Page 3 of He is… Creed: Part Three

And that is probably enough crazy to declare me insane.

His vow flits through my mind. I would die for you. I laugh bitterly into the water. As if that man doesn’t invite death to come for a visit every day of his life. I’m his duty. I was always some sort of duty to Creed. Exactly why falling for a soldier always equals pain. My mother had warned me, and she’d been right.

“Damn you, Creed,” I whisper, thinking of that day when we’d first crossed paths, that day by the elevator when he’d been so damn devastatingly hot. I should have walked away. I press my hands to my face again, and then mentally shake myself. I need to get my head on straight. The situation at hand, and as a whole, isn’t about me and Creed. It’s about protecting the world from Julian. How had I ever dashed off to Germany and pretended something so big didn’t exist?

I can only hope and pray that the accusations against my father aren’t true. He’s all I have left in the world. A little girl’s hero, one I’d felt I’d lost after the Area 51 nightmare. When I returned, I’d convinced myself he’d deserved a chance to mend the past, and I’d wanted to help. And I’d known then, as I do now, that the only way to right the wrong is to somehow contain or imprison the Zodius. They’re terrorists against humanity. But I’m not okay with torturing them. I will never be okay with torturing them.

In their own way, all the GTECHs, Zodius and Renegade, are victims of the government’s experiment. Unwilling ones, too. They were lied to and used. No, they don’t deserve to be tortured, and my father wouldn’t be a part of that. Yet, in the back of my mind, I admit to seeing glimpses of a power-hungry man, desperate to save himself and regain his position of authority.

Resolve forms as I reach down and turn off the shower. I’m getting on that flight this morning and copying that hard drive. If Red Dart’s details are on Brock’s computer, I can prove there was no torture mechanism. That easily. One hard drive copy. Then, the Renegades and the government can refocus together on defeating Julian.

I reach for my towel and start drying off when I suddenly freeze with a realization. I squeeze my eyes shut. My clothes are in the exterior room—with Creed. Which leaves me two options: put my bloodied clothes back on or walk out into the room to my suitcase with only a towel to cover up. Flashes of myself and Creed making love, our bodies pressed close, and the wildness we’d shared flicker in my mind. Oh no. The towel idea is not a good one. I need my robe. I’ll just yell out to Creed for him to grab it for me.

I make quick work of towel-drying my hair before I crack the door open. “Creed?” No answer. “Creed?” Still nothing. A fizzle of fear races through me. Has he collapsed? Fallen ill again? “Creed!” I yank the door open, holding the towel tight around my body, scanning the room, heart pounding a wicked beat against my breastbone. The sheets and blankets are gone; the mattress has been changed or maybe flipped.

My gaze sweeps the room, and still no Creed. The good news, I decide, is that he’s not lying on the floor dead or dying, but neither is he anywhere in sight. My breath lodges in my chest—an ache there I don’t name.

Is he gone without saying goodbye yet again?

Suddenly, the patio door opens, a gust of wind lifting the dark floral curtains, the sheers beneath fluttering wickedly. Creed steps into the room, and the wind goes still. In this moment, he looks more warrior than man—dangerous and primal. He’s also bared to the waist, but for the bandages I’d wrapped around him, his jeans low-slung, displaying sculpted abdominals. His feet are bare, his long, raven hair loose around his shoulders.

And despite the proof that he’s not Zodius, that I have no reason to fear him, I feel fear. So much that I can barely breathe. Fear of what I want in this moment. What I always want with him, which is too damn much. Fear of my inability to resist a man I know damn well will hurt me again if I give him the chance—a realization driven home as he casts me in a heavy-lidded inspection so intimate that my knees go weak.

Instant heat spreads through my core and then sizzles like a wildfire through the rest of my body. My nipples tighten, my thighs ache. In the midst of the flames burning me inside and out, there was relief that at least he didn’t leave again, no matter how much I should want him to.

At this point, I have a flight to catch, along with Brock’s computer drive to copy. I need to get dressed sooner than later, but rather than move, I hold my ground, explaining myself. “You didn’t answer when I called you.” My fragile bravado is already faltering under the heat of his stare, my voice raspy. I clench the terrycloth at my chest. “I was afraid you were sick again.”

He just stares at me and says nothing, an animalistic quality crackling off him, edgy, dark—powerful. Hot. So very hot. I swallow hard, the sensual touch of his dark eyes flustering me, arousing me. “Say something,” I finally plead, so far beyond cool-headed and unaffected.

And still, Creed doesn’t speak—he simply stands there, immobile, his eyes locked on my scantily-clad body, sexual tension ratcheting up with each passing minute, impossible to resist. The desire between us had always been intense, but this…this is combustible, the lifebond connection we’ve denied for so very long, transforming the desire into something darker, more intense—all-consuming. As if the desire had a life and mind of its own.

Desperately, I cut my gaze and charge toward the closet. Touching him would be a mistake. It would cloud my judgment and skew my ability to judge the man beneath the lifebond. But I’d barely made it a few steps before he was there, pulling me into his arms.

“You didn’t really think you could walk out here in a towel without this happening, now did you?” he half growls a moment before his lips come down on mine.

Chapter Five

Addie

I don’t resist. I don’t have it in me. I let him kiss me. I’m helpless to stop him. I don’t want to stop him.

I lose myself in Creed in this moment, to his hot, hungry kiss, a mating of mouths that I cannot deny I’ve longed for. The spicy male scent of him seeming to pour through my body like an aphrodisiac. My hands are all over him, his all over me. It’s wildly exciting and intensely addictive. And there’s simply no fighting it, no understanding it. His hands are in my hair. Teeth nip, lips caress.

The towel disappears, my breasts press against his bare chest, his hands caressing over my body as he picks me up, one hand curving along my backside, the other laced through my hair. My arms wrap around his neck, and my legs around his waist. I cling to him, desperate to feel him close to me, inside me.

Somehow, someway, a semblance of real-life slips into my mind, and my fingers shove into his hair, pulling his mouth from mine. “You left,” I whisper hoarsely. “You left and never said a word.”

Our eyes collide much as our passion has—wild and emotional.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve ached to feel you like this again,” he confesses, his voice low and guttural. “How many times I was hard just thinking about it.”

It's not an answer, but somehow, it’s the only right thing in this moment. I quake with his words, shaken by the magnitude of the passion in them, though this solves nothing, explains nothing. But my body doesn’t care; my body simply wants and needs. Don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer to, my mother used to say. And so, I don’t ask for more.

Not now.

I can’t get enough of Creed. I cling to him. Crave him. Breathe him in even as his mouth slants over mine, punishing, hot, and as dominating as the man. There is nothing gentle about the way he kisses me or the way he claims me. He is raw, animalistic passion that drives away the past and leaves only this moment and then the next.

We go down on the bed, me on my back, his broad, masculine frame commanding mine, his lips traveling my jaw, my neck. He presses my breasts together, lapping at my nipples with his tongue, suckling and licking until my back arches in response. He rolls the stiff peaks with his fingers, tugs and nips to the point of stirring near pain in me, yet it’s so much pleasure. I’m panting, watching him in wonder, stunned that this is really happening. He lifts his head, his eyes finding mine, my breasts still intimately molded to his palms. Time seems to stop as the unanswered questions, the unspoken words, burn between us, a spell of sorts, holding us there and compelling us to deal with more than our physical need.

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