Page 82 of Killer Secrets (Tempting SEALs 5)

His lips flattened. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I?" She smiled back at him mockingly. "You have to do everything alone. The team you have with you, you had no loyalties to before this assignment. They're not important to you. Nothing in this deal is important to you except the end result. No one or nothing can be used against you, can it, Ian. Even me."

His face hardened further. "Unfortunately, you can be," he ground out. "You made certain of it."

Shock resounded through her, parting her lips at the emotion that gathered in his voice, in his expression. Like a veil lifting to reveal the soul of the man that she had only sensed before. She saw him. Tortured, hungry, aching.

"Damn you," he suddenly cursed, jerking her to him, his hands pulling at the elastic waist of the silk capris. Material ripped, shredded, the sound of it an erotic hiss as he growled. "I told you. I warned you. You didn't want me like this."

"I want you any way I can get you," Kira gasped, feeling his hand hook in the neckline of her blouse. Buttons scattered and the cloth tore, the shreds pulled from her and tossed aside. "Ian, you keep tearing my clothes."

"Fuck the clothes." His lips went to her neck as he lifted her into his arms, dragging her breasts over the material of his shirt as he moved to the bed. "I'll buy you more."

He tossed her to the mattress, following quickly, coming over her and stealing her lips in another of those soul-destroying kisses. Hard and deep, his tongue licked through her mouth, his lips moving on hers, slanting over them. The heat of it burned into her brain, the need rose with such violent intensity that she felt buffeted by it.

He didn't bother to undress. One hand locked her wrists together, holding them over her head, as the other tore at his belt and the clasp of his slacks. The zipper slid down as he used his knees to push her thighs apart, and within seconds, the engorged head of his cock was pressing inside her.

He didn't take her easy. He didn't take her slow. With a muttered curse and a desperate growl he forged inside her, pushing through the snug tissue and slick juices until he was seated to the hilt.

Pleasure tore through Kira. Nerve endings fired with brilliant, intense sensation and throbbed with the need for more. Her clit was swollen and desperate, the muscles of her pussy clenched and tightening on his erection.

"Being inside you is like heaven," he groaned as his head fell to her shoulder, his lips brushing over it in hunger. "Like being surrounded by silken fire."

His hips flexed, stroking his cock inside her, rubbing the thick crest into nerve endings so sensitive that the friction stole her breath.

"Hold me, Kira." His voice was so rough, so low, she barely made out the words. "God help me, hold on to me."

She froze for an instant. Just an instant, long enough to allow the broken emotion in his voice to register in her brain. The need she could feel tightening his body, not just sexual need, something more, something darker and bolder than mere lust. Something he was trying to hide from himself.

Her arms tightened around his neck as one of his hands clasped her hip, the other her wrists. He held his weight from crushing her by one elbow as his hips began to move.

These weren't deliberate, sensual strokes. They were mindless, primal. It wasn't just the climax he was reaching for, and the intensity of that primitive hunger tore through her senses. She could feel him. She had never felt another man clear to her soul this way. Had never felt anything that deep.

But it was where he touched her. He fucked into her with desperation, his cock burying inside her repeatedly, stroking the flames of hunger and need higher, hotter. Pleasure fed emotion. Sensation fed need until Kira exploded in orgasm with a power that sent shards of brilliant light exploding behind her eyelids.

"Damn you," he cursed her, his voice more broken than normal, his body shuddering as he continued to thrust through his own release. A release that spilled inside her rather than a condom, that extended the waves of pleasure racing through her. "Damn you for doing this to me."

She held on to him tighter, feeling more than his words were saying. Yes, he damned her, and sometimes she damned herself for pushing into his operation. They had each managed to protect their hearts until now. The only difference between them was that Kira was tired of fighting. She belonged to him, and she wouldn't deny it.

"I love you, Ian." Gasping, reeling from the pleasure, she made the vow again. "I love you."

"Damn you."

She couldn't help but smile. Sadly. With a sense of hope and an awareness of the danger she had placed them both in. Ian's emotions were involved now, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Now, they both had a weakness.

* * *

Twenty-two

SHE WAS UNDER HIS SKIN, in his soul, and there was no way to get her out. Ian covered her as they slipped from the villa and made their way over the stone fence to the villa Kira had leased for the summer. He made certain her back wasn't vulnerable, that no one saw her black-clad shadowy form from the house.

He was more concerned with her protection than he was his own. In keeping her safe rather than in advancing the mission as quickly as possible.

Son of a bitch, he had known this would happen. Known she would become so important to him that he wouldn't see her as an equal, or as a partner. All he saw when he saw her was silken flesh and passionate cries. How she held on to him when he loved her, how she shuddered in release in his arms.

She was breaking his heart and she didn't even know it. Breaking down shields he had begun erecting in that bleak desert landscape more than twenty years ago, and had strengthened throughout the successive years. Shields that protected him against loss, that stilled the hunger inside him for something more, something deeper than any relationship he had ever had before.

They were crumpling now, shattering beneath each touch, each whispered cry in his ear that she loved him. A part of him gloried in them, the other part fought frantically to rebuild defenses that were already shattered beyond repair. Because all he could think about was life without her. If Sorrell managed to kill her, if he took her, if something happened to take her away from him.

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