Pulse

by Angel Payne

  “You…you can’t keep doing…I-I mean, if you want to…”

  “Oh, I want to.” Since the waters have calmed, I remove my hand from the bulkhead and use my fingertips to trace the inner curve of her bared shoulder blade. As her skin pebbles for me, I utter, “And I’m pretty damn sure you want to.”

  “I meant talking.” She bucks against me, but it’s a feeble effort. With a growl, I trap her tighter.

  “Oh, we’re going to talk as well.”

  “As…as well?” She ends it on a gasp, which extends into a sigh as I glide my fingers down to tug at the dress’s zipper. As soon as her bodice is loosened enough, I push down the dress from the shoulder she still has covered, exposing that creamy curve to my questing lips.

  “I like talking this way.” I stare from over her shoulder as the blue material slides down farther, including the built-in pads over her breasts. Oh Christ, yes. Swells of silken flesh. A hint of strawberry gumdrop tips. “Don’t you?”

  But just when her chest is about to spill free, she catches the bodice with one hand and clutches it to her sternum. Crazily, I’m just as mesmerized by that mash of fingers and fabric, billowing up and down from the air rushing in and out of her lungs, as I would be from her exposed flesh. Now there’s a phenomenon the ass-clot could’ve never claimed. But who am I kidding? This has nothing to do with the new Reece and everything to do with the woman who can captivate his cock—and the rest of him—just by breathing.

  “N-Not when you avoid the damn s-s-subject.” She twists the dress tighter. I’m not concerned. Her desperate fist even intensifies my pleasure, reminding me of how wound up my dick already is for her.

  I hum into her hair while pulling the zipper down another inch and then drawing little circles on the shivering skin beneath. Her breath snags. Her fist loosens. My libido soars. This is like winning the World Series—maybe even more incredible—knowing nothing but the certainty of my fingers and the pace of my tease are the fuckers responsible for the obvious unraveling of her composure.

  “And what subject, exactly, would that be?”

  She pushes out a strangled laugh. Reins it back before snapping, “You’re kidding. Wait, no. You’re probably not.”

  I draw the zipper to the bottom of the track. Straddle her spine with the splay of my hand, my lungs working harder for air as I palm her flawless flesh. Goddamn, she’s beautiful.

  “Indulge me.”

  And Holy God, do I mean that in more ways than one. I’ve dipped my sights, drinking in the naked nip of her waist and the dimples just above the waistband of her panties—if the damn undergarment can be called that. Because of the dress’s tailored fit, the woman in the shop actually suggested Emma go commando underneath. My girl, blushing to the roots of her hair, had asked for something to keep her stylish but decent.

  But there’s not a decent thing I want to do to her right now.

  “You. Your father.” Not a snag or a laugh or a gasp in that one. Suddenly, she’s so all-business, I wonder if a spreadsheet is about to materialize in her grip instead of the dress top. Not that I’d complain, even if she has switched trajectory for my jugular now. “And the fact that you’ve already made up your damn mind about walking into his pooch screw of a trap.”

  I’ve already lowered my other hand, slipping it beneath her thong next to the other, but now I abruptly halt the descent. “Pooch screw?”

  “You heard me.” She’s still in the groove with the boardroom girl growl, but her body betrays her mind’s intent, every muscle beneath my hands clenching as she fights her climbing arousal. “And you know exactly what I mean.”

  I exhale hard. “Damn it, Emma. Do you think I have a choice about this?”

  She doesn’t tremble anymore. Or clench. Or gasp. As soon as she uses the leverage of the bar to shove away, she’s nothing but a solid glare—and makes damn sure I get the brunt of it as she starts backstepping toward the couch. “You have a huge damn choice, Reece—and the answer for it is called just say no.”

  For a second, I forget she’s standing there with her dress in just one hand and her heart brimming in her eyes—or maybe the sight is exactly why I growl. “Sure. I’ll get right on that, baby—as soon as I forget that this little soirée of my father’s might be one of the best things to happen for us.”

  “Best things? For us?” Her gaze flares and then narrows. “No, wait. You mean you and Foley.”

  “I mean you and me—and the life we’ll be able to have once these fuckers are taken down.” I lean forward, stretching my arms out again. If I could reach out through the windows and scoop up every drop of water in this tributary to prove how adamant I am, I’d do it this second. “Don’t you see, Velvet? We’ve been looking for these bastards, without any viable hits, for months. Now, a whole load of those cockroaches are going to come crawling out of their sewer in one place and on one night—”

  “Because they’re lying in wait for you!”

  In seven words, she pitches from a furious snarl to a full yell, with her stab of a finger as punctuation. It’s not the hand gripping the dress, but she’s shaking so hard that the garment falls anyhow. At once, its leather fringe catches at the strings of her shoes, messing with her balance all over again. She stumbles backward onto the couch in a heap of blue fabric, a lot of huffy profanity…and breaths that are weighted by barely restrained tears.

  Fuck.

  She claps her hands over her face—which gives me one of the most stunning views of her breasts that I ever remember. And damn it, I remember all of them.

  And, until now, have savored every single one.

  This is not a moment for savoring.

  “Fuck.” Even muttering it aloud doesn’t give me a kickback of grim satisfaction. I’m left with a hollow gut and an unhindered, unnerving twist of self-doubt. Out of all the feelings I’ve processed through this insane day, that definitely hasn’t been one of them. But it’s determined to have its say now.

  Was this the wrong move? Pulling back on Bolt and unleashing Tarzan in the name of ripping her truth out the old-fashioned way? All right, so it was the Reece Richards version of old-fashioned, translating into getting her out here alone, with no more emotional hideouts or hindrances, and then screwing it out of her—but that plan was as winning a plan as the pullout method for birth control. Now she’s destroyed and defeated, and I’m hard-up and pissed-off—and ready to clock the dickwad who glowers back at me from the round mirror beneath the champagne bucket.

  I bring my head back up when she starts kicking so hard, the dress becomes a blue dervish on the air. By the time she frees it from both her ankles, it’s got enough thrust to fly across the cabin. In the same motion, I catch it and discard it behind me as I step forward, hell-bent on getting to her as fast as possible. As drawn to her as the first night we met, when everyone in the office at the Brocade recoiled from my damn mutant force field but her. Now, her agony and fury are the storm dominating the air, and I’m standing here like a ridiculous Frankenstein, looming and moping, when she clearly needs me.

  Me.

  Not Tarzan with the you-Jane head games.

  Not player-hunk Richards with the seduction setup.

  The man she loves as desperately and wholly as he loves her. Apparently, a concept that he overlooked in making this whole lame move…

  “Don’t.” Her charge scythes the air as soon as I breach the area near the couch. I’m still a good four feet away from her. “Damn it, Reece. No more. Just. Don’t!”

  I nod slowly, letting her know she’s been heard and acknowledged—just not believed. She’s yelling stay away with her words but begging don’t leave with the aqua storms in her eyes and the tormented twists of her lips. My system answers with a matching conflict, the heat in my crotch warring with the ice storm of my remorse.

  What the hell was I thinking?

  Wearily, I slump into one of the two leather bucket chairs facing the couch. One knee I keep bent while sprawling the other out in a stra
ight line. My foot hits the front of the couch directly beneath where she’s sitting. No flinch from her this time. I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing.

  But I do know—know—she doesn’t want me to go keep Tristan company up on the deck. As bent as she is with me for the dirty tactics, she still doesn’t mind me taking up a bunch of air and space over here on my side of the imaginary boundary line.

  Though, as I look over, I wonder if she’s even keeping track anymore.

  Because over on her side, a lot of boundaries are clearly coming down.

  What. The. Hell?

  I try not to stare but can’t help doing just that. Then confirming exactly what evidence I’m observing in so many beautiful ways.

  Her eyes are exhausted but clear. The plush bow of her mouth is firm with concentration. Her hands, with knuckles curled against each other between her raised knees, aren’t tense or trembling anymore. Her cleavage, now shielded by her knees, rises and falls with a focused thrum instead of staccato panic.

  Yes.

  This.

  Right here.

  It was the point all along.

  I was just trying too hard. Navigating the straits in a zigzag instead of letting her hoist the sails herself.

  Chalk another fucked-up voyage up to the ass-clot.

  Several minutes pass filled with nothing but the engine’s drone and our mutual silence. Hands down, they’re the best moments of my day. I even beg fate to add a few hundred more to the collection and do it with confidence. I’ve paid Tristan to cruise the sightseeing loop all night, and right now, with this creature before me in all her tousled, half-naked truth, I can’t think of a better value for my money.

  But amazing moments are called that because they’re moments—and this one gets its inevitable end in the form of Emma’s determined head jerk, exposing every opalescent light in her gorgeous blues and every strong angle of her raised hand, which she scrapes back through her hair. As she grabs at the strands, lifting them into a white-gold burst at her crown, similar light explodes through my chest. She’s never been more fucking beautiful. I’ve never been so fucking smitten.

  In the next moment, her gaze finds mine again. She sends a heavy swallow down the creamy column of her throat. “I see it now,” she rasps. “Why you’ve done this.”

  Correction. Now I’ve never been so smitten.

  “Back out there”—she waves her other hand toward the aft of the boat—“I would have walked away from you again.” Her forehead crunches. “I hate having to admit that—but I also hate having to say that getting angry was a much better alternative than facing my fear.” She uncurls her hand from her hair and slides it until her fist is supporting her forehead. Her eyes are squeezing with shimmering tears. “And damn it, I am afraid.”

  I ball up my own hands. It’s the only way to keep them positioned atop my thighs instead of lunging out, extended and open, to reach for her. Jesus, how I ache to hold her. To cradle her. To kiss every one of those damn tears into nonexistence. “It’s okay to be afraid,” I grate.

  “No,” she rebuts. “It’s not.” With a peeved snap, she straightens her head and swipes at her tears. “Not like this!”

  “Oh, yeah.” I nearly growl it. “Like this.” And dare to push forward again, punching my fists together while ramming my elbows atop my knees. “Exactly like this, Emma. Each and every day.” And I square my jaw, conveying to her how thoroughly I mean it—inciting her into a clear-cut case of what the hell now?

  “When I accepted your ring,” she rasps, “there were stars in the sky but none in my eyes, okay? I knew—I’ve always known—what this life with you would hold.” She unfurls the fist in order to angle the tanzanite stone on her finger more fully into the light. As soon as that happens, the bright-blue reflections shoot across her face like the thousand stars from which she’s just fought to distance herself. “I knew what this meant, Reece—and what it still means. Loving you brings a breathtaking view, but that means we have to walk at the edge of the cliff with no safety ropes.” She inhales with ragged stutters. “It also means that at any moment, you might get pulled all the way off. And that I’ll have to watch it happen.”

  Well…fuck.

  “Emma.” It spills from between my teeth, as much a plea as a reaction—with a heaping side dish of atonement. This was supposed to be about her facing the truth so she could get braver about it, not taking on the beast, restyling its fur, and then hurling it back to bite me in, apparently, my very exposed emotional ass. “Holy shit…”

  “It’s all right.” She lowers her hand. Wraps it around the other and then rests her chin atop their prayerful hold, over her closed knees again. Despite the clamshell pose, her stare sends nothing but the clarity of love my way. “It is, Reece. It has to be. I see how deluded I’ve been, thinking that the command center would somehow supply you with enough intel and firepower to take down the Consortium. But wars still aren’t won just with drones and guided missiles, are they? It requires boots on the ground. In this case, your boots.”

  She ends it with a hitching sigh—which is, in a heartbeat, the snapped lock on my self-restraint. I’m not a goddamned Jedi, though she sure as hell is my guiding Force, and right now, I’m the lightsaber compelled to her side in a growling, glowing rush. I crumble to my knees next to her, inundated with the yearning to strengthen her, to serve her, to even destruct armies for her. As I push my head onto her lap, barely seeing her bare breasts in my face now, the curl of her body makes me moan with raw gratitude, pledging my fealty to her all over again.

  “My beautiful Velvet.” I breathe it into her navel with as much admonishment as comfort and as much command as succor.

  “My beautiful storm.” And unsurprisingly, her tone contains all the same elements.

  “I’m not falling over the cliff.”

  She pushes a kiss into my hair. “I didn’t say you’d fall.”

  “I know what you said.” I shift away and then up, though latch my grip around her hands as I do so she has to swing her knees over, abutting them to my chest. “Look at me, Emma.” As soon as she drags her lashes up, giving me even a peek at the turquoise splendor of her irises, I repeat, “I know what you said.”

  She thrusts out her chin. “So how can you say you won’t—”

  “Because I won’t be doing any of this alone.”

  “Damn right you won’t be.”

  Her insistence isn’t unexpected, but seeing it in living, breathing color, enhanced by her spirit and beauty, is another advent altogether. My answering surge of protectiveness has nothing to do with craving a reboot on caveman Reece, either—and everything to do with fear. Lots of the shit. The exact same terror she’s so bravely unveiled for me but to which I now cling as if I’m standing here on the edge of an Andes cliff instead of the middle of the Seine.

  Fucking. Pussy.

  I can be fine with that. Extra fear means extra adrenaline. And extra adrenaline means more awareness of any fucker at that party who decides to pull a Faline, attempting to get at me through her. I will not be merciful meting the hellfire for it this time.

  Trouble is, Emma’s not in the mood for mercy either—and makes no secret of it as I mutter, “I was referring to the tactical team Foley’s already starting to gather, but—”

  “But what?” Nope. No mercy. Definitely not. The unwavering angles of her face are proof enough, but when she slides her hands up and clamps her fingers around my wrists, I already know any argument is a lost cause. “You had to know this would be my contract addendum, mister.” She pulls hard, urging my hands closer to her thighs and then her hips. Air leaves me in a massive rush. I spread my fingers along her exquisite curves, drawing ten distinct circles into her warm, wonderful softness. “And it’s not negotiable. I’m on the team.”

  Lost. Cause.

  I know it as soon as my caresses leave light-blue tracers down her thighs. They’re faint enough to appear like jet trails but dark enough to be something kinkier
—a musing that ensures I’m not about to find my way back to composure now.

  But perhaps Emma doesn’t want to be findable either. As I send soft sizzles into the flesh between the band of her panties and the curve of her knees, she skates her touch back up to my shoulders. Her breath comes faster. Her chest heaves harder. The tips of her perfect tits aren’t so easily disregarded now, with their peachy areolas puckering around nipples the color and texture of their fruity pits. So dark. So hard. So perfect.

  And I’m officially lost. Deliriously, gloriously lost.

  “Addendum accepted.” I rumble it out, delighting at once in her responsive little squirm. She joins another to it, with a little more adorable need, as soon as I go on, “But I have some clauses of my own as well.” With wider fans of my fingers, I roll across the tops of her thighs toward the seam where they’re still tightly pressed together. “Equally nonnegotiable terms.”

  “T-Terms?” It tumbles from her in breathy stammers as I tease my touch along the satin triangle covering her center, with its delectable damp patch at the middle. I know she’s wet, and getting wetter, as soon as she parts from the steady, sure command of my thumbs against her inner thighs.

  “Nonnegotiable,” I confirm, spreading her even wider. The muscles beneath my hands flex and constrict, pulsing in time to the throbbing blue lights beneath my fingertips. Jesus. Her hesitation has all but disappeared. She’s a writhing, shaking picture of need, her desire palpable as I lean in, my lips inches above hers, and murmur, “Fixed…and binding.”

  At once, the dark spot in her panties widens.

  As the most succulent scent in the world fills the air.

  Her.

  That pussy. That arousal. That magic.

  “Jesus,” I grit out. “Yessssss, Bunny.” When she only emits a long, high hum in return, I tuck my head down and inhale long and lustily. “All right. Term number one.” I curl my index fingers up and under the waistband riding against her hipbones, slicing clean through the satin on both sides. “This is now my official good luck charm for the mission.”

  As I draw out the ruined garment, she’s consumed by another shiver, though it concludes in a tense little laugh. “You know, you could just ask for a hankie.”