Blue Knight (17 page)

His fingers slid into her cleft, following the line of lace of her thong, testing the dampness. Her hips lifted involuntarily in a hard arch at the touch of his hand. She longed for a deeper, harder invasion.

Rougher.

Her breath came more quickly. She wasn’t even sure how to ask for what she wanted. This was beyond anything Nick had ever done to her. All she knew was that she could so easily come if Nick would only take her with the same anger and force as he had handled her just a moment before.

The knife slit the lace of her thong in two little swipes. The wet lace dropped to the floor on top of her skirt, the purple fabric darkened with her moisture.

Nick’s fingers were still exploring her cleft. Separating her ass cheeks. Her cream was everywhere, coating everything, making her slippery and sensitive. One finger slid against her anus and she bucked hard. The moan slipped out without thought.

“You like that,
mi amor
.”

“
Sí
.” Her voice was husky, deep with arousal.

His fingers pushed deeper into her cleft, into her pussy. She realized he was collecting moisture. Lubricant. Dark excitement flared in her. A wicked thrill. His fingers moved back to her tiny hole and played. Teased. He pushed and probed just enough to make her push back, wordlessly begging for more.

He slipped a finger inside her. Calli clutched at the bedpost, her heart racing and her breathing working overtime as the sensations threatened to overwhelm her. “More!” she pleaded and her voice came out as a croak.

“Ah. I cannot….”

She heard the rustle of cloth. A zipper.

Nick’s cock slammed into her with no preliminaries. He gave her no chance to accommodate his size, adjust to him, or stretch around him. He buried himself to the hilt, one hand on her shoulder to make sure he could grind himself into her to the fullest.

Calli cried out at the fierce taking, reveling in it. It was exactly what she wanted. Her pussy clamped around him, quivering and crawling with pleasure. Her body began to tremble.

Then Nick reinserted his finger into her ass and Calli exploded with pleasure. She clutched at the bedpost as her body seemed to fall apart with a whole new realm of sensuality.

“Harder!” she cried out. “More, Nick. Harder. Faster. Oh god, more, Nick, more!”

He was riding her with the hard roughness she wanted, ramming into her, using her. Her body was responding in a new and vibrant way and she could feel the approaching climax building from deep inside her.

Then he reached under her and gently squeezed her clitoris as he drew it through his fingers.

She screamed, throwing her head back as she climaxed. She could feel her anus and her pussy clench around Nick as he thrust into her, until her contractions forced him to come as well. He shot hot streams of cum into her pussy, giving a gasping cry of his own.

Calli was trembling, her oxygen depleted. She felt Nick tug at the bindings around her wrist, but barely noticed. Then he picked her up. She was laid gently on the bed.

Nick’s body curled around hers and his lips touched her temple. Her cheeks. Finally, her lips. He curled his arm around her waist and she was tucked in tight against his heat and strength.

“You are right, of course,
la dama fuerte
,” he murmured in her ear. “You are always right, most especially when I am…what did you say? Being a little boy?”

“Chucking a little boy tantrum,” she said and tried to hold back a huge yawn. She rolled her head so she could look him in the eye. All his anger was gone. He was calm.

“Your English isn’t that bad,” she said.

“My pride is,” he replied. Then he smiled. “But on one thing you are quite wrong, Callida Escobedo.”

“Oh?”

He pointed to the pile of destroyed clothing. “It’s not just Vistarian men who are prone to melodramatic gestures.”

Daniel slipped away from her bed in the early hours of the morning, giving Olivia barely enough time to wash and dress for breakfast and go over the room to ensure there was no evidence she had entertained a man.

The sex-stained sheets she could do nothing about, so she simply arranged the bedclothes higher over the top of them and hoped the maid would not notice when she made the bed.

She stepped out of the room feeling that she had covered her tracks as best she could and relaxed. Breakfast was a return to routine. The spiced coffee and the strained silence would be almost welcome. It was a predictable event among so many swift changes and fearful uncertainties surrounding them right now. She almost smiled at the armed guards dotting the corridors on her way to the elevator. It seemed close to normal once more.

When Olivia stepped between the arches into the dining room, her heart fell.

Serrano was standing to one side of the room, Ibarra next to him. Standing between them, looking rumpled and defeated, was Ernesto.

The Spaniard wore the same clothes he had been wearing last night, but they were crumpled and disheveled now, as if he had been wearing them for more than twenty-four hours. The tall, olive-skinned man had dark circles around his eyes. They looked like bruises, except they followed the lines and creases of his face, fanning out from his sharp hooked nose.

Sleep deprivation
, Olivia mentally catalogued.

Ernesto was shaking as he stood between the two military men. He could barely stand on his own two feet. His hands were twitching as they hung at his sides. He blinked constantly as he watched everyone enter the dining room and pick up their trays.

Olivia forced herself to keep moving forward, making it look as natural as possible. Her heart, though, was racing a mile a minute and her chest was squeezing hard, making her feel sick. She could taste something coppery in her mouth. Adrenaline. She was close to flat-out panic, she realized. She hadn’t counted on Ernesto being here. Or Serrano. This wasn’t part of the plan. It was too soon. Too quick.

Too quick? Too soon?

She picked up a tray from the end of the line and saw that her hand was shaking. She concentrated on making it not shake as she held the tray. She worked on keeping her face completely without expression as she tried to puzzle out why she would have such an odd reaction. Why too soon?

It gave her mind a distraction to focus on, rather than looking over her shoulder and watching Serrano and Ibarra. It allowed her to appear disinterested.

Why too quick? Surely, the end of Ernesto’s questioning session could not come to soon at all for the poor man, so why would she have any reluctance for it to end, period?

She poured herself a cup of the spiced coffee and noticed that her hand had stopped shaking. Good for her. She even managed to nod at the waiter behind the urn and smile a silent good morning at him.

Then she heard the gasps behind her. The combined indrawn breaths.

She whirled.

Time slowed down as the adrenaline already surging through her system kicked her reactions into high gear and instinct took over.

She got a quick, heart-beat-long snapshot view of the entire dining room from where she was standing at the buffet line, which was spread across the west end of the room, in front of the rear arches.

Ernesto, between Serrano and Ibarra on her left, was just beginning to lift his trembling arm, his long forefinger stretched out to point. He was going to single out someone in the room.

Daniel was just coming into the dining room through the east end arches, from the foyer. Ernesto was looking at him.

Olivia threw her cup onto the tiles with all her might.

The ceramic mug exploded like a small hand grenade, sending china fragments and steaming spiced coffee splattering in all directions for dozens of feet, making those around her scream or gasp and jump backward, sideways, or up out of the way.

Every head immediately turned in her direction. Guns were cocked and aimed.

“I am so sick of fucking spiced coffee!” she screamed. “I can’t stand it anymore. All day, every day. Day in. Day out. When can we get decent American coffee? This…this…shit you’re serving takes paint off walls!” She waved toward the big urn of normal coffee that everyone had mostly learned to avoid.

She pushed a hand up against her temple as if she was delicate and stressed. She didn’t have to work too hard to make it look convincing, because her hand really was trembling. “What about waffles or something for breakfast? Or some real protein and vegetables instead of this constant garbage you keep serving up? Weeks of it….” She gave a shaky laugh. “We’re all gonna die of scurvy at this rate!”

Serrano was staring at her, his little eyes narrowed. He had shown no other reaction to her outburst. He had been one of the few who hadn’t jumped when she’d thrown the cup.

Ernesto’s arm was back by his side.

She needed more out of Serrano, though. Olivia stamped her foot. “I want fruit and vegetables, dammit! I want real food. I’m going crazy eating all this crap you keep serving! I can’t exercise, I can’t walk anywhere. I’m like a mouse in a lab, I’m stewing in my own juices.”

Someone touched her arm gently. She threw the arm off. Serrano was still just watching her. She needed him to come after her. Perhaps only a direct attack would do it. That was what it had taken yesterday. When they had thought she was attacking him, they had reacted.

Olivia drew in a shaking breath and lifted her finger to point at Serrano. “And you, you hypocritical asshole—”

Someone yanked on her elbow. “Shut up
now
, Olivia.” It was Jenny’s voice. She was speaking German. Olivia pulled her arm out of Jenny’s frantic grip.

Serrano jerked his head at Ibarra, who strode toward Olivia.

At last.

Olivia pointed at Serrano again. “You’re such a fine and upstanding leader you can’t even arrange diplomatic status for a single tiny island. You’re fucking useless!”

The collective in-drawn breath of shock was louder this time, because everyone did it. It was punctuated by Ibarra’s gun cocking as he put it against Olivia’s temple.

The steel rim was cold and hard. It felt huge. She kept quite still.

Serrano smiled. “Do you have anything else to say?” he asked softly.

Olivia stayed silent.

“Oh, but you will say something,” Serrano assured her. “You will tell me so many things…Olivia.” He spoke her name like a caress.

He jerked his head again.

Ibarra’s fingers pulled on her upper arm and she was just about yanked off her feet as he hauled her across the floor between the tables.

Olivia didn’t fight it. She had known exactly what she was courting when she smashed the cup down.

Better her than Daniel.

He was still standing by the arches as Ibarra force-marched her into the foyer. His face was completely still and utterly neutral. But he was breathing hard and his hands were thrust deep into both pockets.

She knew both his hands were curled into fists inside his pockets.

Olivia let herself get spun and shoved by Ibarra’s grip on her upper arm in such a way that she cannoned into Daniel as she passed. She touched his wrist. A fleeting squeeze. It was all she dared. She didn’t look at his face again. His flesh was warm. Alive.

As she stood like a cowed, scared woman in the foyer, waiting for the elevator, her head bowed, her gaze on the white marble tiles, her thoughts coalesced around that few seconds’ sight she’d had of Daniel’s face.

The meaning for all her odd thoughts before breakfast and her instinctive actions just now came together in a clear, understandable, painful rush. She loved him. It wasn’t some schoolgirl instant crush, come today, gone tomorrow. She loved Daniel with bone-deep intensity. The sort of simple yet profound love that simply was. An unquestioning love that could and would move mountains.

“Fuck,” she murmured to herself, barely moving her lips. She had done exactly what she had predicted she would do and the most dangerous thing she could do with Daniel Castle—Daniel Alejandro Castellano, actually. Jesus, she even loved his real name. It rolled off her tongue like music or fine wine.

A Vistarian. She’d fallen in love with a Vistarian. One of the most romantic, hardworking, honorable and tradition-loving races left on earth.

God help her.

Ibarra pushed her into the waiting elevator. “You picked the wrong time to complain about the food, woman,” he growled. “Serrano will have you singing like a bird about everything and everyone you know.”

She kept her face still and her gaze at her feet, fighting to hide a smile. Little did he know. They could use thumbscrews, rape her and torture her to death. It didn’t matter. Nothing on earth would make her give up Daniel to them. She would protect him with her life. Didn’t they understand love at all?

* * * * *

Daniel managed to walk over and sit at one of the tables and look relatively normal doing it. Luckily, he wasn’t the only one in the room showing signs of shock.

Serrano was watching him and Daniel fought hard not to stare back. There had been at least three others entering the dining area at the same time as him. Two of them were males. If Ernesto had needed to point out which of the hostages was the one he thought was not the British businessman, then Serrano had no idea which of the males in the group it could possibly be.

Olivia had just covered his ass at the possible cost of her own.

His vision swam gray as he stared at the white tablecloth. He realized that he had been holding his breath to the point where he had nearly passed out. White flecks flitted across his vision. He forced himself to breathe again, fighting the need to hyperventilate to recuperate.

Serrano would notice that, too.

No one came near him. No one spoke to him.

After a while Daniel made himself get up and move stiffly to the end of the short and silent line of people moving around the waiters cleaning up the mess of china shards and cold spiced coffee. They were getting breakfast, for lack of anything else to do. But they were doing it with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

After ten minutes, Serrano and his personal guard moved out of the dining room toward the foyer and the elevators, taking Ernesto with them.