Chapter 5
Zade pressed his face against her mound, nuzzling the soft, wet slickness of her tender folds, savoring her sweet taste. Aftershocks still rippled through her, easing slowly down to panting, trembling stillness. Her hands were still wound through his hair. Gripping like she didn’t want to let go.
He didn’t dare look up. He felt naked and raw and it was going to show. He didn’t want her to see that. Didn’t want anyone to see it.
What the fuck just happened?
They had spiraled way out of control, starting from someplace deep inside him. It was like being possessed. She was oxygen. He was drowning.
And this was nuts. He had to stay on top of himself somehow.
Yeah, good luck with that, with your face buried between her legs.
So damn good. He could have spent hours playing with her pussy, licking and nuzzling until it beamed. Tender and sticky as a sun-ripened peach.
He loosened his grip on her beautiful bare ass, gave those soft, juicy girl parts a farewell tongue-kiss, and slid his face up, pressing it against her warm, smooth belly. Still hiding from her.
He’d never felt anything like it. Her orgasm had torn through his own mind. Blinding fireworks, spinning colors in his head. She shone, and so did he, by reflex. She’d lit him up with all that light.
But some things were better left shrouded in darkness.
He bought himself some time nuzzling her navel. Inhaling the sweet fragrance of her shampoo, soap, and lotion, mixed with her unique body scent.
He’d recognize it from miles away if the wind was right. One whiff and he’d come at a dead run.
She was stroking his hair. Caressing the part of his face that was not plastered against her petal-smooth skin. Her touch felt great.
“Zade,” she whispered. “That was amazing. I had no idea … ”
Neither had he. He rose to his feet. Her skirt was still bunched up against her middle. Nothing covered her down below but those cock-teasing striped thigh-highs. He was captivated by that dreamy smile as she offered herself up with sensual abandon to his hungry eyes, his greedy hands.
“You’ll get cold,” he said. “You should cover up.”
“But it feels good.” Her voice had a wondering tone. “Everything feels good.”
That ratcheted his hard-on even harder and higher. His cock ached and pulsed. Sweat trickled down his back.
Something snapped, pushed too far, wound too tight. Out of nowhere, they were madly at it again. No skillful approach, no seductive circling, just wild, frantic kissing, like they’d die if they didn’t get closer to each other right now.
The velvet softness of her skin, the hot curves and silken heat beneath her skirt rolled over what was left of his impulse control. He lifted her up, clutching her warm ass cheeks in his hands. She clutched back, pulling him against herself. The hard bulge of his cock pressed her belly.
That radiant, soft-focus glow on her face blew what was left of his mind.
Sweet surrender. He could have her. Here and now. She’d let him do her on the roof, in the rain, up against a brick wall, and it would be so fucking good.
He reached further down, stroking the wet seam of her pussy with his finger. She moved against him, and his finger slid inside her. Plush, clenching hot heaven. She shivered and sighed, wiggling around his hand. So wet. It would be a tight fit, but he could make it work for her. A slick, hot plunge and a hard, pounding ride, straight toward their ultimate release. His heart thundered with urgency.
A flash of anger intruded on his lust-fueled daze, disorienting him. Where the fuck did she get off, dropping her guard like that? He could be a monster from a radioactive swamp for all she knew. But what was his problem, anyhow? She was playing right into his hands.
This was so messed up. So fucking backwards.
Eyes on the prize. This was about Luke. He wanted inside this girl’s mind. He had to know if anything in there could be useful for finding Luke. He’d get her home and bone her brains out. Take the edge off so he could think straight.
And then he would get his goddamn head back in the game.
He steeled himself, and slid his finger out of her.
“Don’t break the spell,” she said.
He didn’t want to. She was so beautiful, head thrown back, eyes closed. That pale mass of hair moving with every gust of wind. The sweep of dark lashes, shadowing her cheek.
He released her skirt. It dropped heavily down around her ankles. “We should get you back down to earth,” he said.
“But I like it up here in the sky. I don’t ever want to come back down.”
“We all have to come down to earth sometime.”
She must have heard something in his voice, because she went very still. Her eyes opened, but she didn’t look at him.
“I get it.” Her voice was low. “This is the part where you tell me that this went too far, too fast, and you want to walk it back.”
“Hell no.” It exploded out of him louder than he intended. “I’m not walking anything back.”
Her smile returned full force. “Good,” she said.
He buttoned her coat. Couldn’t trust himself to speak right now.
Most of the Midlanders had scrubbed the worst effects of the brain-stim patterns out of their minds, by hard work and the passage of time, but he and Luke were special cases. The control codes programmed into them were too deeply embedded in his and Luke’s core ASP to eradicate. Even if he’d known what the damn codes were, which he didn’t.
If Obsidian ever identified him as one of the Midland rebels with control codes, he would be at their mercy. Which meant that all of them would be.
And Obsidian had no mercy.
Simone’s phone rang again.
The hell-chimes were faint, but they got to her in the same terrifying way. Her smile faded to a mask, her eyes froze wide. He felt it coming down on her again. The cold, the shock, the pain. The noise. Her heart labored. He’d seen her turn that phone off. The bastards must have rigged her device so they could turn it on remotely.
It made him angry. Those assholes. Hurting her, using her, and she had no clue. They’d left her in the dark, alone and confused.He was going to rip their guts out for doing that to her.
She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out the phone and stared down at the glowing display. She began, robotically, to lift it to her ear.
“No!” He snatched the phone from her hand and hurled it at the wall.
It smashed and scattered into pieces for the second time that evening, but this time, he stomped the pieces. Ground them with his heel. That piece-of-shit phone wasn’t coming back from the dead another time. Rest in peace, motherfucker.
He looked up at Simone, hoping he hadn’t made matters worse. When the means of fulfilling the compulsion pattern were removed, things could go either way. It depended on how well-established the pattern was. How far down into the programming it went. And the subject’s personality and character.
Simone was struggling for breath, but there was a fierce, hard light in her eyes. She wasn’t going under. She was still fighting.
Solid as a rock. Fucking wow.
He seized her, hugging her close, since that seemed to have helped the last time. “You using your talisman?” he whispered into her ear.
She gave him a jerky nod and swayed forward, resting her forehead on his shoulder. It didn’t take as long for her to wrestle it down this time.
He knew they were in the clear when her arms went up and her fingers dug into his back, pulling him close. Safe and sound.
He tilted her face up, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You okay?”
“Yeah. The talisman helped.” She vibrated with something like laughter. “But Zade, what the hell? You killed my phone.”
“Yeah,” he said savagely.
He couldn’t think of anything to say, not being free to explain himself. He had no way to justify going apeshit and destroying her stuff.
Chill. Shine it on. Work the man magic angle. Work it hard.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just lost it for a minute. I’ll buy you a new phone tomorrow. The best one going. Without that evil-ass ringtone.”
“Okay. I’ve wanted to smash that phone since I got it. It’s just your standard smartphone, identical to millions of others. But I never did. I guess I was afraid to … ”
He picked up the thought where her voice trailed off. “To look like a raving head-case who forgot to take her meds?”
“Well, yeah,” she agreed. “That about sums it up.”
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said. “But that phone just had to die.”
“Just don’t touch my stuff again. Ever. Clear?”
“Crystal. Never again. Swear to God.” He hugged her for emphasis.
The door to this building’s stairwell was newer than the one from which they had originally emerged, but it yielded quickly to his lock-picking skills. In just seconds, they were hurrying down the staircase of a building that smelled industrial. He followed his ASP amped sense of direction, based on satellite photos in his data banks. He could look at any roof in any major city in the world and calculate exactly what stairwell would let him out closest to his Jeep.
He helped her into the passenger side and got in, blasting the heat. Even after what had just happened, it would be dickish to make self-serving assumptions.
“I promised you dinner,” he said. “We could still find a restaurant.”
“No.”
Okay, fuck dinner. He’d figure out some other context in which to ask leading questions about her life so he could puzzle out her relationship with Obsidian. The plan had been to take things slowly, wine her, dine her, make her smile, and then take her home and kiss her at the front door. Patience was the plan.
The plan had not involved licking her to a screaming orgasm on a rooftop.
He had to keep his defenses strong. Obsidian had loaded him up with insane combat skills and reflexes, but his control codes could fell him. Three simple word sequences: a stun code, a release code, and a kill code. The stun code froze him, the release code undid that paralysis, and the kill code stopped his heart. No second chances. He didn’t have the luxury of going nuts for a beautiful woman.
One fatal weakness was enough for any man.
But there she sat next to him in the dark car, glowing at him. So damn beautiful, with that sensual hunger in her eyes. The sweet taste of her still lingering on his lips.
He just wanted to give in and let this hot, mysterious beauty with the mesmerizing eyes take him down, down, down. All the way. He’d go. Willingly.
He stared at her mutely. Waiting for her to say it.
“Your place,” she said. “Now.”
Yes. His mind was blanked out by the heat in her eyes. But it would be criminally irresponsible to drive with this much of his blood supply diverted from his brain and racing madly to the party spot.
“What?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing,” he said hastily. “I wanted to be sure that I hadn’t, ah—”
“Not at all,” she said. “I want more of that. Lots more. All night long.”
He blew out an unsteady breath. “Okay.”
“Is something wrong?” Her voice sounded silky. Lightly amused.
“Just give me a minute,” he pleaded. “I’m so turned on, I can’t even think.”
“So don’t think.”
He caught his breath, clenched his fists. He squeezed his eyes shut. Got a grip. “Locked door. Soft bed. Clean sheets.” He ticked them off one by one. “I need those three things for this to go any further. I’m not fucking you against a wall or in a bar bathroom or a back alley behind a dumpster. Or in a car, either, for that matter. So don’t push me.”
She got up on her knees, leaned over the big console, and kissed him. A hot, juicy, open-mouthed kiss. “You pushed me first,” she whispered.