Renegade (Elite Ops 5) (14 page)

fairy came to mind once more. A fragile, innocent little fairy too good for the world she suddenly found herself within.

"I'm leaving." Hooking his thumbs in his belt, he fought the need to touch her.

Surprise filled her eyes then. "Your job is over already? It was hardly worth renting a house for, was it?"

Confusion filled her voice, as well as disappointment.

"I managed to wrap things up faster than I expected," he told her, wondering at the tightening in his chest as she continued to watch him with such somber intensity.

"I see." She nodded slowly. "When are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow evening."

She asked, still watching. "So why are you here tonight?"

He almost grinned. She was smart as hell. She knew something wasn't quite right

about the job he had claimed to have versus the fact that he was leaving so soon.

"I'm here because of what you saw, Mikayla." He tried to say the words gently, to lower his voice enough that she knew he wasn't there to hurt her.

She flinched. Hell, so much for trying. "You're here because of Maddix?"

Nik clenched his teeth for long seconds as he watched the feelings of betrayal fill her beautiful eyes.

"I've known Maddix for a while," Nik told her. "I'm confident enough in the man I know to believe he's innocent. I was here to check you out, to figure out why you would want to destroy Maddix by accusing him of murder."

Nik wasn't going to sugarcoat it. There was no gentle way to tell her. No easy way to break this to her or to keep her from hating him after he was gone.

As she took a step back, almost in defense, her arms wrapped over her breasts, her face paling, causing her eyes to appear larger, darker than before. Pain swept across her features as moisture glistened in her eyes, proof that he was piercing at the heart of a woman who had been hurt too much in the past weeks.

"I see," she whispered, obviously fighting against the hurt and anger he could see building in her eyes. "The night at the club. The guy that attacked me. Did you know him, too?"

Nik's brows jerked down in a frown as he felt the ice he had built around him

before coming here beginning to crack.

"You think I'd have someone attack you, Mikayla?"

Her lips tightened in a mocking grin. "Sorry, how silly of me. You like doing your own dirty work, don't you? Do you get more satisfaction that way?"

He couldn't blame her for her anger. He'd expected much worse than this. But he

had to admit this silent pain tore at him more deeply than screaming accusations could have.

He could have walked away from the screaming. Walking away from this quiet

pain was harder.

"I'd kill any man who tried to harm you," he told her. "I'd never hurt you, 68

Mikayla, not intentionally."

"What more does a liar deserve?" Her fingers clenched on her arms as she held on to herself. "Isn't that how you see it? I dared to lie about your precious Maddix. What more do I deserve?"

He shook his head, hating this. He hated this worse than he had ever hated

anything in this life. Seeing the pain on her face tightened every muscle in his body and tore at his determination not to touch her.

"I don't believe you're a liar, Mikayla," he sighed. "Any more than I believe Maddix is a killer. What I do believe is that you think you saw Maddix. It was evening.

Shadows stretch over the building site at that time of day. That can give anyone,

anything, a far different look."

A tear slipped free.

God, he hated that single tear, the proof that she was fighting so hard to hold back the pain he was inflicting.

"Of course, that's all it was." She nodded in agreement. A mocking, ironic agreement. One filled with betrayal. "You figured it out, Nik. Thanks so much for fixing this little problem for me." Her breathing hitched, breaking a heart he didn't know he had.

"Now you can get out of my house and go back to where you came from."

Any other woman he knew, or had ever known, would have been cursing a blue

streak at this point. Screaming. Throwing things. He could have escaped and thanked his lucky stars she hadn't actually managed to hit him in the head with anything.

But not Mikayla. Her shoulders straightened, her chin lifted defiantly, and she

fought her tears and her anger with everything inside her.

And it was killing her.

Mikayla stared back at Nik, feeling as though she were going to be sick. Her chest felt tight, her heart straining at the agony resonating through her.

Had anything ever hurt this bad?

No, it hadn't. It hadn't even hurt this bad when her uncle had asked her the same

question.

It didn't matter that it was a logical question to ask.

"Strange." Her voice sounded strangled. "You never asked me about what happened that night. You never even asked me about the possibility that I could have mistaken someone else for Maddix, did you, Nik?"

If he had asked, she could have told him why she was so certain. She could have

told him how the sunlight pierced past the shadows, blazed across Maddix's distinctive face for those few, unforgettable moments.

But Nik hadn't asked her.

"There was no reason to ask, Mikayla," he stated; his expression seemed to be filled with pity. "I talked to Maddix, his family, his alibis, and his neighbors. He was at home, exactly as he said he was."

Mikayla nodded again. Whatever it took to get him out of her house, out of her

life. She just wanted to hide and lick the wounds she could feel tearing through her heart.

She had known Nik Steele was a very bad idea. She should have followed her

instincts. This would teach her to do exactly that.

She couldn't believe her heart had led her astray this way. That she had been

poised so close to falling for a man who had been essentially lying to her all along.

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At least he'd had the decency not to actually seduce her, she told herself. That

final humiliation hadn't been delivered.

"Mikayla, you're going to have to accept that Maddix didn't kill Eddie Foreman,"

Nik told her, his voice harsh. The longer he stood there, the more forbidding his

expression became.

"Hey, I'm agreeing with you." She was fighting her tears second by second. God help her, if she didn't get him out of her house then she was going to break down and humiliate herself by losing control of her tears. "You can leave now, Nik. You've explained everything. Why, Maddix should have called you earlier to fix this little problem of his."

She hated Nik. She wanted to hate him. She wanted to hate everything about him

rather than to hurt this way. To feel those sharp talons of agony raking across her soul at the subtle lies he had practiced.

His jaw flexed, the muscles working furiously as he obviously held back whatever

he wanted to say instead.

"Why don't you just leave?" she suggested as she walked to the door and jerked it open. "Go, Nik. Pack. Go back where you came from. I didn't need you before you arrived here and I don't need you now."

She didn't need anyone else to remind her that Maddix Nelson had gotten away

with murder. It was shoved in her face daily. It was spray painted on her shop window; it was left in messages on her answering machine at home every night.

The injustice of it boiled inside her like acid. Eddie Foreman might not have been a nice man, but he hadn't deserved to die like that. And she wasn't strong enough to bring his killer to justice.

The knowledge that there was nothing she could do about it ate at her mind like

acid.

Nik stared at the door, then back to Mikayla.

He wanted to do as she ordered. God knew it was the wisest course of action. He

should walk right out that door and be finished with this. It was obvious it was over.

Instead, the need to touch her was rising within him by the second. It would be his last chance to touch her, to taste her. The last chance to experience that incredible pleasure, that almost peace he found in her touch.

He moved for the door as though to follow the order. His gaze remained locked

on hers, every cell of his body honed in on the warmth of her.

As he stopped in front of her, his hand gripped the edge of the door, pulled it from her grip, and closed it gently while she watched in shock.

"What now?" she whispered, the anger breaking through for a moment. "Do you still want an answer to that question you asked earlier? A little or a lot?" Her lips tightened, that spark of pain darkening her eyes further. "Guess what, Nik? How about none? Nothing. There's nothing more that I want from you. No, just leave, so I can forget you ever existed."

"Why do you think I'm leaving?" His voice was a harsh growl that surprised both of them.

In that tone, he heard what he watched her sense. A hunger such as he had never

known in his life. A need that burned in his gut, in his balls, that tightened and engorged his dick to painful hardness.

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The need to fuck her was ripping him apart. The need to possess her, to do the

impossible, to protect her, tore through him with a power so strong that for a second it tore past the control he had promised himself he would hold on to.

Before he could stop himself, he pulled her to him. Before she could protest, he

lifted her against him, covered her lips with his, and gave into a need so fierce, so overriding, that it was more animalistic than logical.

And Mikayla couldn't resist.

As his lips slanted over hers, she couldn't hold back the need to part her own, to taste him, to feel him, just one more time.

This one last time.

The hold she'd exerted on her tears slipped and the moisture fell from her eyes.

The pain brewing inside her found release as the hunger she couldn't control tore past the barriers she had fought to place between her and this man she couldn't hold herself back from.

Pleasure raced across her nerve endings, raked through her system. Velvet-lined

talons locked into her womb, sending sensation clenching into her sex, swelling her clit tighter and leaving her helpless in his embrace.

He was the bad boy. The heartbreaker. She had sensed it all along, known she

couldn't give in to that temptation, no matter how she wanted to. Ached to.

Her lips parted further, her tongue licking against his as a moan broke free and her hands gripped his shoulders desperately.

He tasted wild and dangerous. His kiss was dark and earthy, filled with

dominance and lush ecstasy.

Arching to him, she could only moan as she felt his fingers jerking the hem of her blouse from her skirt. His big hand stroked beneath it, curving around her hips, lifting her against him as his other hand curved around the rounded flesh of her breast.

His thumb stroked her nipple as his fingers delved beneath the edge of her bra and lifted her flesh free. He was moving as he stroked her past reason. Moving her. Before she could process the information, process where she was, she found herself stretched out on the rich material of the microfiber upholstery of the couch, Nik moving over her.

Her blouse was unbuttoned, spread apart. The front clasp of her bra was loosened

and his lips were traveling over one breast, licking, kissing, as she stared down at him in shock. She watched in bemusement as his lips parted, covered the tight, hard peak of her breast, and sucked it into the blistering heat of his mouth.

His tongue stroked against the tight bundle of nerve endings, sending fingers of

electric pleasure to clench between her thighs as she felt her juices flowing from her inner sex. Her vagina clenched, burned, felt empty as Nik's hard thigh pressed against the sensitive mound firmly.

She was drowning in sensation. The pleasure swamped her, stilled any protests

she could have even thought to have, and wiped away betrayal, hurt, anger, filling her instead with heat and hunger.

She found herself rocking against his thigh as her hands clenched in his hair to

hold him to her breast. Her thighs tightened on him, stroking her clit against the denim of his jeans and the silk of her panties as ecstasy threatened to drive her wild.

She couldn't bear it. The need was ripping through her, rising, pulling her down

into an abyss of pure sensation too intense to deny.

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She wanted more. She wanted all of it. The hard wedge of his erection free, hot

and hard, pressing into her, taking her. She wanted to feel the pleasure/pain of that first possession, wanted to feel the agony of that first orgasm.

"Oh, God. Nik, please . . ." She twisted against him as his lips moved to the valley between her breasts, his tongue licking, as his hand flattened on her stomach, his fingers stroking against her flesh.

"Mikayla." The growl of his voice weakened her further, pulled her deeper into the vortex of pleasure.

Her hands pulled at his shirt, the need to touch his flesh a hunger unlike any other she had ever experienced.

"Sweet baby," he groaned, his thigh easing back, his fingers sliding to her thigh.

"Fuck, Mikayla, I need you."

The admission struck her womb like a sucker punch, causing it to clench, to flex

with wild hunger.

She felt dizzy, desperate. Nothing mattered but his touch. The lies were forgotten, the betrayal pushed to the back of her mind.

"Mikayla, baby." His fingers stroked over the wet center of her body. "I would have loved to have time to convince you to wax this pretty flesh. To let me lick you, taste your sweet pussy."

She cried out. The pleasure that rushed through her was almost more than she

could bear.

"Would you like that, sweetheart?" His lips moved down her body, licking to her belly button, stroking around it as his fingers pressed over her clit. "Do you want my mouth on you? Sucking your sweet clit, licking it? I'd fuck you with my tongue, baby.

Drive it so deep inside your sweet pussy."