Into the Mist (Falcon Mercenary Group #1)(58)

Her moan echoed close to his own ear.

“I want to make you feel good.”

She twisted restlessly beneath him. She wrapped her slim legs around his hips and rose to meet his thrust.

“Take me,” she murmured against his lips again. “Take me, Eli. Make me yours. I need you. God help me, I need you.”

Her words were like a sweet balm. A cool, healing wind in a sun-scorched desert. He gathered her in his arms, as if he could protect her from the world, her past, anything that had the power to hurt her.

Again and again he buried himself deep, stroking through her wet flesh. Silken heat surrounded him. He was drowning in it.

Her hands tangled in his hair. Her fingers dug into his scalp as she gathered handfuls of the long strands. She held him to her, his mouth against her neck.

She convulsed around his cock, the delicate tissues swelling as her orgasm loomed. His balls tightened. Excruciating. The pressure started low in his c**k and pushed outward, straining to be set free.

Faster, harder, he rocked against her. She dug her heels into his ass and cried out. Liquid heat exploded around his cock, and he lost what remaining hold he had on his control.

Flash fire. Electric sensation seared through his balls, up his c**k then exploded outward as he jetted into her in jerky spurts.

She called his name. He kissed her. Devoured her mouth like a man starved. His frantic pace slowed, and his thrusts became slow and measured as he pulled them both back down to earth.

Finally he slipped free of her in a rush of warm fluid. He rested on top of her for a moment even though he knew he was too heavy. It just felt right. He didn’t want to move.

She felt warm and soft beneath him where earlier he’d considered that neither of them were soft people. Yet now she was limber and pliant. Sated.

He rolled over and pulled her into his arms, resting his cheek on top of her head. Her chest rose and fell with his and deep contentment worked through him.

Her fingers slid up his side and to his shoulder as she snuggled closer to him.

“Tell me about you,” she said in a lazy voice.

An uneasy sensation crawled across his skin. “What do you want to know?”

“What was it like to grow up so…different?”

Different. He almost laughed. Different implied something mild. Like maybe he liked knitting while other boys liked football. Being able to make yourself disappear in a cloud of mist? That was a little more extreme than just different.

“What about your parents?” she continued on, oblivious to the tension billowing through his chest. “Were they like you? Were there others in your family?”

He stiffened but forced himself to relax. He couldn’t very well hold out on her now. Not after she’d trusted him with her deepest secrets. A sigh escaped him.

“No, they weren’t like me. I don’t know of anyone like me.” It sounded utterly pathetic even to him. The hollow loneliness seemed to radiate from his voice. What was he supposed to tell her? That when his teammates had developed their freaky shifting abilities he didn’t feel quite like a one man freak show?

“Then how?” She didn’t even finish her question. She didn’t have to.

“I don’t have an answer for you,” he said simply. “Some twist of the gene pool? Maybe my mother used too many cleaning supplies when she was pregnant with me or maybe she fell. I mean who the hell knows?”

He felt her frown against him. “What did they think about your…abilities? Were they scared?”

Scared? He wasn’t sure that was the appropriate way to describe his parents’ reaction the day he’d run home, terrified, to tell them what had happened to him. He sighed again. This was going to be a long story.

“My parents were…religious.” There wasn’t an easy way to explain their fanaticism or the fact that he’d grown up in an isolated, wary world. “I didn’t have many friends. In fact, most kids avoided me or made fun of my weirdness.”

“You mean they knew?” she asked in surprise.

He laughed softly. “I was weird way before I learned of my abilities.”

She pushed up from his chest and repositioned herself so that she could look into his eyes.

“My parents weren’t exactly role models when it came to parental love and devotion. Not to say that they abused me. They made sure I had food and clothing, but they were far more concerned with their duties to the church. I say church. I’d classify it more as a cult. I’ve been to church, and they don’t have much in common with the nutjob my parents followed.

“At any rate, I spent a lot of my childhood wishing I could disappear. I avoided any and all situations that would thrust me into the limelight. I was quiet and sullen.”

It was her turn to laugh. “But you could disappear.”

He rubbed his hand up and down her arm and ran his fingers over the curve of her elbow. “I didn’t know I could until I was ten years old.”

Her sound of shock was unmistakable.

“I broke my cardinal rule of never being noticed. Some dickheads were picking on a younger girl, and I knocked one of them on his ass. Then I ran like hell because there were four of them and only one of me, and I was a skinny, awkward son of a bitch. I hit a dead end in an alley and knew I was f**ked. As I stood there waiting, knowing I was about to get the shit kicked out of me, all I could think was that I’d give anything to be able to disappear. And then the weirdest thing happened. I felt lighter. My vision changed, and I looked down and couldn’t see myself anymore.