With Extreme Pleasure (22 page)

K
ing settled behind the wheel of the Audi convertible that was delivered the next morning along with Cady’s new computer bag and notebook PC.

He belted himself in, and watched Cady do the same. She lifted her face to the midday sun and closed her eyes, the biggest smile he’d seen from her yet spread all over her face.

He turned back to look at the dash, his hands tight on the steering wheel. This was where things were going to get sticky, and could very easily go wrong.

He did
not
want things to go wrong. Not after all they’d been through.

He cleared his throat. “Well, boo? Where do you want me to take you?”

From his peripheral vision, he saw Cady’s head pop toward him like a bobble head doll. “What do you mean, where do I want you to take me? I want you to take me with you…unless…unless you don’t want me there.”

He wanted her everywhere. He wanted her here and now. But he also wanted her to be sure, because turning around and bringing her back would kill him. “There’s no snow in Cajun country. It’s hot and sticky and steamy. You’re gonna sweat your ass off and more.”

She blew a long sputtering raspberry. “What, and you think New Jersey’s all ice cubes and lemonade?”

Nothing against the Garden State, but there were plenty of gardens to be found along the bayou. “There’re no celebrities needing hair and makeup done for photo shoots.”

“I hate doing hair and makeup. Well, I had fun doing yours, but you’re a special case,” she said, laughing at him way more than laughing with him, especially since he wasn’t laughing at all.

At least not much. “We’ve got Lee Benoit, and Beausoleil, but no Bruce Springsteen. And we have crawfish. A
lot
of crawfish.”

She unbuckled her seat belt then and somehow folded and bent her limber body and crawled into his lap. They were face to face when she told him, “You’re doing a really lousy job of talking me out of coming with you.”

He looked into her eyes, smiled softly, watching her expression grow wary as if she were waiting for a blow. He wondered what it said that they were both bracing for bad news instead of expecting good.

Maybe that they were the perfect match he hoped…and why was his throat closing up? He swallowed, rubbed his hand up and down her thigh, and said, “I just want you to know what you’re in for.”

She pressed her forehead to his, sighed, kissed him gently, then pulled back, brushing his hair behind his ear on one side and avoiding his gaze. “If you want to put me off, King, then tell me you won’t be there. Or tell me that you’d rather I stay here. I won’t like it, but I would way rather hear you say that now than to hear later that you made a mistake.”

“I can’t do that, chère. I can never do that.” And then he moved his hands to her face, and ignoring the heat burning wet in his eyes, he kissed her.

Her mouth was so sweet, and the tiny sounds she made as she tried not to cry even sweeter. He slanted his lips over hers, rubbing, tasting, laughing as he did, as he caught her sobs and told her with his touch that she was not a mistake, that they were not a mistake.

And then as the kiss ended, he whispered against her mouth, “I love you.”

That started her crying again, her hands coming up to hold his head as her lips moved from his eyes to his cheeks to his brows. Her tears were wet on his skin, her heart beating so hard her chest nearly bounced through his.

“Oh, King. I thought you only loved the sex. I thought you were trying to talk me out of coming because you could have fun with anyone—”

He pressed a finger to her mouth to shut her up. “You thought wrong, chère. You thought so very wrong. I love more than the sex, and I don’t want to have fun with anyone but you, and if you thought I was trying to talk you out of coming with me, it’s only because I wanted you to be sure.”

“Be sure about what?” she asked, talking against his non-silencing finger. “That I love you? That I want to be with you? That I can’t imagine not waking up beside you every day, ready for a new adventure?”

He snorted. “If they’re all going to be like these last few days? I can do without the adventures.” Then he paused, frowning as he went back over what she’d just said. “Did you say you loved me somewhere in all of that?”

“Yes, yes.” Her head was back to bobbing, her giggles rising on infectious bubbles that burst all over his skin. “I love you. I love you. And my first adventure? Crawfish. I have never eaten crawfish. I want pounds and pounds of crawfish.”

Lord, but this woman tickled him. This woman who loved him, this woman whose appetite and laughter he would never get his fill of. It was hard to tease her, his chest was so tight, but he gave it a go.

“I’ll have word put out to Texas and Mississippi that we’re on our way. I’ve seen you eat, and I don’t think Louisiana grows that many mudbugs.”

“Mudbugs? What the hell is a mudbug?” she squawked as she scrambled back into her seat.

King hit the button and revved the engine once it turned over, laughing as he put the car into gear. “Oh, chère. You are so going to love Bayou Allain.”

T
hey were cruising through Tennessee three days later, taking their time between Pennsylvania and the Pelican State, when Cady turned on the radio.

King reached over and turned it off. “I’m not in much of a mood for the news. What about you?”

Eyes closed, Cady leaned back and lifted her face to the warm spring sun. “I’m not in much of a mood for anything that takes me away from being here.”

“Sorry, chère,” he told her. “Every mile we go is taking you away from being here.”

“Literally, yes. But I was speaking metaphorically. I don’t have a care in the world and, if it’s okay with your majesty, I’d like to keep it that way.”

To that, he had only one thing to say. “Damn, but it’s good to be King.”

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“L
yraka is different.”

Roan crossed his legs. “I’ve heard that crap before.”

“She’s not full-blooded Nerakian. Her father is an earthling.”

He raised an eyebrow. Okay, Joe had his attention. “I didn’t know there were any half-breeds old enough to train, but it makes sense they would mate. The ones I’ve run across make no bones that they like a good roll in the hay.”

“Now you’re being crude,” Joe admonished.

“Just stating facts. Chocolate and sex are the only things they seem to care about.”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

Yeah, he did, but he’d been in a particularly foul mood since Joe told Roan that he wanted him to stay at the training center a little longer. Now Joe was giving him this new assignment. Roan wanted to get back into field work and out of training. He was starting to feel trapped, and that didn’t set well with him.

A leg injury he’d sustained a few months ago had kept him on the sidelines. The doc still wouldn’t release him for full duty even though Roan felt fine. He had a feeling Joe was behind some of it.

“Train her, and I’ll get you the release you’ve been wanting,” Joe said.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“She must mean a lot to you. Is she that good?”

“You can’t imagine.” Joe handed Roan a manila envelope. “This is everything I have on her. I know it’s not much, but read it tonight.”

Roan was still skeptical, but believed Joe when he said he would get him the release. Hell, he’d do just about anything to get back to active duty. He believed there was more to training this chick, though. “What’s the catch? There has to be something wrong with her.”

Joe shrugged, a little too casually, if you asked Roan.

“Like I said, her abilities are different, stronger than the average Nerakian, but she needs to learn discipline and control.”

She was half Nerakian and half earthling, how strong could she be? He assumed she was a warrior so he wouldn’t have to actually do that much. A few weeks of his time and he’d be back getting his hands dirty. He could handle that.

“Okay, it’s a deal. When do I get to meet her?” He’d known Joe for quite a few years. At one time, Joe had been a kick-ass agent, but when the elite force was formed, Joe had taken over recruiting people who had the potential to be the best of the best. Roan knew it took a lot to impress Joe. So yeah, he was curious.

Joe beamed. “You get to meet her right now.” He pushed a button on his intercom. “Go get Lyraka and ask her to come in.”

A few minutes passed before the door opened. Roan didn’t move from his chair. Nerakian women were beautiful, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize they had strange ideas about things.

And they took everything literally. He didn’t have that much patience when it came to explaining every little detail. Women from Earth were more to his liking. They knew the score. He slowly turned in his chair, expecting to see a beautiful woman.

There were very few times in his life he’d ever felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him. This just happened to be one of them. She didn’t look like most Nerakians. Warriors were darker—dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes. Healers had long blond hair and usually wore green flowing robes, and man, were they a pain in the ass. He’d only met one, but that one had been more than enough. Each Nerakian had a different look that immediately said what their role on Nerak had been.

But this woman was different. God, was she different. His heart had already begun to pound, and the palms of his hands to sweat just looking at her. She was a walking, talking billboard of every man’s sexual fantasy—him included.

How the hell was he going to train her?

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W
hatever the Seer wanted, the Seer got, be it for his comfort or his whim or his pleasure.

She stood staring at the chair on the raised dais at one end of the chamber, the chair where he sat when the visions came. From the expression that filled her green eyes, she knew it as well.

Had she witnessed his power? Had she watched as the magic within him exploded into a vision of what was or what would yet be? As he influenced the high and the mighty of the surrounding lands and clans with the truth of his gift? Walking over to stand behind her, he placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her back to his body.

“I have not seen you before, sweetling,” he whispered into her ear. Leaning down, he smoothed the hair from the side of her face with his own and then touched his tongue to the edge of her ear. “What is your name?”

He felt the shivers travel through her as his mouth tickled her ear. Smiling, he bent down and kissed her neck, tracing the muscle there down to her shoulder with the tip of his tongue. Connor bit the spot gently, teasing it with his teeth and soothing it with his tongue. “Your name?” he asked again.

She arched then, clearly enjoying his touch and ready for more. Her head fell back against his shoulder and he moved his mouth to the soft skin there, kissing and licking his way down and back to her ear. Still she had not spoken.

“When I call out my pleasure, sweetling, what name will I speak?”

He released her shoulders and slid his hands down her arms and then over her stomach to hold her in complete contact with him. Covering her stomach and pressing her to him, he rubbed against her back, letting her feel the extent of his erection—hard and large and ready to pleasure her. Connor moved his hands up to take her breasts in his grasp. Rubbing his thumbs over their tips and teasing them to tightness, he no longer asked, he demanded.

“Tell me your name.”

He felt her breasts swell in his hands and he tugged now on the distended nipples, enjoying the feel and imagining them in his mouth, as he suckled hard on them and as she screamed out her pleasure. But nothing could have pleased him more in that moment then the way she gasped at each stroke he made, over and over until she moaned out her name to him.

“Moira.”

“Moira,” he repeated slowly, drawing her name out until it was a wish in the air around them. “Moira,” he said again as he untied the laces on her bodice and slid it down her shoulders until he could touch her skin. “Moira,” he now moaned as the heat and the scent of her enticed him as much as his own scent was pulling her under his control.

Connor paused for a moment, releasing her long enough to drag his tunic over his head and then turning her into his embrace. He inhaled sharply as her skin touched his, the heat of it seared into his soul as the tightened peaks of her breasts pressed against his chest. Her added height brought her hips level almost to his and he rubbed his hardened cock against her stomach, letting her feel the extent of his arousal.

As he pushed her hair back off her shoulders, he realized that in addition to the raging lust in his blood, there was something else there, teasing him with its presence.

Anticipation.

For the first time in years, this felt like more than the mindless rutting that happened between him and the countless, nameless women there for his needs. For the first time in too long, this was not simply scratching an itch, for the hint of something more seemed to stand off in the distance, something tantalizing and unknown and something somehow tied to this woman.

He lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her gaze off the blasted chair and onto his face. Instead of the compliant gaze that usually met him, the clarity of her gold-flecked green eyes startled him. Connor did something he’d not done before, something he never needed to do—he asked her permission.

“I want you, Moira,” he whispered, dipping to touch and taste her lips for the first time. Connor slid his hand down to gather up her skirts, baring her legs and the treasure between them to his touch and his sight. “Let me?”