Zero to Love (12 page)

How had it happened? In a short time he’d become her universe. That he knew her thoughts and emotions only heightened her need to know him better—to become as attuned to him as he was to her.

He delivered a long, slow, maddening lick from her wet pussy through the folds and up to her bud. A shock of pleasure hit her system, doubling, tripling. She writhed. He zigzagged his tongue down, gathering her juices.

Digging her fingers into his scalp, she urged him back to where she wanted him. He resisted with a rumble of laughter and instead thrust his tongue deep into her channel.

She stuffed a bit of the cotton sheet into her mouth to stifle a scream.

Against her quivering sex, he hummed. “Let it out, baby. Let me know how good this feels.”

She ripped the cloth out of her mouth, arched her neck, and issued a cry. He responded by driving the point of his tongue higher—reaching for a spot she didn’t know until now that she wanted touched.

Cream soaked him. He groaned. She loosed another cry.

He drove two fingers deep, twisting and turning in the quest to find that spot. As soon as he touched it, she came apart. She bucked into his fingers, her mind spinning as waves of orgasm pounded her.

He opened his mouth over her clit and sucked. The pressure of his ministrations sent her soaring once again. Her pussy gripped his hand. He curved a finger and stroked her inner walls. A trickle of juices wet those incredibly long digits. But she wanted it to be his cock.

“Fuck.” When he withdrew his fingers, she tried to follow him, her hips rising on their own.

“You’re going to kill me, human.” His rough voice counterbalanced the gleam of lust in his eyes.

She opened her legs and arms. “Come to me. Hurry.”

His cock bobbed against the golden trail of hair on his lower abs. The purple head glistening with precum promised more bliss.

Bracing his weight on his arms, he hovered over her, the tip of his cock playing against her folds. She rocked into him, trying to bring him deep.

“I need— I want— Monroe,” she gasped.

“I know, baby.” In one hard shove, he filled her. The sensations of him owning her consumed her thoughts. He gritted out, “I want to own you, dammit. More than I should.” He pounded into her, driving her up the bed. She reached above her head and grasped the headboard to keep from hitting it.

Then he flipped her, drawing her down hard on his erection. Sitting upright, she closed her eyes at the insane sensation of being speared so deeply. He gripped her hips hard, staring into her eyes.

“Move,” he finally whispered.

She did. Grinding her hips in a circular motion. Her shudder of pleasure rolled into him. He locked his jaw and breathed hard and fast through his nostrils. Feeling more power than she’d ever known, she slid up his length. His face contorted.

She jerked back down, using her inner muscles to hug him tightly. He filled his hands with her breasts, tweaking her nipples until they were two ruby jewels standing at attention. Shivers raced all over her skin. She leaned forward to taste him.

His lips crushed hers in a heated dance of tongues and teeth as she rode him. She inched higher and higher toward an unseen goal, wriggling to work him deeper, needing that blinding finish.

He rolled her again, slamming her into the mattress. She bounced at the force, a grin spreading on her face. He mirrored it as he lifted her ass in his hands and tilted her to an angle that had her hovering somewhere on the verge of heaven.

The weak light streaming in from the windows in the main room painted him in shades of blue. She drank in his appearance, loving the bracket around his mouth and the hard planes of his cheekbones. Skimming her fingers along these, she pulled him down for another mind-bending kiss.

Mind-bending.

She cried out as her body convulsed in ecstasy. The hot wash of his cum inside her drove her on. Pleasure beat like a drum in her blood. For long minutes, she drifted in his arms, aware of him moving in and out, but more slowly. Aftershocks made her jerk.

When she focused on his face again, he was smiling.

“I think you own me now.”

A shadow crossed his face like a bruise. “Magda…”

Before she could wrap her legs around him and hold him inside her, he disengaged and rolled onto his back. He slung an arm over his eyes, breaking contact with her altogether.

Releasing a shaky sigh, she tried to control the tumult of her mind. Since she’d spotted him in the parking lot, her world had become an amusement park ride, a constant revolution of faces and feelings—new information that shattered her.

She sat up and swung a leg over the bed.

He made a blind grab at her. Without removing his arm over his eyes, he asked, “Where are you going?”

“I’m thirsty.”

As if coming back to himself, he bolted upright and jumped off the bed. He disappeared into the adjoining bathroom and returned with a warm, wet washcloth. “Use this to clean up, then get dressed. We have to reach Van Es tonight. We need answers.”

“First I need a drink.” The thirst propelled her into the main room, where Monroe had placed a bottle of grape juice on the countertop. She uncapped it and poured it down her throat. Moments later, her thirst was slaked and the bottle was empty.

Monroe stood at the doorway of the bedroom, staring at her. Warmth bathed his features once again, and a sound of wanting broke from her.

He closed his eyes, then opened them slowly. “Get dressed, Magda. We can’t afford to go back to bed.”

She sidled up to him, her hips swaying with the slipperiness of his cum. “I want to.”

“You are acting purely on your instincts right now. Sex, thirst. We need to tap into our rational minds. I want nothing more than to drag you back into my bed and peel you off the ceiling several more times, but I need help.”

That shook her. He needed help? Monroe—a powerful Mindchanger?

“Yes. I need to speak with an elder who will help, and I must report to him as well.”

“About the…” She contemplated what he’d told her before about spying.

He gave a hard nod. “It’s important.”

While she dressed, he shot her glances she didn’t understand. She went into the bathroom to make herself presentable. As she splashed water on her face, trying to cut the redness on her cheeks and throat from his rough beard, she heard the strains of his voice.

Talking to someone on his cell. Why did Mindchangers use them if they could hear each other in their minds?

Monroe suddenly leaned against the door frame. She wiped her face with a fluffy towel and waited for him to answer the question in her mind.

Sure enough, that crooked grin presented itself—the one that drove her crazy enough to want to forget the world and get into bed with him.

He crossed the glass tile floor to her and removed the towel from her hands. He caught a few stray droplets, then leaned in and kissed the spot between her brows. Something leaped in her core—reaching for him?

When he withdrew, he looked at her for an extended heartbeat. “We use cells because trying to hear each other over thousands of people sometimes gets tiring.” Again he kissed her, this time on the lips. The soft brushing of his mouth was over too quickly. She stood on her tiptoes, but he didn’t kiss her again.

He ran his hands from her shoulders to her wrists. “You’re beautiful. More than ready to meet a Mindchanger elder.”

A shiver at the importance. On the heels of that was a thought for her brother and father. She’d just made love to a Mindchanger, had spent several days with him now, and was becoming more entangled in his world by the second.

Amusement crinkled Monroe’s eyes, but he didn’t mention her thoughts. Instead he steered her through the apartment and down the corkscrew stairs to the shop. Again that small screwdriver on the workbench caught her eye.

He paused by the bench. “What is it about the tool that interests you?”

“I don’t know. I just want to touch it. To hold it.” She let her hand hover over the object.

Monroe picked it up and placed it in her hand. A number filled her head, looming large and black.

“Seventeen,” she murmured.

He jerked. His gaze speared her to the concrete floor. “What did you say?” When she only stared at him, he nodded. “That’s what I thought you said.”

A pounding on the front door broke the silence. Monroe grabbed her hand and hauled her to the door, which continued to rattle in the frame. When Monroe whipped it open, Keefe grinned at them.

The smile fell from Keefe’s face, and again a monstrous silence stretched. “You’re serious?” he asked.

Monroe gave a short nod. What was going on? She didn’t like being left out of the conversation. But the wooden handle of the screwdriver in her hand felt good, and she focused on it.

“I need a—”

“I know. A drink. C’mon.” Monroe led her into the street, and Keefe took a position at her side. The two hulking walls of muscle seemed impenetrable to her. As they neared the silver car Monroe had stolen, she balked.

“Wait, we can’t take this car.”

Keefe started laughing. “Stealing a car to escape the Free Wills is okay, but riding around for pleasure isn’t?”

She drew her brows together. “I don’t…I don’t like it.”

“Good thing Keefe has his car, then.” Monroe crossed the street without a single glance at traffic. Since Magda’s hand was in his grip, she had no choice but to skitter along behind. She did look both ways, but not a car was in sight on this street. Which Monroe knew, or he wouldn’t have led her across.

Relaxing, she allowed him to guide her. Trust flowed like syrup in her veins as she slid into a vintage vehicle that might have been a Camaro.

Keefe gave her an incredulous look. “Might be a Camaro? Sweetheart—”

Monroe rumbled his displeasure at his friend’s endearment.

Unruffled, he continued, “This is a ’67 Camaro, completely restored right down to the custom paint job.”

“It, uh…looks great.” The black paint had been waxed to a sheen that glistened in the darkness. Magda inched closer to Monroe, careful to keep her thigh from pressing along the length of the big, scary Mindchanger in the driver’s seat.

He dropped a black-eyed wink at her. “I hope you think my driving is more frightening than Monroe’s, because this motherfucker doesn’t have anything on me.” With that, he tore up the street, hitting eighty miles per hour before she could stop the squeal that escaped.

Laughing, Monroe wrapped an arm around her, and Magda rested her head on his shoulder, certain that he’d never let anything happen to her.

* * * *

Monroe couldn’t stop thinking about that number she’d spit out back in the shop.
Seventeen
. Fuck, what was going on with her?

By the time they reached Van Es’s home, Magda was squirming in the seat.

“Juice finally hit ya?” Keefe chuckled.

She groaned at the mention of fluid.

Before Keefe stopped the car, Monroe opened the door. Keefe cut the engine, and Monroe pulled Magda out. He led the way up the curved sidewalk to the front door of an old stone home. The windows were small and few, which made the inside dark, but that was the way Van Es liked it.

At their approach, the thick walnut door opened, and the man appeared in the dim light straining from behind him. A thin form—tall and lithe, but far from weak. He possessed one of the greatest minds in Mindchanger history. Even at his advanced age of seventy-nine, he was as strong as some very young Mindchangers.

Magda tightened her hold on Monroe’s hand, and Van Es looked pointedly at their linked fingers.

Monroe felt the smile spread over his face, which launched Keefe into a fit of laughter. Rather than shove his teeth down his fucking throat, Monroe ignored him.

“Van Es.”

“Monroe, Keefe. And Ms. Brunelli. Welcome.” Van Es stood aside to allow them to pass into the house. The scents of flowers struck him like a fist in the gut. He drew up short, suddenly making the connection between Magda’s home and this one.

Glancing around, he took in the bouquets dotting every surface. Magda pulled away and drifted to a cluster of pure white roses in a copper vase on a table in the foyer. As she buried her nose in the petals, Monroe stared at his elder.

“Why the flowers?”

Van Es’s reply startled Monroe.
“It calms the bees to have food.”

“Is she one? A Mindchanger?”

“She’s One. What that means is a mystery even to me.”

“Come, Ms. Brunelli,” Van Es said. Magda raised her face from the blooms, cheeks pink and a gleam in her eyes. He beckoned her with a hand. “Let us talk.”

Van Es walked through a set of double doors and into his great study. Books bound in linen and leather lined floor-to-ceiling shelves. No flowers had been placed in here, but the lingering scent of cigar smoke filled Monroe’s head.

Magda followed, her mind curiously calm just as Van Es had suggested. While Monroe shouldn’t have been surprised by now that she was affected by things such as low numerals and the pure essence of flowers—often used by Mindchangers to cleanse their palates, so to speak—he cringed from the thought. He didn’t want her to be one of them. Then again he didn’t want her to be a target of the Free Wills either.

Van Es took a seat behind his desk and folded his hands over his chest as he leaned back in his chair. Keefe sank to a leather seat nearby, watching. Magda continued to revolve through the space, looking at the books, trailing her fingers over fine Louis IV tables.

She stopped before the humidor. Cracking open the lid, she looked directly at Van Es. “May I?”

Monroe gaped. Keefe snickered. With a wave of acquiescence, Van Es said, “Of course.”

She pulled a fat cigar from the box and drew the length under her nose. Van Es came around the desk with a cigar cutter and a lighter.

What the hell? She was going to smoke that? Most men couldn’t smoke a vintage cigar without puking.

Van Es cut the end and lit it for her. Clamping the cigar between her plump lips, she glanced at Monroe, long tendrils of smoke curling from the corners of her mouth. His balls clenched at the seductive look on her face. “I sometimes smoke Daddy’s cigars.”