Warped (The Mercenary Series Book 2) Read online

  With my hands either side of her ass, I buried my face between her legs. I was starving for her—something I’d missed so badly and yet had been unsure of what it was. I flattened my tongue and licked her from the base of her pussy, slowly right up and circling her clit and then back down again. She leaned back, her palms against the counter as support. The position lengthened her body and pushed out her breasts, though she looked down at me, her dark eyes intense with arousal.

  I licked her again, tracing every line and fold of her labia, twirling circles around her clit each time I reached it. She squirmed against me, so I went deeper, spearing my tongue inside her and pushing as deep as I could go. My nose was buried in the small patch of curls above her clit, and the smell and tastes of her filled my senses.

  I looked up at her again, watching to see her reaction to my administrations. Her ribs rose, her stomach undulating as she moved her body against my mouth. I watched her as my tongue pushed deeper inside her, her cream coating my tongue. Her perfect lips were parted slightly, her chest rising and falling with each staggered breath. She was insanely sexy and heartbreakingly beautiful.

  My cock jerked in my pants. I wanted to be inside her.

  I removed my mouth from her pussy and straightened. She pulled me in for another kiss, and I knew she’d be able to taste herself on my tongue. Fuck. I couldn’t think things like that. It had been a while since I’d last come, and I didn’t want to end up embarrassing myself.

  But she reached for me, undoing the buckle of my pants and pushing them from my hips. Then she pulled my shirt up, and instinctively—from a memory buried, perhaps—I nudged her hand away.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I know about the scars. You don’t have to hide them from me.”

  Of course she did. I’d known she would, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself from wanting to hide them. I allowed her to pull the shirt up over my head, and then she bent to my chest and placed kisses across my skin, her tongue, warm and wet, flicking across my nipples, her teeth grating and nipping. Her hand reached down and circled my cock, and I gave a groan at the contact. Her fingers were firm and warm, and she pumped me from the base, right to the head, and back down again. I could smell the salt of my pre-cum on the air between us.

  She gave a gentle tug on my dick, encouraging me closer, and then her legs wrapped around my hips. I slid my hands down under her ass, and we kissed again as our bodies met. My cock nudged her entrance, and with a slight shift in movement, I pushed inside her. She was so wet, from my saliva as well as her natural lube, and I pushed deep and smooth with one stroke.

  “Ah, fuck,” I gasped, holding her tight, keeping myself deep inside her, just to revel in this feeling.

  She clung to me, too, kissing my shoulder and neck. Her hips bucked to encourage me, so I pulled out, right to the point where I almost slipped from her body, and then thrust back in. My fingers dug tighter into the skin of her hips and ass, and my movements became faster. I wanted her to come, wanted to feel her unravel around my cock, and to have her panting and sated against me.

  I reached between us to work her clit, my thumb pressed against the little nub of nerves. She let out a cry, encouraging me. My hips slammed into hers, and the feeling of orgasm approaching hit me, a coiled spring low in my groin. I was starting to zone out, only aware of the pleasure filling my body and how Vee felt wrapped around my cock, her breasts pressed against my chest, her legs wrapped around my hips. Our bodies so close together they were like one. I could have happily stayed like this for the rest of my life and died a happy man. But then the coil sprung open and I jerked, giving a cry of pleasure, almost to the point of pain as I came hard inside her.

  She whimpered against me, her body jerking with little shudders, her inner muscles pulling and holding me deep as stream after stream of cum spilled inside her. We should have been safer, but I hadn’t even given it thought. I didn’t care. I wanted to experience every part of this woman, regardless of the consequences.

  We held each other as we caught our breath, our bodies rising and falling against each other. My fingers laced in her hair and I tugged gently, pulling her face away from my throat, where she’d buried it, so I could kiss her mouth.

  She kissed me again, and we touched noses, smiling against each other’s mouths.

  I was still inside her, not wanting to slip out, but knowing it was imminent.

  “I don’t remember all of what we had,” I told her, “but I remember how I feel about you.”

  She looked up at me. “You do?”

  “Yes. I remember how much I love you.”

  To my confusion, she glanced away.

  “Vee?”

  She shook her head then shifted her body so I slipped from her, leaving a streak of my semen down the inside of her thighs. She dropped to the floor, grabbing her clothing.

  “Vee?” I said again. “Did I say something wrong?”

  She glanced at me over her shoulder as she made her way out of the room, hunting, I guessed, for the bathroom. “You never said you loved me, X. Love has never been on the table.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  V

  I didn’t know why X saying he loved me felt like he’d hit me in the chest. I should have been happy, shouldn’t I? The man I’d cared so much for turning up alive after all this time, putting his life on the line for me, and then telling me he loved me. So why the hell did I feel like he’d just told me I needed to jump out of an airplane without a parachute?

  I could feel him between my legs, my thighs sticky from his cum, my pussy tender and swollen from us fucking. Because that was all this was ever supposed to be—two people in difficult situations getting a little pleasure from each other.

  But love?

  I didn’t want to examine my own feelings toward him, terrified of what I would learn. How had I felt when I’d believed him to be dead? Heartbroken, yes, but also furious and determined. I’d used my anger to quash down the loss I’d felt at what I’d believed to have been his death. I’d not let myself think of him, or the time we’d spent together, just put it down as yet another source of pain in my life. I’d experienced so much loss, and instead of letting it break me, I’d used it to harden me, to build me up.

  I’d thought X was the same way. He had been the same way—the hard exterior created to defend himself against the torture this world was able to work upon us. He’d been hard and tough, like me, but it seemed him losing his memory meant he’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten all the pain he’d experienced—even the years of torture he’d endured at the hands of his adoptive parents—and forgetting had allowed him to feel a little more.

  Feeling wasn’t good.

  Feeling got people hurt.

  I cleaned myself up and got dressed. It was stupid, but I was nervous to face him again. I thought I’d see hurt on his face, and I didn’t know how to make it go away. Could I tell him I loved him, too? Did I love him? I wasn’t sure I knew how to feel that anymore. I didn’t even tell my sister I loved her. In fact, the way she’d treated me recently, I wasn’t sure I could feel love for her, more a kind of responsible loyalty. Until today, anyway. Today I’d abandoned her and destroyed what responsibility I might have felt for her.

  I hadn’t thought it possible for her to have hated me any more than she already did, but I guessed that wasn’t the case.

  A knock came at the bathroom door, making me jump.

  “You okay in there, Vee?” His voice, so masculine, was enough to make my stomach flutter.

  “I’m fine. I’m just getting dressed.”

  “You don’t need to hide.”

  “I’m not,” I snapped. “I’m coming.”

  I had been hiding, but I didn’t appreciate him calling me out on it.

  I opened the door to find him leaning against the wall opposite. He’d put his pants back on, but remained shirtless. I couldn’t help but appreciate the lines of his pectorals and abs, still defined, despite the hospital stay. His head was
tilted slightly to one side as he regarded me with the blue eyes I’d first fallen for. He watched me with a kind of amused curiosity, and I felt my face heat.

  “I’m sorry I freaked you out,” he said. “I’d just assumed …”

  “You know what they say about assuming something,” I replied, but I was teasing him back now. I wanted to move off the subject. “Hey, I didn’t get the chance to say thank you, and to tell you I’m sorry about your friend.”

  He frowned slightly, his lips pressing together. “Thanks. He wasn’t a friend, exactly, more of a business associate, but I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t spotted my picture in the paper and come to break me out of the hospital.”

  “Your picture was in the paper?”

  “Yeah. I hadn’t wanted it to be. A reporter came into my room and took a photograph of me when I was barely conscious. They said they were trying to find someone who knew me, though I think that was just an excuse to get a story. Considering who I am, I guess I was lucky Harvey was the one who came for me. It could have been a lot worse.”

  “Not for him,” I said without thinking.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Sorry.”

  He reached out and caught me by the front of my shirt and pulled me toward him. His mouth found mine and he kissed me, slow and deep, sending fresh shivers of desire coursing through my body, before he let me go.

  “Don’t ever be sorry.”

  I gave a small smile. I was sorry for more in my life than I’d ever thought possible.

  “Do you think Tony is going to figure out who Harvey is and come looking for us here?” I asked.

  “Perhaps. There’s also a chance he’s just going to think Harvey was with the people shooting up the front of the property, and not bother to look into his identity any further.”

  “So the people shooting had nothing to do with you?”

  He shook his head. “No. Nothing. Like I said, we were checking the place out, and the next thing we know, we’re hearing gunfire, so I used the opportunity as a distraction.”

  “Do you have any idea who was doing the shooting?”

  “I was hoping you’d know.”

  I chewed my lower lip. “I had to go in to court the day when I saw you on the street. It was about me testifying against my father. The people who shot up Tony’s house might have been aiming for me.”

  He nodded. “That’s certainly a possibility. Though I’m sure someone like Tony has plenty of enemies.”

  He was right, of course, but my gut told me my father was behind this. That meant I had two sets of people on my tail again—Tony and my father’s men. Unless they decided I’d been killed in the shooting. That was the best possible outcome in my view, though they wouldn’t believe anything without a body.

  “Tony’s going to have noticed me missing by now,” I said. “I wonder if Nicole will have told him who I left with, or if she’ll try to protect me for once.”

  “I have no idea. I don’t know your sister at all.”

  “Considering her past actions, I’m guessing she’d hand me straight over to Tony if she could.”

  X nodded, not disagreeing with me.

  “What do you want to do now?” he asked.

  The main thing concerning me was that I’d be called as witness at any moment, and right now no one had a way of getting hold of me. If I suddenly went AWOL, the trial would be thrown out of court.

  “I need to get in touch with the detective on my father’s case and tell him how to contact me.”

  “You still want to testify?”

  “I have to. That’s what all of this has been about. After what he did, I’d rather die than have that fucking bastard walk free.”

  “Okay, we can do that.”

  “Afterward,” I continued, “can we get something to eat? I’m starving.”

  He chuckled and kissed me again. “Worked up an appetite.”

  I held back a smile. “Something like that.”

  We left Harvey’s apartment, and X drove Harvey’s car downtown to the station where I knew the detective in charge of my father’s case was based.

  “You should wait here,” I told X.

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “I’d rather come with you.”

  It still felt like a miracle that I was able to sit here, speaking with him, touching him. I’d never believed I would see him again, and though the X who sat next to me now was still him, he was changed by the accident—softer, not as coldhearted. He said he was getting snippets of his memory back now, that being with me was helping him remember things, but part of me wondered if I wanted him to remember. Maybe I preferred this version of X, even if the thing he’d said to me still scared the crap out of me.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for any cops to link the two of us. They know my background, and might put two and two together.”

  He frowned slightly. “They think I’m someone else. I had a fake ID on me when they found me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They still must have thought your story was suspicious. You were found with a gunshot wound and two stab wounds, you have no memory, and no one steps forward to claim you. That’s got to send some warning flags up in their minds. I think it would be better if they didn’t connect us.”

  I felt as though I hadn’t thought this through properly. At least at Tony’s, I wasn’t jeopardizing my main reason for staying alive. Now I was worried I’d end up doing something to screw things up.

  He nodded. “Okay, but if you need anything, just call me. I have Harvey’s cell phone, and I bought another disposable cell phone this morning before we came to get you from Tony’s place. You can give them the number for the disposable cell to call you on.”

  “Yes, I can do that. We can’t stay here, though. What if someone reports Harvey missing, or his body shows up and the police find out he’s been killed?”

  “We can always go and stay at a motel,” he suggested.

  “Yeah, I guess we’ll have to.”

  He must have sensed my reluctance, and reached out to squeeze my hand. “We can find somewhere more permanent when all this is over.”

  I lifted my eyebrows.

  “Sorry,” he said, “Too much again?”

  I gave a small laugh. “Yeah, a little. It’s just strange hearing you say things like that.”

  “Didn’t I before?”

  “No. The closest we ever got to talking about the future was one line, and I shut you down pretty quickly.” I sighed. “Anyway, I don’t know when this will be over—if it ever will be. I’m not sure it will be over until I wind up dead somewhere.”

  He squeezed my fingers tighter, hard enough to hurt. “Hey, don’t talk like that.”

  I forced a smile. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you could remember what both our lives are really like, X. Things are going to catch up with you eventually, too. You can’t expect to start living like a regular person.”

  “Yeah, that may be, but for now we need to concentrate on you.”

  I leaned in and kissed him. “Thank you.”

  Leaving X with the car, I went into the police station where Detective Caraway was based. I was in luck that the detective was in his office, plowing through paperwork, according to the sergeant on the desk.

  I figured I was about to add to it.

  The sergeant placed a call to the detective’s office and then said to me, “Take a seat and he’ll be out in a minute.”

  He must have been keen to escape the paperwork, as Detective Caraway arrived within minutes. He was an attractive man in his mid-to-late thirties, I guessed, with dark hair that was graying at the temples, and soulful brown eyes.

  “Miss Guerra,” he said as he approached. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

  “Yes, I know. There have been some developments and I need to make you aware of them.”

  “Very well. Come through.”

  I followed him down the length of the building to his office near the back. He
motioned for me to take a seat in the chair across from his on the other side of the desk.

  He steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “So, what’s been going on?”

  I took the seat he’d offered. “I need to give you a new phone number to contact me on.”

  “You’re not staying with Tony Mancini anymore?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then where are you staying?”

  “I’ll find a motel. I couldn’t stay there any longer.” I was tempted to show him the bruises around my throat, but knew that would mean he’d pay Tony a visit and find out about the shooting, something I didn’t want to happen. “I’ll call you with the address as soon as I get a room.”

  “Is that safe?” he asked. “Are you in any danger? You know you can go back into the program, if you want to.”

  He was referring to the Witness Protection Program.

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not running. “

  “It’s not being cowardly, Verity, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just standing up in court against your father is brave enough.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to leave. My sister wants to be here, in New York, and I’m not going to abandon her.”

  His brows drew together in a frown. “So she left Tony’s with you?”

  “No. She refused. Is there anything we can do about that? She’s still a minor. She’s only seventeen.”

  “When does she turn eighteen?”

  I didn’t want to admit to this, but I figured he could find out easily enough. “Two days from now.”

  “So she’ll be eighteen in two days?” he clarified.

  I nodded.

  He exhaled a sigh. “There’s not much we can do, Verity. I’m sorry. We could go in there and drag her out against her will, but in two days she’s within her right to just walk back in there, if that’s what she wants.”

  I’d known that was what he was going to say. As far as police allocations of budget went, I didn’t think hauling an almost eighteen-year-old out of a house was going to be high on their list of priorities. Seventeen-year-olds ran away from home all the time, and it wasn’t even as though we had a real home for her to run from.