Danger Mine: A Base Branch Novel (13 page)

Khani dangled in the open air. The white water rolled beneath. She turned her face away from the pit, from the past. Her chin lifted to the light, to the future. To King.

Three feet at a time he heaved her out of hell. His fingers crawled down her arms over her back to her belt. He hauled her over the moist leaves and onto his chest. She collapsed there. Her arms draped over his, laid out at his sides in surrender. Her legs splayed between his. Steam rolled off their bodies in waves. Each rapid breath rocked her.

Too soon he shifted. “Let me look at you.”

Her back met the ground. It was all it took for her brain to kick-start. They didn’t have time to rest. They didn’t have time to snuggle on the forest floor or anywhere else.

“I’m fine.” She bolted upright, using her left hand as leverage. “Son-of-a…” Khani yanked her palm from the ground only to have King yank it from her.

“The hell you are. That looks ugly.” He picked a leaf from the bloody mess.

“It’s just a cut.” She tugged at her hand. His wrist locked around her arm and his gaze flicked to hers. “It’s an ugly cut,” she hedged. His bushy brow hitched so high he could catch a ride with the damn thing. “Fine,” she relented. “Clean it, if you must, but make it fast.”

He lifted her wrist and dragged her into his arms. His mouth was hard and more insistent than ever before. Sure he’d kissed her, but he always let her set the tempo. King’s lips moved so deliberately, so insistently over hers, she forgot to demand control.

With her limbs quaking as they were, she couldn’t have taken it if she’d wanted it. But the craziest thing was she didn’t want it. For the first time in her life, Khani submitted to herself. She let authority slip through her fingers. Her arms relaxed. She let King take her mouth. She let him take control.

His hand firmed at her nape. He tilted her head for better access. The arm around her waist pulled her closer. The ridge of his pecs pressed against her nipples. Hot breath zipped across her lips. His tongue followed.

Khani’s mouth opened at his command. His tongue coiled around hers, mating with insistent strokes and tugs. He kissed her past the pain, past sanity, to a place she’d never been before. Peace.

He levered back and stared into her eyes.

She smiled. “I suddenly have a new found appreciation for your muscles—and my desk job.”

S
he hiked
four miles through snow, ice, and the thatched mess of the forest with wet boots and a bloody hand. With every step she took Street loved her a little harder. His cock did too, though he seriously tried to shove those thoughts out of his mind. Khani had just opened up to him, really dropped the shield, spread her arms wide, and let the bullets fall where they may. He wasn’t about to stomp all over that by trying to seduce her in a cramped tent in an even more confined sleeping bag in the middle of Alaska.

“Look at this,” Khani chirped.

A narrow stream sprang seemingly from nowhere. It followed the valley they weaved through, bending and coursing with the rocky earth.

“It has to be one of the branches from the run-off.”

“I want to dive in.”

“Did you miss the glacial run-off part?”

Khani ground her feet into the earth and pivoted on him, her brows drawn tight. “I haven’t had a shower in an entire day. My make-up is probably puddled around my chin. And I can smell myself. Right now, scrubbing off with snow sounds good. I can’t feel my feet anyway.” She shrugged.

“Seriously?” He cleared half the distance between them in one step.

Her hands came up. “Not seriously. I can feel them just fine. Pins and needles.”

“We need to stop,” he said because if he didn’t she’d probably stumble her way through the pitch, sink holes, and animal traps all the way to Zeke.

“This looks like a good place for the tent.” She pointed to a flat area with a row of toothpick trees on one side.

Street looked from the area to the red-cheeked woman he’d happily give his life for and blinked.

“What?” Her pack hit the ground with a thud. She rolled her shoulders in large circles and arched her neck this way and that.

“I thought I’d have to club you over the head and tie you to a tree to get you to stop.”

“Remember I’m the one who does the tying.” Her sinister grin flashed.

He wrapped his hand around the rope at his waist and reeled her in, the most tenacious catch of his life. “You sure about that?”

“Technicality.” She walked to him, led by the rope cinched around her middle.

“I’ll take it any way I can get it.”

“Is that desperation I hear in your voice?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he reminded.

“Mmm.” Khani’s lips clamped together. Her gaze dropped to his hands.

The knot unfastened between his fingers. As he slipped his fingers from beneath her jacket, he ran them over her thin tee and taut stomach. Her long lashes lay on her cheeks and she shuddered a breath.

“I’ll get the tent set up. You have the first aid kit in your pack?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Get it out. I’m going to clean your hand better than you let me earlier, and then I’ll wrap it.”

“You’re getting bossy, sub.”

“Boss me around all you want in the bedroom and out, except for when it comes to your well-being.” He settled a kiss on the tip of her nose.

“Fine. You get the tent set up and the sleeping bags out. I’ll get the kit out, but before you use it I’m going to clean off.”

“Don’t freeze a nipple off,” he chuckled.

“You laugh. If this were April, that’d be a real possibility.”

“Thank goodness for summer.” He winked, and then turned to their campsite. What he wouldn’t give for a nice fire. This close to her brother’s captors they wouldn’t risk it.

Street cleared away stray branches and rocks. He tugged the roll of nylon from the bottom of his pack and wished they had a propane heater to take the chill out of the air. His nipples hardened at the thought of Khani cupping that ice-cold water onto her porcelain skin. He worked quickly, extending the poles, looping them into the arch of snaps crisscrossing the fabric.

The brownish-green dome formed in less than five. He yanked the sleeping bags from their respective packs and tossed them into the tent. On his knees, he leaned into the small space and hung his headlamp from the center hook and turned it on.

“Get out of the way,” Khani’s voice came high and panicked.

Street shot to his feet. His hand found the butt of his gun without thought. His eyes scanned the dimming area for a threat. He found one all right. The only threat capable of ripping his heart from his chest and stomping all over it with a smile on her face, ran toward him naked as a forest nymph.

Half of Khani’s sopping hair plastered to her cheeks while the rest swung with the gate of her stride. A heap of clothes tucked beneath her arm. Hot breaths curled up from her white lips. Her pert breasts undulated. Long, creamy legs scissored, rubbing her pink folds with her furious effort to get to the tent. The strings of her boots flopped with each step. Her bare ankles stuck out of the loosened leather.

He snatched his eyeballs off the ground and yanked the door of the tent wide. “Yes, ma’am.”

Khani dove headfirst, disappearing inside the shelter. “Shit.”

“Shit what?” Not a thing seemed wrong from his viewpoint.

“I forgot the kit.” The clack of her teeth rattling reached him.

“I think I can handle it. Get your cute arse into the sleeping bag before I forget about your hand and go to work on something else.”

He used the stroll to her pack to settle himself. That was the plan at least. Funny how those things never went to form. Each stride honed his lust to the point at the tip of his dick. Street tugged a fresh pair of boxers and shirt from his pack.

“You get warm. I’ll be back.” He stomped toward the stream. Maybe the frigid water would check his lust. Hell, it’d probably send his balls so far inside his body he’d never find them again.

The rushing water looked inviting. And he’d had his fair share of fountain baths in the dead of London winters. How bad could this be? He stripped in seconds and hit the deck in pushup position. Damn good thing he hadn’t tested the water first. He’d have put his dirty clothes on and called it good.

He flipped to his back and scrubbed the essentials like he were on fire. His poor dick shriveled in his grasp. His nuts sucked up so high he could’ve spit them to the other side of the stream.

Now he knew why Khani jetted back to the tent. Street dried with his old shirt and nearly tripped over himself, tugging on his shorts, shoving his feet into his boots, and running to camp.

“No fair,” Khani yelled from the interior. “I gave you a show. Where’s mine.”

“Trust me. There’s not much to show right now.” He tossed his clothes into the corner of the tent, tucked their packs into the other corner, snagged the kit from the top, and then tucked inside.

The zipper screamed closed under his hand.

“Refreshing?” Khani sat with her knees to her chest. The mummy bag cocooned her from toes to head. Only her clean face peeked out from the insulation.

The headlamp dangled between them. Its beam of light centered on his chest and then swung back to her cheek. Street steadied the light. His chill suddenly dissipated, shoved away by the realization that Khani had not an ounce of make-up on her skin. The light illuminated every fine line and every scar on her soft skin.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathed. Her cloudy gaze dropped. Street tucked his forefinger beneath her chin and lifted so her eyes meet his. “Beautiful.” He smiled. “But I get why you wear it.”

“It’s my armor.” The puffy bag shrugged.

“We all have ours.”

“What’s yours?”

Street slipped his knuckles over her chin, and then cupped the side of her cheek for the briefest of seconds. “Anonymity. Humor.”

“I can see that.”

“Let me see your hand?”

While Khani wiggled her arm out of the sleeping bag, he shoved his legs into his then cracked the seal of the first aid kit.

“You know I can tend to my own wounds, just like you did your own.” She offered him her flayed palm.

“I want to help you heal.”

“Do you really think we can…help each other? Mend the scars of the past?” Her black brows scrunched.

“We’ll always have scars. That’s the nature of wounds, but we can minimize their appearance.”

He pulled her hand into his and surveyed the raw flesh. With deliberate care, he sprayed the area with stout antibiotics, and then wrapped it with sterile gauze. Her hand cradled in his, he tangled their gazes. “Why’d you leave London?”

“I was your superior,” she whispered.

“Vail is Carmen’s superior and they’re about to have a baby together.”

Her pale lips gaped. “How’d you know?”

“She has the glow. Plus you nearly swallowed your tongue when he wanted to come along, and you gave a pretty lame excuse. I figure there was more to it. So, next excuse.”

“I’m better in the field than I am behind a desk.”

He set her hand in her lap and folded his arms. “You’re good at anything you do, especially running away.”

Both her hands balled into fists. Her growl filled the close confines. “Men make women weak, vulnerable. You get into our heads and change us from badass weapons to baby makers with tiny liabilities on our hips.” She straightened her hands as though she were flinging him off and all his complicated stickiness.

“Did you ever think that they chose that life? That that’s what they want?”

She barked a laugh and ground her fist against her forehead. “That’s the worst part of it all. They choose to be weakened.”

“Weakened in one way. Strengthened in others.” He shrugged. “Was I the first person you ever had sex with?” He didn’t think so, but the way she acted he must have broken some treaty she had with herself.

“No.” Her hands dropped to her lap. “But you were the first to make me break my rule.” He waited for it. “Never have sex with someone you’re going to see again.”

“No repeats?” He gawked.

“No.”

“No matter how good.”

“They usually aren't that good.”

“Why me?”

“We haven’t repeated.”

“Not yet,” he said.

“Because you make me weak.” Her gaze lasered into the top of the tent. She blinked furiously.

Street grabbed her injured hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed the tips of her fingers, the ball of her palm. When he raised his gaze she lowered hers. “Choosing vulnerability is the greatest show of strength.”

“Or stupidity,” she amended.

“Love is bold.”

“What do you know about love?” She spat the words, but not in rage. Real bafflement clouded her eye, hitched her jaw.

“Not much,” he said honestly. It’s not like his life had been a prime example for the concept. In fact his had been the opposite.

“Well,” she huffed. “I know enough to tell you love is fictitious.”

“Yeah? Tell that to your brother. You’ve crossed thousands of miles and are ready to take on the Russian mob all to protect him.”

“That’s different.”

“That’s love. Familial or otherwise. Boundless. Inexplicable. It makes you fucking mad and elated at the same time.” He tugged her mouth a hair’s breadth from his. “It makes you do things you never thought you’d do.”

Her granite gaze roved his face. “Like?”

“Submitting.” He whispered the word over her mouth. “I’m yours, Khani. Do with me what you will.” Amazingly, the frigid water’s effects had worn off. He gulped and then begged. “Just please, do something to me.”

H
is lids fluttered shut
. The behemoth of a man with his broad shoulders and hands strong enough to crush her skull without trying had relinquished control…to her. More surprising than his submission was that with him—now—she didn’t need it. The panic she’d always fought in the minutes before her lovers were secured had been replaced by carnal need. It licked her clit like a heavy tongue, steady and insistent.

Usually the desire came after she’d established her dominance, after they were subjugated. Only then did she relax enough to let her body take over. Only then did she unleash her longing.

For too long she’d imprisoned herself, denied herself out of fear.

“Your surrender means more than anything. Your surrender…allows my own.” Khani gathered the material around her shoulders and levered onto her knees. She leaned over King, but for a wholly different reason than she’d have before.

“I’ll never be able to thank you enough for that.” Her lips met his in tender pecks. One by one, she trailed them down his hardy jaw. His stubble prickled her skin. She dragged her mouth across his to the other side and loved him in a line to his ear. Khani pressed her cheek against his. “But I’m sure going to try.”

A soft moan rumbled in his throat.

“You want me to try?” She teased.

“Yes.”

His breath tickled the hollow of her clavicle. She pulled the collar of his T-shirt wide, sank her teeth into the base of his neck, and sucked. King’s hips jerked, brushing his thighs against hers through the layers of their sleeping bags. Her tongue raked his skin. Salt and sex. She drank him like a tequila shot. Her mouth popped off his flesh leaving behind a red stain on his skin.

She slid her fingers over the angry mark. Never before had she scored a lover. Not with a crop. Not with a whip. Not even with her nails. “I’m sorry. I don’t know—”

“Don’t apologize.” He turned his head to face her and opened his eyes. The mix of green and brown calmed her on sight. “If it leaves a scar, it’ll be my happiest one.”

Her hand slipped around his nape. She pulled him close and smashed their lips together. His hands stayed by his side, but his mouth and tongue participated fully, giving as much as they received. Her entire body played into the kiss. The lips of her sex rubbed in maddening time with the roll of her hips.

Mews and pants seeped out between their mouths. Desperation tightened her throat, cutting off her flow of oxygen. Khani broke the kiss. She shoved the suffocating fabric around the gentle curve of her square hips, and then reached for King’s hands.

“Touch me.” The roughened skin of his fingers and palms scratched her sensitive flesh. The tips of her breast stabbed into his hands in return.

Khani dropped her hands from around his and he held perfectly still. His reddened bottom lip hung. “Are you sure?”

“No one ever has. I want you to.”

“Never?”

“You with your mouth, but other than that, no.”

“Fuck me,” he sighed.

“We’ll get there.”

His Adam’s apple flipped a cartwheel in his throat. “Yes.” He touched tentatively at first, no more than a whisper over her skin.

She blamed his mouth for this adventure. Before, with him, she climaxed so quickly. All it had taken was few thrusts of his heavy cock and a tug of her nipple and she careened over the edge of control, unable to halt the inevitable and aggressive release.

He tweaked her right bud. Her back bowed. She clutched his shoulder with her injured hand. Pleasure masked the pain. King cupped her mounds. A hot breeze wafted over her swollen tips, amplifying the thrill that rolled through her limbs.

“Please,” he pleaded, his mouth hovering over her crimson nipples.

“Yes,” she nearly begged in return.

King opened his mouth wide and shoved half of her left breast inside his mouth. His fingers molded the other, which seemed to double in size from the excess blood flow and attention he lavished onto them. She anchored herself to his powerful shoulders, hating the shirt that stood between her skin and his skin.

A flick of his tongue turned her attention. “Yes.” She arched into his mouth and the snap of his wet tongue became more insistent. Her clit pulsed, begging for attention. Khani sucked a lung-full of air, and then another, but failed to tame her desire.

Pressure mounted on her right nipple. King’s lips pinched the peak between his lips and pulled slowly off. His chest heaved. He gulped air as greedily as she, which meant he lusted as powerfully as she. That tidbit ratcheted her urgency.

“Khani, has anyone touched your silky pink lips,” he drew a breath, “or your swollen little clit?”

Her throat clogged. How could she answer? Yes. No. They were both true. No. No one she’d ever allowed to touch her, no one she’d ever wanted to touch her so intimately had. Yes. Someone had broken her will in half, had shattered her to prove an ugly point.

“The night before I took Zeke and left, I wore a short shirt out with friends. When I got home my father slammed me into the counter, ripped my panties off, and beat me until my clit bled.”

“Is your father alive?”

She shook her head, unsure whether she could pronounce a single word with the mishmash of emotions burdening her tonsils.

King went palms up. “Hey, you’re here with me. I’m here for you, to do anything and everything that will make you feel good. That’s off limits. Okay.” He shrugged. “There are a thousand other ways I can pleasure you.”

“I want you to.” She placed her palms against his. “I’ve never wanted anyone to, but I want to feel your fingers slide between my flesh.”

“What about my lips?”

“Hell yes,” she choked.

“My tongue?”

Her knees buckled, but she caught herself against his hands. “Yes.”

“Say my name,” he ordered.

“Don’t I give the orders around here?” She smiled and used her shoulder to wipe a stray tear from her cheek.

“Say my name, Khani.” He dragged her hands to his face and framed them around his square jaw. “Tell me you know who’s here with you…” The outside of his knuckles skimmed over her cheek, across her breasts, and then grazed her belly. “…who’s loving you with his hands…” His head dipped between her breasts. Her hands stayed with him as he licked the underside of her aching breast. “…with his mouth…” King placed a kiss over her heart. His hands anchored on either side of her hips. He leaned back and tangled their gazes. “….with everything I possess.”

“King.” Khani’s heart squeezed, suddenly too large to fit inside her chest cavity.

His smile lit the dark confines of the tent. “That’s right.” He kissed the tips of her middle fingers, and then lowered them to her sides. He tugged the shirt over his head and tossed it away. The pink scar on his shoulder zinged lusty memories to her already aching core. The gnarled skin from a bullet that hit too close to home didn’t have quite the effect.

King ditched his sleeping bag and boxers as though it weren’t so close to freezing just outside their shelter. Inside, however, they’d worked up quite a sultry heat. He flipped onto his belly with his legs stretching the edge of the tent opposite her. The rounds of his shoulders ripped with his engaged muscles. His head drifted from her nipples, grazing like a wild beast over her belly.

Her breath hitched, and then quaked her lungs.

“I’ve got you, troop.” His hand stayed planted on the ground, but his mouth planted elsewhere.

“Oh, God,” she gasped.

He eased his lips from her slick sex. “Oh, King,” he corrected. “Blow me over, you wax?”

“I don’t like hair down there,” defending her choice.

“Your brother might have to save himself. I don’t think I’m leaving this spot…ever.” He slid a finger over her tender nub.

Hell, she might never let him leave.

King tilted his head, flattened his tongue, and slipped it from the cleft of her ass, across her wet channel, to the very tip of her clit. He pulled his tongue into his mouth. His eyes clamped shut and he groaned like a grizzly. Her breasts bounded from her frantic breaths. The tips glistened in the beam of light.

He came back for more, swiping desperately over her pulsing bundle of nerves. Khani knotted her hands in her hair to keep from gripping his. She didn’t want to impede his rhythm in any way. Already she hovered, her insides threatening to rocket away and leave her body behind. Her breaths turned to moans. They crept higher toward keens.

His tongue froze on the tip of her clit. Khani’s hips rocked against the slick tip. He retreated an inch. “Not yet.” His head shook. “I’m just getting started.”

“I won’t last long.”

“Good thing there’s no cap on the number of orgasms I plan to give you.”

Wetness coated his mouth. His head hovered inches from the junction of her thighs. A deep groove ran the length of his spine, hard earned muscles forming a trench. Banded brawn wrapped the slopes of his naked ass. The sight assaulted her restraint.

“King,” she said.

When he raised his eyes all the things she wanted to say stayed glued to her tongue.
I think I love you. You’re the most amazing man I’ve ever met. If I wake tomorrow and you’re gone, I’ll treasure you forever and the gifts you’ve given me.
She settled for, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” His chuckle vibrated her lips. He speared his tongue and lashed her clit, grinding his mouth against the whole of her sex.

Sharp pain tingled her scalp and she realized her grip threatened to yank the hair from her head. “Yes, King. Please, yes.” She pumped against him.

The orgasm swamped her. Every muscle in her honed body quivered with pure delight. Her head tossed back and her toes pointed toward the sky.

Mother fucking tears collected in her eyes, turning her into the vulnerable, weeping sap she’d always feared a man would transform her into. And at the same time she felt stronger than she ever had. Blasting bad guys in the head, throwing herself into the middle of a firefight, or dancing with blades, none of it compared to the bravery it took for her to face down her greatest fear and come through the other side whole.

Still she felt the immediate need to re-establish herself. “On your ass, King. Hands by your side.”

“Yes, troop.” His tongue skated across his lips, licking her cream into his mouth. Slowly, deliberately showing off the body that made her forget herself, he sat and leaned back on both hands. The lines of his abdomen contracted, punctuating the sleekness of his hefty build. The notch of steel corded at his hips, made the perfect handle for her leg to cling to.

The tears receded, overrun by carnal lust. “Yes, indeed.” Her orgasm coated the inside of her thighs. She shoved the sleeping bag over her knees and wiggled out of its confines, abrading her intimate flesh in the process. It rekindled a fire that never banked…and likely never would.

Pre-cum beaded at the slit of his plump crown. She placed her index finger atop the clear liquid and speared it over the smoothness of his head. As she had before, she licked the excess from the pad of her finger. Her mouth watered. The need to choke him deep had her humming, but the unabated throb between deep inside her cunt commanded attention.

Khani straddled his lap as she had too damn long ago. This time things were so very different. King wasn’t restrained and neither was she. She wrapped her arms around his neck—like she’d wanted to do before.

His steady gaze centered hers. One torturous inch at a time, Khani lowered herself onto his cock. The pressure of his broad width compounded. She sank lower, enjoying the swell of his head as it bombarded her body. Knees spread wide, she exhaled and invited him farther inside. The map work of veins strapping his dick worked like a ribbed dildo, strumming her from the core out.

“Put your hands on me,” she ordered.

As though he’d been waiting for the words, as though he’d known they were coming, his hands molded against her lower back and worked them up. The move pulled her impossibly closer. Their noses brushed. Their breaths mingled. Their gazes wed. She seated him fully and they stilled there, unmoving, for a heap of heartbeats.

Then his hands moved. Those big fingers sank into her bottom. She lifted off him to the tip, and then plunged hard. Her gasp ricocheted off the fabric and collided with his bark of pleasure. Again she pounded their bodies together. And again. Each time King’s arms powered the effort a little more, until soon they shared the responsibility of their pleasure.

She’d never shared any part of the duty. She’d never trusted a person enough to want to try. Not until King.

Khani hugged him impossibly close with her arms, with her core.

He shouted a curse that rang like music in her ears. His deft hands tilted her hips, opening them and her clit to the firm ridge of his pelvis.

Pleasure rippled through her. Her hold doubled. Her breaths grew shallow. “Fuck me. Fuck me.”

“I’m loving you,” he strangled. “I’m loving you.” His jaw clenched another curse. “Are you still on birth control?”

“Yes,” she moaned as much in overwhelming bliss as in answer. “Come with me, King. Come.”

His head arched to the unseen stars. He did as she demanded, pulsing his heated orgasm into her womb. Another first. One that—as much as it terrified her—compounded her release.

Her heart stampeded through her chest as though it might crash right through her chest. King tucked his head against her roaring heart and panted. Sweat slicked their bodies, sealing them together.

For how long? Khani didn’t know, but she hoped for a longer time than she’d ever imagined sharing with another human being…even Zeke.

King collapsed back onto his yawning sleeping bag, tugging her with him, seemingly as content to maintain the bond they formed. He pulled her sleeping bag over their bodies and held her atop his chest.