Renegade (Elite Ops 5) (20 page)

He'd always warned Maddix what would happen; Nik would leave it up to the other man to heed the warning or not.

Calling Nik had been a bad mistake if Maddix was involved in any way in the

murder of Eddie Foreman or the attempted shooting of Mikayla. Of course, from a certain standpoint, it could have been considered a wise move. Hire someone to come in to prove Maddix was innocent with the excuse that he simply wanted to know why he was being targeted? That was damned good.

If Maddix and his alibis were lying, then Nik would make certain they all paid.

When he rode out of town he would make sure there were no threats left against

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Mikayla.

When he rode out of town.

That thought left a sour taste in his mouth, and a regret inside him he had been

certain he wouldn't let himself feel.

He couldn't let himself feel. Because there wasn't a chance in hell he could stay.

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Chapter 10

Mikayla walked into the house early that evening. Standing aside, she waited as

Nik went through the house and then returned to the living room. One more evening that she had returned to find her home unviolated.

Lucky her. If only she could claim the same for her shop. There were more of

Maddix Nelson's friends and their friends tripping in and out than there were of her own.

Financially, it was good, but her nerves were shot.

"I have to go out for a while," Nik told her as he came back to the living room, his jaw flexing as though he were clenching his teeth.

"Fine. I'll leave your dinner in the oven." She shrugged as though it didn't matter.

She wasn't going to let it matter. After the completely humiliating episode that

afternoon, the less time she had to spend with him the better.

"I'll be sure to remember that." There was a dark, hungry sound in his voice, a rasp that sent a shiver racing up Mikayla's spine as he neared her.

She breathed in deeply, drawing in the dark male scent of him. A hint of winter in the summer. A hint of heat on a cold winter's night.

"Mikayla." He paused before her; the way he towered over her should have made her feel something other than intensely feminine, protected.

"I thought you had to leave?" She stared up at him, the three-inch heels she wore doing very little to add enough to her height to make her feel a bit more on common ground with him.

She was cursed with her short stature, she determined. And before a man like Nik,

so tall and broad, his towering over her and making her feel feminine and protected could be hazardous to the heart.

"You're a dangerous woman." His voice lowered, the ice in his eyes seeming to unthaw for just a second.

"And what makes you think I'm such a dangerous woman?" she asked, her voice stronger than she knew she actually was.

"Because you make me forget some hellacious lessons," he stated as his hand lifted, his thumb brushing against her lips gently.

They trembled at his touch. She couldn't help it. The need for his touch had been

rising since he had walked away from her that morning.

Who was she kidding? The need for his touch was about to drive her positively

insane. She had never ached like this. To the point that her entire body was sensitized, hyper, on fire. She was burning alive.

"I thought you were leaving," she repeated, the little squeak in her voice as her lips brushed against his thumb.

Oh man, she needed desperately to tighten her thighs, to put just a little pressure on her clit to ease that tingling little burn going on down there.

The way he was looking at her was driving her crazy. As though he could see

straight to that hungry, sexual part of her. The part that had wicked, nasty fantasies about 98

him.

"We'll talk later." That sounded like a threat. A sensual, hungry threat that had her sex clenching involuntarily as she forced herself to slide out of the way, to allow him to open the door and leave.

As the door closed behind him Mikayla could have sworn that some of the life in

the room went with him.

That was exactly what she didn't need, she told herself as she forced herself to the bedroom. The life couldn't leave the room when he left; otherwise, how much worse

would it be when he left her life, not just the room?

Guard against a broken heart, girl,
she told herself as she stepped into the shower.

The shower might not have been the best idea, though, as the water sluiced over

her naked flesh, heated and warm, caressing, her hands rubbing from her shoulders down, over her breasts, her waist.

The rasp of the washcloth over her flesh reminded her of Nik. The calloused heat

of his hands coursing over her body, touching her, feeling her.

Eyes closed, inhibitions lost, a muted moan left her lips, shocking her with the

hunger rife in the sound.

She had never wanted as she wanted at this moment. A man's touch, his kiss.

No, not just a man's, Nik's. Nik's touch. Nik's kiss. His hands smoothing over her stomach, hips, to her thighs and beyond.

Dropping the cloth, she let her fingers touch, so desperate, so on fire, now that

nothing but flesh on flesh could come close to giving her what she needed.

Her head tipped back against the shower wall, the feel of her hair caressing the

tops of the rounded globes of her rear another caress. Another reminder of a touch she wanted, a touch she had no hope of attaining if she didn't have Nik.

Brushing her fingers over the swollen curves of her sex, Mikayla drew in a hard,

broken breath at the whispered caress against her clit.

Sensation shot through her, clenching her stomach and tightening her thighs as

her fingers parted the slick, dew-rich curves of her pussy and delved inside.

It was good, damned good, but not as good as Nik.

A needy moan fell from her lips again as she dragged her free hand to her breasts, her fingers brushing against first one nipple, then the next. She let her nails rake against them as she fought to find the feel of Nik's calloused, roughened fingertips against them.

Almost. She almost had the sensation. The pleasure.

Water pounded around her, hot and wet as her fingers slid through the slick layer

of juices that eased from her vagina. She wanted, ached, to be touched there. To be taken.

It was a hunger unlike anything she could have imagined.

"Mikayla!"

Her eyes flew open in shock to meet the searing blue flames in Nik's gaze.

One hand still cupped her sex, the other her breast, her fingers on her nipples as her brain tried to comprehend the sudden change.

To assimilate the fact that Nik was stripping. His T-shirt tossed aside in the space of a breath, his jeans loosened with one hand, unzipped, his cock springing free as he pushed them over his hips, his gaze refusing to release hers, his expression filled with hunger, with something more than pure lust.

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"I . . ." She tried to talk, to explain, as his hand gripped hers and drew it from between her thighs.

Heat flushed her face. She had been standing there, still touching herself, as he

undressed. How mortifying. And yet how sexy.

The water shut off. She blinked back at him as he drew her from the shower.

Mesmerized. That was what she was. She was mesmerized. She knew damned

well what was getting ready to happen and she was suspended between disbelief and

helpless anticipation.

When his lips met hers, adrenaline jacked through her veins, pouring into her

senses as she felt his hands stroking over her.

No, those weren't his hands. Well, they were, but he held a towel between his

flesh and hers.

Drying her.

A moan tore between their lips as she cried out at the friction against her sensitive flesh. She felt weak, uncertain. The rasp of the towel over her skin was almost too much; sudden, sharp spears of pleasure tore through her.

Her gasps of surprised pleasure were silenced by his lips on hers, but the jerking of her body, the hard inhalation, wasn't lost on him. It seemed to make him harder, hotter.

His lips slanted over hers, his tongue pressing against her and stroking in rapid-fire motions that stoked her own need higher.

Mikayla stopped trying to make sense of it. The hard naked press of his cock

against her stomach was like a brand. His hands were wide, strong, holding her to him as he lifted her, turned, carried her to the bedroom.

Mikayla was shaking. She could feel the tremors racing through her body as his

lips continued to ransack hers.

"You'll be the death of me." He pulled back from the kiss as he laid her on the bed, staring down at her, the broad, bronzed width of his shoulders shadowing her.

She had to touch them.

Her nails raked over the tough flesh, felt the flesh of muscle beneath.

"How?" She forced the word past her lips, questioning his statement rather than begging for him as she wanted to.

Watching his hand move, his long fingers cup her breast, Mikayla lost the ability

to reason anything then.

"This . . ." The answer was lost on her. "This sweet, sexy little body. That innocence in your eyes. I don't know if my conscience can survive you, Mikayla."

"Then make it worth it," she whispered, fighting the whimper in her voice. "For both of us."

She had to touch him as she spoke. She had never imagined pleasure like this,

never imagined such need to touch a man. Her hand slid down his chest, his hard abs, to the thick stalk of flesh rising from between his thighs.

She couldn't encircle it with her fingers. It was heavy, strong, and hot, throbbing beneath her fingers with life and pleasure.

Mikayla's neck arched as his lips came to hers again, his kiss hungrier, hotter,

than ever before.

It was going to happen, she thought. Her ideal of romance had been shot to hell.

The white dress she had planned was dust in the wind.

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Would antique white work?
she wondered, because she wasn't about to deny

herself this.

She wanted to touch him. All of him. All over.

His hair-roughened thigh stroked against her softer one as she ran her foot up his lower leg, feeling the strength, heat, and soft male hair against her foot. She hadn't known her feet could be so sensitive.

But she had known her neck was sensitive. Still, when his lips brushed down it,

moved from her lips, she couldn't halt the cry that escaped her lips.

She wanted to rub her entire body against him.

His shoulder tasted of a hint of salt, a lot of hard, vibrant male, and of life. The taste of his flesh was almost an aphrodisiac, drawing her further into the sensual vortex wrapping around her.

"You don't know what you're asking for," he groaned as his lips brushed along her skin, moving unerringly to the swollen curves of her breasts.

She didn't know what she was asking for?

"Everything you have to give me," she demanded, her head grinding against the pillow as his hands cupped her breasts, lifting them as his mouth descended on one hard, violently sensitive nipple.

"Look at me, Mikayla." His tone was darker, rougher.

Forcing her eyes open, Mikayla stared into the pale blue flames of hunger in his

gaze.

"You don't want everything," he whispered, his cheek brushing against her nipple.

"Everything." No matter how dark, no matter how lusty. She wanted all of him.

His eyes narrowed on her, his tongue licked out, stroking over her nipple a second before his lips covered it, drawing it into the liquid fire of his mouth.

Mikayla arched, her arms wrapping around his neck to hold him to her as she felt

one hand move from her breast to her thigh. She tried to pay attention; she really did. She needed to have an idea of what to do to him when she got the chance. What would make him crazy. Deirdre said it could be done that way. That men would sometimes touch how and where they liked being touched.

If that was true, then she was doomed to failure.

What was he doing with his mouth on her nipple? The way he suckled it, the way

his teeth and tongue rasped over it, was making her insane. The deep drawing strokes were sending sharp bolts of sensation tearing into her belly, her clit.

She was helpless beneath him. Mikayla hadn't imagined pleasure could be so

sharp, so deep. As his lips moved from nipple to nipple, caressing and tormenting each in turn, she found herself growing desperate for more. More touch. More pleasure.

Her fingers dug into his hair, holding on to the strands as his hips rolled between her thighs, the hard wedge of his cock pressing into her lower stomach.

The pleasure was extreme. It rolled through her in waves of sensation too strong,

too shocking, to assimilate as his lips moved from her breasts, lower, down her stomach, then to her thighs.

"You think you can handle it, little innocent?" he growled as his lips brushed over her thighs.

"Anything you want to dish out." Lightning was going to strike her dead for that lie, because just the feel of the ends of his hair brushing along her thighs was throwing 101

her senses into chaos.

That amused quirk of his lips was almost worth the lie, though. It was so sexy,

wicked, dominant.

And just that quick sensation speared along her clit, jerking her body to high alert and drawing her knees up along his hips.

"Good?" he asked.

Good? His fingers were milking her clit. Gently she gave him that. But the effect

was catastrophic. She would have retaliated if she had enough of her brain left to figure out how to retaliate.

Instead, her fingers tightened in his hair as her hips arched, driving her clit closer to his lips instead.

His lips stroked along either side of it, brushing her thighs, sparking flames along each nerve ending he encountered.