Chapter 5 #3
Evening comes. We've been in her townhome all day, the investigation on pause and the world outside held at the length of a phone call, and the quiet between us has settled into a comfort that doesn't need filling.
She reads on the couch. I sit beside her, and the notebook stays in my pocket because the woman next to me is the poem and writing it down would mean looking away from her, and I am not looking away.
We go to bed together. She brushes her teeth while I stand in the doorway and watch her in the bathroom mirror, and the domesticity of it, toothpaste and bare feet and the casual way she bumps her hip against mine when I step in to wash my face, is disarming in a way that combat never was.
Eighteen years of training against every kind of threat, and a woman in cotton shorts bumping her hip against mine undoes all of it.
In bed, she turns to me, and I don't let her set the terms.
My hand closes around her wrist and I pin it above her head, and her breath catches, and the look she gives me, sharp and hot, is an invitation disguised as resistance.
"Round two already?" she says. "Your recovery time is impressive."
"Shut up, Ireland."
"Make me."
I cover her mouth with mine, swallowing the laugh that follows, and kiss her until the laugh dissolves into a moan. My free hand slides under her shirt and up her ribs, and she arches against me, pressing into my palm.
I strip her shirt off and push her flat on her back, both wrists pinned above her head in one hand, and the way she tests my grip, pulling just enough to feel the hold without trying to break it, tells me she wants the restraint as much as I want to give it.
"You're going to stay where I put you," I tell her, my mouth against her jaw. "And you're going to let me take my time. And you're not going to give me performance notes."
"And if I do?"
"Then I stop."
"You wouldn't."
"Try me."
The challenge lands. Her mouth closes on whatever she was about to say, and her eyes go dark with a heat that is half frustration and half anticipation.
I release her wrists and she keeps them where I put them, fingers curling around the slats of her headboard, and the sight of Ireland Calloway holding position because I told her to makes my cock so hard it aches.
I undress her slowly. The shorts and panties, dragged down her thighs with deliberate patience while she squirms. I press my mouth to her belly, tasting the salt of her skin, and work my way down with the same unhurried focus I bring to every task that matters.
"You're being deliberately slow," she says through her teeth.
"Clinical observation?"
"Professional assessment. Your pacing is sadistic."
"I've been called worse." I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh and she jerks. I kiss the other thigh, close enough to where she wants me that her hips tilt in pursuit, and I hold them down with both hands and make her wait.
"Boone."
"Quiet. I'm assessing."
I breathe her in, the warm musk of her arousal, and press my tongue flat against her, one long slow stroke from entrance to clit. The moan she lets out is ragged, raw, and her hand leaves the headboard to grip my hair.
"That's a violation," I murmur against her. "Hands on the headboard."
"I can't."
"You can." I lick her again, slow and thorough, circling her clit with the tip of my tongue before drawing it into my mouth. "Put your hand back."
Her hand shakes as she grips the headboard again, and the effort of holding position while I take her apart with my mouth is visible in every line of her body.
I eat her out with patience and precision, learning the rhythm that makes her hips roll and the pressure that makes her thighs shake. I bring her to the edge and ease back, and the frustrated growl she lets out is so sharp and furious that I nearly laugh against her skin.
"I will actually murder you," she pants. "Slowly. With clinical precision."
"You're giving notes again." I seal my mouth over her clit and suck, pressing two fingers inside her and curling them forward.
She breaks. The orgasm tears through her in a rush, her body arching off the mattress, her voice cracking open on a cry that fills the bedroom.
Her inner walls pulse around my fingers and her thighs clamp against my head, and I hold her there, working her through it until she's gasping and boneless and her grip on the headboard has gone slack.
I climb up her body and she grabs my face and kisses me, tasting herself on my mouth. "Inside me," she says against my lips. "Now. I am done waiting."
I push inside her in one firm stroke, and she's so wet from coming that the entry is smooth and slick and we both groan at the feeling of it.
She wraps around me, legs and arms, and pulls me closer, deeper, and I can feel every inch of her, hot and swollen and still fluttering from her orgasm.
I start to move, slow and deep, each stroke deliberate, and she bites my shoulder and digs her nails into my back and makes a noise against my skin that is half frustration and half pleasure.
"Faster," she demands.
"No." I keep the pace slow and grinding, pulling nearly all the way out before sliding deep again. Her breath hitches with every thrust and her hips try to force a faster rhythm and I hold her down and make her take it at my speed.
"You are the most infuriating man I have ever..." She loses the end of the sentence when I angle my hips and hit the spot that turns her articulate fury into a strangled moan.
"Most infuriating man you've ever what?"
"Shut up and fuck me, Senior Chief."
The title in her mouth, pitched low and breathless and deliberately provocative, almost finishes me on the spot. My hips stutter, and the grin she gives me through her flushed, wrecked expression is so pleased with itself that I have to shut it down or I'm going to lose this round.
I pin her hip with one hand, drive deep, and stay there. "Say my name."
"Make me."
I grind against her, slow and hard, and her eyes roll back. "Say it."
My name breaks apart on her tongue, half moan, half surrender, and the sound of it pours through me like accelerant.
I stop holding back. My pace goes hard and deep, the rhythm easily catching fire, and she matches me stroke for stroke, her body moving under mine with the strength and fluidity of an athlete.
The bed frame hits the wall and her nails score lines down my back and her voice fractures into cries that are desperate and raw and mine.
I feel her climbing, feel the tightening clench of her body around me, and I slide my hand between us and press my thumb against her clit.
She comes apart with a scream she doesn't bother muffling, her body locking tight around me, and the pulsing grip of her orgasm drags me under. I bury myself deep and let go with a guttural groan, spilling inside her while her body milks every last pulse.
Afterward, she's asleep in minutes. Her breathing is deep and even, and her face against the pillow is soft and open, and her hand rests on my chest in the possessive, unconscious way of a woman who reached for what she wanted and has no intention of letting go.
I am not asleep. I am lying in Ireland Calloway's bed with her body curled against mine and the quiet of her townhome around us, and I am listening.
At 0237, the scrape comes. Metal on metal, quiet enough to be nothing, specific enough to be everything. It comes from the back of the house, the direction of the patio door, and every nerve I own fires simultaneously.
I go from resting to operational between one breath and the next.
My hand lifts from Ireland's back without disturbing her weight.
My feet find the floor without sound. The Sig is in the nightstand on my side, because I put it there this morning while she was in the shower, and the grip is familiar and cold and feels exactly as it should.
Ireland stirs. Her eyes open, and in the half-dark I watch her register the weapon in my hand and the way I'm standing and the absolute stillness of my body, and whatever she was about to say dies in her throat.