Sacrifice the Wicked (16 page)

“Don’t even be in here,” he finished roughly. “Turn around and leave right now, Director, or I will make good on every threat I’ve ever made you.”

“Parker.”

His eyebrows climbed. Slow. Incredulous.

Her palms slid along her thighs, wiping the damp traces of her sweat, his watered-down blood, against her jeans. Nervous and restless. “It’s Parker.”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“You’re doing it again,” she replied, squaring her shoulders. “You can’t even trust me to know what I
want
to do.” Her tongue darted out again, as if she couldn’t help it. As if she didn’t know what that pink swipe across her lower lip did to him.

His laugh twisted to something near pain in his chest. Came out half a growl. “You don’t want to waste your time with me.”

She couldn’t hide her trembling as she raised both hands to the first button of her blouse. “Try me.”

His mouth dried as the first button slid free. Bared an inch of skin, the line of her collarbone. And every . . . nerve . . .
detonated
.

Simon closed the gap between them, all but pounced on her before she could do more than take another step back. The backs of her knees slammed into the bed frame, sent her sprawling over the mattress. He followed her down. Crowded her, trapped her between his splayed hands on either side of her head. His knees framed her legs.

She stared up at him, her eyes bottomless and wild. Her lips parted.

Simon ignored the ache in his head, his side. Ignored the exhaustion hammering at him. Every cell in his body shuddered with the intensity of his need.

“One chance,” he said, voice lashed to a taut, strained effort. It was all he could manage. “Order me to go. Tell me you don’t want me here, right now. Treat me like your missionary.
Director
.” But it wasn’t a taunt this time. He wielded her title like a shield; like a lifeline leading her back to safety.

All she had to do was take it.

Parker stared at him. Met his eyes and didn’t flinch.

She should have.

“It hasn’t worked before,” she said huskily.

Holy God.
“Only because I’m an asshole,” he said roughly. He’d make it work. He’d have to; this couldn’t happen. Not like this. Not with him. He wanted to— Christ almighty, he wanted to. That was the problem.

“Simon.” Raising one trembling hand, the very tips of two fingers stroked over his bottom lip. “You told me I’d scream.”

He groaned, shifting his weight to capture that hand. Deliberately, he yanked it away from him, pinned her wrist to the mattress. “You brought this on yourself,” he whispered, and seized her mouth in a kiss that tasted of anger as much as it felt like finding home.

T
his was it. No turning back.

As Simon’s lips covered hers, brushed across them and set every nerve ending she possessed on fire, Parker raised her only free hand and threaded her fingers through his short hair. As he so often did to her, she cradled his head, held him while her mouth strained to meet his passion, match his intensity.

He kissed like a man drowning. Starved for air, for the touch of someone—anyone.

Parker shuddered beneath his onslaught, nowhere near gentle but determined, sweetly savage, only barely restrained by the thinnest control.

Her body arched as heat swept from her forehead to heels. With just a kiss, he started something in her that Parker didn’t know how to describe. Like heat lightning and laughter all at once; like the most insidious drug swirling through her stomach, between her legs.

And all this with just a
kiss.

As his mouth slid to her cheek, lowered to her jaw, she sucked in a shaking breath, throwing her head back to give him easier access to the sensitive skin of her throat. He moved over her, sliding a knee between hers, his powerful shoulders flexing as he lowered his mouth to her neck. Every stroke of his lips, every flick from his teasing, tasting tongue dragged another portion of her self-control to hell.

No.
It wasn’t about his future. Their future. Maybe they didn’t have one; Parker didn’t dare assume this was anything but sex between two adults, physical and wild. Giving in to the want and the temptation.

There was too much at stake to be anything else.

The stucco ceiling offered her no answers, only a formless glow of lamplight that painted his face in harsh lines of gold and shadow. It dipped into the hollows beneath his cheekbones as his lips traced her skin to the top of her blouse. His tongue flicked out, a brief caress that pulled at her swirling insides, before his teeth closed over her flesh. A nip. Just hard enough to curl her toes.

Parker gasped, her back arching, hips raising in shameless delight and meeting only the powerful muscles of his thigh between her legs. Grinding herself against it shot fireworks through her body, too hot, too fast. Not nearly enough. She groaned on a shuddering exhale, laughed when Simon’s chuckle ghosted over her sensitized skin.

Shifting his weight to his knees, deliberately pushing his thigh into the juncture of hers, he pulled her fingers away from his head and turned them palm up. His eyes gleamed, wicked green and gold as his gaze met hers. Held it.

When he pressed a kiss into the palm of her hand, something in Parker’s chest tightened. It stole her breath, her voice.

His tongue flicked out. So soft compared to the solid muscle of his thigh, tight against her body. Insistent pressure where she wanted it most. He transferred her hand to the same easy shackle that held her right wrist captive and pinned her flat against the bed.

Thrilling. His strength, his needs fueled hers. His fingers at her wrists, callused, forceful enough to leave marks, warned her that he wasn’t playing. Not this time.

Was he ever?

She hoped not. Arousal so sweet, molten hot, stole every inhibition she had left.

She wanted him to take her. Take her, God, like . . . like some kind of prize or possession. Use her, make her scream. Just like he’d promised.

Was that wrong?

Did she care?

“Earth to Parker,” Simon said, his voice husky with arousal mirrored starkly in his angled features. Firm and apparent behind his zipper. His smile flashed, rueful. Edged. “You along for this ride?”

Parker opened her mouth and swallowed her words as he hooked his finger at the collar of her blouse. Too easily, he flicked a button open with thumb and forefinger.

“Because I think I know what you like.” His words fell over like silk, feathered delight and embarrassment through her. “But you need to be clear with me, sweetheart. I don’t want to hurt you.” Another button popped open, and another. “Okay?”

She nodded, once. “So . . . so far, so good,” she whispered.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

A
gain, he smiled. Mind-alteringly sexy. Slowly, as if savoring every inch of her skin each button revealed, he worked his way down her shirt.

Parker bit her lip as the last button slid free.

Would he see her as she saw herself? Attractive enough in clothes, nothing special outside of them, Parker wasn’t a woman who took to admiring herself in mirrors.

But the look in Simon’s eyes—awe and appreciation and raw, visceral lust—told her she didn’t have to bother. As he pulled away one flap of her shirt, baring the lacy edge of her beige bra, his smile crept into his eyes. Crinkled them.

His fingers settled over her ribs. “Your skin is so smooth.” Slowly, he traced her ribs, a feather-light touch. Parker squeezed her eyes shut, all too aware of the fluttering way her stomach jumped beneath his so-slow exploration. “You smell like what I always imagined the desert would smell like.”

She huffed out a laughing groan as the second half of her shirt fell aside. “It’s my perfume.” She flexed her arms, pulled at his grasp, but it only tightened around her wrists. More erotic than imprisonment had any right to be.

“I know. That perfume I told you to wear again.” She jerked, gasping as his mouth settled just over her navel. A kiss, slow. Deliberate. “That was the day I decided to get you here.”

Heat climbed her cheeks, not all of it simple passion. “I just— It’s my perfume, I always—”

Simon nipped at the soft flesh just over her hip. She cried out, half in pain that didn’t really hurt, half in shock. All desire. “Don’t lie to me, Parker,” he said roughly against her skin.

“I’m not,” she gasped.

“Yes, you are.” With no more warning than that, he shifted his grip on her hands and yanked her upright. He didn’t let her go to do it, forcing her arms straight, baring her bra to him. Parker’s eyes flew open.

And then she wished she’d kept them closed.

He was too much. Too much man, too much aggression. Frightening and awe-inspiring and sensual.

He stared down at her, his jaw rigid with something she couldn’t read—control or anger or determination. All of the above. His knee dipped the mattress by her hip, his other still planted between her legs. The position put her so close to his bare skin that she could feel the heat radiating off him.

Fever?

Of a sort. The same kind that infected her. Stripped away her barriers and left her needy, desperate for more.

For Simon.

Raising her chin, she met his glittering stare head-on. “Prove it,” she told him. It trembled.

His nostrils flared, as if he were an animal. Starving, hunting. Fresh on her trail.

Without grace, without patience, Simon stripped her of her shirt, transferring her wrists to each hand to get the white material off. Her bra followed, unclasped expertly. And all at once, she knelt half naked in front of a man who was supposed to be her subordinate.

She was his boss.

The ice bitch of the Mission.

Not anymore.
Those rules had been thrown out the instant they’d fled from her home. The instant that all-call had gone out.

Now she was just Parker Adams.

Needy, vulnerable. Aroused.

His gaze slid over her like a physical caress. Traveled over the line of her shoulders, her collarbone. Her chest rose and fell too fast to hide, and she was sure he saw her pulse hammering at the base of her throat.

He didn’t touch her but for the fingers at her wrists. Just looked at her. Lazily. Slowly. Taking his sweet time. As his gaze lowered to her breasts, full and tight, Parker’s cheeks flooded with heat as her nipples obviously beaded beneath his scrutiny.

His slow, sexy smile ripped the bottom out of her stomach.

“I dreamed about this.” His voice filled her senses, dark and dangerous. “You’re going to come for me, Parker.”

Her throat dried. Parker held his gaze, squirmed as he only stared at her. Waiting.

One dark eyebrow rose, supercilious as hell.

He knew. Damn him, he
knew
what she wanted. What he did to her. But only waited.

She looked away. “I—”

“Yes?”

Parker licked her lips. It didn’t help. “I don’t . . .”

“Look at me, Parker.” Gentle. Coaxing. But no less an order.

She did.

Simon’s eyes narrowed. Slowly, he reached behind her, found her braid and pulled it over her bare shoulder. The ends tickled the top of her breast, tickled and stroked and added another layer to the complex sensations already twisting her up inside.

His fingers brushed the same spot, and Parker shuddered. He pulled the band off, stroked those fingers through her hair until the braid unwound and most of the cool mass slid down her back.

“You don’t have a choice,” he said, even as he wound a lock of her copper hair around his index finger. Lust pounded through her body, wicked and wanton. “This is about what I want. Isn’t that right, Director?”

She flinched. But he wasn’t wrong.

The hair tightened around his finger, pulling harder and harder until she had no choice but to lean forward. Where her arms were beginning to shake, his seemed rock solid over her head. A taut line of muscle and strength, patience incarnate.

“Say it,” he whispered, his eyes bottomless.

“I—” Parker took a long, slow breath. Felt it flood her chest, her belly.

Felt it burn away into nothing as he tugged on her trapped hair.

“Please,” she managed, her eyes wide. Her heart pounding so hard, it overwhelmed fear. Shame. All those things she’d spent so long avoiding. “Please touch me. Take me, Simon, make me come.” Her back curved, unabashedly thrusting her breasts to him. Needy, an offering she desperately wanted him to accept. “Come with me.”

Every breathy word caused his eyes to darken. The smile left them. Left his mouth, drained from his features until Parker could only shiver as he studied her from a place she didn’t recognize. Something not cold; God, he was too vivid, too intense to be cold. Not detached, not judging by the lust shaping every hardened muscle of his beautiful body.

Something . . . strong. Something immovable.

“You’re mine,” he said softly.

Oh, God. That sounded . . . so permanent. So . . .
So dangerous.
She wanted it.

Parker nodded. He pulled on her hair, hard enough to force a small sound from her throat. “Say it, Parker.”

“I’m yours,” she gasped. “Damn you, make me yours.”

His eyes banked hard. The fingers around her wrist tightened near to pain. Letting go of her hair, he curled his hand around her throat and crushed his mouth to hers.

As if he knew. Knew how the dominant edge in him stroked something feminine and sultry and soft in her. As if he could sense how much his aggression turned her on.

Parker moaned as his tongue slid between her lips, found hers and stroked it, tasted her. Let her taste him. Finally, letting go of her wrists, he dragged his hand up her ribs. Filled his hand with her breast, stroking. Molding, shaping. It freed her to touch him in turn. His muscles were hard and defined under her searching hands, leaping to her touch as if she were a live wire laid against his skin.

He made a rough sound in his chest as her fingers stroked over one flat nipple, returned the favor in kind as his found her left nipple and pinched it tautly between thumb and forefinger. She cried out, throwing her head back and wrenching her mouth away under a flood of wild demand. Him, inside her.

Now
.

He tugged her arms back, slid a hand behind her back and lowered her to the bed, springs squeaking faintly underneath him as he shifted over her.

“Grab the headboard,” he commanded.

Parker’s hands stilled, half outstretched. “But I—”

He twisted her nipple, hard enough to draw the breath from her lungs. Just this side of pain, so delicious that her shoulders flattened, back arching. “The headboard, Parker.”

Shaking with need, she raised her arms above her head, fingers interlacing around a metal rung of the sturdy headboard. It left her exposed, open to his study.

“If you move your hands,” he warned, stretching out beside her like some kind of pagan god at a feast, “there will be trouble. Am I clear?”

The man stole her breath. Her logic, her rational thought. With his jeans riding low on his hips and his chest bare to her hungry gaze, he looked every bit as decadent, as sinful, as everything the Church warned against.

She could have gone her whole life without feeling
this
. Him. His hands on her, his rough aggression surrounding her.

She nodded. “Clear.”

“Good.” Simon bent, very slowly, and drew her right nipple into his mouth. Parker groaned with the pull of it, with the exquisite torture of his damp, hot mouth encircling her breast. Tongue flicking across the tight bud, he bit down gently. Just enough.

Her groan shuddered to a gasp for air.

Was this the right thing to do?

God help her, it didn’t matter now.

His fingers found the clasp of her jeans, and with the same easy effort, Simon unsnapped the front. The zipper hissed.

He drew back, teeth tight at her nipple, pulling it. Sending streaks of lightning from breast to belly and lower. She could feel the hot, sticky fluid between her legs, wetter than she’d ever been for any man. She wasn’t a stranger to sex, but whatever Simon was doing to her transcended just sex.

He played her. Played her body like a well-oiled instrument. As he shifted his mouth to her other breast, Parker gritted her teeth, fingers clamped on the metal rung until she was sure the edges would score permanent lines into her skin.

But as his teeth closed on her skin, his fingers slid beneath her jeans. Found her warm and swollen, slick with need. The sound he made only pushed Parker higher, stripped her of inhibition and fear as her legs fell open.

“God, you’re wet,” he breathed against her skin, damp from his mouth. “Is this for me, sweetheart?” His fingers brushed against her, slipped between the folds of overly sensitized flesh until she was all but writhing against him. Desperate to be free of her jeans, to feel him fully inside her. When he stroked against her clit, Parker jerked, sobbing out a word that she’d meant to be encouragement but didn’t make it past a raw sound of need.

Simon’s laugh, his breath, ghosted across her breast.

His fingers eased out of her jeans. He pulled away, leaving her keenly aware of the loss of his body heat, but only groaned, “Oh, God,
yes,
” as he peeled the material from her hips. Slid them down her legs.

Parker clung to the headboard, her eyes squeezed shut. She could only imagine what she looked like. Her hair tangled around her shoulder, her pale skin pink with exertion and embarrassment and arousal.

“Don’t move your hands,” Simon warned. The denim cleared her feet, rustled as her jeans hit the floor. “No matter what.”

“Got it,” she whispered.

The bed dipped, squeaked as his weight settled on the mattress. Parker didn’t dare open her eyes.

“You’re unbelievable.” She jerked as his lips brushed the sensitive skin just above her knee. “Sexy.” They moved over her thigh, tracing a line higher and higher. “Strangely obedient,” he added in lazy amusement.

She shook her head.

Bracing both of his hands beside her hips caused her weight to shift. Parker opened her eyes, frowning in concentration.

Only to gasp as he met her gaze. Like a god, she’d thought before. Indolent and confident and carved from perfection. His swarthy skin gleamed in the lamplight, muscles in his shoulders and arms bunching as he slowly lowered himself to her.

He didn’t look away.

“Trust me,” he said. Ordered. Another demand.

She trembled, fingers aching around the headboard. “Why?”

As his elbows locked around her thighs, one hand flattening over her belly, Simon smiled. “Because you need someone to trust, Parker Adams.”

She shook her head, her hair sliding over her cheek as she swallowed hard.

“And you need someone to take care of you.”

“I can’t—”

“At least for as long as I’m here.” He blew against her flesh; a tease. “And you need to hold on tight,” he added, just before he buried his mouth into the soft flesh between her legs.

“Oh,
God,
” she managed. It was all she knew to say as his tongue dragged over her clitoris, stroked around the tiny nub of tangled nerves. His lips pulled at it, tugged, left her gasping and twisting as he pulled away to slide his tongue deeper. Only a taunt, a torment compared to what he
could
fill her with.

But it was enough to raise her hips from the bed. To force him to push against her stomach, hold her still as he feasted at her wet flesh. He licked her so thoroughly, so deeply that her breath came in pants, gasps, pleading.

Simon shifted, and as Parker writhed beneath his mouth, he eased two fingers into her body.

“There’s no shame in wanting to be taken care of,” Simon said, his voice rougher than it’d been moments before.

Parker shook her head, over and over, but she couldn’t look away. Not from his eyes, smoldering. Not from his mouth, damp from her own body’s arousal.

He’d tasted her. He approved of her.

Her hips jerked, bucking even without her order as his fingers stroked through the ring of nerves already pushed to breaking from his tongue. They dragged over a particular spot, curved into her inner flesh.

“You’re a strong woman, Parker.” His mouth curved up. “You’re strong enough to fight even when you don’t have a chance in hell of winning. Giving up control doesn’t make you less.” In and out. His fingers played her as skillfully as his tongue had, twisted inside her. “Give me everything you have, sweetheart. I want it. Every last secret.” He lowered his lips once more to the tight bud of her clit.

Her mind shattered an instant before her body followed.

Parker’s denial never made it through her scream.

U
n-fucking-believable.

She humbled him. Rocked him down to his shredded soul. The caliber of her response, the sweet way she gave in to his demands and let herself go stripped Simon of any words he might have said to reaffirm distance between them.