“Was?” he questioned, his expression tightening with the anger flickering in his eyes. “You mean what is between us.”
She had to laugh, she couldn’t help herself; the only problem, it wasn’t amusement, it was sheer incredulity.
“You really are such a Mackay,” she told him wearily. “More so than I ever imagined.” And it was actually more of an accusation.
“I actually expected you to figure that out years ago, baby,” he assured her, and though she tried to hide it, he could see the pleasure she felt at the endearment.
Ethan called her silly girl names and he’d seen the secret enjoyment she derived from it, but the endearments filled her with emotion, with pleasure.
“I should have.” The slightest tremble of her voice spoiled her mocking tone as he pulled her into his thighs, the hard wedge of his cock pressing against her lower belly through his clothes and her sleep shirt. “Dammit, Duke, this won’t solve anything.”
“Except your fear? Your certainty nothing lasts forever?” He smiled down at her chidingly. “Or are you just too scared to fight for it?”
“Maybe I just don’t believe in fairy tales.” But she wanted to. That hunger filled her voice, darkened the soft gray of her eyes.
Pushing his fingers through her hair, he tugged her head back, loving the silken feel of the soft waves and that little flush of pleasure that filled her face as the tugging motion created a sensation he knew she loved. For years he’d dreamed of how damned good it would be to touch her, take her.
With the other hand, he began to slowly unbutton the shirt she’d borrowed from him.
He had to have her again. Now. The explosive pleasure of hours before hadn’t nearly sated his need for her. It had only burrowed deeper inside his balls, made him thicker, harder than ever before. He had to touch her, taste the sweetness of his need, and feel her taking her pleasure of him as well.
“Duke, this is insane. You know it is,” she whispered as he pushed the shirt from her shoulders, leaving her warm and bare against him.
“Insane? Oh, baby, I’ve been insane for you for years. This is just going to make it better.”
Maybe.
Hell no, it would only make his hunger for her higher, hotter.
Tugging her head back again, he covered her lips in the kiss he hungered for. One of those deep primal kisses that shredded his restraint and left him lost in the taste of her, the feel of her.
She was every fantasy a man could possibly have of a woman. The taste of her exploded through his senses. Like the taste of fabled ambrosia, she drugged his senses and filled his soul.
A shudder raced through her as his lips moved over hers, his tongue stroking against hers, his body hardening, lust whipping between them, fiery and mind-numbing. Her fingers pushed into his hair, clenched and pulled, as desperate as he was to deepen the kiss, to burn hotter, higher in the sensations erupting between them.
Fuck, she’d been worth waiting for, worth giving her the cold, lonely months after she’d run from him.
He felt things he only felt with her, needed things she alone had ever made him need.
Emotions she fought, refused to acknowledge. But just as she couldn’t fight the pleasure, she’d realize she couldn’t fight the emotions either. She was beginning to realize they went hand in hand.
Tearing his lips from hers, they went to her neck, as both of them fought his clothes, his boots. It took forever to undress, to release the engorged, painfully sensitive length of his cock. The broad head pulsed, throbbed, so damned eager to be buried inside her that even his balls ached.
He swore he’d go slow and easy. Swore he’d show her he could be patient and teasing. Son of a bitch, he didn’t know if he was going to make it.
Naked now, his head lifted from her neck only long enough to get her laid out on the bed.
“Duke . . .” She moaned his name, her gray eyes slitted and staring back at him with dazed need. “We’re both crazy.”
“Not yet.” He was getting ready to get crazy, though.
Coming over her, he locked his gaze on her tight, hard nipples. Candy pink and tempting.
“Oh God, Duke. Please . . .” She arched, shuddering as he sucked one of those sweet nipples into his mouth, drawing on it, loving it.
Damn. Damn. Nothing mattered but more of her.
Angel felt pure, unexplainable sensation begin exploding through her in rapid-fire succession with each strong draw of Duke’s mouth. Heat surrounded her nipple, raking blasts of pleasure erupted in her womb, spasms of reaction clenching her lower belly. His teeth raked against the tender tip, his mouth enclosed it again, drew on it, his tongue rasping it with delicious heat.
Oh God, she wasn’t going to survive this.
How was she supposed to hold any part of her heart from him when he kept destroying her with such pleasure?
Then his hand stroked her thighs, between them, and her nails dug into the hard flesh of his back as she felt his finger part the saturated folds he found there, press against her entrance, then thrust full length inside her.
Sensation exploded through her. It shot to her bloodstream, clenched her responsive womb, and rippled through the snug flesh surrounding his finger.
“Fuck, you make me wild for you, Angel.” His finger retreated as he moved, his shoulders parting her thighs further.
“Duke . . .” She cried his name as his head bent, his tongue sliding through the slick, sensitive folds with delicious pleasure. “So good . . . Oh God, Duke, that’s so good.”
It was exquisite. It was so damned good. Her hips lifted and a cry escaped her despite her determination to hold it back. What he did to her should be illegal. She bet it was illegal. Somewhere. But not here and now and not as far as Duke was concerned. Not as far as his wicked, hungry tongue and his tormenting fingers and lips were concerned.
Duke hadn’t even realized how much he needed her, the sweet taste of her and the feel of her going wild beneath him. Her knees lifted, her pretty legs parting farther as he ran his tongue around her hard little clit and tried to throttle the desperate groans in his throat as she arched against his mouth.
Her fingers were in his hair, clenching, kneading like a cat as he buried his tongue in the heated center of her body, desperate for more of her.
She arched into him again, twisting against the stroke of his tongue against her clit, then crying out as he drew it between his lips for a heated kiss and lash of his tongue. “Oh yes . . . like that . . . more like that.”
“Like this, baby?” Her clit throbbed as he held it between his lips a second later, then rolled his tongue against it.
Fuck, he was dying for her. Not just dying with the need to satisfy the throbbing in his cock, but the needs wrapping around his heart, clenching it as the pleasure, the hunger for every part of her rose with the same vicious demand as the lust pounding in his balls.
She was his. She didn’t want to acknowledge it, she wasn’t ready to accept it, but she was his.
“Duke . . . please . . .” she gasped beneath him as he lapped at her, his tongue parting her bare folds, licking every slick, wet curve of her inner lips, as he moved lower. Finding the snug entrance again, he rimmed it with quick licks, flickering over it as her hips jerked and a shudder raced through her.
She was stealing inside him with her innocence and her need and, God help him, he was defenseless against her.
“I could eat you for hours,” he groaned. “Keep my mouth right here and just taste you, feel you coming apart for me.” His tongue rolled around her clit again, pulling another of those helpless cries from her.
Before she had a chance to realize his intent, he was pushing two fingers inside her, feeling the snug muscles tighten further, bearing down on his fingers, and clenching desperately on the invasion.
“So sweet and tight,” he groaned aga
inst her clit. “Feel how tight you are, baby. How hot and sweet.”
He stroked her inner flesh with slow, languorous rubbing motions, feeling each convulsive clench of her pussy around his fingers.
“Duke, please!” she cried out. “Please, let me come. Now . . . please . . .”
Angel was certain she couldn’t possibly survive the sensations building inside her or the storm she could feel waiting to fracture inside her.
The deep, internal spasms clenching her pussy around his fingers only built the sensations higher. They did nothing to ease the pleasure spiraling out of control.
She could feel perspiration glazing her body, the heat building inside her, not in the least cooled by her body’s response to it or the AC running on the other side of the room.
“Duke, please!” she gasped, shuddering as the stroke of his tongue around her clit became firmer, hungrier.
A second later he sucked her clit between his lips, drawing on it as his finger began moving, fucking into her with quick strokes that shattered her senses, exploding through her in a rush of ecstasy so intense she lost herself within it.
Before she could recover, before the blaze of sensation could ease, he was on his knees, his cock pushing inside her, parting the clenched, rippling tissue still gripped by waves of pleasure.
“Oh fuck . . . Angel . . .” he groaned, pushing inside her, an inch at a time, stretching her, separating her flesh with such lashes, a pleasure-pain she knew she couldn’t survive. “That’s it . . . so fucking tight . . . sweet hot pussy’s so tight . . .”
She bucked beneath him, driving him deeper only to catch her breath on a shattered cry as he plunged fully inside her. And he didn’t stop. She would die if he stopped, die if it eased before she reached the pinnacle he was pushing her to.
A guttural groan tore from him as the pace became faster, harder. Pounding inside her relentlessly, he fucked her like a man possessed, like he knew she was possessed. And she knew it would destroy her. There was no way to survive.
Each hard plunging stroke shafting inside her pushed her closer. Lashing, white-hot arcs of sensation slammed through her, pierced her womb, her clit. . . . Her pussy clamped down on the iron-hard erection shuttling inside it with a driving rhythm and in one blinding second, she shattered.
The sensations exploding through her senses were chaos. They ripped through her body, her heart, and she swore they dug into her soul as a hoarse wail met the kiss he slammed over her lips.
Driving her through the explosive orgasm, he thrust inside her, deep, lodged in to the hilt then filled her with hard, heated blasts of his own release. Each pulse of semen sent a shudder through his powerful body and deepened his kiss, deepened the fracture he made in the shields protecting her from caring too deeply, too much. He was destroying her and he didn’t even know it. Taking hold of her, owning a part of her she knew she’d never regain again.
SEVENTEEN
She was going to drive him to an early grave, Duke decided as he found her outside the house later that evening crouched by the natural barrier between the yard and the woods. She’d been out there half a dozen times throughout the day, pacing the back of the yard, checking the vines for openings, staring into the forest surrounding the house.
She’d acted damned strange when she’d stepped back outside more than half an hour ago. The tension he’d felt gripping her, the feeling that her mind was moving too hard and too fast, had him following her when he couldn’t reconcile the reason for the sudden alertness.
“What the hell are you doing out here?”
She was kneeling on one knee, her head tilted to one side, a frown on her face as she stared at a depression in the dirt.
“Be quiet,” she muttered.
He watched curiously as she stood and turned in the direction of Declan on watch, then turned again until she would have been facing Harley.
At the point where she stood, both men would have had a clear bead on her.
“I don’t feel it.” She shook her head quickly. “It’s not there.”
“What?” Duke could feel the hair standing on the back of his neck.
Her head jerked around to him, eyes widening as something akin to panic flashed in her face.
“Inside,” she suddenly snapped, then turned and ran as though she didn’t have stitches in that damned thigh.
He followed her, though. Across the yard and into the back door of the house.
“Bliss! Chaya!” She screamed their names, fear, an edge of panic echoing in her voice as she slid around the kitchen table and raced into the hall. “Chaya . . . ! Oh God . . .” She threw open Bliss’s bedroom door.
“Angel, what did you feel out there?” He grabbed her, twisted her around. “What?”
“Angel.” Chaya stepped from the bedroom, Bliss behind her, her weapon held close to her thigh as she stood protectively in front of her younger child. “What’s wrong?”
“Angel?” Natches was armed as well as he rushed into the house through the garage entrance. “What’s going on?”
“Declan and Harley—where are they?” she demanded. “They always sight me when I go outside the border. They didn’t do it when I was just out and there’s a boot print with unfamiliar tread in a perfect sighting position for both men. Someone was drawing their attention, and now I can’t feel them out there.”
“Bliss, safe room.” Chaya hit the digital pad and pushed her daughter into the secured room.
They didn’t question her reaction or the sense of danger suddenly pushing at her mind.
“Go with her.” Angel grabbed her mother’s shoulders, suddenly terrified for her. “We’ll check it out. You stay with her.”
“Bliss, close that door,” Chaya snapped, though her gaze stayed locked with Angel’s.
A second later the steel door hissed closed.
“Do you think I’d trade my safety for yours?” Chaya demanded caustically. “Or knowingly allow you to face danger alone? Not this time, girl. Not ever again if I can help it.”
Damn her. Now wasn’t the time for this argument.
“I won’t forgive you if you die before I have a chance to tell you exactly how mad I am at you,” Angel snarled in her mother’s face as something settled into place inside her.
What it was she’d have to define later, not now. But she knew the time was coming to settle the years between them, and she wasn’t lying. She wouldn’t forgive Chaya if anything happened to her before they did that.
Chaya narrowed her eyes on her. “You think you’re the only one that’s mad? Don’t think I don’t have a few things to say to you as well, so you damned well better make certain you’re in shape to hear them.”
“Help will be here in minutes,” Natches informed them, the ice in his voice, in his eyes, pure death. “Duke, you and Angel go after Harley, we’ll go for Declan. Use your suite entrance. Chaya and I will go through the office.”
“If someone took out Harley and Declan, they’ll know you’ll go for your son, Natches,” Duke pointed out. “They’ll be waiting for you.”
Natches froze, his gaze swinging to Angel, and in his eyes Angel saw a confidence, a flash of certainty in whatever he saw in her that she hadn’t expected. “No doubt both of them will be a trap,” Natches assured him. “Go in with your eyes open. When Dawg and Rowdy arrive with the others, they’ll split up and come in hard, so be watching for them.”
If Declan and Harley had been taken out, then the men coming for Bliss were better than Angel had believed possible.
“You be careful, girl.” Chaya pointed her finger at Angel imperatively, her brown eyes fierce. “Don’t you dare let anything happen to you either.”
“Girl?” she scoffed. She was getting rather tired of the “girl” title. “Same to ya, Mrs. Mackay,” she muttered, turning back to Duke. “Let’s go.”
The weapon
s they needed were waiting in the bedroom. It took only seconds to clip the holster to her good thigh and shove a clip in the military-grade rifle she’d just cleaned and checked before she followed Duke out the French doors at the side of the suite that morning. Using the natural cover Natches had planted in the yard, she and Duke hurried to the hidden break Natches had shown her the day before that led to Harley’s position above the house.
The path to the sniper’s position held natural evergreens, fallen trees, and dips and creases in the upward slant of the property that provided the perfect cover to move to the heavily branched pine Harley was supposed to be positioned in. As they headed in, the sound of sirens could be heard coming closer, racing to the house.
Using hand signals Duke directed her to a route that would take them above and behind Harley’s tree. Moving quick and silent, the soft-soled boots she wore made no sound, her lighter weight making it easier for her to move silently as they hurried to the young man’s location.
She’d been through here several times, familiarizing herself with the mountain, and she’d returned often—unless she felt those sights tracking her. She hadn’t seen the sheltered paths then, hadn’t connected the very intricate puzzle Natches had created within the forested rise of the mountain behind the house.
They didn’t speak, but used hand signals when communication was needed. Sound carried far better than the unwary realized and caused a chain reaction that anyone experienced in reading those signs could use.
Signs such as the birds usually twittering in the trees were quiet as they neared Harley’s position. It was as though the wildlife had paused, waiting to see what the humans were going to do.
Once they had the tree in sight, she knew why.
Harley was crumpled at the base of the pine, still and silent. Blood marred the side of his face and his arm, but it was impossible to see if he was alive or dead as they crouched behind the dubious protection of several fallen logs.