Blowback (The Black Cipher Files Book 1) (35 page)

He scraped his teeth along the path to my belly button as he slid to his knees. His hands played with my nipples while his tongue painted patterns on my stomach, his weight against my legs anchored me to the wall.

But what held me captive against the ancient wallpaper in mud brown and orange was my own vulnerability. My own need to hold on to our connection.

He dragged his hands down to my waist and ripped at the zipper of my jeans. The soft scrape of his beard scuffed erotically against the sensitive skin of my belly before his tongue probed the thatch of hair protecting my sex.

My hands hung limply at my sides. I may have started the game but Lucas was halfway round the board and I hadn’t made a move.

He pulled my jeans down to my knees and braced his forearms against my thighs. With his thumbs, he spread me open wide and like an ice cream cone, he licked me up in one long stroke.

All my blood rushed south. I thought my knees would give way. I’d lost control of this encounter. “Move to the bed.”

“Nope.” Lucas shook his head back and forth, the stubble of his beard brushed against me. My blood throbbed and pulsed.

I was so turned on I couldn’t breathe. The air in the room seared my lungs as I tried to draw in oxygen. I could make him move. “I know at least ten defensive moves that could have you on the floor in two seconds.”

“But then we’d miss all this fun.” His teeth scraped against me as he spoke. Then he turned his head sideways, opened his lips and sucked my clitoris into his mouth like a grape.

“Jesus,” I gasped.

He relentlessly, rhythmically sucked at the knot of nerves and sex until I came in an explosion so hard, fireworks blurred my vision.

With a gentle lick he teased my still sensitive body. I whimpered as internal contractions milked a phantom cock. The sound galvanized something within me. I didn’t want a phantom. I wanted him, inside me.

I wasn’t going to be the only vulnerable one in this room.

Lucas knelt in front of me. His jeans spread wide, an impressive erection filled his boxers and the tip of his cock peeked out the top. He glanced up at me, his hair mussed from my hands and a smug smile on his face.

“What?”

His grey eyes sparkled as he swirled his tongue over his wet mouth. “Yum.”

I shoved my jeans down around my ankles, pushed them off with my toes.

“Your turn.” I slid slowly down his body my hips and stomach rubbing over his chest, the hard points of my nipples stabbing into him. The wet heat of my open legs caressed the head of his cock, still trapped in the confines of his jeans, as I sank to my knees.

I held his wrists in a loose cuff. Then I pressed his hands against the wall, forcing him to keep his hands off. “No touching.”

I wanted him as hot and helpless and breathless as he’d had me. I eased my palms over the hard muscles of his ass and gently scraped his jeans down to his knees. Pulling his hips to mine, I tilted my hips up slightly and encased his shaft in the triangle between my legs, touching but not penetrating. Wet rain from my body slicked his erection as we rocked together. He dropped his head back and a long, low groan came from his throat.

The compulsion to let him slam his body into mine was overwhelming.

The muscles corded in his arms as he strained with unbearable tension. “Let me in.”

I cupped his testicles drawn tight with arousal. The scent of sex hung in the air. That unmistakable mingling of male and female. The instinct to tense, to keep him out was strong. This willing surrender of my body went against everything my mind wanted. My body wanted his heat but also his strength.

I wanted him.

Not just sex. Him. The traitorous impulse invaded. I wanted all of him. Impossible. His gaze burned into me willing me to let go. To let us take each other.

“Now.”

He slid his palms up my back tracing the line of my spine. His arms banded around me, cradling me, pulling me up. He pushed off his jeans as his mouth covered mine. The kiss was urgent, insistent, erotic.

We tumbled to the bed in a tangle. He ripped open a foil packet and covered his erection. Finally, he speared my body with his.

He touched me deep inside, in a place frozen from lack of use, encased in a shield, so hard it would never crack or melt.

Yet I felt as if I could melt. Become soft, pliant, needy in a matter of moments just from the intimacy of his lips against mine. The heat of his arousal burned away the last of my resistance.

The press and slide of his weight on top of me, covering me, protecting me, roared through my blood. My hips slammed into his, our bodies colliding with erotic slipperiness. Fierce heat incinerated us as we soared over the edge of sanity.

Impossibly this joining was more intense, more memorable than our first time. And I wanted, as before, to just lie in this bed with him. Be with him. To hold on to this exquisite feeling for a little longer before reality intruded.

We lay there, chests heaving, his weight upon me no longer a protection but a burden. Already my thoughts intruded, rejecting this neediness I seemed to feel. I understood anger. Understood revenge. I didn’t understand this need inside of me, clawing to get out, clawing to hold on to him as tightly as I could and never let go.

Mentally I squirmed, antsy, anxious to put distance between us. Searching for a way to stop the neediness from overwhelming me.

And I found my answer in Bella.

How could I have done this, taken this refuge, this respite while Bella was a prisoner, trapped and afraid–because of me?

He heaved a sigh then rolled to the side, yanked my body flush to his, and jammed his mouth on mine. Hard.

Here was the heat, the anger, I thought I’d wanted earlier. But I couldn’t go back. Not now.

He said, “Bella isn’t in more danger because of this.”

I pressed my palms flat against his shoulders trying to shift away.

“You aren’t bad for taking this release.”

But how could I find pleasure right now?

“I’m sorry,” I ground out. Apologizing was foreign to me. “I can’t do this. It’s not fair to Bella.”

“Not fair to Bella?” he said musingly. “I’ve been thinking about your relationship with Bella.”

I definitely didn’t want to talk about that. “No thanks.”

“Oh, this needs to be said.” He kept his hands on my body, but his touch was gentle now. “You told her you’d done everything for her but that isn’t really true, is it?”

I jerked back. The sentiment was harsh, judging, totally at odds with the tender caress of his hands.

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t cut yourself off from her, from everyone just for Bella’s protection.”

“Of course I did.”

“Be honest, Jamie.”

This abrupt stranger baffled me. “I was honest.”

“Bullshit. You haven’t been honest since you were fifteen years old.”

I hadn’t realized how much I’d started to depend on Lucas’s support and understanding until it was so suddenly ripped away.

His pulse beat in his throat, his voice raw as if ripped from his gut. “If you didn’t get close to anyone, then
you
couldn’t get hurt again. All that posturing about protecting your sister. You were protecting yourself.”

His accusations stripped me bare emotionally, as bare as I was physically.

“If no one gets close, then it can’t hurt when they leave. Or die.”

Was he right? Anger fueled the hurt burning in my chest. For his understanding of me, completely and thoroughly. The need to lash out, to wound him consumed me. “Yeah. Well, everyone does leave. Everyone does die.” My heart cried even as I forced the words through lips stiff with pain and distress. I knew my words would push him away, I knew it. Just like I knew him.

Everyone leaves me. He would too.

“Yeah...I guess I’m gone then.” His rejection was absolute. His words gutted me with astounding accuracy. Pain, intense and insistent, rolled through me.

I’d thought Bella’s rejection had hurt. But my relationship with Bella was merely a fantasy...something I’d built in my own mind.

My relationship with Lucas had been real, solid, a bond that had strengthened by the minute.

Until I ruined it.

Silence overtook the room. We had nothing more to say.

“We’d better get dressed,” I said. “Ramirez and Zeke will be back soon.

Lucas rolled away from me and I slid off the bed quickly.

I dressed quietly, picking up clothes strewn all over the hotel room. The lack of control I had granted myself just a short while ago appalled me.

My thoughts arrowed back to the last time I’d dressed in the half light of the partially open bathroom door. The last time I’d stolen away before temptation won and I lay back down to revel in the comfort of his arms.

As he lay in the hotel bed sheets, he looked tired. Circles of exhaustion rimmed his eyes. His hair was wrecked, mostly from my hands fisting in its silky texture.

His arms were roped with muscles and dusted with blond hair. Strong arms that held me with tenderness, even when I demanded rough. Cradled me when I needed comfort.

And I had severed that connection, like a scalpel through flesh, cutting it out, ridding myself of the weakness.

I’d gotten what I wanted, what I needed.

So why did it hurt so much?

THIRTY-NINE

Five more minutes until contact.

We’d picked up Lucas’s van from Dulles because we’d needed the gadgets and the surveillance capabilities. As soon as we’d parked the white van in the Reagan National Airport parking lot, Lucas started checking the equipment one last time. “Ready?”

I tumbled out the back of the van. Zeke sat in the passenger seat with Ramirez ready to drive.

I adjusted the mini-microphone/transmitter situated just below my throat and disguised to look like a button. The device had a range of three hundred yards and matched the other buttons on the white shirt I wore underneath the yellow Izod sweater. Hopefully the outfit made me look approachable and harmless.

“Check,” I whispered. Fall had hit with a vengeance and my warm breath puffed white.

Zeke sent one click to the listening device disguised as an earring. He’d tracked my voice. One for yes. Two for no.

Lucas stepped out of the back, touching his ear piece. “We’ve got reception,” he said tersely.

Lucas stepped toward me, rubbed his hands along my biceps and eased me into his arms awkwardly. I tried to step back but he held on to me too tightly. “Just for a minute, please.”

Ramirez and Zeke turned away to give us privacy. The tension between Lucas and I had been clear. Since they returned from getting food, both men avoided us.

Lucas had cut me open with his words in the hotel room. I knew the only reason he’d stuck around was to rescue Johnny. Otherwise he’d be long gone.

“Be careful.” He looked as if he wanted to kiss me. But then he let go.

“Always am.” I forced the words out.

This had to work. Gratitude and regret weighed heavily on me.
Thank you.
A sudden urge to shelter in his arms shook me. I had forfeited that right. “Keep safe.”

“Stick to the plan,” he cautioned.

“We’ve been over it multiple times.”

“Just don’t do anything hotshot.”

“Me?” But the expression on his face compelled total honesty. “I would never jeopardize the hostages.”

“I know.” Lucas brushed a hand over my hair, then pulled back as if he’d breached some invisible field.

I eased away from him, walked around to the passenger side of the van, and flipped open his cell phone. My contact point with the psycho holding my sister and my link to my crew. “Are you tracking?”

“I’ve got you,” Zeke said through the open window, then nodded toward a handheld device. “You realize if we can use trilateration to track your location with this, they can too.”

“It’s a risk I’ll have to take.”

Lucas frowned. “What if they block the signal?”

“We should still have some time to pinpoint her location.” Zeke punched a button on the tracker. “We just need to hope they’re so busy with the phone they don’t notice the low level frequency of the button.”

“Just record everything.” I wanted this guy caught. “And get my--the hostages out alive.”

Ramirez was silent through our exchange. And for a moment I wondered what was going through his mind. He looked at us, his mouth a flat unsmiling line.

He was waiting for a woman who might never return and his only concrete lead, Johnny, depended on this rescue. He nodded once, then gripped the steering wheel.

Lucas’s cell phone rang. The rasp of my breathing was harsh in the silent night air. What if they’d hurt Bella?

A lifetime of worrying about her safety and protection washed over me. I took a deep breath and answered. “Hello.”

Without hesitating, the older man said, “Take the Metro and get off at the Foggy Bottom station. The trains run every fifteen minutes. Call this number when you’re street side.”

I repeated the information back to him, watching Zeke’s fingers fly across the laptop keys. He’d start tracking me right away. He’d been right. We’d needed him.

“You have the key fob?” The man on the phone asked arrogantly.

“Yes.” Not a complete lie. I had the files but not the actual key fob.

“You have thirty minutes.” The line clicked off.

I’d need to hustle. If I missed the train I’d be late. And with traffic, Lucas, Zeke and Ramirez would be lucky to be at the station before me. I didn’t have time for any more goodbyes. “Get them.” I gave them a thumbs up and ran for the Metro station. Rather than wait at the machines, I bought a MetroCard illegally from a guy on the way down.

I made my way to the entrance, my heart pounding so loudly people at the Pentagon could probably hear it. My adrenaline spiked.

Pull it together, Jamie. Or you won’t do Bella any good.
I paused at the escalator for a calming moment. Taking one more slow inhale, I headed down. I’d be out of pocket while underground, the transmission capabilities on the button would be muted in the train tunnel, but there was no choice.

If Bella’s kidnappers grabbed me in the station, Lucas and crew wouldn’t have any warning for at least twenty minutes--until they expected me to arrive at the Foggy Bottom station and I didn’t show up.