Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances) (13 page)

She couldn’t respond at first -- not with the warm stirring of his breath against her neck. "I’m not exactly on speaking terms with the government anymore."

There was a slight shake to her voice, fueled not by fear but by the hard body pushing into her, the deep fuck-me-now timbre and the masculine scent of his skin rising up to eviscerate the last traces of bleach.

She had no idea who he was, but her body’s reaction was anything but fear.

"You could have called someone else -- a boyfriend or a husband..."

"Ex-husband -- I’m not on speaking terms with him, either."

He chuckled again, acknowledging her point. Amanda reached out, slowly, to the light switch. When he made no move to stop her, she turned on the overhead light.

Squinting against the sudden glare, she angled her view until she could look up at him. His eyes were shut, permitting her to study his face without censure.

She sucked in a breath. He possessed a pussy-drenching kind of face, with a bearded, chiseled jawline and near-black brows topping eyes that were heavily fringed with thick lashes. His pale red slash of lips had an obstinate set to them. The strong nose, broken at least once, divided everything into perfect halves crowned with thick dark hair, a little longer than a soldier would wear and swept to one side.

He was younger than her forty-six years, too, perhaps by as much as a decade.

"I’m not as safe as I look." He smiled when he said it, the curve of his lips like a gut punch.

"You don’t look safe at all," she shot back. "But I won’t know until I can stare you in the eyes."

He complied with a slow lifting of the lids, the effect the same as if he’d been peeling off the tight black t-shirt hugging his broad chest.

Blue eyes. Not just any blue -- she knew the color, had seen it twice before piloting covert rescue ops. Three years apart she had pulled a team out of remote, dangerous terrains. One male, one female each time, with identical blue eyes on the men. Those eyes had haunted her sleep ever since, populating fantasies in which they descended below the horizon of her stomach as the man's hard uncompromising mouth fastened against her clit.

Slowly, she rotated the wrist he still held. The texture of the skin on his hand was unmistakable, like a rough velvet nap. She’d missed noticing it until she had looked into those eyes, but the texture provided further confirmation.

"I know what you are." The words were out before she could think to call them back.

His mouth curled to the right in a weary smirk. "What am I?"

He tilted his head as he asked and she could tell that he listened for something. Memories flooded to the front of her mind -- the men’s enhanced vision and hearing, a crazy grip you couldn’t shake off and blue eyes that bled to black when they clicked into some kind of battle trance.

Amanda shrugged. She didn’t have a name for what he was -- no agency tags had been placed on the mission. She tilted her head and listened with him, finally hearing a familiar double whir. "Toran LH-67, single seater, urban reconnaissance."

Out in the open, the small helicopters were quiet until they approached within a block of a person. Her intruder had detected it at least half a minute before she had, all with Amy White moaning in the background.

"SUV out front..." He hesitated, lifted one dark brow. "Make that two."

Looking at his eyes, she saw the first fine strands of black start to bleed from the pupils into his irises. He glanced over his shoulder at the pistol on her bed.

She placed her free hand flat against his chest. "You don’t have to run."

When he didn’t move, she eased from where he had her wedged between his body and the wall. Reaching into the top drawer of her dresser, she removed two sets of handcuffs.

"Take your shirt off and get on the bed."

The command surprised him enough to instantly restore his irises to their bright electric blue. She opened one of the cuffs’ bracelets and shook it in his direction as she explained her plan.

"I’m Army Major Amanda Child, five months retired, and you..." She pointed at the bed. "You are my boy toy. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. So peel that shirt off now or I'll have to punish you."

When he still didn't move, she touched his face, cupping one side as she matched his steady gaze.

Experience told her that he would annihilate the agents gathering outside -- regardless of what they were packing in those SUVs. She had pulled the first team out during the final stages of California's Second War for Independence. The man and woman had mowed through more than thirty heavily armed combat troops with nothing more than handguns and their bodies to reach the rendezvous point.

And that was what they were capable of when injured and after a week of low rations.

"It’s six p.m." She stroked her thumb across his cheek. "Families are arriving at their homes...kids will be running from cars to the house, some stopping to play in the yard. How many deaths do you want to be responsible for today, soldier?"

A slow blink signaled his acquiescence. Head dropping, he moved toward the bed, stripping the t-shirt off as he went and tossing it casually onto the floor. Reaching the mattress, he pushed the handgun under a pillow and settled with his back against the wrought iron headboard, his arms held up and his wrists touching the cold metal as he awaited the shackles.

She attached one bracelet to the headboard. He caught her hand before she could slide the other bracelet around his wrist.

"Are you sure you can sell this?"

Amanda looked at his bare arms, the ripped abs and hard planes of his chest with their small, lickable nipples. Blushing, she finished her inspection. "Yeah, I can sell it."

It was asking a lot, not just that she could convince anyone knocking at the door that they were interrupting a little early evening sexing, but that she wasn’t purposefully handcuffing him to make his apprehension all the easier.

Releasing her, he let Amanda secure his hand. She circled the bed, attached the second set of bracelets to the frame but didn’t lock the cuff. In case he needed to escape, she placed the key to the other cuff in his palm.

"Give me a name, Amanda." He rubbed his cheek along her sleeve to hook her attention. Even with the fabric separating them, the gesture sent fire racing across her skin.

Her chest tightened at the way her name sound falling from his lips.

Trusting…intimate.

"Let me think for a second." She slid her belt off, tossed it on the floor. Leaving her pants buttoned, she unzipped them then crawled onto his lap. She watched his face while she proceeded to unbutton and re-button her blouse, intentionally mismatching their placement.

When she was done, she threaded her fingers through his hair. A heavy knock sounded on the front door, audible over the music still playing on the clock radio. She leaned forward until their foreheads touched.

Dark, dangerous.

"Loren," she whispered. She brushed her lips against his, her thoughts only half on the infrared dish likely pointed at the house at that moment. "Sit tight."

She made her way to the front door, stopping to turn a table lamp on in the living room as she yelled at the knocker to hold his damn horses. She yanked the door open, chain off.

"Not buying, move along to the next house." She started to shut the door but a size twelve, black patent leather shoe blocked her.

"Major Child?"

She followed the line of the shoe all the way up to its owner’s face. Slick suit, shades, ear piece.

She knew the type all too well.

"This a recall or something?" She had a hand on her hip, her gaze daring him not to notice the disarray of her clothes.

"No, Major."

"Then come back later." She pushed on the door, giving his foot a squeeze. "Kinda busy now."

Bringing his hand up, he pressed back. "Ma’am, are you alone?"

He knew she wasn’t. And a quick records check on the computers undoubtedly running inside the SUVs would have told him she lived alone.

Relaxing her grip on the door, she poked a hip in his direction. "Just me and my toys, lover."

"We believe there’s someone else in the house, Major."

She closed her eyes and let a wistful smile play over her face. "How does that contradict what I just said? Look, he’s handcuffed to the bed and I don’t want him getting cold or lonely...or starting without me."

The suit put his hand to his ear, someone else feeding him orders. He nodded, then offered her a flat smile. "Sorry about that, Major. You have a good evening now."

"I plan on it." Amanda let the door close on her return smile. She locked the bolt, secured the chain then sauntered back to her bedroom musing that the agents outside likely didn't want to make a scene before they were convinced the man they searched for was inside. There had been a few too many events like that on the news these last six months.

She found "Loren" exactly where she had cuffed him, his attention laser-focused on the doorway and the hall behind her, his free hand an inch from the gun hidden beneath the pillow.

"It’s just you and me, baby." She reached the edge of the bed and bent down until her lips were against his ear. "Under surveillance, no doubt."

Putting on a show for the infrareds, she walked the perimeter of the mattress, lifted his free hand and drew the handcuff key from it. She set the key on the nightstand and then secured his wrist. Stepping back, she considered her next move.

Loren decided for her. "Take your clothes off."

He sounded like a man ready to fuck, but that couldn't be the case. He was playing a part, just as she needed to. She brushed a thumb over the button on her pants. In the five months since her retirement and the year before that fighting to keep her commission, she had grown eight sizes. She had been a big girl to begin with, scraping by at each weigh-in just a few grams below the ceiling for female helicopter pilots.

She chewed at her bottom lip as her thumb slowly unthreaded the button. A stranger, she couldn't expect Loren to react any kinder to her body than her ex-husband had. Hell, Ronnie was just an okay looking guy, truth be told, and he had found her seriously lacking before the weight gain. What would a man like Loren, with the body and face of a god, think?

"Lose the pants, Amanda." Bright blue eyes glittered dangerously at her and an almost smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Part of her wanted to run and hide in a set of oversized sweats, but too much depended on putting on a good show. Not just Loren's escape but her own freedom now that she had aided him. She reminded herself that she had trained for subterfuge like this, even if she had no real experience. And she had changed before strange good looking men dozens of times under situations just as deadly.

Still, she was in no hurry to be naked in front of such a gorgeous specimen of masculinity who was only in her bed because his alternative was a street full of civilian casualties.

"Quit stalling."

She sighed, thankful she had burned her granny panties last week in an attempt to ease the increasingly dark, self-loathing mood that had gripped her after her forced retirement. Pressing her lips together, she finished unbuttoning her dress pants and let them fall to the floor. Without them, only black lace panties and a matching garter belt attached to black silk stockings covered the lower half of her body .

Loren surprised her again. His gaze jumped to her exposed flesh. His nostrils flared and a bright flush of color darkened his cheeks. When he looked up to meet her gaze, he lifted one dark brow. "Now the top."

Taking her time, she undid the buttons, watching him stare at her chest as it came into view inch by inch. "You don’t get out much, do you?"

His focus zeroed in on her fingers working the next to last button, Loren offered a tight, "No ma’am."

"Ma’am?" Her hands froze over the last button.

"I mean..." Looking up, he blushed again.

She scowled. He damn well better not call her
Major
.

"No, Amanda. We're kept on a very short chain where I serve." His lips parted softly and she saw the tip of his tongue come to rest against his upper teeth for a second before he spoke again. "So continue."

Now he really sounded like a man ready to fuck.

Flexing his outspread arms, he drew his bottom lip in and held it between his teeth, a growl vibrating in his chest signaling his growing impatience.

With his eyes on her hands, she looked down his body as she unfastened the last button. The thick bulge of an erection pressed against his zipper.

She groaned softly then shrugged her blouse off and stepped to the foot of the bed. Bending over to pull his shoes and socks off, she heard his matching groan as her breasts tried to escape the black shelf bra she wore.

The sound soaked her pussy.

Her entire being shaking with anticipation, she crawled up his body until she was at the waist of his jeans. She covered the fly with her palm, cupping the hard cock beneath her hand -- hard and big enough to make her heart do a double back flip.