Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances) (15 page)

He pulled out and lifted the weight of his body from her. "I’m sorry --"

She shook her head, just a little, not enough to mar the serene beauty that had settled over her features. Tentatively, he kissed the spot he had just savaged. When she didn’t tense at the contact, he sealed his lips over the wound, his tongue gently massaging the flesh until the flow of blood stopped.

Finished, he pulled the bed covers over them and wrapped his arms around Amanda, holding her as the rhythms of her body slipped into those of a woman sleeping. He pressed his face against her hair and then against her exposed shoulder.

Only a few minutes had elapsed, but he could smell the change in her scent. The shift moved not from passion to fear but from something that was entirely hers to one that was partly his.

*****************

Amanda woke from a sleep unscarred by the nightmares she had battled nightly since her last mission on active duty. Feeling the animal heat of her lover, she knew why she had slept so peacefully. Loren held her, one arm flat against her back, the other across her shoulder and chest, his hand cupped beneath her breast. A leg, long and muscular, comfortably draped her hip and thigh. His hips pressed warmly against her bottom.

Her ex had always slept on the far side of the mattress, even when she still would have characterized their marriage as good. When the nightmares started, he always woke her and complained until she slunk down the hall and slept on the couch.

Amanda inhaled a ragged breath.

Lips brushed her shoulder.

"You awake?"

"Yes," she murmured. With his heightened senses, lying to Loren wasn't possible. Not that she needed to lie anyway. She ached to spend every minute with him she could get.

He cleared his throat with a swallow. "You want some ice?"

The question puzzled her until she moved her shoulder and a dull pain brought back the memory of his biting her. She closed her eyes, a little surge of triumph swelling her chest.

"What's wrong, Amanda?"

He sounded worried, guilty. She put a hand over the one cradling her breast. "Nothing."

She rolled in his arms and kissed him on the mouth. "I’ll take that ice if you promise not to be gone too long."

Loren nodded. The tender look of concern stamped across his strong features as he left the bedroom made her melt blissfully back into the mattress.

She knew the look.

Knew the bite, too.

She had seen such a mark on the throat of the woman from the second team Amanda had been sent to pull out. She had piloted the couple back to safety. With no debriefing agent to immediately whisk them off, the pair had showered then made their way into quarters nowhere near as private as they thought. Awake for more than twenty-six hours, Amanda had already opted to bunk down in a dark, quiet corner in lieu of a quick shower.

Not that anyone could sleep with two wet, naked bodies tumbling onto a nearby bed, the man possessively pushing the female down onto the mattress, his gaze reverent as he ran a fingertip against the bruised outline of his teeth on her flesh.

"I am yours now. Always." He had said. "Hold me safe."

With a look as sad as it was devoted, the woman had acquiesced with a nod.

Tears misted Amanda’s eyes as she remembered the couple, the memory followed fast and hard by the Army’s betrayal and Ronnie’s abandonment as he placed his career above marriage to a woman his commanding officer now considered toxic.

She allowed one self-indulgent sniffle for the past and then dried her tears with the edge of her pillow case. Loren entered the room with a bundle of cubes wrapped in a damp cloth a second later, his sheepish smile fading as the phone along her bedside rang.

Amanda frowned. No one called her. Her new bosses and co-workers would be home for the night. She had no family left -- no friends either. And Ronnie only contacted her through his attorney.

She grimaced. All the improvements in technology and artificial intelligence in the last few decades and society still hadn’t figured out a way to rid the world of divorce lawyers.

Eyes locked on Loren, she picked the receiver up and answered with a curt "Yes?"

"Amanda?"

She swallowed, mouth pursing at the grate of her ex-husband’s voice in her ear.

"It’s me--"

"’Me’ who?" She hoped the question would put a dent in his over-inflated ego. Raising her left hand to Loren, she tapped the pad of her thumb against her ring finger and the faded outline from where her wedding band had circled for more than a dozen years. He nodded his understanding.

"Ronald," the voice on the other end answered.

She smirked. Her ex would seeth for days whenever she slipped and called him "Ronnie" during their marriage. Now that they were divorce, Ronnie was all she called him when she wasn't hurling
asshole
,
bastard
, or
cock
--

"Amanda, are you listening?"

She smiled wider as Loren sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled a single cube from the bundle. He stretched his arm out and rubbed the ice against the bite mark. Amanda cupped his elbow with her free hand and coaxed him closer.

"Yeah, I’m listening. What the hell are you calling for?"

"I was worried about you."

"Worried?" She laughed. "That’s a first."

Someone had called Lt. Colonel Ronald Ridenhour and told him there was a man in his ex-wife’s house. Someone with a caravan of big black SUVs, fully equipped with infrared dishes and powerful antennas.

"Are you alone?"

"No, I have company."

Loren’s gaze was on her shoulder, but she knew he also was listening to both sides of the phone conversation, smiling at Ronnie’s discomfort and the bored tone with which she answered her ex-husband. Pausing in his gentle administration of ice to her shoulder, he motioned to the phone and mouthed the words
may I?

She nodded and he took the phone from her, holding it close to her breast as he ran the melting ice over her skin and down to the hardening nipple. Ronnie’s voice stuttered a series of unanswered questions.

Once her skin was coated with water, Loren sucked Amanda’s nipple into his mouth. He left the cube melting in her belly button and retrieved a fresh one from the night stand. Keeping the receiver close to his face, he left a trail of wet, noisy kisses down her stomach.

She could hear her ex-husband’s nervous cough on the other end at the same time the ice touched her clit.

"Oh, god!" The words rushed from her.

Tongue followed ice, ice followed tongue. Cold, warm, both wet.

Loren let the phone rest on Amanda’s hip, leaving his hands free to tease her. There was no sound coming over the phone, but she knew Ronnie was listening, frozen in dread fascination or indignation as her soft moans began to fill the room. She lifted the receiver from her body and quietly said his name.

Ronnie responded with a hard, breathless, "What?"

"You’ve been retired, jackass. Don’t ever fucking call me again."

With that she hung up and surrendered every ounce of attention she had to the man nestled lovingly between her thighs.

"Thank you," she said, ready to cry again.

He blinked slowly, his bristly cheek nuzzling her thigh as if to tell her it had been his pleasure. His fingers slipped lower, still holding the ice. He circled the ring of her cunt with it then lowered his mouth to blow warm air against the same spot. He teased her like that until the ice melted. Only then did he climb back up her body, his rock hard cock sinking into her like a gun returning to its holster.

Fucking her, slow and sweet, he whispered against her ear, "Tell me you left him."

She shook her head.

Loren squeezed her breast, sinking ever deeper into Amanda’s soft flesh as he sighed into her hair. "The man was a fucking moron."

*****************

Amanda watched the clock blink from 3:59 to 4 am. Loren was sitting up in bed. He had moved slowly into the position, attempting, perhaps, not to wake her.

"You don’t think they’re still watching?" she whispered.

"I know they are...but maybe they’ll think of how lovers often slip away at night..."

She rolled towards him and brushed her fingers against his back. "Not the good ones."

He turned on the lamp on his side of the bed and looked at her, his features pained. "I can’t stay much longer without showing my face. And I can’t show it in broad daylight."

Amanda pushed the covers away and sat next to him, her legs tucked under her. Taking his hand, she guided it to the spot on her shoulder where he had marked her. "Can you really leave me?"

Anguish washed over Loren’s face and he pulled his hand away. "It’s not what I want."

"Good," she whispered. "Wait here. Please..."

He nodded and she bounced up from the bed, her steps down the hall crisp. In the kitchen, she drew the curtains shut and opened the refrigerator, leaving it open so she had light to work with. Keeping her movements natural in case someone watched her heat signature, she opened the dishwasher and pulled the bottom tray all the way forward.

Twisting the water blade, she lifted it and shook. A package fell out. She grabbed it then quickly replaced the blade. Taking a clean glass from the top tray, she closed the dishwasher, poured some iced tea and carried the glass and package back into the bedroom.

She set the glass on the nightstand next to Loren. Still holding the package, she walked over to her bedroom closet and dug through the clothes before returning to the bed with an unused pair of men’s casual pants and a light jacket.

Sitting next to Loren, Amanda fingered the bottom of the pants. "My ex’s. Forgot to take them in to get hemmed and then..."

Letting the rest of the sentence fade into nothing, she unwrapped the package. A tight seal of opaque plastic gave way to a tighter roll of twenty thousand in paper credits. She had saved it in case she needed to make a run for it, but the money was only half of what she wanted him to see. Shaking the roll, two tubes fell into her hand, each about the size of her pinkie.

She held them forward for Loren to take.

Picking one up, he inhaled sharply. He rolled it between his fingers until the stock number and date faced him.

"They’re still good," she assured him.

He lifted a brow. "If they were good to begin with instead of fakes."

She nudged him with her elbow. She wasn’t some ultra-bad ass operative, but she wasn’t an amateur, either. "There were three to begin with. They’re not fakes."

He sat a little straighter, his gaze lighting with a smile as it danced between the black market injectors that would temporarily alter his features and the civilian clothes. "You are a miracle, Amanda."

He put the injectors down and turned toward her. His finger traced the outline of her bruise. "My miracle."

"Your traveling miracle," she corrected, her gaze and tone clear in their meaning -- she intended to leave with him.

"First I want you to tell me why you have these. Why you helped me."

Sinking onto her side, Amanda rested her head on the pillow and remained silent until he folded his body around her and nudged her with his chin. "Tell me."

"Two years ago I piloted an extraction mission in Puerto Rico... " When she hesitated, Loren filled the gap.

"The Massacre of Las Mareas."

She nodded, then stared into the bright blue eyes. "It wasn't the rebels who killed all those people."

Amanda braced, waiting for him to make the connection. Based on his reaction to her earlier plea to think about the children outside before starting a gun fight, she hoped he understood her motivation to betray her government.

He brushed her cheek. "And you wouldn't stay quiet."

"I stayed quiet enough." The ghosts of entire families danced through her head, the parents clinging to their bloodied offspring. "I only had my testimony to offer if I spoke out -- the video files were classified before we even made it back to the ship."

"They would be altered by now," Loren added. "Although the originals will still exist somewhere for future leverage."

He lifted a brow, his mouth quirking to the right as he mulled over her situation. "Actually, they may have disappeared and the Army thinks you have them. Otherwise you'd be dead already."

She snorted, the same thought having occurred to her after the first time she discovered her home had been searched. Even though the government hadn't killed her already, she had been as good as dead until her return home this evening. The constant monitoring and secret searches of her home and new work place were grinding her to dust. Most days, she doubted her own senses and even her sanity. Even when she didn't, the image of slaughtered civilians pressed down on her.

Leaning in, Loren brushed his lips across her eyelids to ease the pain sparking inside her. "Baby, when you pack, I want you to include that pale green nightie -- the one that matches your eyes."