Unleashing the Storm Read online

  He hadn’t told Dev just how violated he’d felt. This had been the second time the ghost had attempted to hold him down and touch him—the first time, back in September at the mansion, Kat had arrived just in time.

  At Dev’s, the spirit had been too strong even for Kat to do much. The only reason the spirit stopped when it did was because it really wanted Dev, and no substitute would do.

  “I do give a shit, Creed. Or else I wouldn’t be here.”

  “You’re here because you want an orgasm,” he said before he could stop himself, and fuck, that wasn’t like him at all.

  He knew Annika was younger than most women her age, less experienced socially because of her upbringing. She’d been a trained killer for the CIA, hadn’t been on dates or to the prom, and he had no right to try to corner her. “Shit, Ani, I didn’t mean that. I just…I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  Still, even now, when she reached out to touch his arm, he shrank back slightly, hating himself for that reaction.

  “So, what? You’re so pissed at me I can’t even touch you?”

  “That’s not it,” he said, but she’d already started to walk out of his house. “Annika, wait.” He moved off the couch, losing his blanket as he grabbed her arm. She swung around and clocked him in the jaw, an automatic response to the threat of capture.

  He didn’t let go of her arm, even though her left hook was nothing short of amazing. She’d connected with his right cheekbone, and despite the fact that her touch had been a hit, his right side began to tingle in that good way he’d been missing.

  “Fuck you,” she spat, and then stopped and stared. Because he’d been naked under the blanket and her eyes were drawn down between his legs. He was a big man all around, but that wasn’t what held her interest. No, she was drawn to the tattoos that covered his right ball and half his cock, loved to get between his legs and spend time tracing the pattern with her tongue, and Christ, he wanted her there right now.

  “Put your mouth on me,” he said, and he saw the resistance in her eyes even as she licked her lips. He put a slight pressure on her arm as he spoke again. “Now, Annika. I want you on your knees in front of me. And don’t lie to me—I know you want it too.”

  Her lips parted, her nostrils flared and she sank to her knees slowly. He braced himself for her touch, prayed that he was going to be able to handle it. He wanted Annika to wipe that spirit’s touch from him.

  She dug her fingers into his hips, licked the tip of his cock and then took him deep into her mouth. He realized he’d been holding his breath when he heard his own long, low groan, and he let his eyes close as she continued to heal him with her talented, warm lips and tongue.

  When she grazed her teeth lightly over the ridge at the head of his cock, his right side began to switch temperatures, varying between freezing and hotter than hell. He put his hands on her shoulders, not sure if he could steady himself like that.

  But Annika had stopped, was staring at him again. “Has this ever happened before?” she asked, and he was about to answer no, when he realized she wasn’t talking about the temperature shifts.

  A glance down at his chest and leg revealed that his tattoos seemed to be morphing, nearly moving across his skin, as if the pattern was trying to tell him something.

  Annika got to her feet, held his six-foot-five frame steady. “What’s wrong? Please, Creed, tell me.”

  His mouth was dry, his throat tight, and all he could do was let her support him. “Just take me to bed, baby. Please just fuck me and don’t ask me any more questions tonight,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  She didn’t hesitate, tugged at him wordlessly until he followed her up the stairs to the loft area that was the entire second floor. Open and airy, with windows overlooking the valley all around and a large, king-sized bed in the middle of the room, it was one of Creed’s favorite places to be.

  “Too much light,” he murmured, and after Annika helped him onto the bed, she found the controls for the curtains and quickly sheathed the room in darkness, rolling down the blackout shades.

  He heard her stripping—normally, he’d tell her to slow down so he could enjoy every single reveal of her toned, curvy body. But now, in the total darkness, all he wanted was her warm flesh on his, and he hoped her electric current was set to high.

  “Ani, hurry,” he heard himself say.

  She crawled onto him, her breasts pressed against his chest, his arousal pressing her belly. “I’m here, Creed.”

  “Cold. I’m so cold. Can you shock me?”

  “You know that doesn’t work…”

  “Try it,” he insisted.

  But she ignored him in favor of sliding his cock inside of her, where it was hot and wet and it hit him better than any jolt of electricity. Both of them groaned loudly, as she took him to the hilt, his hips came up off the bed and his right side began to warm again, finally.

  “Oh, my God—Creed, I can’t wait,” she cried out, but he was already ahead of her. His balls tightened, his cock throbbed and he released inside of her, clutching at the sheets as the orgasm rolled through his entire body.

  He was vaguely aware that she’d come too—hard, her sex milking him dry. But he soon realized that it was as if the electricity he’d felt when he entered her was not going to let either of them off the hook so easily. Because he remained rock hard and she appeared to be in the middle of some kind of amazing, multiple orgasm.

  “SO…GOOD,” SHE GROANED. “Oh, God…yes.”

  “Harder. Ride me harder.”

  The sound of his voice heightened the climax, her fifth, sixth…she didn’t know. She’d lost count. Creed always made her lose count.

  His hands cupped her breasts, and his thumbs rasped over her nipples, which had grown more sensitive since she’d met Creed than they’d been in her entire life. Spasms took her, breakers on top of breakers, and as the waves of ecstasy melted away, Creed thrust upward so fiercely she screamed with the force of it.

  “I love when you scream for me.” He arched into her again, his cock driving deep and stretching her wide at its thick root, its steely hardness hitting all the right places. “Only me.”

  Yeah, but was she the only woman who screamed for him? She didn’t know if he was celibate while she was off on missions.

  She didn’t expect it, didn’t ask for it, but he’d better not make the mistake of letting her come face-to-face with one of the biker-babe skanks she’d seen him with in the past.

  Not that she was jealous. Like she’d told Dev, this was just sex.

  And what great sex it was. She smiled and ran her hands over the ripples in his abs and then up, to his chest, which still ran hot on one side and cooler on the other. The tattoos seemed to move beneath her palms, living things that shifted just under the skin, though she swore at times she could feel an outline. Testing, she sent a small shock into the tattooed side of his body, and that made them writhe more, angry.

  Still impaled on Creed’s shaft, she flicked on the nightstand lamp and watched the designs on his chest, neck and face morph from Native American symbols to faces. Creepy faces with jagged teeth, and narrowed eyes that seemed to look straight at her. If they thought they could scare her…she sent a shock into one of them, and it silently screamed as though in agony before shifting back to the original design.

  “What did you do?” he breathed.

  “A little shock.”

  Throwing back his head so the tendons in his neck strained, he closed his eyes. “Not…a good idea.”

  “You said—”

  “I was wrong.”

  His hand slid up her back to her scalp, and he brought her mouth to his. Slipping his tongue between her lips, he clicked his piercing against her teeth so it sent a rare shock sizzling through her bones. Nothing shocked her, not in the electrical sense, but sometimes Creed’s body jewelry acted as a conduit between them—he often said that if one of his piercings touched her when she climaxed, he felt her release.

  Which exp
lained why his favorite way to make her come was with his tongue, and she wasn’t about to complain.

  In a fluid move she’d not believed a body as big as his could master, he rolled her, pinned her to the bed as he plunged deep. He could be rough sometimes, because she enjoyed it, but this was different. Urgent.

  Creed grunted and slammed into her, shoving her a few inches up the bed, so her hair brushed the headboard. Every stroke brought her closer to another peak, every one of his panting breaths made blood roar in her ears. She loved the sounds he made, so primal, so raw.

  He increased his pace, something she hadn’t thought was possible. She clung to him, gripped his shoulders so hard she was sure she’d leave marks. He rode her like his life depended on it, and when he hissed, “I need you to touch me,” she wasn’t sure what he wanted.

  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 o
f 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.

  CHAPTER

  Sixteen

  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.”