Chapter 49 #2
“Hmmm.” She tapped the marker to her lips, smudging a tiny dot of black at the corner of her mouth. “Not sure yet. I’ve been feeling…anxious for the last few days. Like there’s something in my brain that itches and I can’t reach it.”
Her fingers drummed against the board. “I constantly feel like we’re missing something. I figured I’d throw it all up here, see where I land.”
I leaned down and kissed the curve of her neck, soft at first, meant to soothe, not derail.
Then again, soothing her had a way of derailing both of us.
I couldn’t help myself. My tongue swept across the faint taste of sleep-warm skin. A low groan rolled up my throat—unfiltered, honest—and it vibrated right against her.
“That,” she breathed, eyes drifting shut for a heartbeat, “is wildly distracting.”
“That,” I countered, teeth grazing gently where neck met shoulder, “was the intention.”
Her head tipped back, a helpless little tilt that I loved, and her breath caught all pretty and trapped.
“Caden,” she warned, softly, shakily, familiarly useless.
“Mhm?” I hummed, already kissing lower.
“We are supposed to be…thinking.” The sentence lost structural integrity halfway through, fraying at the edges.
“I am thinking,” I said. “Just not about whatever the hell is on this board.”
She made a strangled noise somewhere between offense and surrender. “We have conspiracies to solve.”
“I know,” I said, lips ghosting back up her throat. “And yet here you are, parading around our room in my shirt like the solution isn’t me fucking you into oblivion.”
My fingers drifted to the buttons of her shirt, undoing each one with unhurried precision, savoring the way the fabric parted beneath my hands until it finally revealed what I’d been hoping for: bare, flushed skin and nothing underneath.
She let her head fall against my chest as I ran my thumbs across the soft curve of her breasts, circling her nipples with enough pressure to make her moan. Quiet, involuntary, and so achingly responsive it made my pulse stutter.
“Let me help you focus,” I whispered into the shell of her ear. “You seem a little…distracted.”
My hand moved lower, skimming over the curve of her waist, then slipping between her thighs, and when my fingers found her center already slick, she gasped as her hips twitched toward my touch.
She moaned when I brushed over her clit, louder this time. Desperate. Needy. Exactly how I liked her.
“Ms. Thompson,” I growled roughly against her ear, “you’re very wet.”
“Yes, well,” she muttered, still managing to sound smug, “pulling out the whiteboard again was very exciting.”
My palm came down on her pussy in one hard, punishing slap, firm enough to make her gasp again, while her whole body twitched in response.
My other hand wrapped around her throat—lightly, but possessively—as I leaned in close, my breath hot against her cheek.
“You like mouthing off, don’t you? Try that again, and I’ll bend you over that desk until you can’t sit through a single war meeting this week.”
She shivered in my grip, and whispered, “Sounds like a proportionate punishment.”
Next she reached behind her, grabbed the back of my neck, and dragged my mouth to hers, twisting just enough for our lips to crash together. Fierce. Hungry. Like fire meeting gasoline.
Perfect.
Tasting her first thing in the morning… There was nothing like it.
Her back was still to me, and I didn’t give her a chance to turn around. I gripped her hips, walked her to the desk, and bent her forward in one rough motion, the shirt rucking up over her ass.
I leaned in, mouth at her ear. “Remember, you asked for it,” I growled, already lost to her. “Keep your hands right there, and don’t move until I tell you.”
My hand came down hard on the curve of her ass, the sharp slap echoing through the room.
She let out a ragged, breathless sound—half defiance, half submission—as I aligned my hard cock with her entrance. Then, with one powerful thrust, I drove deep inside her, every inch swallowed by her wet heat.
She gasped—loud—as I smirked, then tightened my grip on her hips, knuckles whitening as I pulled her flush against me.
With each hard, unyielding thrust, my hand kept the rhythm, landing with firm, deliberate smacks on her ass that blended pain and pleasure perfectly.
Her muscles clenched around me, slick warmth coating every inch of skin where we met.
“Caden…” she moaned, trembling with strain. “Harder.”
Jesus fuck. This woman begging for me made me downright feral.
“You will be the death of me,” I muttered, rough and low.
Her body trembled under my hands, back arching, spine curving as I drove deeper, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips. The heat radiating from her skin was intoxicating, mixing with the sweet tang of sweat and the electric pulse of desire.
I bent my head, teeth grazing her neck, biting lightly before trailing a line of fire down to her shoulder. Her gasps hit my ear like thunder.
“Don’t you dare stop,” she whispered, breath catching, shaking with need.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I growled back.
Every movement was brutal and precise, consuming us both. I could feel the tight squeeze of her walls as I pushed her closer to the edge, each thrust harder and faster than the last.
Her fingers clawed at the edge of the desk, nails digging into the wood as she surrendered to the relentless drive between us, every moan and shiver answering the savage cadence I commanded.
She was so fucking close.
I leaned forward, and bit down hard in her shoulder as I slid a thumb down to her swelling clit, pinching and circling with deliberate intensity.
Her body jolted violently, trembling as she tipped over the edge into her release, a desperate cry ripping from her lips. “Caden!”
Her screaming my name sent a shock straight through me, breaking down every last restraint. With a growl, I lost myself, driving harder and faster until I tumbled over the edge alongside her, painting her insides with my cum.
We stayed like that for a moment, breathless, tangled, the room humming with aftershock. My forehead dropped to her shoulder, sweat cooling on our skin, her heartbeat pounding in time with mine like some unspoken truth we hadn’t yet dared to say.
I didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to break the moment.
She turned in my arms, her mouth tugging into the kind of smile she only gave to me. The kind that broke me wide open. “That escalated quickly.”
“No,” I said, barely more than a whisper, brushing my nose against hers. “It escalated the moment you walked into my life.”
She leaned into me, forehead to forehead, breath to breath. And when her lips met mine again, it wasn’t frantic or hungry.
It was home.
EMMA
Caden was the worst distraction ever.
Thank the gods I hadn’t met him during law school, or I never would’ve finished.
Not that the whole degree did me much good anymore.
Though the whiteboard I’d grown so fond of in college, was still my friend.
After giving in to Caden—twice—we were both standing in front of it again, each holding our third cup of coffee like it was life support.
“Why would Collabs experiment on their own species?” I mumbled, uncapping a marker with my teeth. “It doesn’t make sense. And I hate that we know so little about them.”
“We know about the tattoo,” Caden said, far too relaxed for my sanity.
I bit the inside of my cheek before replying. “Not really. It’s an assumption we made. Could have nothing to do with them.”
“Okay,” he said, lifting one hand, conceding. “Then what do we know? We know they started working with humans the moment humans started experimenting on magi.”
“Right,” I said, dragging a line across the board. “Which was to figure out what we are. Something the Collabs already know, because they are magi.”
He flexed his jaw, quietly thinking, loudly brooding. “Unless…they’re trying to merge both species somehow.”
The marker froze in my hand.
Slowly, I turned to face him. “You think the Collabs want to figure out how to insert translation into humans?”
He dragged a hand over the back of his neck. “Could be, yeah. Would explain why we found human and magi blood at the scene.”
A cold pulse shot through me. I set the marker down with a rough click.
“Do you know what that sounds like?”
His brow arched, expression unreadably calm. “What?”
I met his stare head-on. “Fucking Julian’s experiments.”
His jaw flexed. “Well, now you mention it… If I hadn’t killed him myself, I’d move him right to the top of our suspect list.”
I gasped, the air snagging halfway to my lungs. “Maybe not Julian.” A beat. “But there is someone else who was also dabbling in such experiments, who is still alive. Someone Stephen’s been trying to track since Switzerland.”
Caden didn’t blink. “Gordon,” he said, the name almost a blade.
I nodded once. “He had the same knowledge Julian did.”
“But Collabs aren’t abducting human babies,” he said, frowning.
“As far as we know.” I bit the inside of my cheek, gaining momentum. “Plus, he might’ve found another way.”
Caden’s gaze rested on me, before he sat back on the edge of the bed.
“All right.” He angled his head. “You think Gordon is working with the Collabs?”
I nodded, everything in me coiling taut. “More than working with them. He might be leading them. And if he is…”
We were both quiet for a second. Caden leaned forward, his tone dropping to a dangerous murmur. “He was alive during the battle of ’59. And Julian said he was a Specialist, right?”
“Yes.”
“So he’d be powerful enough to create a bubble…”
“And a blue portal to send me into the future,” I added.
“Fuck.” He blew out a breath, dragging a hand over his face. “Gordon might very well be the man behind the bubble.”
“And he knows my translation is the same as Julian’s.”
A shadow crossed my lover’s face. “Which means he could make you the exception to it. Which is why you survived translating beneath it. I just don’t understand why he’d want you to be.”
“Because,” I said quietly, the truth settling heavy on my tongue, “I’m his only success.”
Caden launched to his feet so fast the bed groaned under the motion, the sudden violence of it enough to make the air ripple. “He needs you alive to replicate the result.”
A chill crawled its way up my spine. “Caden…” My voice turned paper-thin, barely there. “That has to be it.”
He went still—unnervingly still—like a man whose body had briefly forgotten to breathe so his mind could sharpen into something ancient and vicious. Calm. Controlled. Honed.
The kind of stillness that came right before annihilation, when a predator stopped pacing only because the kill was already decided.
Low enough to be intimate and lethal in the same breath, he said, “He won’t fucking touch you.”
I leaned into him and slid my hand into his, grounding him with the soft sweep of my thumb, anchoring him to the present instead of the battlefield he’d already marched into in his head.
“I’m not worried,” I murmured, holding his gaze with a steadiness I hoped matched the iron in my resolve. “He’ll never get to me.”
“Never,” he swore, staring at me with eyes as black as his haze, a blood oath, carved from grit and fury, delivered through clenched teeth like a promise written in stone.
I pressed my lips softly against his. Quick, and intentional, a seal to the oath and a reminder of what we were protecting.
When I pulled back, he spoke quietly, as the gears in his head kept visibly turning. “Cara said the man behind the bubble handed the Radicals the Amplifier.”
His frown carved deeper, teeth grazing his lower lip. “Why would Gordon arm the Radicals with a nuclear weapon? If his endgame is merging magi and humans, why supply the people trying to stop the Great Exposure?”
I exhaled slowly, frustration knotting low in my stomach. “She could’ve been lying.”
Caden nodded, but I could see he wasn’t convinced.
Then—like a match striking—I felt a spark catch.
“Julian told James something,” I said, turning my head toward the board again. “Gordon lost his entire family in the Battle of ’59. Which we now know was a war between humans and magi. It would make sense he would never want another Great Exposure.” I paused. “And who were fighting to stop it?”
Caden blinked once before speaking. “The Radicals.”
I lifted a hand and tapped the whiteboard, once. “Exactly.”
Caden pushed to his feet with a dangerous kind of calm.
A beat sat heavy between us, the hum of the room too quiet for what we’d uncovered.
“But then…” I lifted my gaze to his. “Is Gordon working with the Collabs? Or with the Radicals?”
Caden stared at the board like it might bleed answers if he glared hard enough. “I have no fucking clue.”