Warrior: The Elect, Book 3 (7 page)

“Who made this?”

“I did.”

He laughed at the shock she knew showed on her face. “I thought women were supposed to like men who cook,” he teased.

“Well, yeah. I just didn’t expect…” Embarrassed, she let the thought trail off, but he plucked it out of her head.

“You didn’t expect a grunt to do something so unmanly?” he asked wryly.

“Busted.”

He laughed again, and she was relieved to see he wasn’t insulted. “It takes a lot of calories to feed a guy my size. Call it a survival mechanism. Or saving my bank account from all that eating out.”

She studied him, intrigued by this new facet of his personality. “Any other secret talents I should know about?”

His smile changed from open and teasing to wicked and sexy. She sucked in a breath as he stood and held his hand out. “Let me show you,” he crooned.

How could she resist? Trembling, already aching with a need only he could instill in her, she took his hand and let him lead her to the side of the bed. He fingered the hem of her camisole.

“Lovely,” he said regretfully. “But it has to go.”

He stripped her, quick and efficient, before nudging her back. That was when she noticed the fur-lined cuffs dangling in the middle of the headboard. She shot him a nervous look.

“Trust me?” he asked seriously, and she didn’t need to think about it.

He’d loved and protected their son. Rescued and taken care of her. She did trust him. With her life and with her body, if not her heart. Nodding, she moved into position. He helped her lie back on a nest of pillows and snapped the cuffs closed. He was replacing the bad memory of her captivity with one of pure pleasure. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. His gaze was dark and hungry as he looked her over from her face down her body and back up again. She pressed her thighs together. What she saw in his eyes scared her a little even as it excited her. Pure dominance. A primitive, primal intention to claim.

“It’s time you see what’s really going on here. What the bond is. What it means to be mated to an Elect male.”

His bold statement stirred her anger. “Made that decision for me, have you?”

His responding smile was just this side of mean. “You keep holding back, sweetheart. And I will have.” He bit her bottom lip. “All.” Turning his head, he nipped her neck. “Of.” Another bite, hard enough to mark this time. “You.”

She licked dry lips. “I’m not a submissive woman.”

“Here you are. Here you will be. In our bed.” His features were sharp but his grin was sinful. Lascivious. “At my mercy.”

Oh God. Her body shouldn’t respond so fiercely and desperately at his words. She wanted to clench her thighs together, but he moved between them, the rough denim abrading her core and adding to the need rising in her body. He leaned down and circled her nipple with his tongue. She trembled and bowed her back, trying to give him more, silently pleading for everything.

“Mmm,” he murmured. “Like that, do you?”

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.
“Don’t ever stop,”
she begged mentally, not realizing she shared the thought.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I won’t. Never.”

When he started moving down, she would have protested had she not sensed his intention. He spread the lips of her sex and tasted her with one long lick that sent electricity zinging through her. Then he got serious. He teased her, his tongue flicking lightly over her clit while he circled her entrance with a tender touch. One finger stroked into her, then two. He put just the right amount of pressure on her G-spot with each thrust and sucked her clit between his lips. Driving her higher and higher, making her desperate and finally making her beg.

“Carter, please,” she wailed. “Make me come!”

“Aw, baby,” he said. “Your pleas, your cries are so sweet.” She swore he growled. “But not yet.”

His fingers slid free of her pussy and rimmed her rear entrance. She knew they were slick with her juices—with her lust—but she couldn’t keep from freezing when he worked one into her ass, then two. She wasn’t a stranger to anal sex, but it had been a long time. Even though she remembered he’d make it incredible for her, she tensed.

He felt her hesitation, of course.

“Shh, sweetheart,” he whispered, his free hand stroking her from her inner thigh to her knee, spreading her when she’d tried to close her legs. His tongue thrust into her pussy, fucked her until she gasped at the pleasure and felt his answering response, his fingers thrusting into her anus. He passed the resistance easily. He’d banished her doubts with bliss—and damn him, he knew it.

Not that she cared. She rolled her hips, meeting each stroke. His mouth moved back to her clit. This time he tugged it with his teeth just hard enough to send a jolt of pleasure mixed with pain racing through her. Desire built and built, and when it threatened to overwhelm, he didn’t hold her back.

The orgasm burst over her with a force she’d never experienced—never dreamed of. Every inch of her body was so sensitive it almost hurt. Her vision became a kaleidoscope of shifting, brilliant colors. And though Carter hadn’t come inside her, she felt him right there with her. She was still shaking, still trying to make her surviving brain cells cooperate, when she felt the head of his cock slide into her ass.

His entrance was unhindered and slick, his jaw clenched tight. He nodded to the bedside table when she met his gaze, and she turned long enough to see the bottle of lube, open and obviously used. She’d been so far gone to her orgasm she hadn’t even noticed him get it and use it. That worried her a little. What did it mean that he could make her so delirious with ecstasy? How would she survive it when he tired of her and left?

Carter watched her carefully as he worked his cock into her ass. This was the ultimate act of possession, of dominance. Claiming. And she was thinking too damned much. He felt a hurt she tried to bury, but it was impossible to hide emotions from him. He gritted his teeth. Not against the urge to thrust into her and distract her with pleasure, but rather a darker need. The instinct to surge into her mind. To demand her answers, her trust. To demand her heart and soul.

Demanding, he knew, was the wrong approach. He had to show her. There were some things that could only be demonstrated. He
would
have all of her, and he would give her all of him in return. He continued his gradual advance/retreat in her rear channel, working his way deeper as his fingers brushed lightly over her clit. Strumming, teasing her back up to the precipice of rapture once again.

He almost exhaled a gust of relief when her eyes began to glaze and her breathing became uneven. She couldn’t move her arms, but she lifted her legs to circle his hips. It was her first step in lowering those walls she kept so high. Trusting him to care for her, entrusting her body—her pleasure—to him. Her gaze remained glued on his cock, watching each stroke as he worked deeper. He groaned when he was finally seated to his balls. So damned tight and hot.

He squeezed her clit as he pulled his cock out again. Slow, withdrawing so fire licked through his veins, spread through his dick. She wasn’t having any part of slow, however. Her heels dug into his back and she arched against him.

“Harder,” she demanded, a rough whisper.

Ah, hell. How could he deny her what he wanted her just as much? He refused to fuck her blindly, though. Control was imperative. He kept his thrusts steady and even and shallow through pure force of will, and still it wasn’t enough for either of them. He could see the lust and frustration building in her eyes, in the pretty pink flush that covered her face.

“Carter. Faster,” she pleaded.

Now,
that dark, primitive side of his soul said.
Take her now. All of her.

He didn’t even try to fight it. Reaching up, he hit the hidden switch on the cuffs to release her wrists. Then he sat back on his heels, pulling her with him and gripping her hips, and thrust fast but not quite hard. The pleasure might kill him.

“Touch yourself,” he ordered and watched as her hand slid between her breasts, down her belly, and revealed her clit. She set two fingers on it and rubbed. “Hell yeah. Just like that, baby.”

He couldn’t decide which was more fascinating to watch—his cock sliding in and out of her ass or her bringing herself so close to orgasm. He wasn’t ready for her to do that yet, however.

“Don’t you dare come without me,” he snapped.

She hesitated, but her ministrations slowed as she obeyed him. He smiled.

“You’re mine, Jamie.”

She shook her head once and he fucked her harder.

“You are.”

She replied with a sound that was half protest and half acknowledgement. He had her now.

“You are, baby,” he crooned, slowing his thrusts. “Say it. Admit it. And I’ll give you what you want.”

“Yours,” she said. “But that makes you mine.”

Smiling, he stretched out over her, keeping one hand on her hip to hold her still and gripping the back of her head with the other. “I’m not the one who’s been fighting it, sweetheart.”

He kissed her. His tongue fucked her mouth with the same greed as his cock fucked her ass, and he felt that fire between them threatening to explode. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, and a keening cry left her lips as she came. That sound was like a salve to his soul. It healed the past hurts and betrayal. Solidified the bond between them. The love.

That awareness undid his last shred of control. His balls drew up so tight it was almost pain. And then his orgasm consumed him. It blew him apart, then put him back together as someone else—someone new.

Mated,
that inner voice whispered again.

It was a long time before he could carefully withdraw from her, and even though she’d drifted to sleep, she whimpered a protest and tried to hold him to her. He got a small bowl of soapy water and a cloth and cleaned them both. Then he returned to her, pulling her into his arms where she belonged—where she would never dare hide from him again.

Chapter Five

The next morning, Jamie stood beside Carter in the dining room and, along with what had to be half Mason’s security force, watched as Toler and Martin were led in. Well, actually, all the men watched the two males. Jamie was watching Livie. The woman, who had been friendly until now, had been reserved and jumpy at breakfast. It made Jamie curious about what the nature of her relationship with Martin was exactly.

Since the others were focused on the prisoners, Jamie was probably the only one who noticed the quickly hidden flash of pain on Livie’s face and her careful visual examination of the prisoner. Then Jamie turned to examine Martin too. His body was rigid with tension—not surprising under the circumstances—but instead of being a good little soldier, he ignored the room and everything in it to look over Livie just as thoroughly as she had him.

Jamie leaned close to Carter. “There’s something more than a casual roll in the hay between those two,” she whispered.

Carter snorted and answered her mentally.
“Not on his side of it, I promise you.”

“Oh, I think you’re wrong about that, babe. Watch him. He looks like a man blindsided with feelings he has no idea how to deal with and probably would rather not. He’s still coming to terms with it.”

She was getting the hang of this telepathy thing. She couldn’t initiate contact, but while he held the link open between them, she could answer.

“I don’t think you need to be worrying about another man’s emotions,”
he half-teased, half-complained. He paused.
“And you aren’t. So why bring it up? What are you suggesting?”

“We use it against him.”
Was it mercenary? Sure. Necessary? Absolutely. She had no intention of being taken and used as a lab rat again, and she’d be damned if she saw it happen to anyone else. To stop it, she needed answers.

Carter was silent a long moment, and when he finally replied, she was stunned.
“You question him. We’ll follow your lead.”

“I think we can clear some people out of here first.
Toler too.”

First rule of questioning—separate the suspects. It was done with no complaints, leaving her, Livie, Carter, Brax, Mason and Martin, the latter of whom was sitting alone at one end of the table. Jamie approached and sat opposite him. She stared at him until he fidgeted. She focused her gift.

“Who do you work for?” she finally asked.

“The US government. Black ops. We don’t know names.” It wasn’t a lie, but there was a hint of evasion too. She’d asked the wrong question.

“Okay. Who do you suspect you work for?”

Instead of answering, he looked at Livie, who’d hung back against the wall. Jamie motioned her to the seat at the head of the table, placing her between Jamie and Martin. A bit of tension relaxed from his face, and Jamie almost smiled.

Ah yes, we definitely have you.

He sat his hands on the table and the metal of his cuffs clanged. “Any chance of getting these removed? And maybe a glass of water?”

She felt the men behind her tense, but she wasn’t an idiot. Jamie laughed and shook her head. “Sure. I’ll free you and give you a weapon. No problem.”

“Had to try, didn’t I?” he replied. His tone was a mix of joking and regretful.