Ardor's Leveche (6 page)

“Easy, wench,” he said, his voice gruff.

“You are so hard,” she said, referring to his nipple.

“And nigh to bursting if you don’t stop that,” he threatened.

She ran her tongue over the V-shaped hollow at the base of his throat. “What,” she asked, “is this called? Do you know?”

“The suprasternal notch,” he answered. “Why?”

“It is such a mysterious part of our bodies,” she said. “So sensuous.”

“There’s nothing sensuous about it. It is simply where the collarbones come together.”

“You don’t want me to do this, then?” she asked, licking the discussed area and pressing her lips to it.

“For the sake of argument, let’s say I don’t mind,” he said, threading his fingers through her hair and holding her head as she continued to lave his throat.

She moved her lips up until she was kissing him beneath the chin. She could feel the hard, steady pounding of his blood rushing through facial artery. Over his chin she slid her lips until she took his mouth in a soft, fleeting kiss before moving on to the tip of his nose.

“You are a very handsome man,” she said.

“You should see my brother,” he said in a husky tone.

“Is he more handsome than you?” she asked, trailing her kisses up the bridge of his nose and onto one closed eyelid.

“Some say he is, aye,” he answered gruffly.

“Not possible,” she denied as she moved to kiss the other eyelid.

“Don’t knock what you haven’t seen, wench,” he told her.

Ardor laughed softly and laid her head against his shoulder. “What do you want from me, Major?”

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“Let me show you,” he said.

He pushed her down upon the bunk and took hold of the zipper of her jumpsuit.

He paused—expecting her to protest—but when she didn’t, he eased the zipper down to her waist.

Gently he ran his hands inside the opening of the jumpsuit and caressed the soft flesh. He touched the lace of her bra and grunted. “Is this a regulation garment, wench?” he asked.

“Standard issue,” she reported with a slight snort.

He eased his palm over one lace-clad breast and kneaded it tenderly. “Works for me,” he said.

Ardor drew in her breath as he tugged the bra down with his thumb and touched the satiny smoothness of her areola. He was paused just above her nipple and she ached to have him touch it, to draw it into his mouth.

“Umm,” he said and leaned in to nuzzle her neck.

He smelled so good to her—a trace of cinnamon oil, a bit of lemon, a whiff of male muskiness that set her juices to flowing.

Almost as though he knew how his touch was affecting her, he lowered his hand from her breast—eliciting a mild protest from Ardor’s lips—but when he slid his palm down her side then over her belly and past the elastic waistband of the jumpsuit, she could not stop the groan that pushed from her throat.

Before she could object, he stood up and reached down to lift her to a sitting position. Without saying a word, he peeled the short sleeves of the jumpsuit from her shoulders and pushed it down her back. Again, without so much as an audible breath, he eased the garment from under her hips and drew them down her legs, slipping off her prison-issue canvas shoes before removing the jumpsuit completely.

Wishing she could see his face, all she could sense was his dark outline as he hovered over her. The coolness of the air flowing over her brought goose bumps to her flesh and she felt naked—even with the bra and panties she was wearing—and totally vulnerable to the man in the cell with her.

“Your skin is like warm velvet,” she heard him say as he trailed his fingers along her thigh.

Tensing only a little as he unhooked the front closure of her bra and spread it back, she sighed deeply as his calloused hands covered her breasts. The heat from his palm sent spirals of desire racing along her nerve endings as he lightly caressed her, hefting the heavy globes in his hands as though weighing them.

“You are all woman, Ardor Kahn,” he said in a throaty voice.

His fingertips slipped over her nipple then began circling it, hardening the little bud with each slow circuit. When he pinched it lightly between his thumb and middle finger, she could not stop herself from arching up on the bunk, pressing against his questing hand.

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“Raoul, please,” she said and felt his hand still.

“Shush,” he said and moved his attention to her other demanding breast.

He was playing with her, she thought, but it was a game she, too, was good at it.

His body was close enough for her touch and she reached out to put her hand between his legs, at the apex of his thighs.

His hastily indrawn breath pleased her and she massaged him through the stiff khaki of his uniform pants. He was hard—his tool like a stone as it leapt beneath her hand.

She was expecting him to strip and join her on the bunk. What she was not expecting was him to step back, away from her touch and take the waistband of her panties in his hands and drag them down and off her long legs.

Feeling even more exposed, Ardor felt her heart trip-hammering in her ears. As his hands spanned her waist—gripping her—her eyes flared wide.

“Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?” she asked.

He said nothing, just increased his hold on her hips.

The bunk upon which she lay protruded out from the titanium walls like a shelf.

Her head almost touched the adjoining wall but the bunk ended a good three feet from the opposite wall—just enough space for him to slide onto and go to his knees, dragging her down to the end of the bunk, scooting his arms under her knees and hefting her legs over his broad shoulders.

Realizing what he was about to do, Ardor reached down to grab his hair but before she could, his mouth was between her, and her world was being rocked in a way she had never experienced.

Kurt Bowen had been good at oral sex—professionally so—and his mouth was a trained weapon. He could do things with his lips and tongue she had never imagined, but the expertise with which the man holding her thighs spread apart was a master of the act.

Her captor was using his thumb and forefinger to knead her outer labia, squeezing the lips together in a rhythmic cadence that sent quivers through Ardor’s lower belly.

He raked his short nails down the interior pathway from clitoral hood to her vaginal opening. It was a sweet sensation that made her inner lips itch—craving more of his delicate stroke.

As though sensing her need, he dwelt on one particularly itchy area just beside her clitoral hood until she sighed. Moving on, he very slowly and with great care inserted one long finger into her cunt and arched it up and down, stroking the vaginal floor.

Ardor could feel her love juices flowing and she was ready for the hard cock she had felt between his thighs, but when she started to speak, he hushed her, and before she could bat an eye, his lips were plying over her heated flesh.

His tongue was a wicked thing, she thought, as he plied it first along the inside of her upper thighs then swooping it across her aroused clitoris only to thrust it devilishly 33

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into the inner folds—lapping from top to bottom as though he was a man dying of thirst. He pressed it into her opening then dragged it upward until she cried out, the tip of that deadly muscle touching her enflamed clitoris. He swirled his wet, mobile mass of tissue around and around her outer lips, lapping at her until she was writhing beneath him.

“Inside me,” she pleaded, panting.

“Like this?” he countered, and inserted his middle finger deep within her.

Ardor groaned, grabbing his hair and holding on as though she was afraid she’d slip off into the vast reaches of the megaverse.

His finger was inside her—twisting, going deep. He pulled it out and she could hear him sucking the wetness from his finger, and she nearly came.

“Raoul, please!” she begged him.

The finger that stabbed into her cunt was only a tad less gentle than it had been, but the lips and teeth that latched onto her clitoral hood did so with a proprietary suction that made her cry out.

He was working her clitoris with the tip of his tongue—poking and swirling—until she could stand the friction no longer. She pulled his hair roughly but he paid no heed to her. His finger turned within her and she felt him touch something that made her tighten her legs around his neck.

Between the swirling attack on her clit and the pressing on whatever it was he was pressing on sent Ardor over the edge with a shriek, her neck arching back. Ripple after ripple moved through her with a ferocity she could never have imagined. Nothing—no one—had ever given her such a climax and she quivered from head to toe and back again. For the first time in her life, her toes curled and then the unthinkable happened—

the ripples started again and with even more force.

“Raoul!” she screamed, jerking her fingers in his hair.

He pulled his finger from her, tossed his head to break her hold on him, pushed her legs down and scooted over her, stretching his brawny body atop hers, pressing her down upon the bunk.

A voice tight with what could only be annoyance hissed from his lips. “
Creo la vez
próxima que usted llamará mi nombre más bien que el suyo
.”

Ardor blinked. She had learned enough Storian to translate what he had said—“I believe next time you will call my name rather than his”.

“Who?” she asked and felt him stiffen, no doubt surprised she had understood him.

Before she could question him further, he pushed himself off her and strode toward the cell door.

“We will be nearing Riezell Nine in about six hours,” he said. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep? Who knows how long it will take to remove that damned implant in your brain.”

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Ardor sat up as though she’d been pulled by strings. “Implant?” she echoed. “What implant?”

He hesitated then let out a long breath. “So they didn’t tell you what they had done?”

“What implant?” she demanded, reaching up to touch the side of her head.

“Your masters at Command had their techs in the sublims lab insert a retinal tracker in your thalamus. It sends back whatever you see to them, although we’re fairly sure it doesn’t have auditory probes as well. We won’t know for sure until it is removed.”

Fury rippled through Ardor and she clenched her teeth together so tightly her jaw began to throb with the pressure. That she hadn’t been asked, her permission granted, sent waves of hurt through her entire body. Would they have done such a thing to Chastain Neff? Would they have dared?

“Damn him,” she said, tears filling her eyes.

“What him?” he asked. “Who do you mean?”

“I want that thing out of me!” she said.

“Until we reach that cave you have two choices as I see it.”

Ardor raised her head, wishing she could see his face for his tone was sharper than she felt was warranted. “What choices?”

“You can either be unconscious or securely blindfolded. There is no way you will be allowed to transmit the location of the cave to your masters.”

The thought of being drugged into oblivion worried Ardor. Who knew what the Storians might do to her in such a state?

“Blindfold me,” she said, scrambling off the bunk to recover her jumpsuit. Not even bothering to put on her underwear, she dragged the prison garb on as soon as she found it.

“Sleep,” he ordered. “Don’t worry about the implant. I doubt it will cause you any discomfort. If it was going to, it would have before now.”

Rubbing at the side of her head, Ardor had to agree with him, although she could swear she felt something wriggling around inside her skull.

“Rest, wench,” he said, his tone filled with laughter. “I’ll keep the bogeymen away.”

“Just keep the cadaver away,” she asked.

The door to her cell snicked open and she caught just a glimpse of his back as he exited. He seemed taller than she remembered.

Striding briskly down the corridor, the Reaper’s smile would have frightened anyone who saw it as he shifted from Breva’s form into his own. It was a talent not many like him had the ability to do, but he had perfected human-changing and along 35

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with his ability to shape shift into the form of a wolf or a raven, that talent had kept him out of his enemies’ hands.

He was acutely uncomfortable in the khaki material of his 2-I-C’s uniform, much preferring the black silk shirt and black leather britches that marked him as a Reaper.

He itched to rid himself of the scratchy cotton, and wished he could tear Breva’s unspeakable garment from him and walk naked through the corridors.

“That would scare the hell out of my men,” he said with a snort.

Not that he cared. He was enjoying himself, for whenever he could impersonate Breva, he did. Such shenanigans never failed to amuse him and irritate the hell out of Breva. Waiting at the elevator that would take him up to his quarters, he rearranged the molecular structure of his face to that of Raoul Breva’s once more. It wouldn’t do for anyone—not even his own crew—to see him without his mask. There would be repercussions that would ripple from the
Sangunar
to Stori and back again.

Reapercussions
, he corrected in his mind as the elevator door opened and laughed at his play on the word.

His enemies thought they had killed him in the fire pit. It was not yet time for them to find out they hadn’t.

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Despite thinking she would not, Ardor had slept soundly, unaware of the odorless, invisible gas that had wafted into her cell to make sure she did. Had she known she’d been handled in that way, she would have been furious, but awaking refreshed, as calm as her present circumstances allowed, she sat up and ran her fingers through the thick cascade of her dark hair.

And became aware of a fledgling headache that ordinarily would not have bothered her but now—cognizant of the implant Breva had told her had been inserted into her brain—even the most minute of twinges concerned her. Putting a hand to her temple, she cursed Kurt Bowen and his team of treacherous lab techs.