Unleashing the Storm (26 page)

At
least, she wasn’t sure until she smoothed her hands down his back to grasp his
buttocks and pull him as deep as he could go. Even then, he wasn’t satisfied.

“Touch
me, dammit.”

She
looked up into his face, a mask of pain she didn’t understand, but as her
fingers drifted down to stroke the valley of his ass, his expression softened
into something like relief. One cheek burned, the other froze—and her fingers
met in the middle to stroke it all, to bring the two halves together.

“Yeah,”
he groaned. “That’s it. Make it right again.”

Okay,
this was new…he’d shown her positions and techniques she’d not even dreamed of,
but never once had she touched him so intimately, and as her fingertip skimmed
the sensitive opening, he gasped, shuddered and released inside her in hot
bursts that went on and on and sent her over the edge once more.

Ecstasy
took her in an explosion of color and light, and she might have passed out,
because suddenly she was aware only of his weight on her, his labored breaths.
He was so big, so crushingly big, but just when it seemed her bones would
crumple in on one another, he withdrew and flopped onto his back.

Rolling
to him, she stroked his chest, the tattoos that now appeared completely normal.
“Creed,” she said, pushing up on an elbow, “what is going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m
fine now.” He tucked her beneath one arm so her head rested on his shoulder.
“Thank you.”

This
was too weird. She still had no idea why he’d walked out on her in the bar, but
now she was just as confused by his out-of-character, sullen comments in his
living room, and then the sudden need—no, demand—for sex. Specific touches. And
the tattoos…

“Tell
me what all this was about.”

“Let
it go, Annika.”

The
fluffy post-fuck bliss vaporized in a mushroom cloud of fury. First Dev, now
Creed…they were shutting her out.

“I’m
not letting it go. Something bad happened to you. Did someone—or some
thing
—hurt
you?”

“I
said, let it go.”

“You
know what? Fuck you.” She surged off the bed and threw on her shorts, not
bothering with the underwear. “You don’t want to let me in on your big secret?
Fine. Why don’t you tell me why you worked me wet and then left me at the bar
like some piece of trash? What, were you embarrassed by me in front of your
buddies? You were in a big enough hurry to get me out of there.”

He
sat up. “Christ, Annika. Is that what you think happened?”

“I
don’t know what happened,” she yelled. “Because you haven’t bothered to fucking
talk to me!”

“Yeah?
How’s it feel to want to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind, but they
won’t tell you?”

“What
the hell are you talking about?”

She
swore his tattoos were writhing again, and when he looked down at his hand, at
the design that pulsed and glowed there, she knew she wasn’t seeing things. He
clenched his fist and shifted his dark gaze to her.

“You.
I’m talking about you.” He grabbed a pair of sweatpants out of the huge oak
dresser next to his bed and stepped into them, never taking his eyes off her.

“I
tell you stuff.”

“Yeah.
Pardon me while I reflect on the deep conversation we had about the virtues of
fish pudding.”

“That’s
not fair. I hate fish pudding. I did
not
discuss its virtues.”

He
ground his teeth so violently she heard the grate of enamel on enamel. “No. And
you also clammed up when I asked where you’d eaten it in the first place. I
don’t know a damned thing about you except what everyone else at ACRO knows.
You dodge questions and avoid any kind of situation that might lead to
intimacy.”

God,
she’d never met anyone as annoying as him. So what if she hadn’t told him her
fake parents had fed her only European cuisine? The reason, to keep her more
convincing and effective for overseas work, wasn’t something she wanted to
share.

“Got
a dictionary?” She pulled on her shirt, screw the bra. “Because it seems to me
that we’ve been all over the intimacy thing.”

“That’s
not what I mean, and you know it. Have we ever been on a real date? You know, a
dinner of more than buffalo wings and a pitcher of beer while you blow me from
under the table?”

She
bit back a smile at those memories. She loved how he tried so hard to control
his breathing while she went down on him in public, loved how he trembled with
the effort of not shouting like he always did when she made him come with her
mouth. “I have a lot to catch up on.”

“Baby,
you’re caught up on the physical side of things.”

An
iceberg lodged in her chest as the conversation with Dev about her emotional
immaturity came roaring back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It
means that once you get what you want, you can’t wait to get away from me. You
won’t spend the night in my bed, but you don’t have a problem sleeping over at
Dev’s place. It means that every time we have an argument, you walk out.”

“You’re
one to talk about walking out.”

He
shoved his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I know. That thing at the bar was
stupid, and I’m sorry. But that was once. You do it every time.”

“Because
I don’t know how to argue,” she snapped. “I never had to. In the world I grew
up in, someone pisses you off, they stop breathing. There is no argument.” She
turned away from his dark gaze and blew out a breath. “And I don’t know how to
do this.” She’d never had a boyfriend and certainly hadn’t slept with anyone
before Creed. Sex was easy. Knowing what to do afterward, that was hard.

“Do
what?”

“This!”
She waved her arm around the room. “Me and you. I don’t understand the
protocol.”

“You
stop running away. You let me in.”

She
shook her head. This was way too complicated. She needed another assignment.
Bringing in those two Itor agents from Idaho hadn’t been nearly exciting
enough, hadn’t allowed her to slide into the mental place where she was most
comfortable: mission-mode. Cold. Efficient. Single-minded.

“Dammit,
Annika. Someday you’re going to fuck up, or something bad is going to happen to
you, and you’re going to have to let someone in.”

“I
have someone.”

“Right.
The almighty Dev. And what happens when he’s busy or unavailable? What are you
going to do then? Come find me and fuck the problem away? Your usual MO?”

For
the first time in her life, Annika was speechless. Her mouth worked, but
nothing came out. Finally she summoned her voice, but when she spoke, it didn’t
sound like her.

“I
don’t need this. I don’t need you or your dick or your condescending bullshit.
If I don’t open up to you, maybe it’s because the last time I did, you turned
me in and got me suspended from missions for six months.” That wasn’t entirely
true; she wouldn’t open up to him anyway. “I don’t need a fucking therapist,
Creed.”

“I’m
not asking to be your therapist. I’m asking to be more than a closet fuck.”

She
hated this, hated that their relationship had gotten to this point without her
noticing. Hated that what they had might qualify as a relationship at all.
“Maybe Dev should have given you the
Cosmo
lecture instead of me.” She
grabbed her shoes and started out the door, but his soft voice stopped her at
the threshold.

“What
Cosmo
lecture?”

“Don’t
confuse sex with love,” she whispered.

And
then she fled, just like he said she always did.

SUNDAY
NOON

When
they hit Salmon, Idaho, Ender stole a car. He didn’t tell Kira he stole it,
acted like,
Yeah, this car has been waiting for us all along.
Then he
pulled off into the woods, changed the plates and finally phoned his comms
contact, Bryan, again.

Bryan
officially registered the stolen vehicle within minutes, and Ender and Kira
headed northeast to the private airstrip and jet, to take them the rest of the
way to the Catskills and ACRO.

All
this, and she still hadn’t agreed to join. All this, and she was supposed to
have been dead days ago. By his hand.

“Fuck.”
He slammed the car’s steering wheel and, next to him, Kira started.

“What’s
wrong? Is someone following us?” She looked around wildly, checking all the
windows.

“No
one’s following us,” he said. Just his past, and shit, Dev was going to ream
him. He rolled his neck from side to side to loosen the tight muscles as he
pushed the car hard to make up for lost time.

Bryan
assured him the private jet would be in place to take them on the final leg of
their journey. So far, he hadn’t sensed any more I-Agents, and he wondered why
they seemed to have given up so easily.

“So,
is there a name for what you are?” Kira asked. She hadn’t spoken much at all
for the past hour, had crossed her arms over her chest and remained deep in
thought. Ender had appreciated the silence, but knew that women, no matter if
they were part animal or not, loved to talk.

He
gave a long-suffering sigh before he answered. “Yes.”

“Are
you going to tell me?” she asked, and he thought about telling her no, that he
couldn’t in case she didn’t sign on.

But
that was ridiculous, because if she didn’t agree to join, she wouldn’t be
around long enough to tell anyone at all. In many cases, powers could be
stripped to eliminate the person as an Itor target or future threat, but ACRO
scientists had determined that Kira’s specialized physiology wouldn’t allow for
ability stripping. “I’m an excedo. Excedosapien.”

“Are
there a lot of you?”

“Enough,
I guess. I never took a head count.” He shrugged. “Derek was one too. Different
abilities. He was stronger, not as fast.”

“And
you really don’t think of yourself as a freak?” she asked.

He
thought of himself in a lot of ways, but freak was never one of them. “No.”

“Thanks
for elaborating on that.”

“Kira,
look, I just don’t want to talk about my life. I never have.”

“Are
you telling me that there’s no one in this entire world who knows about your
life?”

“No,”
he said, aware that he was leaving dent marks in the steering wheel with his
fingers. Dev didn’t count, because he just…knew. Ender had never actually had
to sit down and explain anything to anybody. ACRO had tried to force him to see
their shrink only once, and after he nearly killed the man, they decided that
Ender was better off when his mind was left alone.

“What
about your parents?”

“I
haven’t seen them since I was seventeen.”

“So
they don’t even know if you’re alive?”

He
wanted to ask why it was so damned important to her, but he already knew. He
was the first guy who’d known the truth about her, the first guy who protected
her instead of merely fucking her.

Killing
her would’ve been so much easier than this. “I don’t know what they know. That
life just wasn’t for me anymore. I was causing trouble for them. They’re better
off now.”

She
nodded, like she got that. And yeah, he could see why she did.

He
shifted in the leather seat, realized that his cock was hard. Kira was putting
out those damned pheromones again.

“It’s
almost time,” she said, staring down at his lap and sucking her full bottom lip
between her teeth. He heard the low growl of approval rumble in the back of his
own throat as her hand traveled between his legs, wondered if she could mount
him and let him drive at the same time.

“Can
you wait another half hour, just so I can get across—” he started, but she tore
open his pants with one hand as she freed herself from her own BDU bottoms, and
he had a feeling he was about to find out the true meaning of “zero to sixty.”

When
her hand circled his cock, his foot jerked the accelerator nearly to the floor
and he pulled the wheel so far to the right they almost ran off the road.

He
cursed, righted the wheel with both hands while she chuckled, her voice low and
throaty, the way it always got when her heat became an uncontrollable need.

She
stroked him until his breathing was faster than normal, until his split
concentration forced him to give himself over to Kira in a much different way
than he’d been allowing over the past hours.

He
held the wheel steady with his left hand, which allowed Kira to climb on board.
He put his right hand on the wheel, because he was going to need both hands for
this one, and Kira ducked her head against his neck, her warm breath fanning
his skin, her sex wet and hot and rubbing his cock in a way that made him jerk
his hips upright against her.

“Impatient,
are we?” she murmured.

“Don’t
play games with me.”

“Or
what? You’ll pull over and spank me for being a bad girl?”