The Risqué Target (24 page)

She hadn’t expected it. She hadn’t even realized he'd removed his pants, but she was elated he had.

“I'm so hard. I need you, Nala,” he whispered. His words cascaded like his hands over her body, and he inched a little more into her.

“I can't,” she said.

He stilled, and his dark blue eyes searched her. “You don’t want to?”

“No, I do. It's just that I've never had an orgasm during sex, during the actual intercourse part,” she confided, embarrassed and upset.

He smiled and pushed a piece of hair from her forehead. “There’s a first time for everything, sweetheart, and tonight you will.” He chuckled again as though he knew something she didn't.

She didn’t want to disappoint him, but she knew her body, damn it, and it wasn’t going to happen.

“Just look at me,” his raspy tone cajoled.

She found herself yielding, yet again, to his command. She lifted her eyes and met the heat smoldering in his. He pushed his palms into the mattress. She waited for the thrust, but it didn’t come. Instead he hauled back and took his hard manhood from her.

“Please don’t stop just because I can't….” she began, her words fading off.

He eased just barely inside her, and then he withdrew. The torture continued for excruciating seconds. He'd enter her, but not entirely, not completely filling her, and it drove her crazy.

She wanted all of him. Her hips thrust forward, attempting to take him, but the strapping man refused her what she needed. “Please,” she said, on the brink of resulting to begging.

“Please what, sweetheart?” he purred in a thick, masculine rumble. “What do you want?” He guided himself another inch inside her.

“I want… I want all of you.” She fought for air, for her voice.

In one swift thrust, he plunged into her, this time completely filling her. “Like this?” He pulled out, but then pushed his hard flesh back up into her.

“Yes, Tantum!” she gasped. “Yes. Just like that.”

“Say it again.” He sucked in a sharp breath. “Nala, say my name again.”

In a shallow whisper, a summons from her lungs, his name escaped her lips. “Tantum.”

His face became severe, tense. He slammed deep into her and pulled her hips up. He didn’t pump her, but rather ground and rocked inside her.

She cried out from the pleasure, from the fervor of his movement, moaning his name again and again.

“Fuck, Nala!” He withdrew and shuddered. “Your pussy feels so good, sweetheart.”

That was when her senses came to life. The taste of him still on her lips, the smell of him lingered in the air. The sweat of their joined bodies gliding between them. His dominant fullness filled and entered her. His hard muscles were taut, strained, and arresting. She heard the groan, the animal sound rumbling from his throat, and she knew a wild beast was about to be released. It was then when she almost let go.

He started to pump her harder, clench her hips tighter.

The fury, lust, and heat in his eyes reached into her, tore at her control. Her hands grasped his shoulders. Teetering on turmoil, she thrashed beneath him. Her muscles constricted around him, jarred and fractured, his every movement amplified by her sensitivity.

The sensation was too strong, too overpowering, and it scared her. She found she couldn’t control it. It was not like the orgasm he'd given to her with his toying finger. This feeling was different, disobedient, and unstoppable.

“Something's not right. I-I don’t feel right,” she said, but the odd sensation persisted to build. She couldn’t make it stop. It was out of control. She had to make it stop before it consumed her. “I-I can't do this. It's—”

“Calm down.” He hushed her and stroked her cheek with his palm. “It’s okay, Nala. Feel it and just let go. Don’t try to fight it, sweetheart,” he softly said.

The sensation was claiming her, taking her over. She wiggled and tried to push him away, but he held her tight. “It's too much. I-I can't—” Her labored breath caught her words.

“Nala, you can. Let go of that control, baby. Give it to me.” He gripped her tighter. His eyes were filled with such strong affliction as he solemnly declared, “I want all of you.”

And the levy broke. She waved her flag, released her defenses, and let herself go. Finally admitting her defeat, she surrendered her control. “I'm going to cum, Tantum! Oh my God, Tantum, I'm going to cum!” she cried out.

He'd gone further than any other man, taken her to a place beyond fantasy. Trying to get more of him, she wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed her hips recklessly against him. She jerked violently, convulsing around him. Seized by a rush of ecstasy, a new sensation like none other, her body ruptured into a thousand pieces and shattered all around him.

“Nala, fuck! You are so beautiful, Nala,” he grunted, his desperation weeded into his words.

He pumped her, harder, faster until his body shuddered, until he moaned out her name one last time, until finally the beast had broken free.

****

With his body still trembling, his breath harsh and uneven, Tantum tried to unwind, but after experiencing the longest, hottest release of his life, he found it wasn't easy. And Nala was still holding him, unlike most women who usually rolled over and relished what he'd done to them, doing a finishing dance upon the sheets. But not her. She held him close and wasn’t letting go.

Fearful he was crushing her, he turned over onto his side, taking her with him. Her arms didn’t retreat. She cuddled up into his already heated form. Her hair beneath his nose tickled him, and it smelled like Nala, a permanent smell imprinted on his brain forever. He didn’t realize he was stroking her hair, her silky, long tresses, until he felt her shaking against his chest. It roused him from his comfortable, transfixed state. Did he hear a whimper, a faint female cry?

“Nala, look at me,” he said, rougher than planned, but the thought that she was upset after they'd just had sex enraged him. He wondered what it could be, if he had hurt her, dissatisfied her, or left her with regrets.

Her head shifted up and back, and sure enough, her eyes glistened, wet and teary.

“What's wrong?”

“Tantum….” She smiled with an angelic grin, pure and euphoric. “That was so… so wonderful,” she whispered.

His heart swelled. She wept from happiness, from pleasure. “Of course it was. Would you expect anything less with the two of us?”

“It's never been like that for me,” she meekly said, and under the circumstances, he liked her bashfulness.

“Believe me, sweetheart, it's never been like that for me either.” It was the truth, and he couldn’t wait to do it again.

And he wouldn’t have to for long.

Tantum woke up ready to tackle the day, ready to finish the job, and resentfully let Nala go. The inevitable event would kill him, but he hadn’t been lying when he told her he had nothing to offer her. She deserved a man who knew who he was, not one who was hiding behind a false identity like Marcus Richards.

He rolled over, and his hands fished through the bed. He shot to his feet. She was gone. He scrambled into his pants before he reached the top of the stairs and then took the steps two at a time, jumping over the last three.

The panic that had broken him into a cold sweat departed when he smelled bacon. He grabbed the dining room doorframe to slow himself down and came to a complete stop. If this was what he was going to feel like when she finally stepped out of his life, he didn’t know what the fuck he was going to do. Still shaking from the instant rush of dread, the anguish and fear that she'd left him, he instructed his body to relax before he made way to the kitchen. “Hey,” he said to the nicest backside in Washington D.C., leaving his tension in the wind.

With a spatula in hand, she turned around. Her hair was tousled in a most alluring way, and her eyes were sparkling with lust. She smiled at him, and his heart started to slam into his chest, this time the fear coming from what he felt for her.

Intentionally, he raised a brow. “Are you making breakfast?”

“Yes. I can be nice sometimes.” A morning afterglow lit her up like the sun itself.

“Oh. So you're admitting you can be, uh, a little difficult at times?” He cleared his throat.

“If you mean a bitch, then yes. But I thought after the gift you gave me—”

“Gift?”

“Yes. I unwrapped you, got excited, and then I got to play with you.” A sly grin fanned out her succulent lips. “I'd say that's a very nice gift.”

“Is that right?” He wanted to tell her this particular gift wasn’t returnable, but he figured that kind of selfish behavior would get him into trouble.

“Yes, Tantum Maddox.” She waved the spatula at him. “Now sit down,” she instructed and pointed the utensil at the island across from her.

Obediently, he pulled out the stool. “You know, you could keep the pleasantness going.” He sat down. “Or are you trying to get back some of that control you lost last night?” He was unable to hold his chuckle at a bay when her brows knitted together before she turned to face the stove.

“I didn’t lose it.” She spun around with a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast, set it in front of him, and met him eye for eye. “As I recall, you took it from me.”

“Is that what you're telling yourself?”

“Yep. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.”

Enjoying her light play and candid smiles, he waited for her to join him at the counter. “All right,” he said, and set his elbows on the table. “I'll tell you what, Nala Dekker. You can have all the control you want.” He picked up his fork and pitched it into some eggs. “But in the bedroom, you pass me the torch. Deal?” He filled his mouth with the forkful of fluffy eggs, salty but good.

This time, her forehead wrinkled . “You think this is going to be a frequent thing?”

The question beat the shit out of his heart. Obviously she’d had her fill of him last night, and she was ready to move on. To get back to her own life.

He shrugged, as though it would somehow stop the ass-kicking to his heart. “It was a rhetorical statement.”

“Do you want it to be?”

“Why don’t we discuss that when I get back?” If he had his way, he'd never let her go.

“When
you
get back?”

“You're not going, Nala. It's too dangerous. I told you last night.”

“I know, but I thought—”

“What? That I’d change my mind?” If anything, last night only made him want all the more to protect her.

“I'm an agent, trained just like you. I can handle myself, or do you lack confidence in me?”

With patience as thin as paper, but as heavy as the paperweight that held it down, he sighed. “Listen, this is almost over with. I'll take the Rowan file, meet the agent, and when I get back, when we sort through all this shit, you can be as fucking confident and well-trained as you want. But until then, you're my responsibility.”

Her mouth opened but then snapped shut. Her eyes squinted, and an impressive screw-you expression displayed across her face. She held it for a few seconds. She picked up the fork, did that strange little two-touch before she shook her head, and brutally dug into her eggs.

“Does it interfere with the job?” he asked.

“What?”

“Your OCD. You know, your obsessive-compuls—”

She dropped her fork on the plate. “Yes, I know what OCD is, Tantum. You don’t need to spell it out for me.”

“I just noticed the way you pick up your fork. Sometimes you do things twice,” he said, getting the hint that this was something she didn’t like to discuss. But he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to know more about it, about her. He'd read about it in her file from NESA, along with a few other interesting things.

She started to pick up her fork again, but she must have changed her mind and put her hands beneath the table to rest them on her lap. He could've kicked himself for bringing it up. “I call it the terrible twos. It happens almost all the time with certain things I do, and then at other times, it can occur without ever having happened before.”

His head shifted back. “What do you mean?” he asked, slightly confused.

Her gaze flinted around the room, landing back on him with a heavy sigh. “Like the day at my apartment when I reached for my gun. I've never shot anyone before, and frankly, I'm not sure if the terrible twos will happen when I do. So, when I load my gun, I put in a bullet every other round.”