Page 36 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

“Madame,” Nick intoned, a huge snowy napkin over one brawny forearm, the other hand pulling out her chair for her.

He was trying to keep a straight face because Nick Ross did not look like a butler.

Not in the slightest. He did look like a tough, very sexy man pretending for a second or two to be a butler.

Elle sat with a sigh, her first moment of relaxation since the plague began.

Nick was piling her plate high with food.

“Nick,” she murmured. Her stomach started closing up. He looked up with a sharp gaze and stopped immediately. He set her plate in front of her.

“Eat,” he ordered. “You’re not hungry, I get that. You’re too tired and stressed to be hungry. But trust me when I say you need some hot food in you. Once you start, you’ll feel better. Start with one bite.”

Okay. She tried a bite of risotto. Mushroom risotto, creamy with cheese and butter. Too rich , she thought, until it settled warmly in her stomach.

“Another,” Nick said and she put another bite in her mouth. Instead of a blocked system, gullet and stomach closed tighter than a fist, her system opened up and accepted another bite. And she found she was ravenous.

“That’s my girl,” Nick said as she started tasting the other dishes. Besides the risotto, which was of course delicious, Stella had sent a ragout of vegetables, baked goat cheese, an orange and fennel salad, fresh focaccia and homemade raspberry ice cream.

She ate half of what was on her plate and sat back to watch Nick demolish everything else, fast and neat.

She sipped at her wine. “So. Sophie and Jon.” She cleared her throat delicately. “That was a surprise.”

Nick stopped, fork in mid-air. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Elle turned her glass in her hands. “It just feels…weird.”

She’d been utterly taken aback at seeing Sophie take Jon’s hand, smile up at him in that unmistakeable way women had when looking at their man.

The way she looked at Nick, the way Catherine looked at Mac.

Though it took a lot of courage on Catherine’s part to look at Mac that way.

Mac looked like he ate fragile young scientists for breakfast and spat out the bones.

Still, Catherine was very very happy. And Mac was visibly completely in love with her. So that was working out okay.

“Weird how?” Nick spooned up the last of the raspberry ice cream and held it in front of her mouth. It was divine but she was stuffed. She shook her head.

“Well, for one thing, Jon doesn’t seem her type.”

“Sophie has a type?”

“Hmm. She’s very picky.” And detached when it came to men.

They both were. Well, Elle wasn’t any more.

She couldn’t be detached about Nick. She’d loved him practically her whole life.

He was in her blood and he made that blood boil.

Sophie wasn’t like that, she didn’t do passion.

Elle had seen her date dozens of men and Sophie shrugged them off.

Perfectly acceptable men in suits, with retirement accounts, good jobs, advanced degrees.

Sophie would go out once or twice then get bored.

So, a guy like Jon would be off Sophie’s radar. Wouldn’t he?

“What’s Jon like?” Suddenly, Elle needed to know about the man with her friend. Sophie was out there all alone in incredible danger, becoming emotionally involved with the man sent to protect her. “He seems so—so cold. And controlled.”

“You don’t know him,” Nick said, eyes steady on hers.

She ducked her head. No, no she didn’t know Jon. She’d only met him days ago and those days had been stressful. And then the plague struck. She lifted her eyes to Nick’s. “My best friend in the world is with him, right now. Her life in his hands.”

“I can reassure you there, honey,” Nick said briskly. “Jon is as good as they come. If anyone can keep your friend safe, that’s Jon. He’s fast and he’s tough. And cool. Always thinking five steps ahead. Man’s a machine.”

“Saying he’s a machine isn’t helping,” she whispered.

This was insane. All she needed to care about was Jon bringing Sophie safely to Haven.

What difference did it make if he was going to break Sophe’s heart afterward?

And yet—and yet…Sophie’s face when she looked at Jon.

Elle had never seen that expression before.

Open, completely vulnerable. In the midst of all that chaos and death.

“Stop that.” Nick looked at a spot over her head, then kissed her. “Stop overthinking this. I can practically see all the thoughts buzzing around in your head. You’re just exhausting yourself and you’re not doing your friend any good at all.”

“I know.” Elle shook her head. “I just can’t help worrying about her.”

“Stop it,” Nick said again.

“Make me,” Elle said. It came upon her like a burst of electricity.

Her man, her husband, sitting there with all that coiled energy that seemed like such a part of him, like a panther or a lion.

Some primal animal. Her man. The man she knew could kiss her and love her into a stupor.

That was exactly what she needed, right this minute.

To be loved into a stupor, to shove these thoughts circling endlessly right out of her head. “Make me forget all of this.”

She was astounded at the voice coming out of her mouth. Sultry, husky, daring. Pure sex. She’d never had that voice before in her life.

It had a magic effect on Nick. That tough, handsome face had been puckered with worry for her, tender and gentle.

Suddenly, his features tightened, eyes glittering.

The skin over his cheeks suffused with blood, as did his full lips.

That was what he looked like during sex, though he wasn’t even touching her.

But he was thinking about it, oh yeah. Worried, tender Nick was gone and Nick the conquering warrior was here, right in front of her. Predator looking at his prey.

The air around them suddenly bloomed with pheromones. The air was hot and heavy and she could barely pull in a breath.

“You want me to make you stop thinking?” he asked. Nick’s voice was a deep low growl. Oh God. Just hearing that tone made her skin prickle. He moved forward. “I can do that.”

Nick kissed her, one of those kisses that went straight to pure sex. Some of his kisses were light and tender, tentative, like a question. This wasn’t one of them. It was immediately open-mouthed, carnal. A statement.

In a moment, they were on the bed, Nick lying heavily on top of her.

Though Nick had been in her mind and heart since she was girl, they’d had sex one night—he’d been her first and last—and then had been separated for ten years.

A week ago they’d found each other again, in the midst of terror and danger.

Everything about being with Nick was unsettled and unsettling except for the fact that she loved him.

Every time they made love it seemed like something different from the last time. There was no routine, as she had always assumed other couples had. At times the sex was fast and furious, at times soft and languid. Never twice the same thing in a row.

This time, too, seemed different. He was urgent—his muscles tense, mouth demanding, hands quickly removing her clothes.

And yet at the same time there was a vast tenderness there as his hard hands touched her, rolling her this way and that as he unbuttoned, unzipped, unclasped, shimmied down various items. And even when she was naked he didn’t move heavily on her, spreading her legs with his thighs, ready to enter her quickly.

No, she was naked but Nick wasn’t in her, something that would have given her cognitive dissonance if it weren’t for the fact that his hands were so busy.

His hands gave her almost as much pleasure as his sex.

Cupping her shoulders, down over her breasts, thumbs brushing against her nipples giving her pleasure that shot straight to her womb, then skimming her sides, reaching her thighs, pulling them apart…

She waited in hot anticipation to feel his heavy weight shifting on top of her because like any lab rat that had been fed pellets as a reward she knew, like she knew that the sun would rise in the east the next day, that amazing pleasure would follow.

So she held her breath a little, eyes closed so she could concentrate on the feel of his body on hers, and waited.

But instead of rolling on top of her and entering her, he shifted lower. He opened her legs so his wide torso could fit between them, lifting them high and bending her thighs back so she was completely open to him.

And then his mouth was on her breasts and oh! Hot honey flowed through her veins.

Foreplay was rare with Nick and she cherished it. He was always apologetic about the lack after they had sex but, well, Nick was Nick and he knew what he wanted and what he wanted was to be inside her as deep and as hard as he could get, as fast as he could. His words, not hers.

Every single time he vowed to go slowly and every single time he failed.

So it was astonishing to feel him tense and hard as usual but making no move to enter her. It was hard to complain, though, while he was kissing one breast then another, taking a nipple in his mouth and tugging so hard a line shot straight to her sex and throbbed in time with his mouth.

She found herself relaxing, falling back into the arms of pleasure as if into a warm ocean, letting the current sweep her away.

Nick’s dark head moved over her breasts and she lifted a lazy hand to run it through his thick dark-brown hair.

For such a hard man, his hair was so soft. She loved to touch it.

Looking down, all she could see was the top of his head, dark lashes, slashes of cheekbone and his mouth on her breast, suckling like a baby.

Only this was no infant. Nick was a fully-grown male and he didn’t make her feel motherly.

Without looking up he whispered against her skin, “Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes, you’ll feel more.”

Her eyes closed, and yes. Every single nerve ending was reporting back to headquarters.

She could feel it all, everything, so intensely it was as if a wind had come to scour away several layers of skin.

She could feel his mouth moving over her delicate skin, the rough day-old beard biting a little.

His callused hands down her sides were warm and hard.

He slid them to her hips then, unexpectedly, his entire body slid down.

Her breasts, wet from his mouth, felt cold.

Her eyes fluttered open.

“Eyes. Closed.” Nick whispered and she closed them again.

Nick kissed his way down her stomach, licking and taking tiny love bites, his face so close to her belly his eyelashes gave her butterfly kisses.

Lower still, chin nuzzling against her pubic hair, then he opened her with his thumbs and, oh, God!

Her back arched and Nick reached out with one big hand splayed on her chest and gently pushed her down.

Her neck tilted back into the pillow shaking with the intensity of the sensations.

There was no question now of opening her eyes because she didn’t have any strength to do anything but lie there, stunned by lavish pleasure.

He was kissing her there, kissing her sex, exactly as he kissed her mouth, his tongue creating electric pleasure.

Pleasure so intense she forgot to breathe, couldn’t think, was lost. And as he pleasured her with soft, deep kisses, pressure rising rising like the ocean rising to break upon the shore and she lost herself in the sharp, pulsing delight of an orgasm, the world fell away.

All of it, forgotten. The grief, the danger, the knowledge that a deadly plague had been unleashed from her lab, a virus so deadly it could wipe humanity from the face of the earth, was wiped from her mind.

She’d felt the weight of responsibility in every fiber of her being, sorrowful duty driving her on beyond her strength, unable to sleep or to rest.

That was what Nick had given her. A moment’s pleasure beyond her ability to resist and as necessary as air.

She wanted to thank Nick but the words wouldn’t form before she drifted away into sleep.