"You haven't answered me, Kira." His lips lowered to the corner of hers as he arched her against him. "What are you scared of? You can love, but no one can love you?"
"That's exactly how it works." She had to force the words past the constriction in her throat.
"Why, Kira?" His lips moved over hers, ignoring them when they parted in hunger, when her tongue stroked across his. "Why can't anyone love you?"
"Because they don't know me." She almost felt lost again, as lost as she had felt when her husband had walked out on her. "I'm the Chameleon. Always changing. How can you love someone like that?"
He lifted his head to stare down at her.
"And yet, always Kira," he guessed.
Always Kira. Always alone. She had never recovered the feeling of security and sense of balance that she had known before her parents' deaths. She had lived with the knowledge that her family had died because they had fought against the specter known as Sorrell. Because her father had taken up one lost child's battle and searched endlessly for her and her abductor.
Her father had been a lawyer, her mother had been a child services representative. When one of her children had gone missing and the trail had led to a white slavery organization, she and her husband had followed that trail.
Sorrell had struck back. He had killed her parents and Jason's fiancée and it probably hadn't even blipped on his radar that he had destroyed two more lives in the process. And made two enemies determined to bring him down.
Until Ian, love hadn't been a part of her life. Neither had true security. She realized, in his arms, she felt safe, she felt warmed. And only now did she realize how frightening that was. Because she could lose him so easily.
"We'll talk about love when this is over," she told him desperately. "You'll see then, you don't love me. It's the situation. It's being in this world, having it wrap around you, smother you. You don't love me, Ian. You love the normalcy you think I represent. That's all."
And she knew better. If any man knew what he was about and who he was, then it was Ian. And he was terrifying her. Shaking her resolve. She couldn't let him do that.
He chuckled. Clear, warming amusement echoed in the sound as he pulled her tighter against him.
"Psychology isn't your strong suit, sweetheart."
"Of course it is. I spent years studying under the best profilers we have on terrorism and their victims. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about."
Her voice was breathless; her body was filling with arousal. She couldn't be this close to Ian and not ache for more.
He simply smiled. A slow curling of his lips that sent her senses spiraling with a hunger to taste them, to feel them against her own. It also sent fear ratcheting up inside her. He was staring at her as though he knew her. Knew parts of her that even she didn't understand.
"I love you, Kira."
Emotion exploded in her head, in her soul. She was only barely aware of the thin cry that left her lips, of the tears that rolled from her eyes and over her cheeks. Tears he caught with his mouth a second before his lips covered hers.
"Belong to me," he whispered against her lips a second later. "Right now. Right here. Belong to me."
Oh God, she would always belong to him.
He released her hands but only an act of God could have pulled her from him then. There was no chance she was going to allow anything else to peel her from his body.
Her arms slid around his neck as his wrapped around her back. His lips were on hers, eatable, so eatable. Like rough velvet, stroking over nerve endings, sending fiery pleasure whipping through her body.
Kira arched in his arms, wishing she could meld a part of him inside her forever. A part she could always hold close to her, some part of him that she would never lose.
"My wild little lover." He eased back, ignoring her cry of protest. "We're not going hard and fast this time. Is that how you protect yourself, Kira? Does it have to be hard and fast so you can hold on to those reserves of control you keep in such supply?"
"My control?" she gasped, forcing her eyes open as she felt his hands move to the hem of her black shirt. "You're the one with too much control."
"Let's see about that," he suggested, his rough voice and confident smile causing her to moan at the implications of his dare.
"That's not fair," she gasped. "We both know you can hold out longer. I want to break. You don't."
He chuckled again. "Is that how you see it, Kira? That hard and fast means you've managed to break my control rather than me breaking yours?"
"Duh!" She gasped as the black stretchy cotton shirt cleared her breasts. "What else could it mean?"
"It could mean the pleasure is too important to lose," he suggested as she lifted her arms, allowing him to pull the shirt free of her body before tossing it aside. "It could mean I want to relish rather than devour. Haven't you ever wanted to relish it, Kira? Savor the pleasure and hold on to it forever?"
He was going to lock her soul to him forever. She could hear it in his voice when he spoke of savoring rather than rushing. He was going to imprint himself not just on her body, but on her very spirit to ensure no part of her ever escaped him.
He thought he loved her, thought he knew her. He thought this pleasure could go beyond deceit.
"No restraints this time," he warned her as he pulled his own T-shirt from his body and dropped it to the floor.
She should be running, finding an excuse not to do this, not to allow him to lock her to him more than she already was.
Naked from the waist up, Kira watched as he sat in a nearby chair and unlaced his combat boots while staring back at her.
"Take your boots off, Kira," he told her softly.
She sat on the edge of the bed and braced her ankle on her knee, working at the laces as she watched him, like a puppet without the sense to think for itself.
She licked her lips nervously as they pulled a boot off simultaneously and then shifted to work on the other. Once they were removed he gathered them, along with their shirts, and walked to the closet where he stored them on a rack before turning back to her.
As he stood in the closet doorway, he lifted his hands to the belt cinching his waist, then the closure of the black mission pants he wore. Kira got to her feet, imitating his actions, removing her pants as he watched her, her breathing escalating, moving hard and fast through her lungs.
She couldn't seem to draw in enough oxygen. Couldn't seem to shake free of the hypnotic arousal tearing through her.
"Maybe we should sleep for a while," she suggested breathlessly, knowing better but helpless against the need to find an escape, any escape, from what she knew was coming.
At least a delay. A delay would be nice.
"If that's what you want, the couch in the sitting room should suit you."
He peeled the pants from his muscular legs and any thought of sleep flew out of her mind. As he straightened, his erection pointed out from his body, wide and hard, the engorged crest dark and throbbing with lust.
She felt her pussy clench at the sight, become slick and hot at the need to be filled, taken. To be possessed as only Ian could possess her. As though he were the other part of her, separate but created to fit her exactly.
As she watched, his fingers curved around the thick stalk, stroking, tightening as he felt her eyes on him.
She became increasingly aware of the juices gathering on her pussy lips, knew that in the low light of the room the moisture would be shimmering on the bare, hairless flesh. And that was where his gaze was directed. She could feel it. It made her wetter, even as she felt her breasts swelling, her nipples becoming impossibly harder.
Licking her lips, she slid one hand over her stomach, her fingers dipping down as it slid lower and her eyes moved to his face.
He was watching, a grimace contorting his face, as she slid her fingers over the sensitive flesh between her thighs. Her breath caught at the pleasure. One fingertip raked over her clit, sending hard, brilliant streaks o
f fire burning over her nerve endings.
"Beautiful," he groaned. "Part your lips for me. Let me see how hard your clit is. How swollen."
She separated the folds of flesh with two fingers while the middle finger circled the torturously hard nub of nerve endings.
Her juices were flowing from her now. She could feel them trickling between the lips, soaking her pussy with the slick excess.
His hand tightened on his cock before loosening his grip. His nostrils flared with lust, as though drawing the scent of her in across the distance separating them.
As she let her fingers push through the thick juices and caress the humid flesh of her pussy, he moved to her. She knew she should act. She should make the first move and push him to the bed rather than standing here, tempting him, teasing him. Instead, her other hand smoothed up her stomach and cupped the swollen mound of her breast.
She was teasing him and she knew it, hoping to tempt him, to break his control.
Kira felt the breath catch in her throat as Ian grabbed her wrist, dragging her fingers from the slick heat of her pussy and lifting her hand. To his mouth.
Oh Lord, she wasn't going to be able to stand at this rate. He brought her fingers to his mouth and let his tongue lick at one before drawing it in and sucking the moisture from it.
His eyes blazed, his expression tightened, and a groan rumbled in his chest. The feel of his tongue stroking over her fingers was sexier than she could have ever imagined it would be. It shouldn't have been this erotic. Fingertips weren't erogenous zones, were they?
Of course they were, but only when Ian was encouraging them to be such.
Kira tipped her head back, feeling her hair stroke down her spine. Another added sensation to lend to the eroticism of the moment. Another blow to her own control.
"Look at me, Kira." His voice stroked over her nerve endings. Rough, rugged, almost ruined.
She forced her lashes open, feeling the heavy lassitude that pulled at them as arousal grew inside her.
"Do you know how beautiful you are to me? How courageous and strong?" he asked her, his tongue stroking over her fingertips one last time before he placed her hand on his shoulder.
Against her stomach she could feel the hard length and throb of his cock and wanted nothing more than to feel it pounding inside the hungry depths of her pussy.
"I'm just me," she told him breathlessly with a quick shake of her head.
"Just you," he agreed, one hand settling on her hip as the other moved up her side to cup the heavy weight of her breast.
"Ian, I don't know if I can handle this." She was shaking on the outside, on the inside she was melting, weakening.
"Pleasure?" He smiled down at her, his expression sensual, wicked. "Of course you can, baby. You can handle all the pleasure I have to give you."
She could die from it, was what she could do.
A startled gasp left her lips as his head lowered, his lips smoothing over a distended nipple.
"I can't stand up." Her legs were shaking.
"I can help with that," he told her, his voice so very considerate, edged with lust and erotic promise.
Insidious eroticism was what it was, because in the next second his lips covered hers, his arms holding her closer, giving her the support of his stronger body. His aroused body. His cock pressing into her belly, throbbing against her sweat-slicked flesh as her nipples were buried in the thatch of chest hair, raking into it, rasping the tender tips.
It wasn't just a kiss. It was an assault against her control. It was slow and savoring, a melding of lips and tongues, whispered groans and weak cries.
It was her arms wrapping around his neck to hold him closer, her soul devouring the emotional, sensual trails of pleasure to hold for the future. To remember in the event that he walked away and never returned.
"Better?" Ian crooned, his sandpapery voice sending a surge of sensation to strike at her womb.
"Don't have legs left," she muttered, trying to recapture his lips, to hold his kiss to her.
His chuckle was followed by a caress of those lips against her neck, to her ear, down to her shoulder.
"I'll be your legs." He picked her up and carried her to the bed, laying her along it as he came over her, stealing her lips again, his hands stroking over her breasts, cupping them, his thumbs rasping her nipples as his lips followed.
Kira shook her head desperately. She knew what he meant to do, and she couldn't bear it. He was imprinting her soul with his touch, with the pleasure only he could give her.
"Ian, please," she moaned, not that her plea distracted his lips from their course.
Taking stinging kisses from her neck, her collarbone, they arrowed to the tip of a tight, hard nipple, they destroyed any protest she would have further voiced.
"I want all of you tonight," he told her, staring down at her, his eyes darkening as she bit her lip and shook her head slowly. "All of you, Kira. If I have to let you walk beside me, then I'll know all of you belongs to me. Every inch of this sweet, hot body, every particle of your heart and soul. You'll be mine."
Her fists clenched in the blanket.
"No . . ."
"Fuck you, yes!" Anger flashed in his eyes. "You forced me to accept you being involved in this, now by God, you will accept me."
* * *
Twenty-four
SHE DIDN'T WANT HIS LOVE. The thought was ricocheting through Ian's head, burning through his own defenses and plain pissing him off.
She loved him. He knew she loved him. He could feel it, see it in her eyes, feel it in every touch of her body, but she didn't want his love in return.
Why?
He cupped the swollen mound of her breasts, felt the heat of her flesh and saw the flush of arousal that colored it. Her nipple was hard, distended, like a tender pebble against his tongue as she writhed beneath him.
Her eyes were shadowed, riotous with fear and pleasure, and that confused him. She confused him. The mix of vulnerable woman and courageous agent never failed to mesmerize him. She wasn't hard or embittered. She laughed, and she cared, and she loved, even knowing that those she loved could be taken from her in a second.
He licked at the tender hard flesh of her nipple and sucked it tenderly into his mouth at the thought. She loved him, though he had given her no reason to love. He had tried to push her away, even as he pulled her to him, several times. And she was always there, a part of him, sliding into his soul as though she had always been meant to be there.
Now she was denying him the same place within her, that same security. Damn her. She had made herself imperative within his life, so imperative that he had pushed aside his own prejudices about having a woman within one of his missions and let her in. She was part of the danger he was facing and she couldn't even enter the part of his soul that he had opened for her?
The hell she couldn't. She would, one way or the other, give them both what they needed.
"You're mine," he whispered against her sweat-slick flesh as he moved from one breast to the other, licking and nibbling, tasting her skin and becoming drunk on it.
"Please, Ian." Her gasp filled his head, passion and lust, defiance and need, echoing within it.
"Tell me you're mine." He licked over the opposite nipple, drew it into his mouth, and nearly shuddered as the taste of sweet female flesh infused his senses.
"I'm yours. I swear. I'm yours." She arched beneath him, pushing the berry-ripe tip deeper into his mouth.
He gave her what he knew she was aching for. His lips closed snug and tight over the tip of her breast. He sucked it inside, drawing on her, relishing the taste of her as his tongue lashed at her nipple.
Her body drew tight beneath his as she shuddered and trembled in his arms.
"Am I yours too, Kira? Do I belong to you?" He lifted his head, glancing up to see the battle she waged reflected in her sweat-dampened features as her head thrashed back and forth on the bed, denial contorting her features as a cry fell from her lips.
/> He licked one nipple, then the other. He let his kisses trail from one mound to the valley between her breasts and the journey that led to the sweet, seductive spice of her wet pussy.
He was dying to slide his cock inside the velvet heat of her vagina. To feel her muscles tighten around him, stretching as they took him, accepted him. The way her juices slickened the sweet depths, the way they eased his penetration of her. His possession of her.
Oh yeah, he had her heart, even a part of her soul. But he didn't have all of her. Not yet. Not yet, but he would have it before the night was finished.
"Ian, don't torture me. Don't do this." Vulnerability, fear, arousal. It all clashed in her voice as the plea had him laying his cheek against the soft mound of her belly and forcing him to breathe in deep, to remember what he was fighting for.
He wouldn't take from her. He accepted her. Her need to fight for what she believed was right, her need to be here, to see the man that had destroyed her family fall. He accepted those parts of her that refused to allow him to coddle her, to keep her out of danger. He needed her to accept him in turn. To claim him. To demand him.
He needed it, though it made no sense. He knew he loved her, knew she loved him, what did it matter if she was willing to face it at this moment or not?
It did matter. It mattered that he could lose her, that she could lose him, and that vow wouldn't be between them. That she wouldn't know how much he had loved her, needed her. Because for whatever reason, she didn't want to hear the words.
"Do you know what the taste of you does to me?" He nipped at the flesh of her thigh as he made a place between her legs for his shoulders. His hands clamped on her hips to hold her in place even as he ignored her sharp little nails digging into his scalp or how she tugged at the thick strands of his hair.
"Let me touch you," she cried out. "Let me taste you."
"Let you love me?" He smiled as he laid his cheek against her thigh, the spicy-sweet smell of her infusing his senses as he stared up at her. "Let me love you, Kira."
She shuddered, her gray eyes going stormy as she stared at him, pleaded silently with him.