Undercover Lover (35 page)

“All right then… So you don’t mind if I see her?”

“Let me ask you something.” Tallis draped his arm over the back of the sofa in a self-assured posture.

Günter felt the musician trying to dominate him and it made him bristle. Keeping a check on his temper, he only nodded. If push came to shove, he knew which one of them would win. He didn’t need to yank out his cock to prove it.

“Sure.”

“Did you ever touch her when you were looking after her for me? Show yourself to her?”

The night at the college bar fast-forwarded through his mind, painting an admission of guilt on his face he failed to hide.

Tallis blinked—slow—like a cat.

“Once,” Günter admitted. “When she was too drunk to get herself home. Yes.”

“Good, because that’s what she said too.”

“You were
testing
me?” Günter shot to his feet as white-hot rage burned through him. “After everything I’ve done for you? For your family?”

Tallis faced off with him. “You think I don’t have a right to protect my sister? After what she went through? For you?”

“Sure!” Günter waved a hand into the air. Let it fall to his side. “Protect the hell out of her. Smother her to death. We’ll see how long she lasts under your dictatorial rule. At least with me she had a pulse.”

“What?” Tallis took a step backward.

The Jenny he’d seen today—while still everything sexy and beautiful—bore little resemblance to the lively spitfire he’d known in Oxford, or the heroic woman who’d saved his life in London. She was wasting away as part of her brother’s entourage. Günter said as much.

“She’s free to come and go—do as she pleases,” Tallis defended. “I hardly lock her up.”

“You don’t have to. The press does it for you,” he answered, understanding now why Jenny had wanted to be part of the operation in London so badly. She didn’t want to fight monsters to vanquish them. She wanted to fight to live. To exist.

Tallis sat, seeming to deflate, and Günter sat across from him.

“You really think she’s that unhappy?” the musician asked.

“I think she is happy to have you in her life again, but…” He searched for the right words, his knowledge too new for him to be entirely certain. “You’re such a strong presence. It’s easy to get lost in your world.”

“And you’re not a strong presence?”

Günter had to laugh a little self-deprecatingly at Tallis’ question.

“I am. Maybe even more than you around her. I think, however, that she feels more at ease standing up to me. I’m not her long-lost brother. Her idol.”

Tallis rested his head against the couch cushion and closed his eyes. Günter watched as he struggled with what do for his sister and came up empty. Sat forward. Fidgeted. Heaved a sigh.

“I have things I have to do. What you do is up to you.” Giving up, Tallis stood and opened the door—dismissing him. “But Gun?”

Pausing in the doorway, Günter looked at the man he’d never quite been able to fathom.

“Just make her happy.”

* * * * *

Fans jostled Tallis as he left the Garden to go back to his flat for the afternoon before the show. Günter shouldered them out of the way, using his body to prevent unwanted contact with Tallis as much as possible. One rabid woman swooned in his path and another took the opening to wrap herself around the musician’s middle. It took a full five minutes of wrangling before Günter and Simon closed the car door between themselves and the still-shrieking fans.

Fifteen minutes later, he stepped off the elevator and keyed in the code to his door before brown eyes swam in memory, distracting him from the list of fifty things he had to do before tonight’s show. Needing to focus, he tried not to think about what might be going on in the apartment one floor above his own. Then briefly considered stalking the video feed in Tallis’ security flat. Just to satisfy his curiosity once and for all.

No. That seemed too pathetic even for him. Whether Jenny’d moved out or not was none of his business until she made it his business. He was done with spying on people—trying to play chess with the players in his life so he could arrange them just so on the board. Doing so never seemed to prevent him from getting hurt—or them.

He stepped into darkness and hesitated, waiting for the motion sensors to trigger the lights. When they didn’t he cursed and felt his way along the wall to the bank of switches. Fingers trailing over the panel, he froze. The sensors weren’t broken. The switches had been flipped.

Pushing back his coat, he thumbed the snap on his holster. The slither of his gun against leather sounded loud in the darkness, but the heavy weight of the piece felt reassuring in his hand. Back to the foyer wall, he stepped sideways into the living area.

A light shone under his bedroom door and he frowned. Sloppy. Who would take the trouble to break into his flat and then leave obvious markers?

Someone who doesn’t want to get shot
, logic whispered.

“Show yourself,” he called. “If I have to come in there, I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

A rustle of fabric accompanied a shadow flickering across the base of the door. The knob turned and Günter’s finger slid to the trigger. Heaven help the person who opened that door, because if their face even remotely reminded him of Dublin or London he’d ventilate them with pleasure.

People said you could train a man to kill in cold blood with military drills and exercises. If asked, he’d tell them it was far more expedient to make them fight for the life of someone they loved. Give a man hell and he’d have plenty of demons to back him up in battle.

The door creaked open on deliberately unoiled hinges and a feminine silhouette lounged in the frame.

“Jenny?”

“Gun,” her voice purred and his cock lengthened along his leg.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, lowering his weapon but not holstering it. First things first. In his experience women he’d thought were made of purity and light had a way of going very wrong.

She dangled a metal object from her fingers and sashayed toward him.

“I know I need a lot more training.” He heard her lick her lips and saw her gaze alight on the weapon. “But do you think we could play with a different sort of gun tonight?”

His cock twitched hard in his too-tight jeans and he nearly dropped his piece. Probably a good idea to put it away. He holstered the gun and slid his coat off his shoulders. When he stepped forward, she held out a pair of…handcuffs?

His hand flew to the loop at the back of his waist and found it empty.

“How in bloody hell did you steal my cuffs?” He felt in his pocket for the keys. They were gone. He remembered the last time he’d felt them—before he’d escorted David through the crowd to the limo at the Garden.

Throaty laughter ensnared him. Its decadent flow trailed down his spine, snaked around to his middle and settled low.

He stalked her. She let him. Backing up step for step as he approached—prey to his predator. When the backs of her knees hit the bed, she tossed her hair out of her eyes and looked up at him, exposing the column of her neck. He followed the line of her throat to the expanse of flesh between her breasts.

Round globes thrust her hardened nipples against a landscape of creamy satin material. The faint shadow of her areola beckoned and he lifted a hand to cup her breast. When he thumbed the pebbled peak, desire turned her eyes dark and languid. Lids heavy, lush bottom lip pulled between her teeth, she presented a picture of decadent temptation he was long past denying.

“What were you planning on doing with those?” he asked, his gaze resting on the cuffs she’d dropped onto the bed.

“Um…” She cleared her throat. “I was going to chain myself to the bed and offer my soul to you, but…”

“But what?”

He slid his other hand around her back and let it drop to the arch of her ass, his fingers barely grazing her cheeks. Her hand cupped his neck, and her insistent tug brought his forehead to hers.

“I realized you already had it,” she whispered against his lips.

On a moan he captured her mouth, nibbling at its sweetness until she sighed and opened for him—her tongue teasing out, a flitting point of heat, to dance with his own. All woman. All soft. All his.

“Jenny,” he said on a gasp.

He didn’t know if he could take her sweet and slow the way his higher self demanded. But for her… He’d give her this.

Palming her bottom, he drew her firmly against his cock. He made slow work of tasting each nuance, savoring each moist point of flesh until she mewled into his mouth and rubbed up against him.

Fingers skimming his chest, she played with his nipples. Shocks of pleasure increased the ache in his cock until he could barely breathe. Pre-cum leaked from him, sticking him to his briefs, slipping the material along his member in a caress that made him hiss.

“Jenny…”

Grabbing her hand, he pressed it against his hard length. Her fingers curled around him and he thrust forward into her palm. She read his need and unzipped him then, releasing him from bondage.

A hand to her shoulder—the lightest touch—pushed her to the bed. She gazed up at him, eyes searching his face, high cheek bones highlighting their depths.

“Please,” he begged.

Moistening her lips, she dipped her head and took him in. His entire being centered on the heated pressure of her tongue. His hips jerked and she swallowed him down, adjusting her throat around him with a glorious fluttering of muscles. Hands on either side of her face, he directed her bobbing motions as she gripped him firmly and sucked. Pressure pooled at the base of his cock, building in his balls, lapping in hot waves until he knew if she hummed against him one more time he’d come so hard he’d probably go blind again.

“Stop,” he gasped, pulling her head away.

She teased him with the tip of her tongue to the head of his cock and his hips jerked, a hearty bead of pre-cum sliding down and over the rounded flesh.

He growled and her answering laugh was low and throaty.

She lay back on her elbows, her negligee exposing length of limb he wanted to explore from ankle to thigh.

“Scoot back,” he commanded.

She complied readily, cushioning her head on the pillows heaped at the top of the bed. Curls drifted around her shoulders, framing her face in satin tendrils. Günter placed his gun in the nightstand before shedding his clothes. Naked, he turned to her.

Her eyes devoured him as she languidly touched herself through the satin between her legs. He watched her slide the material up with one hand, slowly, teasing, as she pleasured herself with the other.

Lids heavy, she gazed at him. Hips swaying, she prepared to fuck herself with two glistening fingers. Her musk swirled around him, creating an alchemy of oxygen, transforming it with her essence.

Wet and slippery, her sex pouted for him. The bud of her clit stood out proudly. Delving again and again, she increased her pleasure until her head tossed on the pillows. Just when he knew she’d reached the edge of her precipice, he dipped down and sucked that nub into his mouth.

Back arching from the bed, she screamed. He sucked harder until she came apart beneath his mouth. Honey stole from her recesses to coat his tongue. He drank her in until his thirst called insistently for another kind of slaking.

Draping himself over her still-shattered form, he entered her to catch the last clenching shudders. Her walls gripped him in the sweetest embrace he’d ever known. With each push of his hips, her breasts shimmied. Breath coming in mewling gasps, she rose to greet him—to take him deep inside the warm, safe haven of her body.

“Love you,” he whispered in her ear, kissing her temple.

“Yes,” she cried, sobbing her reply into his shoulder.

Her hips came up and his world came apart around him. His root bumped the hot sweet spot between her thighs and she clenched, pushing him over the edge into a different kind of oblivion—a moment where nothing mattered but the woman in his arms and the places she took him. Places where only they could go.

A long while later he realized he’d collapsed against her. Sprawled as he was on her torso, he wasn’t sure she could breathe. He rolled over a little too quickly and his head spun.

“You okay?” she asked, sleepy.

“Never better,” he said when he saw the healthy color in her cheeks.

He propped himself up on his side to stare down at her. Fingers skimming over one breast, he played with her pouting nipple until it peaked at his ministrations. He studied each beauty mark dotting her rosy skin and trailed his gaze to the puckered scar in her side. Angry lines of pink and red marred her arms. He met her eyes and saw she’d been watching him peruse the marks.

“Are they too ugly?” she asked.

“They make me angry—” he said. “But you’re beautiful to me. It doesn’t matter in that sense.”

He brushed his knuckles lightly over the point where the drainage tube had been inserted into her lungs and was glad his vision had been too weak at the time to really notice the apparatus they’d attached to her body.