The scent of coffee greeted her as she entered the living room, and the sight of Kell, shirtless and in bare feet, moving around the kitchen brought an ache to her chest.
He had tried to comfort her each time she awoke from the nightmares last night, but she had felt his anger simmering through the room. Silent. Deadly. Each time his rough voice had dragged her from whatever nightmares tormented her, it seemed his anger had only grown.
“I had Ian go out and get you some fresh cinnamon rolls,” he announced as he poured her a cup of coffee. Then, as though he had done it every day of their lives together, he sugared and creamed her coffee before setting the cup on the kitchen table.
“So that’s how you get the cinnamon rolls without leaving the house,” she said. “I should have known.”
A quick grin flashed across his face before his head lowered to steal a kiss. “I have a sweet tooth.”
“No kidding.” She sat down, picked up the cup of coffee, and gave a sigh of delight before taking her first sip.
He made a perfect cup of coffee.
“Kira stopped by while you were in the shower,” he told her as he moved to the other side of the table with his own cup. “She’s offered to pick up your dress for the party and bring it to you. I think you should let her.”
She met his gaze warily. “The final alterations have been finished.” She finally shrugged. “She’ll have to pick up the accessories for me though. I hadn’t gotten around to that yet.”
“I’m sure she could manage it,” he said.
Emily nodded before lowering her head and staring at the cinnamon roll that sat in the little saucer by her coffee.
“Em. Everything’s going to be okay,” he told her again.
“I know that.” She flashed him a confident smile. “I know you’ll take care of me, Kell.”
He was so fierce, so determined. She could see it in his eyes, in the hard set of his expression.
“What were the nightmares about then?” He sipped at his coffee, watching her over the rim of the cup.
“I don’t know.” She could feel the suffocating sense of fear rising inside her again. “I couldn’t remember them after I awoke.”
“Do you have them often?” The question was posed casually, but Emily saw the sharp scrutiny in his gaze.
“After the kidnapping I did.” She rubbed her hands over her face before shaking her head wearily. “For months afterward I couldn’t sleep at night at all. The darkness was terrifying.”
“You were probably blindfolded when you were kidnapped,” he said gently. “Fuentes is known for that. When he kidnaps one of his victims he keeps them blindfolded for hours. It throws your senses off balance and makes the fear sharper.”
“So the psychologist said.” She grimaced. “It took days before I could make sense of what was going on around me after the rescue. I don’t remember a lot of that week and I remember nothing of the kidnapping itself after the limo was run off the road and we were taken.”
She and the other two girls had been on their way home from a party in D.C. Two senators’ daughters and Jansen Clay’s daughter, Risa. Emily’s father and Senator Bridgeport, Carrie Bridgeport’s father, had been instrumental in pushing through several bills that had given drug enforcement agents critical freedoms in uncovering the transporters and suppliers of the drugs coming into the United States.
Carrie Bridgeport had died from the dose of Whore’s Dust she had been given, and Risa Clay was currently in a private institution due to the mental damage the drug had inflicted on her.
God, those girls were so young. Carrie had been sixteen, Risa barely eighteen.
Her gaze dropped back to the coffee, the steam from the creamy brew rising, thickening, and before Emily could stop it a horrified scream tore through her mind.
Daddy, help me!
“Emily!” Kell’s voice shattered the sudden memory that was there, then gone.
Wildly, she stared around the kitchen, realizing she was no longer in her chair. The coffee dripped from the table where the cup had overturned and Kell’s arms were around her, dragging her back from the hot liquid, holding her to him as she tried to fight him.
“What is it?” He turned her to face him, his expression fierce, his gaze demanding as he stared down at her, forcing her to look at him. “What did you see, Emily?”
His voice was loud, battering through her mind, hoarse and commanding, as she fought to keep from being dragged back into the darkness awaiting her within her own memories.
“Screams.” She shook her head, jerking away from him to put distance between herself and the sheltering warmth she needed so much.
She couldn’t let him hold her. She shook her head, shaking as whispers fractured her mind.
“Will he come for you?” A sneer, a voice that filled her with terror. “Tell me. Tell me how to contact him.”
She shook her head furiously as she gazed back at Kell. “How did you know I’d been kidnapped?” The question wheezed from her lips. Had she betrayed him?
Kell frowned. “I’d just come off a previous assignment in the Gulf. I was entering debriefing when my CO for that mission told me about the kidnapping. I requested an immediate flight to the transport off Colombia’s waters where the rescue teams were being flown. Once there, I pretty much demanded to be a part of the rescue. Why?”
She shook her head. It didn’t make sense.
“Why, Emily?” he snapped.
“I remember whispers,” she gasped. “Screams. I don’t know whose they were. Mine or the other girls’. A scream for daddy. Someone whispering questions. Asking if someone will come. How to contact them. And it’s so dark . . .” She shuddered as he pulled her into his arms again.
“The stress works against you.” His hand covered her head, holding her to him. “The Whore’s Dust is destructive. Nothing the victims have remembered in the past has had anything to do with the night they were drugged. Everything’s fractured in your head from the time you’re given the drug until the time it’s completely out of your system. Days for some. Weeks for others. Some never recover, Emily.”
Like Risa Clay. She hadn’t recovered. Not yet.
“You have every right to be frightened,” he told her then. “You know what Fuentes can do. Your subconscious knows how terrified you were when you were taken the first time. That subconscious can be more destructive than the reality. It creates demons and nightmares and whispers of memories that you can’t be certain are true or false.”
She breathed in roughly. “I haven’t had nightmares since those first weeks.”
“And once this is over, they’ll disappear again,” he promised her, pulling back enough to watch her with eyes so deep, so dark, they were like endless pools of emotion.
How could she have ever thought he was cold? That there was no emotion, nothing gentle, to back up the extreme sexiness that was so much a part of him?
“It’s just fear,” she said then, swallowing tightly, trying to convince herself of that.
“Just fear,” he agreed, though she swore she saw suspicion flashing in his eyes. The same suspicion that filled her.
“But you want to know if I remember any more whispers,” she guessed.
His lips tightened. “Just in case.”
Emily inhaled deeply. “No other victim has ever remembered anything?”
He shook his head as his hand cupped her cheek. “But you’re not everyone else,” he told her then. “If you remember any whispers, a voice, a face, anything, I want to know.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“And tomorrow night, you’ll stay close to me,” he ordered. “You’ll follow orders. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she answered with a shaky smile. “And I will, Kell, because I have no desire to ever lose your arms around me. I won’t risk allowing harm to either of us.”
His jaw clenched tight, the muscle working in it furiously before a tight grimace crossed his face and his arms tightened aroun
d her.
“Emily, do you know what you do to me?”
She could feel his erection against her stomach, his arms tight around her, flexing to hold back his strength, to hold back the need to pull her so close that they melted into each other.
“I know what you do to me.” Her hands wrapped around his back, smoothed up it, feeling the powerful ripple of muscles beneath her palms. “I know I’ve dreamed of you for years. Fantasized and ached. And I know I love you more than I thought I could love anyone. I’ve loved you all along, Kell, I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“You didn’t want to give your father what you thought he wanted,” he accused her softly, a sad curve tugging at his lips.
“How did you know that?” She hadn’t even admitted it fully to herself.
“Because it’s the reason I stayed away from you, chère. Had I taken what I wanted, then I would have been giving the Kriegers and the Beaulaines what they dreamed of. A woman they approved of, and eventually the grandchildren they dreamed of to carry on their bloodline. It took Fuentes to show me what I was throwing away and this new threat to make me move my ass and claim you. And I’ll never let you go, Emily. Remember that. Wherever you go in life, I’ll be behind you. As well as in death.”
He had lost so much, so young. And that loss had scarred him, made him harder, made him bitter for so long. Now, she saw the man he was inside in the heated warmth of the emerald eyes staring back at her.
He was a warrior. Fierce. Determined and strong. And he was her lover.
As his lips caught hers in a kiss of gentle wonder, Emily felt the breath hitch in her throat. She needed him. In ways she had never known she would need a man, she needed Kell.
He needed her.
As he lifted Emily into his arms and carried her back to her bed, he admitted to himself what his heart and soul had known for years. She was the other half of him. Courageous, brave, defiant, and winsome. She was every dream that had sparked in his mind for as long as he had lived.
His Papère Beaulaine had said that once Beaulaine men found the other half of themselves, then they knew it. There was no doubt. There had been no doubt in his mind for years who his woman was. The doubt had been in himself, in his own stubbornness and his inability to reach out for what he wanted without the past interfering.
As he laid her back on the bed and undressed her then himself, he knew the past had nothing to do with this. Emily was his future.
“I’m going to love you to exhaustion today,” he told her. “When night falls, you’ll have no choice but to sleep.”
He gripped the stalk of his cock, his fingers curling around it as her gaze dropped, her hot little tongue swiping over her swollen lips. Her blue eyes were darkening, heating as she shifted on the mattress, her thighs parting.
And Kell’s gaze was drawn lower. Over tight hard nipples to paradise. To soft creamy flesh glistening with the sweet juices that drew his tongue like a magnet and a hard little clit peeking from the folds with shy hunger.
“It might be hard to exhaust me,” she whispered then. “I’ve been waiting for you a long time, Kell.”
“Ah chère, no longer than I’ve dreamed of this.” He stroked his cock, letting the anticipation rise, feeling the heat of her gaze on the hard flesh as it tightened further, a drop of creamy precum beading at the tip.
He watched as her gaze narrowed on the little pearl of liquid before she rose to her knees, moving with such grace and sensual intent that she stole his breath.
What little oxygen was left in his lungs whooshed out as her tongue curled over the head of his cock, drawing the silky fluid into her before her mouth covered the swollen head.
“Bébé,” he groaned, his voice harsh. “Hell yes, suck it deep.”
She was drawing him along her tongue, filling her mouth with his flesh as the head of his cock throbbed in eager anticipation.
He loosened his fingers, sliding them deep into the cascade of auburn waves that framed her face, pulling it back and watching her lips as they stretched around his flesh and sucked him into the pleasure-rich depths of her mouth.
“Emily, sweet.” He let his senses go, let them fill with the sight and feel of her as she brought him more pleasure than he had ever known.
His balls drew tight along the base of his shaft, the pleasure of it washing up his spine and sizzling through his scalp with never-ending pulses of hot, electric sensation.
She did this to him every time she touched him. Weakened his knees with a pleasure that he never knew he could experience. She filled his head with thoughts of a future and his body with a lust that nearly brought him to his knees.
Tightening his fingers in her hair he pulled her back, grimacing in pleasure at the drag of her lips over his flesh and the sheen of moisture from her mouth that now coated his cock.
He pulled the swollen crest free, his jaw tightening at the exquisite pleasure of her tongue licking over it and her moan of denial vibrating around it.
Holding her head back, he stared into the velvety depths of eyes so blue they mesmerized him. Gripping his erection, he placed it at her lips once again, sank in, then pulled free as he tensed against the need to fuck her mouth until he’d spilled every drop of semen torturing his balls into the heated depths.
“You’re playing with me,” she moaned as her fingers slid over his thighs then moved in to wrap around the base of the heavy shaft. “That’s not nice, Kell.”
“Fucking your mouth should be done slow and easy,” he drawled, holding her head back with the thick strands of her hair. “It should be savored, chère. Such sweet pleasure should never be rushed.”
He watched her eyes dilate and darken at the thick Cajun accent he couldn’t hide when he was with her. It rumbled from his chest, as much a part of him as his upbringing had been.
“I shouldn’t be teased either.” She was breathing harder as he tucked his cock at her lips once more, watching her eyes flutter closed, feeling her hands tighten at the base as he pressed forward once again.
Slowly. He eased inside the wet heat of her mouth, feeling her tongue lick and stroke against the sensitive underside, feeling one slender palm cup his balls as the other hand began to stroke the shaft as he moved his own fingers.
He gave her her head, watching in ecstasy as she began to suckle his dick with sweet abandon. His hands caressed her head rather than pulling it back, sifting through the silk of her hair, touching her cheek, the shell of her ears, desperate to touch her in any way as she gave him a pleasure that he could never describe. A pleasure he would kill to preserve.
“Ah, sweet Emily,” he whispered. “Such a hot, sweet mouth. A wicked little tongue.” The wicked tongue in question was lashing at his cock head with each slow move of her mouth. It curled beneath the throbbing crest and undulated against the underside with a ripple of fiery pleasure.
If he wasn’t careful, he would spill himself between her lips, and that wasn’t what he wanted, for either of them. He needed to be inside her when his release came. To feel the hot pulse of his semen as her pussy contracted around him.
He would have preferred to feel her without the protection of the condom, but it wasn’t a risk he could take again. Not yet. God help him, he couldn’t take her to that party with the risk that she could have conceived his child.
“Enough, Emily,” he groaned as he felt the cum bubbling in his balls. The sac was so tight, drawn so close to his body that he was in agony.
Pulling back, he eased from her grip, his back teeth hurting with the need to fuck. To take her. Possess her. To mark as his forever.
Instead, his lips caught hers as he moved over her, pressing her to the bed and filling his senses with the scent of feminine arousal and the sound of muted whimpers echoing in her throat.
His sweet little fox.
His hands caressed her arms, gripping her wrists to pull them above her head as he plundered her lips with a hunger that would have shocked him at any other time.
 
; He wasn’t taking her gently, but he needed to. He wanted to. The hunger was rising inside him like a storm gone wild, pummeling at his control as he fought to touch and to taste as much of her as possible.
“Kell—” The soft, needy cry that fell from her lips as he moved to taste the sensitive flesh of her neck had a shudder racing through him.
She was slightly damp with the heat raging inside her, and he could taste the sweet perfection of her in the curve of her neck, over her collarbone.
Sweet, swollen breasts rose sharply, her nipples tight and flushed with the need to be touched. To be tasted.
With a hungry groan he filled his mouth with one tight bud, his tongue curling around it as he cupped the flushed mound with his hand.
Each lash of his tongue had her jerking against him, pushing her nipple deeper into his mouth as she arched against him. Her thigh rubbed against his swollen cock, pulling a groan from his chest as he moved from one nipple to the next. Her response to his hungry suckling whipped through him.
If he didn’t touch more of her, taste more of her, then he was going to go insane from the need. Control? He scoffed at the thought of it as his lips moved down her torso with hungry kisses and quick flicks of his tongue. Each caress whipped through her, jerking her against him, assuring him of her pleasure.
“I need to taste.” He nipped at the smooth skin of her hip. “To bury my mouth in your pussy and grow drunk from the taste. You’re like the smoothest whiskey, sweet and hot and so damned potent you steal my mind.”
He spread her thighs, moving quickly between them as he gazed up at her, filled his senses with the sight of her, arms outstretched on the bed, her fingers clenching into the blankets as her head tipped back in pleasure.
He ran his fingers through the wet slit and she moaned and arched. He opened the fragile folds slowly, the soft inner flesh glistening with its layer of syrup, and a ragged plea tore from her throat.
When his head lowered and he drew in the first taste of her, Kell let the hunger have him. He licked around her clit as his hands wrapped beneath her thighs and lifted them, pushing them close to her chest and tilting the flushed, soaked flesh closer to his mouth. Holding her thighs steady he parted them further, his gaze held by the folds opening, revealing the delicate entrance to the mysterious flesh beyond.