Pulse Read online

  She’s captivating.

  Breathtaking.

  Glistening and shining and coming alive for me in ways I haven’t ever anticipated.

  There’s the shiny arousal just inside the V of her thighs. The dewdrops of sweat trailing the focused furrows in her forehead. The kiss of early twilight, reflecting from the open hills and the distant sea, in the elegant valley of her lower back. She’s a collection of light and liquid, of pale-amber skin and gleaming electric reflections—especially as I reach for the nightstand and my fingers start to pulse brighter.

  Emma’s breaths pump faster as she watches me sheath all my digits in thick latex gloves. They’re a special pair, created and sterilized for electrical laboratory engineers, and I’ve been saving them just for this occasion.

  She breathes even harder when I reach back into the drawer and pull out a new tube of lube. I’m steady about the movements, needing to make sure she sees them and comprehends them but also needing to watch her as she does. Shit. I must be a sick fuck. Just witnessing her apprehension jacks my lust by discernible degrees. But I talk myself out of complete remorse by reminding myself of one key fact.

  The pendulum is swinging. The scales are balancing.

  Or so I fucking hope.

  “That’s some interesting…nectar.”

  And even dare to inch beyond hope when she mixes sarcasm into her uneasy snip.

  “It’s definitely going to help,” I ensure, flipping the lid up before squirting a little on my fingers. “But it’s not the whole commodity. If this is going to work, I need your buy-in, Velvet. Your trust, your acceptance, your willingness.”

  Though she’s flat against the bed, I watch her swallow heavily. Her flaxen waves are turned to gold by the sun as her gaze turns to storm clouds from trepidation. But after a long moment, a pulse vibrates through her as if she’s been punched through the gut with new resolve.

  “I’m…I’m willing.” She turns her face up so all of its open, expressive curves are visible to me. “And I trust you. And I want to accept you, Reece. To have you claim me…there.”

  I want to kiss her. Hard.

  But I hold back, needing something else more.

  “So you want me to take you in your ass.”

  “Y-Yes.”

  I need that.

  “With my cock.”

  “Y-Yes.”

  Damn. Damn. That too.

  I lunge over, bending to her. Pulling her up until she’s on her knees on the bed, one hand at her nape and the other in her hair, securing her in place for the bruising passion of my kiss. I work at her lips until she parts with a groan, letting me invade her with my mouth again and again, working her tongue in unfiltered, undaunted gratitude for the gift of her trust—and the treasure I’m about to take.

  When I pull my lips from hers at last, I tell her the exact same thing with my eyes, letting the impact of my gratitude sink into her psyche just as my cock’s about to take her most carnal tunnel. “Position yourself for me,” I dictate firmly. “Raise your ass and drop your head.”

  She nods, looking a little hesitant. And goddamnit, with that tiny second of intrigue, yanks every molecule of air right out of my chest again. It’s not an original theory—the woman stops my heartbeat dozens of times a day in just as many ways—but right now, in her ultimate submission, offering her most vulnerable entrance to me, I forget what breath even is. At the same time, my heart’s never felt larger, clamoring like a stallion at the corral of my ribs, surpassed in pain only by the surging bull between my thighs.

  Now it’s time to let that beast run free.

  “Fuck…” My groan gives way to a hiss as soon as I drop my shorts and set my dick free. Thanks to my earlier orgasm, at least my damn lightsaber isn’t turning the whole room into a spacy cantina. While the veins of my cock are aglow, the flesh between them actually matches that of my thighs, which I press against the back of hers while squeezing an ample quantity of lube over her perfect back hole.

  Then inside it as well…

  Grunting as her walls close in over my fingers.

  Loving how her moans correspond to my deeper thrusts.

  Holding my breath as I position my cockhead at her opening.

  “Oh! Unnnhhh.”

  “Ssshhhh, Velvet.” I brace a hand to the small of her back, securing her in place. “Relax. Breathe.” Though I can’t, it’s important that she does. “Stay pliant for me. Stay perfect…”

  Perfect.

  The word doesn’t begin to touch what it’s like to breach her walls, the tightest and sweetest paradise my dick has ever experienced.

  Perfect.

  Not even half the praise that she deserves for the aria of her rapid sighs filling my senses like a song as I slide deeper into her. Then deeper…

  “Oh, God.”

  “Almost there, sweetheart.”

  “I— I can’t…”

  “You can. Just breathe.”

  “It’s…it’s so full.”

  “Yeah. And so good.”

  So fucking good.

  And so goddamned perfect.

  And yet, still barely enough to describe what it’s like to sink myself fully into her, heart thundering and cock throbbing and balls swelling, a crashing celebration of knowing I’m the only one to invade her like this. To see her unravel, raw and wrecked and clutching at the sheets, because of how thoroughly I’ve raided her virgin recesses.

  And I’m not even done yet.

  Because now it’s time to take the rest of her into the light with me.

  She screams into the pillows as I begin to move again, but only in subtle increments. In the next moment, I feel like joining her. It’s hell, telling my body to spill just a portion of my come, but thank God for my curious foray into Tantric techniques a few years ago. The little I do remember comes in handy now, along with a brutal twist of my balls, to keep the bulk of my climax at bay.

  So worth it.

  And, once again, so perfect, as the electrons of my ejaculate start working their magic against the inner corners of her body…at the same moment I strip my left hand free of the glove and hold the center of her body, stimulating all the bared nerves in her quivering pussy.

  “Oh!” Her cry pings through the room as she twists her head against the pillow. As if fucking her ass isn’t enough to turn my dick into a surging thunder stick, the new sight of her features takes my inner storm into a new category of torment. Remember this. Remember this. All of it. The arousal staining her cheeks. The gasps escaping her lips. The wild Chardonnay and Champagne splash of her hair, tangling more as I lengthen my lunges.

  “Good girl.” I use my right hand to add another sluice of lube while seeking her most tender button with my left. “Stay with me, Emma. Stay…with…me.” The emphasis pounds out along with my defined stabs into her backside, pummeling the crevice that’s now so open and ready for me. But as I risk a look down, needing to watch the juncture where my cock takes her with such carnal consummation, she mewls again in blatant protest.

  “Can’t,” she rasps. “Reece. Wh-What are you doing to me…”

  “Bringing you the world, baby.” After my next plunge, I keep my dick buried inside her, giving us both new sensations by rolling my hips instead. “The sun. The moon. The stars. The storms. They’re all yours, Emma. They’re all yours because you’ve brought them all to me already.”

  “Oh…God…”

  She whimpers it this time. The sound, so full of submission and adoration, pulls me over—in more than just the obvious way. I drop my body over hers, rushing my right arm and hand up the length of hers. While I keep taking her ass with my cock and igniting her clit with my other hand, I form my lips to her neck, cherishing the wild cadence of her pulse beneath my mouth.

  Knowing now is the time.

  “Give.”

  To take back my trade for the blood.

  “All of it, Emmalina. Give it all to me. Now.”

  The significance of the words isn’t
lost on her. I see her recognition in the sob that crunches her exquisite face and then bursts from her passion-stung lips. But most of all, I feel it in the orgasm that takes over the sex I’m caressing and the ass I’m fucking. The hot, tight grotto that I flood with my own release, giving her my electric white ropes as she gifts me with her ultimate, shivering surrender.

  Taking the innocence she’s given in place of her blood, with the certainty that I’ve come out ahead on the deal.

  Way ahead.

  No way do I slough off the conclusion, even after our rhythm finally slows and my cock at last softens. “Stay put,” I direct, bestowing a soft kiss between her shoulder blades before scrambling into the bathroom and fishing some newly bought hand towels out of the box in which they’re still sitting. Taking back one with suds, one for rinsing, and one for drying, I make short work of cleaning us both up before settling back into the pillows and gathering her close to me.

  Twilight has taken over the sunset now, casting pewter and plum shadows across the room. They’re apt envoys for our sated peace—an accord from the strangest skirmish I’ve ever had with a lover before. Then again, Emmalina Crist isn’t like any woman I’ve ever known. She didn’t fight against me today. She fought for me—but best of all, she led me to the place where I could fight for myself. Where I could stab a sword through the memories that have been defining me for too damn long.

  Before realizing they don’t have to define me anymore.

  Holy God.

  Does she know what she’s really given me today? What she’s really done for me? How much I owe her? How thoroughly I love her?

  “Reece?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Can we do that again sometime?”

  Okay, what’s the step that comes after Holy God, I love her?

  “Anytime you’d like, Bunny.” I thread my fingers through her mussed hair and kiss the top of her head. “And yeah, that even means slicing open a few veins for you again.”

  Her soft laugh ripples across my chest. She runs a couple of fingertips up and down the indent between my pecs. “You know you could’ve gotten the offer even without that, right?”

  “Yeah. I know.” I thread my fingers with hers. “But you would’ve gotten my offer, even if you’d hated that.”

  “Oh, I didn’t hate it!”

  My turn to chuckle. She riposted as if I’d just banned her from ever having guacamole again. “Glad we got that cleared up.”

  With a content smile twinging her gorgeous lips, she settles back against me. “See? It feels good to get things cleared out every once in a while. Admit it, Richards. You feel better.”

  As I tug her closer, I feign a reluctant grunt. No way am I going to point out that just about any guy on the planet would feel like a god after taking their woman in several erotic ways in just two hours. Instead, I just utter, “I’ve admitted a lot of new things since falling in love with you, Emma Crist.”

  “Hmmm.” But the silken sigh is threaded more with satisfaction than question. “That’s a perfect answer, Reece Richards.”

  “Perfect, eh?”

  “As if you didn’t know that already?”

  Snort. “Maybe I did. A little.”

  She gives up another sigh before a yawn takes over. I can’t blame her for the exhaustion, despite the fact that we haven’t even talked about dinner. Maybe after a nap, she’ll be open to the idea of me turning her into dinner. Now there’s another version of perfect I can get into…

  And making her world perfect, at least for today, is all the perfection I need too.

  Twenty-four hours later, nearly to the minute, I’m silently pleading with the universe for a retroactive time machine. Or the ability to add backward quantum leaping to my skillset. If science can figure out how to turn a guy into a lightning rod, what’s a little time-jumping on top of the mix?

  Because even though Hollywood and Los Angeles are literally spread at my feet, all I really want is my legs tangled in bedsheets and Emmalina back in my arms. Naked. Definitely that too. If I’m going to go through the hassle—and potential pain—of throwing myself back in time, then my naked woman isn’t a negotiable item.

  Not happening.

  As my brain clangs with the dismal reminder, it also orders me to be grateful for what the moment has brought. A rare chance for a fast escape from the black-tie grind going on behind me. While I happily agreed to be the guest of honor for the city’s event, a grand ball serving as an early birthday party for the Griffith Park Observatory due to tonight’s lunar eclipse, an hour and a half of the perpetual grip-and-grin has sent me outside for a necessary recharge of the shit I can’t plug in for—my high society smile and fake-but-you-wouldn’t-know-it laugh.

  I couldn’t have timed the getaway any better. It’s just after sunset, an occasion filled with the daily magic of why people come to Southern California and never leave. The heat of the day is threaded with the ocean-borne breezes of the night, and the freeway haze makes itself useful in the lingering glow of a spectacular sunset. There are few better locations in the city from which to take in all this as well. The Griffith Observatory was an early discovery for me after moving here, being one of the few places with a light show more dazzling than my fingertips. As I stand on the terrace, hands in my pockets, the downtown skyline glimmers like a star at the center of an urban galaxy, and the sky darkens from pink to lavender.

  “Earth to Richards.”

  The crack is accompanied by a heartier laugh than it deserves, so I don’t bother with the middle finger I’m used to giving Sawyer Foley. I do give him a cocked eyebrow and a double-take, considering I rarely see him out of Tommy Bahama wear and flip flops. His dark-blue dress suit is a notable shocker. Not that I care what the guy wears most of the time, even though he’s officially been on my “unofficial” payroll for almost eight months now. As long as he brings his shrewd ex-FBI side to the table, he can go as surf-bum chic as he wants—a style choice presently confined to his lime-green socks emblazoned with parrots as purple as the sunset.

  “Sorry, Goldie,” I mutter while turning toward him with scuffing steps. “Already bought my Girl Scout cookies at the grocery store.”

  “Yeah? If you’re hoarding the Thin Mints, I quit.”

  “Thin Mints, huh?” I wheel my sights back out over the city. “Yeah, we’re going to have problems.”

  “Problems?” The interjection comes from one of the three men who have separated from the throng that’s poured out of the elevator bay to our left. At most parties, a trio consisting of a guy in astrological steampunk regalia, a dark and exotic god with purple spiked hair, and a brooding six-six hulk would cause a few cases of whiplash, but most of this crowd probably saw weirder during their morning smoothie stops. “What do we have problems about?” the steampunk professor asks, embellishing his first query as he glances at the view like he’s seen it a thousand times. And probably has.

  “Cool your rockets, Trestle,” the exotic one soothes. “I’m fairly sure these two honchos were just getting ready to throw down about which sister is the prettiest.”

  Mitch’s crack, delivered with a good-natured grin, still slams Foley into popsicle mode. And no, stiff and frozen isn’t the norm for a guy getting reminded about the girl he’s pursuing, but I’ll be the last one to call attention to it. Foley’s never been secretive about his appreciation of women—at least between the time it takes him to find and fuck one—meaning that since he’s moved his sights from Emma onto her sister instead, I no longer want to tear off the guy’s testicles. That’s a good thing, since it’s a crappy idea to castrate the guy who’s taken point on our campaign to learn as much as we can, as fast as we can, about the Consortium—who aren’t the little nest of “fringe” lunatics I’d once assumed. Thanks to the help of Angelique La Salle, who’d helped the psychotic bastards turn me into a walking isotope in the first place, we’d been ready for the stunt they pulled back in November when they’d attempted to recapture me using Emma as bai
t…

  Or so we’d thought.

  Now, we’re not so sure about the Consortium’s actual purpose that night. Each day of the last six months has brought us closer to actually finding the truth—by pushing ourselves to ask some tough questions.

  One: If the Consortium had really been after simply getting me back, why bother with hiring a band of merry men, bad-guy style, to ruin the Richards Reaches Out fundraiser event? What was their ultimate purpose in staging that drama—and re-outing me as a superhero to the world?

  Two: If Faline, the bitch mistress on high who led the whole operation, had really desired to punish me by killing Emma, why hadn’t Faline just done that? Again, the woman’s actions that night don’t add up—unless the Consortium had secondary intentions about the chaos that went down.

  Three: What about the hugest chunk of the picture we received from that night? The connection Foley and I made while poring through security camera footage after Faline and her minions kidnapped Emma and Lydia—when we discovered the tattoo behind Faline’s ear marking her as a member of the Scorpio crime cartel?

  Yeah. What about that?

  The answers haven’t come as quickly as I’d hoped, especially because our team has had to carefully cover our steps in every inroad to the Scorpios. The cartel hasn’t become one of the world’s most powerful criminal organizations by turning a blind eye to its intruders, even the mildly curious—and our interest is far more than “curiosity.” And while the men standing with me are among the best in the world at subtlety and subterfuge, there still can’t be any room for error.

  In short, “creeping and careful” has damn near become our team’s motto. Yeah, even now and even here, where most of the crowd seems fixated on getting in selfies with the celebrities in attendance. Even in those circles, there’s a hierarchy. The C list wants to be seen with the B list, and that list is on the hunt for the A-listers who have already arrived and retreated. I’ve spotted several of them heading toward the parking lot already, hiding out near the Charlie Turner trailhead until their assistants’ phone calls will summon them back to the party for the main ceremonies of the night. Though Foley already looks like he wants to join them, and I’m sorely tempted to, it’s bad form for the honoree of the evening to be sweaty after a jog in from the parking lot, even in La-La Land.