Danger Mine: A Base Branch Novel

by Megan Mitcham

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he reminded.

  “Mmm.” Khani’s lips clamped together. Her gaze dropped to his hands.

  The knot unfastened between his fingers. As he slipped his fingers from beneath her jacket, he ran them over her thin tee and taut stomach. Her long lashes lay on her cheeks and she shuddered a breath.

  “I’ll get the tent set up. You have the first aid kit in your pack?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Get it out. I’m going to clean your hand better than you let me earlier, and then I’ll wrap it.”

  “You’re getting bossy, sub.”

  “Boss me around all you want in the bedroom and out, except for when it comes to your well-being.” He settled a kiss on the tip of her nose.

  “Fine. You get the tent set up and the sleeping bags out. I’ll get the kit out, but before you use it I’m going to clean off.”

  “Don’t freeze a nipple off,” he chuckled.

  “You laugh. If this were April, that’d be a real possibility.”

  “Thank goodness for summer.” He winked, and then turned to their campsite. What he wouldn’t give for a nice fire. This close to her brother’s captors they wouldn’t risk it.

  Street cleared away stray branches and rocks. He tugged the roll of nylon from the bottom of his pack and wished they had a propane heater to take the chill out of the air. His nipples hardened at the thought of Khani cupping that ice-cold water onto her porcelain skin. He worked quickly, extending the poles, looping them into the arch of snaps crisscrossing the fabric.

  The brownish-green dome formed in less than five. He yanked the sleeping bags from their respective packs and tossed them into the tent. On his knees, he leaned into the small space and hung his headlamp from the center hook and turned it on.

  “Get out of the way,” Khani’s voice came high and panicked.

  Street shot to his feet. His hand found the butt of his gun without thought. His eyes scanned the dimming area for a threat. He found one all right. The only threat capable of ripping his heart from his chest and stomping all over it with a smile on her face, ran toward him naked as a forest nymph.

  Half of Khani’s sopping hair plastered to her cheeks while the rest swung with the gate of her stride. A heap of clothes tucked beneath her arm. Hot breaths curled up from her white lips. Her pert breasts undulated. Long, creamy legs scissored, rubbing her pink folds with her furious effort to get to the tent. The strings of her boots flopped with each step. Her bare ankles stuck out of the loosened leather.

  He snatched his eyeballs off the ground and yanked the door of the tent wide. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Khani dove headfirst, disappearing inside the shelter. “Shit.”

  “Shit what?” Not a thing seemed wrong from his viewpoint.

  “I forgot the kit.” The clack of her teeth rattling reached him.

  “I think I can handle it. Get your cute arse into the sleeping bag before I forget about your hand and go to work on something else.”

  He used the stroll to her pack to settle himself. That was the plan at least. Funny how those things never went to form. Each stride honed his lust to the point at the tip of his dick. Street tugged a fresh pair of boxers and shirt from his pack.

  “You get warm. I’ll be back.” He stomped toward the stream. Maybe the frigid water would check his lust. Hell, it’d probably send his balls so far inside his body he’d never find them again.

  The rushing water looked inviting. And he’d had his fair share of fountain baths in the dead of London winters. How bad could this be? He stripped in seconds and hit the deck in pushup position. Damn good thing he hadn’t tested the water first. He’d have put his dirty clothes on and called it good.

  He flipped to his back and scrubbed the essentials like he were on fire. His poor dick shriveled in his grasp. His nuts sucked up so high he could’ve spit them to the other side of the stream.

  Now he knew why Khani jetted back to the tent. Street dried with his old shirt and nearly tripped over himself, tugging on his shorts, shoving his feet into his boots, and running to camp.

  “No fair,” Khani yelled from the interior. “I gave you a show. Where’s mine.”

  “Trust me. There’s not much to show right now.” He tossed his clothes into the corner of the tent, tucked their packs into the other corner, snagged the kit from the top, and then tucked inside.

  The zipper screamed closed under his hand.

  “Refreshing?” Khani sat with her knees to her chest. The mummy bag cocooned her from toes to head. Only her clean face peeked out from the insulation.

  The headlamp dangled between them. Its beam of light centered on his chest and then swung back to her cheek. Street steadied the light. His chill suddenly dissipated, shoved away by the realization that Khani had not an ounce of make-up on her skin. The light illuminated every fine line and every scar on her soft skin.

  “You’re beautiful,” he breathed. Her cloudy gaze dropped. Street tucked his forefinger beneath her chin and lifted so her eyes meet his. “Beautiful.” He smiled. “But I get why you wear it.”

  “It’s my armor.” The puffy bag shrugged.

  “We all have ours.”

  “What’s yours?”

  Street slipped his knuckles over her chin, and then cupped the side of her cheek for the briefest of seconds. “Anonymity. Humor.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Let me see your hand?”

  While Khani wiggled her arm out of the sleeping bag, he shoved his legs into his then cracked the seal of the first aid kit.

  “You know I can tend to my own wounds, just like you did your own.” She offered him her flayed palm.

  “I want to help you heal.”

  “Do you really think we can…help each other? Mend the scars of the past?” Her black brows scrunched.

  “We’ll always have scars. That’s the nature of wounds, but we can minimize their appearance.”

  He pulled her hand into his and surveyed the raw flesh. With deliberate care, he sprayed the area with stout antibiotics, and then wrapped it with sterile gauze. Her hand cradled in his, he tangled their gazes. “Why’d you leave London?”

  “I was your superior,” she whispered.

  “Vail is Carmen’s superior and they’re about to have a baby together.”

  Her pale lips gaped. “How’d you know?”

  “She has the glow. Plus you nearly swallowed your tongue when he wanted to come along, and you gave a pretty lame excuse. I figure there was more to it. So, next excuse.”

  “I’m better in the field than I am behind a desk.”

  He set her hand in her lap and folded his arms. “You’re good at anything you do, especially running away.”

  Both her hands balled into fists. Her growl filled the close confines. “Men make women weak, vulnerable. You get into our heads and change us from badass weapons to baby makers with tiny liabilities on our hips.” She straightened her hands as though she were flinging him off and all his complicated stickiness.

  “Did you ever think that they chose that life? That that’s what they want?”

  She barked a laugh and ground her fist against her forehead. “That’s the worst part of it all. They choose to be weakened.”

  “Weakened in one way. Strengthened in others.” He shrugged. “Was I the first person you ever had sex with?” He didn’t think so, but the way she acted he must have broken some treaty she had with herself.

  “No.” Her hands dropped to her lap. “But you were the first to make me break my rule.” He waited for it. “Never have sex with someone you’re going to see again.”

  “No repeats?” He gawked.

  “No.”

  “No matter how good.”

  “They usually aren't that good.”

  “Why me?”

  “We haven’t repeated.”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Because you make me weak.” Her gaze lasered into the top of the
tent. She blinked furiously.

  Street grabbed her injured hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed the tips of her fingers, the ball of her palm. When he raised his gaze she lowered hers. “Choosing vulnerability is the greatest show of strength.”

  “Or stupidity,” she amended.

  “Love is bold.”

  “What do you know about love?” She spat the words, but not in rage. Real bafflement clouded her eye, hitched her jaw.

  “Not much,” he said honestly. It’s not like his life had been a prime example for the concept. In fact his had been the opposite.

  “Well,” she huffed. “I know enough to tell you love is fictitious.”

  “Yeah? Tell that to your brother. You’ve crossed thousands of miles and are ready to take on the Russian mob all to protect him.”

  “That’s different.”

  “That’s love. Familial or otherwise. Boundless. Inexplicable. It makes you fucking mad and elated at the same time.” He tugged her mouth a hair’s breadth from his. “It makes you do things you never thought you’d do.”

  Her granite gaze roved his face. “Like?”

  “Submitting.” He whispered the word over her mouth. “I’m yours, Khani. Do with me what you will.” Amazingly, the frigid water’s effects had worn off. He gulped and then begged. “Just please, do something to me.”

  16

  His lids fluttered shut. The behemoth of a man with his broad shoulders and hands strong enough to crush her skull without trying had relinquished control…to her. More surprising than his submission was that with him—now—she didn’t need it. The panic she’d always fought in the minutes before her lovers were secured had been replaced by carnal need. It licked her clit like a heavy tongue, steady and insistent.

  Usually the desire came after she’d established her dominance, after they were subjugated. Only then did she relax enough to let her body take over. Only then did she unleash her longing.

  For too long she’d imprisoned herself, denied herself out of fear.

  “Your surrender means more than anything. Your surrender…allows my own.” Khani gathered the material around her shoulders and levered onto her knees. She leaned over King, but for a wholly different reason than she’d have before.

  “I’ll never be able to thank you enough for that.” Her lips met his in tender pecks. One by one, she trailed them down his hardy jaw. His stubble prickled her skin. She dragged her mouth across his to the other side and loved him in a line to his ear. Khani pressed her cheek against his. “But I’m sure going to try.”

  A soft moan rumbled in his throat.

  “You want me to try?” She teased.

  “Yes.”

  His breath tickled the hollow of her clavicle. She pulled the collar of his T-shirt wide, sank her teeth into the base of his neck, and sucked. King’s hips jerked, brushing his thighs against hers through the layers of their sleeping bags. Her tongue raked his skin. Salt and sex. She drank him like a tequila shot. Her mouth popped off his flesh leaving behind a red stain on his skin.

  She slid her fingers over the angry mark. Never before had she scored a lover. Not with a crop. Not with a whip. Not even with her nails. “I’m sorry. I don’t know—”

  “Don’t apologize.” He turned his head to face her and opened his eyes. The mix of green and brown calmed her on sight. “If it leaves a scar, it’ll be my happiest one.”

  Her hand slipped around his nape. She pulled him close and smashed their lips together. His hands stayed by his side, but his mouth and tongue participated fully, giving as much as they received. Her entire body played into the kiss. The lips of her sex rubbed in maddening time with the roll of her hips.

  Mews and pants seeped out between their mouths. Desperation tightened her throat, cutting off her flow of oxygen. Khani broke the kiss. She shoved the suffocating fabric around the gentle curve of her square hips, and then reached for King’s hands.

  “Touch me.” The roughened skin of his fingers and palms scratched her sensitive flesh. The tips of her breast stabbed into his hands in return.

  Khani dropped her hands from around his and he held perfectly still. His reddened bottom lip hung. “Are you sure?”

  “No one ever has. I want you to.”

  “Never?”

  “You with your mouth, but other than that, no.”

  “Fuck me,” he sighed.

  “We’ll get there.”

  His Adam’s apple flipped a cartwheel in his throat. “Yes.” He touched tentatively at first, no more than a whisper over her skin.

  She blamed his mouth for this adventure. Before, with him, she climaxed so quickly. All it had taken was few thrusts of his heavy cock and a tug of her nipple and she careened over the edge of control, unable to halt the inevitable and aggressive release.

  He tweaked her right bud. Her back bowed. She clutched his shoulder with her injured hand. Pleasure masked the pain. King cupped her mounds. A hot breeze wafted over her swollen tips, amplifying the thrill that rolled through her limbs.

  “Please,” he pleaded, his mouth hovering over her crimson nipples.

  “Yes,” she nearly begged in return.

  King opened his mouth wide and shoved half of her left breast inside his mouth. His fingers molded the other, which seemed to double in size from the excess blood flow and attention he lavished onto them. She anchored herself to his powerful shoulders, hating the shirt that stood between her skin and his skin.

  A flick of his tongue turned her attention. “Yes.” She arched into his mouth and the snap of his wet tongue became more insistent. Her clit pulsed, begging for attention. Khani sucked a lung-full of air, and then another, but failed to tame her desire.

  Pressure mounted on her right nipple. King’s lips pinched the peak between his lips and pulled slowly off. His chest heaved. He gulped air as greedily as she, which meant he lusted as powerfully as she. That tidbit ratcheted her urgency.

  “Khani, has anyone touched your silky pink lips,” he drew a breath, “or your swollen little clit?”

  Her throat clogged. How could she answer? Yes. No. They were both true. No. No one she’d ever allowed to touch her, no one she’d ever wanted to touch her so intimately had. Yes. Someone had broken her will in half, had shattered her to prove an ugly point.

  “The night before I took Zeke and left, I wore a short shirt out with friends. When I got home my father slammed me into the counter, ripped my panties off, and beat me until my clit bled.”

  “Is your father alive?”

  She shook her head, unsure whether she could pronounce a single word with the mishmash of emotions burdening her tonsils.

  King went palms up. “Hey, you’re here with me. I’m here for you, to do anything and everything that will make you feel good. That’s off limits. Okay.” He shrugged. “There are a thousand other ways I can pleasure you.”

  “I want you to.” She placed her palms against his. “I’ve never wanted anyone to, but I want to feel your fingers slide between my flesh.”

  “What about my lips?”

  “Hell yes,” she choked.

  “My tongue?”

  Her knees buckled, but she caught herself against his hands. “Yes.”

  “Say my name,” he ordered.

  “Don’t I give the orders around here?” She smiled and used her shoulder to wipe a stray tear from her cheek.

  “Say my name, Khani.” He dragged her hands to his face and framed them around his square jaw. “Tell me you know who’s here with you…” The outside of his knuckles skimmed over her cheek, across her breasts, and then grazed her belly. “…who’s loving you with his hands…” His head dipped between her breasts. Her hands stayed with him as he licked the underside of her aching breast. “…with his mouth…” King placed a kiss over her heart. His hands anchored on either side of her hips. He leaned back and tangled their gazes. “….with everything I possess.”

  “King.” Khani’s heart squeezed, suddenly too large to fit inside h
er chest cavity.

  His smile lit the dark confines of the tent. “That’s right.” He kissed the tips of her middle fingers, and then lowered them to her sides. He tugged the shirt over his head and tossed it away. The pink scar on his shoulder zinged lusty memories to her already aching core. The gnarled skin from a bullet that hit too close to home didn’t have quite the effect.

  King ditched his sleeping bag and boxers as though it weren’t so close to freezing just outside their shelter. Inside, however, they’d worked up quite a sultry heat. He flipped onto his belly with his legs stretching the edge of the tent opposite her. The rounds of his shoulders ripped with his engaged muscles. His head drifted from her nipples, grazing like a wild beast over her belly.

  Her breath hitched, and then quaked her lungs.

  “I’ve got you, troop.” His hand stayed planted on the ground, but his mouth planted elsewhere.

  “Oh, God,” she gasped.

  He eased his lips from her slick sex. “Oh, King,” he corrected. “Blow me over, you wax?”

  “I don’t like hair down there,” defending her choice.

  “Your brother might have to save himself. I don’t think I’m leaving this spot…ever.” He slid a finger over her tender nub.

  Hell, she might never let him leave.

  King tilted his head, flattened his tongue, and slipped it from the cleft of her ass, across her wet channel, to the very tip of her clit. He pulled his tongue into his mouth. His eyes clamped shut and he groaned like a grizzly. Her breasts bounded from her frantic breaths. The tips glistened in the beam of light.

  He came back for more, swiping desperately over her pulsing bundle of nerves. Khani knotted her hands in her hair to keep from gripping his. She didn’t want to impede his rhythm in any way. Already she hovered, her insides threatening to rocket away and leave her body behind. Her breaths turned to moans. They crept higher toward keens.

  His tongue froze on the tip of her clit. Khani’s hips rocked against the slick tip. He retreated an inch. “Not yet.” His head shook. “I’m just getting started.”

  “I won’t last long.”

  “Good thing there’s no cap on the number of orgasms I plan to give you.”