His tongue swirled around her belly button, chased her goose bumps down to the junction between her legs. She shuddered against him, clinging as her legs went weak. His hands shaped her bottom, slid to her hips, and gripped her hard.
“Then we’ll practice together until we’re so strong nothing can get through the shield I build around you before you ever go out on another mission. You’re not ever going to endanger us. Unless it’s spontaneous combustion, because right now, Jaimie, I think I might go up in flames.” His tongue dipped into her heat, lingered for a moment, and then found her inner thigh.
She jumped when his teeth nipped her. He laughed softly out of sheer joy. “I want to get married immediately.” He plunged his tongue into her wet heat.
“What?” The word came out a strangled gasp. She closed her eyes and held on to him for her sanity. He licked at her, long savoring licks as if he could feed from her forever. The sounds he was making vibrated through her body, adding to the waves of pleasure his mouth created.
Mack never stopped devouring her, his mouth clamped over her wet, slick entrance as he turned his body slightly, enough to give him leverage so he could force her back down on the bed. She spilled onto the comforter, her legs splayed, so he could slide down onto the floor, dragging her hips nearly off the bed, assaulting her with his hungry mouth.
She cried out and he reveled in the sound of her voice, the way he could take her up so fast, the way she always responded to his touch. He lifted his head, his tongue licking at the flavor of her on his lips. “I love the way you taste, Jaimie. I swear I could eat you for breakfast every damn morning.”
“Inside me. Right now, Mack. I can’t wait.” She tugged at his hair to try to force him to blanket her.
“I love to torture you,” he whispered, his fingers moving inside her, stretching her, finding that secret erotic button that had her writhing on the bed, her hips bucking, and her feminine muscles squeezing tightly. He watched her eyes widen and glaze, the flush spread over her body. Her stomach rippled and her breasts lifted.
“Again, baby, this time go all the way,” he ordered and replaced his fingers with his mouth. His tongue speared her and she bucked against him hard, her breath exploding out of her aching lungs. She heard herself sob as the fire streaked through her. Her body thrashed, but he held her firmly, his tongue teasing and stroking, insisting on his way. That fast she flew apart, an explosion of her senses ripping through her body like a hurricane.
Before she could catch her breath, he pulled her thighs apart and stood over her, his cock in his hand, poised at her pulsing entrance. He waited until her eyes locked with his and then he plunged deep, driving through her tight, sensitive folds. Fiery hot. Velvet tight. His body reacted, the scorching heat rushing through his veins like a drug. Addicting. Real.
His
.
He held her still, open to his invasion as he plunged deep over and over, savoring the grasping, viselike grip of her muscles surrounding him with fire. She made him hot. She made him wild. She made him forget everything ugly in the world. There was only Jaimie with her body and her love surrounding him with such mind-numbing pleasure he sometimes thought he might not survive it.
He could feel flames licking over his skin, surrounding his cock, streaking through his body, down his thighs, up into his belly to settle into a rolling ball of fire. “Damn, baby, you’re so fucking tight. So hot.” Another low growl rumbled in his chest, a sound so animalistic it shocked even him. Nothing mattered but the fire building.
Her muscles tightened around him, locking down, imprisoning him in a velvet inferno. “Don’t. Baby, you’ve got to stop or I’m never going to hold on.” He wanted to be there forever. Live there. Just stay locked inside of her where fire purified them both. Streaks of flames blazed through his cock, teased his thighs, and raced down his legs to his toes.
He plunged deep into that scalding heat and she writhed again. His breath hissed out, a harsh, rough demand. “Stay still, Jaimie.”
Pure need rode him now, a thousand demons intent on prolonging the ecstasy. He set his teeth and gripped her legs, jerking them over his arms as he levered over her, thrusting hard over and over while her soft mewling cries accompanied the frantic, harsh rhythm he set. The tension grew and stretched in him. He felt the boiling in his balls, as they drew tighter and tighter. He didn’t take his eyes from her face, watching her every inflection, every transparent expression, each nuance. Every time her breath hitched or she arched her body, or thrashed her head, he slammed home, driving deeper, claiming all of her, taking her body for his own.
Her cries crescendoed as the tension wound tighter and tighter and the fire built into an all-consuming blaze. This was the moment, this tightening of her body to the point of pain around his cock, strangling, gripping, drawing thick jets of seed from him so that ecstasy tore through him, taking him soaring. She screamed, the music he’d been waiting for, and he caught her flailing hands, anchoring her as her body rippled and pulsed, milking his.
He collapsed over her, his hair damp, a fine sheen of sweat glistening over his skin while the aftershocks rippled and danced around him, her muscles tightening and releasing, taking the last of his seed from his body.
Mack pressed kisses over her belly and between her breasts and then rolled over and stared at the ceiling so that both of them lay half on and half off the bed. “You know one of the things I missed most?” Besides her sense of humor. Her brain. The way she looked at him as if he was the best man in the world. He turned his head to look at her. “The way you always woke me up in the morning.”
He couldn’t imagine the feeling her mouth created, that warm, amazing pleasure, the moment of complete awareness; there was only reality or nothing. Fantasy didn’t cut it, not when he’d had the real thing. She paid attention to detail. She always had. What turned him on. What made him hard as a rock. What made him lose his mind and thrust helplessly into her silken mouth. Jaimie always made him feel as though she loved every part of him, as though bringing him pleasure was her pleasure.
“I missed it too,” she admitted. She touched her fingers against his until he tangled them together. “I love making you happy, Mack. I always have.”
He rolled onto his side and propped himself up, pushing damp curls from her face. “I need you to tell me the truth, baby. Can you live with what I do? I swear to you, I’ll leave it for you. We’ll find something else.”
She shook her head. “I know what you need in your life, Mack. I’ve always been about making you happy. I like keeping your house, and cooking for you. I love waking you up in the morning and meeting every need you have. I’ve always loved being yours. I needed to know what we have isn’t all about sex and I’ve learned that. We’re so hot together, so wild and out of control sometimes, that I needed to know there were feelings involved.”
“See, honey.” He leaned in to kiss her. “I just don’t get that. How could you not have known?”
She smiled at him. “I guess women need the words sometimes, Mack.”
His teeth flashed at her. “You’re going to be getting words, honey. We’ve got to get you packed before they call me. You know it will be soon.”
“I’m going to work, not just stay home naked waiting for you.”
“I know you will. You always have. And you want a baby, we’ll have a baby.”
“Do you?” Her gaze remained steady on his.
A slow smile warmed her. “If I’d thought about it before, I’d have realized having you tied down with children only helps my cause. Sure. I can handle a few kids.”
“That boy, Dae-sub, he was an amazingly stoic teenager. He was tortured.”
“He’s his father’s son. And he protected Mi-cha as best he could. I have to say, honey, I didn’t feel too sorry for Armstice thinking about him in the hands of Dae-sub’s father.”
“Sergeant Major said the Special Ops team drove them right to the front gate of the Korean embassy, got out, and walked away, and just left the car.”
“A guard was waiting. He drove the car onto the embassy grounds and they were all officially taken into custody. The great part was, they had no idea what happened or how they got there. The only one to escape us was Blaine. He was outside the embassy, waiting to call reporters and film the kid’s death. If North Korea or China manages to pick him up, all to the good.”
She sat up, trying in vain to tame her disheveled curls. “I hope the general can figure out who paid Armstice to kidnap those children.”
“Believe me, they’ll find out,” he said grimly. “And did you read the newspaper report on Jefferson? They gave him a wonderful burial. A heart attack. Very sad. A good man cut down in his prime.” He glanced at his watch. “We’d better get moving. We’ve got a lot of packing to do. I’m not going without you and if they call . . .”
“You’ve got to go.”
“And you’ll be coming without all of your fancy equipment.”
Jaimie straddled his body, settling over his hips, her knees on either side of his thighs. “Are you absolutely certain we have to go right this minute?”
He reached up to wrap a hand around the nape of her head, slowly pulling her down to him. “I guess we’ve got a little time.” He fastened his mouth to hers and just let himself drown.
Keep reading for a sneak preview
of the next exciting book
by Christine Feehan
W
ILD
F
IRE
Available May 2010
from Jove Books!
He heard the birds first. Thousands of them. All varieties, all singing a different song. To an untrained ear the sound would have been deafening, but it was music to him. Deep inside, his leopard leapt and roared, grateful to inhale the scent of the rain forest. He stepped off the boat and onto the rickety pier, his eyes on the canopy rising like green towers in every direction. His heart shifted. It didn’t matter what country he was in—the rain forest was home. Any rain forest, but here, in the wilds of Panama, he had been born. As an adult he’d chosen to make his home in the Borneo rain forest, but his roots were here. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Panama.
He turned his head, looking around, savoring the mingled scents and noises of the jungle. Each sound, from the cacophony of the birds to the shrieks of the howler monkeys to the hum of the insects, contained a wealth of information if one knew how to read it. He was a master. Conner Vega flexed his muscles, a small shrug only, but his body moved with life, every muscle, every cell reacting to the forest. He wanted to tear his clothes from his body and run free and wild as his nature demanded. He looked civilized in his jeans and simple T-shirt, but there wasn’t a civilized bone in his body.
“It’s calling to you,” Rio Santana said, glancing around at the few people along the river. “Hang on. We have to get out of sight. We’ve got an audience.”
Conner didn’t look at him or the others maneuvering small boats up the river. His heart pounded so the blood thundered through his veins, ebbing and flowing like the sap in the trees, like the moving carpet of insects on the forest floor. The shades of green—every shade in the universe—were beginning to band with color as his leopard filled him, reaching for the freedom of his homeland.
“Hang on,” Rio insisted between clenched teeth. “Damn it, Conner, we’re in plain sight. Control your cat.”
The Panama-Colombia leopards were the most dangerous of all the tribes, the most unpredictable, and Conner had always been a product of his genetics. Of all the men on the team, he was the most lethal. Fast, ferocious, deadly in a fight. He could disappear into the forest and disrupt an enemy camp nightly until they were so distraught, haunted by a ghostly assassin no one saw, they abandoned their position. He was invaluable, and yet volatile, and very hard to control.
They needed his particular skills on this mission. Being born in the Panama rain forest to the tribe of leopard people indigenous to the area would give them a distinct advantage should they come across the elusive—and very dangerous—shifters. Conner also gave the team the advantage of knowing the local Indian tribes. The rain forest, most of it unexplored, even for other shifters, could be difficult to navigate. But with Conner growing up there and using it as his personal playground, they wouldn’t be slowed down when they needed to move fast.
Conner’s head turned in a slow freeze-frame movement indicative of a hunting leopard. He was close to shifting—too close. Heat poured off of him. The scent of the wild animal, a male in his prime, strong and cunning, ripping and clawing to break free, permeated the air.
“It’s been a year since I’ve been in a rain forest.” Conner dropped his pack at Rio’s feet. His voice was husky, almost a chuffing sound. “Much longer since I’ve been home. Let me go. I’ll catch up with you at the base camp.”
It was a small miracle and a testimony to Conner’s discipline that he waited for Rio’s nod of consent before he began to walk fast toward the line of trees near the river. Six feet into the forest the sunlight became only a few dappled spots on the broad, leafy plants. The forest floor—layers of wood and vegetation—felt familiar and spongy beneath his feet.
He unbuttoned his shirt, already wet with sweat. The oppressive heat and heavy humidity took its toll on most people, but to Conner, it was energizing. The natives wore a loincloth and little else for a reason. Shirts and pants grew wet fast, chafing the skin, causing rashes and sores that could quickly go septic out here. He peeled off his shirt and bent to unlace his boots, rolling the shirt and pushing it inside a boot for Rio to retrieve.
He straightened, inhaling deeply, looking around at the vegetation surrounding him. Trees rose up to the sky, towering high like great cathedrals, a canopy so thick the rain fought to pierce the various-shaped leaves to hit the thick bushes and ferns below. Orchids and flowers vied with moss and fungus, covering every conceivable inch of the trunks as they climbed toward the open air and sunlight, trying to pierce the thick canopy.
His animal moved beneath his skin, itching as he slipped out of his jeans and thrust them deep in the other boot. He needed to run free in his other form more than he needed just about anything. It had been so long. He took off sprinting through the trees, heedless of his bare feet, leaping over a rotten log as he reached for the change. He had always been a fast shifter, a necessity living in the rain forest surrounded by predators. He was neither fully leopard nor fully man, but a blend of both. Muscles wrenched, a satisfying pain as his leopard leapt to the forefront, taking over his form as his body bent and the ropes of muscles shifted beneath his thick fur.