Raven (Kindred #1) (13 page)

Her unsteady breaths made her heart rate grow erratic. It thudded so hard that each pulse shook her throat. So squeezing her eyes closed, she sealed her mouth and swallowed hard.

But Raven’s tongue glided through the seam of her lips, giving her no time to regain her equilibrium. “Pretty baby,” he muttered. “Open those big browns for me.” Letting her eyelids relax, she thought she was looking to him, but her world was one big blur, so she couldn’t be sure what she was seeing. All that existed now was the panting gasp that scraped the back of her throat.

“I’m gonna watch you come,” he said, running his mouth to her ear and sliding the vibrator through her heat to undulate it against her opening. “Nothing sexier than watching the way you breathe when you’re hot for me. You want to come? Do you? Tell me.”

“I want to come,” she said, and he moved the toy in circles.

“I’m gonna watch you come like this…” Tracing the vibrator up and around her clit, he let it touch every intimate part of her. “Then I’m gonna fuck you until you come again. You’ve got a sweet pussy, baby. I’m gonna get to know it real well… Say it again.”

“I want to come,” she said, clenching her teeth in resistance to the building pressure that made her lightheaded.

Noting her defiance, he stroked her cheek with his stubble-roughened jaw. “Relax,” he breathed and opened his mouth over hers. Distracting her with a kiss at the same time he massaged the toy over her again. Her forbearance failed and she was sent into a blind fog of endorphins that made every part of her spasm into a tense ball. “That was a good one.”

The vibrator went off, but she didn’t have time to register that before he was kissing her and running his hands up and down her torso. While trying to blink, Zara couldn’t breathe because her throat was so dry. But he kept on kissing her until her extremities began to tingle and she regained feeling.

Wrapping her hands around his shoulders, she spread her fingers and was impressed at the girth of his definition. Sliding them down his arms, she squeezed his elbows, then they shifted and she was flipped onto her face.

Grabbing her hair in a fist, he pulled it off her back, and kissed the nape of her neck. Then with the slightest of touches, he ran his tongue down her spine, sending a shiver through her that brought her to the brink of the precipice again.

“Rave—”

He smacked her ass, then kissed the globe and drove a forearm under her hips to pull them up. “This is gonna be fast and dirty,” he said, insinuating a finger between her thighs to dip into the well he’d created in her with her previous orgasm. “You need to be fucked good and hard… it’s gonna make everything feel all better.”

She wasn’t sure what it would make feel better, but she didn’t care. She’d do anything he asked of her at this point. “Lift up that ass,” he said and she pulled her legs under her. Both his hands came to the insides of her thighs and he forced her knees apart, giving her a wider center.

“Are you going to—?”

“I’m going in right here,” he said, squeezing two fingers into her sensitized passage. “Hold on to the bars on the headboard. Don’t let go.”

Zara wasn’t sure she had the strength to provide much of a lever point of resistance against what Raven could be capable of. But she lifted herself and did what he said. His fingers slid out of her and she glanced over her shoulder to see him lick them clean. His proceeding wink almost made her arms buckle, but her grip held true after she noticed that he had himself in hand.

Her excitement only faltered when she caught sight of his jeans, riding low around his thighs. Leaning over her, he pressed her cheekbone and forced her to look ahead. Scrutiny while screwing obviously wasn’t one of his turn ons.

With one hand on her hip, Raven yanked her, angling her body to his liking, giving no thought to any preference she may have. But Zara was already panting and writhing in anticipation of what he was going to provide and had no desire to participate in the decision-making, not when Rave was so skilled.

The provoking pressure of him pushing inside drenched her with sensation. Displaying a lack of patience, Zara inhaled and closed her eyes. “Rave—”

He smacked her again, and she realized that he always cut her off when she used his alias. Sucking her lips into her mouth, Zara wriggled back against him, enjoying how his mass felt against her inner muscles.

“Now I’m gonna make you scream,” he said, skimming his palm up her back, pushing down on his return to make her arch her ass up. “That’s it, baby. Purr for me.”

Drawing back, he left her body, so she held her breath and waited for him to return. The head of his dick stretched her threshold, and when she could bear it no more, she dragged in a breath and whined though she dug her teeth into her lower lip in an attempt to dam the whimper.

“That’s all I wanted,” he said.

One arm swooped under her and he caught her when he slammed into her. His pace was so furious that she had to cling onto the headboard even when he drove her forward enough to bump the top of her head into it.

With his steadying arm, he thrust deep and tilted her pelvis to a perfect position for optimum penetration. His bruising force pummeled her cervix and she clenched to slow his fury, but it didn’t work. Except the speckles of her orgasm emanated outward and she tossed her head back to scream out. She had never experienced such breakneck bonding before. The pose, each of his actions, the urgency of his thrusts, all of it belonged in a cave somewhere thousands of years ago.

Losing her grip with her sweaty hands, she let go and he smacked her ass. “Hands!”

Despite the frenzy, he was aware of her every move and that attentiveness only increased her excitement. Keeping up his movement inside her, he lunged forward to grab both of her hands, which he picked up to plant on the headboard. Going back to his task, he held her hips and shoved into her once again before she heard his curse stream, this time hissed out from between his teeth.

Flopping onto her face, Zara made no attempt to speak or even move. Hyperaware of every cell, she closed her eyes and experienced every tremor and throb until their completion. She didn’t know exactly where Raven was, but he stroked her arm, provoking her into turning her head toward the other side of the bed.

With her face still buried in the pillow, she was pleased to see that he was lying beside her. Although, he was on his side and wearing a frown that didn’t suggest he was a man basking in the bliss of pleasure comparable to what she was experiencing.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, lifting a hand to reach for his face, but he didn’t let it get that far.

“I came here to earn your trust,” he said, pushing her body away from his. “This was not how I intended to get it.”

“You’ve never screwed a woman for information before?” Zara asked.

Rolling onto her side, she dug her elbow under the pillow he’d just vacated and rested her temple on her fist. For her, this was more than the mission he was on. He was pushing her boundaries and awakening desires in her that she never knew she had. Raven was special.

But she was getting the impression he didn’t feel that way, from his anger and his inability to relax when he was having sex or trying to joke, she knew he felt damaged, that something in him held back because maybe he didn’t believe he deserved having anything good in his life.

“I have,” he said, sitting up on the far edge of her bed, facing the window. Not that he would see much. There was nothing but darkness beyond the curtain and even if it was daytime, all that was out there were the dumpsters.

“Why am I different? Why not screw me and ask me your questions when I’m half-asleep? When I’m languishing in the endorphins of orgasm and my guard is down?” Hoping he might admit some vulnerability that would let her confess her own care for him, she asked leading questions.

He cracked his knuckles, then he tipped his head to crack his neck. “You’re too messy to adopt as a typical asset. I’ve already revealed too much of myself to you.”

Taking her fist from her head, she grabbed a vertical bar on the headboard and used it to push herself up in his direction. Kneeling behind him, seated on her own in-steps, Zara spread her hands on his back. “Whenever you make cryptic comments like that, you send my mind into overdrive. Why am I messy, Raven? What are you afraid of?”

He turned his head enough for her to see the silhouette of his profile, highlighted against the orange glow that emanated from the security light outside her window.

“Knowing the truth of who I am could get you into serious trouble. It could cost you your life.”

“That’s another cryptic comment, beau,” she said. Splaying her fingers, Zara pressed her hands into him. Not that it was her intention, but her weight wasn’t enough to make him move. That inherent strength was one of the qualities that fascinated her about this man. She kept on leaning into him until her lips touched his spine. “Why do you need my trust so bad?”

“You might be the only person alive who can help me avert disaster on a global scale.”

That was less cryptic. Easing back, she dismissed the fizzing chemistry still at work within her. Languishing with her lover didn’t seem right in the light of that kind of declaration. Since her phone conversation with Sutcliffe, she’d had her suspicions about what was going to happen, and this was the confirmation Zara needed about the gravity of the situation.

“How can I do that?” she murmured.

“I came here to earn your trust because I need information. But I also have to divert you from a certain course of action and if I don’t… If I fail, then you’ll fail, and that will cost lives.”

“How am I going to do that?” she asked.

At no point in her diary did Zara have a date marked for a mass killing spree. All of these things he said were going to happen—that she was going to be responsible for—she wasn’t sure she could live up to that kind of expectation.

Leaving one foot on the floor, he twisted to bring his other knee onto the bed so he could face her. “I can’t tell you that until I have your trust. Once I do. I’ll tell you everything.”

He was dealing with his own demons, but still prioritized saving lives. Searching his eyes, she read pain behind his detachment that made her wonder if he’d been hurt by women in the past. “Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little,” she said, trying to coax him into telling her the truth about what was going on. Except his expression didn’t flinch, he just kept examining hers, looking for a way in.

“How do I win your trust, Zar?”

“Well,” she said, gasping in a smile and changing the mood because it was obvious that he was not going to open his heart to her tonight. Slapping her hands onto his thigh, she moved onto all fours then backed up enough to loop her arms around his neck and hang her weight on him. “You could start by spending the night instead of sneaking out while my eyes are closed. I’ve never seen you in the daylight before.”

His features became hard and his patience was lost. “I want your trust. But I don’t want you to fall for me. Emotions make things messy.”

She wasn’t sure she could stop that train now that it was on the tracks. His hook was the danger that shimmered from his posture and expression. But he cared about things, about innocent lives and her safety. Having never seen him with anyone else, she wondered if he was a loner, damaged and maybe a martyr to his own cause, whatever that was. But it was his complex character, as well as his seduction, that fascinated her and she wanted to know more, she wanted to know all of him.

“Is that why I’m a messy asset?” she asked, pausing before she kissed him. “Because you have feelings for me?”

“It’s my experience that women run away with that feelings shit faster than men.”

“If you want me to take a chance on you,” she said, tipping her head to the left to kiss him. “Then you’re going to have to take a chance on me.” Tipping her head the opposite way, Zara kissed him again. “Spend the night, Rave. Stay for breakfast and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

Grabbing her face, he pulled her mouth onto his. After a short, fiery kiss, he used his grip on her to shove her onto her back.

“I’m a man of my word,” he said. Twisting, he drew one knee up onto the bed and supported her torso with his hands. “It’s the most precious thing a man can give.”

Optimism thrived. She wouldn’t be afraid if he was here and she could offer him comfort. Having him here all night would give her the chance to prove that she could be a sanctuary for him and that their association didn’t have to be all give and no take for him.

“Does that mean you plan to stay?” she asked. Nudging her fingernails into the nape of his neck, she scraped them back and forth.

Straightening his arms, Raven threw her back on the bed, then stood up and turned to come down on the mattress as well. Crawling over her, Rave stayed high on his hands and knees, caging her between his limbs, to stare down into her face.

“I’ll have to stay to find out if you’re a girl of your word. But after tonight, all bets are off.”

“What does that mean?” she asked. Curling her hands around his shoulders, she stroked a path from his chest to his back, as far as her reach would allow. 

“It means, tomorrow you give me your trust and I’ll give you mine. But if you betray me, the consequences will be severe for you and everyone you care about.”