me to.”
I reach under her and pinch her ass.
“Naughty kitten.”
Her hands scrunch in the covers and her
grin lights up the darkened room. “You could
come up here.” She pats the bed beside her.
“Then we could both—”
She breaks off with a gasp as I flip her
over, press her into the bed with one hand,
and bring the other down on her ass, hard
enough to sting. “Strike one,” I tell her.
She scrabbles in the blankets, pulls them
around her head and moans.
I bring the flat of my hand down on her
ass again. Smile at the back of her head when
she gasps, and grip her ass-cheek to intensify
the sensation. “That was for calling me by
my real name.”
I spank her a third time, putting some of
the muscle of my shoulder into it. Hard
enough that she’ll still feel it tomorrow, and
maybe the day after. “That was for surprising
me.”
“Wha-what?” she gasps.
I turn her back over. Take her hands and
put them by her sides. Wait until she digs her
fingers into the blankets before I kneel
between her knees again and lift her legs
over my shoulders. I lower my face into the
sweet space between her thighs and nip at
the wet, secret skin of her labia. She gasps
like she’s sprinted for a klick and rolls her
hips up to me in tight pulses.
“Kitten,” I say, letting my voice go deep
and dark with pleasure. I flick my tongue
over the swollen nub at the top of her slit.
Lean in and suck on it until she bucks against
my hold.
“Oh, God!” she wails.
I grin against her labia. Close my mouth
over her opening and push my tongue deep
between her folds. She tastes salty and
slightly musky, like real, freshly-baked
bread. I listen to her gasping moans. Then go
back to sucking on her clit.
“Hale,” she pants. “Please, Hale . . .”
She’s already begging. Spanking
seriously turns my kitten on. And maybe all
those nights with Mouse, going down on her
because she was too damaged inside to fuck,
have given me some skills. “Rule four,” I
remind her before I give her a hard nip on
her inner thigh.
“Oh!” She jolts at the bite but
immediately relaxes back into my hands.
I give her inner thighs some attention,
kissing and licking, to let her cool down a
little before I return to the show. I blow on
her labia, lick her with long strokes. Flick
the taut nub of her clit with the tip of my
tongue. Within a few strokes, she’s thrashing
and moaning again. I slide one hand up to
cup her breast and thumb that hard button.
Flick her nipple in time with my strokes
against her clitoris.
“Oh, please!” she chokes. “Oh, God,
please!” Her legs shake against my
shoulders. Her whole body is rigid with
sexual tension.
“You wanna come, kitten?” I lift my head
from her enough to speak, letting my warm
breath blow over her labia.
“Yes! Please! Please, please!”
I pretend to consider it for a moment.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Ohhhhh.” Her head whips from side to
side as she fights against her need. Her
expressive little face is drawn like she’s in
pain. Her body’s sheened with sweat. I
lower my head and catch her clit between my
teeth.
She goes wild, bucking and straining. Her
body arcs against the bed. Her hands rise and
claw the air.
I flip her over before she has a chance to
realize she’s broken the rules again. Catch
her hands and cross them behind her back. I
pin her wrists with one hand and hold her
down while I open my fly and shove down
my pants. Time to fuck. We did gentle, and
we both enjoyed it, but she loves it rough and
dirty. And that’s what I want right now.
“Bad kitten.” I give her a hard spank as
the little monster bursts free and pokes
against the back of her thigh. She wails at the
spank, so I do it again, hard enough to make
my palm sting. Her ass must be smarting. I
switch hands and redden the other cheek for
her. She’ll definitely feel that when she sits
down tomorrow.
“Oh, yes,” she moans. She arches her
back, lifting her ass and rolling her hips as
she tries to impale herself on the little
monster. I let it bump along the curves of her
thighs for a moment while I match up that
second cheek. Then I reach down and feed it
into her.
She’s so wet I slip back out. I grin at her
back while I position myself again. Sink
deep into that hot wetness. Groan with
pleasure. There’s nothing better than this, the
feeling of burying myself deep in her tight,
wet body. I lean over and kiss her shoulders.
Push her soft dreads to one side and nip the
back of her neck. Whisper to her that I’m
going to fuck her until she can’t come
anymore as I begin working my cock inside
her. Her whimpers rise over the wet
slapping of our bodies. Her face is turned
into the rumpled covers but I can see that her
eyes are open. Her brows drawn tight in an
agony of sexual tension. She’s more than
ready.
I pull her hips back into my thrusts. Pin
her hard against the bed while I work my
hips furiously against hers. She’s gasping,
begging, her body heaving under me as she
tries to rise to each thrust. I wrap one arm
around her hips, the other under her, across
her chest, and hold her still as I pound into
her, fucking her as hard as I can. Held
captive, forced to accept my wild pace, with
no other outlet, she screams. Full-throated.
Woman in ecstasy.
“You can come, kitten,” I growl, giving
her permission at last.
She screams again as she comes. Her
body clenches frantically around mine. I
pump hard into her orgasm, feeling her tight
wetness convulse around my cock. The
mounting pleasure becomes unbearable and I
come, locked deep inside her, her pussy
milking me as I keep rocking in her, coming
in her, until I’m completely spent.
I collapse on top of her. Covering that
slender body with mine. An amazing sense of
peace fills me. I close my eyes. Shut my ears.
Lose every sense except the feeling of her
soft body under me and the contentment that
envelops us both.
Finally, the feeling begins to fade. A
noise breaks through my euphoria. It’s a
thread of sound. A whisper. Kez’s soft
voice, saying, “I’m sorry,” over and over.
I disentangle one arm and lift off her
enough to brush her dreadlocks over her
shoulders and look down into her face. Her
eyes are closed and there are tear-tracks on
her cheeks.
“Shh, kitten. I’ve got you.” I brush away
the wetness on her cheeks. Did I hurt her?
She didn’t tense or give any indication that it
hurt while we were going at it. “Was that too
much?”
“No.” Her eyes flicker open. She smiles
faintly. “It was just . . . intense.”
Intense is good. I lift off her. Kick off my
boots as I climb up onto the bed and drag her
with me. Push one of the towels she’s left on
the nightstand between her legs and spoon
her tight into my body.
“I should get a shirt,” she whispers.
“Otherwise I’m going to stick to you.”
She is pretty sweaty. We both are. Best
way I’ve ever come across to get sweaty.
With a contented grin, I let her go, watch
as she rolls to her feet and fumbles her way
across the dark room to the rack of clothes at
the foot of the bed. She feels along the rack
until she finds what she wants. Tugs a lacy
little top off its magnehanger. The clothes
pendulum on the rack after she pulls free the
camisole, and a shape at the back of the rack
catches my attention. It’s a thick, shaggy
sleeve. Much too big for Kez. Curly fur
circles the cuff.
I sit up and look more closely. That
sleeve looks extremely familiar.
“Kezra,” I growl.
A step away from the bed, she freezes.
“What?” she whispers.
“What’s my winter coat doin’ on your
clothes rack?”
“Oh,” she breathes. “Um.”
“Yeah?” I can’t wait to hear this.
“Well, um—”
Unbelievable. Little thief. “They should
call you light-finger, not Lightfoot.”
“I was going to give it back!” she wails.
She clutches the camisole to her chest,
twisting the soft material between her hands.
“Why the fuck did you steal it in the first
place?”
“I didn’t steal it! I swear! You left it!
You were loading cargo and you took it off
and you left it on a stack of crates. I didn’t
want someone else to take it—”
“So you stole it instead,” I growl. I
searched for that coat for weeks. Not just
because it’s a damn good coat, but also
because it had my DNA all over it.
“I was going to give it back to you the
next time I saw you—”
I lie back and fold my hands behind my
head. “Which explains why it’s still hangin’
there.”
“No, God, I, uh—” She hangs her head
but even in the dark with her head down I
can see the fiery blush that’s spread over her
face and all the way down her neck. It’s
sweet, and sexy, that blush. Her whole
obsession with me is sweet and sexy. In a
marginally psychotic sort of way.
I pat the bed next to me. “C’mere, kitten.”
She tugs the top over her head and
scrambles onto the bed. She perches next to
me and peers down into my face. I doubt she
can see my expression in the dark, but I
soften it anyway. “Are you angry with me?”
she asks.
“No, but I’m lockin’ my closet the next
time you come over.” She cuffs me on the
shoulder and I chuckle. “When exactly were
you plannin’ to give it back?”
“Before winter,” she says. “I know I kept
it too long. I was going to bring it back to
you the next day but it, um, it got dirty and the
place I took it to be cleaned took forever. By the time I got it back, it had been weeks. I
couldn’t think of any way to return it to you
without it being completely weird.”
“How ‘bout, ‘here, I found your coat’?”
“A month later?”
She leans against my side, but that’s not
nearly enough contact to satisfy me. I pat the
bed again and she stretches out next to me. I
slide my arm under her shoulders, turn her so
she’s cuddled against my side. She slides her
thigh over mine. Rests her head on my
shoulder, her hand on my chest. Nice. I like
the way our bodies fit together, even when
we’re not fucking.
“Don’t think I missed the part about
gettin’ my coat dirty. What’d you do to it?”
She buries her face in my shoulder.
This should be good. “Tell me,” I say.
“It just got dirty.”
“Sure, coats do that all the time. All by
themselves.” She makes a little choking
noise against my skin. “What’d you get on it?
Mud? Blood? Come? What?”
She puts her hand over her face. I catch
her wrist and drag her hand back down to my
chest. Kiss her temple. “C’mon, I won’t be
mad.”
“Promise?”
How bad can it be? “Yeah, I promise.”
“Come.”
“You let someone come on my coat?”
That is fairly disgusting. Maybe I don’t want
it back.
She thumps my chest. “I came on your
coat, you idiot!”
“You came on my coat.”
“It was an accident! It was a cold night
and I’d had a bad day and your coat was so
warm and soft. I could smell you on it and it
made me feel close to you and one thing led
“And you ended up comin’ on my coat?”
“Stop saying it like that!”
“Like what? How many ways are there to
say that you juiced on my coat?”
“You’re making me sound like a
pervert!”
I roar with laughter and pull her tight to
me. Kiss her forehead since she’s hidden her
face in my neck. “You are a pervert. What
were you doin’, humpin’ my coat?”
“No!” she wails.
She definitely was. She gets so sweetly
wet when she’s aroused and I can see her
making a mess on my coat if she was rubbing
herself against it. “Pervy kitten.” I reach
down and give her a little smack on the ass.
“You said you wouldn’t be angry!” she
cries into my neck.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t punish you.” I
give her another smack. Still not too hard
because she’ll already be bruised from our
first go-round. And both the idea of her
humping my coat while she fantasized about
fucking me and the smack have gotten the
little monster’s attention, so it’s looking like
round two is about to begin.
“I’m sorry!” she wails.
“You’re forgiven,” I say easily. And
truthfully. I’m not angry with her. A little
bemused by her obsession, but not angry. I
wrap my arms around her and drag her on
top of me. Tip her face up so I can see her
expression, and kiss her soundly. When she’s
panting and breathless and sure that I’m not
really mad, I say, “Now show me what you
did to my coat.”
She does. And it turns out that being
ridden works for the little monster after all.
She falls asleep on top of me afterwards.
I’m relaxed but not sleepy, so I prop myself
up on some pillows and hold her while she
sleeps. Occupy myself by contemplating
ways to kill Kison Tyng.
Chapter 14
I don’t know much about Tyng, but
fundamentally all killing is about waiting for
the right moment and striking when it comes.
To assassinate someone, you have to create
the moment. That means getting close to the
target. If Kison Tyng is like every other
paranoid drug lord, he’ll have an array of
defenses to hide behind. So the trick is
finding a way to cut through those defenses,
and create the moment.
Baby Tyng is a way in, but she’s not the
only one. I’ve got a score to settle with
Kincaid, too, and I like the idea of killing
two birds with one stone. If I can get some
leverage on Kincaid, then force him to get
me through to Tyng, I can take them both at
the same time. That has significant appeal.
And then there’s another option. If Tyng
wants flesh from Kez, he might be willing to
come out from behind all those defenses to
get it. I’m not crazy about using Kez as bait,
but she’s dangling on his hook already.
As I’m parsing through the advantages
and disadvantages of the various routes to
cutting Tyng’s throat, there’s a knock on the
door. I lie still to see if Kez wakes. If she
doesn’t, then whoever it is can wait until
after she’s rested.
But she does. She lifts her head off my
chest groggily. Her hand slides up to my
shoulder. I catch it, squeeze her fingers
gently, and whisper, “Someone’s at the
door.”
“Oh,” she murmurs. She rubs her face
against my chest and I smile at her. I like
how comfortable she is with me. Feels like
we’ve been together for a long time. I’ve
never had that sense of ease with a woman
before, and I like it.
Kez stretches and cuddles against me,
sliding her arm around my neck. She turns
her head towards the door, even though she
can’t possibly see anything in the dark.
“What’s up?” she calls.
“Kezzy?” Chiara’s voice. “Nev’s asking
for you. Are you okay—?”