer gave their polite farewells, both having wives and businesses to get back to. Alex Trestle, Mitch Mori, and Kane Alighieri stayed a little longer, enjoying the new meal that Reece insisted on ordering in for us—directly from the Obelisk’s kitchen. After dinner, Reece had done a shitty job of feigning a yawn and declared to everyone that he and I were bound for bed.
That night, I gave him lots of screams.
The next morning, everyone else was gone.
A quick check on my phone had supplied the text from ’Dia, reassuring me that Sawyer was personally supervising her trip back home. She had no idea where Alex, Mitch, and Kane had disappeared to, but I wasn’t worried about any of those men not being able to take care of themselves. Alex, with his love of disguises, seems theatrical, so he likely disappeared into the crowds of Broadway for a few days of bingeing shows on the Great White Way. Mitch and Kane, the other pair of lovebirds in our bunch, have probably slipped off to a warm-weather destination for some well-deserved downtime as a couple.
I’m relieved and grateful that Sawyer saw to my sister’s safety, for more reasons than one, but didn’t press ’Dia for more details beyond that. Once we’re home in LA, that won’t be the case. Priority one within the next week? Getting that girl to lunch for some serious girl-to-girl “debriefing” time, especially about Mr. Foley.
Okay, maybe not priority one.
One gaze up into Reece’s face brings me that reality fast enough.
His gaze, intense as quicksilver, glistens even brighter as he looms into my personal space and drops a soft, sensuous kiss on my slightly parted lips. When done, he pulls back an inch before growling one question for my ears only.
“You ready to give me some more screams, Velvet?”
I feel the fresh flare to my eyes. “H-Here? N-Now?”
And why? Cracking the mile-high club isn’t new for the two of us, thanks to several flights together on the Richards Resorts private jet. The only reason we didn’t take that aircraft for this trip was due to the required departure airport: Teterboro. So we flew commercial first class, meaning if he really needed my “scream” that badly, he had five hours in which to drag me into the first-class restroom and have his wonderfully wicked way with me.
He had five hours. Past tense.
We’re now fifteen minutes from our final descent, which is why I’m gawking at him like half his brain really has been sucked into a jet turbine.
“Hmmm,” he finally intones, the masculine angles of his face tightening into the mode between worshiping me with his gaze and ravishing me with his body. “So tempting, little bunny, but I have a better idea.”
“Which is?”
“A surprise.”
I perk a little, indicating I’m all ears, but he pours on the aura of enigmatic even thicker, remaining mysterious but attentive during the rest of the flight, the entire landing, through the VIP suite arrival process, and then out to the private parking lot, where Zalkon is already loading our bags into a sleek silver Range Rover.
“Okay, this is new,” I quip as Reece leads me toward the luxury SUV by one hand. “And that too.” I don’t hide my double-take as Zalkon passes off the keys to him. To Zalkon, I tease, “You double-shifting it out here, mister? Meeting and greeting someone else? Though I have it on good authority that awards season isn’t for three more months, so don’t you dare try to fleece me with any of the Hemsworths.”
Z chuckles, his white teeth contrasting with his burnished Armenian skin. “Nothing of the sort.” He excha
nges a rapid glance with Reece. More secrets. Gah. “Have fun on your special field trip,” he drawls, adding a wink as his special version of torture.
“Oh, for the love of—”
Reece cuts me short by pulling me close and landing a firm kiss on my fuming lips. Then deepening it with his tongue, rolling mine with knowing hunger until I’m moaning and gripping his neck with horny fervor. When we drag apart, he doesn’t let up with the sexy razz, letting a smile start in his eyes before taking over his lips from the middle out. I don’t think my heart’s fluttered as hard since watching Enrique Iglesias turn Jennifer Love Hewitt into a puddle of sunset-colored goo in the “Hero” video.
“Get in the car, you little minx,” he whispers in a voice dipped in the same sensuality. “We’re burning daylight.”
I refrain from pointing out that it’s only three o’clock, because I suspect the point will fall on deaf ears. The man does love staging surprises—at least for me. Speculation flies across my mind about whether he’s pulled stuff like this on his other girlfriends, those legions who came before me, but the anxiety leaves my head as fast as it came. The time has come to stop worrying about whether I measure up. The guy climbing behind the wheel, still with that boyish smirk across his lips, has earned my effort to get over that shit once and for all. Some days, like today, it’ll be easy. Others, it won’t. But from now on, he at least gets my best attempt to forget I’m a very mortal girl on the arm of an electric-blooded god.
“Reece?” I’m yanked out of my private pep talk when he turns right at Imperial instead of left to get on the freeway toward the Brocade. I’d assumed we’d head there and spend the night in his penthouse suite, since he’ll likely want to be debriefed about what’s happened while he was in New York making sure I didn’t get run over by ambulances and turned into a human smoothie. “Where are we…”
“Throw on some music, baby,” he deflects. “And enjoy the day. It’s a good one.”
He’s right. It’s a perfect afternoon, and it becomes even more perfect when he takes a right at PCH, heading along the ocean until we hit Playa Del Rey. At the Santa Monica Pier, where tourists turning into lobsters mingle with local kids on their way to the roller coaster and Ferris wheel, we rejoin the coast and sing along to the alt rock station as the Pacific waves glitter in the sun like a billion diamonds atop rolling blue satin.
After passing the cliffs of Tuna Canyon and sharing a few stoplights with Lamborghinis and Ferraris through Malibu, Reece turns the car up a road I would’ve missed under normal circumstances. All right, maybe not a road road. The strip of pavement can barely be called a two-way thoroughfare, with no sign to identify it or painted stripes to delineate lanes.
As we climb higher into the canyon, the road definition gets even looser—though holy Mother Nature does the scenery take up the slack. While I’ve known these canyons are out here, I had no idea they were this open and wild, with rolling hills as far as I can see, dotted with yellow and red wildflowers blazing between sage and berry bushes. When we take our first true curve, giving me a view of the route we’ve just taken, the sea spreads out far below, an azure panorama that sucks the air from my lungs.
“Holy…ssshhh…”
Reece’s grin just grows more arrogant. Damn him, he knows I won’t do anything about it in my current stunned and babbling state.
We climb even higher.
The road twists a little tighter.
The vistas earn even more of my colorful commentary, leading to the exponential jump of Reece’s smirking swagger. Yeah, even guiding this big car on this dinky road, the man is the chiseled, magnificent definition of swagger.
At last, he turns right again. A dirt road this time—the whole “road” assignation really up for grabs now—with the car’s tires digging in for traction as we scale a steep hill to a flatter but equally rugged summit. At the top, the road levels out, so Reece cranks the wheel so the Rover is parallel on the road.
And optimal for transporting me into another world.
When he turns off the ignition, I really do wonder if he’s somehow just bolted us off the planet and to another realm. As I feel my jaw slowly plummet, I struggle to open my brain wide enough to allow all this beauty in. The breeze across the ridge smells of sage and lavender and sea mist. The hills all around us, flowing to meet canyons of rugged crags in so many shades of brown and amber, look painted against the sky.
And this sky…
Wow.
It’s vast and huge, already twinkling with a few bold stars directly above, but shaded in the lemon, tangerine, and strawberry meringue of the sunset down along the water.
The sough of my bewildered breath keeps me company while Reece jumps out and runs around to open my door. I let him help me out, but when he tugs me toward the rear of the Rover, I tug free, needing to savor my mesmerized reverie for a few seconds more.
But after those few seconds, I realize mesmerized isn’t going to cut it. I’m standing here, rejoicing in being alive, less than a week after the night I almost died. Would I be reveling so fully like this…without that?
Thankfully, my heart sends back an instant answer.
Yes.
Because anywhere I am with this man, and anything I do with him, is worth the celebration…
A thought he seems to have culled right out of my head—what’s freaking new?—as demonstrated the moment I join him at the back end of the car and take in the luxurious white tablecloth he’s laid out across the tailgate, topped with a plate of my favorite macarons from Bottega Louie and a bottle of Dom chilling in a steel bucket. Next to that, the best part of the spread—a pair of crystal glasses etched with sleek lightning bolts.
I’m no sooner done with my overwhelmed sigh than Reece reaches for me, drawing me between his long legs braced against the side of the car. The twilight turns his gaze into a captivating cerulean, but the purpose in his embrace and intensity across his face are what arrest my attention the most now.
“Hey. What is it?” I underline the quiet question by framing his strong face with my hands.
He smiles again. The brashness is gone. This time, his expression is full of wonder that matches my own…and yet there’s a focused kind of curiosity that makes my heart do some extra somersaults and my belly tingle with anticipation.
I fight the urge to press him too hard for his mysterious thoughts, but it’s not easy. This moment isn’t my script to write. He’s got his own words for it, and I wait, dealing with all my expectant tingles, for him to be okay with sharing what’s on his mind.
Shit. What is on his mind?
Is he returning to the world of crime fighting? Leaving it completely and asking me to run away with him into some government protection program? Breaking up with me?
Oh, God.
Buh-bye, script writing.
“So,” he finally says, gazing at me and then sweeping his regard out across the bluffs. The wind starts its sunset surge off the ocean, blowing his hair off his face and making him look like some historical lord about to traipse across the moors. “Do you like it?”
For a second, all I can give him is a perplexed stare. “Do I like what?”
He breaks out in a laugh. I stab him with a tighter glower. “This.” He sweeps a hand out, now really looking all lord-of-the-moors about it. “All of…this.”
The breath hitches in my throat. “Errrr…”
“Answer me, Emmalina. Do you like it?”
Now I’m laughing. My mirth is not appreciated by the poor man, so I sober up and reply, “It’s the most beautiful place I think I’ve been on this earth. As a matter of fact, I keep wondering if it is still earth.”
“Well.” He shifts a little, reaching back into the Rover for a thick sheaf of papers held together with a big binder clip. “We can make it whatever we want to.”
I accept the stack as soon as he slides it in front of me, quickly scanning the top page—before the air doesn’t just stop in my throat, but my entire body. I sw
ay, literally dizzy from the words, but Reece steadies me by grabbing both my hips.
“This…this is a land deed,” I finally stammer.
“Certainly is.” Reece’s rumble matches the hills around us. Calm covering strength.
“To…this land?”
His gaze is gentle as he fingers strands of hair off my cheeks. “Just about everything you can see right now.”
“With my name next to yours…as co-owner.”
“Definitely correct again, Velvet Bunny.”
I gyrate my jaw a thousand directions, but nothing works to aid words that have fled my whole damn mind. “Are…are you…” No. He can’t be serious. “When…how…why…?”
“Why?” he finally cuts in, emphasizing with a snort. “That’s begun to be pretty obvious, don’t you think? Even before everything that went down in New York, I sensed we were headed for this, Velvet. Look at the facts. No way in hell will I ever let you return to that apartment of yours without at least three guards, and though my place on the West Side is secure, it might not be that way forever.”
I raise a stare over the sheaf at him. “And fighting the Consortium with everything we’ve got is going to take extra security and extra space.”
He splits a huge grin and lowers a kiss to my forehead. “Which we’ll have plenty of out here. A place to live and thrive, to train and fight, with everything custom-built from the ground up, exactly as we need and want it.” As he pulls back, his smile grows along with the excited gleam in his eyes. “It’s going to be state-of-the-art, Velvet. A huge technical and tracking center there. The main house and pool there.” He glances back to ensure I’m following as he points. “And of course, offices and a business center…maybe a huge rec room with all the normal shit that goes in such a thing.” He quirks a questioning glance. “You have any idea what goes in a rec room?”
