Better with You: Outback Skies, Book 4 (4 page)

Eight of Charlie’s heartbeats later, the man was unconscious. They’d moved him to his bed, left him there, hand wrapped around his own flaccid cock, and exited the party.

Four hours later, he was dead.

Job finished. Onto the next one.

Charlie had found it difficult to shower for a while after that. Not because he feared for his life. Charlie never feared for his life, but because the second the water hit him, he pictured Dani naked, remembered the enigmatic emotion he’d seen in her eyes when he’d stripped his clothes from his body…

That ambivalent light had never really left for the rest of the time they’d been partners.

It was uncharacteristic for any agent, let alone one as coldly ruthless and effective as Dani. It had stirred him. Confused him. And prompted him to dig into her past, to discover the horror of her childhood, the torment of her teenage years, the determination of those years…

What he’d found had unsettled him. Made being with her, working with her, so much harder.

She was damaged, not ruthless. The agency had tapped into that damage, exploited it. Used it.

His heart had hurt for her. He’d hated what she’d lived through. Hated even more what ASIO had turned her into.

Every time she’d looked at him, he’d seen that strange emotion in her eyes and wanted to discover what it meant. Had it been desire? Had she felt something for him? Fuck, he wanted her to. Just as much as he wanted her to feel something apart from the cold triumph of a target terminated.

Wanted her to feel it with
him
.

Then he’d received orders while in Russia, orders he’d refused to carry out, and Dani had tried to kill him.

Yet even then, as she’d straddled his hips with his blood dripping from her favourite blade, that mysterious emotion had smoldered in her eyes. He’d recognized it for what it was then—conflicted raw desire.

Now here he was, wanking off to the thought of her in the shower with him again. And to think he’d considered himself normal, human even, since arriving here in the Ridge.

Huh. He wasn’t even close.

However, the realization didn’t soften the steel in his cock, nor the base craving in his core for his one-time partner. A woman he’d never been able to shake—emotionally, sexually or physically, it seemed—no matter how deep into the middle of Australia he went.

The woman in his head as his hand pumped his cock faster, faster, harder…

“Fuck you, De Vries,” he growled, lifting his face to the stinging water as a tingling pressure began to build in his groin. As the soles of his feet began to itch.

As his stomach began to clench and his anus to contract.

“Fuck you…” He pumped his hand faster. Curled his fingers against the tiled wall. Pictured Dani in here with him, her back pressed to the same wall, her foot on his shoulder as he lowered to his knees and smoothed his hands up her wet, sublime thighs, parted the glistening folds of her pussy to reveal the pink button of her clit, a tiny nub of flesh he gladly took in his—

“Fuck you,” he groaned, pleasure detonating deep in his groin. His come spurt from him in thick wads, ropes of pleasure he knew he’d been imprisoned by all those years ago when he’d first met Dani.

Ropes he feared would see him dead.

“Fuck,” he muttered, dropping his head and his cock, “you.”

His groin still pulsed with the fading force of his orgasm. If he opened his eyes, he would see the last of his seed dribbling from his cock to be washed down the shower’s drain.

He didn’t.

Instead, he turned to the shower’s opening, ran his hands through his wet hair and opened his eyes.

Dani stood beside the vanity basin, his Glock in her hand.

“Hello, honey,” she murmured. “I’m home.”

Chapter Four

Charlie moved.

Dani moved faster.

It was the first time she’d ever done so.

Before he could finish lunging at her, she slammed the tip of his Glock into the middle of his forehead.

“Uh uh, John,” she admonished. “We’re not done here.”

He froze.

She stared at him. Swallowed. Christ, had she ever been hornier?

His nostrils flared. A little. “You wanna join me? I’m a little spent right now, but I reckon it won’t take long to get it up again. I mean, when it comes to my
wife
, I’m always ready. For
anything
.”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she ran her gaze down his naked body, over his broad chest and its dark wet hair, his exquisite six-pack, until she found the white scar on his side.

Her stomach rolled as the vivid memory of sinking her blade into his body crashed over her. How many times had she wished to hell she’d been an inch higher? An inch higher would have killed him.

Many times.

How many times had she thanked fucking God she’d missed her mark?

More than just many. Every goddamn day.

What a fucking mess she was.

“If you’re going to pull the trigger,” Charlie said, his emotionless voice jerking her stare back up to his face, “do so now. Otherwise, you have exactly five seconds to—”

Dani stepped into the shower. She pressed her body to his, lowered the gun from his forehead and captured his mouth with hers.

This time, he didn’t hesitate in responding.

With a hungry growl, he fisted one hand in her hair and hauled her to his body. Into the shower. Under the running water.

A part of her brain told her he’d done so to wet the gun she still held in her hand.

The rest of her brain didn’t give a flying fuck.

Not when his tongue invaded her mouth with such savage possession.

He slammed her to the wall, his hips pinning her there as he moved his free hand to the front of her shirt and tore it open.

Before the tepid water could stream over her exposed flesh, his palm covered her right breast. Kneaded it. Pinched its nipple.

She cried out and the sound was swallowed by his brutal kiss.

She groaned, ramming her hips forward, needing to feel his groin—no matter its spent state—against hers.

With another growl, he tore his lips from hers and took possession of the side of her throat as he snared her wrist. He sucked hard on her neck and smashed the back of her hand—the one gripping his Glock—to the tiles.

She released the weapon. She didn’t have to. Holding tightly to a gun when someone was trying to dislodge it was a skill even a rookie agent could do. Charlie knew that. The fact he carried out the action, and the fact she succumbed to it, was significant.

Not just to her, but it would be to him too.

The second the gun clattered to the wet floor, he yanked her wrist from the wall and pressed her hand to his groin.

Wanton lust flooded through her.

His cock, nowhere near as flaccid as it had been when she’d first entered the bathroom, overflowed her palm. It throbbed in her hand, thick and heavy and warm.

“Fuck, John…” she moaned and skimmed her blank stare over the white ceiling. “I need…”

He closed his fingers around her throat and stared into her eyes, his other hand still kneading and worshipping her right breast. “Unless it’s me buried to the hilt inside you, I don’t fucking care.”

Hot pleasure swam through Dani at his snarled declaration.

She looked back at him. “Make me come, husband. Make me come so hard I forget why I’m here.”

Something dark and icy glinted in his eyes and then, with a low chuckle, he released her throat. “Strip,” he ordered.

She didn’t move.

Her mind pictured the tiny scalpel in the waistband of her jeans.

Charlie’s jaw clenched. “Take off your jeans,
wife
.”

She did. Without looking away from him, she toed off her boots, unzipped her fly and rolled her sodden jeans down her thighs. Over her calves. Off her legs.

Charlie’s nostrils flared as he ran a slow inspection over the hairless curve of her sex.

Her heart smashed faster at the open hunger she saw flare in his eyes, and then he growled and flattened his hand to her pussy. Sought out her clit with one hard finger. His trigger finger. Of that, she had no doubt.

Rolled it over the sensitive point of nerves. Over and over.

Dani gasped at the waves of exquisite pleasure radiating through her lower body. She cried out again when Charlie dropped his head to her left breast and sucked her nipple into his mouth.

She arched into his far-from-gentle touch. “Fuck, yes.”

He drew harder on her nipple, pinching her right one with his fingers as he did so.

The water flowed over them both, running past her eyes, her parted lips and into her mouth.

She pressed a shaking hand to her face, tangling her other one in Charlie’s wet hair. She fisted it, pulling on the thick, dark strands with enough force to hurt.

Charlie growled and sucked her nipple harder. Bit at her flesh.

Liquid electricity sank into her core.

She thrust her hips forward. “Fucking shove your finger in me now, John,” she demanded.

He lifted his head. Straightened. Pressed his muscular body to hers, and in doing so sank his trigger finger past her pussy lips and deep into her sex.

Pleasure consumed her.

“John Tennant doesn’t exist any more, Dani,” he murmured, grinding his cock—now a semi-stiff pole—against her belly. “The next time you call me that, I’ll show you what Charlie Baynard does to ASIO agents with murder on their mind.”

The threat—or the promise, she didn’t know which—sent a wicked lick of danger and fear through her.

She really didn’t know who he was now that he was Charlie. But something told her it involved pain. And exposure.

He had enough dirt on her, on the director, on the agency, to bring it all crashing down in a bloody heap. She feared he also had enough anger to bathe everyone involved in the Russian job in blood.
Their
blood.

And yet, even that dire thought had no impact on the urgent lust consuming her.

Tightening her inner muscles on his invading finger, she cupped her hand to the side of his face and stroked her thumb over his bottom lip. “John who?”

He gave a low chuckle that turned into a lower growl as she squeezed his finger again with her sex.

Hot desire blazed in his eyes and, with a twist of his wrist, he slid another finger into her wet pussy and scissored them together inside her.

Dani closed her eyes and rolled her head, her breathing turning to shallow, rapid gasps.

In her line of work, sex was a tool, a means to an end, even a weapon. It meant nothing to her anymore. She felt nothing during it…

But this?

Holy fuck, it was only Charlie’s fingers inside her, and her body was awash in sensations she had no control over.

Pleasure. Real pleasure.

Raw pleasure.

Rolling her hips, she squeezed at Charlie’s masterful fingers. Rode his hand with grinding pressure.

“You’re so tight, Dani,” he declared, his voice as animalistic as his earlier growl. “And wet.”

She whimpered. Again, a real sound. A sound she’d never made during sex before.

Jesus, if she weren’t careful, Charlie would undo her before she could—

Without warning, he withdrew his hand from between her legs, dropped to his knees and replaced his fingers in her pussy with his tongue.

Shards of pleasure detonated inside her. Her head swam. Her breath caught in her throat.

Between her thighs, Charlie swiped at her folds, licked at her clit. She whimpered again, seeking out his hair.

He didn’t let her. Slapping her hand away, he hooked the back of her thigh with his other hand, roughly yanked her foot off the wet shower floor and dumped her thigh on his broad shoulder as he quickened his tongue’s flicks over her clit.

Dani clawed at the wall, her toes curling in the water pooling at her feet.

“Fuck me,” she groaned, catching the
John
before it could fall from her lips, “if I’d known you were this good at going down, I would have demanded you—”

Charlie plunged a finger back into Dani’s sex and stroked her G-spot.

“Holy fuck,” she cried, bucking into the determined caress. “Keep doing that.”

He did, sucking and biting on her clit as he did so.

She writhed against the wall, the tepid shower water streaming over her cold on her flushed skin.

“Fuck, Charlie…” She grabbed for his hair again. This time, he didn’t stop her. Maybe because he was too engrossed in turning her into his moaning sexual slave? He worked her clit, her sex, her G-spot with a skill beyond Dani’s comprehension.

For a dark moment, she wondered how many national situations he’d saved this way, reducing his target or the enemy to a moaning, vulnerable mess, and then Charlie sucked on her clit and she forgot how to do anything.

Christ, how was she to survive this kind of pleasure?

Balling her fists in his hair, she clung to him, desperate for an anchor.

This was bad. This was very bad. He’d rendered her defenseless with just his mouth, his fingers.

She hadn’t been prepared for this. She hadn’t
meant
for this to happen.

The gun to his head—that was what she’d meant to do. Hold the gun to his head, hold him imprisoned with the threat of his brains being shattered out the back of his skull while she filled him in on what was happening, on why she was here.

And then she’d seen the scar left by her knife all those years ago. Seeing the scar, the night she gave it to him came back to her, the tormenting guilt of what she’d done that night all in the name of service for her country. The guilt and the oh-so-potent, dangerous feelings she’d harboured for him.

A conflicted, confusing mix that made her heart race and her tummy knot and, before she knew it, she was in the shower with him.

Surrendering to the raw, physical lust for him she couldn’t deny.

Surrendering, essentially, to him.

Which was more dangerous than anything.

And still, she clung to him now, as he tongue fucked her to heights of pleasure she hadn’t imagined possible. As he stroked her inner walls and laved her clit and propelled her towards an orgasm she hungered for.

She needed to take back control.

She needed—

Charlie snaked his free hand around her hip, over her arse cheek and stroked a firm finger over the puckered hole of her anus.

“Oh God,” Dani groaned, her body trembling at the new sensations flooding her. “Oh God, J…Ch…oh God…”

He flicked his tongue over her clit faster, wriggled his fingers in her pussy in harmonic rhythm and pressed at her anus again.

“Ch-Charlie…” She gasped, tugging at his hair. She was going to come soon. The heat in her core, the building pressure in her centre… She was going to come soon, explode with pleasure. When that happened, she’d be more vulnerable than ever. “Oh God, Charlie…” she moaned, rolling her head against the tiled wall and willing herself to move even as she held his hair tighter and ground her pussy to his mouth. “Charlie…I need…”

She was going to come.

Her whole body was on fire, a concentrated rush of exquisite tension and liquid electricity.

“Charlie…I need…”

Shaking her head, she tried to shift, tried to remove her thigh from his shoulder. Tried to take back control of her body.

In response, he nipped her clit and squeezed her arse cheek with a punishing force.

Pleasure and pain knotted together, twisted into one exquisite sensation, one intoxicating detonation.

She came. Hard.

Harder than any climax she’d had before.

Her gasping cries bounced around the shower. Her fists tightened in Charlie’s wet hair.

She bucked and rolled her hips with each throbbing wave of release, incapable of governing her muscles, her body.

Charlie lapped at her sex, one finger still buried deep within her contracting walls, stroking that sweet spot within.

She rode each wave of pure pleasure, eyes closed, breath wild, moans wilder. She surrendered to what he’d wrought upon her. Lost herself to it.

To him.

To the man she’d condemned to death by coming here.

The man she didn’t want to admit she loved.

It wasn’t until her brain—normally so sharp, so
on
—registered something cold and hard and metal pressed to her side, that the reality of what she’d allowed to happen sank in.

By then, it was too late.

He had her.

Opening her eyes, her brain screaming he had her in the most vulnerable position she’d ever been, she dropped her stare to where he crouched at her feet.

Saw the tip of his Glock pressed to the soft flesh just above her right hip. Positioned exactly against her kidney.

Fuck
.

She jerked her stare to his face. Saw something dark and lethal in his eyes.

“It’s wet,” he said, “so it may not fire. But do you want to take the risk?”

She shook her head.

Holding the gun to her side, he slowly removed her thigh from his shoulder.

“We’ve both been sloppy, sweet cheeks,” he said, rising to his feet without breaking eye contact. “You caught me in a compromising position and I put you in one.”

She didn’t move.

“Turn off the water,” he ordered.

The fact he was completely in charge while completely naked wasn’t lost on Dani. Nor was the fact that his cock was engorged and erect.

Flicking a glance at his erection, she searched for the taps behind her.

“I’m not going to lie, Dani,” he said. “What you’re looking at has nothing to do with the fact I have a gun to your kidney and everything to do with the fact I want to fuck you more than I’ve wanted anything in my life.”

The confession sent a hot pulse through Dani. Her breath caught in her throat.

Lifting her gaze from his rigid cock, she licked at her bottom lip. “Are you going to kill me now?”

The cold metal at her side drilled harder to her flesh.