Dangerous Protector (Aegis Group Book 5) (9 page)

Damn, she was beautiful when she forgot to be self-conscious. When she was focused on pleasure.

He cupped her ass and lifted her higher. Her jeans had slid down so far the only thing keeping them on was her legs around him.

They needed a bed. His big bed.

“Hold on.” Marco lifted her with one hand against her ass, her wrapped around him.

“You are not
carrying
me up the stairs.”

“Sure I am.”

“No, Marco. No!”

“I won’t drop you if you stop squirming.”

“You won’t drop me if you put me down.”

He found the first step by chance and the next thanks to muscle memory.

“Marco…”

“Relax or I’m going to put your ass down on these stairs.”

“You can’t tell me to relax. That’s not how it works.”

“Wanna bet?”

Marco bent, going to a knee then lowered Fiona’s bottom to another stair. He planted his hands on the stair just above her hips and pressed his sex to hers, grinding them together. Fiona’s head fell back, lifting her breasts.

Don’t mind if I do…

He wrapped his lips around one nipple and sucked.

It was her turn to grind against him. The stairs didn’t seem like all that bad of a place, now that they were here.

Marco shoved his hand between them, into her panties and cupped her mound.

Wet. Slick. Ready.

He switched breasts, and circled her clit with a fingertip.

Fiona’s fingers threaded deeper into his hair and curled them into fists. She tugged and lifted her hips. She’d completely forgotten her stair aversion, and the tension strung tight within her was a whole other kind now. The right kind.

Marco pumped his fingers into her, and she nearly came up off the stairs. Her eyes flew open, lips parted.

Fuck.

She was going to come on his hand.

“Marco…” His name was a plea.

“What? What do you want, sweetheart.”

Her eyes were unfocused. She stared at him for several seconds.

“You,” she said on an exhale.

He nearly came in his pants at that breathy, needy word.

Marco dug out his wallet and grabbed the condom, thankful he’d found a few extras in her nightstand before leaving. He pushed up to his knees, and she unbuckled his belt. Their fingers tangled getting his jeans unbuttoned.

He’d felt need before, but not like this. Maybe it was how they’d met, or knowing this wasn’t going to last, but the urgency to have her was new.

She ripped the condom open and hesitated.

“Do it.” He braced his hands on the stairs, his erection pointed lewdly toward her, precome dampening his skin. His head buzzed, but that was probably the beer.

Fiona rolled the condom on, none of her usual hesitance in the touch. She even pulled him toward her, dick first. Her little hot hand wrapped around him, and the sight of his cock sliding between her labia was—so fucking hot.

He pressed into her, watching her pink skin stretch around him. She leaned her head back, arms spread across the stair, feet braced below him. He held still and watched her, the way she undulated, driving him deeper, fucking herself on his cock. She was pretty damn amazing. Boring? Clearly not a word he’d use to describe her.

“Marco.” Frustration, need, it was all rolled into one, sweet word.

He withdrew and thrust, still hooked on the sight of her. The way she felt hugging his cock. The glistening moisture coating him. Damn, but he was a lucky guy.

“Marco, if you don’t move I’m going to…”

“Going to what?” He flexed his hips, sliding deep into her and dragged his gaze up her body to her face.

Her jaw worked soundlessly.

“That’s what I thought.” He chuckled, more than a little pleased with himself.

He reached up, winding her hair around his hand and tugged, exposing her neck.

“Tell me if this hurts.”

He got a foot on another stair for better leverage and thrust in earnest—harder, faster, deeper. Her hands gripped him, those little nails cutting into his skin. But he didn’t care.

Watching the way she lost herself, that was what he really liked. Driving her to not only orgasm, but forgetting herself. In his arms, here, with his cock buried deep inside of her, Fiona was gorgeously uninhibited. Primal.

Marco hooked an arm under her knee, forcing her to open wider.

Her eyes shut, and the helpless noises she made were enough to tell him she was close.

“Look at me, sweetheart.” He needed to watch her, to see that moment of ecstasy. “Fiona.”

Her lashes fluttered open wide and their gazes locked. He bent his head and shifted her head, his hand still in her hair, his elbow on the stair. She had her other leg hooked over his hip, moving with him.

There.

Her eyes seemed to go completely black and her lips parted on a silent scream. He felt the muscles of her pussy tighten, milking him with her orgasm.

“Oh—fuck.” He thrust, his motions rougher as the skin at the base of his spine prickled and his balls drew up.

Marco groaned and spent himself, rocking his hips against hers. Fiona’s body curled around his, cradling him through the orgasm.

Fuck, the stairs were a great idea.

The tremors had barely left his body. He scooped Fiona up, hiked his pants over his hips and managed the last eight or so stairs, then the half dozen steps to the bed. He flopped back on the mattress. Fiona squawked and rolled away from him, burrowing under the blankets.

He toed off his boots and his clothes, more than ready to fall asleep with a warm, soft woman next to him. He cleaned up in the bathroom and got Fiona’s things from downstairs.

She’d made her choice the moment she popped the tab on her jeans and gave him that come hither stare. If she didn’t like it, well, there was still the guest room. Though he hadn’t imparted the tiny detail that there wasn’t a bed or even a door on that room yet. He wasn’t in the habit of bringing home company, which made Fiona an anomaly. A curiosity. And before much longer, his siblings were bound to poke their noses where they didn’t belong.

“Fiona. You want the bathroom, sweetheart?” He gently prodded at the body under the blankets.

She groaned and rolled out from the other side.

Poor thing hadn’t gotten much sleep, thanks to him, and it had been a long day.

Marco settled in bed and stared out the sliding glass doors. The desert view was vast, unending and unforgiving. A person could get lost out there. Many had.

The bathroom light flipped off and he tracked the sound of Fiona’s steps behind the bed and to the other side. She slipped in as comfortably as though she belonged there, and for now, she did.

He reached across, hooked his arm around her waist, and hauled her back up against his chest.

“What am I? A human body pillow?” she muttered.

“Yes.”

She sighed and shifted, but didn’t move away.

“Talked to your friend again?” she asked.

“Not yet. He’ll probably ignore me until he has something.”

“I didn’t even know people had issues with NueEnergy.”

Marco couldn’t think of a reply that wasn’t dickish, so he kept his thoughts to himself.

“Thanks for bringing me here, Marco.” Her hand covered his and she squeezed.

“Tomorrow we can go out on Hell’s Revenge up near Slickrock.”

“That doesn’t sound like fun.”

“Sure it is. Slickrock is the most famous mountain biking trail there is.”

“Marco… I can barely ride a bicycle down the street.”

“Too bad. We’ll do Hell’s Revenge then.”

“That doesn’t sound better.”

“It’s an ATV trail.”

“Oh. Why’s it called Hell’s Revenge?”

“It’s better to just experience it, sweetheart.”

“Are you trying to kill me?”

“Lots of places to hide a body around here. Especially the chatty ones.” He poked her side and she squirmed.

“Hey, you’re the one that wanted to get all close and personal.” She pushed his hand away.

“I’m comfortable.” He slid his hand back to her stomach and she shifted her arm, making room for him.

“Well, this will go down as the most exciting weekend hookup I’ve ever had.” Fiona snuggled into the pillows and sighed.

Marco stared into the darkness.

Hookup.

He’d had his fair share of them, but he didn’t like the word. Not for this. But wasn’t that what he’d told her they were? Friends with benefits for a weekend? That was a hookup.

Marco laid there rolling the word around in his head long after Fiona dozed off. He had no right to be irritated, and yet…he was.

9.

“Oh, shit! Oh, shit!
Oh, shit! Oh, shit!”

Fiona screamed, the wind whipping her hair back, and the little ATV roaring as it charged up a nearly solid wall of rock. She laughed because she couldn’t help it. They should have died a dozen times over on this course, and yet the little buggy seemed to stick to the rock, crawling up, down, and over impossible bits of terrain.

Marco gunned the engine, sending them careening around a bend. She held her breath.

If someone was coming from the other way…

There wasn’t enough room on the rock for two ATVs…

The trail opened up and he eased off the accelerator.

This was…amazing. Fiona had never done anything like this. Even rollercoasters couldn’t compare. Of course, on a ride there were safety precautions. Out here, they had helmets, a seatbelt, and…a first aid kit. There was nothing keeping them from sliding off the rock if Marco misjudged the path or if a rock came lose. They’d tumble to their death. And as far as she’d seen, they were the only idiots out here.

“You want to take the wheel?” Marco twisted toward her, and that smile tugging at his lips was so damn sexy. She wouldn’t tell him, but out here, around his family, he had a lot less of the bad-boy biker thing going on and a lot more of the be-still-my-beating-heart thing rocking her world.

“What? Are you crazy? I’d kill us.” Still, she kind of wanted to. What was it like being behind that wheel?

“Nah. I used to take noobs all over these rocks. I won’t let you wreck. Besides, my dad would kill us if we crashed this thing.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Sure you can.” He shifted the ATV into park and popped the door open.

Fiona sat in the passenger seat, clutching the oh-shit-bar with both hands, watching him circle the two seater buggy to her side. She wanted to…and she was scared to.

“Come on. This part’s easy.” He opened her door and held out his hand.

“I can’t.”

“Come on, sweetheart. I’ll be right here.” He wrapped his hand around her wrist. She could feel him through the leather gloves he’d given her earlier, along with these goggles and safety helmet. It wasn’t a sexy ensemble, but it sure did look good on him.

She held onto the bar, both dying to get behind the wheel and terrified of killing them both. There was a time when she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. She’d have pushed Marco out of the seat and taken the wheel herself. But she’d changed. And she wasn’t sure she liked all of the ways she’d become different.

“Okay.” She let Marco help her out of the buggy, then circled the front of it on her own.

By the time she climbed into the driver’s seat, Marco had folded his big body into her seat and slid the other one forward. She could mostly touch the pedals, so they spent another moment adjusting it until Marco was satisfied.

“Okay, it’s already in low gear. Here.” He pointed at a switch on the dash. “Just shift into drive and give it a little gas. It’s different from a car. If you don’t press the accelerator, it’s not going to roll forward, even on an incline. Try it. We’ll head down this path. Follow the dark tracks, and then there’s some sand up ahead where you can really open her up.”

“Oh my God.” She shifted into drive. “Oh my God.” She pressed the accelerator and the ATV lurched forward like a drunken rabbit. “Oh my God!”

“Give it some more gas,” Marco yelled over the roar of the engine.

Though her gut said to hold off, she did as Marco directed, and the ATV sailed forward. She fought the urge to squeal and instead focused on keeping the wheels on the darkened path, years of vehicles before hers coloring the rock.

“You’re doing good. Give it a little more punch up this bit. Go on. I take this at twice this speed.”

What? She was slow and boring now?

Fiona gritted her teeth and stomped on the accelerator. Her vision narrowed to the path ahead of her. She held tight to the wheel, keeping the buggy on the path and not slipping off either side of rock. A wrong move, a misplaced wheel and their helmets wouldn’t do a lot of good in saving them.

“Open’er up,” Marco yelled.

They crested the rise of rock, and a gradual stairstep descent was the only thing between them and a sandy path.

She pointed the ATV down and pushed the pedal almost all the way to the floor board.

They roared over the trail and she laughed, the thrill and adrenaline making her giddy.

“Go up onto the bank over there.” Marco pointed ahead of them, at a dirt bank that marked the path’s turn.

The wheels rolled off the rock, onto the trail, and she gunned it, steering the ATV up banks of sand, zigzagging across the wide, empty path on their way to…she had no idea where they were going. It was the journey that mattered. And she was having one hell of a good time.

Marco’s hand settled on the back of her seat, his arm pressed to her shoulder. It was a man-move, spreading across the buggy, taking up more than his fair share of room, but she didn’t mind it. He wasn’t a controlling kind of guy. He glanced at her and grinned.

They wound their way out to holes called hot tubs where people drove four-wheel drive Jeeps through and across yet more rock. Marco didn’t move to take the wheel back from her, even on stretches of the trail that looked completely impossible.

“Ease up, just a bit, and head straight that way.” Marco leaned forward and pointed.

“Are you trying to get me to drive off a cliff?” She had enough confidence, after an hour or so behind the wheel, that she didn’t hesitate to follow his direction.

“You’ll see,” he yelled over the engine.

They went another hundred or so yards before he had her stop, and he killed the engine.

“What are we doing out here?” She twisted to look behind her. Some bicyclists were off in the distance on the Slickrock Trail, which Marco had pointed out earlier. It looked as impossible as the ground they’d crossed, only those poor souls didn’t have an engine doing all the work.

“Come on.” Marco tossed his helmet into the ATV and grabbed the cooler out of the back.

They’d packed food and drinks earlier. She hadn’t even thought about that stuff, but suddenly her stomach growled, insistent she eat. Now.

“Wait up.” She unhooked her helmet and scrambled after Marco. “How is it we aren’t sliding on this rock?” She grabbed Marco’s hand and he helped her down a bit of steep ground.

“It’s the sand stone.” He paused and scuffed his boot on the rock. “Unlike the boulder-rock you get on a mountain up in Denver, this stuff grips like sandpaper. If you were to go on any other terrain and try what we’re doing here, you’d probably kill yourself.”

“I’m almost sorry I asked.” Fiona’s pace slowed as the ground opened up under their feet, giving way to the Colorado River below. “Wow…”

She shielded her eyes, her mouth hanging open. It was one thing to look off into the distance and see Arches National Park, the mountains and where the river canyon was. It was a whole other thing to be standing on the cliffs above the water with all that spread out below her.

A perspective like this reminded her how awfully small she was.

“A little farther.” Marco veered to the right, creeping further and further out until he seemed to be on the very edge.

“You’re going to fall and die.” And yet, Fiona was scrambling after him.

Man, he had a fantastic ass. She was almost jealous of his jeans for being able to cup and hold him like that.

Marco set the cooler down and lowered himself to the ground.

Fiona wasn’t anywhere nearly as graceful. She flopped down and leaned her head back, soaking in the sunshine. There was no way she’d brought enough warm clothes with her. When she’d thought of Moab she’d thought: Desert. Hot. Skimpy. Instead, she was wishing she had another layer on over her light jacket.

What she wouldn’t give to cuddle up against Marco, but she couldn’t go there. Sleeping with him and spending time here were dangerous enough already, and then throw in everything he was doing for her, and it was half a miracle she wasn’t in love with him already. With the way things were going it wouldn’t take long or much to put her heart on that road. He was bad boy hero material, scuffed, worn-in, a few holes in it, but just right to get the job done.

“Here you go, road warrior.” Marco handed her a soda and a bottle of water. “Drink both.”

Her heart did a painful little flip-flop.

This was a fling. Nothing permanent. He’d made that perfectly clear, and she had to remember that. Cling to it even, or else she’d lose a piece of herself to a man that didn’t want it, and that was a sobering dose of reality.

“Having fun?” Marco leaned
back, taking in the sight of Fiona’s flushed face, the sun on her skin, the dazzling smile. She was something else out here. Freer.

“Best weekend hookup ever.”  She popped the top on her soda and drank deeply, lashes casting crescent shadows on her cheeks.

He grimaced.

Hookup.

Right.

That’s what they were.

The carefree mood withered. For a few hours out on the rocks they’d lost themselves. He loved it out here. There was a freedom that didn’t exist anywhere else. And she felt it, too. But nothing could loosen the weight of guilt from around his shoulders. Not until Ghost undid the whole fucking nightmare.

Marco pulled out the sliced strawberries, the little sandwiches and snacks. Most of it was leftovers from last night that could be eaten chilled. A little fancier than what he’d have packed for himself, and unless he was mistaken, there were a few things his mother had included with probably the wrong idea. Like the strawberries and cream. This, the whole spread, was for Fiona. Because his mother had liked her. Because he was the last child who hadn’t gotten married, divorced or procreated.

Shit.

He should have looked through the fucking cooler before they left. This, the whole thing, was packed for a romantic picnic. Not a rock crawl.

Fiona didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she was being obtuse on purpose. He shouldn’t be irritated by the hookup label. That’s what he’d made them in her eyes. Still, he didn’t have to like it.

“Have you heard from your friend today?” She bit off one of the strawberries, a little of the juice dribbling down her chin.

Marco wanted to lick it off, paint her lips with the cream and make her lick that off his mouth after he finished kissing her. If things weren’t complicated, if this were just a weekend hookup he would. But it wasn’t. As she was reminding him.

“No, but there’s not much cell reception out here.” He pulled out his phone and held it up. There was the tiniest bit of signal—and a text.

He clicked it and scrolled through Ghost’s dry details.

Scott had been to the house. He knew the cameras were gone. Ghost had watched him via a camera he’d set up in Fiona’s house.

That was going to have to come out before he took her home, without question.

The rest of it…was not good.

“What’s wrong?” Fiona leaned toward him.

He had to tell her some of the message. Where to start? How much truth should she know? What lies should he feed her? This covert shit was Ghost’s world, not Marco’s, but he’d made it his the day he went to Ghost to call in on all those favors.

“Marco? You’re scaring me with that look.”

“Sorry.” He pocketed his phone and bit off half a sandwich triangle. Where to begin?

“Is it work? Your family?” She paused. “Me?”

“I don’t want to alarm you…”

“If you have to say that, then I’m scared.” She sat up straight, face pale.

“Scott was in your condo last night. He appears to have made a key, and he has the code to your security system.” There. That was a truth, a whole truth and no lie whatsoever.

“What?”

“I suggest changing the code—”

“I have changed it.”

Which meant Scott had tampered with the system before the break-up.

“Oh my—oh my God. Seriously?”

“Yes. My guy went in, took out the surveillance equipment that was there and set up one—single—camera by the TV, just to see if anyone came looking for the stuff, and he got Scott on tape. He came in through a door in the kitchen.”

“The garage. Through the utility room. Oh my God.” She cupped her cheeks, eyes wide. “This whole time…he could have been in my house? While I was sleeping? When I was at work?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Fiona.”

“No—thank you. I’d have—oh my God—I would have never have known if it weren’t for you.” The way she looked at him, like he was some sort of hero, sucked. He wasn’t a hero. He was worse than the thief she feared, because he was doing this song and dance to her face. “Was that it? What about the transmitter and the data and… Who is he working for? Why?”

“My guy’s working on that, still. Whatever they want, it’s worth breaking a lot of laws over. Makes me wonder…” It made Marco wonder if Good Global and Scott weren’t considering
taking care of,
not only the equipment at her house, but Fiona as well.