Midnight Promises (Midnight series) Read online

  Carefully watching her eyes, he slid his fingers over her, sliding in gently. Full lips blew out a breath and her eyes narrowed so that only a slit of bright blue showed. She felt like wet silk. He penetrated her with his finger, watching her carefully. He didn’t have to look at her to see how aroused she was, he could feel it against his hand. She was hot, wet, her body weeping for him.

  His was weeping for her too. If his dick hadn’t been encased in briefs and jeans it would have been wet with precome. His balls were tight and his entire groin hurt. That was okay. He could deal with pain. SEALs lived with pain. They marched to the cadence of “pain is weakness leaving the body.”

  Luckily, Felicity wasn’t in any pain. No, she looked relaxed, pleasured.

  He slid his finger out, then in again, exactly what he’d like to be doing with his cock. She sighed and he nearly sighed too. God, just this was better than sex with any other woman.

  “Like that?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Hmm.”

  “Say it.” His voice was sharper than he intended. But he really needed her to say it out loud.

  She should have slapped him down but she didn’t. Her lips curved in a dreamy smile and she watched out out of those brilliant semi-closed eyes. “I like that, Metal. A lot.”

  “Say my name.”

  “Metal.”

  “My real name.” Jesus, why was he behaving like such an asshole?

  “Okay. Sean, then. I like what you’re doing to me, Sean.” No censure in her voice. And it slammed him upside the head that she understood, on a deep level, what he wanted. Metal was his military nickname and he was fine with it. Most of the people he dealt with on a daily basis were friends from his soldiering days anyway.

  He was Metal. Metal was a soldier. But Sean—Sean was a man. Sean O’Brien of a family beyond his military family. He wanted to be Sean for her. Something more than a soldier.

  And who better to recognize that he was two people than someone who’d been someone else all her life?

  She did understand. She was smiling at him, caressing his skull trim.

  “Sean,” she murmured.

  Oh God. His heart gave a huge kick in his chest. Even with her eyes half-closed, Felicity saw him better than anyone else ever had. She saw straight into him. And from the dreamy smile on her face she liked what she saw.

  Against all the odds.

  “I was going to go down on you but I really need to kiss your mouth instead,” he said roughly.

  She blushed and it was such a beautiful thing to watch.

  “Oh, um. Okay.”

  Metal shifted so that his head was even with hers and kissed her, while keeping his fingers inside her, staking his claim.

  The kiss was deep and he didn’t lift his head. They breathed through each other. His tongue stroked hers while his fingers stroked between her legs, in rhythm with his tongue. She was wet and warm in both places and felt like heaven.

  Carefully, he rolled a little on top of her. Just enough so that his mouth was right above hers as they kissed endlessly. His finger stroked in and out. He reached deep inside her and felt her gasp in his mouth.

  “Like that?” he whispered without leaving her mouth.

  “Oh yeah.” He could feel the exhalation of breath as she said the words.

  His finger reached deeper into her softness. “And that?”

  She made a noise deep in her throat. But he knew she liked it because she contracted around his finger and her hips lifted slightly. He stroked her inside, deep and slow. Her arms twined around his neck bringing him even closer to her.

  Her thighs started trembling as he increased the rhythm of his strokes and her mouth went slack. The kiss deepened. He pressed her harder into the pillow as he stroked her faster and faster. Their mouths and his finger in her sex were making little noises in the quiet room. It was like a little symphony. Then her gasps were added and then another deep noise. It took him a second to realize it was him, growling in his throat as he felt her sex contract once, twice. When he bit her lips she exploded, hips rising and falling, clenching hard around his hand and oh God, he’d never felt anything as wonderful as that.

  He held her tightly, kissing her through her orgasm until she subsided, a light sheen of sweat over her flushed body. The hold around his neck relaxed and her arms fell bonelessly to her sides. He lifted his head to look down at her, that beautiful face pure sex. Beard rash, mouth swollen and wet, a slight smile on her face.

  She lifted a hand as if it weighed a ton and caressed his face. He was slightly bristly and needed a shave. He was going into the bathroom to jerk off and wash off but first he had to kiss her. Because it was impossible not to.

  Her eyes half-opened, like lifting a lid hiding the summer sky. The smile widened. “Wow.”

  “I’ll say.”

  At any other time he’d be doing internal capers and smiling smugly because he’d gotten the woman off. But this felt different. Real and serious. Felicity’s face was so soft as she looked at him. That expression of intelligent wariness had disappeared. He’d heard her story and understood how she’d lived a life undercover, which meant hiding emotions from the world.

  Metal had never been sent in undercover. He was too big and fair for one thing. But it was also recognized that he didn’t have the mind-set for it. He was a warrior and he went into battle in uniform. He never had to pretend to be what he was not.

  Felicity, her whole childhood, never had that luxury. He recognized now how she hid behind a facade because that facade was...down. She was open to him. And he was open to her.

  They were touching only via her hand on his face and it was as if his molecules were melding with hers. It was such an intense feeling it was almost unsettling. He opened his mouth, closed it, then thought what the hell. “At the risk of sounding stupid, I never felt anything like that before.”

  That was exactly the kind of statement dumb guys made just before opening themselves up to being slashed open by a sharp tongue.

  She shook her head. “Me either. That was amazing.”

  Metal nodded. “And it wasn’t even sex.”

  She made a choked sound, like a laugh and a cough at the same time. “Well, it sure felt like sex. For me, at least. You didn’t, em...”

  “I didn’t get off, no. But it was still amazing.” His eyes circled her face. “We’ll be having the real thing. Soon.”

  Another choked sound. “Yeah.”

  “You still have stitches and bandages.”

  “What stitches? What bandages?”

  This time he made the choked laugh sound. He touched the tip of his forefinger to her nose. “Okay. So I’m going to the bathroom for a shower and a shave.” And to jerk off. “And then I’ll help you wash. No shower for you yet, but soon. And then we go into ASI.”

  “ASI?”

  “My company. Jacko’s company. We’ve put in a request to have the airport footage and it might be arriving soon.”

  She used her elbows and sat up against the pillows. “You put in a request?” she echoed blankly. “For the footage?”

  “Yeah. We’ll see if we can get a visual on the guy and then—”

  Felicity shook her head, amused. “You didn’t need to put in a request. I could get that footage for you in three minutes, Sean. Tops. I didn’t do it sooner because I didn’t think about it. I felt really awful and weak and I wasn’t thinking straight. But now I feel much better and I can get the footage from the airport from here. By the time you get out of the shower, in fact.”

  Metal didn’t even try to argue with her. He knew his hackers and the distinction between legally and illegally obtaining data wasn’t one they easily grasped. He used the only argument he could. “We’re going to involve the Portland PD and if we catch the fucker there’s going to be a tria
l and he’s going to be put behind bars for a long long time. To do that we need to observe legal niceties otherwise any evidence will be thrown out long before we get to trial. So thanks for the thought but we’ll do this the official way.”

  “Okay. But I’ll get that footage for you anyway so that we can start work on it. And then when the ‘official’ footage comes we’ll be ahead of the game. Hospital footage too.”

  Metal nodded. He had no trouble whatsoever with getting the jump on the authorities. If they caught the guy they’d just catch him again on the footage provided by the airport. Which was still pissed at the fake bomb alert. He knew John had to tiptoe around that one. If the airport authorities figured out that Felicity was the one to pull the alarm she’d be in trouble. Even if she’d saved her own life.

  Metal was not about to let that happen.

  He bent down to kiss her and went to the bathroom for a shower and a shave and a little relief.

  He tried really really hard not to hobble his way there because he had a true blue steeler, and it fricking hurt. For a second, just a second there, he’d been about to come in his pants, feeling her wet heat contract around his hand. Ah, God. Hand in her, tongue in her, he’d felt every second of her climax, felt the long rise and sharp fall. Something else he’d felt—her surprise. As if it was all new to her. Unexpected.

  He wasn’t new to getting his rocks off but this was all unexpected for him, too, even if the getting-his-rocks-off part hadn’t happened. Didn’t matter.

  She was wrong, he thought, as he shucked his clothes and dropped them to the bathroom tiles. He hadn’t come, but it had definitely been sex. He’d been with her every step of the way except for the very end when he pulled himself back from the brink because he didn’t want to come in his pants. Not cool.

  Although everything else about it had been cool. Her tongue tangled with his, mouths eating at each other. Her hands clinging to his shoulders, keeping him close as if there was somewhere else he wanted to be, which was crazy. Her legs and sex completely open to him. He’d felt the trembling in her thighs just before she started coming...

  He stepped into the shower and turned the water on. Cold. He didn’t need hot water. His body was generating all the heat he needed. He looked down at himself, stiff as a club, huge and almost inflamed-looking. Tip shiny with precome. He moved under the water and the cold stream did little to cool him down. It was suprising steam didn’t come off him.

  He couldn’t stop the images in his head, that gold-and-ivory goddess in his bed, gasping into his mouth, pulling hard against his finger, so hard her hips lifted against his hand.

  She hadn’t been able to stay still—writhing against him, lifting one leg to wrap around his hips, making herself even more open to him.

  She’d been so hot and wet, arms tightening around him, mouth open under his. Every part of her warm and welcoming and so incredibly desireable.

  Metal was as tall as the showerhead. He stepped right under the icy spray, bowing his head so he could fit, looking straight down at himself.

  His hand wrapped around his dick. Usually the touch of his hand alone gave him a little relief because Pavlovian little devil that it was, his dick recognized that as a prelude to getting off. It didn’t work this time because his dick also recognized that this was going to be a piss-poor substitute for what it really wanted.

  What it really really wanted was to slide into Felicity’s slick and welcoming sex, slide in really deep and really hard.

  Everything he knew about women told him she would welcome him and not pushing in and fucking her was the bravest thing he’d ever done. His medals for operating under fire? Not fucking her had been just as hard.

  But he’d been really worked up and he might have been rough and hurt her and that image—of Felicity crying out in pain and not pleasure—stopped him dead.

  It hadn’t been easy controlling himself, though.

  He gave an experimental slide down his dick and then back up. It wasn’t Felicity but it was better than nothing. He couldn’t go back out with his dick waving in her face, so it was going to have to be now and it was going to have to be with his hand.

  Another experimental slide, then another. If he closed his eyes he could almost imagine he was in her. He’d go in slow at first. She’d been wet but small, and he didn’t want to hurt her. So he’d slide in slowly...his fist followed his thoughts. Down, up, down.

  He’d fit. He’d make sure of that. Moving in and out of her, he’d kiss her, kiss her neck, maybe take just a little nip. She’d jolted when he’d done that.

  Oh yeah.

  His hips were following his hand as he remembered how she’d jolted, then shook, then trembled and then came.

  Man, that had been ace, feeling her come around his hand.

  The same hand that was pumping his dick, faster and faster now until he got harder and bigger and then started coming, in long pulls that made his knees weak.

  He shot his other hand out against the tiles to keep himself upright because the memory of Felicity coming, and his own climax, made his knees weak.

  It finally ended and he sighed, letting the water cascade over him until finally it registered as cold. He looked down at himself. Even after coming he was still half-erect. But his dick would have to take a hike. And maybe it wasn’t possible to not be half-erect when Felicity was in the next room.

  He’d gotten off, that would have to be enough. He couldn’t stay here forever under the cold shower while Felicity needed him. Nope.

  He shut the water off, dried and got dressed, already looking forward to seeing her again.

  * * *

  Metal—Sean—came out from the bathroom bare-chested, shaved, in clean jeans and smelling of soap. Had he shampooed? He had a skull trim and Felicity had no idea how those worked. Certainly he didn’t need to blow-dry his hair.

  He smiled at her and walked across the room, keeping his eyes on her the whole time, and oh my. She’d been lying in a puddle of pleasure, completely wiped out. But the sight of all that beefcake—tons of ripped muscles moving in perfect harmony as an alpha male moved straight to what it wanted—woke her tired body up and infused it with newfound energy.

  Because what this alpha male wanted was her.

  Where two seconds before she’d been a formless mass of sweat-soaked bliss all her muscles tightened as strode toward her. Her most reliable ally, her brain, had gone AWOL and all that was left was hormones and erogenous zones. Breasts, sex, mouth, belly...every inch of her that he’d kissed and touched roared to life.

  He couldn’t possibly think she was ready for a second round, did he? Because she wasn’t. Absolutely not. Well maybe, she thought as she watched all those muscles moving. If he asked nicely.

  He stopped by the bedside and looked down at her. She must be quite a sight. Hair spread out all over the pillow, lips swollen. Completely naked.

  He held out an enormous hand. “Come on, honey. You’ll feel better after washing and putting on clean clothes.”

  She blinked. “Feel better? This is one of the top ten moments of my life.”

  He didn’t smile often but when he did it was spectacular.

  He lifted her out of the bed and she stood awkwardly, very aware of her nudity. Covering her breasts and sex with an arm and a hand would be really stupid after what they had shared but she had to practically order her arms to stay down. She wasn’t used to nudity in front of other people. Her few sexual encounters had been firmly under the covers and she’d gotten dressed the instant she was out of the bed. This embarrassment was really dumb and she had to get over it.

  She stared at the ground and there were his bare feet. His feet were absolutely fascinating. Very long but narrow and with high arches. Tendons and raised veins running over the top of the feet, a few blond hairs on the straight toes. They could have b
een the feet of a Greek marble statue only flesh-toned.

  Sex had broken what little filter she had between brain and mouth. Head still down, she opened her mouth and “You have beautiful feet” came out.

  And she blushed.

  His head was down too. “You have beautiful feet too. Prettier than mine, that’s for sure.” He stepped forward and placed his big feet outside her much smaller feet. She had on pale pink toe polish. It was an interesting contrast.

  “I have prettier nail polish too,” she mused.

  He lifted his big foot, examined it. “Yep.”

  They both laughed, lifted their heads. Their eyes met and her awkwardness was gone, just like that.

  He tugged at her hand. “Let’s get you washed and dressed.”

  Before, it had sounded so outlandish. She’d been washing and dressing herself forever. She didn’t need help. Helping her get washed and dressed made her sound like a child. And even as a child she’d been self-sufficient for as long as she could remember. Her mother had never helped her get dressed and ready for school, she’d always done it herself.

  But Metal made it not awkward and infantalizing. And to her surprise, she did need help. She could probably have done it all herself but it would have taken forever and it would have been painful. With Metal’s help, it went smoothly and painlessly.

  She stood like a doll as he smoothed a washcloth over her. When the washcloth cleaned her between her legs, a wave of heat pulsed through her, so strong she forgot to be embarrassed.

  But beyond that, it was a gesture of caring. He’d fed her, loved her senseless and now was washing her. It was almost more intimate than the non-sex sex they’d had on the bed. Strangers can have sex without feelings. But you can’t gently wash someone without emotions being there. Sex was one thing. This level of caring was another.

  She bent her head down curiously to watch as he gently peeled away the bandage. What had been a terrible slash was now a thin line with tiny black stitches. “Doesn’t look so bad,” she said.