Shards of Hope

Chapter 49

IT WAS AFTERNOON in Venice by the time Zaira was able to go off shift, and though she’d been up for well over twenty-four hours, she went to bed with a deep sense of frustration at how little she’d unearthed about the conspiracy targeting the Arrows.

The pathologist had just confirmed that Jim’s brain, while showing signs of Halcyon damage, wasn’t the Swiss cheese that scans showed his female partner’s to be. Even after a full detox, Olivia might never salvage large blocks of memory. Jim, on the other hand, might well have made a total recovery.

According to the pathologist, the male may have been “one of the lucky few who have a kind of natural protection against long-term Halcyon damage.”

“Which is why he had to die,” she said to Aden when he joined her in her room ten minutes after her own return. “If it was Blake, he was very careful about it.”

“No luck with surveillance feeds from security and street cameras?” Sitting on the bed, he took off his boots and socks.

She shook her head and, having already changed, stood in front of the closed door and indulged her need by watching him. Boots set aside, socks beside them, he rose and removed his belt to drop it by the boots. “Beggars belief to think this situation is unconnected to our abductions.”

“Agreed. Two different entities suddenly after the squad? I don’t buy it.” Zaira blew out a breath and watched him strip off his T-shirt. “How are things in the valley?”

“On track.” He stretched, rubbing the back of his neck, his body flexing.

Breath catching in her throat, she clenched her stomach. “How do we do this? What are the rules?”

“We make the rules.” He closed the distance between them, crowding her up against the door in a way she’d permit no one else. With Aden it felt as if she was basking in sunshine, her body turning molten.

Running her hands up his sides, she shivered when he dipped his head to kiss her throat. On the PsyNet, her shields began to fall, but she’d built fail-safe after fail-safe since RainFire. No one would know her emotions, know that he was her greatest weakness.

She held his head against her, craving the contact, the sensations he aroused in a body that, before him, had never understood it had the capacity for such pleasure. But as her mind began to haze, she felt the hard thrust of his erection against her abdomen. “Do you want full sexual contact?” Zaira wasn’t sure if she could trust even Aden to invade her body in that way.

Aden lifted his head, palms braced on either side of her shoulders. “Sexual penetration is the final step. Many more precede it.”

“How do you know?”

“There are manuals.”

“Manuals?” She gripped fistfuls of his hair. “I want to read them.”

“If you get in bed,” he said, his lips against hers, “I’ll download them to your organizer.”

“Blackmail?”

“Negotiation.”

The rage in her wanted to curl around him. “These better be worth it,” she said, sliding into bed as he found the slim-line device on a small shelf by the door and came to join her, his body sleek and strong and healthy, his olive-toned skin warm.

Tapping the screen, he brought up files from his own account, then lay down on his back beside her, holding up the organizer so they could both see the screen. “This bed needs to be bigger,” he said, and lifted one arm so she could use it as a pillow.

She turned into his body so that she was on her side and he wrapped his arm around her. It made her feel precious again. Worth protecting. “As long as you don’t go far, we can get a bigger bed.”

That look again, the one that said an inferno blazed below the calm waters of him. “Vasic passed on this package of data,” he said, his voice rough. “It apparently originated with Judd, but Vasic’s added to it, as did Stefan.”

• • •

I’M happy you need it had been Vasic’s only comment when Aden raised the subject of physical bonding.

“That’s ridiculous,” Zaira said suddenly, her eyes on the screen. “The pulse point of the wrist cannot be an erogenous zone. It’s just like any other part of the arm.”

Aden’s body grew taut. Placing the organizer beside him, he picked up her hand and bent it slightly back to expose the delicate skin above her pulse. He didn’t touch it with his mouth as the literature had suggested. Instead, he used a fingertip to map the tracery of fine veins beneath the skin. “Your skin is softer than mine,” he said. “Did you know that?”

“Yes.” Warm breath against him, her eyes trained on what he was doing to her wrist. “I like the way you feel against me.”

His body grew impossibly harder at her confession, but he continued to trace her veins with a fingertip. It was difficult to hold his concentration, especially with Zaira’s unfettered breasts pressed against his side, the thin barrier of her black tee no impediment to feeling the lushness of her. The fact that her nipples were hard ratcheted up his primal response.

Long conditioned to suppress all sexual desire, his penis was now very definitely receiving signals from the rest of him and it liked those signals despite the almost painful intensity of the sensation.

Bringing Zaira’s wrist closer as his erection throbbed, he licked out very gently over the pulse point, then blew on it.

Her pulse skipped, fingers curling into her palm. “Perhaps the manual writers do know something,” she admitted.

Instead of releasing her, he put his lips to her skin, licked out again. She tasted of Zaira, of power contained in a small form, of ice and of steel. Blowing on her skin once more, he released her. She didn’t pull away, allowing her hand to fall on his chest, over the racing beat of his heart.

Her fingers curved, her nails grazing his skin.

It was too much provocation.

He had her under him before he consciously processed what he was about to do. Halting with his weight braced above her, he looked at her face, into her eyes. “If you ever want me to stop, just say.”

“Why would I do that when I can just break one of your ribs instead?”

And Aden found he knew how to smile after all, his lips tugging up at the corners. “That’ll work, too.”

A small fist mock-punched him in the abdomen. “I wouldn’t hurt you.” Thunder in her gaze.

“You are so beautiful.” The words came out raw.

Freezing, she looked up at him for a long, long time. “You mean it,” she whispered. “You really do.”

He didn’t understand why she’d even question that, but he didn’t have time for a discussion. Not today. Bending his head, he kissed her. She opened for him immediately, one of her legs curling over his hip in a distinctively possessive act. Reaching down, he pulled up her other leg until she was locked around him, her arms wrapped around his neck as she held him to her.

“Mine,” she said on a kiss.

The single word branded him to the soul. “Yes.”

When he allowed her to feel the weight of his lower body, she slid one of her hands through his hair to grip at it. He groaned at the tug of sensation, at the sign that his wild, dangerous lover was with him every step of the way. Pushing up her tee, he drank in the silken feel of her skin, shaped her rib cage. How can you be so small and so strong?

Her answer was to bite down on his lip. Not hard enough to hurt or to draw blood. Just enough to send an electrical current directly to his erection. Shuddering, he shifted his hand to close it over the warm globe of her breast.

She jerked, nails digging into his nape. “Don’t stop.”

The husky order sliced like a scalpel through any control he might’ve retained. Raising his head to look at her face as he touched her, Aden saw her eyes flutter shut and his entire body turned into one big pulse. Giving Zaira pleasure was an intoxication, her trust in him a drug. With no one else would she allow herself to be this vulnerable—that knowledge alone was enough to drive him to the edge.

When the scrape of his thumb over her nipple elicited a throaty moan, he knew he should file the response away for later retrieval and future use, but his brain wasn’t functioning too well. All he wanted to do was taste her, touch her, devour her.

Lowering his head on the roar of need, one hand under her back to arch her up toward him, he sucked at her nipple. Zaira twisted under him, her legs sliding over his body, but she didn’t push him away. Continuing to lick and suck at her, he drank in the small sounds she made and suddenly understood that he had a deeply primitive core that gloried in his ability to give his lover what she needed.

“What—” Zaira sucked in a breath as he switched to her neglected breast. “What should I do?” A gasp. “For you?”

Drunk on her, Aden didn’t reply.

Shuddering as he grazed his teeth over her breast, she said, “Do you want me to take off my top?”

Aden had to stop, tense every one of his muscles, his penis ready to explode. “Yes,” he finally gritted out.

Reaching down, she tugged off the soft fabric. He didn’t see what she did with it, his eyes on her naked upper body. She appeared even more delicate this way, the skin of her breasts pale and already marked by his caresses. Closing his hand over the flushed flesh of one breast, he bent his head to the other, not yet done with his self-imposed task.

The sound that came from her was a shocked combination of pleasure and sweet need, her arousal damp and hot in the air.

It turned Aden into a creature of pure want. He took Zaira’s mouth in harsh demand. Arms and legs locking around him again, she met him kiss for kiss, their bodies rocking instinctively against one another and their breathing choppy. He drank her up and demanded more, his greed for her voracious.

ZAIRA didn’t know how to process this much pleasure, this much sensation, but neither did she want to stop. Especially when Aden was so totally out of control. She’d always thought he was beautiful, but seeing him like this, his cheekbones flushed and his hair falling around his face as he gorged on her, she had no words to describe the way he affected her.

“Yes,” she said.

Eyes jet black and glittering with need, he shook his head, as if to clear it for thought. “Yes?”

“Full sexual contact,” she whispered, running her fingers over his kiss-swollen lips. “I want it.” Even in the midst of such unadulterated pleasure, part of her knew this was a moment out of time. If she was lucky, the madness might not live in her blood, but that didn’t alter her nature, didn’t alter her feral possessiveness where Aden was concerned.

A possessiveness that in itself was like insanity.

“Zaira.” His body trembled from the vicious control he’d managed to assert over himself. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She wanted every part of him she could hold, at least for these hours where she was sane and rational and not a monster—because she wasn’t sure she could hang on to her reason as she spiraled further and further into emotion. Further and further into the extraordinary, deadly, powerful man who was her lover. “I want you.” Drawing him closer, she pressed her mouth to his.

Kissing was a wonderful, wonderful thing. She loved being able to taste him, loved being able to feel his breath as the perspiration-damp heat of his body rubbed against hers. It was so intimate, more intimate than anything but his mind open to her own. She slid hers open just enough for him and he swept inside to deepen the already intense intimacy of the contact.

Afraid time was running out, that she wouldn’t get to experience the entirety of this sexual inferno with him, she moved her hands to his waistband and undid the button, lowered the zip. He cooperated, kicking off his pants, but one of his hands still cradled her jaw and neck, the other on her breast as he continued to kiss her as if he couldn’t get enough.

Zaira. Zaira. Zaira.

Something fell dully to the floor as his mind burned with her name, and she realized it must be the organizer with the manuals. She should’ve probably read those so she’d know what she was doing, but all she wanted to do was touch Aden. Rubbing against him, she made a frustrated sound. Aden.

He didn’t ask her what she wanted, just lifted off her, hooked his fingers into the sides of her pants and panties and pulled. His breath caught as she was exposed and he paused with her clothing halfway down her thighs, but she twisted to remind him she wanted to be naked.

Jaw clenched, he got the items off. When he would’ve come back down, she touched her toes to his briefs, her leg bent. Getting the hint, he got off the bed and stripped off the briefs before returning to his position over her. She barely glimpsed him. I wanted to admire you.

ZAIRA’S words almost ripped away what infinitesimal control Aden had managed to claw back so he could be certain she was ready. Later, he said, one of his hands on the side of her face as he held her in place for another kiss. This one was raw, deep, almost rough, but she didn’t push him away. Wrapping her legs around him instead, she arched into him.

Wet heat slid over his cock, her arousal unhidden.

His heart slammed against his ribs.

Then she began to kiss his shoulders, his neck, and he knew he was one more caress away from losing it. Running his hand down her side, he insinuated it between their bodies in an effort to distract her—and pleasure her. “I have to make sure you’re ready.” That part of the manual he’d memorized; if Zaira was giving him the gift of her trust, he would do nothing to abuse it.

She moaned at the first brush of his rough-skinned fingertips. “I am ready.” Nails digging into his shoulders, she writhed under him. “But . . . Aden . . . what . . .”

Sweat broke out over his body at the now wordless gasps that spilled from her mouth as he stroked his fingers through her liquid-soft folds to find her clitoris and rub. His fingers were wet with her, the lubrication both easing his way and driving him crazy. When he moved his hand lower, to nudge at the entrance to her body, she bit him on the arm.

“No?” he asked, his muscles so tense it felt as if they would snap.

Why did you stop?

Her response made his penis jump. Sliding one finger into her in a slow, relentless push that made her moan, he pressed his thumb against her clitoris at the same time. “Like this?”

Hips moving against him, she scored his back with her nails. He fisted his free hand against the bed at the silent answer and moved his finger in and out of her while caressing her clitoris in a ragged motion that echoed his harsh breathing.

Zaira didn’t seem to mind, her body squeezing tight around his finger less than half a minute later. Biting down on the back of her own fist to muffle her scream, she melted around him. He was at once deeply, unashamedly proud of giving her such extreme pleasure, and on the verge of breaking.

Withdrawing his finger from her body as he called on every ounce of his Arrow training to hold on to his splintered control, he cupped her damp heat and sought her mouth for a kiss. She opened for him, her hands tight in his hair as she claimed him in return.

Licking her tongue over his before she broke the kiss, she raised her eyelashes. “Now,” she said, and shifted her body so that his penis nudged at her wet heat.

Aden’s brain short-circuited.

ZAIRA could feel Aden’s ragged control in the painful tension of his muscles, but he still found the willpower to say, “You’re certain?” His voice was hoarse, the hand he’d placed once more on the side of her face tender.

Her body spasmed on emptiness even as her heart, that battered, twisted organ, ached. “Yes.”

He didn’t ask again, just gripped her under the hip with one strong hand and pushed the tip of his erection into her passion-swollen entrance.

“Aden.”

Sliding his other hand under her neck to hold it gently but with unmistakable possessiveness, he said, “This’ll hurt.”

Kissing him again in answer, she spoke to him mind to mind. I choose this pain, she said. I choose you.

Zaira. Her name held so much passion, so much emotion she almost couldn’t bear it.

Except it filled her up to overflowing . . . and then Aden filled her. It was slow and hard and deep and it took her breath away. A tear rolled down her face and it had nothing to do with pain, everything to do with the emotions that clawed her heart. Wrapping her arms around Aden’s neck, she pressed her cheek to his.

Zaira, are you—

Don’t stop, she whispered. Don’t stop.

Stroking his hand over her thigh, he pulled back, then pushed in again, even slower this time. It felt . . . Zaira’s body arched, her mind splintered. But she wasn’t lost. Aden was there around her, with her.

It’s always been you.

His voice, his words penetrated the cascade of sensation taking her over and it was too much. Too beautiful. Too precious. Too wonderful. Skin threatening to burst, she held on to him as tight as she could and she hoped she had the will to fight the rage and the broken need that lived in her, with or without the madness.

For him, she’d fight. For Aden. Always, for Aden.