High Octane Heroes (6 page)

Michael didn’t hesitate; he curled a leg back and shifted his weight. KK’s meaty fist flew past his helmet. In a blur of motion, Michael dipped, swung a leg out and clipped the burly biker.

Carver slashed again and missed the agile SWAT leader. KK’s overweight frame crashed into the concrete floor with a shuddering boom. Reggie stumbled back to his feet in time to receive another elbow to his injured shoulder.

Michael flung a fist at Carver. The gangster sidestepped, but then the legendary cop reversed direction. Forcefully, he hammered his steel-toed combat boot into the throat of the recovering KK. The biker staggered back.

Kara watched in morbid fascination. Michael was awesome to behold. Reggie lunged with an animalistic growl. His knife
dug through the rolled-up sleeve on Michael’s left arm. Renegade whipped his arm in a twist, deflecting the blade’s lethal strike, but taking a minor gash for it.

Like a fighter in a kung fu movie, he spun, chopped a leg into the gut of Carver, and landed a solid fist to Reggie’s rib cage. Kara cringed at the gruesome crunch of bones.

The stabbing, hacking, punching and kicking action came as flashes. Wound by wound, the three criminals were pulverized into submission.

Reggie lay at Michael’s feet, gulping in wet, wheezing breaths and clutching his chest. Kara was sure the man’s snapped ribs had pierced his lungs.

KK lay bent at an awkward angle across a demolished crate. A jagged, blood-soaked plank of wood pierced through his lower back and stood out from his abdomen. The biker’s eyes stared unfocused off into space, frozen by death.

“You like cutting up women?” Michael snarled.

Kara shifted to see. She knew Delaney had won the fight. Of course he had, but now he was going to execute Carver. No judge. No jury.

“Delaney. No,” Kara cried.

The four men he’d slain were fair game. They’d tried to kill him and they’d lost. But Carver was captured. He had to be taken to jail. Michael’s reputation was mythical. Everyone knew he crossed the line. But it was all in the name of justice. Wasn’t it?

Michael stood over the defeated gangster. The front of Carver’s wife-beater crumpled in Michael’s leather-gloved grasp. The other curled in a massive fist and stayed poised, cocked back and ready to deal death.

Michael turned, and his steel gray eyes leveled on Kara. She swallowed in fear laced with arousal. His fury was terrifying
and beautiful. “What for? For justice? So the courts can let him off on a technicality? Or set him free because there isn’t enough room in the prisons? This fucker is a plague on society.”

He was right. She blinked and focused on him. His piercing eyes bored into her. She nodded. It was the wrong thing to do, but the world was a better place without the likes of the murderous gangster.

Carver hung limp in Delaney’s grasp, beaten and bloodied worse than Kara had ever seen. And then Michael twitched. His fist came forward with a horrible meat-tenderizing squish. Kara closed her eyes and wished away the horrible scene.

A slap of carcass against concrete resounded and was followed by heavy footfalls. Her handcuffs went slack with a click, and she opened her eyes. Michael scooped her up off the ground like she weighed nothing and curled her to his massive chest.

She couldn’t help the tears of rejoicing. Horror still assailed every nerve in her body, but she was safe. Adrenaline pumped like furnace blasts through her veins, and she collapsed against him, sobbing.

He held her in his arms and walked her out of the warehouse. She clung to him for dear life, not wanting to let go. Kara buried her face in his chest as the clamor of squad cars, officers and people all around her filled her ears.

Shame replaced the waning heat of adrenaline. There weren’t adjectives powerful enough to describe how badly she had fucked up. She couldn’t face her brothers.

“She all right?” Kara heard Jacobs ask, and she felt Michael bob his head.

Her legs dropped, and she balanced on the five-inch heels still amazingly strapped to her feet. She opened her eyes and blushed at the impassioned gaze Michael aimed on her. She’d never felt more like a rabbit caught by a lion than right then.

Michael snapped his gloves off and tossed them in the squad car. He yanked off his helmet and threw it in as well. Then he turned back and fixed her with another dark glare.

Kara fidgeted beneath his scathing stare and smoothed the folds of the tiny dress draped across her breasts.

A blur came from her right, and his hand snagged the back of her neck and tilted her head back. She gasped, staring at him as he scrutinized her.

“Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. Her wrists were sore, but she was otherwise unharmed. Michael’s abrupt arrival had saved her from untold horrors.

“You sure?”

“Yes. I…I’m okay.” The touch of his hand was hot on her skin and sent sparks of arousal straight between her legs.

His hand dropped from her jaw and gripped the front of her dress and pulled. A wave of heat flushed her cheeks. The dress barely covered anything, and she knew her breasts were in full view although his body shielded them from anyone else’s sight. At his mercy, her sex clenched moistly.

“What fucking asshole dressed you in this?”

Kara looked down in shame. “I… I did.”

“Seriously?” His voice was steel and electricity trickling down her spine.

She nodded. His damning gaze narrowed, and she swallowed hard. Kara knew he would never hurt her even though he was the deadliest man she knew.

“Yo, Delaney. Lieutenant wants to debrief Brown,” came a voice from over her shoulder.

Michael nodded, but his stare remained on her. She looked to her open-toed shoes and focused there. Her toenail paint hadn’t chipped through everything.

“I’ll make sure she gets there, but me and her are gonna have a little chat about police work one-oh-one.” His grave voice conjured another lump in her throat and forced her to swallow.

“Get in the car,” he said with an ominously quiet tone.

“I know I screwed—”

Michael snared her wrist before she knew what happened. He spun her to face the open passenger door of the squad car and slapped her ass loudly. It stung but fueled her raging hormones as much as her outrage. Thinking he’d spanked her in front of half the precinct, she whirled in place. The flooding heat reversed from her core to her face. But his massive frame stood in the way and no one had seen. Relief washed through her. Of course he wouldn’t humiliate her like that.

“Get in the fucking car.” The edge in his voice brooked no argument. A darker part of her wanted to obey his every wish regardless. Michael Delaney had touched her butt. A grin tried to fight its way onto her face, but she shook it off.

She twisted on the towering heels and slid into the car. The door slammed against her shoulder, and she scooted into the seat.

Michael got in on the other side, slammed his door too and shoved the key in the ignition. Kara squirmed, trying to no avail to find a way to sit and allow the skimpy dress to cover her with some semblance of decency. The outfit simply couldn’t comply, so she crossed her legs and stared at her knees.

He started the car, slammed it in gear and peeled out. Nineteen agonizing minutes of silence later, he slammed on the brakes. They skidded to a halt at a turnout on the side of the mountain road overlooking the city. The valley below was a field of lights as twilight surrendered to the night.

Michael threw open his door, rounded the front of the squad car and yanked open her door. He reached in before she finished
undoing her safety belt. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her from the car.

There was no chance to adjust her dress, and the summer breeze brushed across her hardening peaks. He spun her toward him and surveyed her savagely. Inch by inch, he inspected her and the intensity of his gaze melted her from within.

“Are you stupid?” he snapped.

“I… I thought—”

“What if I hadn’t gotten to you?”

Stunned by his question, she met his hard gaze. What did he mean?

“Do you have any fucking idea what guys like that do to women like you?” He grabbed the front of her dress and yanked it up. He didn’t seem to care her breast fell out as a result.

Excitement swelled through her, and her nipples tightened. “Wh… what?”

“Dammit, Kara.”

Her heart fluttered at his gruff utterance of her name.

“Ever since you came into this precinct, I tried to ignore you. To not think about you… This…” He shook her barely there dress in emphasis.

His gaze blurred into hunger as it dropped, and she felt it sweep across her exposed flesh. “I…”

“You almost got your ass killed.”

She stared. This wasn’t a chewing out for being a stupid rookie. There was real heat, true passion in his words. Michael was upset. She knew she should make some effort to cover her breasts, but letting him see them was a thrill she had only imagined before today. “But I—”

“But nothing. If I hadn’t been close by, you’d be dead. I can’t have that.”

“I’m sorry—”

His chest heaved with emotion, and his gaze slid up from her breasts to meet hers with hardened resolve. “I can’t protect you like this, and I can’t stop thinking about you. So… So you belong to me now.”

Her pulse doubled and a wave of heat rushed through her. “I…belong to you?”

“Yes.”

“I…” Speechless, she stared back.

“Don’t even pretend you don’t feel it too. I’ve wanted you from the second I laid eyes on you, but I tried to ignore you. That ends now.”

In emphasis, he tore what remained of her dress from her and left her mocha skin completely bare. Kara trembled beneath his heated stare, vulnerable and totally naked. His ravaging stare never left her as he tossed the remnants of the shredded dress into the car.

“You’re mine, Kara.”

His lips seized hers, and Kara moaned as he crushed her body against his, knowing what she’d tried to deny since the day she’d met him.

She did belong to him.

Completely.

Kara melted into his possessive kiss and yielded to his claim. In the hundreds of fantasies she’d had about Michael, nothing could have prepared her for the reality of his dominance. His greedy lips consumed her, and his tongue battered through to hers and flickered. Fire swept through her, and she thought she might faint.

His tough hands scooped her breasts, and he glided thumbs across her aching nipples. His touch was surprisingly gentle, but fierce all the same. In the middle of nowhere her wicked dreams of Renegade were going to be realized. Michael Delaney was
going to fuck her, and she couldn’t be happier.

He broke the kiss with a growl and bit her chin lightly. “You deserve better than this.” Michael pushed her backward, and then turned her. “Better than out here.”

Kara braced herself against the hood of the car and widened her stance. God, she needed him inside her.

“But baby, I need you.” He swatted her ass with a stinging slap and grabbed it like he owned it.

Kara hissed at the spark of pleasure it sent straight to her core.

“I need to fuck you. Right here. Right now.”

His words seared her flesh like lava, and her pussy clenched in excitement. It was crazy, wild, but the road was remote, and it was unlikely anyone would come along. She needed him to claim her, and the risk of being caught only made it hotter. They were long past the point of no return.

Kara looked over her shoulder and arched her back. If her eyes didn’t say it, she was no longer too afraid to utter the words to him. “Take me.”

Men like Michael Delaney afforded no indecision, and he lifted her ass up with one hand and yanked open his belt with the other.

Kara watched in lust-stricken anticipation as he pulled out his huge, thick cock.

He jerked her hips, bucked and impaled her slippery pussy in a forceful plunge.

Waves of hot pleasure rippled through her as she stretched to take him all. Kara whimpered in ecstasy.
Finally.

Fast, hard and deep, Michael fucked her tightness and took her over the edge within minutes. Kara clung to the car for dear life as she came a second time, and Michael sealed his claim by pulling out and marking her ass with his cum.

He collapsed against her and held her tight. Together, they sucked in air until the orgasmic tremors faded. Turning her, he took her face into his strong hands and kissed her tenderly.

He took off his uniform shirt and put it around her. It was longer than the skimpy dress she’d worn and draped just above her knees. She smiled in thanks and understood the gesture was more than offering her clothing.

“I have to get you back to the lieutenant,” he said gruffly.

“Yeah…”

“Let him bitch you out. Don’t argue. I’m putting in a request to have you transferred.”

Kara was stunned. He’d fucked her, now he was sending her away?

“I can’t have you getting into shit like that again. I can’t be there to protect you, so I want you to transfer to SWAT training.”

Stunned again, Kara stared in disbelief.

“I need you with me. Where I can protect you.”

“I can protect myself—”

“I know.” He traced a calloused fingertip across her lips. “I know you can, Kara. But that’s my job now.”

What could she say to that?

Michael slid his hands under her chin, lifted her onto her tiptoes and kissed her possessively. Amazed no one had driven by, they got back in the car and drove to headquarters. He stopped out front and took out a card. He wrote his address across the front and slipped it into her hand.

“Go, check in. Then get your ass to my place.”

Kara couldn’t wait; right now she grinned. Sometimes dreams did come true.