Blue Knight (30 page)

Daniel caught at her arms again. “Wait, Olivia. Just wait, please. There is one thing more I must say.”

She made herself let go of his shirt. She smoothed out the wrinkles she had made.

Daniel was staring at her, as if he could not quite bring himself to speak. Finally, he dropped his gaze and looked away. “If I do not make it back—”

She moaned. “No, Daniel—”

“No, don’t be romantic about this. You’re as much a realist, as practical as I am. I must tell you this and you must listen. Please.”

She stared at him. Daniel wasn’t practical or a realist and neither was she. They were both emotional romantics at heart but life had made them this way. They had both become so damn good at it and so very practiced. They had maintained the outer efficient layer for so long it just seemed that this was the way they were supposed to be.

But she had seen a different facet of Daniel emerge the last day or so, when he let his guard down. A far different sort of man, one who might have been. The one that she liked to think was the true Daniel.

It occurred to her that neither of them had ever faced this before. Neither of them knew how to handle an emotional parting, when there was a good chance they’d never see each other again. Soldiers did it all the time, but Daniel had never had a stable relationship to practice with. The only parting Olivia had ever experienced had been acrimonious, retracted and hostile and her ex had insisted on hanging around like a bad smell for years afterward.

At the very least, Daniel needed her to listen now and not trip him up with her fright and hysteria because that would make it worse for him.

So Olivia slid one hand around his neck and the other into his hair. “I’m listening,” she told him softly.

His thumbs moved in circles over her arms. “If I do not find you, search out Eduardo Peña with the loyalists. I have no idea what rank he is now, but he was based at Pascuallita before they lost the main island and he’s still alive, so he must be with them at the big house at Acapulco. Find him. Talk to him.”

“Talk about what?”

Daniel took a breath. “About me. About you and me. Tell him what we talked about. You’ll like Duardo. He’s very simpatico. He’ll understand a lot quicker than I did.”

She could feel a buildup of pressure behind her eyes, making them sting. She blinked hard. “You want him to know you’re sorry, don’t you?”

He made a small movement with his head. A tiny grimace. “Yes, damn it.” He sighed.

Olivia tightened her arms around his neck. “How long until you leave tonight?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“An hour. Not much more.”

Her heart lurched, but she bit back her reaction, for Daniel was still speaking.

“The rendezvous point is miles away, three bays north at Bahía Coralina. I had to make it that far from here. The
insurrectos
would have noticed troops massing on their doorstep.”

She nodded, her cheek brushing his shoulder. “Then you had better make good use of your hour, hadn’t you?”

His arm swept her legs up. “I intend to,” he murmured.

* * * * *

Gomez laid the electronic pieces on Ibarra’s desk and stepped back.

“Where?” Ibarra asked, rubbing at his tired eyes.

“The phone itself was at the front of the hotel, spread across a dozen yards of the old public car park on the concrete there. The pieces of the battery were out by the laundry, out the back.”

“As far apart as you can get them.” Ibarra considered the pieces. “It’s Solos’ phone?”

“Yes, sir. He confirmed it was his.”

“I suppose we have no hope of getting it operating again?”

Gomez shook his head. “The technician who looked at it said there are pieces missing. It shattered and sprayed parts everywhere and the wire board has been broken. It is quite dead.”

“How convenient,” Ibarra said.

“Sir?” Gomez asked, puzzled.

Ibarra shook his head, sitting up, the last of his fatigue draining away. Serrano was right after all. Nemesis was here at the hotel and the asshole had stolen Solos’ phone and got out a message.

How dare he!

Who was he? Which one?

Ibarra looked up at Gomez. “I want a recording from today and the most recent list of all the male guests, now.”

“Yes, sir!” Gomez snapped off a salute and hurried away, the perfect unquestioning officer.

* * * * *

As soon as Daniel placed her on the bed, Olivia knew this time it was different. It wasn’t simply that her own heart was breaking.

He kissed her with a slow, deep lingering thoroughness that left her breathless and panting. His tongue swept through her mouth, lazily curled around her own and stroked her lips with teasing, long passes that made them tingle. All the while his hands held her head still and his knees pinned her hips.

She caught glimpses of his eyes watching her as her own eyelids grew heavy and tried to keep closing, the blue of his eyes so brilliant and pure it made her breath catch.

His mouth moved down to her shoulders and his fingers and lips teased and stroked and gradually inched her camisole straps from her shoulders, straining the fragile silk and lace between her breasts and over her arms, trapping them by her sides.

With little nips and tugs of his teeth, he dragged the camisole inches lower, so that it was barely covering her breasts. The areolas of her breasts were peeping above the lace.

With a hungry sound, he feasted on the flesh he’d exposed, sucking and nibbling, stroking it with his tongue.

Olivia began to writhe on the bed, her hands splayed flat on the covers by her hips. This was an unexpected torture. Bereft of toys and instruments, Daniel could still bring her to a fever pitch and she was fully clothed, too.

Her pussy was pulsing and so wet it was soaking through her jeans. Her clit was throbbing, begging to be stroked. To be pressed against. To be played with.

She moaned, this time in pleasure and desperation.

Daniel ran his tongue over the visible arc of her areola, making her gasp. Then he blew on it and her hips lifted in reaction, making her arch, pushing her breasts up and offering them.

Daniel kept running his tongue around the arc of her areola, back and forth, until his tongue bumped into the lace of her camisole. Each time he nudged the camisole a tiny fraction of an inch lower.

Olivia found she was holding her breath, waiting, tension coiling in her gut.

Daniel’s tongue continued to sweep back and forth in that careful arc, until she began to squirm.

Then her camisole popped over her hard, erect nipple and slid beneath, freeing it.

Daniel still avoided touching her nipple with his tongue. He lathed her areola, pushing the camisole down farther, until the slope of her breast was too sharp for the lace to cling anymore and it slid beneath her breast completely.

Even then, he did not surrender to temptation. Instead he turned to her other breast and began the same slow, tension-racking nudge of her camisole with his tongue, swiping over the circle of her areola, until that nipple, too, was freed of the lace and silk, then the breast itself was fully exposed.

Still he did not indulge himself. Daniel sat up, making Olivia give a soft cry of frustration.

He laughed. It was a low sound. “You sound thwarted, my tall one. Anyone would think I am not being a gentleman.” He had switched back to Spanish.

“You are not,” she told him as he swiftly unbuttoned and discarded his shirt. “No gentleman would leave me lying in this state.”

“You are to blame for that, my sweet.”

“Me?” She was genuinely astonished.

Daniel tugged the hem of the camisole out of her jeans and slipped the garment off over her head. He dangled the damp piece of silk and lace in front of her. “You wear this and these—” His other hand smoothed its way down her thigh. “No bra, your hair down and Vistarian symbols all over your body like brands out in public. You wonder why I tease you now? You’d be better off wondering why I didn’t just lower you to that bar room floor when you first stepped in there this afternoon and claimed you as mine for the world to see.” His hands curled possessively around her waist as he stared down at the silver belt buckle. “I wanted to. Jesus, how I wanted to.” His voice was very low.

“Daniel,” she breathed, afraid to break the spell. This was the real Daniel. Right now.

He blinked and looked at her, then stirred, his hands falling away from her abruptly, like he had been caught with them in the cookie jar. “Vistarians are full of bullshit like that. Sorry. All that Latin male ego run amok combined with generations of poets and dreamers. Now everything’s a symbol or a sign to us.” He laughed tightly. “Or a warning.”

He lay on the bed next to her and Olivia hid her disappointment by reaching for him. “If you
had
taken me, then you might have used the table. That floor would be far too cold.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped open a little. He laughed again, but this time it was a good laugh. He kissed her, rolling her so that she was lying on top of him. He pushed her hair back. “I love your hair, especially out like this.”

She laughed. “I grew it out and refused to cut it because my father and my ex kept saying I should cut it, that I was too old to have long hair anymore.”

“Drinking buddies, were they?”

“Something like that. Let’s change subjects.” She kissed him and spread her legs until they slipped to either side of his hips. She ran her tongue from his lips to the base of his throat, having learned from Daniel himself how erotic it felt. His head pushed back into the pillow and he hissed. His hands came around her waist.

“It’s safe to talk about yourself now,” he pointed out.

“But you only have less than an hour,” she said, her lips moving against his chest. “I don’t want to spend that talking about my cantankerous family.”

“Later, then,” he said. “Promise me you’ll tell me later.” His hands tightened and shook her a little.

She lifted herself up enough to meet his eyes with her own. She could see the unspoken “if” there. It was large, radiating…and silent.

“Yes, later, then,” Olivia said slowly. She returned her lips to his chest and could feel the rapid beat of his heart beneath. She spread her fingers there, too. What was in her heart was so close to spilling from her lips. She held it back by kissing his flesh, pressing her love into his chest over his heart.

She swirled her tongue over his skin, tasting him. Daniel had such a unique flavor. She would recognize his scent and his taste blindfolded. Just the taste and touch of him made her clit give a little pulse and push images into her mind of them making love and of Daniel’s cock sliding into her. His hands on her body. Pressing herself against him in the shower. His mouth on her clit, nuzzling her. There were already so many memories and they flickered through her mind as she let her mouth wander down his stomach.

If someone who had known her future had told her she was going to fall so deeply in love with a man like Daniel, two weeks ago, she would have told them they were lying. She would have laughed in their faces and crudely told them they were full of shit and demanded her money back. The idea of falling in love with someone like Daniel was so far beyond possible her mind simply would not have been able to grasp it.

Yet it was now a reality.

She worked quickly to strip him of the rest of his clothing. She took hers off, too. Daniel shifted his limbs and torso, helping her remove his. His cock was thick and ready and Olivia pressed kisses into his stomach just above where the rounded head rested and saw it jerk in response. She slid her tongue down his abdomen, alongside the shaft, not touching it, but letting her breath fan over it, while her knee separated his thighs and she settled between them.

As she swirled her tongue over the base of his cock, Olivia cupped his testicles in her hand and gently squeezed.

Daniel groaned, his head rolling back.

Encouraged, Olivia stroked the seamed flesh of his perineum, while still keeping her lips and tongue busy at the base of his cock and her hand around his testicles. She felt his hip tighten and lift. Another deep, choked groan pushed out from his lips.

She slowly inched her way higher up his shaft, her lips and tongue and sometimes her teeth making a feast of the silky hot skin, while her hands stayed busy massaging and stroking, teasing and touching his scrotum and perineum. By the time she reached the head of his cock, Daniel’s breathing was shallow, fast and loud.

His fingers slid tentatively into her hair. She sensed he longed to drive them against her head, to control her and fuck her mouth with hard strokes to relieve the ache she had built in him, but he was holding himself back manfully, letting her tease him.

She engulfed his cock with her mouth suddenly and without warning.

“My god, Olivia!” he cried, his hands clutching at her head as his back arched.

Olivia didn’t pause. She sucked him, her lips riding up and down his shaft, bumping over the soft ridge of the head of his cock, while her tongue stroked at the seamed underside of the head with relentless, soft probing swipes. Each time she took him into her, she relaxed her throat and pushed him further back, until her lips were reaching halfway down his cock. But she was at the wrong angle to take him deeper into her and that wasn’t what she wanted to do right now.

Daniel was already writhing on the bed, his hands driving into her hair. He was totally caught up in what her mouth and hands were doing to him.

Olivia lifted her fingers away from stroking his perineum and reached between her own legs. She was dripping with natural lubricant and she gathered it up on her fingers.

As she fucked Daniel with her mouth, she spread the cream over his perineum and rimmed his anus with the tips of her fingers. Just the touch of her fingers made him moan and his hips shift in a way that told her he liked it, although he was so caught up in what she was doing to her cock, she suspected he wasn’t quite aware of what else she was doing.

She could feel from the pulsing of his cock that he was about to come. Olivia slipped the tips of two of her fingers into his ass, feeling the muscle clench around her. She concentrated on what her mouth was doing, on coaxing his orgasm from him.