Blue Knight (13 page)

And obsession it was. No man could secretly gather and brood over such a collection of photos and materials like Lucas had of her and not call it an obsession. Was it an unhealthy one though? Not if she reciprocated, Téra had decided. She was of age. Even Duardo had tacitly approved.

She just couldn’t figure out what was stopping Lucas.

The next evening, around sunset, she gave up the mental puzzle and went for a run. Grounds security gave her clearance for up to two miles along the cove. She gratefully slipped on her running shoes at the edge of the high tide line and eased into the first mile at a slow jog. Then she pushed up to her normal running pace, feeling her breathing settle in and her mind drop down to neutral. This had been a good idea. The waves were a perfect accompaniment, with their constant noise and rhythm.

Toward the end of the second mile, she could see a figure ahead, standing on the hard sand. She was going to have to run around them.

As she got closer she could see the person was going through ritual movements for some sort of martial arts program as they faced into the sunset. Well, they’d picked a great place to do it. They had to be Vistarian military, which was why grounds security had said she was safe anywhere up to two miles from the house. There was obviously some personnel operating this far away.

Then details began to register as she got closer. The height of the figure. The way he was moving.

Lucas.

Clearly, he had thought he would never be disturbed here, especially by her. He was wearing old sweat pants that hung low on his hips and nothing else. His olive skin shone in the last of the day’s light, highlighting the muscles beneath.

She was a quarter of a mile away when he turned and spotted her. Téra slowed to a jog. Then a walk. She finally halted several hundred yards away from him, but even from that distance, she could see his fury.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she called. “They didn’t tell me.” But even as she was apologizing, she was absorbing his appearance, the details. He was lean, with hard-packed muscle that came from honest work, not hours in the gym. Her hands itched to run all over his body. Especially, she wanted to slide them under the band of those low-slung sweats.

But Lucas was just staring at her, not giving an inch.

She spread her hands. “Fine. I’ll go.” She turned and began to jog slowly back the way she had come, following the line of her footprints. But she had barely traveled a hundred yards before she became aware of the fall of running steps behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. Lucas was running after her and he was gaining.

Irrationally, she abruptly didn’t want him to catch her. Even though he had longer legs, she could probably outlast him over distance. She began to run—not an all-out sprint, not yet.

He gained ground steadily to the point where she could hear him pounding the sand behind her. It gave her a spurt of speed and a dose of adrenaline.

With a roar, Lucas lunged for her. His arms wrapped around her middle and she tripped and fell in a flurry of sand and limbs. Lucas’ dead weight stopped her from rolling across the dry, white sand. She came to a halt on her side, fine sand covering her, her chest heaving from the hard sprint.

He didn’t leave her there. With a growl, he threw her on her back and pinned her arms above her head. His knee rammed between her thighs and pushed them apart, the rough cotton of his sweats scraping over her sweaty skin. The front of his sweats was tented, showing he was fully erect.

Téra looked up at him. The odd look in his eyes made him seem a little like a stranger to her, but at the same time the black eyes and sharp planes of his face she had spent so many weeks studying had become so familiar to her, she almost wept with the comfort they brought her. This was Lucas. She knew him, even though she knew so little about him.

His strong masculine scent seemed to settle over her like a blanket, even as his thigh pushed up high between her legs. It jammed up against her pussy and she gasped at the rough contact.

“Scream,” Lucas growled. “I know that hurt.”

“Is that what you want?” she asked. “You want me to scream?” She was already breathless from the running and the adrenaline spike. But now the adrenaline overload was converting to a languorous, far more pleasurable reaction.

Her pussy lips swelled and moistened and began to pulse with need. It emphasized how empty her pussy was. How close Lucas was. Lucas and his cock.

Téra shifted on the sand, her body rippling as the images of what Lucas might do to her, here on this lonely beach, flittered through her mind.

“Make me scream, Lucas,” she told him. Her voice was still breathless, but raw with lust.

He was watching her every move. He’d seen the change in her, seen the lust take her. His eyes, already black, seemed to darken further. They narrowed. He licked his lips. “You should be afraid. You should not invite such things.”

She lifted her thigh, the one between his. She pushed it up against his groin. Her knee pressed against the soft skin of his testicles, covered by the cotton of the sweats. She moved her knee so she could apply a gentle pressure. “Make me scream,” she repeated. “And I will do the same to you.”

He shut his eyes. “
Usted es una bruja
,” he muttered.

“If I am a witch, then I’m a crappy one. My spells don’t work on anyone.”

With his free hand, he yanked at the waist of his sweats, pulling them down his hips in two sharp tugs. He wore nothing beneath them. His cock reared against his stomach.

Lucas De la Cruz was well-endowed. Téra had suspected he was large from her brief exploration through his trousers on the night of the wedding, but she had not realized the true extent of his size. The girth of his shaft was nearly that of her wrist. The length of it looked to be as long as her hand, before the head pulsed and throbbed.

She swallowed.

Lucas ran a finger the length of his cock. “I have only to see you from a distance and I am instantly hard and aching. My mind fills with thoughts of fucking you. Taking you in ways that would have me arrested in Mexico and probably in Vistaria, too. Your brother would shoot me in the back of the head if he knew of the ways I have fucked you in my dreams, Téra.”

She couldn’t take her gaze away from his fingers as they trailed up and down his cock.

“Do it,” she whispered.

“Do what?”

“All of it,” she said simply.

For a moment he was silent. If a silence could be said to be full of astonishment, this one was. He stared at her. For the first time, Téra knew she had genuinely surprised him.

The grip he had on her wrists loosened. He sat up on his heels, his gaze still taking her in, as if he was reassessing her.

Téra reached for the band of her sports bra and pulled the garment up and off over her head as she lay there. She dropped it to the sand next to her and lay naked from the waist up, calmly staring back at Lucas.

He was anything but calm. She could see it in the way his chest was lifting as he drew in more and more air. His pulse was throbbing in the base of his neck.

For the first time in their dealings together, she realized that they were close to an equal footing. The balances were tipping. She could feel it.

If she was very careful, she could win. She could have her way.

Téra slowly sat up, pulling her leg out from between his. Then she got to her knees so that she was facing Lucas. Moving carefully, feeling as if she must not startle him, she laid her hands on his chest. When he did not flinch or throw her hands off, she let out her breath.

Progress.

She realized she was trembling. The stakes here were high. The next few minutes would decide many things.

His skin was so warm! So surprisingly soft, too. She had not expected that. Lucas seemed to be made up of harsh planes and solids, except for his lips. She had expected the solidness to extend to his flesh, but it was soft and pliant.

Téra smoothed her hands over his chest and felt the tattoo of his heartbeat under her right hand. Lucas stayed silent and still, even though his breath whooshed out from between his lips as she leaned forward and kissed his throat.

She let her fingers trail up to his neck, to curl around his throat and circle around to the back of his neck. A shudder ran through him.

He was either ticklish or highly sensitive. Either fact delighted Téra. She thrust her fingers into his hair and used the leverage on his head to bring his face down to hers so that she could kiss him.

At the first touch of his lips, she knew she could kiss Lucas forever. The soft lips tasted faintly of something cinnamon and something sweet, beneath the unique taste of Lucas himself. She found herself thrusting her tongue into his mouth, moaning with delight.

His tongue touched hers. Tentatively. He was meeting her halfway, but not committing himself yet. But that was okay. That was enough for now.

She realized that she was rubbing her breasts against him, so that the nipples brushed his upper stomach. The friction was delicious, supplying another small source of pleasure that spilled into the others and added to the mix.

Téra spread the fingers of her other hand against his bare hip. Her little finger bumped against the lowered sweats. With deliberate slowness, she moved the hand across to his groin, then lower, between his thighs, to cup his balls. They were heavy, swollen glands, filling her hand. As she took them, Lucas tore his mouth from hers and sucked in a deep breath.

And for the first time, he touched her. His hand gripped her hip, curling over the satin of her running shorts, the nails digging in.

His eyes had a haunted look that made her hesitate. Why would this put such an expression on his face?

But the need to keep giving him pleasure drove her to drop her eyes back to his pulsing cock and slide her hand up to the shaft and curl her fingers around it. They didn’t reach all the way around. Not even close. But the flesh was just as soft, hot and satiny as the rest of Lucas and she knew she wanted him in her mouth.

She spread her knees as much as she could and settled her hips down into the sand.

“Téra….” Lucas whispered, as she lowered herself down. His fingers touched her hair lightly. Entreaty, or perhaps encouragement. But the tone of his whisper sounded like a man being tortured.

She’d worry about that later.

With her hand curled as far around the base of his shaft as possible, she licked the massive head of his cock. Tiny pearls of pre-cum had already emerged, proving that Lucas was as vulnerable to her as he’d just claimed. She stared at the size of his cock head and wondered how she might get it in her mouth. Then she mentally shrugged. She’d manage.

She curled her tongue around the edges of the head and heard his groan. She smiled to herself and kept licking and sucking at the edges and tip. Teasing. His cock jumped and twitched and she could feel her own pussy pulsing in response. Lucas’ breath shortened.

Finally she stretched her lips and drew the head into her mouth. It was a struggle to get it all in at once, but she did. She paused, letting herself adjust to the size of him. Lucas gave a smothered groan and she felt his fingers slide into her hair. Both hands.

She flicked the point of her tongue along the underside of the head and he jerked. His hands clenched.

“Téra…
mi pequeño
.”

Téra eased more of him into her mouth, letting the back of her throat relax. She had not had much practice at this, but she had read enough and heard enough to understand the principles and now she wanted to be good for Lucas. But he was simply too big for her to take a lot of him into her. She struggled to take an inch or so more, then slid her lips back along the shaft to bump over the head.

Lucas hissed through his teeth. His hands clenched in her hair again.

Encouraged, she repeated the movement. Down and back up. With a swirl of her tongue on the underside.

After a few more strokes like that, she tried sucking, as well.

“
¡Mi dios!
” Lucas muttered. His voice was choked, thick with pleasure.

She knew he was close to coming. The tension in his body and the strumming in his cock were unmistakable signs and she was triumphant that she had brought him to this point.

But at the last moment, Lucas thrust her aside. “God, no, no!” He wrenched himself from her mouth and pushed her from him with his arm thrust out like an iron rod against her shoulder, sweeping her aside.

His head fell back as his cock spasmed and he ejaculated into the sand, his hand around the base of his cock. The tendons in his neck strained. His whole body arched as he came. It didn’t look like a pleasure. It looked almost like he was in pain.

Téra lay sprawled on the sand where he had thrust her and watched, the arousal in her body turning sour.

She hadn’t imagined that haunted look in his eyes, then. Or the tortured tone in his voice.

Tiredly she reached for her sports bra and struggled to straighten it out from the rolled tangle of Lycra and netting. Finally, she was starting to understand. There was something bigger than her and Lucas stopping him from taking her.

She just had to find out what it was.

* * * * *

When inspecting the hostages, Colonel Ibarra had managed to remember that the guests at the hotel generally had no military training and did not recognize Vistaria as a formal diplomatic country yet. He had not insisted on recognition of rank and privilege. He wasn’t quite that gone on his own power trip and was still hoping a diplomatic solution might be found from among the mess he’d been handed. The inspections had maintained a veneer of civilization. The guests had got to sit down in the lounge while he had ranged around the room, stopping to “chat” to one or two while he’d decided which one of the guests he would pick out for his questioning session that night.

Serrano was operating from a completely different set of illusions. If anyone in the hotel was still under the impression that they were guests, not hostages, then his inspection at six o’clock that evening quickly corrected their mindsets.