B/Faith
We stare at the monitor for another few seconds, and then my gaze shifts to the one on the far left. There’s a picture of Paul Galveston on one side of the screen, and an image-recognition software program running on the other. Behind the images, lines of code race up in dizzying motion.
Poor Betty is working her digital fingers to the bone.
My gaze darts to Galveston, and I can’t stop the shiver that races through me. Killian’s fingers trace down my lower arm to circle my wrist.
“Hey, we’re going to get through this shit. Okay?”
Although I nod, I can’t look away from the screen. The memory of aiming my weapon, and squeezing the trigger, rises up like an unstoppable nightmare before my eyes. I should’ve gone for a head shot, the way I’d been trained to. Why the hell didn’t I?
Because when it came to it, I wasn’t a killer? I silently shake my head.
From the first moment I stepped into the gunroom at the Fallhurst Institute, I felt at home. Cradling my first gun turned me on. The power. The danger. I’ve blocked it all out. But now the stinging memory returns. “Am I a horrible person, Killian?”
He jerks in surprise. “What?”
I wrap my arms around my middle and move away to the window. My unsettled gaze bounces over the skyline before I turn back to him. He’s swiveled around in his chair and is watching me. “I shot him, and I didn’t even feel bad.”
His beautiful eyes turn to ice chips. “Why the fuck should you feel bad for defending yourself against an asshole who was coming at you with the intention of doing you harm? Who ended up doing you harm?”
I shake my head. “But I shot him. In the chest. I watched him bleeding out. We were in the middle of a fucking desert. How is he still alive?” I know my questions are irrational, but I can’t help myself.
“The motherfucker stabbed you. You’d lost a lot of blood and were struggling to stay conscious. Your aim was probably off. You can’t blame yourself.”
My gaze veers away but I still feel his slowly trace down my body. A minute passes.
“Show me the scar,” he says thickly.
I freeze, and my heart starts hammering. “What?”
“At the hospital, they said they were having a hard time stopping the bleeding because your wound was deep. It was why you slipped into the coma. I’ve never seen it. Will you show it to me?”
I shake my head. “It’s not very pretty.” And it’s intensely personal. More than he will ever know.
“I have some not very pretty ones too. Let’s compare,” he tosses out jokingly. Except I know it’s not a joke. The look in his eyes is deadly serious.
This is my cue to leave. Return to the safety of my bedroom. “You first,” I murmur.
He immediately pulls his T-shirt off, leans forward, and points to the inch-wide raised scar on his lower back.
“I know that one,” I say. A shallow knife wound sustained in a back-alley fight in Croatia on his second assignment. I have caressed it many times while I explored his body. Kissed it while he slept.
“Come here,” he says. I walk over to him. He takes my hand and guides it to the base of his skull. He holds my finger against a raised three-inch bump. “Stitches from a tire iron that wanted to be intimate with my brain. From a guy whose truck I tried to steal when I got stranded in Minsk. He wasn’t very happy.”
My lips twitch, but the smile doesn’t quite make it. “You’re a billionaire who invented a chip to makes rockets go faster or something. You didn’t think to just buy the truck?”
He shrugs. “He wouldn’t take a bank transfer or my Audemars Piguet watch, which he thought was fake. Carrying cash on that op wasn’t really encouraged, so my options were limited. It was steal the truck or walk fifteen miles to the nearest rendezvous point in three feet of snow. I chose door number one. Turns out I wasn’t great at hot-wiring a vehicle in the middle of a blizzard.”
My fingers trace the scar. “When did it happen?”
He hesitates before answering. “Two years ago.”
I’ve thought about it over the years, whether he continued being an operative or not. I even imagined him with other partners. Other women. I’m not sure how I feel about having the confirmation.
As if he reads my mind, his gaze tracks and snags mine. “It was supposed to be an easy, solo, two-day mission. In and out, picking up a laptop a team member was forced to leave behind when they had to get out quickly. The data on the laptop was too important. I was in the mood for a change of scene so I offered to go.”
He doesn’t owe me any explanation. But fuck if the tightness in my chest doesn’t ease with relief. My fingers drift over the scar and over his warm scalp. I continue to gently massage, the joy of running my fingers through his hair a hypnotic pleasure I can’t seem to stop.
When my fist slowly clenches around a thick clump, he makes a sound under his breath.
“Baby, you know we’re not going to last much longer like this, don’t you?” he says in a guttural, barely discernible voice.
“Yes,” I answer simply. Because every second since that moment in the park last night has been leading up to this. It was the first thing that terrified me when I heard his voice. It’s what terrifies me now as I use my hold on him to tilt his head.
Our eyes meet. His upper body is bare. I know every inch of it. “Show me more.”
A definitive shake of his head. “No, it’s your turn.”
“I have only one.”
“Then show me something else. We can get to that last if you want.”
My breath catches. This is happening.
I trail my fingers through his hair, taking my time to rake my nails along his scalp before drawing them down his neck and across his wide shoulder.
He hisses under his breath, and his eyes drift shut for a moment, as if he’s absorbing and imprinting this contact into the very fiber of his being.
I love touching Killian. Something happens to me when we touch. It’s a chemical thing that defies logic. So I don’t fight it. He lets me play, down over his chest, between the crevices created by his impressive six-pack. He hasn’t let himself go in the last four years. Not one little bit. Sleek muscles bunch beneath my fingers, and I actually feel him shake the lower I go.
“Stop fucking torturing me, baby. Show me what I want to see,” he growls, his urgent demand hot against my cheek.
My hands reluctantly fall from his body. I shouldn’t feel this mild panic about undressing in front of him. But I’m suddenly nervous about exposing myself completely to him. Perhaps I know that there will be no turning back this time. No abbreviated session we can fool ourselves into thinking doesn’t really count. Or maybe it’s that little nugget of doubt that suggests he won’t like this new, thinner, maybe lesser, version of me.
But then I look down into his eyes, and all I see is the same out-of-control fire that’s raging inside of me.
“Now, baby.”
I go to draw my top over my head, but at the last moment, I change my mind. Instead I pull my arm through one strap and then the other. I don’t deny that the slide of the cotton against my skin turns me on. I hook my fingers in the bunched-up fabric and slowly pull it down over my breasts. Lower lip caught between my teeth, I hold my breath and raise my head.
One look is all it takes to reassure me that Killian is as turned on by this version of me as he was by the old version. “Move your hair over your shoulder, let me see you properly,” he commands.
Even the act of shoving my hair over my shoulders turns me on.
When my top half is fully exposed to him, he jerks his chair closer and settles his hands on either side of my hips. His face is level with my breasts, and his fevered eyes are riveted on my hard pink nipples.
“Fuck, they’re even more beautiful than I remember.”
“My girls?” I shakily joke.
“My beauties,” he rasps. Still keeping his hands on the desk, he leans forward and gently blows on one nipple. The sensation powers down my body straight to my pussy. He repeats the action on the other peak, and I feel myself getting wetter.
“God, you’re exquisite. So goddamn beautiful.” The reverence in his voice is so deep and pure it draws a helpless moan from my throat. “I’m going to taste you now. Would you like that?”
I inhale, and my head bobs in an eager nod.
Hot blue eyes darts from my chest to my face, his avid gaze absorbing my every reaction. “Lean forward, baby. Squeeze your tits together with your arms for me.”
My heart flutters wildly as I comply. His request is a new one to me. In the past, he liked me to cup them for him. Now they feel extra-heavy, extra-sensitive as he moves that last excruciating inch and draws his tongue across one tight nub. We both groan. My eyes squeeze shut, and I feel like I’m drowning in fiery pleasure as he begins to lap at me. His tongue and my nipple are the only points of contact, and that is the most incredible, spine-melting feeling.
“Killian,” I sigh, unable to stop myself from articulating what he’s doing to me.
“So good, baby. So fucking good,” he growls around my nipple.
He transfers his attention to my other needy breast and creates the same insane magic before sucking it hard into his mouth. My ass grinds on the desk, my pussy desperate for relief against the ache clamoring deep inside.
I throw my head back, eager for more of what he’s doing. The helpless noises rising from my throat trigger an insane reaction in him. His ministrations turn even more ravenous, the suction on my flesh turning almost painful as he gorges on me. As the moan rips through me, and my hips undulate faster.
“Are you fucking my desk, sweetheart? If I keep doing what I’m doing, are you going to come all over it?”
He shouldn’t be able to make me blush. The things we’ve done with each other, to each other, should erase all embarrassment. And yet heat flows up my neck into my face. Because I feel like I’m on the edge. As if another swipe of his wicked tongue will set me off.
He pulls back a little and stares at me with wild eyes. “I asked you a question. Your body’s on fire, and you’re pumping those hips in that fast way you do when you’re so close. Should I keep kissing your gorgeous tits? Do you want to come on my desk or on my cock?” he asks as he swipes his tongue between my squeezed-together breasts.
I have to swallow a couple of times before I can answer. “On…on your cock.”
He groans long and deep. “Shit. That means we need to relocate. And…I don’t want to. Not just yet.” He turns his head to the side and sucks hard on one nipple.
Pleasure rains sweet fire on me. “Oh God!” The balloon of craving between my thighs threatens to burst wide open. The heavy petting against his front door yesterday barely took the edge off my insane need. It’s building up again, wilder, fiercer. I know it’s going to annihilate me. “Please…”
“Does it hurt, sweetheart?” he whispers hotly against my skin, and even the hot puff of his breath threatens to send me over the edge.
Desperate, I squeeze my thighs together. “Yes!”
He stands and yanks me off his desk. My eager arms and legs circle his shoulders and hips. He stumbles when my hot sex snuggles his rigid cock.
“Jesus!” His forehead rests against mine, and he breathes deep. When he raises his head, his face is a mask of barely-held-together control. “Hang on just a little longer, sweetheart. I’m not going to fucking blow my load propped up against the wall like a damn schoolboy this time. Much as I loved that hand job, the next time I taste heaven again will be in that tight, beautiful pussy.”
“Hurry. Please. I need you so much.”
His face slackens with an emotion that scrapes me raw deep in my heart. “God, Faith, I’ve waited so damn long to hear that.” His voice is filled with pain and joy, longing and hell.
I bury my face in his neck when he starts to move again. My eyes prickle, scaring me even more…throwing me back to the last time I truly wept. That memory has no place here, and yet where else can it belong but right here, between the two people who created it, even if one of them has no clue about it?
My heart squeezes as I hug my secret close.
My baby.
The precious child I lost when Paul Galveston drove a knife through my womb.
A sound rips through the room. Battered. Mournful. A wounded animal in its death throes. It’s torn from what remains of my soul.
Killian stops dead in his tracks. “Faith? What—?”
I shamelessly rub my damp sex against him. “Don’t stop. Please. The bed, Killian. Take us to bed.”
The scent of my arousal explodes between us. His breath shudders free, and he resumes walking. He can’t see me like this, so I call on every ounce of composure I can find. The moment we reach the bedroom, I spike my fingers through his hair and fuse my mouth to his. More than an eager participant, he devours my lips as he makes a beeline for the bed.
The landing isn’t smooth or sophisticated. We tangle and roll and fight not to break contact. His teeth nip at me, and my nails dig in where they land. I’m still wearing panties, my top is bunched around my waist, and he’s still wearing his pants. To undress we need to separate. Neither of us wants to.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he mumbles against my lips.
“What…?”
The sound of my panties ripping answers my question. He pulls the tattered scrap of satin from me without breaking our kiss. A soft rush of air between my pussy lips sends a shiver of anticipation through me. He rolls us over so I’m on top and growls against my lips, “Unzip me, baby.”
I don’t need a second prompt. My shaking hands delay the task a little longer than I want, but it helps that he doesn’t have boxers or briefs on beneath. His cock springs up, hot and heavy, and oh so gloriously hard into my hands. We both groan as I eagerly pump him from root to tip.
He finally tears his mouth from mine to grip my shoulders and hold me a little distance from him. We both look down at what I’m doing to him. “Christ, you do that so good,” he says through clenched teeth.
“You feel amazing.”
“And you look insanely gorgeous. And hungry. Do you want me?” he demands raggedly.
“Dying, Killian. I’m dying for you.”
“Show me,” he responds.
I nudge him between my thighs and tease his length with my wet sex. We both shudder. He looks up into my eyes, and we accept that we’re at the breaking point.
“Inside, darling. Put me inside you now,” he pleads.
“Yes.”
He holds me up, his strength effortlessly sexy, and I position him against my core. He releases me, and I sink down, sheathing him tight and hot and spine-meltingly magnificent.
There are no words to describe the alchemy of our coming together. No words to express the bruising perfection of Killian’s thick cock inside me. So we don’t bother to find them. We stare deep into each other’s eyes, breath suspended, absorbing the awe and majesty of it. Beneath me, he trembles from head to toe. My hands frame his face, his jaw, his neck before, unable to resist, I lower my mouth to his.
His hands finds my hips, lock me down, and he pistons inside me with a superb roll of his hips. We’re both shameless voyeurs, finding indecent pleasure in watching what our bodies do to each other. So, inevitably, we part again to stare at the perfect synchrony of pussy and cock.
“I’ve dreamed of having you like this again, watching you take my cock with your beautiful tits bouncing in my face.” He tilts his head up and catches one nipple in his mouth. “God, I’m fucking these tits the first chance I get. Then I’m eating your sublime cunt again. After that, that tight ass you’ve been torturing me with is mine.”
Everything I crave. “You sound like you have a list in mind,” I gasp through the thrusts.
“You have no fucking idea.” The words are a strained mess, punctuated by vicious thrusts inside me. Each one knocks the breath out of me and shoves ecstasy into me. I knew I wouldn’t last long. And while I mourn it being over for me way too soon, the storm approaching is one I’ve waited so long for. I want to be drenched to my very marrow. Then wrung completely dry. “Killian…”
He catches the warning in my voice. He kicks his pants away, and with a twist of his body, rolls me over onto my back. Muscle memory kicks in, and I raise my legs just as he shoves his arms beneath them. My butt is elevated off the bed and the next thrust drills into me, sparking stars across my vision.
“Killian!”
“Jesus!” His jaw is clenched tight, and sweat beads his forehead.
Fire races up from my toes, and I let loose the scream scrambling through my vocal cords. His thrusts turn lightning fast and drive me up the headboard. When my head begins to bang against the wood, I don’t give a shit.
I’m coming. Dear God, I don’t think I’ll survive the aftermath.
“You will. It’ll be fucking earth-shattering. But you will, baby. And it’ll be so good. I promise.”
My eyes widen when I realize I spoke the words aloud.
I see his strained smile. And then my eyes roll. Bliss, unstrained and blindingly powerful, surges through me. My cunt spasms with extra-enthusiastic vigor.
Above me, Killian tenses. “Fuck, you grip me so tight! Shit, I can’t hold on,” he gasps, and then I feel his lips brush mine. “Open your eyes, beautiful. I need you to watch with me.”
I drag my eyes open, watch his cock push inside my eager pussy, and ripple through my orgasms. Each time he emerges slicker, our pleasure is heightened. He supports me with the sheer strength of his lower body, keeping us locked together as we fuck each other straight into paradise.
We collapse back onto the bed in a mass of boneless limbs, incoherent words, and cum. He gathers me into his arms, and I drape myself over him, spent and useless.
After an age of gliding his hand through my hair, Killian exhales heavily. “God, Faith, that was beyond beautiful.”
I nod around the panic creeping into my heart.
His other hand drifts down my back. And encounters my top. He chuckles. “We never got around to taking this off.”
“Hmm.”
“Let’s take care of that now.”
A thought attempts to shove its way through my sex-hazed brain. But it never makes it. Killian pushes me back against the pillows and drags the top up my body. I weakly fight free of it just as he hisses.
“Fuck!” I keep my eyes closed for one more vain second. Because I have to open them, look down, and see what he’s looking at.
The puckered, angry-looking skin is just below my navel. Only an inch and a half across but it’s deep, and even though it’s completely healed, I experience a lingering pain whenever I touch it. The doctor described it as phantom pain. I call it the guilty reminder of the consequences of reaching for the forbidden.
I exhale shakily when Killian’s fingers caress it reverently. His face has lost its healthy, vibrant color, and his jaw is set in concrete. He shakes his head a couple of times, visibly battling his fury. “God, baby, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s…I…”
Words I can never utter stay locked in my heart as he lowers his head and grants me an anointment I don’t deserve. “We’ll find the bastard. I promise. We’ll find him, and I’ll put him down.”
The vow is deep and solemn. He touches the scar one more time with his hands and then with his mouth.
Then he worships his way up my body.
And I fight back tears for the second time tonight.