HER NEXT AWARENESS was of someone picking her up. Her body burrowed into the support of his.
She exhaled. “Daire?”
“I’ve got you, baby.”
Despite not knowing where they were or where he was taking her, it didn’t occur to her to be on guard. Without objection, she let him carry her through the air and up. The scent of the Beast curled her lips. It only grew when he laid her down in the cradle of a familiar bed. They were home.
“Mm,” she said, trying to reach for his neck without opening her eyes.
“You feel this?” he asked, putting her hands on the bed to slip something short and hard into her palm. He curled her fingers around the cool metal and directed her thumb to the top of the cylinder. “It’s a panic button.” Which implied he was going to leave her alone. Opening her eyes, she tried to sit up, but he caught her shoulders and eased her back down. “I’m gonna be in the store, right outside. I’ll be watching and can be here in less than thirty seconds… and I’ll lock up.”
“Where are we?” she asked, relaxing as he stroked her hair from her face.
“About twelve hours from where we started. I was going to keep driving but need to feed you. You be okay for a minute?” She managed a loose nod as her eyes drifted closed again. “Okay.”
The warmth of his lips on her forehead heated her comfort. He moved through the Beast and closed the door before locking it. The bed was so comfortable. Just being there, in his space, in their space, made everything better.
Although it was tempting to go back to sleep, he’d said something about food. Eating required sitting… at least semi upright. It wasn’t fair for him to do all the driving and about time she learned how to haul the trailer anyway. Maybe they could eat on the road and he could get some sleep too.
Before any of that, she needed a shower. The last wash she’d had was the shower in London. The quickest shower of her life. Keeping the temperature low would help to wake her up anyway. Forcing herself to rise on a groan, her head was still waking up as she got undressed.
Funny that in Zeus’s Vegas suite, she’d woken up in a flash. But there, in a safe place, sluggish was just fine. She turned the water on and hooked the loop of her panic button onto the bud of the clothesline inside the stall. Daire’s shower gel was the only option. She relished bathing in his scent and didn’t mind using his razor either, although it might bother him.
Clean and smooth, she closed her eyes and breathed out. The water cascaded over her. Bringing Daire along was probably a big mistake. The guy was forceful. He knew what he wanted, and it wasn’t easy to change his mind. Not that there had been time for debate.
The door suddenly opened. On a gasp, she turned only to see Daire peeking in at her.
“I’m back.”
“I see that,” she said, narrowing her eyes in a semi-glare. “And trying to give me a heart attack. What happened to platonic?”
When she shut off the water, he opened the door fully and offered her a towel to dry off.
“I forgot.”
The mischief in his tone suggested otherwise, so he got another glare. “You’re incorrigible,” she said, stepping out of the shower, drying her face. Her personal space was his apparently. He stayed to close the shower door. “Now I don’t feel so bad about using your razor.”
“I have others,” he said, easing her wet hair from her temple with his fingertips to then run his digits through it. “I love it when your hair’s wet. I love you’re in our home. Where you belong, baby.”
“You’re not following the rules. Strict rules, remember?” she said, tossing the towel onto her head to dry her hair, forcing his hand out of it. “We’re colleagues.”
Turning her back on him, the clothes she’d taken off were nowhere in sight. To get others, she’d need her bag or the closet behind Daire. Hard to get there with him blocking the passageway.
“Mm hmm,” Daire said from close behind her, real close.
Tipping her chin toward her shoulder, she tried to ignore the tickle crossing her shoulder blades when he got even closer. The whisper of his fingertips skimmed onto her waist. Touch. Her Heart. They were together again.
Her breath quivered as it crossed the threshold of her lips. “I thought you liked rules, Agent.”
The palpable intensity of his need pulsed around them, filling the intimate space, reminding her of every time he’d had her there on that bed. The one right in front of her.
“Used to. You’ve changed a lot of things about me, Temptress,” he said, his hands growing bolder as they curled around her ribs. When his grip tightened, she tried not to flinch against the pain, but failed. He must have noticed because he immediately turned her toward him. “What happened?”
He was already in a crouch, his mouth just a couple of inches from the bruise on her ribs.
“Nothing,” she said, her fingers sinking into his hair. “Nothing important.”
The scowl on his face implied he thought otherwise. “I should’ve made that fuck pay for hurting you… A quick bullet was too much of a gift and there wasn’t time—”
“Hey,” she said, putting her fingertips on his lips. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing in the past matters… not while we’re alone together.”
His brow relaxed a little. “What happened to platonic?”
Smiling, she slid her hands up his torso. “We’ll do platonic after you kiss me… Three weeks is too long.”
“Never again,” he said, bending to scoop his hands under her ass to pick her up. “No one will ever take you from me again.”
Coiling her arms around his head, she parted her lips, seeking his. Being with him, in their home, together, alone… platonic was too much to ask. Daire didn’t hide that he thought so too. After a single stride, he bowed to lay her on the bed, coming down with her, their mouths never parting.
The pound of their heartbeats gave a bassline to their need. It sped and thrummed through each of them, charging the vibration in the air. Widening her mouth, she tightened her hold on his head and whined into his mouth, aching with the power of the kiss that fought to consume her. It would never be sated. She would never be sated, not when he was there, when her Heart was with her, offering gratification.
Tess fought to remove his shirt and whimpered when he broke their kiss to stand up. He set one boot on the edge of the bed and then the other to unlace his boots and free himself from the clothes that remained between them. With the soles of her feet on the mattress, she pushed up the bed until her head was right in the center of the pillows. Daire was quick to join her, quick to return to his rightful place between her thighs, the only place that he truly belonged.
Whatever Olympus was, whatever it took from him and from her, when they were with each other, naked and devouring each other, everything was as it should be. The world was right. As long as she was under him, nothing else mattered.
“Yes,” she exhaled when his lips trailed from hers to her neck and his fingers slipped down the center of her body to caress her clit. “Please, my Heart… I need your cock now.”
He raised his head to kiss her lips again. “Foreplay, baby,” he teased in a whisper on her mouth.
“I spent all day close to you and three weeks dreaming about you,” she said, running her fingers through his hair as he kissed a route to her breasts. “I showered with your soap… I’m ready, primed. Fuck me, baby.”
“Not yet,” he said, licking her cleavage and continuing down to her abdomen until his lips touched her clit.
“Oh God,” she groaned, squeezing her eyes closed. What was his obsession with eating her? His innate need to have his mouth on her pussy seemed to overwhelm everything else. “Daire, baby, please don’t make me—”
But it was too late, her body bucked up; a hard, almost pained screech came from the back of her throat. Panting, she couldn’t relax, couldn’t make her muscles loosen. Locked in the clench of orgasm that rolled over her as he angled his mouth to keep on kissing her, she lost all sense of space and time.
Her fists were still balled in his hair when he ascended to plunge his tongue into her mouth. Yes, she loved it, loved him, needed everything he gave. Winding her legs around him, she sucked his tongue deeper, loosening her hands to caress his shoulders. The kiss deepened, speeding to fever pitch and then it was gone. His mouth vanished, but there was no time to miss it because he reared up, driving his cock into her in one slick perfect move.
Everything about him was perfect. Everything about him was hers. Tess’s arms relaxed, her hands snaking around to his chest when he straightened his arms to look down into her as his hips moved, claiming every part of her. Inside and out, all of her was his. There wouldn’t ever be a time that wasn’t true. Together or not. In the same country or oceans apart, there was something unavoidable between them, something that wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard good sense tried to chase it off.
“Daire,” she panted, digging her nails into him as he sped up. Her body moved in time with his on instinct. She didn’t ever think about the mechanics of it, didn’t think about what she had to do to respond to him, her body just knew what it needed and what to give to him. “Baby…”
“I’m here,” he said, pulling back to bow down and kiss her quick before thrusting into her harder and faster than before. “Oh, fuck, baby.”
“Yes,” she said, grabbing for his arms.
That sense of him being on the edge, the fraying of his control, enlivened her hormones, shoving her fast into the thick ambrosia of climax. Arching into it, she clamped around him, another scream bursting from the deepest part of her as completion came in more than just a physical release. Her love was there. With her. He’d chosen to come with her. Temporary though it was, he’d chosen to be at her side. To be there with her, rather than stay behind with his unit, to remain in his home with what he knew.
Her Heart was right there with her, climbing his own peak until he released himself into her, filling her with the love and desperation they’d both struggled to contain while parted.
She was still recovering when he dropped onto his side next to her and brushed her hair from her face.
“We’re good at platonic,” he said, pushing her chin up to kiss her cheekbone. Pulling her tighter against him, he slid lower to bury his face in her hair over her ear. “I could do platonic with you day and night for the rest of time.”
Her lips curled though every other part of her was still immobile, heavy in its drugged-up bliss. “Platonic’s on pause. I said we’d do platonic after you kissed me.”
Laying both of her hands on the arm he had resting over her stomach, she stroked and scratched, appreciating the weight of it and the strength of his support.
“Helluva kiss,” he said. “Are you hungry?”
“You brought food?”
“Yeah,” he said, rolling over to pounce off the bed.
Watching him was a pleasure, even after he retrieved a pair of sweats from the closet and put them on.
“What did you get?” she asked, staying on her back, staring at the ceiling.
“I got Chinese food,” he called up the trailer. “But I went to the store too, so I can cook if you want something else… got your milk as well.”
“Chinese food sounds good,” she said, having missed it while on her jaunt over the Atlantic.
Making herself sit up was a struggle, but she scooched to the end of the bed and put a hand on either side of the hallway to steady herself as she stood.
“You don’t have to get up, I can bring it to bed.”
He wasn’t even looking in her direction, he was doing something with bags on the dinette table. Still, it didn’t surprise her that he knew exactly where she was and what she was doing. Making her way down the passageway, she stopped at the closet and grabbed one of his tee-shirts to pull it on over her head.
“I missed eating with you,” she said, sliding in at the dinette.
“Funny, I missed eating you,” he said, winking before putting the last of the boxes onto the table. “Will you sit at the other side, please?”
He asked but bowed to take her hips before she could do anything. He slid her out of the one side and slotted her in at the other, shuffling her in front of him to do so. Once she was sitting, he went to the fridge.
“Why this side?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. “You want to see the door.”
“I do,” he said, projecting his voice a little, proving he had no shame about it. “And if someone comes through it, you slide under the table.”
“I do?” she asked, accepting the beer that he opened for her.
Daire nodded and stepped back to point at the bed. “Unless you’re in bed. If you’re at the back of the trailer and it’s safe to leave, pop the big window. It’s a fire escape, it’s designed to let you out. Go out and bolt. If it’s not safe, if there are enemies outside or there’s no cover, you remember the bed lifts? There’s a strap under there, lift it, go under and use the strap to pull it back down. I will come get you when it’s safe.”
“I don’t like talking about this,” she said, accepting the chopsticks he got from the drawer under the sink. “I don’t want anyone coming into our home without permission.”
“It’s kinda what happens when people are after you,” he said, opening one of the food boxes to push it toward her, showing it was her favorite. “You don’t have to worry about anything except staying out of sight. Most of the spaces in here, like the bed panels and closet door, they’re reinforced, or I’ve switched them out, so they will provide cover for gunfire.”
“Are you going to get under the bed with me?” she asked, snagging some chicken with her chopsticks.
One corner of his mouth rose to show a dimple though he didn’t actually look at her. “That’s not how this works, babe.”
“I want to know how it works,” she said. “I can shoot a gun.”
“Good,” he said. “But you won’t ever need to. Not so long as I’m around.”
Raising her chin, she kept her chicken in her mouth as she responded. “So long as you’re around is what worries me.” She swallowed the food. “I don’t want you with me if it’s going to get you killed.”
He stopped moving around to set two hands on the dinette table and look her in the eye. “Say I wasn’t here right now. Say I stayed in Vegas, and you went on the run on your own.” She nodded, picking up the box as she lifted her heels to the edge of the bench under her. “I stay with Harry. Ulysses comes for us. Comes for you at Three’s house. No matter how it goes, we find out that you were meant to retrieve the keys.”
“With you so far,” she said, offering him some chicken.
He shook his head, so she ate it instead. “No matter how it plays out, you have Z and H after you. You know I wouldn’t be far away from H… especially when I know you’re in the mix.” She nodded along and kept eating. “Eventually, at some point, someone catches up with you. If that someone is me and Harry, then we’re together anyway. If that someone is Zeus, he takes you to the beta site. You know I’ll know if he’s there because Harry will know, so we’ll all end up there. No matter what, this doesn’t end without you and me being in the same space at the same time.”
She put down the box with the chopsticks in it to pick up the beer. “Okay.”
“Do you ever…” he said actually closing his eyes and emphasizing the last word with a head tilt, “ever in any scenario see me not putting myself between you and danger? Can you imagine any scenario where I don’t do everything in my power to protect you even if it costs me my life?”
Discarding the beer, she put her hands on the table to pounce onto her knees, pushing herself closer to him. “And do you see any scenario where I’m just okay with you being in pain? Do you honestly see me standing aside and letting you be hurt, in danger, without fighting until my last breath to be with you?”
He bent the elbow closest to her to descend until their faces almost touched. “What happened to platonic?”
“On pause ‘til after I kiss you,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck and clambering onto the table to yank his mouth to hers.
Lost in their kiss, she pulled herself closer when he picked her up and then they were down, on the floor, right there in the middle of the trailer.
Figuring anything out wasn’t going to be easy when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. But it wasn’t so bad. She’d tolerate the ache of her ever-present need, the power of her omnipresent desire. Being with him was too much of a gift to ignore.
They’d been taken from each other against their wills. They needed this time to reconnect, to remember their ownership of each other, to brand each other with their combined scents and invisible mark. Daire was with her again; she couldn’t let their precious time together go to waste. Not one single second.