Untamed Hawaiian Heat (Rift Hunters) (2 page)

An image of subduing Mateo with ropes coalesced in her mind, and another surge of power shot through her just as he broke her hold on his wrists. She felt rope slide beneath her palms, securing him. Kiana trailed her tongue along the line of his jaw, relishing the subtle scrape of his five-o’clock shadow. So caught up was she in her erotic fantasy, she didn’t realize what had just happened.

* * * *

Mateo lay still for several moments beneath Kiana, shocked. What the hell had just happened? She shouldn’t have been able to throw him off her so easily without the upgrade to her cybernetics.

She leaned in and captured his lips, thrusting her tongue deep as she pinned his wrists to the bed.

A warm breeze wafted through the thatched walls of their sleeping quarters, bringing with it the scent of ripe mangos and plumeria blossoms. An image of her squeezing a mango and leaving a trail of its sweet, sticky juice down his chest and over his cock sent lust racing through him.
“You’re killing me here, Kiana.”

She placed a lingering kiss on his ear. “What’s the matter, Mateo? Don’t like it when I turn the tables?” She gave a husky laugh and pressed kisses to his lightning-bolt tattoo. A tiny jolt of power leaped from under his skin with each brush of her lips.

“You started it,
mi amante
. I’m just going to be the one to finish it.”

Mateo jerked his hands, testing the strength of her hold, and grinned. He’d been right. She hadn’t gone to Ash for her upgrades. No doubt she’d been too busy staring at that fucking map again. His smile faded quickly when he felt rope twist around his wrists.

Where the hell had she gotten rope? Glancing up, he didn’t see anything around his wrists. Yet something held him completely restrained. Closing his eyes, he focused his sensors and scanned her cybernetics to see if there was something wrong with her system.

Nothing. In fact, he felt the lingering traces of— Kiana bit into his shoulder, then licked the lightning bolt that twisted down his bicep.

A shock of energy trembled through their link, stimulating the restlessness he’d been experiencing the past few weeks. Something he’d been reluctant to share with her. Why, he wasn’t sure.
Bullshit! You know exactly why you don’t want to share it with Kiana
. Mateo paused when he heard Remi’s voice in his mind. He hadn’t thought about his friend since he’d left Spain. Why would he be hearing his voice now? He groaned when Kiana’s lips closed over his nipple, completely forgetting what he was searching for. She drew on it hard, catching the taut bud between her teeth and biting down.

He arched his back as a sharp pleasure-pain tore through his body. “
You know you’re going to pay for that, mi querida
,” he managed to growl through their link.

Kiana released his nipple, a wicked smile curving her lips. “You’ll have to wait until I’m done with you, Mateo. And I won’t be done for quite some time.” She licked along the ridges of his stomach. “Not even close.”

He twisted his hands again, testing the invisible bonds. He couldn’t break them. Whatever had given her the extra strength was holding fast. He moaned aloud when she unbuttoned his pants and gave the head of his cock a slow, sensual lick.

“Mmm… I love the way you taste,” she murmured when the rest of his shaft sprang free.

Mateo closed his eyes as she took him into her mouth, sucking until her cheeks hollowed.

She swirled her tongue around the underside of his erection, flicking it wildly over the highly sensitive folds of skin near the tip before releasing it. She began working her hand along the length of his shaft, stroking him from base to tip, her grip firm.

His eyes flew open when she took his cock to the back of her throat. The rapture of giving and receiving such intense pleasure flooded his every pore, leaving him gasping for breath.
“Kiana…”
He couldn’t find the words to finish the thought as she continued to slide her hand along the length of his dick in rhythm with her mouth.

Within seconds, Mateo became aware of the restless energy building inside his chest. It rushed through him, pounding in his ears, drowning out the sounds of the wind rustling though the trees outside and the guards patrolling the perimeter. The power reached for Kiana…as though it wanted to touch her. He twisted his wrists again and was surprised to find them free.

He held completely still, not wanting to alert Kiana that whatever she’d been using to bind him was no longer effective. He waited patiently until she was near the tip of his shaft, then quickly grabbed her under the arms and rolled her beneath him.

Kiana grunted as the air rushed out of her lungs in a whoosh as he positioned himself between her legs. Taking both her wrists in one hand, he stretched them out above her head. With his other hand, he unbuttoned her battle dress uniform bottoms and pushed them over her hips along with her panties. Once he had her naked, he thrust his cock deep into the hot depths of her pussy in one swift motion. She gasped.

Mateo pressed her down into the pile of blankets under them and licked along her collarbone up to her ear. “Should have been paying more attention, mi querida. Did you think I wouldn’t break free of your bonds?” He sucked her earlobe between his teeth and bit down.

Kiana looked at him in confusion when he drew back.
Bonds?

Mateo pulled out of her slick folds as her question slid into his mind. He gazed down at her, teasing her with the head of his cock at her entrance. “As if you didn’t know you had my hands bound.” He plunged inside her again.

Kiana whimpered, arching her hips up in an effort to control his movements.

He leaned back and grasped her hips to still her writhing. He pulled out until just the tip of his cock barely penetrated her.

“Please, Mateo.”

Mateo was surprised when he sensed something spark to life inside Kiana. The anomaly was a turbulent impatience that demanded… Well, he couldn’t fathom what it wanted.

Pushing aside the answering flare in his chest, he pressed inside her again until he was fully sheathed. He paused until she opened her eyes and looked at him. “Mine, Kiana. Do you understand?”

Her eyes widened at his declaration of possession. Mateo could feel the shiver that danced along her spine, echoing through their emotion link. She nodded her agreement.

Something didn’t feel right. Like a piece of his soul was missing. No. That couldn’t be right. Kiana was his world. His life. His love.

“You know that’s not true, mi amigo. You know there’s another.”
Remi’s voice sounded in his mind again.

Mateo shook his head. He couldn’t have heard Remi’s voice. He was gone. Desperately needing to drive the reminder of his past away, he began to move inside Kiana. He slowly increased the speed of his thrusts, his pleasure amplified by the strength of her ecstasy pounding through their cybernetic link until he couldn’t tell where his ended and hers began.

Their climaxes crashed over them simultaneously. Their emotion link vibrated with each convulsion of their bodies, doubling the euphoria washing over them. Mateo pulled out and shifted to lie beside Kiana as he drifted back to the real world. His mind wandered aimlessly, then focused in on the restlessness inside him as it began to build again.

He shifted so he lay behind her, and pulled her into his arms as she finally fell asleep. She’d been working too hard of late. He wished she would allow him to help her find the answers she was looking for.

Soon the lantern flame flickered and died. Staring into the darkness, Mateo attempted to stay awake. For some reason, he had a foreboding that when he awoke, everything would be different. Fatigue pulled at him, though, reminding him he hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours.

The calm he’d experienced after their lovemaking only tempered the fierce energy pulsing in his chest. As he drifted toward sleep, he felt it rekindle, where it remained at a simmer. Waiting. But for what?

Exhaustion finally overtook him. He heard Remi’s voice again as he sank into oblivion.

“He’s coming.”

* * * *

Kiana jolted awake to the sound of an alarm blaring through the com link on her desk. It seemed like only minutes since she’d drifted off. She glanced back at Mateo and saw him stretching as he sat up. She was tempted to ignore the call and let Montgomery handle it.

“Lieutenant Grant, we’ve got a breach in the perimeter approximately twenty clicks southeast.”

Kiana pushed the thought of curling up next to Mateo away and got up.

Mateo was already strapping on his gear. She smiled at the sight. He was as dedicated to stopping the Syndicate as she was, even though he wasn’t from Hawaii. He’d taken her fight as his own. It made her love him all the more.

“Stop looking at me that way, Kiana.”

She heard his voice whisper in her head. Kiana raised an eyebrow. “Or what?”

He straightened from tightening a wickedly curved knife to his thigh and approached her. He pulled her close to him with one arm and brought his other hand down on her ass with a resounding smack. “Oh, I think you know what will happen, mi amante. Now come, let’s get rid of those
bastardos
.” With one last playful slap on her bottom, he headed for the flap over the entrance of their hale noho.

Kiana watched Mateo as he headed for the door, her gaze lingering on his tattoo as he exited the room. She quickly finished strapping on her own gear and was heading out when she realized Mateo’s tattoo had been glowing again with a sapphire light that shimmered faintly along its lines. She made a mental note to look at it more closely after they’d dispatched the bastards who dared to approach their camp.

Chapter Two

Earth 2013

Tiaki breathed deeply and focused the energy seeping through his fingers, pulling more from Earth's core. He’d never had so much trouble closing a time rift before. The threads in this one were ragged and stretched. Which meant it had been open for a while. It also implied that it might have been opened by unnatural means. That troubled him.

Although he shouldn’t be surprised. When Rift Master Cacus had informed the Ternion—which consisted of the Council of the Gods, the Kings Council, and the Rift Hunter Council—that the Obsidian Syndicate had been using the rifts to affect the history of other planets, the decision had been handed down to prohibit the use of the rifts. What they hadn’t known at the time was that Aizik Quintilius had designed a transdimensional gate that allowed him to create rifts without the use of the core magic. The only way this rift could have been opened so far from the Phoenix Galaxy had to be that gate. He needed to alert the Citadel as soon as possible.

Tiaki forced his attention back to the task at hand when he sensed the rift begin to fluctuate. Energy spiked around its perimeter, feeding back into his magic.

Shit. This wasn’t normal. What the hell had caused this kind of damage?

Reaching for his magic, he concentrated his efforts. The tattered strands of the rift flexed as he knitted them back together. He could feel the relief in the energy patterns as each thread became whole again. There was still a little more than a yard to go before he could reinforce it to prevent it from reopening.

He started to back off from the mending process when a sudden spike shot from Earth’s core. Energy rushed through his body and into the opening.

The rift began to hum and vibrate, pulsing with a life of its own. He’d used rifts before when he needed to close one in a remote location, but the power pouring in and out of this one was greater than any he’d ever encountered. Though the energy wouldn’t normally hurt him—since he knew how to harness it—he didn’t want to find out if the sheer magnitude of this much raw power would. He started to sever his connection with the rift when he suddenly felt his body being pulled into it.

Knowing it was futile to try to avoid being dragged in, he allowed the rift to engulf him. The energy swirled around his body, cradling him like a mother would her child. It caressed his senses, warmed him as he spun and twisted in the vortex. Colors flew by at an increasing rate as he neared the end of the rift. He braced himself for the drop that would occur upon exiting.

Another energy spike surged inside the vortex as he approached the end. He panicked when he realized his magic was still linked with the rift. Just as he was disengaging the last thread, a powerful bolt of electricity traveled along it, thrusting him through the last couple of yards of the tunnel.

What the hell?
He wrapped his arms around his head just before he slammed facedown into the hard-packed ground with a bone-crunching
thud
. Every molecule of his body cried out in agony. He lifted his head at the sound of gunfire. A woman stood over him, a stunned expression on her face. Behind her a man entered the clearing, anger blazing in his eyes.

Tiaki felt his magic rush toward the couple.
Mine
, he thought he heard his mind growl as blackness enveloped him.

* * * *

Kiana halted in her advance and leaned against a mango tree to catch her breath. The sweet scent of the ripened fruit assailed her with each inhalation. She could hear the voices of her team calling to one another through the com link. Sweat beaded on her brow. It was too fucking hot to be chasing the cowards.

The bastards were retreating again. How the Obsidian Syndicate, or OS, had succeeded in infiltrating the government so thoroughly when they acted like this was beyond her.

And with the new president a staunch supporter of the Syndicate, they’d had no trouble gaining control of most of the major military bases. Including Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Once they’d obtained control, they had wasted no time in culling the soldiers who’d refused to comply with the changes they wanted to implement.

The Resistance had been born when it became apparent the OS was hiding something from the US citizens as well as a good portion of the government officials. Well, if what the information a handful of senators and representatives brave enough to feed the Resistance with could be believed. Which Kiana was extremely skeptical of. Still, what choice did they have but to trust the few who showed a desire to take back the US government? No matter how they had to pretend to support the OS.