Illicit Connections (Illicit Minds Book 2)

by Rebecca Royce

  “Never touched yourself there?”

  She shook her head. “No privacy.”

  “Then I get to be the first to introduce you to how hot that can be? Amazing.”

  And it really was. He felt so… lucky. Even amongst the horror that would try to take over their lives, he was damned lucky to have her. He got to touch her, hold her, make love to her. The rest of the world could go to hell for not seeing her as the dream she really was.

  Her body clenched around his fingers, and she gasped. Yes, this was what he wanted for her. This was what he’d dreamed about. Warmth pooled on his hand as Seven came. She cried out his name in what he hoped was ecstasy as tears slid down her cheeks.

  After a few seconds, he needed to say something. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, sort of. “That was…”

  “Watching you find pleasure was like a religious experience for me.”

  Her voice sounded breathless. “Really?”

  “And now, sweetheart, I really want to be inside you.” He kissed her nose, wondering if she noticed that he was shaking from his need. “Is that what you want?”

  “Yes—a million times yes.”

  He supposed that was enough reassurance, even for him. As he removed his boxers, he felt a huge amount of relief. He was as hard as a rock for Seven, and every brush of the cotton material against his erection had been a little piece of Hell. Still, it had kept him from coming before he’d gotten anywhere near her, which, in this case, was a very good thing because of how fast he knew he would come otherwise.

  Seven stared wide-eyed at his cock. She didn’t say a word, and after a moment, Ben worried. “Everything still okay?”

  “Yes.” She looked up, meeting his gaze. “I’ve never seen one so big.”

  He had to admit, that did great things for his ego. After all, he was a man. He’d think about the fact that she’d said that all the time now. Still, his “big” cock wanted inside her tight pussy, and that was where he was headed. That very instant.

  He laid gentle kisses on her belly as he moved to her entrance. She sighed and pulled his head up to kiss him. The warm heat from her pussy pressed against his hard length, and he shuddered.

  The last thing he wanted was to hurt her.

  “It’s okay, Ben.”

  Her sweet eyes stared up at him with so much trust. It humbled him.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She nodded, her eyes alight with happiness. “I know. I won’t break. Trust me. And you can’t get me pregnant. Also, they blood-test us all the time, so if I was sick, I would have been put down earlier.”

  The fact that she didn’t know how fragile she was—or maybe worse that she hadn’t been treated as a precious jewel—broke his heart. Still, he pushed inside her an inch at a time. Her gasp as he entered told him his suspicions had been right. He had to handle this with finesse.

  For him, it was exquisite torture. Her pussy wrapped around him as though they’d been made to be together. With each inch, he made his way farther inside her heat. Ultimately, he knew they’d be perfect. He just had to get her there.

  Finally, he was fully sheathed. “Wow.” He could hardly breathe. This was Heaven. This was what loving another person should feel like—the joining and completing of two souls.

  Seven’s eyes filled with tears. “Ben, you’re completely embracing me like this. I never knew it could feel this way. It wasn’t…”

  “Shh.” He really didn’t want to hear about her other experience. Not now. As far as he was concerned, the only moment that mattered was this one. “This is just about us.”

  She laid her hands on his cheeks. Slowly, he began to move within her.

  It was hard not to let himself completely lose all sense in the movements. Plunging in and out of Seven would have been such a release. But she was new to this. He was determined not to hurt her.

  “Ben.” Her voice was like a caress on his soul. “Let go.”

  How had she known he was holding back? He smiled down at her. It didn’t matter how she knew. He shouldn’t be surprised. This was Seven. She knew things. He took her words as permission.

  He moved fast. One second in, then out again. Back in. She groaned and arched her back. “You like that, sweet girl?” “God, yes.” Seven closed her eyes.

  He reached between them to squeeze her clit, and she arched off the bed beneath him. “You like that even more.”

  “It’s torture. This amount of pleasure is torture.”

  Her words resonated with him. He knew exactly what she meant. They moved together toward completion, and he could tell it was going to rock his world off its axis. This was monumental.

  Seven’s passion overtook her like a firecracker exploding. As long as he lived, he’d never forget the sight. Biting his lip, he held back his own release, wanting to make sure hers went on as long as it could.

  Finally, in one moment of pure bliss, life altered for Ben. A combination of pleasure and pain overtook him until he lost his vision. Spilling his seed inside Seven was the most visceral experience of his entire life. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t make sense of anything.

  Forcing himself not to fall on top of Seven too hard, he slumped down gently on her made-for-him-only body. Blackness overtook him, but if he died that very second, he would leave the planet a happy man.

  Ben opened his eyes. How long had he been nearly comatose? An hour? A minute? He stared down at the warm body beneath him and cursed himself, because despite his best intentions he had to be crushing her.

  He lifted himself. With a groan, he pulled his amazingly still hard cock out of her pussy. If life were perfect, he would spend the rest of his life inside her and never have to do anything else.

  She moaned and put her arms around his neck. Not opening her eyes, she spoke. “No. I like it. You make me feel warm and safe underneath you. Don’t go.” She was so adorable.

  “I’m rolling over next to you but not leaving the bed. Here.” He pulled her into the crook of his arms. “Sleep here.”

  She sighed and shuddered. “I can’t go back, Ben. Before tonight, I would have found a way to survive the hours until my death, but now… I can’t. I won’t even make it through the car ride. I can’t ever leave you and the girls.”

  She was so unlike everyone else he knew. She spoke the truth, always.

  “No one is taking you from me. If we have to, we’ll go on the run. But I don’t think it will come to that.”

  Seven opened her blue depths and looked at him. “How can it not?”

  “If I have to, I’ll get an injunction to stop your execution. I’ll challenge the constitutionality of the whole thing.”

  Her fingers stroked his chest, and his cock jumped. He had to control himself. She would be sore. She didn’t need another slamming round for a while, as much as he might have wished he could hop right on and go for it.

  “I don’t know what most of what you just said means.”

  “It’s legalese. The point is that I can make it impossible for them to execute you by claiming that it isn’t legal for them to do it in the first place.”

  She sighed. “Ben…”

  “Don’t doubt me yet, Seven. For a few minutes, let’s pretend I can do this as easily as I said I could. Tomorrow is soon enough for us to play the ‘what if’ game.”

  “I don’t doubt you. I just know Madame. I know that she can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants.” She kissed his chest. “But I believe in you.”

  “That’s all I ask.” His head spun. “I think we should try to get some sleep.”

  “Do you think it’s okay for me to stay in here? Would it upset the girls to find me with you?”

  “It’s highly unlikely they would ever know you were in here.”

  She paused. “What if they come in to wake you in the morning?”

  “They don’t do that. When they wake up, they sneak downstairs to watch cartoons because they know I’ll make them turn
them off when I come down.” He could feel his eyes getting heavier. She just felt right in his arms. “Even if they found you here, they’d not really understand what went on. They’d probably think you had a sleepover or something. They love you.”

  “I love them.”

  He was enormously glad about that. She hadn’t said she loved him, even though she’d admitted to being his. It would come—he hoped. He thought she loved him.

  “Go to sleep.”

  She snuggled closer. “At home, in the Institution, there are so many people jammed together, sometimes I can’t sleep because people snore so loudly. I sometimes prefer my nights on the floor of clients’ homes, because at least it’s quiet.”

  “That’s not your home. That’s just where you were wrongly imprisoned for so long.”

  “I’d like to have a home.”

  His eyes no longer felt heavy. Now he was wide awake. “This can be your home, or wherever we end up. As long as we’re together, that will be home.”

  “Okay.” She sniffed. “Do you snore?”

  “If I do, are you going to go back to your room? Should I be prepared to sleep alone?”

  “To answer your question, no. I would sleep badly the rest of my life to be here with you. And can I take your answer to mean that you do? You cut logs in your sleep?”

  He cracked up. Life with Seven would never be boring, not even when the crisis he knew they were going to face was over. “I’m teasing you. I don’t think I snore, and if I do, please feel free to kick me or elbow me in the ribs.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  Her words slurred together now. She had to be exhausted. He’d slept a little bit before she’d come into the room, but she had not.

  Within moments, her breathing had become deep and even. He stared out into the darkness. There was a lot to do. Seven needed to keep clearing the ghost energy out of his neighbors’ homes. He didn’t want her to do that too quickly, but she did have to show that she was doing her job to keep Roman or any other member of the Fury from reporting to Madame that she wasn’t working.

  He needed to speak to his friend Dodie in Georgia. She was the best lawyer he knew at navigating federal statutes. If she wouldn’t take on Seven’s case, maybe she could at least advise him on the best way to go. He needed to work so he could pay for all of this.

  A thought dawned on Ben. All that was important, but there was something he desperately wanted to do that had nothing to do with any of it. He wanted to take Seven and his girls out on his boat. Yes, they would spend part of the day out on his boat.

  The world would have to wait a few hours while they did that.

  Ten

  Seven had never been on a boat before, and she found the experience to be soothing. The movements of the water relaxed her, making her sleepy. She leaned against the side and closed her eyes. Had she ever had a morning like this before? Other than climbing aboard the boat and letting Ben put her in a life jacket, she’d done nothing. Nothing.

  “Daddy and Uncle Gene rode their boat across the world once.”

  Seven opened her eyes and regarded Ella. The little girl sat across from her, wearing a red lifejacket. Her dark hair was woven into two braids that fell just below her shoulders. Daphne wore an identical outfit, her hair in one long braid down her back.

  “Across the world?” Seven didn’t know about a lot of stuff, but she could actually tell certain landmasses on the globe. If someone spoke them aloud, she could remember where everything was located.

  Ben laughed from where he captained the sailboat. “Not exactly across the world.” His black hair blew in the wind while his eyes were alight with happiness. “Your Uncle Gene was twenty-two, and I was twenty-one years old. We wanted to have one last hoorah before I went off to law school and Uncle Gene—ahem—went to study English literature.”

  Suddenly afraid she’d missed some kind of cultural reference,

  Seven scratched her head. “Did he not study it?”

  “Maybe he did for five minutes before he gave in and let his darker side guide his life.”

  Ella stood up and slid next to Seven until they sat side by side. “Uncle Gene is a hooligan.”

  “That’s a good way to put it, Ella-bella.” Ben leveled his gaze at Seven. “Gene is responsible for you coming to work with us.”

  “Ah. So he’s an important person.”

  Ben shrugged. “In a manner of speaking, yes. I’ll always be grateful he was able to use his connections to find you.”

  She would, too. If she ever had the chance to do something for Gene Lavelle, she would. “Go on.”

  Ben laughed. “Right, so our dad had a sailboat. A little bit smaller than this one, actually.” Ben looked around the sailboat, and Seven guessed he was remembering the size of the other boat. He really had an amazing mind. Everything he said transfixed her. “Somehow—and now all these years later I can’t imagine how—we managed to convince him to let us take the boat and sail it, by ourselves, down to the Caribbean.”

  Seven stood, nearly falling forward. She hadn’t found what Ben called her sea-legs yet. “I like to look at globes. One of the guards would show us where places were. That’s quite a ride.”

  Ben laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. Gene wanted us to make it all the way down to an island called St. Lucia. We were going to sail down there and then hang out for several weeks before we sailed back.”

  She couldn’t imagine such a trip. Seven had spent days in the back of a van with no idea where she was. What would it be like to be on the water with the horizon gone and only herself to rely on?

  “Did you make it?”

  He shook his head, his eyes wistful. “No. We had to be rescued off the coast of Florida. It was one giant mess after another. I’m better on this lake than I am in the open water. But my brother did take the trip again. By himself. And he made it, which officially gives him the right to blame all our sailing troubles on me.”

  As she stared at Ben, a funny feeling started in the pit of her stomach. He was such an incredible man. She had no doubt she loved him, the kind she’d heard the guards talk about and the way the other Conditioned whispered about at night, and that was a gift she’d never thought to have. What was life without love in it? She’d thought her life would end without ever experiencing the emotion.

  It was warm outside, but goosebumps appeared on her exposed arms. She rubbed them absently. Dread. She swallowed. Yes, that was the emotion taking hold of her insides. Sheer and utter dread. She blinked a few times, trying to clear it from her system. She wanted to be with Ben more than anything. If someone wanted to hurt her, all they would have to do now was to harm Ben in even the smallest of ways.

  “What’s wrong? You just turned three shades paler.” Ben extended his hand to her. “Come here. Are you feeling seasick?”

  “No. I’m okay.” Still, she walked to his outstretched hands. In the background, Ella and Daphne laughed. The girls seemed always capable of entertaining themselves. She’d never known children so adept at finding amusing games they made up out of their own imaginations. Maybe it was a twin thing.

  Ben brushed her hair out of her eyes. They stood in silence as the wind pushed the hair Ben had just moved away back into her line of sight. She blinked a few times, trying to will away her need to start crying.

  “What’s going on, honey?”

  She shivered at the sound of his voice. All she wanted in the world was to crawl into his arms and believe he could make everything better. But that was impossible, and she should have considered the risk he and the girls would be under before she’d gotten into bed with him and let him capture her heart.

  “I think, if you love me as I believe you do, then you and the girls should go away and never think of me again.”

  Ben grimaced. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am. Dead serious.”

  “What’s brought this on?” He stroked the side of her face and, like an idiot, she stood there and let him do
it. Ben was like a drug to her. Already, in such a short time, she was addicted to his touches, consumed by his embrace.

  “If something happened to you and the girls, it would kill me.”

  Ben pulled his gaze from hers to stare out at the horizon. She had no idea what he was thinking, and she wondered if he had decided to listen to her and leave her alone. Part of her was thrilled—she really couldn’t abide the idea of his getting hurt. But the other part of her wanted to vomit at the thought that he would give her up.

  “When Dana died, I just couldn’t believe it.” He sighed and looked back at her. “She’d been sick. We knew it was coming. I’m Mr. Prepared, so we had all her affairs in order. She’d read all kinds of books on handling death with young children and had practically written me a dissertation.”

  Seven wasn’t exactly sure what all of what he said meant. She didn’t recognize the word “dissertation” or know how one got one’s affairs in order. Still, she understood enough to grasp that they had prepared a great deal for her passing.

  These couldn’t be easy memories for him to discuss.

  “Ben…”

  He kept talking. “But then she was gone and there really isn’t any preparing for losing the woman you love and the mother of your children.” He sighed. “So all worry about losing you, or any concern you have about losing me aside, I’m not going to go away or leave you because we’re both worried about what could happen. We’re all going to die someday. There’s no point obsessing about it to the point that we can’t live our lives. You’re part of my life now.”

  “I just have this bad feeling.”

  “Seven—”

  “Daddy!” Daphne’s terrified voice carried over the breeze. She’d jumped to her feet.

  “What is it, sweetheart? Seven, hold this.” He pointed to the wheel, and before she could object, he crossed the boat to get to his daughter.

  Seven gulped as she grasped the steering device. What could he possibly be thinking letting her be in charge of this?

  “Just hold tight to it, sweetheart.” Ben turned to Daphne.

  “What is it, baby?”