Killer Secrets (45 page)

He kissed her lips softly, because he couldn't help
himself. She had given him something he had never

known before, the chance to love someone who knew the fires
he walked within.

She wouldn't be pacing the floor and crying while he was on
a mission. Hell, he'd probably be the one

pacing the floor and cursing whenever she wasn't within
sight. Because he knew her.

He frowned at that. Something would have to change after
this. Neither of them would be able to go

back to their old lives. Their old lives wouldn't exist
now. Neither of them were the same people they had

been when this operation began.

He smiled though, realizing there was no regret in the
thought. There were other ways. There were

always other ways, other jobs, and damned if he wouldn't be
ready for a change, if they survived this.

If they came out of it alive.

His arms tightened around her as he sent up a prayer. Just
protect her, he thought. Nothing more.

Nothing for him, because that would be selfish. He never
prayed for his own survival, but now he prayed

for Kira's.

Twenty-five

HE SLEPT THREE HOURS; HEthought Kira would sleep longer.
Ian slipped from the bed and made

his way to the shower, mentally and emotionally preparing
himself for the next few hours.

He would spill blood today, and he would spill it again
before the night was over. As he stepped beneath

the shower's spray he braced his hands on the wall, leaned
his head into it, and breathed in roughly.

He hadn't lost enough sleep yet to weaken him, and he'd
make certain once this morning was over to

find an hour for a nap. He'd learned to sleep where he
could, when he could, if it meant only a few

minutes propped against a wall. Or a few hours curled
around Kira.

His arms ached to return to the position he had awakened
in. Clenched to hold her against him.

Hell, he was dangerous to himself in this shape. This was a
mission, not an excuse to screw his head up.

Or his soul. But that was exactly what he had managed to do
where Kira was concerned.

Suddenly, he was questioning plans that had been fact for
two years. Questioning his own motivations

and wondering about his reasons for getting involved.
Honor, glory, and the American way were

wonderful surface excuses, but when a man set out to kill
his sire, there was more to it. It was personal, it

had become personal in a desert twenty years before, and he
realized with a vague sense of disgust that it

had shaped his life, even after the danger had passed.

She was changing him. Or perhaps that was the wrong word.
It wasn't a change, so much as a

revelation. She had made him realize why so much of his
soul had seemed empty for so long. He hadn't

even realized what he was missing, what he was searching
for, until Atlanta. And even then he had tried

to deny it, tried to push it away.

He was the worst sort of male chauvinist, yet he had
allowed her into the mission, he had kept her at his

side. The logical part of his brain, which worked only
rarely when it came to her, assured him she was a

capable agent. The emotions though, those had blindsided
him, ambushed him.

And now he was in emotional hell.

More blood would stain his hands this morning, and even
more once the meeting with Sorrell

commenced. He was sure she was no stranger to bloodshed,
hell, he knew she wasn't, but he didn't want

to kill in front of her. He wanted her to keep that vision
of a white knight that she seemed to have

convinced herself he was.

Ian shook his head before lifting his face to the stinging
water and mentally kicking himself for the fool he

was.

Son of a bitch. She had a way of twisting his guts into
knots and he couldn't seem to stop it, no matter

what he did or how many times he told himself he was doing
the right thing.

As he stood there kicking his own ass for his weakness, he
felt her. Hell. He lowered his head to the

spray again. He hadn't heard her slip into the bathroom,
but he felt her. Not just a presence, her

presence. Soft, smelling of his possession, warm and
willing.

He turned his head as the shower door opened and she
stepped inside the large cubicle.

She didn't speak, and his tongue was paralyzed as her hands
slid down his back.

"You should be sleeping." He cleared his throat,
certain his already ruined voice sounded like a

monster's growl as a smile flirted at her lips.

"I got cold." She blinked against the drops of
water that splattered to her face.

He knew better. The temperature was controlled, she
couldn't have gotten cold. Hell no, she was hot,

burning inside the same as he was, even after the rapture
that had claimed them hours before.

His arms went around her. Trapping her against the side of
the shower wall, he stared down at her

intently, watching the passion that clouded her eyes and
feeling the response clear to the engorged,

painfully hard length of his dick.

Hell, he shouldn't be this hard. He shouldn't be bending
his knees and rooting it against the slick, hot

folds of her pussy.

He had work to do. He had killers to take care of, a drug
cartel business to run. He had to play the

game until the minute he put a bullet in Sorrell's and
Diego's heads. That required planning, not fucking

himself blind.

"I need to be downstairs." His head lowered to
the ripe, plump bead of her nipple and he heard her gasp

as he fought to make sense of the thoughts and emotions
jumbled inside him.

"Okay." Her hands tunneled into his hair though
and held him to her breast.

Ian surrounded her nipple with his lips, drew it into his
mouth and let his tongue play with it. He stroked

it, lashed it, sucked at it with firm draws of his mouth.

"You're a wild man." A thread of satisfaction
filled her voice as he moved his lips to her neck, licking

along the smooth column and taking nips of her with his
lips.

God, he loved tasting her flesh, loved immersing himself in
her scent.

"Horny man," he muttered.

She laughed, her hands flattening against his shoulders as
she pushed him back and went to her knees

before he could stop her.

Ian stared down at her, unable to move now, unable to form
a coherent thought at the sight of his heavy

shaft aimed at her soft, pink lips.

Her tongue peeked from between those perfect lips, curled
along the underside of his cock and had him

gritting his teeth at the wild pleasure that ricocheted up
his spine.

Now, if she had given him a chance to recover his sense, he
might have pulled her to feet, lifted her until

her legs could circle his hips, and his cock could burrow
into the paradise he found between her thighs.

But she couldn't keep it that simple.

Her mouth surrounded the crest, took him deep, and began a
long slow suction as her hands wrapped

around the shaft and a groan tore from his throat.

"Ah yeah." He gave himself over to the most
wicked, heated head job a man could ever know.

Sweet lips surrounded him, a tight hot mouth stroked him,
and that tongue of hers was a curling, lashing

little demon of ecstasy.

"Deeper." His hands slid into her wet hair, his
fingers tightening in the strands as he braced his legs firmly

beneath him. "Take it deeper, Kira."

Slumberous, erotic sensuality transformed her features. She
was beautiful. Exquisite. And she was

sucking his dick like a favorite treat. He loved it. Loved
her.

God help him, he loved her.

His cock slid farther along her tongue as he felt her moan
vibrate along the shaft.

"Deeper," he urged her, his voice so thick, so
rough he could barely understand the words himself.

"Come on, baby, you know what I want."

Uncertainty flickered in her eyes, causing him to pause.
She had never . . .? At least not like this. Not

deep, not to the point that a man knew he would lose his
mind buried inside her mouth.

He smiled down at her. "Just relax. Let me show
you."

His fingers tightened in her hair, tilted her head back
just a bit, aligning the head of his cock with the soft

inner depths of her throat.

"Breathe through your nose, relax. It's good, Kira. So
good."

He watched her nostrils flare as his eyes narrowed and he
began to move again. His hips shifted, nearly

pulling his cock free of her mouth before he moved inside
again, going deeper, just a little deeper, feeling

her tighten on him.

"Relax." Ah God, he was desperate, burning for
that final depth where he would feel the exquisite

clenching at the back of her mouth, feel her tongue
rippling along the undershaft.

He pulled back and filled her mouth again, touching that
final portal for the briefest instance before

retreating. It was so fucking hot, blistering, destroying
him.

"A little more," he panted. "Just a little
more."

Ah hell. He was dying, burning alive. His balls were drawn
so tight against the base of his cock that they

felt constricted to the point of pain. The need to come was
like a burning lance shooting straight up his

spine and sizzling through his brain.

Her long black hair flowed down her back, her exotic face
was filled with hunger, and she sucked his

cock like a woman starving for the taste of her man.

Ian clenched his jaw tight with the effort to hold back,
pushed through her lips again, and swore he was

going to die before he managed to come.

It was perfect. It was a haven in the middle of a storm,
the center of the hurricane, the depths of a

volcano. It was white-hot heat and a pleasure he knew he
couldn't live without now.

He felt the back of her mouth relax, though it rippled
against the head of his cock. The muscles of her

throat spasmed, tightened, and before he realized he'd lost
it, his semen was jetting from the tip of his

dick and filling her mouth.

Her throttled cry was another ripple along his cock, her
stroking hands, her rapturous mouth. His head

fell back on his shoulders as a harsh, guttural shout
filled the steamy shower and he pumped his release

down her throat.

Damn her. She was still there, the muscles at the back of
her mouth spasming and rippling, extending his

pleasure until he forced himself to jerk from between her
lips. If he didn't, he wouldn't stop thrusting. As

good as the release was, as exquisite, as fucking hot, he
needed more now.

Ian pulled her to her feet, clamped his hands beneath her
ass, and lifted.

"Wrap around me," he snarled.

Her legs went around his waist, her arms around his
shoulders, and his cock nudged into the fierce,

honey-slick folds between her thighs.

He didn't ease into her, he couldn't. Bunching his thighs,
he held her in place and with a harsh cry pushed

into the swollen, slick portal of her clenching pussy.

"Son of a bitch." He locked his teeth together as
she cried out against his shoulder, her teeth sinking into

his flesh.

He was buried in fire. Lightning clashed and burned through
his nervous system as sweet, wicked

spasms of hunger rippled over his erection.

He was buried to the hilt, balls deep in rapture and
sinking fast.

He pushed her against the shower wall, tightened his grip on
the cheeks of her ass, and pulled back

before impaling her against it with a deep, desperate
lunge. He was groaning, whispering her name, his

face buried in her neck as her cries echoed in his ears.
And he couldn't stop.