Elite Metal-ARE-epub (54 page)

“I don’t get you,” she said finally and tugged her shirt over her head. The t-shirt landed on the television next to his. Simple, gray-colored and completely nondescript, but he liked the image of it next to his shirt. As she had in the classroom, she wore a simple black bra. Without an ounce of modesty, she unhooked it and slid free of the lingerie.

“Good.” He preferred to be an enigma, especially if it provoked her into trying to solve him. Enjoying the view of her breasts, he smiled at the peaked points of her nipples. Yeah, she had her tells. The whole interaction had him hard as a stone, and all they were doing was stripping and talking.

What the fuck was he going to do when she let him touch her again?

Toeing off his shoes, he reached for his belt and undid it. She mirrored him, step for step until they were both nude. His cock jutted up, full and thick. His balls were tight while he admired the lean length of her.

“Thank God I didn’t imagine you,” he said aloud. She really was quite perfect. And, having been on the receiving end of her strikes and sweeps, as capable as her musculature promised.

She chuckled, and he jerked his gaze upward. Zeroing in on her face, he drank in her smile. “You’re crazy.”

“So you’ve said.” He made a twirling motion with his finger. “Let me see all of you.”

“You first.” There it was. The push back. He’d expected it. Spreading his arms wide, he complied with the request and trusted her to not clock him in the back of the skull.

Facing her again, he raised his eyebrows. With a shake of her head, she mirrored his pose and spread her arms out from her body, fingers splayed, and turned in a slow circle. The ripple of muscle as she moved beckoned him. So fluid and graceful—“It’s a butterfly.” A hint of blue and green graced one cheek of her ass and he dropped to a crouch to get a better look at it. She held still and glanced over her shoulder. The colors were stunning against the deep tan of her skin, almost jewel toned.

“Yeah.” She sounded almost sheepish, and he caught the rueful smile on her face. Open, honest emotion, and it punched him square in the gut.

“May I?” He held his palm toward it as though to touch, but hovered just over the skin. At her nod, he traced the line of the butterfly. It had the shape and the design of a monarch, but the coloring was so unusual. He’d never seen one in blues and greens. “It’s really very pretty.” Did it have some meaning to her? Was she the butterfly?

Or was she the caterpillar who longed to shed her existence to become a butterfly?

“I lost a bet.” The admission caught him off guard. Still stroking the wings, he admired the supple strength and beauty in the line of her back. The muscle tension eased as he traced a line up to her lower back and down again. Everything about this woman was lovely, even the mystery she presented to him. “It was a stupid bet to take, but I did and then I lost. So he picked out a butterfly for me, and I’ve had it on my ass ever since.”

He.
A man picked out the butterfly. A man had claimed ownership, and his gut twisted. “First question,” he said, ignoring the tightness in his throat. He couldn’t keep his fucking hands off of her. “Are you
with
anyone?”

The muscles in her ass clenched and he settled his hands on her hips as he stood. Closing the distance between them, he soaked up the feeling of her back against his chest. No manufactured perfumes harshened the air around her. He wanted to get drunk off her sweet, wild vanilla sugar scent. 

“No.” The whisper carried a note of such finality, it made his heart hurt. “I’m not.”
Anymore.
She didn’t use the word, didn’t even attempt to, yet he heard it anyway.

Trusting his instincts, he slid his arms around her and pulled her against him. Holding her, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Can’t change the past.” The flip response couldn’t disguise the emotion clogging her words.

“No, you can’t. Doesn’t mean the past doesn’t hurt us or shape us.” Hell, he knew how much it could affect a person. His past ate away at his soul. All the good acts he could do wouldn’t give back the lives lost to his work. “So I’m sorry.”

“How do you do that?” Instead of pulling away, she sank back against him and let him hold her. The violent urge to cuddle her had him reaffirming his patience stance. Whatever the hell happened to her—where the fuck were the people who should be taking care of her? Family? Loved ones?

“Do what, sweetheart? You need to be more specific.”

“This,” she glided her touch along his arm, then covered his hands where they rested against her abdomen. “How the hell do you see me?”

“I don’t know.” He’d promised her truth. “All I know is I saw you two years ago, and I wanted to see you again. Maybe it was the smoking hot legs or the fuck me walking you were doing—or maybe it was that playful look you shot in my direction. I
wanted
to know you.” She hadn’t asked, but she still deserved to know. “I looked for you for a long time. When I saw you in Nigeria, it hit me all over again, but I couldn’t get close. If I hadn’t saved some security footage, I wouldn’t have been able to see you walk over and over again.”

Laughter shivered through her, and she turned her head. Following her focus, he met her gaze in the mirror. He loved how she looked in his arms, the deep tan of her skin a contrast to his paleness. He really did need to get out in the sun more, but after years of tropical assignments, he found he liked the indoors. No insects. No sunburn. No threat of dehydration or starvation.

“You know, that sounds kind of stalkery.” But humor warmed the depths of her hazel eyes.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like. I wanted a name to go with the face and the walk, but couldn’t find it. Figured I had to give up when I took the teaching post, and then you walked into my classroom.”

“We said we were keeping it personal.”

He slid a hand down to dip between her thighs. She was damp and soft. Her lips parted at the caress. “Trust me,” he told her. “We’re definitely keeping it personal. What happened in that classroom and in the one next door had nothing to do with business. Not to me.” Unless… “Was it professional for you, Copper?”

Not once did her gaze cut away from his, so he held fast and let his finger drift along her slit. The slow petting gesture offered both satisfaction and torture. He wanted days with her, not mere hours. He wanted to spend time discovering what she responded to, what she craved, and what would send her over the edge.

“I want to tell you yes, so bad.” The admission cost her, and he respected the blunt honesty. “Because it should have been.”

“It’s okay,” he told her, finding her clit with his forefinger and stroking the hard nub. Her knees gave and he held her up, gazes locked together as he continued to caress. The muscles of her ass went taut against him and her breathing grew shallower. Increasing the pressure, he squeezed her clit and her mouth opened wider. The muscles along her throat contracted and he could see the strain of holding back her cries as she began to pump her hips to meet the strokes of his fingers.

“Gabriel.” Harsh and needy, she asked with a few syllables and he turned her to face the mirror fully and settled on the bed with her in his lap. With her legs spread and straddling his knees, he had the perfect view of her pussy and the right angle to give her exactly what she asked for.

Sliding one hand up to her breast, he caught a nipple between his thumb and forefinger. A pinch of pressure as he increased the speed of his hand on her clit and she came, a low half-formed note bursting from her throat. Raw emotion spread across her face, and her smile devastated his senses. The sheer beauty in the silent orgasm stole his breath. Her cheeks flushed. The ruddy color spread down her chest and gave her an almost rosy hue beneath the deep tan. Her eyes gleamed. He could have eased off the pressure, but he increased the stroke of his fingers until her back arched. When she cried out this time, he heard her gasp.

Satisfaction flooded him and his cock ached, but he ignored its demands. Copper’s eyes drifted to half-closed and she shuddered, wide open and vulnerable in his arms. She’d give him the fucking sun and the stars in her reaction.

“Definitely personal,” she whispered and he nuzzled a kiss to her temple, petting her down.

“I know,” he said.
God, did he ever know.

Chapter Seven

Still trying to catch her breath, Copper sagged against Gabriel. His hand against her pussy was the most erotic thing she’d seen in a long time. The view hardly compared to the heat he continued to stoke through her. Her inner muscles clenched at the emptiness, and she was very aware of his cock pressed against her ass. Instead of angling for entry though, he simply stroked and soothed her.

Covering his hand with hers, she concentrated on reclaiming some control. Gabriel peeled it away from her, layer by layer, until she wanted to give it to him.
Fuck wanting, I did give it to him.
Whether she could ever admit it aloud or not didn’t matter. Actions spoke far louder than words. Twice now, she’d let her feelings for this man seduce her.

Feelings.

What. The. Fuck.

“Easy,” he murmured the word and rubbed his cheek against hers gently. The bruises from his interrogation darkened the skin below one eye. Bruises weren’t supposed to be sexy. “I’m not going to hurt you, remember?”

“I’m not afraid of you.” She’d told some really big damn lies in the past, but nothing compared to that whopper. Gabriel Danvers scared the hell out of her.

“I didn’t say you were.” Her erstwhile white knight was also a gentleman for letting the big stinking pile she tried to shovel go. “I said easy. You’re getting tense. You’re
safe
here. No one is getting to you without going through me.”

Believing him proved far simpler than she cared to admit. She didn’t want him to be between her and danger, however. The people she was after didn’t play games. Killing? Well, Red Wolf had killed plenty. They’d paid a steep price in blood. She didn’t want his blood on her hands either.

“Nothing professional,” she reminded him, shifting her thoughts away from the dark and treacherous path.

“Trust me, my mind is not on work at the moment.” The teasing words accompanied his fingers dancing over her body. “Look at you. I love that look on your face.”

Raising her eyebrows, she glanced up from his hands to study herself in the mirror. She didn’t see anything special. She’d seen the same face for three decades now—the woman who could vanish in a crowd. The woman no one could pin down to an ethnicity. She’d listed three different ones during school, usually picking whichever one suited her mood, and no one ever questioned her choices. Her lips were moist, and her eyelashes dipped with her eyelids half down.

The stubble on his cheek left hers a little flushed where he’d rubbed against her. She enjoyed the rasping sensation of it, the raw reality. The intensity in his gaze, however, captivated her. “What do you see?” Yes, she’d just wasted a question, but she didn’t give a damn.

“I see you.” He smiled and her bruised heart squeezed in her chest. “I see intelligence in those hazel eyes. A crafty, clever, and vividly brilliant intelligence. There’s a softness in those lips, one that doesn’t come out and is well hidden, but when you smile…like that.” He grinned as her mouth seemed to move in reaction to his words. “It takes my breath away. I want to do everything I can to bring that smile out. Then there’s your chin. It’s a very stubborn chin.”

Laughter bubbled out of her before she could swallow it away. “How the hell can a chin be stubborn?”

“You lift it—see, there you go. You raise it when you’re irritated or considering a move. It’s not quite a tell, but you don’t like to be challenged. So, when you think I’m going to, you raise your chin. It’s telling me you’re ready, that you can handle whatever bullshit life throws at you, because you’re above it.”

Shock piled atop shock. Why wasn’t he furious with her?
So what did you get out of him?
Merc’s words drifted through her.
Did it ever occur to you he played you?

“Where did you go?” Gabriel frowned and his hands drifted to rest on her thighs. The need to turn around and fill herself up on his cock warred with the need to answer his question. She’d come here to get information. Instead, they were playing at sex again. How the hell did he keep turning her inside out?

No, why am I letting him do it?
She wasn’t an idiot. She wanted to participate or she wouldn’t still be in the room. The text she’d sent Cobalt had been straightforward. She was going dark to work Gabriel over, she’d check in with him in the morning. The plan made sense—then.

“Copper.”

“Don’t do that.” She eased forward on his lap and, at her resistance, he let her go. Rising, she wanted distance between them.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t talk to me like you
know
me.” She pivoted to face him. “You don’t know me.”

“I know I don’t.” The easy agreement deflated her argument. “I don’t know you, Copper. I
want
to know you. Do you think it was easy to accept you were working with people who knocked me out? Kidnapped me? Interrogated me? Worse, that you were the one who injected me?”

Every indictment was true, so… “Why do you still want to know me?”

“Because,” he said, rising to close the distance between them. She didn’t retreat from his approach or resist when he settled his hands on her shoulders. “You fascinate me.”

“Fascination with fire is great until you get burned.” Nothing about their situation was sane or safe. “We said nothing professional.”

“I’m still in the personal zone. You wanted to know why I was talking to you like I know you. Hell, why I tried to take you out for coffee and dinner. Dating you comes with obstacles. I’m good with obstacles. Sooner or later, you’re going to say yes to me, and we can try this the normal way.”

Normal? What the hell was normal?

“And it’s my turn for a question because, by my reckoning, you’ve asked several.”

Irritation crawled through her because he was right. God, the man knocked her off her game. It was disheartening…
Maybe I am compromised.
Only the bitter rejection of the accusation she’d experienced before didn’t choke her this time. “You’re due. You keep putting up with me.”