Rules of Engagement (9 page)

Katarzyna, breathing harshly, fell onto the cool, smooth leather and let him roughly strip away her remaining articles of clothing. Her eyes at half-mast, she watched him undo his jeans and free himself. His cock was long and thick and flushed with blood. Her fingertips dug into the supple arms of the chair as her breath shuddered out of her.

He reached for her and Katarzyna shook her head. “No,” she protested hoarsely. “All of it. I want you naked.”

His fingers clenched and he looked as if he was going to ignore her request. Then, his eyes avidly roaming her body, he stripped his dark shirt over his head, exposing the broad shoulders and long, lean muscles of his torso. Her mouth literally watered. The shoes, socks and jeans followed and he was exposed in all his naked glory for her eyes, making thick, hot liquid seep from her sex.

He pulled a condom from the back pocket of his jeans before dropping them to the floor and now tore the foil packet open.

“Feet on the arms,” he ordered as he rolled on the plastic sheath.

She complied, her thighs wide, exposing more of herself to his hot gaze. He moved between her spread legs and, without being asked, Katarzyna spread her labia open with her fingers.

He bent over her, surrounding her with his heat and scent, braced one arm on the armrest. He wrapped a large, strong hand around his cock and guided it to her opening, teasing her with the incredibly soft head. She moaned.

He plunged inside, hard and deep, hilting himself to the root. She cried out, savoring the sensation of being full to bursting once more, of his heated cock rubbing her inner channel, of his head brushing the gate to her womb.

He fucked her without the care, without the finesse he’d apparently exhibited for previous lovers, and she reveled in it. His hands cupped her buttocks and lifted her hips to meet each thrust, grinding his groin into hers, and it was too much for Katarzyna. She came quickly, crying out his name, the orgasm intense, her whole body shaking uncontrollably. Her grappling fingers found his hair once more and pulled his mouth down to hers, uncaring if he could taste her tears.

He tore his mouth from hers when he went over the precipice with a guttural shout, his body going rigid above hers before the spasms shook it.

* * * * *

Two more orgasms later, Jake and Katarzyna were sprawled side by side on her bed, sweat cooling on their bodies, the blankets and pillows all scattered on the carpeted floor. She could feel his rapid heartbeat underneath the hand that he kept trapped on his chest. Its tattoo matched hers. And like hers, it was slowing down. Eventually, it would go back to a less dangerous rate.

Like in another month or so.

Limp with an exhaustion that sank to the marrow of her bones, Katarzyna closed her eyes, let herself drift into a half-sleep, then drifted into the first real sleep she’d gotten in six months.

She woke to see the bedroom lit by the lamp on the bedside table on his side and Jake looking down at her. He was on his side, his head propped up with one hand. The other was slowly, almost lethargically drawing her hair away from her face, strand by stray strand.

“I love looking at you,” he murmured, tracing a finger down the length of her nose and over the curves of her lips to end at the point of her chin. The expression in his eyes was so peaceful, so content that she wanted to look away.

Then why did you stay away?

His eyes darkened. “I’m sorry,” he said, making her realize she’d voiced her question out loud.

Jake released a tired sigh and settled on his back.

“I had to stay away from you,” he explained quietly. “For your own safety. You’re a cop—you should understand that.”

“Ilena Tkachuk’s in custody, isn’t she?”

“Not quite,” he said dryly. “She agreed to a deal. She’ll be of more use on the outside than locked up somewhere Amnesty International can’t find her.

“And she’s not the only enemy I have. I did what I did for a lot of years.”

He sounded weary and maybe just a shade regretful. Katarzyna drew him to her. He came, throwing a hairy, heavy leg across both of hers and letting her twine her arms around his shoulders as his head found her soft breasts.

“But I couldn’t stay away,” he continued, sounding irritated. “During the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And at night, I couldn’t stop dreaming about you. I thought it would get better the more time passed, but it didn’t. It got worse and worse until I was a menace to those around me.”

He lifted his head and caught her eyes, his own fierce. “Tell me it was the same for you,” he demanded harshly, his fingers biting into her flesh. “I couldn’t have been the only one going through that hell.”

Unable to speak past the tightness in her throat, she only nodded. Her response soothed him and he pressed a firm, dry kiss to her lips before his head returned to her chest. For long moments, she alternated between stroking the warm, supple skin of his shoulder and sifting her fingers through his hair.

“What now?” asked Katarzyna finally.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

She took a deep, fortifying breath and closed her eyes, summoning the last vestiges of her courage. “I don’t think I can handle it if you continue the field assignments.” The worry for his safety, the uncertainty of his fidelity would undo her and eventually, undo them. Was this why she’d always picked men she somehow knew she wouldn’t care about deeply? Even now, the thought of him with Ilena Tkachuk was a sharp, slicing pain inside her.

“I’m retired from the field. I decided that while I was recuperating from a collapsed lung. I had a lot of time to think in between the morphine drips.”

He rolled onto his back again and ran both hands through his hair. “But I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life.”

She sat up and laid a hand on his shoulder, willing comfort into him. The muscles in his shoulders slowly unknotted. He covered her hand and squeezed her fingers before lacing them with his. He touched each of her features with his eyes, as if memorizing them. “I do know that I want you with me while I figure it out.”

Joy was a slow, bright shaft of sunlit warmth through her body. “That’s good.”

He cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing over her lower lip. His own mouth tipped down at the corners. “I don’t know if I can stay here, though.”

She went still, knowing what he was telling her. It gave her only a moment of pause. “If you leave I’ll go with you,” she said, and brought her mouth down to his in a soft, gentle kiss unlike any they’d shared.

She moved to face the end of the bed then swung a leg over his body to straddle him, pressed her lips down the length of his cock, teasing him with the occasional swipe of her tongue, pausing occasionally to gasp when his mouth returned the favor. She tasted his abdomen ridged with muscle, followed the thin line of hair back down to his erect cock and took him into her mouth. She applied all he’d taught her, then forgot about skill and technique and simply gave herself up to the sensuous feel of him in her mouth.

As his cock hardened further in her mouth, his moans of pleasure vibrated against the juicy folds of her sex. He nibbled and sucked and licked, and then probed her depths with his tongue. His hands grasped her hips and pulled down so he could go deeper. He treated her stiff clitoris to swipes of his tongue then sucked it when her hips arched against his mouth.

His rough hands roamed the curves of her ass, squeezing, clenching. Then he grasped both globes and spread them apart, exposing the puckered ring of her anus. He rimmed it with a finger and her entire body became taut as fearful anticipation whipped through her like lightning. Her mouth stopped its rhythm up and down his cock. Jake lifted her sex from his mouth, dipped a finger into her drenched pussy and slowly pushed the long digit past that tight circle of muscle until he could go no farther. Katarzyna released a long, low moan, the most exquisite pleasure weakening her, leaving her feeling boneless.

Soon another finger joined the first, stroked her on the inside. He spread his fingers wide and she moaned again. He withdrew his digits, eliciting an incoherent protest from her. He slid his body out from under hers and arranged her on the bed, her head cushioned on her arms, her ass up in the air like an offering.

Her breath was trapped in her throat as she waited for him to continue. He fingered her again, three digits this time, thrusting and rotating with care and deliberation, loosening her more until she was clawing at the white sheets and begging him to take her.

Abruptly, his fingers were gone and the broad head of his penis, still wet from her mouth, pressed against her sphincter and she instinctively resisted.

“Relax,” he coaxed, his own voice anything but. “Let me in.”

His words fell over her and she tried to relax and open but couldn’t. A hand found her sex and played with her, pinching her clitoris, delving into her wetness, drawing her focus away from the insistent pressure against her rear entrance. A harsh sound came from above her as he forced the knob of his penis past her resistance. She gave a choked, inarticulate cry. It felt like she was being torn in two.

Jake murmured soothingly to her, again urging her to relax. Katarzyna squeezed her eyes shut and just breathed, and the pain slowly ebbed. All the while, he rocked her back and forth until she was fully impaled by his cock, feeling fuller than she had before. By then, the whimpers she made were of pleasure and not pain as her excitement returned and grew.

He thrust steadily into her, making her sex throb in time with his rhythm. It felt different from having him take her in her pussy. Dirtier. Forbidden, even. And those thoughts made her flush and more wetness trickle down her thighs.

He increased his pace and force, making her body shake each time he hilted. She heard his breathing hitch, knew he was close to climax, and came. She shuddered, both her cunt and her ass spasming as wave after wave of exquisite sensation crashed over her. Through the haze, she felt him lunge into her three more times, then he swelled and burst and made her come again, screaming his name loud enough that she knew the neighbors would take notice.

* * * * *

When she came to, early dawn light was filtering through the drapes covering her window and Jake was nuzzling her navel, his tongue lazily flickering over her belly button. He lifted his head when she sighed, the sound regretful.

“I don’t think I can,” she said.

His eyes gleamed as a wicked half-smile lifted his lips. “I just want you to lie here and let me do all the work,” he said, and reached out for something on the bed. “And to help you,” he continued, “I brought these up from downstairs.” She heard the musical
clink
of metal on metal and he dropped the handcuffs onto her chest, the metal startlingly cool on her skin.

She hooked a finger through one cuff and lifted them up.

His voice lowered seductively. “I’ve wanted you at my mercy since I looked at you handcuffed to my bed.”

She swallowed, her body beginning to warm and soften even as her pulse tripped and sped up. “Are you going to show me mercy?”

“Do you want me to?” he asked.

A small smile playing on her lips, she snapped a cuff on one wrist and raised her arms over her head, toward the wrought-iron headboard and its convenient vertical posts.

Ann Bruce
is the pseudonym for a self-professed computer geek who, in between snowboarding, reading comic books, and wearing out the buttons of her PS3 controller, writes because it’s an acceptable means of explaining all the voices in her head.

For the latest news, free reads, and more, visit
www.annbruce.net
.

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