Smoke and Mirrors (11 page)

She swallowed. “Because I’ve only known you twenty-four hours, and there are so many things in the way…”

His lips parted, drifting around her chin and cheeks and eyes without touching. “I can’t see anything dividing us right now. Not even much air.”

It was increasingly hard to remember why she shouldn’t do this. She held his semi-naked body under her hands, her heart thundering in her breast and her whole being melting with need. His mouth was so very close…and he could kiss. Oh God, yes, he could kiss…

She closed her eyes, lifted her face that extra half inch, and kissed his lips.

They parted in immediate response, yet enchantingly, he let her lead as she traced his mouth with her lips and tongue, tasting him with wonder and increasing sensuality.

She drew back, staring at him. Reality had faded dangerously. There was only Rodion and the invisible electric charge tugging them together. And her sense of anticipation that something huge was about to happen. Unless she stopped it.

“What now?” he said huskily. “Do you want me to fuck you?”

Like her, he knew this was wrong. She smiled. “Do you think I’m so wimpy that coarse words will send me screaming from the room?”

“No. I really want to know, because the tension’s killing me.”

Unexpected laughter spilled breathlessly from her lips, was answered in his amazing eyes. And as it began to die, a lump seemed to form in her throat. “I don’t do this,” she whispered in anguish. “I
can’t
do this. I came to tell you… Oh hell.”

It was too much to expect, too enticing to resist. She gave in and reached both arms around his neck, fastening her mouth to his, fitting herself to his long, lean body. Immediately, his hands slid down to her bottom, pulling her upward, drawing her over his erection. Then he simply seized the hem of her sweater and pulled it up and over her head and arms, breaking the kiss at last.

She wore no bra, since she’d rejected yesterday’s as soiled and the borrowed sweater was too baggy to really need one. As he dropped the sweater on the floor, she wanted to curl up with embarrassment and hide her imperfections under covers and darkness. But he stared, devouring her breasts with his eyes, and she realised, stunned, that he liked what he saw.

At the same time, his hands were on her jeans, unfastening and shoving them down over her hips with the speed, surely, of great practice. When his hands grasped her naked buttocks, pulling her upward, she was so desperate that she jumped and wrapped her legs around his waist.

He didn’t stagger, just strode forward a couple of paces and lifted her higher, wedging her rear against the tall chest of drawers while he latched his mouth to her naked breast and sucked. Her head fell back with the wild force of the sensation, pushing her breast into his mouth, and he pulled harder. In blind response, she wriggled, searching for the large, hard bulge in his jeans.

He raised his head, his breathing ragged. He took one hand from her bottom and delved into his jeans pocket before holding the tiny packet in front of her eyes.

“Yes or no,” he said unsteadily.

She stared from the condom to his clouded, handsome face. It wasn’t a question about condoms. It was a question about sex. Yes or no. She knew what she should do. And what she would do. For this once, there was no contest.

“Yes,” she whispered. “If you want it.”

“I want you.” He tore the packet with his teeth and somehow shoved down his jeans and manoeuvred the condom on with one hand while holding her to him with the other. She wished she could see him do it. Then, he stepped back from the chest of drawers and, with aching slowness, watching her all the while, he lowered her onto his cock.

It had been a long time for Nell. But she was so wet for him, so eager, that he slid inside her with no resistance whatever. And he felt amazing. She shuddered around him. He swung her around and strode to the bed.

Already dizzy from desire, from violent, overwhelming need, Nell watched the world spin as he laid her on the bed. He held her bottom up off the mattress to keep her legs around his waist. When she refocused, his eyes blazed with a wild passion she’d never encountered before. It excited her beyond belief.

“So let’s fuck,” he said softly and drew back to push deep inside her.

She cried out with the stunning pleasure it gave her, and he blurred gold and red before her eyes.

“Your aura is back,” she gasped. “Oh, what the hell are we doing?”

“Call it distraction,” he said breathlessly, thrusting into her again. “Sex is the best distraction for things you’re not ready to deal with yet. Therapy, if you like…” His eyes widened, drinking her in, and he groaned.

She must have looked pretty wanton with her arms flung up over her head. Almost sacrificial. For some reason, the thought aroused her, almost as much as the sight of his powerful body above her and the feel of him inside her. She reached for him with urgent arms.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, kneeling on the bed and giving in to her embrace. He lay over her and kissed her lips with blatant, openmouthed sensuality. His hands, warm and exciting, held her by the waist and travelled slowly up to her breasts, as though teasing himself.

He raised his head, watching his palm stroke one straining nipple, barely touching, before firmly cupping the whole breast. She moaned, and he bent to kiss the other. All the while, he moved inside her with slow, sensual strokes.

“Touching you is like falling into silk and velvet,” he murmured, his breath as well as his lips stirring her nipple to a hard, long peak. “And nectar… Warm, responsive nectar,” he added as her body undulated to the touch of his mouth.

She never felt like this. Men never talked to her like this. Something had to be wrong.

“Irina,” she blurted, in grief and loss, because this might just be distraction for him but for Nell, there could be no going back from it.

He stilled, as he’d done when she last mentioned that name. Then, slowly, he detached his mouth from her breast and raised his head to gaze down at her.

“No.” He shook his head and with deliberation, bent to take her other nipple between his lips. He flicked it with his tongue, then sucked with unexpected force, and the pleasure streamed through her, hard and exciting. He released her nipple and instead rolled it between his fingers.

His voice was low and soft. “This isn’t about Irina.” Slowly, achingly, he pushed in and out of her, making her glow, making her moan. “This is just you and me. And sex.”

She gasped, straining up to meet him because it felt so good. She wrapped her legs around his hips again, caressing, and he drove farther in with a groan that vibrated to her trembling core.

“Still silk and velvet,” he said unsteadily. “Hot, wet velvet, like a glove in the rain.” He growled deep in his throat as she clung to him, massaging. “A glove with muscles.” He began to move more rhythmically within her. “Nell, Nell, you’re spoiling my plan…”

“What plan?” she gasped, writhing to the wild, insistent pleasure he was driving inside her.

“To make it long and slow. Maybe I’ll do that later.” His voice cracked. “Oh fuck, Nell…”

“I am,” she got out on a choke of breathless laughter, and he smiled and lowered his head to kiss her mouth. His arms went around her, hard, holding her head steady as his pace increased, thrusting hard and wild. She met him, massaged him, circling her hips, and he ground and twisted within her, groaning. Never in her life had she been so aroused, so exquisitely pleasured, or so desperate for completion. Nor had any man ever seemed so passionate about her body, about taking and giving sexual joy. The tiny animal sounds of need that spilled from her seemed to spur him on.

She ran her hands over the flames of his tattoos, raking down his back to his firm, thrusting rear, pulling him into her, writhing under him with gasps and moans she couldn’t suppress as orgasm caught and surged through her like a tide.

He covered her mouth with his, smothering her cries of joy. He rammed into her once, twice more and reared up on his elbows, groaning, almost like in her dream. Flames seemed to leap in his eyes, reflections of those on his skin, blurring the blue to gold and orange. And then his lashes swept down as he collapsed on her. Heat surged through her, almost like an electrical charge, from her core to every extremity and nerve ending, blinding her with the fresh rush of weird, intense ecstasy. Her mouth opened wide under his in a silent cry of fear. And then there was only pleasure.

She held on to him in a wonder that amounted to awe. He kissed her mouth with trembling lips and then buried his face in the pillow beside her. For a few moments, that was enough, as orgasm faded to a dull, sweet ache, and the strange rush of blissful heat calmed to something more normal.

She whispered, “What the hell was that?”

From his voice, he was smiling into the pillow. “I told you. I burn.”

Insistently, she pushed at him, rolling him onto his back until she sat astride him, his cock still buried deep inside her. She
felt
burned, branded by sex with him. And yet drowning the fear was a wild exhilaration she’d never known before.

He opened his eyes and smiled. “Well, that’s a vision I could get used to,” he said softly, stretching luxuriously under her and folding his hands under the back of his head as if to enjoy the sight.

Nell had no words for the beauty of the splendid man beneath her who’d just given her such unprecedented joy. So she used none, just bent and kissed his mouth. He seemed to need no recovery time, for he stayed hard inside her. His eyes closed once more, and she couldn’t help moving on him, short, lazy movements that seemed to caress the satisfied after-tingles still buzzing deep inside her.

He smiled contentedly under her lips but didn’t move for so long that she lifted her head in sudden amusement. “Are you asleep?”

“Yes.” He pushed inside her once, lazily. “But I can still fuck you in my sleep.”

“Liar.”

“Oh, but I can. And I can make it long and slow, just as I meant to the first time.”

“But you wouldn’t be asleep,” she pointed out.

He raised himself on his elbows and rolled her under him. Amazingly, his eyes were clouded with lust all over again. The man had stamina.

“You can’t have everything,” he said and reached over her to the bedside table for another condom.

“Yes, you can,” she said fervently.

****

Rodion woke with a woman in his bed and a novel feeling of peace in his heart. It wasn’t the way he’d planned to start this momentous day, but it would do. It would do just fine. Slowly, he turned his head on the pillow.

Nell lay curled at his shoulder, her dark brown hair cascading over his skin. Her long eyelashes lay thickly against her cheek, and the breath came calm and even from between her soft, parted lips. She’d done some beautiful things with those lips last night; there were a few he still had in mind. But unfortunately, now was not the time.

He hadn’t planned last night. The kiss on the cliffs had been to keep her with him. And because he’d wanted to kiss her since he’d first seen her in the police station looking so vulnerable and brave and beautiful. But he had rebound issues. She had touching issues. He’d never expected it to go this far.

When he’d taken her in his arms in his bedroom, it had genuinely been to comfort her and ease her worry over the dreams she didn’t want. But that she’d dreamed of him, and clearly in a sexual way, had done things to him. Wanting her became a need, as sharp and imperative as water to a man dying of thirst.

And he’d been right. She was a sweet fuck—urgent, passionate, eager, and yet tender and vulnerable. Remembering the feel of her soft, writhing body in his arms made him consider quite seriously taking her again as she woke. A man could get lost in her body and yet still not mind waking up, because she intrigued him and made him laugh.

A sweet fuck was a dangerous fuck. He’d been here before, so recently that his wounds were still raw. But his wounds were unimportant. It was time to get up, kill the bad guys, and find his treasure at last.

He smiled to himself as he slid out of bed. It had become habit to refer to his younger siblings as treasure, to hide his meaning in general conversation and yet still be understood by those who knew, like Anna, Ilya, and Boris. Now he even thought of them that way. If there was anything left of the mischievous kids he’d last seen more than two years ago, they’d howl with glee at the idea of being his treasure.

He veered away from that. He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on what damage might have been done to them, or he’d go insane. Worse, he’d fail to rescue them. He needed his head clear.

A shower helped. When he emerged, he wrapped himself in a bathrobe and walked back into the bedroom. On the chest of drawers, his phone was lit up. He grabbed it and read the text message. It made him grin.

A tap sounded at his door, which opened almost immediately to reveal Anna’s head.

“Everything okay?” she asked as he walked toward her.

Still smiling, he nodded. “Marenko’s fuming because I wasn’t at the Royal Hotel in Leith. He’s demanding to know where the fuck I am.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing yet. Let the bastard sweat. Do him good to spend some time among the homeless.”

Although he stood in front of her, Anna inevitably looked over his shoulder to the bed. Perhaps she already knew. Perhaps he hadn’t been as quiet as he’d imagined.

Anna raised one eyebrow. “You’re a fast worker, Rodya, I’ll give you that.”

“I’m getting dressed,” he said pointedly.

“Hmm.” Her gaze came back to him, not best pleased and yet with a hint of anxiety. The eternal big sister. Although, as it turned out, her anxiety didn’t appear to be for him. “You’ve been in the habit of screwing women who don’t take sex as seriously as you,” she observed.

“Seriously? Trust me, I laugh my way through it. So, unfortunately, do the women.”

“Rodya,
I
‘m serious. That girl doesn’t do such things lightly.”

“I know that,” he said.

“Then what the fuck are you doing with her?”