Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
In the last twenty-four hours, Ally cried more than she had in her entire life before being abducted. Which was saying a lot, because she’d always been someone who expressed her sorrow through tears.
But all that emotion she’d kept locked down as she just tried to survive was now bubbling out.
She’d cried when Doc carried her out of the burning building and passed her into Mateo’s arms. She’d cried when they’d been bundled into an SUV with blacked-out windows and driven into Manhattan.
She’d cried as she’d been looked over by a doctor.
She’d cried when she’d given her statement to Mateo’s boss, Falcon Oswald, and felt bad about it because the guy had been really kind and gentle with her despite looking like an angry giant at first. She’d cried when Mateo carried her into an apartment in Prey’s building, which was where they’d live until the Azure thing was resolved and they started their lives somewhere else.
She’d cried when Mateo ran them both a hot bath and washed every inch of her with a tenderness that filled all the holes inside her.
She’d cried when he tried to get her to eat something, and when he’d tucked them both under the covers of a huge four-poster bed.
Basically, she was a soggy mess.
Nightmares had come for her the second she fell asleep, and if it wasn't for Mateo’s steady presence, shaking her awake, holding her while she trembled, the fear so real it was like it lived inside her, she wasn't sure what she would have done.
The only thing that made her not feel like a complete waste of space, was that at one point during the night, it was Mateo’s groans that had woken her, and she’d found him in the grips of a nightmare of his own.
She’d climbed onto him, touching kisses to his lips until he’d woken, and then she’d let him hold her while he shook so violently the bed vibrated along with them.
He’d apologized over and over again for getting her on Azure’s radar, and she assumed he’d been dreaming about the trafficking ring doing terrible things to her, although he wouldn't say exactly what the dream had been about.
Now they lay in bed, which was basically all they'd done since they arrived here. In the end, Mateo had convinced her to eat a little, but her appetite seemed to have fled despite her not eating much the entire time she’d been held captive.
They’d taken a shower together before climbing back into bed last night.
While she didn't feel rested, and wasn't sure she’d ever get over the bone-deep weariness that clung to her, Ally didn't want to sleep anymore.
“What are you thinking about, little mouse?” Mateo asked.
When she propped her chin up on his chest, she found him watching her with a careful expression. It was like he was worried that anything he did or said might be the thing that completely undid her and caused her to shatter into a thousand pieces.
Okay, she had been a mess ever since she knew they were safe, she’d cried and cried and cried some more, but she didn't like him being so careful with her.
She felt broken inside, so messed up and turned about that she was having trouble untangling her emotions, but she wasn't going to break.
Which sounded silly. How could you be broken but not break?
“I want you to stop being careful with me,” she blurted before she lost her nerve.
Mateo’s rule was to always say what she was thinking and tell him what she was feeling.
While that hadn't necessarily been something she could do while they were at Azure, even after she learned that he was undercover, she wanted to be that way again.
“Stop being careful with you?” His dark brow furrowed, and she leaned up to kiss away those lines.
“Yes. That’s not how you treated me before.”
“Before you hadn't been kidnapped by people I was trying to get arrested, and tortured. I hadn't tortured you. You hadn't been sold, and then captured again, then almost died in a fire.”
“I'm not made of spun glass,” she said, realizing maybe for the first time as she actually said the words out loud, that they were true. Maybe she’d always been someone who cried, who took the easy way out, who hid and made herself small to avoid being noticed, and who was bullied because she never fought back.
But she was here. Still standing. Broken but not shattered.
If she could endure the horrors of being kept prisoner by a sex trafficking ring and come out the other side, then she definitely wasn't made of glass.
“No, little mouse, you're not made of spun glass,” he said as he tangled his fingers in her hair. “You're made of gorgeous stained glass, beautiful, fragile, but strong all at once. You want me to make you forget for a little while. Is that what you want, baby?”
“Yes,” she said on a breathy moan as arousal flooded her body, and she ground her naked center against his hip since they were snuggled together in the bed.
She needed him to show her that he still saw her the same way, even after what had been done to her.
It was the only way to make the feeling of being dirty disappear.
She needed him to take what he wanted from her body, leaving her wrung out and sated at the end.
“We don’t have any of my usual toys, but I guess we can make do,” he said, his voice taking on that husky tone she loved.
Before she could blink, he had her on her back, and he’d ripped the covers off the bed, tossing them in a tangled mess on the floor somewhere in the room.
Since neither of them had bothered putting clothes on after that first bath when they arrived, they could skip the undressing step.
Mateo was still a patchwork mess of bruises—she had a fair few scrapes and bruises herself after the motorcycle and car incidents—and she hated seeing them on his skin, but she was choosing to see them as evidence of their survival and his love for her.
“You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life,” he told her, and there was a reverence in his voice. “Need to devour you.”
That was the only warning she got before he shoved her thighs apart, wedged his massive shoulders between them, and did just that.
His mouth was hot against her sensitive flesh, and he didn't hold back.
Each stroke of his tongue against her bundle of nerves was deliberate, intense, and determined.
He was going to make her come, and he was going to make her come hard.
And she did.
Minutes later, she came, screaming his name as pleasure assaulted her seemingly from every angle.
But Mateo didn't stop.
Instead, he slipped two fingers inside her, scissoring them for a moment as he flicked lazy licks against her swollen bud. Then he speared his tongue into her, licking deep as his fingers held her open to him.
Another orgasm built, slower this time, and she rocked her hips against his tongue as it grew.
It started low in her belly, a languid tingle, then it began to spread, until it consumed her, and when he closed his lips around her bud and sucked hard, his fingers still inside her, curled to hit that magic spot, she fell apart for a second time.
But Mateo still didn't stop, even as she began to float back down from her high.
“Can't come again,” she whimpered, trying to close her legs but unable to because he was still between them.
“Oh, baby, you're coming again,” he said with a dark chuckle as he looked up at her.
Was there a more erotic sight than the dark head of the man she loved between her legs, his lips glistening with the evidence of the pleasure he’d given her?
“I can't,” she protested, already knowing it would do no good. If Mateo was determined to give her orgasm after orgasm, then that’s what he’d do, even if he had to tie her in place so she couldn’t escape. The thought filled her with another burst of need, and she moaned.
Which Mateo apparently took as a signal to get back to work.
Lips sealed around her bundle of nerves, this time, he delivered the softest of caresses with the tip of his tongue. Featherlight, so gentle, that it made the pleasure build even slower. Ally’s hips rocked without any conscious thought, as he edged her closer and closer to the precipice.
No matter how much she pressed against his lips, Mateo wouldn't pick up the pace, and it wasn't enough to push her over the edge.
“Mateo, more,” she whined.
“Thought you didn't want to come again, little mouse,” he teased.
“Don’t stop,” she begged, straining to find the lips that had left her hanging.
Chuckling, the sound vibrating through his mouth when he took her bud into his heat again, she whimpered. Those excruciatingly slow licks returned, working her into a frenzy. Her fingers curled into the bedding, her head thrashed on the pillow, every muscle in her body strained to reach the end.
When his teeth scraped across her sensitive bud, the orgasm hit without warning. Tossing her into another universe where nothing existed but pleasure.
“One more, baby, then I'm coming inside you,” Mateo said, doubling down on his efforts to give her another orgasm before the first one completely faded.
This time, he didn't hold back, licking at her fervently, suckling hard, using his fingers to pump in and out of her, and when she came it was with tears, as the fourth orgasm in mere minutes almost stole her breath.
Then he was shoving inside her, so big and thick and perfect, filling her, and she groaned as sensations rippled through her already wrung-out body.
This wasn't soft and gentle love-making, it was raw, primal, and powerful.
Mateo thrust in and out of her, using her body the way she loved, as though it belonged to him.
He seemed to swell inside her, getting almost impossibly big, and when he reached between them, took her bundle of nerves between his fingers, and tugged on it, she came with a scream at the same time that he did.
Nothing was better than coming together, and she clung to him, wrapping her arms and legs around him as the orgasm crashed through her, stealing the last of her energy.
An annoying buzzing sound almost ruined the moment.
“Sorry, little mouse, it’s Falcon. Probably about Azure, so I’d better take it. Are you good with that?”
Wanting to know what was going on with the trafficking ring that had almost torn them apart, she nodded her consent.
Lowering his weight so it was pressing gently into her, making her feel cocooned in safety, Mateo stayed buried inside her as he reached for the phone.
She prayed it was news that the trafficking ring was done, that whoever was still undercover there had found what they needed to destroy it.
“You're on speaker,” Mateo told Falcon as he accepted the call.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you'd want to know, I got a call. Azure is scrambling to find a new location after what happened. They think you're dead, but they’re worried that someone will tie the shopping mall crash to them, so they’ve packed up, sold off the women they had, and they’re preparing to pick up a whole new batch today.
You going off the rails is pushing them to make changes they're not prepared for, and Van is confident that it’s going to lead to mistakes he can use to finally get the names we need to shut them down for good. ”
Van was one of the other undercover operatives? Ally never would have guessed that in a million years. The man was cold, empty, and darkness clung to him like a second skin. But hopefully, he was good enough at his job that he could bring the ring tumbling down.
*
Van Huxley considers himself to be dead inside until one woman who refuses to break changes everything in the third book in the action packed and emotionally charged Prey Security: Undercover Team series!
Defending Van (Prey Security: Undercover Team #3)