Heatseeker (Atrati) (20 page)

“Want it,” she moaned.

“Need it.” He grabbed her ass, pulling her more tightly against him, the tip of his engorged penis sliding into the mouth of her honeyed depths.

He’d had sex in the last decade, but damned if this wasn’t the first time in those years he felt the sense of completeness just connecting this much. The feel of her wet heat against his naked cock was a single breath away from being too damn much.

So much more intense than with anyone else. Ever.

And then realization struck why that was. Or at least why he wanted to believe it was.

“Shit,” he ground out. “Condom.”

“I’m clean,” she promised, sliding downward, taking him further inside.

“I am, too, but Rach—”

“No,” she said fiercely, holding on to him with her arms and legs in an iron grip. “No condoms between us.”

“You don’t know . . .”

“I know I can trust you, darn it. You know you can trust me.” She stopped and stared at him, her eyes filled with that wounded vulnerability he so desperately wanted to dispel. “You do trust me, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then no condom.”

“Pregnancy?”

“Mirena.”

“Who?” Who the hell was Marina, and why was Rachel bringing her up now?

“It’s an insert. No pregnancy, almost no period. Good for an agent.” Rachel undulated again, this time causing his sex to sink more deeply into hers. “We’re covered. No babies.”

He stopped himself from saying,
Maybe someday.
Shit, what was he thinking? They didn’t have that relationship anymore.

For good reasons that he just couldn’t think of right then.

“Just make-you-scream sex,” he whispered into her ear before biting gently into her earlobe.

“If you think you’re up to it,” she taunted, though her tone was more breathless than challenging.

“Oh, I’m up to it all right, angel.”

“Prove it.”

“My pleasure.” He carried her to the bed and laid her down. “And yours, too.”

She nodded, making no attempt to deny it.

That was so damn arousing, her sexual honesty. She’d always been like that, even when they were younger and she was a lot shyer about her desires. He’d never known another woman as willing to admit how he made her feel as Rachel.

He’d never cared how much he affected a woman as he did Rachel, either.

“Do it,” she ordered.

He wasn’t about to say no. He surged into her in one long, inexorable thrust, eternally grateful she was as wet as she was, because it was one hell of a tight fit.

“Don’t do this often?” he panted as he stilled above her, trying to regain a measure of control and surprised how intensely he needed an answer to that question.

“Intimacy requires trust.”

“Sex isn’t always intimate.” He’d had enough experience with the other kind to know what he was talking about.

“For me, it is.”

For some reason, that made him want to beat bloody every man she’d been with since Kadin had been forced to walk away from her, a confused and hurting twenty-year-old kid.

“Hey, Trigger . . . don’t leave.”

Since he hadn’t moved, he knew she was talking about his mental tangent.

“Don’t call me that.”

“I will if I want to.”

Something cold gripped his insides. “Don’t.”

“Stop talking,
Kadin
. Start moving.”

“Forgot the foreplay,” he ground out as he did what she wanted, moving their bodies together, sinking deeper into her with every thrust of his hips.

“Don’t care.”

“I’ll still make you scream.”

“Yes.” She wanted it, wanted the oblivion of sex with a primal need he understood only too well.

He sat up, sliding his forearms under her legs and shifting her so he went deep with every thrust.

She looked up at him, her expression filled with carnal need and emotion she’d deny was there. But he knew what he saw.

“You’re good at this,” she praised.

“With you, I’m the best.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not about it being you and me. It’s just sex.”

He shook his head, laughing inside at her naïveté. It was all about who they were and had been to each other, but if she needed to tell herself different, he’d let her.

“Stop looking so smug, and pound me into the mattress, Mr. Atrati-man.”

“You always were pushy in bed.” Once she got past her initial shyness.

Rachel had always known what she wanted and let him know, even if half the time he was sure she couldn’t handle it.

“And you always wanted to treat me like I’m breakable.”

“You’re a hell of a lot more fragile than me.”

“Don’t you believe it.” She tilted her pelvis, forcing him to go deeper. “Let go of my legs.”

He laid them across his thighs, happy to have his hands free to touch her.

With a look of concentration he’d seen in battle but rarely the bedroom, Rachel dug her feet into the bed on either side of his legs, meeting him thrust for thrust, enhancing the push-pull of their coupling with passionate intensity.

He reached down and cupped her breasts, loving the way they fit his big hands so perfectly. “No one else fits me like you do.”

“Remember that, when you walk away the next time.”

“Damn it, I—” But he couldn’t promise not to leave again.

And she knew it.

“Don’t,” she ordered. “Just make me scream. That’s the only promise you have to keep to me anymore.”

It was the one he knew he
could
keep. He pinched her nipples, playing with them until they were red and swollen and she was making small broken sounds of want.

If he reveled in affecting her this way, he could damn well be forgiven. Rachel made him feel like a god in bed, and somehow he’d forgotten that.

Hell, he’d forgotten on purpose, but remembering and experiencing it were one hell of a rush.

Letting one hand slide down her flat stomach, he brushed his thumb over her close-cropped pubic hair. “You trim down here now. I like it.”

“Me, too.”

The hair was soft and short enough, there was no guessing when he let his thumb dip between her labia and find the swollen nub of her clitoris.

She jolted at the first touch, her body going rigid and then picking up pace as she slammed toward him on each downward thrust.

“You’re the most responsive woman I’ve ever touched.”

“And your cock’s the biggest one that’s ever screwed me.”

Fury washed through him, increasing his sexual need to dominate and prove that he was not just the biggest cock she’d ever had but the best lover.

He grabbed her hands and pulled them above her head, looming over her as he ground their hips together, taking control of their movements almost completely.

She didn’t seem even slightly intimidated, just moving against him as much as she could, giving and receiving pleasure without apology or mercy.

“Don’t like the comparison?” she taunted.

And finally, he understood. “No.”

“Remember that, too.”

“I will.”

“Let go.”

“I like this.” He always had, but she was the only woman he’d ever wanted to hold down during sex.

“Me, too, but right now I want to touch.”

He released her wrists, glad to notice they weren’t even red from his hold.

She shook her head, as if she knew what he was looking for. “I’m not breakable.”

“You’re too damn sexy, is what you are.”

“Glad you think so.” She reached up and flicked his male nipples with her short fingernails. “You’re pretty hot yourself.”

Damn, that felt good, electric jolts of pleasure going straight to his dick. She was the only woman who ever took time to find erogenous zones on him besides the obvious one.

And he had to admit, she was pretty good at it.

They touched and moved together with one powerful thrust after another, their jolting rhythm unbroken even as the pleasure built toward an explosion. He was so close to coming, he knew he had seconds to bring her off before he lost it.

Leaning forward again, he trapped his hand between their bodies as he took her mouth like the warrior he was.

This was one battle he was determined to win. She would climax before he let himself go.

He thrust his tongue into her mouth, and she met his aggression with pure, white-hot desire. Her hands came up to lock behind his neck, her legs wrapping firmly around his hips.

He broke the kiss to move down her neck and bite at the spot that used to drive her crazy.

She detonated with the scream he’d promised her, her inner channel clasping his penis like a lubricated fist. And he was toppling over, too, filling her with his ejaculate, experiencing a fierce satisfaction at the thought of leaving something of himself behind in her body.

And an inexplicable sadness that this could not result in pregnancy—in the child they’d always promised each other.

He’d never admit that, though, even to himself, so he concentrated on the pleasure, the amazing way it felt to be connected to this woman in such intimacy.

She had been right. For her and
with
her, sex was not just a physical act. It couldn’t be.

Not when his whole being, body and soul, was melded with hers so completely that for a moment in time there was no distinguishing between them.

Even if she wanted to pretend that the physical act of sex was all they shared.

He lowered his body down onto hers fully, holding his weight with his forearms but craving the closeness of touching her everywhere possible.

“So good,” she slurred against his neck.

He smiled, his cock throbbing with an aftershock from the best sex he’d had in a decade. “Mmm, good, but it gets better.”

“Not possible.”

He grinned. Now, that was a challenge, even if she didn’t realize it. “Oh, yeah, angel . . . remember?”

“What?” she asked, sounding replete but not exhausted.

Just where he wanted her.

“Foreplay, angel, foreplay . . .” And he set about reminding her just how good at that he could be, too.

The next morning, Eva and Peace were gone before Rachel woke up.

That wasn’t what had put her in a less-than-happy mood, however. It wasn’t even the fact that she’d woken up alone.

No, what had her ready to snap off the head of the first person who spoke to her funny was the fact that she’d
cared
she was the only body in the bed that morning.

It made sense that Kadin would rise early to see his team members on their way. There was no reason he should have stayed in bed with Rachel or woken her to tell her he’d be downstairs.

Or wherever he actually was, because he
hadn’t
been downstairs, and Mrs. Abdul informed Rachel that Kadin had gone out. Not where, naturally.

Kadin would have to have left instructions for Mrs. Abdul to divulge that information. And he hadn’t. Which wasn’t a problem. Really.

He and Rachel had indulged in sex the night before—at her instigation—not renewed their epic love story.

She
knew
that. She did.

And she wouldn’t want it any other way. Couldn’t let herself go there, even if she wanted to.

Rachel just wasn’t that woman anymore.

So, no way should it have even caused a blip on her radar to be by herself when she woke up. Only it had.

And that had her scowling as she tore a piece of flatbread off and dipped it into the tzatziki-like mixture Mrs. Abdul had put onto Rachel’s plate, along with fruit, bread, and what smelled like roasted pork, shredded and mixed with mango chutney. Rachel would reserve proper identification for when she ate it.

“What did that bread ever do to you?” Kadin’s voice came across the rooftop garden.

Rachel’s head jerked up, and she let her frown fall on him. “Nothing. What are you talking about?”

“You look a little angry there, angel. Something wrong?”

“No,” she denied, even less willing to share her reason for her cranky mood with him than to face it in her own head.

“I see you decided to go shopping in my duffel.” He was referring to the fact that she’d opted to wear one of his black T-shirts rather than the scrubs top.

It was way too big for her, but she didn’t care. “It’s real clothes. I would have worn your pants, too, but they just fell off.”

It had nothing to do with the fact that the shirt smelled like him.

Kadin smiled, looking way too easy in his own skin for the morning—make that almost
afternoon
—after. Another thing that pissed her off . . . how much sleep she’d apparently needed. She hadn’t woken until hours past dawn.

“You’re still healing both mentally and physically,” he said, as if reading her mind.

She repaid that comment with a frown. He could stay out of her head, thank you very much.

Only she’d committed to letting him inside, hadn’t she? Reminding herself of that truth was bound to make her bad mood worse.

But, darn it, he’d been right about one thing. Telling a stranger about what she had gone through was not an option for her.

“You do look out of sorts today, angel.” He settled on the couch beside her, leaning toward her so his words whispered intimately across her face. “I know it’s not the sex. That was amazing. Are you
that
tired of wearing scrubs?”

“You told me you would get me real clothes,” she accused, glomming on to something she could admit to being annoyed over, fighting urges to both move away and close the distance between them.

“I did.”

“So, when are you going to?”

“I told you, I did.”

“What?” She was in no mood for verbal games this morning.

“Finish your breakfast, and then you can come downstairs to our room and see if you approve of my purchases.”

“You went shopping for me?” Already that morning? He smiled, the warm expression coming too easily to him. “I don’t make it a habit to break my promises, Rach.”

“Only the important ones.”

Chapter Fourteen

W
ell, crap,
Rachel thought.
Where had that come from?