“More.”
His fingers slipped between her lips, toying with her aching flesh.
“More,” she begged again. She’d keep begging until his thick cock stretched her.
A finger speared her to the knuckle and massaged her from the inside.
One of Marina’s legs buckled. Oliver draped it over his shoulder and sucked her clit into his mouth. His tongue slayed it with quick lashes. Her heart bucked inside her chest, promising to crack a rib.
Another finger stroked deep and then another. They danced and worked, stretching her clamoring channel.
“Oliver, please?”
He kissed the crest of her mons, settled her onto noodle legs, and stood. Using one hand, he yanked the green T-shirt over his head, while the other worked on his belt. The metal clanked together and then his jeans slipped down his legs.
His gigantic cock greeted her at full attention. She should worry about taking all of him inside her body. They were so different in size. Reckless or not, she lifted to her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He bent forward enough that she interlocked her fingers.
Marina leaped into his arms. Oliver caught her bottom and lifted her off the ground. Her legs coiled around his etched hips. Again, a faint trill played for her attention, but it didn’t have Oliver’s passionate gaze or magnetic body.
“Don’t make me stop,” he growled.
“If you stop, you’ll walk with a permanent limp.” Marina grabbed his face and pulled him close.
Their lips met in a forceful embrace.
He locked an arm around her waist. His other reached between them. Anticipation stilled her breath.
“Breathe, Bonnie,” he mumbled against her lips.
She would really, but the broad head of his penis pressed the walls of her vagina with surprising weight. Warmth burned down the back of her throat. What if she couldn’t take him? They didn’t have much of a chance of working as it was. Another obstacle, an obstacle that large, would spell doom for sure.
Her hands shook against his back.
“Marina,” he barked.
The sudden noise startled her. She found his gaze and pled for answers to which she didn't know the questions.
His fingers gripped the back of her skull. He pulled her against his mouth. The tang of her lingered on his lips as she opened for him. Their kiss slowed its pace and turned into something more than just the frantic hormones of two mutually attracted people. It added meaning and a terrifying weight to the mix, but she wouldn’t stop for all the reassurances in the world.
She drank him in, filling the sad moments of her last months alone with memories of him, of this moment.
The head of his cock eased inside. Marina sucked languidly on his tongue and relaxed onto the blunt width. His hands roved her waist and neck, soothing away the sting. Small undulations of his hips pushed him deeper by the barest of centimeters and pulled him out to the tip. Slowly, methodically, he worked inside her to the very core of her existence.
Marina’s head fell back. He continued to nip and kiss her neck as he buried himself deeper. She breathed through the sting until it blossomed into wild lust. She wanted him harder and faster and as deep as he could go.
She bore her heels against his taut cheeks and pierced herself to the base of his cock. A high-pitched moan tore from her lips, and Oliver groaned against her neck. He pulled her back to meet his gaze and held her still.
“Once will never be enough, Marina.”
No. Not even close, but it was what they had, and no one could take it from them.
“It’s a place to start,” she breathed.
Oliver walked them until the cold concrete wall chilled her back. Stunning blue gaze burning into hers, he pulled from her to the tip and sank home.
Her fingers bit into his back. Each stroke rubbed her sensitive nub and a hotbed of nerves inside her pussy. Pain melted to pleasure. She spread her legs wider, inviting him deeper. Her nipples scraped against the hair and unrelenting muscles of his chest.
His tempo rose, cresting the madness of earlier and forging ahead. The etched plateaus of his abdomen flexed and bunched. Blood plumped the veins over his biceps and forearms. With each thrust, his pelvic bone slammed onto her clit. His thighs buffeted her ass.
“Do you need more?” He slammed into her again and again.
“No,” she moaned. “Just you. I only need you.”
He drove her into the wall and over the precipice of her climax.
“I need you, Marina.” He growled the words and pounded furiously. “Oh, God. I need you.” He pressed into her, pinning her to the wall. Every one of his muscles tensed, and heat filled her belly.
Her muscles contracted, igniting a fierce burn. The liquid flames of lust consumed her.
“Oliver.” She cried his name and clung to him. Arms locked, she held him tight, never wanting to leave the moment.
His breaths whooshed hot on her neck. He mumbled things in Finnish she didn’t understand. She might not understand them in her native tongue. Her brain was scorched from the flames, which was why the incessant trill didn’t make sense, either.
Marina turned his face to hers and kissed each bald patch within reach on his head and face. The scars didn’t detract from his masculine beauty. If anything, they endeared him to her all the more. He’d chosen those wounds and carried those scars so she didn’t have to.
She loved him. Plainly and simply, she loved him. Only there was nothing plain or simple about their entanglement. A grave filled with guilt as deep and wide as an ocean stood between them.
Oliver pressed a heartbreaking kiss to her lips, pulled from her body, and then set her on her feet. Surprisingly, they did their job. He used his T-shirt to clean them up. Too soon, he pulled his pants to his hips, beginning her long starve for his firm white butt and magnificent cock.
“Which do you want first?” He held her clothes in one hand and a vibrating, trilling phone in the other. Her phone lit like a movie screen with missed calls and text messages. She looked from the phone to the clothes and then back at Oliver.
You.
It was what she wanted to say, but duty called, had called many times. With a huff, she scooped up her clothes and grabbed her phone. She wrestled her way into her clothes with one hand and read four text messages, all with variations of the same critical message.
Marina stepped into her shoes and straightened her blouse.
Oliver stood too far away with his hands crossed over his naked chest.
“My first informant is coming in with the evidence we needed. I have to be there.” Lord, she didn’t want to go.
“Work used to be my exit strategy.” Oliver said it matter-of-factly. The unreadable expression remained the same as it had since he’d handed her the phone.
“What would you have used today, if I hadn’t beat you to it?”
“I didn’t mean to be an ass, I just… I don’t know.” He scratched at his beard.
“Question still stands.” She shrugged.
“I don’t want to leave. So I don’t know.” His big, claw marked shoulders bobbed. “It’s a first.”
“It’s a first for me too.” She hiked a brow at him.
The combination knocked him down a peg, and his arms dropped to his sides.
“Promise me something?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That easily? You don’t know what I’m going to ask you.”
“Yes,” he repeated.
Her heart filled and shattered all at the same time. She drew a deep breath because she knew what she was asking. She was asking him to give them a chance—a real bleeding knuckles and broken bones fighting chance.
“Find something that makes you better and eases the pain of your past.”
He huffed a long breath and then nodded.
It was all she’d ask of him. He could do with it what he would, or not, and leave her on a bypass machine for the rest of her life.
She si
ghed, turned, and opened the door.
“Marina?”
Her name from his lips cemented her feet in the open doorway. She looked over her shoulder at the love of her life.
“Do you still think once will be enough?”
“I never did.” She smiled.
“Yet you did it anyway, with no promises or guarantees.”
“I’d do it again.” She tossed his words back at him and walked out the door.
22
Oliver removed his helmet and surveyed the near quiet. The contrast of life and death mocked him everywhere he looked. For each plot of succulent green grass, a casket lay beneath filled with a body. A harsh few remained empty. Two of them held him at bay. In the distance, cars passed, people walked, and life went on without their loved ones. Every day, children lost parents, parents lost children, wives lost husbands, and husbands lost wives. He scrubbed a hand over his smooth jaw and stood. If they forged ahead from tragedy, then he could too. At the very least, he owed it to the ones he’d loved and lost to really try.
That was what he told himself, which was progress.
He plotted a course he hadn’t traveled much in the last eighteen years but knew by heart. Birds chirped in the early light of morning. Grass crunched under his boots. His feet slowed and then stopped in front of the tree that had grown some twenty feet since the last time his mom had brought him to visit. Its leaves bushed full, shading the bench his mother bought for the grounds along with the sapling.
“Hey, Sully.” Oliver held his breath and listened to the rustling of the leaves.
Their mother’s words came back to him.
He might not be in the ground under this headstone, but his body was on this Earth and feeds the earth. This tree, any tree, is a part of the earth. Anytime you feel sad, listen to the wind through the trees. It’s Sullivan talking to you.
Moisture blurred his vision of the headstone that simply read Sullivan Dean Knight, Oct 27, 1981 - July 23, 1997, Beloved son, brother, and friend.
Oliver wiped his eyes and rocked on his heels several times before building the courage to sit. Speaking, well, that was harder still. He’d thought about what he’d say for the last four days. Why could he face down a madman with a knife without reservation, yet he quivered at the thought of speaking to the dead? Because what he had to say wasn’t easy.
His chest expanded on a breath. On the exhale, no words came out. He leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands.
“I’m sorry this has taken me so long. Hell, it’s still taking me forever, and I’m here. The road here was long and bumpy, brother.” Tears fell to the ground, landing on short green blades and sliding down. “More than that, I’m sorry—more sorry than you’ll ever know—that I didn’t listen that day. I wanted to impress you, for you to see how grown up I was, just like you.”
He straightened and lifted his head to the tree, blinking furiously.
“Thank you, Sul.” Oliver pressed his lips together to keep from screaming. He breathed through the onslaught of emotion until he could finally speak again. “Thank you for saving me. I’ve spent so long blaming myself for your death that I haven’t honored your sacrifice. You gave your life for mine, and I haven’t lived it, not really.” He drew a fortifying breath.
“All that ends today. From now on, I promise to honor your memory. I promise to think of you and no longer linger over the guilt I carry for your death, but remember the wonderful, caring, sometimes assholish brother you were.”
Oliver grabbed his face and slowly dragged a hand over the baby soft skin and rough scars.
“When I look in the mirror, I see your face. I won’t hide it under a beard anymore. A pretty small step, huh? It’s pretty big for me, not that those bastards left me much of a choice. That patchy shit looked awful. Even still, I kept hold of it for too long.”
“You were one handsome devil.” He patted his face once more. The curve of his broad smile etched under his fingertips.
A heavy gust blew the short hair on his head and screamed through the leaves.
“Conceited much?” Oliver smirked at the tree and himself really. The more he talked, the easier he breathed.
“I met a girl. I could lie and say she’s not the reason I’m here, but I figure you know already. The truth is I’ve thought about coming to talk to you since her party. I was in pretty ugly shape. She made me look at myself and face my fears.
“I feared you’d have been a better man than I am. I made it true by not accepting the gift you gave me. Never again. I’m about to honor the hell out of you, Sully. One day, maybe I’ll have a son. If I do, I’ll name him Sullivan. I’ll have to check with Marina, of course. First, I have to work up the guts to ask her on a date. Before I do that, I have to visit one more grave.”
Oliver stood over the mound of dirt that covered an empty coffin. A wilted bouquet of cut wildflowers and a US flag at the head decorated the heap. Around him thousands of US military men lay at rest under white stones, marking their years on Earth. One day, he would join them but not anytime soon. He had things to do.
“I’ve examined all the evidence from the blast site and Tor’s home, where I killed the son of a bitch. I had every one of his bunkers checked and spent days and months agonizing over this shit. And as crazy as it seems, I know you’re not dead.” He placed his hands on his hips and felt a thousand pounds lighter than he had that morning. “It has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t want you to be dead, which I don’t, but so much doesn’t add up.
“I don’t know where you are, but I won’t stop looking.” Oliver pointed a finger at the grave. He was getting a little too comfortable talking to himself. “P.S. You’re a dickface for not listening to me. If you’d just let Tor go, you’d have saved me all kinds of trouble.” He turned to go but paused. “Oh, also, I made peace with my past, and I’m about to do some crazy shit. You're bad for missing it, but thanks, brother.”
He saluted his friend’s fake grave and headed for his motorcycle but then stopped in his tracks. Marina leaned against his bike with a fresh bouquet of flowers with the same paper as the ones on Hunter’s heap of dirt. Her sweet, wide smile practically levitated him to her sexy stilettos.
“I come every Sunday.” Marina stood and waggled the flowers in further explanation. “Almost every Sunday,” she amended. “My job—the thing that eases the pain of my past—keeps me away sometimes.” Her gaze hit the ground, and she toed a fallen leaf. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“I found my thing.” He lifted her hand to his face and spread her palm against his smooth skin.
Her gaze pinched.
“The thing that eases the pain of my past. I found the variation of myself I can live with.”
“I can’t be your thing, Oliver.”
He smiled and cupped her gorgeous face.
“Marina, you are mine. There’s no way around that, but the thing that eased the burden of my past was letting Sully go, forgiving myself, and living—actually living—to honor his memory.”
She nuzzled into his palm and grinned. The grin faltered. “What about Hunter?”
“This is going to sound crazy, but I have evidence to back it up, and it’s not because I can’t let him go.”
“I don’t follow.” Marina’s fingers relaxed by her side, no longer seeking reassurance by knotting her clothing.
“He’s not dead.”
Oliver watched her gaze dart this way and that, working things out.
“Then where is he?”
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted.
Her lips scrunched. “Then…we have to find him.”
His heart couldn’t be any fuller than it was at that moment. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“Of course, I do.” Her laugh warmed his insides. “But not about that. You wouldn’t drag his memory through the mud that way.”
“I love you.” Oliver scooped Marina into his arms and twirled her around.
Her arms wrapp
ed around him as tightly as they had a few days ago when he’d been buried inside her. Tears spilled from her eyes. “Oliver, I love you.”
He’d only thought his heart couldn't be any fuller. Those words, their meaning, rocketed him to the stars. He tugged her mouth to his and reveled in her taste.
“Marina, my Bonnie, will you live with me? I don’t mean under my roof yet. We’ll take it however fast or slowly we need to, but will you share the experience of your life with me?”
“With all my heart, yes.” Her scream filled the cemetery with life and love. Theirs.
“You’re everything to me. You’re mine, Bonnie. Forever.”
“And ever.”
CAPTOR MINE
Base Branch Novel 11 - - Details coming soon
ENEMY MINE
Base Branch Novel 1
When friends become enemies and enemies become lovers.
Born in the blood of Sierra Leone's Civil War, enslaved, then sold to the US as an orphan, Base Branch operative Sloan Harris is emotionally dead and driven by vengeance. With no soul to give, her body becomes the bargaining chip to infiltrate a warlord's inner circle. The man called The Devil killed her family and helped destroy a region.
As son of the warlord, Baine Kendrick will happily use Sloan's body if it expedites his father's demise. Yet, he is wholly unprepared for the possessive and protective emotions she provokes. Maybe it’s the flashes of memory … two forgotten children drawing in the dirt beneath the boabab tree… But he fears there is more at stake than his life.
In the Devil's den with Baine by her side, Sloan braves certain death and discovers a spirit for living.
READ MORE
Books by Megan Mitcham
BASE BRANCH SERIES
ENEMY MINE
JUSTICE MINE
STRANGER MINE
WARRIOR MINE
DANGER MINE
PRISONER MINE
VERSIONS
VIRTUES
VARIATIONS
NEVER MINE - NOVEMBER 2016
Variations (Base Branch Series Book 9) Page 16
