Beneath the Secrets Part 3(11)

Her hurt cut through the adrenaline and pain eating away at him, and then it punched in the chest. He didn’t want to get off of her. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want her to go away. “I’m sorry,” he breathed out. “Kara…I’m sorry.” He lowered his forehead to hers. “I am getting this all wrong. I’m just trying to keep you alive.”

Her fingers curled on his cheek. “I’d rather have you by my side, helping me. I’d rather not be alone in this anymore, Blake. Don’t make me be that again.”

Alone. He felt the ache in that word when she said it. Her family was dead. Her sister was missing. He wanted to make it better for her. He would. He’d get her sister back, no matter what that meant. “I’m the wrong person to count on.”

“Because you expect to die.”

“Because I’m willing.”

“I’m willing. There’s a difference between being willing to die and wishing you were dead.”

He inhaled sharply and lifted his head to look at her. She saw too much and he saw no point in denying the truth. “And that’s why you’re a problem, Kara. You make me want to live again and damn it, that’s dangerous.” Too dangerous. He had to find his control again. He had to do it now.

His mouth came down on hers, his tongue tasting her deeply, drawing in her sweet honey flavor. There was a desperation to his kiss, a need to get to that familiar place where there was only pleasure and escape. Blake skimmed a path up her slender waist, over her high, full breasts, and she rewarded him with a sexy half moan, half pant, that thickened his cock and set his blood on fire. Burning up, urgently wanting to be inside her, Blake shoved off the bed, shackled her legs and dragged her to the edge.

Wasting no time, giving her no chance to argue or challenge him, he undressed her. The sooner she was naked, the sooner he could feel pleasure and escape, not pain and the other things she stirred inside him that he refused to name. And still, with every touch, with every brush of their eyes, more than sex stirred in the air, in his body. In his chest.

He undressed, and disposed of his gun on the nightstand, and while it could protect them from enemies, he wasn’t sure who would protect him from Kara. She’d seduced him into every emotion he’d never wanted to feel again and he was desperate to gain back the control she’d stolen. His knees hit the mattress and he lay down, pulling her to her side, her back to his front, his body cradling hers. He didn’t want to look into her eyes, determined to make this just sex, two people surviving a small piece of hell. He nipped her ear. “Are you ready for me?” he asked, sliding fingers in the wet heat of her sex that told him her arousal matched his.

She made a soft sound of pleasure, and then challenged him. “I’m ready, Blake. The question is, are you?”

His cock thickened with her response, and he pressed against her, inside the tightness of her sex, his hand flattening on her stomach, angling her body as he buried himself deep inside her. “Do I feel ready?”

“Just know this,” she whispered, arching into him. “Wherever you’re trying to escape to, Blake, I’m here. I’m with you.”

He stilled with her words, their content shaking him to the core. Blake buried his head in her neck. She was with him. He wanted her with him. He shouldn’t. He couldn’t. He did. He was falling for this woman, and he could almost feel her carving away at his anger and pain, could almost feel the raw, aching parts of himself being exposed. Could almost imagine Alvarez using those weaknesses to slaughter him, and everyone he cared about, including Kara. “You’re going to get us both killed.”

“I’m going to keep you alive.”

This wasn’t working. He had to get away from this woman before he couldn’t. Blake pulled out of her and turned her to face him. She instantly pressed her mouth to his, her soft, tempting tongue teasing its way past his lips, to caress and seduce. To hell with it. He stopped fighting what he was feeling, stopped denying this was more than sex with Kara, and with a low growl, he pulled her close again, sinking into the kiss, and guiding his shaft back between her legs, pushing back into the tight, warm center of her sex. He was falling in love with this woman and she was right. Denver had been the beginning of what was inescapable today.

For the first time in years, he didn’t think about who was in control. He thought about who he was with, and he saw Kara as more than a body, more than a way to suppress the flashbacks. He was lost, but not in the sensations of edgy need and pleasure. In this woman.

Blake savored Kara. He kissed her, touched her, tasted her, made love to her. Every touch of her hand was waking up a new part of him. Every brush of her hair on his skin like an electric charge. Every collision of their eyes a touch of his soul to hers. When they melted into satisfaction together, sated and exhausted, and he pulled her to his side, her head resting on his chest, he was alive again and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. How did a man, on what he knew was most likely a suicide mission, embrace life? How did he not, with Kara in that life and in his arms?

Blake stared at the ceiling, listening to Kara’s breathing slow, feeling her body relax against his into slumber, his mind racing. Kara had been hurt by Alvarez as well, and as much as he wanted to bring her sister back to her, he knew, and he knew she knew, that it was a long shot. That bitter truth only made his mission more important. This wasn’t just about vengeance, though he didn’t deny he wanted it. Too many people had died directly and indirectly because of Alvarez. It had to end. Blake had to kill him no matter what the consequence.