Fiery Surrender

by Mari Carr

  Langston wasn’t going to be too far behind her.

  When Rich’s hand brushed his ass, Langston stilled with only the head of his cock between her lips.

  “Rich,” he said.

  Rich ran his hand over Langston’s ass again. “Neither one of you is going to come until I tell you to. We’re nowhere near the finish line, so work it out. Find a way to hold off.”

  Langston sucked in a ragged breath, silently cursing Rich when he ran a finger through the slit of his ass.

  “If you want me to hold off—” Langston started.

  He didn’t have a chance to warn Rich to take it easy because his husband lifted his hand and smacked his ass.

  God. Again with the spanking.

  Langston had dated a woman once who loved it when he spanked her. And Langston had loved the fuck out of doing it. He’d never imagined how much he would enjoy being on the receiving end.

  Mina moaned again and Langston glanced back, watching as Rich drove his thumb into Mina’s pussy. Langston lifted his hips, trying to twist more, to get a better angle to watch, but all he succeeded in doing was withdrawing from her mouth completely.

  With her mouth free, Mina was able to talk again. “Not your thumb. Fingers,” she pleaded. “Three of them. Deep. Hard. Fast. I’m so close.”

  Rich lifted his head and raised one eyebrow, reminding Langston that he was supposed to be keeping their demanding wife quiet. Langston guided his dick back between her lips.

  “Hush, Mina,” Langston soothed, thrusting in shallowly, once, twice, three times, before stilling again.

  Rich’s hand was burrowing between Langston’s ass cheeks.

  “Shit,” Langston cursed when he felt Rich’s wet thumb stroke his anus. He was using Mina’s arousal as the lube.

  He pressed in, not stopping until he’d breached as much of Langston’s ass as he could.

  “Fuck. Me,” Langston breathed.

  Rich must have taken his words as an order because he started thrusting his thumb in and out.

  Gray spots clouded Langston’s vision, the foreign invasion hurting in the best possible way.

  Mina wiggled beneath him, her breathing growing more rapid. Clearly Rich wasn’t just playing with Langston.

  Langston started thrusting his hips once more, fucking Mina’s mouth as Rich fucked his ass. Finesse was out the window, the three of them giving up all semblance of control as their primal instincts took over.

  Mina came first, her loud cries reverberating around his hard flesh, pushing him too fucking close to the peak.

  “I warned you, Mina,” Rich said, slapping her pussy. “Only with my permission.”

  Langston had forgotten about that command, fairly certain he was going to fail too if Rich didn’t hurry up.

  He’d pulled out as she came, giving her a chance to catch her breath, but…goddammit. He needed her, needed to come down her throat, needed to watch her swallow every fucking drop. And he needed it now.

  Mina lifted her hands to grip Langston’s hips and guide him back in. She was sucking him like a woman possessed, while Rich plowed deeper into his ass.

  He liked having his ass filled. At least with Rich’s thumb. He wasn’t sure the same would hold true when it came to taking Rich’s monster cock inside him.

  Mina came again or maybe this was just an extension of her first. He wasn’t sure she’d come down from that one.

  “I. Can’t. Hold. Back.” Langston’s balls constricted. “Jesus H.”

  “Come,” Rich said.

  Langston was already there, coming in Mina’s mouth. Her fingernails scored his sides, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she swallowed every drop even as her body trembled with the aftershocks of her own orgasm.

  He withdrew and fell to her side heavily, surprised when Rich crawled up on the bed on the other side of him. Langston shifted to his back, his breathing labored.

  Mina wasn’t faring much better, while Rich looked like the cat who ate the canary.

  Langston lay still, taking stock. Having Rich’s thumb in his ass had pinched, burned, but now…he felt empty.

  “You okay?” Rich asked.

  “If I say I liked that, are you going to act like a cocky ass?” Langston asked, only half joking.

  Mina shifted to her side, lifting up until she rested her weight on her elbow. “He’s always a cocky ass.”

  “Good point,” Langston said with a laugh.

  “Plugs,” Rich declared. “We need to buy butt plugs.”

  “And maybe some cock rings?” Mina said hopefully.

  Langston tossed a pillow at her, muffling her delighted laughter. He no longer felt so antsy.

  He really was a genius.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I have to get out of here and do some work.” Mina waited until she was turned away from Langston and Rich to smile. Her husbands had adopted the exact same broody posture—arms crossed, feet braced, frowns on their faces—as they watched her pack her bag so she could go to the Social Law Library.

  “I don’t think this is safe.” Rich turned on Levi, who leaned against the wall near the suite door. “You won’t let us order room service, but you’re taking her to some random library?”

  “The Social Law Library isn’t a random library. It’s in the John Adams Courthouse, public place, safe, broad daylight. It’s not like I’m walking down some dark alley at midnight.” Mina hoisted her pack onto her shoulder. “I need to work on the Morrison indictment, and when I’m with you two, I don’t get anything done.” She smiled slowly, remembering when she’d tried to sit down at her computer last night and they’d been wonderfully distracting.

  “We promise to let you work,” Langston said.

  “And maybe your self-control is good enough.” Mina stood on her toes to kiss his cheek, then whispered in his ear, “But mine isn’t. Anytime I look at you, I want to fuck you.”

  Langston exhaled, his warm breath washing over her. He reached for her, but she danced back out of range. Rich was still frowning, but she honestly wasn’t sure if he was worried about her leaving or pissed that she had been given a day pass out of here.

  “Don’t play with each other without me,” she said, pointedly looking at Rich. “Or if you do, take video for me to review later.”

  “You’re a pervert,” Rich grumped.

  “Aww, you say the sweetest things,” she murmured as she walked toward the door.

  Langston ran the back of his hand along her cheek. The gesture so affectionate and sweet, her heart stuttered a beat. “Mina, be careful.”

  “Levi, you had better take care of her,” Rich declared.

  “The Grand Master believes there is little to no danger of Mina being a target, since the subject already knows that she doesn’t have the tablet.” Levi tugged his jacket into place, hiding the gun.

  “Ready?” Levi asked, and when she nodded, he opened the door.

  Mina glanced back. Now her boys looked worried. “Don’t look at me like that. I’ll be fine.”

  She and Levi walked out into the hall, where Tate was waiting. He rose from the chair, setting down a heavy book, tucking his highlighter inside as he did.

  “How many pages of reading do you have this week?” Levi asked.

  “In English? Couple hundred.” Tate looked pained. “In German? Couple hundred more.”

  “Why did we decide to get degrees that require other languages?”

  “Because we’re idiots,” Tate said sadly.

  “Yes, we are. You all good with this?” Levi asked.

  “Yes, the other packages are secure, easier to watch one room.” Tate wiggled his eyebrows a little.

  Wait. What? Was Langston’s brother with Selene?

  Levi led her to the elevator, and together they went down to the lobby. Mina slipped on her sunglasses in the elevator—Langston’s request, since glasses could obscure features enough to throw off facial recognition. Langston was worried, bordering on paranoid, if he thought Luc
a was trying to find her by hacking security camera feeds and using advanced facial recognition. When he grimly pointed out that Oscar could have done exactly that, she’d agreed to wear the sunglasses.

  It had the added benefit of making her feel cool and famous. People looked at her as she crossed the lobby, her sunglasses on, hulking bodyguard at her side.

  There was a black sedan illegally parked right outside the hotel doors. Levi took the keys from his pocket—of course he didn’t trust the valet—and opened the back door. Mina slid in, the soundtrack from a spy movie now playing in her head. Maybe because it was all so over-the-top, she didn’t actually feel nervous being out of the suite. Instead, she was amused, a little anxious to get there and start working, but not scared.

  “So why are you getting a degree in classics?” Mina asked Levi.

  “Two reasons. First, I took Latin as my foreign language in college, so getting a grad degree in classics made use of that.”

  “An interesting choice. In college, did you plan to enter the Army?”

  “Yes. Army ROTC. Arabic wasn’t an option, otherwise I would have taken that, since I knew I’d probably end up in the Middle East.”

  “So what’s the second reason for classics?”

  “I want to be educated.”

  Mina frowned. “Did you not finish your undergraduate degree?”

  “No, I did, but that was just sort of a means to an end. I wanted to learn for the sake of learning. Not as a stepping stone to something else. I’m studying long-dead cultures, two mostly dead languages—ancient Greek is really different than modern Greek—and someday I’m going to be a professor who will teach these equally useless things to other people.”

  “You’re studying it…because there is no practical application.”

  “I’ve done my time being practical.” His voice darkened with what she thought was remembered pain. “Being useful.”

  Mina nodded, not wanting to continue a conversation that seemed painful for him.

  Levi turned onto Arlington Street. Mina had done research at the Social Law Library a few times in the past, when Trinity Masters’ events had brought her to Boston in the midst of important cases. The law library was the second oldest in the U.S. Built in 1893, the John Adams Courthouse, where the library was located, had an eclectic style, with small arched windows close to the ground and an arcaded mezzanine.

  Unlike at the hotel, illegally parking to escort her in was not an option, as city workers were doing repairs to the road right in front of the courthouse.

  He found an obscenely expensive parking spot one block down and around the corner in a garage. It was late enough in the day that all the other parking spaces were already filled, leaving one terrible corner spot against the wall. When Levi opened the driver’s door, the wall was so close, the resulting opening was too small for him to get out.

  Mina laughed and got out her side, having to turn sideways to scoot through the space between their vehicle and the car next to them.

  “Mina, wait!” Levi called out the open window. “Fucking Boston.”

  “Repark closer to this car so you can get out,” she called out, stepping out of the way. A uniformed delivery driver with a dolly walked across the garage, pausing to watch them.

  Levi backed the car halfway out of the space and rolled down the window. “Mina, get back in the car.”

  “Just park.”

  “Ease of ingress and egress is essential.” Levi’s face was hard.

  “Levi, please just park and get out.” She wasn’t going to have much time as it was. “If I get back in and you repark, then I can’t get out.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, then made a frustrated noise and put the car in drive, inching into the space. The driver next to them had parked practically on the line, so it was their problem figuring out how to get in.

  Mina felt a moment of unease, a sixth sense telling her that there was someone behind her. She turned and saw the delivery man walking toward her. It was clear from the way he was moving—easily and quickly—that the massive cardboard box on his dolly was empty.

  Mina smiled at him, though she wasn’t sure he was looking at her. In deference to the chill in the air, he had a sweatshirt on, the hood up to cover his ears, though he was also wearing a ball cap with the delivery service logo.

  Hood up. Face obscured.

  Mina’s shoulders pulled tight, and in a split second, she went from mildly concerned about the parking situation to hyperalert.

  “Levi!” she called out.

  The delivery man sped up, headed right for her.

  Mina backpedaled, bumping into their car. There was a crash as Levi slammed the driver’s door open, smashing it into the wall.

  Mina’s bag slid off her shoulder and hit the concrete with a clatter. She screamed, partly because some long-buried self-defense class had ingrained in her that it was something she should do, and partly because she was now terrified.

  The driver released the handle of the dolly, which fell with a metal clang that drowned out the sound of her screams.

  That was loud, someone will come.

  The driver reached for her, and Mina raised her arms defensively and sidestepped, putting herself in the narrow space between the cars. The assailant grabbed her wrist, yanking her arm. Mina jerked back, her arm now extended. She looked to her right, into their car. Levi’s face was set in hard lines. He was back in the car—he must not have been able to get out.

  “Go limp!” he yelled to her.

  Mina bent her knees, dropping onto the ground, one arm up and extended. Levi was trying to get his big body into the passenger seat. He had his gun in hand, the window rolling down ridiculously slowly.

  The delivery man jerked her arm and her knees slid on the pavement, a little spike of pain working its way through her with a jolt.

  Distracted by that, she hadn’t noticed the needle, not until he stabbed it into her upper arm. The contents burned her muscle as he depressed the plunger.

  Mina screamed again, this time pain taking the forefront.

  Above her, Levi’s long, heavily muscled arm thrust out the passenger window, gun pointed at her attacker. “Let her go,” Levi yelled. “I will shoot you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her assailant jerked her up, holding her body in front of him as a shield. They were still standing in the narrow space between the cars. Close enough that if she raised her hand she could have touched the barrel of Levi’s gun.

  “Let. Her. Go.” Levi had leveraged more of himself out of the car window. The barrel of his gun looked huge. And it was pointed at her shoulder.

  “Don’t shoot me,” she stammered. The words felt heavy and slow. Levi’s gaze cut to her for a moment, and then away.

  The assailant hitched her up, holding her higher along his body. She felt his breath in her hair. He was hiding behind her.

  “Last warning.”

  “Do not risk her life.”

  “I’m not.”

  There was a deafening pop as Levi fired.

  Mina screamed in pain—her ears felt like they’d just exploded, and she clapped her hands over them, the shock of the gunshot momentarily overwhelming the lethargy from the drugs.

  Her assailant was cursing even as he backpedaled, pulling her with him.

  Levi was yelling something. He was half in the car, half out, his hip on the passenger windowsill. He was staring at her with an intensity that said he was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear him. She tried to read his lips. She thought she made out “drop” and “shot.”

  Drop so he had a clean shot.

  Mina bent her knees, letting her body weight take her down. The drug was taking hold, so Mina saw the next few moments happen in a blurry stop-motion.

  The assailant raising a boxy-looking gun.

  Levi, his body half out the window, but arms steady. His hard expression.

  Two popping sounds. Levi’s second shot, and the assailant’s gun.

  Levi crum
pling, in seeming slow motion. Slumping forward, draped over the passenger door as he collapsed.

  Then Mina was moving. Being carried.

  An oddly pleasant floaty feeling, thanks to the drugs.

  Then the inside of the box. The massive box that was just big enough for her body when he forced her into the fetal position.

  Darkness as he sealed her in.

  * * *

  “Admiral, there’s a call for you. It’s being transferred from Cohortes Praetorianae.”

  “I’m not taking calls right now,” Antonio told his assistant. He had a fucking assistant. How had his life come to this?

  The assistant looked at him uneasily, and then glanced at Milo, who was at his side.

  “Admiral, I’m sorry, but they say you want to take it. They said it’s…they say it’s a ransom demand.”

  “Ransom?” Antonio looked at Milo. “Get one of the knights. I want to know where every fucking one of our people is right now.”

  Milo’s already grim expression—they’d been trying to track down Luca Campisi, and more importantly, figure out why a man they’d hired would have been building a bomb the Americans called a “city killer”—turned grave. “Yes, Admiral.”

  Antonio walked to his father’s desk. This room was—maybe always would be, in his mind—Giovanni Starabba’s office. He’d started out trying not to use it, but the position within the house—mansion, Leila would correct—and security features meant it was the best option for an office.

  And so he’d taken over his father’s office, his last holdout being to use a smaller desk in the corner for his computer. The ornate desk that held court in a place of prominence still had the state-of-the-art phone on it.

  He glanced at the phone, hit record, confident that Cohortes Praetorianae would already have a trace on the call, and then picked up the receiver.

  “Yes?”

  “You have something of mine,” a male voice said in Italian.

  “And what is it you have, Luca?” Antonio asked. He’d never met the man, but he was confident in his guess.

  “I have Mina Edwards. I release her when I get the tablet back.”