Renegade (Elite Ops 5) (22 page)

She struggled to keep her eyes opened as she watched the folds of her sex part,

watched the slick, juice-laden folds part and hug his flesh as he entered her.

"Nik." Her hands gripped his wrists as he held her thighs, his hips pressing steadily forward. "Nik, I . . ." She licked her lips. She didn't know what to say, what to do.

Pleasure was tearing through her; a tight, pinching burn was mixing with the

violent eroticism and stoking the arousal inside her higher. Heat washed over her, burning beneath her flesh as a painful pleasure began to deepen.

"Hold on, baby." Nik's voice was deep, dark, stroking over her senses and pushing her higher. "Hold on to me, Mikayla."

Her hands tightened on his wrists as she thought she knew what was coming.

Deirdre and other friends had assured her there would be pain. The larger the man, the greater the pain, she had been assured.

Nik pushed inside her, his cock pressing against the thin shield of her virginity.

His thumb moved to her clit, pressing against it, rotating and sending her senses

screaming in sudden, vibrant sensation.

The orgasm that washed over her shocked her. It threw her into a pleasure so

extreme she lost her breath, her voice, and any pain she would have felt as Nik surged 106

inside her, breaking through the virgin shield she had saved for him.

A part of her acknowledged that. She hadn't known him, hadn't known who he

was or when he would come into her life, but this was what she had saved herself for.

Wild, exquisite sensation crashed over her, arching her hips and burying his cock

deeper, harder insider her as his hips thrust against her once again.

Pain was submerged in brutal pleasure. It was disguised in agonizing ecstasy as

one orgasm surged through her even as she began to build toward another.

The feel of his cock stretching her, thrusting hard and deep inside her, had her

entire body arching toward him as he came over her. His hard body surrounded her, his arms gathering her close as his lips covered hers.

A brutal male groan joined the tortured moan of pleasure that tore from her throat as his tongue thrust hungrily into her mouth.

His chest hairs rasped against her nipples; the stubble on his face rasped against her; his thighs caressed hers; his cock speared inside her. Hard. Deep. Triggering a climax that tore her from the very foundations of her soul and sent her flying into pure ecstasy.

Nik stiffened in her arms, his erection burying deep when she felt him tense, felt his cock pulse and throb inside her.

It was a rush of adrenaline and rapture. A high that Mikayla could have never

imagined. One her friends had never warned her of. It was like flying into the sun and piercing paradise as Nik groaned her name, whispered something foreign, and collapsed against her.

It was like finally belonging.

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Chapter 11

She was sleeping.

Nik stared down at Mikayla's relaxed face as he moved back to the bed, a warm,

damp cloth in hand.

Cleaning her gently, he couldn't help but marvel at the softness of her skin once

more. Unblemished, lightly tanned, her muscles toned with a feminine softness he could barely resist.

He'd nearly forgotten to wear a condom.

As he moved back to the bathroom, that thought tortured him. Not since he was a

teenager had he forgotten to wear a condom. Not since the conception of the daughter he had lost. But he'd nearly forgotten with Mikayla.

Disposing of the damp cloth, he turned and braced his hands on the decidedly

feminine sink and stared into the mirror above it.

What he saw there bothered him in some elemental way. The lack of emotion that

had been in his eyes, hell, in his soul, for the past years was now replaced with too much emotion.

The pale blue orbs looked tortured. As tortured as he felt. He could feel the

nightmares of the past moving in on him now, brewing from behind that closed door that had his nightmare emotions locked behind it.

That door was no longer locked. Mikayla had opened it, and now he had no idea

what the hell he was supposed to do with the emotions welling inside him. What the hell was he supposed to do with Mikayla?

Stepping back into the room, he had every intention of walking out of it and back

to the cold, lonely bed in the guest room.
Why compound the mistake?
he thought.

Sleeping with her would only make it harder to leave later.

Amethyst eyes were opened now, watching silently as he stared back at her, as

though she knew what he was about to do.

He had just taken her innocence, taken a gift that she could only give once. One

she had saved all these years only to bestow it on a lost cause.

She would remember this night forever; he didn't want it to end with her regrets.

Like a man walking to a death chamber, he moved back to the bed and the

woman. Slid into it and gathered her against his chest as he wondered if sleep would ever hold anything but regrets after this.

"You have no responsibility to me, Nik," she whispered in the darkness as he flipped the small bedside lamp off.

God, was she so wrong.

"I didn't say I did." He kept his voice low, fought to keep his emotions in check as he buried his fingers in long strands of hair that flowed out from her head.

He felt her lips against his chest as her fingers played softly against the light mat of hair on his chest.

"Tell me something about you," she whispered.

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Nik stared up at the darkened ceiling and realized how little she truly did know

about him. How little he allowed anyone to know about him.

"I was married once." He grimaced, wondering where the hell that admission had come from.

Rather than jumping in and questioning, Mikayla remained silent.

"I had a daughter. Her name was Nicolette." He hadn't told anyone about his child. He never talked about her. Sometimes, he felt as though Nicolette had been nothing but a dream.

"That's a very pretty name," Mikayla breathed softly against his chest.

Nik could feel the pain inside, just as sharp, as bright, as ever, but this time it seemed tempered by time, or by Mikayla.

"What happened to her?" she asked softly after several minutes had passed, an edge of sadness in her voice that warned him that she knew his baby was already gone.

"How do you know anything happened to her?"

Mikayla lifted her head from his chest until she could gaze down at him, the dim

light from the moon spearing through the windows, giving her just enough perhaps to see by.

"If nothing had happened, then she would still be with you," Mikayla said softly.

"You wouldn't be dodging bullets for a woman you barely know if you had a child depending on you to come home."

God, how right she was.

"I was in the army." He cleared his throat, remembering too clearly the decisions he had made because of his daughter. "I transferred out of the unit I was in for a desk job when my wife became pregnant. Nicolette was five when her mother decided marriage

didn't suit her. She was having an affair while I was working long hours to try to provide as much as I could for her and Nicolette. It wasn't enough.

"I was at work when she left. The man she had been sleeping with had been

mixed up in some bad business. Some of his enemies thought he was in the car with her and Nicolette. They intercepted it. Nicolette was shot."

Her body was torn apart by the power and speed of the bullets that had ripped into her tiny body.

Nik could still see it. The blood, the horror. The knowledge that he hadn't

protected his child.

"It was my fault," he finally whispered, accepting that guilt now as he had never before. Accepting it because he realized the care it took to hold a woman's heart.

He hadn't taken that care. He had nourished his job, nourished his position, and

given his free time to his child, while his wife had been left on the outside looking in.

"How is it your fault?" Mikayla asked.

Nik stared back at her. "Because I wasn't the husband I should have been,

Mikayla. I wasn't the man I should have been."

"Nik, I'm so sorry," she whispered, and he swore he saw the glimmer of a tear that eased down her cheek. "But it wasn't your fault. Your wife made that decision, not you."

Someone other than he shed a tear for the child who had never had a chance to

live. The delicate little girl who wanted to be a ballerina. The laughing mischief maker who waited each evening for her "poppa" to come home.

"It was a long time ago." He had to blink back the moisture in his own eyes.

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Mikayla shook her head. "It happened yesterday. That's how clear it is in your heart, Nik. You loved your daughter."

He nodded slowly and said, "Yes."

It happened almost nightly in his dreams, almost daily in his memories. And the

ache never completely went away, though over the years it had softened.

"Lay down." He pressed Mikayla back to his shoulder. "Nicolette would have loved you. You look like one of those damned fairies she was forever reading about."

And Mikayla did. In that moment Nik realized how much she did resemble one of

the little sprites in those long-ago books Nicolette used to make him read to her.

"A fairy, huh?" He felt Mikayla grin against his chest.

"A very beautiful, very wild fairy." He almost smiled himself. "Flitting around and finding trouble every chance she has. You need a full-time keeper."

"Are you applying for the job?" The laughter in her voice, the gentle teasing, was almost more than he could bear.

"Too many jobs already." He had to close his eyes against the refusal he forced past his lips. "Let me get you out of this one first, baby. Maybe you'll learn how to stay out of trouble after that."

"You can hope." Her voice had sobered, the realization that he wouldn't, couldn't, stay a silent reminder that nothing lasted forever.

"I can hope." He kissed the top of her head gently before tucking her closer to his body.

He could hope for many things, though he had stopped doing so long ago. If one

didn't hope, then disappointment didn't visit. Hoping meant you had something to live for, and living for something or someone else was asking for pain.

He'd make certain she was safe; then he would make certain someone watched

over her. Someone other than him.

The next day Mikayla assured herself she had gone into this with her eyes opened.

She wasn't in love, she promised herself. When Nik left, and she knew he would leave, then she would be able to go on without nursing a broken heart.

It didn't help to know she was lying. As autocratic as he could be, as dominant as he was, she was still falling in love, and that knowledge had the power to terrify her.

He was so much more than most men she knew. Hell, more than any man she had

ever known. In the dark the night before, she had learned something about him that she hadn't expected. Something that might explain that dark, tortured air she glimpsed around him.

He'd lost so much. A whole life in some ways. A wife and a child. He'd obviously

left the army after their deaths and now worked privately. But he was still alone. And a niggling little warning at the back of Mikayla's mind whispered that he seemed to like being alone really well.

When he drove off after following her to the shop, Mikayla stared at his back with a frown for long seconds. He'd drawn away that morning. He'd already showered and had coffee when she got up, his gaze as frosty as ever as she fixed her own.

Perhaps frostier, she told herself as she stepped into the shop and greeted Deirdre before heading to her office.

There were phone calls to make. Nik was searching for Eddie's killer, but that

didn't mean she couldn't help him in other ways.

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She hated being on the sidelines where her own protection was concerned.

Mikayla didn't hide from the realities of life. This was her life, and she was the one who had now become a killer's target.

But why?

It took a while, but she finally managed to reach a friend of Eddie Foreman's who

had been elusive for so many weeks.

"Look, Mikayla." Robert Cronin sighed after realizing who she was trying to get hold of him. "Let the police investigate this one."

"Robert, they're not investigating anyone," she informed him wearily.

She had known Robert for years. Before his divorce, his wife had often come to

her for dress alterations. As Robert was another construction foreman, though now no longer with Maddix Nelson, there was information as well as gossip that he had to be privy to.

"Why did you leave Maddix Nelson's company?" she asked. "Just give me information, Robert. Help me."

"Son of a bitch, you're gonna end up dead," he said and she could almost imagine the grimace on his craggy face. "Maddix Nelson ain't no killer. If his granddaddy was alive, then I'd say be looking at him. That man was a pure black-hearted son of Satan if you ask me."

She didn't want a dissection of the family tree. Just information, she thought in

frustration.

"Maybe Maddix is just better at hiding it," she suggested.

Robert was quiet, though the distant sound of machinery in the background could

be heard.

"There's some talk," he finally said. "Maddix has been seen in places that he shouldn't be seen, maybe talkin' to people he shouldn't be talking to. The illegal sort.

Eddie was at a party a few months ago; he used to get pretty drunk, ya know?" Robert cleared his throat. "Anyway, he said he had something on Maddix. Didn't say what, but said it would bring him down."

Mikayla bit at her lip. "Do you have any idea what it was?"

"He didn't say, Mikayla," Robert growled. "Whatever it was, though, Eddie was sure he could hurt Maddix with it. If Eddie told anyone what it was, then it would have been Steve Gainard. He's the only one Eddie would confide in, if he was going to confide in anyone."