With Extreme Pleasure (10 page)

“That wasn’t what I was expecting.”

“Too much? We can switch positions. I’ll go slow.”

“Speed’s not the issue. It’s been awhile for me. And you’re…not what I’m used to.” Though that was a temporary situation. Getting used to this…to him…wouldn’t take much effort at all.

He settled his hands at the crease where her hips met her thighs and slid his thumbs down to her sex. “Take your time. I’ll just play here while you do.”

He caught her clit, pinched it. She jumped, driving him deeper. “I’m afraid your playing is going to kill me.”

“Should I stop?”

“Oh, hell no,” she said, and he laughed like a wild man half out of his mind. “I hope you’re laughing with me and not at me.”

“Goddamn, woman. I’m laughing because it’s the only thing keeping my cock from killing you.”

“I’m good to go,” she told him, and leaned forward, threading her fingers through the hair on his chest and bracing her weight on his pecs. “Try to keep up.”

She rode him then, up and down, grinding, gyrating, rubbing her clit against the base of his shaft where his wiry pubic hair tickled.

He held her hips and helped her, raising up to bite at her nipples, the flesh of her breasts, her neck, her shoulders, leaving bruises of his making to mark her like the rest, easing back when he finally reached her mouth.

There he was gentle, kissing her softly where he knew it was safe to kiss, nuzzling and petting as if to heal her. But the time for gentleness passed quickly, and he bucked his body upward.

She cried out, shushed him when he voiced his fear that he’d hurt her. “I want you to hurt me. I want your hurt to keep me walking bowlegged for days.”

After that, he didn’t seem to worry about causing her pain, or he hid it well if he still did. He surged up, his fingers digging into the muscles of her thighs as he held her where he wanted her.

She moved with him, against him, stopping and letting him be the only one in motion, rejoining him when her belly pulled taut and contracted.

She felt her orgasm in her mouth, her nipples, her rib cage, her cunt. She came apart like brittle glass, shattering, falling, crushed. Irreparable.

She knew that he’d followed; she could feel the warmth of his semen, could hear the guttural sounds he made, the pain of his pleasure, like raw wounds flayed open.

But the sensation of fracturing consumed her, and she couldn’t let it go. Neither could she find where to start the cleanup, or how to put herself back together.

It was enough, she supposed, that she was finished. That there was nothing left of her to break.

T
here was a big part of King that wanted to stay in bed when he came awake the next morning, and that big part was making itself known between his legs.

The woman responsible for the state of his mind and body was snoring softly—and still naked—at his side.

Her nakedness and her softness made a damn compelling case for his not wanting to get up and get going. It didn’t matter that they’d been in bed for fourteen, fifteen hours, maybe sleeping ten.

He liked lying here, remembering Cady riding him like a wild pony, reliving the way he’d flipped her over and showed her the stallion he was.

She was a hungry wench, and an agile wench for being so busted up. Not wanting to hurt her, he’d held back, gone easy, kept things toned down to gentle rather than the rough he enjoyed.

At least he’d done all that until she’d threatened to hurt him if he didn’t treat her right.

Having sex with Cady sure wasn’t what he’d expected to happen when she’d climbed into his truck in that Manhattan parking garage and refused to get out. Was that just yesterday morning?

Damn if he would ever complain about her stowing away again.

Neither was he going to complain about the pain slicing through the back of his head, down his neck, and into his shoulders. If not for looking at a long day of driving, he’d pop a pill.

He’d turn over and pop Cady if not for the sixth sense telling him McKie was on his way.

Reluctantly, King rolled out of bed, found the clothes he’d been wearing before rolling in, and pulled them on, grimacing when he reached up to run his fingers through his hair and hit his stitches.

A new bandage was probably in order, as was a shower, he realized, standing at the toilet for the morning’s first pee, but he kinda liked smelling like Cady, and so he zipped up to hunt down coffee instead.

Three soft raps of knuckles on the door stopped him in the act of pulling on his first boot, and stirred Cady at the same time.

“Who is it?” she asked, drowsy, sitting up and switching on the bedside lamp. “Is it McKie?”

King glanced over, finished with boot number two. “If it’s anyone else, they’ll be stuck there till he shows up to play good guy.”

“You’re a good guy,” she said, pouting.

“Maybe so, chère, but I am all out of ammo.” Not an easy thing to admit, but there it was. The waif in the bed had fucked him worthless.

And at that emasculating thought, he went to answer the door.

It was McKie—he identified himself when King asked—and the government man came bearing not only coffee but breakfast. “I’m not too early, am I?”

“Guess that depends on who you’re asking,” King said, stepping back to let McKie step inside the room. “Except for needing a stitch or two tightened, I’m raring to get going again. But Cady? I imagine the girl could use another couple of days to recover from the assaults she didn’t bother reporting to the police.”

“Assaults?” A dark brow arched, McKie set the box of food and drink on the room’s table, then handed one of the coffees to Cady. When she reached for it, King realized she was still jay bird nude under the covers she’d pulled to her chest and tucked beneath her armpits.

“Shit,” he mumbled as she took the cup and asked for cream and sugar both. His own cup he drank straight black because black was the color of the cloud he was looking though. He didn’t like the way McKie was watching the blanket slip and slide as Cady flavored her brew.

“How’re you this morning, Miss Kowalski? Ready to get started? Or do you first want to tell me about these assaults?”

“Cady, please,” she said, twirling a wooden stir stick in the cup. “No to the assaults, but yes to the other. Anything to wrap up this chapter of my life. I am so ready to move forward you can’t even know.”

McKie glanced from Cady to King then at the second bed covered with their belongings before his attention returned to the used one and the naked girl sitting there. “Sounds like you had a good night.”

“I did, actually, yes.” She paused, sipped her coffee, smiled like some sort of sex siren she-devil, and made it work—even with her black eyes and fat lip. “King and I boinked like bunnies, I’m still as naked as the day I was born, and I’d like to get dressed. So if you two could step into the hallway long enough for me to get to the bathroom…”

King felt his face heating from yet another blow to his manhood, and mouthed, “Me, too?”

“Yes, you. Both of you.” She made a shooing motion with the hand not holding her coffee, which caused the blanket to slip, and King to groan as he watched more and more of her body being revealed. “Give me three minutes.”

McKie was already at the door. He pulled it open, glanced both ways down the hall, then stood there waiting for King, leaving King no choice but to grab the key from the desk and do what Cady had told him.

Once outside, he shoved his hands to his hips and started counting the three hundred sixty seconds she’d said she needed. Then he stopped and looked at McKie. “I don’t know why she told you that. The bunnies thing.”

Fighting a grin, McKie leaned against the wall beside the door, his arms crossed over his chest. “Set everyone at ease. Keep me from wondering if you did, you from wondering how to hide it. Smart girl, that one.”

“Hmph.”

This time, McKie laughed, a short, sharp burst that said they’d been had. “Hey, she’s in there, we’re out here. She got her way. I’d say that qualifies as smart.”

And qualified King, at least, for pussy-whipped. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Hey, when you warned me off yesterday from hurting her, I figured there was something between you two.”

There hadn’t been then, but King wasn’t about to weaken his position with more details when the man already knew more than he needed to know.

He turned toward the door. They’d been out here three minutes at least, and if it had only been two, tough shit. He was hungry. And he had a claim to stake.

McKie stepped forward and blocked him. “I need to know that it’s not going to make a difference. This thing between you and Cady.”

King considered the government agent who suddenly seemed more like an adversary than someone on his side. He felt a bad heat flaring up in his gut, one that stirred memories of being locked up. “You don’t want our thing to mess up your thing, is that it?”

“Yeah,” McKie said, his eyes dark and giving no quarter. “That’s it.”

It had been months since King had felt the urge to deck another man. He’d gone through most of his life with his hands in fists, waiting for a chance to swing.

Part of doing so had been self-defense. He’d grown up dirt poor, had learned to be tough to survive.

It was the same strategy that had given him eyes in the back of his head during his years behind bars. He wouldn’t be alive today if he hadn’t learned to live that way.

But another part of the urge that had him wanting to slam his knuckles into the other man’s face, a very large part in fact, was about striking first, before he could lose, before something else was taken from him, his money, his family, his home, his life.

Now Cady.

He didn’t like thinking this man was going to take her away, because that meant thinking about the fact that she wasn’t really his, and that meant thinking about what life might be like if she was.

And so he didn’t think it. Any of it.

He stuck the key card in the lock and said, “You heard the girl. She wants to get on with her life.”

W
hen Cady came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, showered and shampooed and freshly shaved, she felt like a new woman. A new woman who was hobbling around like a much older one, true, and one still bruised to bits, but she wasn’t going to complain.

She’d enjoyed last night beyond belief. Had sex with any other man ever been that much fun? Griping about the morning after soreness between her legs and rarely used muscles left quivering never crossed her mind. Even if it had, she could hardly do so in front of company.

Her telling Fitz that she and King had shared more than the hotel room’s bed had, she imagined, been enough of a public revelation for one morning. If she said anything else about last night, King would no doubt throttle her.

The thought had her smiling as she used her fingers to pinch more spikes into her hair. She would never have pegged him for the shy type, or even the silent type—not that she’d expected him to brag about his conquest.

But it was rather sweet how he’d been struck speechless by what she’d said. She liked that he hadn’t turned it into a joke and made their time together less than it was.

Fun and games aside, she’d done her best while going to sleep, while waking up, while showering, not to dwell on the unknown of what she and King had done. What it meant. Would they do it again. Were they going to talk about it or pretend nothing between them had changed.

She was changed. That much was a given. Whether the playful sex, the reflective sex, the near desperate sex, or the conversation they’d shared was responsible, something during the night had altered her sense of self.

Logical or not, there it was, though she wasn’t going to examine it any closer. She didn’t want to do anything to break what might be nothing but a spell. And so she tucked away everything but the moment and made for what remained of the breakfast Fitz had brought.

The two men sat huddled over her laptop studying a map of Pennsylvania. King looked up, and their gazes caught; she felt the tug of his like a magnet at her steely resolve not to look for more in what they’d done than she’d already found. She couldn’t risk losing even the tiniest bit of that.

“Planning our itinerary?” she asked, then reached for a lukewarm sausage biscuit and bit in.

Fitz scooted his chair away from the small desk, looked her over before meeting her gaze with a probing one of his own. “King told me about one of your assaults, and the connection to Tuzzi you were able to make.”

Cady stepped back until her knees hit the bed, then hopped up to sit there cross-legged. “It’s a very weak connection, but after hearing what you said yesterday, it’s hard to believe Tyler climbing into my bed was a coincidence. Still, Alice was the one who came after me, not Renee.”

“Renee was the sorority member,” King added. “Which makes her involvement a smoking gun just as dangerous as the Smith and Wesson I took from the psycho roommate.”

Fitz glanced over, his gaze cutting into King. “You still have it? The handgun? I don’t want this operation derailed on a technicality because you’re unlicensed and carrying an unregistered piece.”

“It’s gone,” King said convincingly enough that even Cady wasn’t sure of the truth.

She knew that he’d taken the gun from Alice, but she’d been in such a panic that she didn’t remember if he’d had it with him when he’d climbed behind the wheel of the Hummer and driven her away from that nightmare.

“Make sure it is,” Fitz said to King, his voice containing a borderline threat which he didn’t tamp down when he turned to Cady. “I want to know everything, no matter how weak you think it is.”

Cady nodded, wondering if this was the time to assert herself and tell Fitz what was on her mind. “Anything that comes up, I’ll let you know…assuming you’re around for me to tell you.”

“I’ll always be close—”

“As close as the nearest satellite,” King interrupted to add before biting into a muffin.

“I’ll be close,” Fitz reiterated strongly. “And I’ll be checking in.”

“So what is our plan, then?” Cady asked, hoping the change of subject would ease the strange tension between the two men, plus give her a chance to have her say. “And how is Malling sharing my day-to-day activities with Tuzzi going to help you stop the flow of his drugs?”

Fitz sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Those details are classified.”

Yeah, that’s what she’d expected to hear. But it was an answer she couldn’t live with if she was going to be involved. “I’m just supposed to trust you, is that it? I have no idea who you work for, or if you’re even one of the good guys. All I have is you telling me that doing what you say will get Tuzzi off my back.”

“You don’t have to do anything, Cady. But as far as trusting me…” He’d paused, focused on her more intently, made certain she couldn’t look away.

“I’m the one who found you, remember? The one helping you out, keeping you from having to deal with red tape and official channels. Who would I be if not one of the good guys?” She started to shrug, was stopped when he added, “Besides, aren’t you the one who said anything to help?”

“You found her by accident,” King reminded the other man, giving Cady a chance to pull her thoughts together. “She popped up on your radar, remember? You didn’t go looking for her. So that anything she’s offering? It’s qualified, boo. She’s not giving you her services carte blanche.”

Before Fitz could argue his point further, Cady launched into making hers. “Did you ever watch the show
Alias
, Fitz? Kick-ass government chick out to save the day? No? Well, the bad guys had the same equipment, if not better, than the good guys. They had moles inside the CIA. Hell, they convinced a lot of people that they were the CIA.”

She took a breath, went on. “And before you give me some spiel about reality and make believe and telling the difference between the two, weren’t you the one who said yesterday that truth is stranger than fiction?”

Cady met the agent’s stony gaze directly, watched him shake his head, then glanced at King to find him wearing a cocky grin. She was in no mood for cocky. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, chère. Not a goddamn thing. Except I was the one who said that about truth and fiction.”

“Who said it isn’t the point.” Gah. Men. She took a deep breath and tried again. “The point is that I have to be sure I’m helping the right side. That I’m not indenturing myself to Tuzzi forever by working with someone who in some stranger than fiction reality is working for him.”

Surely he could understand that. Surely wanting that one small assurance of who he was wasn’t too much to ask, because frankly she didn’t have it in her to go another round this morning, and she feared waiting until tomorrow to commit to McKie’s plan would be too late. Malling, lacking the brains of Tuzzi, could screw everything up for good.

Fitz didn’t respond right away, as if taking in and digesting what she’d said, and the conditions King had laid out. Finally, the agent leaned forward, rested his elbows on the arms, and laced his hands. His gaze traveled from Cady to King and back twice before he spoke.

“What Tuzzi has done to Cady indirectly, as cruel as it is…” Fitz paused for a breath, pressed his lips together and looked down.

Either he was a hell of an actor, or carrying a real burden, Cady mused, watching as he gathered his composure and went on.

“As cruel as he’s been to Cady, he’s perpetrated monstrous things against other inmates, as well as against those on the outside who cross him.”

“Like I’m about to do,” she heard herself muttering when she’d meant to keep the thought to herself.

“You’ve got me looking out for you. They didn’t,” Fitz assured her, but in the back of Cady’s mind rang King’s words, “the closest satellite away.” Fitz continued, “I need to put a stop to all of it. To what he does on the inside. To what he gets others to do for him out here. And since I need your cooperation to make it happen, you can bet I’ll have your back while we’re getting it done.”

“If you’re the good guys, I suppose that helps. If you’re not…” She let the thought trail, hoping to remind the agent that she had a name and a face, and she wasn’t one of Tuzzi’s others.

“Did you know him when you were at school?”

Cady shook her head at King’s question. “I knew of him. Everyone knew of him. His name came up in gossip about his fraternity’s pranks, and at the same time, he was written up in the campus paper for his community service.”

“Volunteered or court ordered?”

This time, Fitz responded to King. “The Kowalski murder was the first time Tuzzi hit the system.”

“Even though he’d been dealing drugs,” King said, pushing out of his chair and crossing to the room’s window.

“Even though,” Fitz said, his gaze following King.

The Kowalski murder
. God, she hated the sound of that. “Was Kevin the first person he killed? Did watching my brother die give him a taste for that? For taking life?”

“He was the first to die by Tuzzi’s hand, yes. But then his taste…grew. Pulling a trigger was no longer enough.”

And this Cady really didn’t want to hear.

“He graduated to things like bloodbaths in the prison showers. Dismemberment. There was a fire in one cell where the inmate had been rendered unconscious.”

Cady shuddered, and King stoically said, “Except you can’t tie him to any of this. You can’t prove he was involved.”

“That’s where Cady comes in.”

Cady, who knew a guilt trip when she saw one unrolling at her feet like a long red carpet. Cady, who was no VIP. “How do I come in? That’s the part that’s still eluding me here. I want to help. You have no idea how badly I want to help. But I haven’t heard details. I’ve only seen…gloss.”

“You, Cady Kowalski, are Nathan Tuzzi’s weakest link.”

King dropped the drapes into place and came to sit on the bed beside her. “We running a game show here, McKie? Or are you going to give Cady what she wants?”

Cady ignored King’s interruption and addressed what McKie had said. “I don’t get it. Why am I a link of any kind? And why the weakest one if I am?”

“What you are, Cady, is Nathan Tuzzi’s obsession. The one single person unrelated to his illegal activities who he’s got it in for. You’re not business. You’re personal. And personal means getting careless, making mistakes.”

Fitz paused as if he wanted to be sure both of them were listening, his face somber as his gaze swung from hers to King’s, then dropped to a spot on the bed between where they sat.

Her gaze followed the same direction, and she realized not only had she crumbled what was left of her biscuit all over the unmade bed, but that King was now holding her fingers, his thumb stroking the back of her hand.

“Wow. That’s a mess,” she said, not even sure if she was talking about the biscuit or being the center of a psychopath’s attention. King didn’t say anything, just continued rubbing her skin. Funny how she didn’t seem to feel it.

Fitz reached for his coffee cup and dropped his gaze to the contents. “When it comes to business, no one is more exacting than Nathan Tuzzi. He guards his contacts and informants more jealously than I imagine he ever did that girlfriend who sent him after her cat.”

“But he’s not that careful when it comes to Cady,” King said.

“He’s gotten away with so much for so long that I’d be surprised to find he thinks he’s anything but infallible. His information flow in and out of the prison never seems to hit a snag. And that’s our biggest problem.”

“You can’t snag him,” King said, pulling Cady’s hand into his lap.

Fitz shook his head. “Not him, not his people. We have no timetable. His deals are too sporadic, and we haven’t been able to catch a break intercepting his orders going out or the news coming back in. But if we know Malling is going to be reporting to Tuzzi, we can be ready.”

Something had been bugging Cady and she finally spoke up. “What day was Malling paroled? What day did he get out exactly? It was yesterday, right? The same day Tyler finally crawled into bed with me?”

“Not yesterday, but the day before, yeah.” Fitz tossed the cup he’d picked up earlier into the trash.

“I knew it! That’s what he’d been waiting for. He wasn’t there for Alice at all. He was there for me.” She stopped, puffed out a breath as every fucking thing fell into place, and looked from Fitz to King and back as it did and as she realized that if not for Fitzwilliam McKie, she would never have been able to connect the pieces.

She bounded off the bed. She couldn’t sit still. “He knew when Malling was getting out and that Tuzzi would be getting more aggressive. Tyler was planted there to make the first strike. To let me know the psychological war was over. That with Tuzzi’s man back on the streets, the time had come to get physical.”

She threaded her fingers into her hair and tugged as she paced, working it out, one puzzle piece tucking into a second, a third fitting tightly with a fourth, a fifth over there snapping precisely and turning a jumbled mess into a whole that was supposed to mean something…

That’s when she stopped. When the picture began to come into view. It was so simple, she should’ve seen it before. “I don’t have a choice, do I? I fight back, or I run for the rest of my life.”

“You always have a choice,” King told her, his voice gruff but soft, and Fitz nodded, both men on her side. She wasn’t in this alone. And that made it easier to face the horizon, the unknown, and her personal Armageddon.

Even if she did have a choice, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she said no. So ID or no ID, she gave McKie her yes—adding one caveat, and pinning him with a look that told him her terms were not negotiable.

“If I find out you’re not who you say you are, what I’ll do to you is nothing compared to what Tuzzi has done or plans to do to me.”