Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6 (23 page)

He backed her up to the island and lifted her, never breaking the kiss. She held his face, finally content. This was what happy felt like.

No, this was ecstatic.

Happy was watching a shooting star.

This was like being in the center of the universe.

His hands pulled her to him until she wrapped her legs around his back. “Missed you so damn much.”

“No more than me missing you, babe.”  His lips devoured hers, pulled her out of time and place as quickly as being dragged underwater into a different world.

Everything sharpened with Dingo in hers.

His skin tasted salty and clean, smelled musky and warm.

His hands ... found her breasts, thank you, Universe. Heat rushed and coiled, twisting. She needed more. Lifting her head, she panted, “Here. Bedroom. Don’t care, but I have to have you inside me.”

“Jesus, Val. Good way to make me lose it before I get there.”  Dingo could feel his heart trying to jackhammer its way out of his chest. If he died now he’d be pissed.

At least give me one more time with this woman.

She laughed and his heart flipped over in his chest.

He’d said he missed her.

Missed? Could a word be more deficient in meaning? How could he explain what walking around without any hope of ever holding her again felt like? That he woke up at night calling to her. Wishing he could come back and change everything just to have another minute with her.

She leaned in and he kissed her tenderly, careful of her bruised face. Dingo would find Navarro. When that happened, Navarro would pay in ways he could never imagine, but Dingo could. One thing about the life he’d led was that he had plenty of experience to draw on when it came to payback.

He’d never been one to go after vengeance, but he couldn’t allow Navarro to get away with hurting Valene. Dingo would do this world a favor and wipe out Navarro’s organization, starting with the head of it.

He’d never kissed much before Val, because kissing her had been more intimate than sex with women before her. She stole a piece of him every time her lips touched his and he’d given it up willingly, knowing the day he had to walk away there’d be a bottomless hole inside him.

But he couldn’t stop himself back then.

He’d never touched anything habit-forming... until he held her.

She kissed his face and hair, murmuring, “I like your natural color. Looked strange as a blond. Like a pretty boy.”

He rolled his eyes. He’d never been called pretty in his life. Leaning close, he nipped her ear and whispered, “This is crazy.”

She scooted forward, backing him away from the counter until he had to grab her as she slid off. She took advantage of the move to tighten her legs and stole his breath when she pulled herself up against his dick that was so hard one more move like that would ruin everything he had in mind.

His conscience started yammering about how he wasn’t going to do this again. He cursed the little bastard but it wouldn’t shut up.

Dingo dropped his head to hers. “I hurt you once. Didn’t mean to, but I sure as hell don’t want to do it again.”

She clamped a hand over his mouth. “Whatever idea you have about being honorable and passing this up because tomorrow you’ll be gone–which I pretty much have figured out–that’s not stopping us from doing this. I could have died tonight and so could you. Every second you stand here talking, is one less second you get to feel my mouth on you.”

He swung around with her hugged up against his chest, flipped the knobs on the stove to off, and had made it to the great room when she reached down and cupped him.

“Fuck, Val, keep that up and I won’t make it to the bedroom.”

“Screw the bedroom. I can’t wait that long. I’m wet and ready. What’s wrong with here?”

She would be the death of him. No question. He was panting so hard it hurt to laugh. “No condoms.”

“Oh. Get moving. What are you waiting for?”

“For you to let go of my dick so I can walk, babe.” He kissed her and she relinquished her grip on him. He’d run full obstacle courses with less effort than it took to stride across that room and down one set of stairs with Valene doing everything she could to make him blow a gasket.

He tossed her on the first king-sized bed he found, then snatched a condom from the top drawer on the closest dresser where he’d stashed them when they set up this place. He tossed the unwrapped condom on the bed.

She pushed up on her elbows. “It doesn’t work unless you wear it.”

“Smartass.”  Holy hell, he’d missed her. He grabbed the legs of her oversized sweat pants and yanked, pulling them down far enough to find out she had no underwear on.

His mind blew two fuses trying to hold back after seeing that. He warned her, “Don’t do a thing or I’ll be the first one to have fun.”

Velvet brown eyes twinkled with a wicked thought. She lifted her T-shirt over her head and pinched a breast. “You mean like that or...”  His mouth dried out when her nipple turned into a hard little nub. Her other hand slid between her legs and she gasped, “Or like ...”  Her head fell back. “Hurry up, Dingo!”

Somehow, he had his jeans off, the condom on and landed on top of her in ten seconds. He couldn’t remember pulling down his zipper. “You’re torturing me.”

He eased down and pushed her hand away from between her legs to make room for him to nuzzle all that sweetness. One lick and she came off the bed. He licked again and she grabbed a fist full of his hair.

“Stop torturing
me
,” she yelled at him.

“You can take it.”  He chuckled then got serious about kissing and teasing her with his lips and tongue, taking his time driving her to the edge of insanity then bringing her back. He loved the sounds she made. Loved her yelling at him. He pushed his finger inside and she arched, trembling.

Val was always strung tight as a well-crafted bow and he lived to make her snap, lived for the one moment she was all his and nothing in the world could reach her but him.

He eased his finger inside her with his palm turned up, slowly bending the tip of his finger and stroking gently. She whispered, “Oh...yes ... ”

His girl knew what he was looking for and wanted him to find it. Her G spot.

One brush of his fingertip over that tiny rough area deep inside her was all it took for her to shout,
“There!
Right there!
”

He stroked her with his tongue at the same time his finger played across her G spot.

She let go with a wild scream. “
Yessss!
”

He didn’t stop until she finally fell back against the bed, limp. Now he could take his time without her berating him to stop fucking around.

Yep, that’d been one of her favorite orders.

But he had a few favorite commands of his own that he’d get around to before he was done with her. Running his hands over her silky skin would make a blind man not care about seeing. He reached her breasts and sucked on one, running his tongue over the tip that puckered, happy to see him.

Missed you, too.

She had perfect breasts because they were attached to the perfect body because it belonged to the perfect woman. When you started with a woman who could turn you on with just a smile, make you happy just to be alive and rock your world with just a kiss, you knew you’d found perfection.

She pushed herself up and stared at him with the languid look of a cat who had fallen into a barrel of catnip.

He paused, kept his eyes on her, and leaned forward to kiss each nipple.

That’s all it took for her to rejoin the party. She shoved him over onto his back and climbed on him. His balls throbbed. They were worse than a mutt waiting to be given a treat.

And she was a killer treat.

Grasping his erection, she lifted up and brushed the tip back and forth through her wet canal and started moaning. “This is so good. Don’t you wish you were me?”

He laughed, because if she didn’t slide down soon he’d cry. If his dick could talk, it’d be begging and offering her anything she wanted.

She guided him in slowly then buried him inside her so fast he sat up sucking air. His hands held her still. “Don’t move.”

She was stifling another laugh. Damn her.

He heaved breath in and out. Every nerve in his body had locked onto the feel of her wrapped around him. “I’m telling you, Val. Been too long.”

“We could fix that if you’d let me move.”

He started laughing. He had never laughed during sex like he did with Val.

Maybe because it was always more than just sex with her.

Don’t go there. Just stay in the moment. No past. No future.

Releasing her shoulders, he said, “Go for it.”

Oh, she did, squeezing gently as she slid up and down, tightening her muscles more each time. He gripped his forehead, but it might as well be empty since all the blood had headed south the minute she’d played with herself.

He lifted his hips, picking up her rhythm when she changed the tempo. She dropped her hands to his chest and he clamped his on her hips, driving into her over and over. Muscles corded in his neck and he gasped. “Do it.”

She reached down to touch herself and arched.

He was a goner.

The inside of his head exploded with blinding light. He kept pumping until he was milked dry. When his brain fog cleared, he had her in his arms, tucked as close as he could hold her and was kissing her hair that had dried into blonde spirals.

She didn’t move and he was content to just feel her skin against his, letting his thoughts drift to the times they’d spent the night in their favorite beach cove with a bottle of wine and a blanket. He’d wake to the ocean rolling softly along the shore and Valene curled up against him.

If he had to define contentment, those moments would be the closest he’d ever come to putting it into words.

She lifted up on his chest and grinned. “I felt that at my G spot.”

“You feel everything there.”

Her face took on a mellow expression and her eyes softened. “I feel everything
you
do there. Only you.”

See? A woman like Valene made a man feel powerful enough to conquer worlds. He’d never wanted to conquer a world, but damned if he wouldn’t go hunt one down for her if they lived during the dark ages.

So many people wanted power and money.

All he’d ever wanted was to be wanted ... for more than right now.

No matter how much someone said they cared, they eventually tossed him aside. Val cared. He knew she did, but their worlds might as well be in two different solar systems. He’d stayed too long the last time and almost got her killed. Just being associated with him had her in danger this time.

He’d know when the time came to leave, but this time he’d tell her goodbye if he lived long enough to have that choice.

Chapter 28

Chatton sat near a tall window where she could watch airplanes take off at Los Angeles International Airport. In her other hand, she held a burner phone for calling Wayan. He should know better than to try triangulating her position since this phone had no GPS, but that wouldn’t stop him from putting every resource at his fingertips on it when she called.

He answered, “Few people know this number and none call from untraceable numbers. What do you want, Chatton?”

“I’ve got good news.”

“You have located Soo Jin?”

“I told you, Wayan. She’s dead. She went up in a small airplane with someone who was trying to release a poison into an aquifer in the US. Something went wrong and the airplane crashed. She has no fingerprints on file anywhere, but the woman who died was definitely Asian.”  There was enough truth in that statement to stand on its own. Soo Jin had helped a man called Tanner on Sabrina Slye’s team stop the terrorist plot, and both of them almost died in the plane crash, but they’d had one working parachute and survived.

Jin’s sister, on the other hand, had been marked as disposable and jumped with a sabotaged chute. That meant a female Asian body was recovered but not identifiable.

“I do not accept that as truth.”

“What would be the point in my lying to you, Wayan?”

“To keep me from uncovering the reason you sought out the General and me. I also do not believe that you are sincere about Orion’s Prophecy.”

Where was a hammer when she needed something to beat sense into the voice in this phone?

“I’m as invested as you and the General, but I’m not calling to argue who cares the most.”  If she tried too hard to convince him she was in all the way on the prophecy, he would definitely not believe her and she’d throw up in her mouth by the time she got the words out.

“That has yet to be seen. Why are you calling, Chatton?”

She let a pause build, knowing he was pressing the phone closer to his ear because he would never take this call on a speakerphone. “Like I said, I thought I’d share good news. The scroll you and the General tried to get out of the Vatican a while back with that bombing attempt is out in the open. I’m on the trail to it.”

Now the pause was on his end. Was he trying to determine if she was jerking him around or not? Maybe, but he couldn’t risk losing the scroll. He might even be behind getting it out of the Vatican this time, but if that was the case, something had gone very wrong for it to be floating around the US.

He finally said, “I know who possesses the scroll.”

“Okay. In that case, we won’t need to discuss any arrangement.” 
Come on, Wayan, take the bait
. She had to keep him from going after her secrets. When she allowed Sabrina’s agent, Tanner Bodine, to spirit Soo Jin away and hide her forever, Chatton had crossed Wayan by not delivering Soo Jin. He threatened to find out what she was after and to take it from her.

She was hunting for the person who was systematically killing off everyone in her Macintosh bloodline. She would find the person who had killed first her mother, then her father.

Chatton was now convinced it had to do with a damn Celtic artifact passed down through generations of her family that had roots all the way back to when the Picts ruled Scotland.

Wayan said, “I am willing to discuss an arrangement if you take possession of the scroll before my representative acquires it.”

At least she had him talking. “What sort of arrangement?”

“I want the scroll and you want to remain a secret to someone.”

Just like Wayan to slide in a threat. “You also need my artifact,” she reminded him, just to keep all the cards on the table.

“It would be unwise to think you may hold that over me forever, and you should know that I am quite close to discovering who you hide from and why.”

She’d spent enough time around Wayan to pick up the slightest change in his voice and she caught excitement. She’d buried her identity as an MI6 agent who hadn’t survived a bombing when she’d been in the right place at the wrong time.

But when determined to take down an enemy, Wayan was as lethal as the strike of a black mamba. Chatton had been his enemy since the day she’d informed him she had the Celtic cross he needed for his Orion Prophecy project.

His belief in all this Orion business was absurd. She saw it as a pet project with deadly consequences if those five artifacts came together. She didn’t think spirits would rise up and start a war, but Wayan might.

She kept her gaze on a 747 coming in for landing, flaps set. All clear. “Tell you what, Wayan. I’ll bring you the scroll if that will clear our debt about Soo Jin. I can’t produce a body that doesn’t exist.”

“I have one offer for you. Bring me that and the General’s artifact if you wish for me to keep your secrets. You have precisely six days.”  He ended the call.

Wayan was a psychopathic killer, but from what she’d learned about him, if he made a deal he was good for it.

The only problem would be getting her hands on the General’s artifact, but it was that or hand over Soo Jin, and Chatton wouldn’t fool herself into thinking Wayan didn’t already have someone else hunting for the woman. There was no way Chatton would hand any human being to Wayan with the exception of the General, who was cut from the same cloth as Wayan.

If she got her hands on the scroll, she’d very likely run into the General’s man Rikker, which could give her leverage for gaining the General’s artifact.

Everything came back to finding that scroll.

~*~*~

Wayan waited through the clicking sounds associated with a secure call, something Chatton never worried about. Careless woman. When the new call went through, he spoke first, “Report your progress.”

His man said, “Targets one and two have been successfully eliminated.”  

Wayan asked, “Have you reported to the General as well?”

“Absolutely. You said to make sure he thinks I’m his man on this end.”

“Very good. I believe we have an opportunity to corner Chatton, who is presently in your area of operations.”

“Think she’s working with the General?”

“No, she operates on her own. She believes she can retrieve the scroll and deliver it to me.”

“Do you want her to do that?”

“Absolutely not. What I want is for you to deliver
her
to me. Alive.”

“I may not be able to arrange that until I have the scroll in hand.”

“That will be satisfactory, Rikker. Leave no trail whatsoever.”

“Yes, sir.”