Ultimate Warriors (8 page)

     
"Uh
… I thought you were trying to keep me quiet because you thought I’d give us
away."

     
"Hmmm,"
he murmured, his eyes dropping to her lips.

     
"Was
I wrong?" It was a mere breath.

     
"Completely."
His head dipped toward her. Nari
felt her own head start to whirl. She parted her lips on a harsh breath that
stopped completely when his lips finally touched hers. Every nerve ending in
her body focused on him, on the softness of his lips, the pounding of his heart
against her chest and her own echoing heartbeat.

     
The kiss
they’d shared before was nothing like this, merely an appetizer that hadn’t
done nearly enough to satisfy her appetite.

     
Heat
shot through her body, so intense she seemed to liquefy. Her bones turned to
jelly. His tongue probed the seam of her lips, his hand tightened at the back
of her neck, holding her steady, allowing her no retreat. Even had she been
able, she couldn’t stop this. She craved it … had been craving a connection to
him since she’d first set eyes on him.

     
Her lips
parted on a ragged breath. His tongue thrust its way inside, staking bold
possession, stroking the roof of her mouth, her teeth, her tongue.

     
She
whimpered, unable to control the mewling sounds she made as he invaded her
mouth.

     
He moved
an arm around her back to support her, freeing his right hand to rest at her
waist, fingering the hem of her shirt a brief moment before he was pushing
beneath and upward, striving for her breasts. The skate of his fingers over her
never-before-touched skin cause shivers to course over her.

     
Just looking at him made her pulse quicken.
To have him
touch her was nearly more than she could bear. And when his hand closed around
her breasts, pinching her nipple between his fingers, she cried out in his
mouth, clutching at his arm, afraid he’d pull away and stop what he was doing
to her.

     
Pleasure
radiated from her nipple, converging in an arrowed line straight to her cleft.
She was melting again. Her blood turned to lava in her veins. Her clit throbbed
with the rapidity of her pulse. Frenetic heat tore at her as he broke from her
mouth and slid his tongue along her jaw and down the cord of her neck.
Everything he did to her was new, yet not. She felt comfortable with him, eager
to have him lay claim to every inch of her body. She wasn’t scared or reluctant
as she should have been.

     
She
reveled to have him.

     
He
explored her ear, nipping, tasting,
sucking
the lobe
into his mouth.
All the while, his fingers plucking at first
one nipple then the other, drawing them into hard knots of pleasure.

     
She knew
what she wanted. She wanted his mouth there.
Everywhere.
But the car was too confined. It was like a trap. She
could
couldn’t
quite reach her goal.

     
Frustrated,
Nari pushed his hand aside, reaching down to push the lever to make the seat
recline. It went back with a pop that startled them both, making her flatten
against his chest.

     
Panting
with arousal and exertion, she shifted until she sat astride him, leaning low
to keep from bumping her head.

     
Shayne
looked at her, his eyes heavy lidded with lust. He sat up, pushing her top up
until he could lay his lips on her, nuzzle her breasts, taste her. She
strangled a gasp as his teeth scraped over her flesh, gently biting, teasing
her nipples to hard points. "Oh, God, Shayne…."

     
He
circled her back, cupping her against him as he sucked her breasts to piercing
points of arousal.

     
She bit
her lip, rocking her hips until her cleft reached his encased cock. He groaned
and lay back, arching, thrusting his hips upwards. The huge bulge rammed
against her, hard as a rock. Even muted through the fabric, she felt his heat,
his strength. Her cunt had soaked her panties, seeping into her lightweight
pants. She rubbed herself against him, the smell of light sweat and lust
arousing her more than she’d dreamed possible.

     
Shayne
grit his teeth, dropping his hands to her hips until he could control her movement
and his own. He thrust again, rubbing hard against her clit, fiercely plunging
her into a swirl of pleasure that heightened with each passing second.

     
Nari
gasped, flattening her palms against the roof of the car, riding him as waves
of bliss crested inside her. A wild excitement engulfed her. She was straining
toward fulfillment, her muscles tightening,
her
throat
hoarse and achy with the effort of controlling her screams.

     
He
groaned loudly, his hands near bruising her hips, and then he was driving
against her like mad, roughly rubbing, hands cupping and massaging her ass,
bringing her hard against him. She felt his cock shudder, her own arousal peak,
culminate in a rapture that zipped through her erogenous zones with the speed
and lingering effects of lightning.

     
Nari
fell against his chest, gasping, goose bumps shivering across her skin.

     
It took
her many moments until she could find her voice. When she was able to speak,
she said, breathlessly, "You’re not leaving without me."

     
He
shifted beneath her, and she looked up at him. He was grinning crookedly,
looking sexy and mussed, with strands of hair clinging to his damp forehead.
"Okay. But I think we’re both going to need a change of clothing."

* * * *

     
Nari
stared at the darkened sanitarium with a sense of deja vu. This time, however,
she’d been ordered to wait in the car. She didn’t like it, but she could hardly
argue that she knew the lay of the land as she had at the orphanage. Savage had
insisted that he was safer to try it alone and she didn’t feel comfortable
about arguing with that assessment. It was bad enough that he was determined to
risk yet another excursion for information despite all of her attempts to
reason with him that getting her mother’s files just wasn’t worth the
possibility of getting caught and the consequences attached to it.

     
She
sighed as she watched Shayne disappear into the shadows of the sanitarium
grounds, wondering if she’d really tried as hard to convince him not to make
the attempt as she should have.

     
The
truth was that the nightmares had been becoming more frequent, and getting
worse all the time despite Shayne’s efforts to help her, and she was too scared
to think of much beyond stopping it. In some ways, she supposed it wasn’t as
bad as it had been since she’d first sought Shayne Savage out. At least now she
dreamed of having someone to help her, someone she could turn to when the demon
who called himself Onyx invaded her dreams.

     
She
didn’t doubt that it was the fact that Shayne monitored her when she slept that
she’d gained that much of a sense of security, but realistically, she knew it
couldn’t continue as it had indefinitely. Sooner or later Shayne would throw up
his hands in defeat and leave her to her own devises--or maybe even just give
up and try to have her committed.

     
She
desperately needed a solution to the problem or she really was going to go
nuts.

     
It had
occurred to her, more than once, that it might already be too late. She’d begun
to feel as if she was being followed whenever she went out. She never actually
saw anyone, but the feeling of being watched persisted. She’d considered
mentioning it to Shayne several times, but each time she’d been on the verge of
mentioning it, she had dismissed the temptation.

     
It had
all the earmarks of paranoia.

     
He
didn’t seem to think she was crazy and she rather thought she would prefer to
keep it that way.

     
She
didn’t want to end up like her mother had.

     
After she’d
checked her watch about a dozen times in thirty minutes, she got out of the car
and paced for a while, trying to focus on her problem rather than her anxiety
about whether Shayne would manage to pull off his break in. When she’d walked
off some of her excess nervous energy, she settled on the hood of the car and
stared up at the night sky.

     
The
dreams, she realized, had become more solidly threatening since she’d begun
seeing Shayne for sleep therapy--more real and less dreamlike. She wondered if
there was a connection or if it would have happened regardless. It seemed to
her that she’d already been heading in that direction–which was why she’d
sought his help to start with but she couldn’t help but wonder about the way it
seemed to have accelerated just within the last few weeks.

     
She’d
been dreaming for years. Up until recently they had only been disturbing, but
almost as soon as she’d started seeing Shayne about the problem, the dreams had
become to manifest physical after effects. Was there a connection? Or was it
only coincidence?

     
Or was
it connected to something else that had happened in her life?

     
What if
she wasn’t being paranoid about being followed?

     
She
hadn’t considered that before, but she realized that that sense of being
watched and followed had begun after they’d visited the orphanage.
Was it only a guilty conscience that made her feel it, or had she
triggered something by going back--something in the real world.

     
The
hostility she’d felt when she’d tried to get the records wasn’t something she’d
imagined, not the determination to keep her from learning what was in the file.
It was about her, after all. Apart from pure meanness, why might old Townsend
want to keep the information from her? Particularly when there didn’t seem to
be anything especially important in the file.

     
Except the information about her origins.

     
And, now
that she thought about it, Shayne was strangely focused on her origins.

     
She’d
thought he was just downplaying her mother’s claims of having been impregnated
by a demon, but surely he’d taken that information in stride surprisingly
easily … and become more determined than ever to find out what he could about
her birth parents.

     
If she
set aside her fear that she was losing her mind, what did that leave her with?

     
Her
mother was telling the truth and either hadn’t been able to handle it and had
been locked away, or she’d been locked away for another reason entirely … to
keep her quiet? To make certain she couldn’t influence, or protect, her child?

     
The
scrape of gravel snapped Nari from her thoughts. Whirling toward the sound, she
saw that Shayne had returned and relief flooded her. Slipping off the car, she
met him. To her surprise, he wasn’t carrying anything.

     
"You
didn’t get in?"

     
Instead
of answering her, he motioned for her to get into the car. He didn’t speak
until they’d headed back to town.

     
"I
looked through the file. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to remove
it."

     
Nari
glanced toward him in surprise, but it was dark in the car and she couldn’t
read his expression. "Why?"

     
"Somebody
went to a lot of trouble to bury your origins."

     
Surprise
and uneasiness went through Nari at the same time. "You think so
too?"

     
He
shrugged. "You never know the way they guard records these days--and it’s
possible the director of the orphanage is just a bitch who enjoys wielding what
little power she has, but I definitely got that feeling when we met with the
same resistance to seeing your mother’s records."

     
Nari
digested that a while, relieved that someone seemed to share her paranoia and
at the same time further unnerved. "What could it mean, do you
think?"

     
He shook
his head. "Your mother was killed in a freak accident--at least
that
was the way it was described. According to the story,
they thought she was trying to escape. She had gone up to the roof of the
building and was attempting to climb down when the fire ladder came loose and
she fell to her death."

     
"But
you’re not buying it?"

     
"It
would take a freak accident to kill somebody falling no more two stories. The
building just isn’t that high. Broken bones, I could accept, but plenty of
people have fallen even further and lived. The thing is, she was cut to ribbons
and there just isn’t any logical explanation for that in a fall."