Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(54)

“Make love to me,” she whispered against Dan’s neck between a string of hard, biting kisses. She lifted a leg, hooking her heel behind his knee. He was gratifyingly hard when she rubbed herself against him, and her body answered with a swift rush of marvelous liquid heat.

“Brooklyn…Jesus,” he groaned, flattening his wide palm beside her head as she gently bit his earlobe. She loved the nickname he’d given her, loved that he only used it when they were on the brink of intimacy.

With his free hand, he gripped her hip, giving it a squeeze before sliding his hot palm down the length of her thigh until he reached the crook of her knee. Lifting her leg high around his waist, he more fully aligned their bodies. And this time when he stroked forward, rubbing against her, it was as if the material separating their sexes had melted away. She could feel the length of him graze her distended clitoris. The subtle ache that had been building between her thighs exploded into a painful coil of tension.

She reached down to attack the buttons on his jeans, her fingers trembling as first one, then another, and then another popped open. When the front of his fly gaped wide, she shoved her hand inside his black boxer briefs, gripping the heated, rock-hard length of him, remembering how violently red, how hugely swollen and painful his erection had looked right before he slid on the condom.

“Brooklyn,” he gasped, his head falling back on his shoulders, the big veins running on either side of his neck standing out like garden hoses. “We shouldn’t…Holy shit, that feels good.”

“Mmm,” she hummed, keeping one hand inside his pants, pulling, petting, stroking, as she used the other to undo the button on her trousers. Her zipper made a soft scriiiitching sound that was barely audible above their heavy, gasping breaths. Lowering her leg, she toed out of her shoes. It was a pity she had to release the steely length of him in order to grab the waistband of her pants and panties and push them down her thighs. But she was rewarded for that small sacrifice when, after stepping out of the puddle of clothing, she discovered both of Dan’s hands were now planted on the door beside her head. His chest rose and fell in huge, hungry breaths. His eyes glowed with a lust so hot it was like gasoline to the fire already burning in her blood.

“Make love to me,” she said again, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, going up on tiptoe to realign their bodies. “Make me forget just for a little while.”

A frenzied muscled ticked in his jaw, his lips flattening into a thin line. “Brooklyn, you have no idea how much I wanna do exactly that. But I don’t have a condom.”

She shook her head. All this talk was allowing some of that terrible pain to creep back in, some of that spirit-crushing despair to seep into the mortar she’d used to quickly build up a wall around her grief. “Forget about it,” she told him, shoving his jeans and boxers down his thighs until his erection sprang free. “I don’t care…”

*

Steady watched Abby scoop some of the goop she’d made from that hemp-plant-that-wasn’t-really-a-hemp-plant off a palm leaf. She mimicked sticking it to her eyes while Yonus translated for the people of the village. “And then, you press this to your face like this and go to sleep for the night. It will make the infection…” She wrinkled her button nose, glancing at Yonus. “Does that translate? The word infection?”

“I’m calling it the eyesight stealer.” Yonus shrugged.

Abby nodded. “I like that even better,” she said, before continuing to demonstrate. “So it will keep the eyesight stealer from…well”—she shrugged her shoulders—“stealing your eyesight.”

Steady glanced at the dark faces around him once Yonus had fallen silent in his translation. He didn’t need to speak the language to know the Orang Asli were eager to give Abby’s remedy a try. One man stuck his finger into the goo and lifted it to his nose, inhaling deeply. His expression was intrigued as he offered his finger to the rest of the villagers.

Steady had to roll in his lips to keep from chuckling as a dozen dark heads leaned in to give the paste the ol’ sniff test. But when he looked over at Abby standing in the middle of them, her skin dewed with sweat and her pale green eyes bright with enthusiasm, all his laughter died. Because in that instant everything, everything, suddenly became clear. Cut-glass clear. Mountain rain clear. As if he’d been clocked in the skull with a two-by-four of crystal-clear truth.

He loved her.

“Abby…” Her name was on his lips before he could call it back. He didn’t know why. All he knew was that he needed to say it.

“I know.” She laughed when one of the women of the tribe timidly touched a lock of her hair. “We need to be on our way. I know.”

Sí. They probably did. For many reasons, not the least of which was that he was itching to find a pay phone or a landline or even an electrical outlet with which to juice up his iPhone. He needed to call back to HQ to see if they had a status update on Ozzie. His best friend’s situation had been a constant presence in the back of his mind. But…that wasn’t what he meant. He meant… “Abby…”

And there it was again. Her name. Slipping from between his lips of its own accord. And each time he said it, it rang inside him like a promise…like a prayer. Which made sense since the good Madre Maria knew he was tempted to fall at her feet as a penitent, pledging to worship her forever.