Page 24 of Countdown to Murder
Mira
He left the hand I was touching in place and lifted his other hand to my cheek. It seemed as if sparks flew, but he barely touched me with his fingertips, and then trailed them along my jawbone to just under my ear — a heated path that sent sparks to my groin. He paused, and then slid the hand to the back of my neck, which should have brought the fighter to the forefront, but I wanted his hand there. He grasped the base of my skull and pulled me towards him. Some distant part of me knew we should fight him, but I needed to see what happened next. Needed to see if he could make thishungerin me go away.
My clitoris was swollen and throbbing again. My heart raced. I could tell my eyes were dilated. The hunger, the need, was a wild creature.
But all of this was at the back of my mind because his lips touched mine and there were more sparks, and my heart stopped beating.
His lips pulled back a few millimeters and touched again. I froze, and he kissed his way to my ear, following a track about an inch higher than his fingers had grazed. I could feel both lines on that side of my face now, as if fire had blazed an actual path.
“Relax, Darlin’. Let me kiss you like a woman needs to be kissed. Can you do that for me?”
“I don’t know how.” It came out as a whisper, just as soft as his. Barely audible.
“Will you try?”
I gave a single nod, no longer trusting my voice.
I wanted to fight against the hand on my neck, and yet, I didn’t. When his lips touched mine again, I focused on relaxing them, and within ten seconds, I’d figured out how to kiss him back and keep them relaxed. He moved his other hand up, so his thumb stroked near my mouth and his fingers held the side of my neck, but it wasn’t scary — it was the opposite, as if he was also touchingbetween my legswith those fingers. I don’t know how the wall ended up at my back, but it did, and I relaxed more. No one would sneak up behind me. The wall was safety.
I sucked in a deep breath when Panda’s leg pressed between mine, and he bent it, so his thigh pushed into my groin. My hips moved of their own volition, pressing my clitoris into his thigh,and his tongue came into my mouth. I touched his with mine, and then I felt the loss of him because he was suddenly half-way across the room.
“I’m sorry,” he told me. “That wasn’t appropriate. I look forward to continuing this when our op is over, but we can’t do this now.”
My knees didn’t want to hold me. I’ve been trained until I’m no longer affected negatively by the aftereffects of an adrenaline dump, and yet, that’s exactly what this felt like. My entire body was shaky. I bent my knees and slid to the floor.
“I’m not even certain what that was.”
“A kiss, Darlin’.” He ran his hand through his hair, and I wished I’d thought to do it when he was kissing me.
“You’re going to have to stop looking at me like that, Darlin’, or I’m going to leave Miss MacKenna to her own devices and take you to a cabin somewhere so I can have my way with you.”
I shook my head. “We have a responsibility to the client.”
“Yes, we do.” He bent down, his feet still on the floor, his knees bent, his butt near his feet. “No matter what happens, remember that kiss. It’s how I feel about you, and I think it should tell you something about how you feel about me. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. We may have some challenges if we try to pursue this, but so long as you want me, I’m here.”
He seemed to be strongly measuring this statement, so I considered his words carefully before I responded. “This feels like a big deal, so I’ll treat it as one. I’m not sure exactly what that was. It felt like more than a kiss. I want to know what happens next. It’s scary, and I may need help overcoming prior pro—”
Something took my voice, and I fought to pull air in. It took a handful of seconds before I could breathe again. I didn’t try to speak, because I was too pissed off to form a coherent sentence.
“Prior programming,” Panda said. “Things you can’t speak of, too?”
I nodded. “Apollonius is listening. I feel his presence. Someone else’s too. Probably one of the people who trained me.”
He stood and took two steps back. “The man who is coming to care for you wants to offer you a hand up. The man who sees you as a competent partner also wants to offer it, not because you need it, but because I have your back.”
“But you’re stepping away because you know I don’t need a hand up. You’re showing your confidence in me to stand the fuck up on my own.”
He smiled, I stood, and he engaged his mic.
“Jones, how soon can you come to the basement?”
“On my way. Four minutes out.”
“Copy that.” Panda put both hands on his hips and looked at me, head to toe and back up. “Where would you put guards?”
“Three in the outer room, just before you go into the saferoom suite, but I’d leave him a clear trail to get there. No one on the stairs, or anywhere else on this level. This assumes a few people in the room with the client. I know we’re supposed to keep the fighting far from her, but if we have people stationed on the first floor who can converge on the steps once we’re fighting him, so he can’t leave — a wall of people with a net behind them, so he can’t fly out either...” I walked to the door and looked out. “We need to set a trap. If not here, then somewhere else. It’s the only way to catch the bastards who can fly.”
I had so much information I wasn’t allowed to tell him. I’d broken past some of the training controls, but not all of them. It was important I be the one to fight this vampire because I had the best shot at taking him out. He couldn’t get into my head, plus, if I bit him, even in human form, I could kill him. My venom mostly affects respiration, which obviously doesn’t affect vampires. However, it also targets the cardiac system, and this does affect them. It takes about ten times more venom than is necessary to kill a human, but that’s okay because I generally have enough on board to kill twenty humans. It means I can only kill two vampires at a time, but we only had one to kill.
