Chapter 26 #2
“I’m going to take my time with you,” I tell her, reaching for the button of her pants.
“Going to taste every inch of this perfect fucking body. And you’re going to lie there and take it because you can’t do anything else.
You’re captive. Trapped. At my mercy. You’re mine right now, Mia. Completely mine.”
“Yes,” she whispers, her eyes dancing feverishly. “Yours.”
The word hits me like a fist to the chest. Mine. She is mine. This brilliant, fierce, complicated woman is mine to touch, mine to taste, mine to ruin.
I drag her pants down her legs, taking her underwear with them, and toss them somewhere into the hay.
She’s completely bare now, and I take a moment to appreciate the view.
The soft curve of her stomach. The flare of her hips.
The neat strip of dark hair between her thighs, already glistening with arousal.
“Spread your legs,” I order.
She obeys instantly, her thighs falling open, and I have to close my eyes for a second, because the sight of her—bound and open and dripping for me—is almost too much.
“Look at this pretty pussy.” I trace one finger through up her, gathering the wetness there before slowly pushing it inside. “Soaked already. So fucking wet. Is this all for me?”
“Yes—”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, it’s for you. All for you. Please, Nate, I need—”
“You’ll get what I give you, baby.” I bring my finger to my mouth and suck it clean, watching her eyes darken with desire. “And right now, what I’m giving you is a lesson in patience.”
I start at her ankle, kiss my way up her calf, her knee, her inner thigh.
She’s trembling by the time I reach the crease where her leg meets her body, and I can smell her arousal—musky and sweet and absolutely intoxicating.
But I don’t touch where she needs and wants me.
Instead, I switch to her other ankle and start the journey all over again.
“God, please, no. I—”
“Shh.” I nip at her inner thigh, making her cry out before soothing the sting with my tongue. “I told you I was taking my time.”
By the time I’ve kissed my way up both legs twice, she’s practically sobbing.
Her hips are lifting off the hay, searching for contact I’m not giving her.
The sounds she’s making—desperate little whimpers and moans—are going straight to my cock, which is straining so hard against my jeans, it’s almost painful.
“Please,” she begs. “Please, please, I can’t—”
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t take it anymore! Please touch me, put me out of my bloody misery, just—”
With a grin, I bury my face between her thighs.
She screams, her whole body jerking against the restraints as I seal my lips around her clit and suck hard. I grip her hips to hold her still and go to work, licking and sucking and fucking her with my tongue while she writhes and wails above me.
She’s moaning, groaning, telling me to keep going, telling me she loves it, telling me not to stop.
I have no intention of stopping. I want to drown in her, want to stay here forever, tongue buried in her cunt, drinking down every drop she gives me. Fuck, she’s so soft, it’s driving me wild.
I add two fingers, crooking them against that spot inside her that makes her back arch off the hay, and feel her walls start to flutter around me.
“That’s it.” I pull back just enough to speak, my breath hot against her swollen flesh. “Come for me, baby. Come all over my face like the good little slut you are.”
She shatters with a cry that echoes through the barn. Her thighs clamp around my head, her whole body shaking, and I work her through it with my mouth and fingers, drawing out every last tremor until she’s gasping and limp and twitching with aftershocks.
I lick her clean, every fold, every crease, savoring the taste of her release on my tongue. Then, I sit back, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and start undoing my jeans.
“That was just the beginning,” I tell her, freeing my cock. It’s so hard and thick, it’s almost purple, pre-cum leaking from the tip. “I can do this all day.”
Her eyes go wide when she sees me. It still amazes me, that look, like she can’t quite believe what she’s dealing with, as if she’s not sure whether to be terrified or turned on.
“Remember your word,” I say, positioning myself at her entrance.
“Milkshake,” she says rather nervously.
“That’s the one.” I thrust forward, burying myself to the hilt in one stroke.
A scream is strangled in her throat, her back bowing, her bound hands straining against the rope.
I give her half a second to adjust before I start moving—long, deep strokes that drag over every nerve ending inside her.
The angle is incredible, her body tilted because of the way her arms are secured, and I can feel her clenching around me with every thrust.
“Fucking perfect,” I growl. “This cunt was made for me. Only me. Say it.”
“Only you—”
“Louder.”
“Only you!”
I pound into her harder, the hay bale creaking beneath us, the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh filling the barn. She’s so wet, I can hear it—that profane squelch with every thrust—and it’s driving me out of my goddamn mind.
It’s driving her mad too, from the cacophony of sounds she’s making, the way her heart is beating so loud, it might just escape from her chest. She’s breathing hard, and I can smell the orgasm coming for her, sense how she’s about to lose all control, luckily before I do.
“You’re going to take everything I give you.” I shift my grip on her hips, lifting her higher, changing the angle so I’m hitting deeper. “Every. Fucking. Inch.”
“I’m coming,” she cries out, half a sob, half a moan, and then she’s panting, writhing, jerking against her restraints that keep her arms raised above her head before she starts to go limp and satiated.
I can feel my control slipping. That darkness I warned her about—it’s rising now, inky and hungry, wanting to consume her whole.
I want to mark her. Bite her. Make her scream until her voice gives out.
I want to flip her over and take her from behind, pull her hair, smack her pert little ass until it’s red and stinging, use my belt to—
Pain explodes behind my left eye.
I stagger, my rhythm faltering. For a second, the world whites out, replaced by a high-pitched ringing that seems to come from inside my skull. It’s like someone’s driven a spike through my temple.
“Nate?” Mia’s voice, distant through the ringing. “Nate, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head, trying to clear it. The pain is already fading, leaving behind a dull throb and a hollow feeling in my chest. “Just a headache. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? We can stop—”
“No,” I say harshly. I take a breath, force my voice softer. “No, I’m good. I want this. I want to come inside you.”
I start moving again, but something’s changed. That rising darkness—it’s still there, but it feels different now. Less like passion and more like…compulsion. Like something separate from me, pushing me toward an edge I can’t see.
Ignore it and focus on her.
I reach between us, finding her swollen clit, and start rubbing in tight circles. “Are you going to come for me again?” I ask. “Can you give that to me? Come on my cock like a good girl?”
Despite the fact that she just came like gangbusters, I can tell she’s close again from the way she’s clenching around me, the desperate, breathy little sounds she’s making. I drive into her harder, faster, my thumb working her clit, and when she finally tips over the edge once more, I follow her.
The orgasm rips through me, every muscle in my body seizing. I spill inside her with a groan that sounds more like a roar, pumping her full of my release until there’s nothing left.
For a long moment, we just breathe. I’m still buried inside her, my forehead pressed to her chest, her bound hands trembling above us. Then, I inch backward and put my hands on her soft thighs, keeping them open as I watch my cum leak out of her, making a mess in the hay.
I decide to make an even bigger mess and push it back up her thighs and deep inside her, surprised to find her still throbbing, the urge to breed her never going away.
Then, I reach up and undo the rope, freeing her wrists. She winces as she lowers her arms, and I immediately pull them into my lap, massaging the faint red marks the twine left behind.
“You okay?”
“More than okay.” She smiles up at me, her eyes heavy lidded. “That was…”
“Intense?”
“I was going to say incredible.” She pauses, her expression shifting to concern. “But are you okay? That headache—”
“It’s nothing.” I kiss her palm, then each of her fingers.
“Happens sometimes. Probably just dehydration. Or a patty melt. Maybe I oughta start taking LactoEase.” I look at her breath in the air, condensing from the cold.
“We should get going, go back into the house. Should be warm enough, though if it’s too weird for you, we could go anywhere. Get a hotel.”
“I’m good with anything,” she says, reaching for her scattered clothes. I watch her for a moment, drinking in the sight in the dying light—the marks I’ve left on her skin, the satisfied curve of her lips, the way she moves like a woman who’s been thoroughly fucked. Ravaged, even.
And then, distantly, I hear it: the rhythmic thump of helicopter blades, growing louder by the second.
My little vacation is over.
“Nate?” Mia is frozen, her bra half-on. “Is that—”
“Yes.” The hollow feeling in my chest spreads. “They found me.”
The helicopter sets down in the same field where Danny parked the Meridian. By the time Mia and I climb down from the hayloft, Julia is already emerging from the aircraft, her light hair whipping in the rotor wash, followed by two men in black suits.
She doesn’t look angry, which is a bad sign. What she does look is terribly, horribly out of place on my family property. It makes me feel sick, like she’s some sort of virus infecting my roots.
“Vanguard.” She stops a few feet away, hands clasped in front of her. “We need to talk.”
“How did you find me?” I say, grinding my teeth.
“How do you think? You know the hover car has its own tracking system.” Her gaze flicks to Mia, who stands slightly behind me, then back to my face. “I tried reaching you for hours. Your watch is in privacy mode, back at your apartment. Do you have any idea what that looks like from our end?”
“Like I wanted some space without you breathing down my fucking neck.”
Her eyes widen, and Mia gasps from behind me. This might be the first time I’ve ever talked to her like this, but fuck it.
The shock is quickly smoothed away. “No, what it looks like is that you’ve gone rogue, and that’s a very dangerous place for you to be.” She steps closer, lowering her voice. “Thirteen people are dead, Nate.”
The words hit me like a punch. “What?”
“Structural collapse. An old parking garage in Queens. The whole thing came down during rush hour.” She pauses. “By the time emergency services reached the scene, it was too late. But if you’d been there—”
The realization settles over me like ice water. “I could have gotten them out.”
“Yes. You could have.”
I think about those thirteen people. People who got up this morning, went to work, parked their cars in a garage that had probably stood for fifty years, people who never made it home because I was here, in Montana, fucking a woman in a hayloft while their world collapsed around them.
“Why didn’t Paragon respond?” I ask, wishing that icy feeling in my chest would go away. “He’s supposed to be backup.”
If not the new me.
“Paragon experienced a malfunction.” Julia’s expression remains blank, but I can tell she’s holding something back. “He’s being recalibrated.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I say. It sounds like an excuse. It is an excuse. “I just wanted a break. I wanted to…”
“I know.” Julia’s voice softens slightly. “That’s why I’m here, Nate. You can’t disappear like this. You can’t just…opt out when you feel like it. People depend on you. The country depends on you. You have a role to play in the new America, and that role doesn’t include personal days.”
“I understand,” I manage to say. I understand now too well.
“I hope so.” She glances at Mia again, and this time, there’s something sharper in her gaze. “Miss Baxter. I think you know better than anyone by now just what is at stake. I trust you got what you needed for your article.”
Mia stiffens beside me. “I—yes. Thank you.”
“Good. Then I’m sure you won’t mind if we cut this excursion short.” Julia gestures toward the helicopter. “We can fly you to the airport, where we have a jet waiting for you. A private one. Very nice. Compliments of Conrad Marsh.”
“She can come with me,” I say. “Danny can take her back in the Meridian—”
“The Meridian is needed elsewhere.” Julia’s tone shuts it all down. “Miss Baxter, if you please.”
Mia looks at me. I can see the question in her eyes. Is this okay? Should I push back?
I want to tell her to stay, want to grab her hand and tell Julia to fuck off while I take the helicopter ride back to New York with her instead of alone with my handler.
But thirteen people are dead. Because of me. Because I chose a woman over my duty. I’m going to have to sit with that truth for the rest of my life.
“It’s fine,” I tell Mia. “I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I lean in, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Thank you. For today. For…everything.”
She searches my face for a moment longer then nods. “Be careful.”
I watch her walk toward the helicopter, the men in suits flanking her. She looks back once, her expression unreadable in the fading light, her hair whipping around her.
Then, the doors close, and she’s gone.
Julia stands beside me as the helicopter lifts off, the rotor wash flattening the grass around us. We watch it rise into the darkening sky, banking east toward Bozeman.
“She’s going to be a problem,” Julia says quietly. “I can feel it.”
I don’t respond. How can I? Deep down, in the part of me still capable of honesty, I know she’s right.
Mia Baxter is going to be a problem.
And I’m going to let her be one anyway.