Damion Read online

  “That’s it, sweetheart,” he said, stroking her, in a slow steady rhythm that had her moving against him, had her hands clinging to his shoulders, her breasts arching into his chest. He palmed one of them, a rough, punishing, wonderful attack of pleasure on top of pleasure.

  She buried her face in his neck, clinging to him, moving against his hand—lost… lost in his touch, lost in the climb to bliss that came on her hard and fast. Lara sucked in a breath at the same moment that every muscle in her body coiled and then released into spasms of pure, white-hot pleasure. When she finally could breathe again, Damion brushed the hair from her face.

  “What if I find another half dozen ways to do that to you again?”

  She remembered him saying he’d found a little piece of heaven when they’d made love before, so she answered, “Then if I die tomorrow, I’ll die a happy woman.”

  ***

  It was several hours, and several orgasms later, and nearly dawn. Though underground, Lara only knew this by way of the clock. She was wearing Damion’s T-shirt, and they were both propped against the headboard of the bed, their shoulders and legs touching, while watching a Wesley Snipes Blade marathon. Thankfully, her headache was gone, and the flashes of images were held at bay.

  “Maybe we should wear leather, like Wesley,” Lara murmured. “That way we look really cool when we’re fighting the bad guys.”

  “Too hot,” Damion said. “And it’s really not easy to move around in.”

  She glanced at him and lifted a brow. “You’ve worn leather?”

  “I gave Chale’s Harley jacket a whirl once,” he commented. “Once was enough.”

  She laughed and scooted to lay on her side facing him, weight on her elbow, feeling oddly at home and safe, for the first time, well, ever. The rest of her memories were of Serenity—of loss and war. If there had been a time before that, she didn’t remember it. She shook off that thought, clinging to this escape with Damion. “You are so not the Harley type.”

  “You won’t get any argument out of me on that one.”

  “In fact, you and Chale are so different. It’s amazing how close you seem.”

  “Sometimes I think he lives to agitate me, but yeah, we’re pretty tight. He’s my brother from another mother.”

  She wondered if she had any siblings, if the images of the family that were now indistinct shadows in her mind, would ever take shape again. “Did you say you have a brother, or did I make that up in my often confused thoughts these days?”

  A subtle tension slid over him, a slight tensing of his jaw. The phone by the bed rang, and Damion hit the mute button on the television remote so fast, it was as if he welcomed the interruption. He answered the call, and the tension cranked up another notch. Suddenly on edge, Lara sat up, urgently seeking an update, suddenly terrified that someone had been hurt going after Powell, and she would be suspected of leading them into a trap. Why hadn’t she insisted on going with them?

  The call was quick, a few seconds in which he said nothing but “copy that” and “let me know if anything changes.”

  “Is everyone okay?” she asked, the minute he hung up.

  He gave a slow nod. “Fine.”

  “Translation, not fine,” she said. “The lab and Powell were gone, weren’t they?”

  He nodded. “The entryway into the facility was blown up, with rocks blocking the path. They’re going to dig it out in daylight, and Chale and Houston are setting up surveillance.”

  Lara ground her teeth. “You won’t find anything. He’s too smart for that.” She pulled her knees to her chest, his shirt to her ankles. “I should have told you about Powell sooner. I thought I was protecting someone who’d saved my life. Instead, I protected the man who has taken it, and for all I know, my family’s lives too—if I could even remember who they are. I can’t make out their faces. The only people I remember are those involved with Serenity, and Skywalker, whoever he is.” She glanced at him. “My father. He feels like my father.” She pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead. “I can’t believe I let Powell get away. He’s going to do whatever he did to me to others. He’s going to keep trying to destroy the Renegades.”

  “Hey,” he said gently and pulled her onto his lap. “Stop being so hard on yourself. It’s not like you sat on the information for months or even weeks.”

  As Lara straddled him, a sudden rush of emotion overcame her, and she slid her hands into his hair. “Thank you.” He gave her a wolfish smile, and she quickly added, “I’m not talking about all the wicked, wonderful things you did to me, so stop grinning like that.”

  He wiggled an eyebrow. “Wicked and wonderful. That bodes well for me being in control in the future, if I do say so myself.”

  “The future,” she repeated hoarsely. “See, those words, that statement, is what I’m talking about, and why I said ‘thank you.’ Even when you thought I was with Adam, you tried to come up with reasons to believe in me. You asked me to give you a reason. And now, when even I’m afraid to believe in me, somehow you still do. All I can remember about the past is losing everything and being alone with nothing but fighting to live for. You make me feel…” Her voice hitched, and she swallowed. “You make me feel like I’m not alone.”

  He slid his hands over her hair and pulled her mouth near his. “You aren’t alone, sweetheart. You aren’t alone.”

  For now, she thought grimly, until something happens, something surfaces to change that. “I swear to you, Damion—if we find out that I did anything to hurt you, or the Renegades, I truly believed it was to save innocent lives. I believed the Renegades were like Adam. I would never—”

  “I know, and so does everyone else here.”

  “You don’t know. You can’t know. I need to know. I can’t stand the not knowing. I’m almost desperate enough that I’d even let Becca read my memories in hopes of weeding through the lies to get answers. But as much as I want those answers, I’m terrified for her to see something horrible, something that no one, especially me, will forgive me for. I have to find out about me, and where I’ve been, and what I’ve done, before anyone else does.”

  “Stop doing this to yourself, Lara. Focus on now and the future.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t start counting on you, and then wake up, and you’re gone, like everything else in my life. Or worse, have you wake up and realize you’re bound to me by this mark on my neck, and we despise each other. And don’t tell me to stop saying that, or that it can’t happen. We both know it could.”

  “It won’t, but I’m not going to argue that point because I can tell it’s a battle I won’t win. So, most importantly, you need to know that the only thing the mark on your neck guarantees is that a blood bond makes us die together. We decide the rest.” His thumbs stroked her cheeks. “I’m with you because I want to be, not because I have to be.” He brought her lips a breath from his. “And I hope you feel the same way.”

  “I do,” she whispered, her body tingling with sudden arousal. “You know I do.”

  “Then be with me, Lara. Forget everything else, and just be with me.” He eased his hands under the shirt, calloused fingers skimming her naked skin, her bare breasts. “Just be with me.”

  His lips slanted over hers, his tongue pressing past her lips. The spicy maleness of him filled her mouth, drugged her, and claimed her very breath. Need built inside her, as a flame quickly ignited. “Lara,” he whispered, her name on his lips somehow saying everything she was feeling, the wild frenzied need that was suddenly theirs.

  He kissed her, or maybe she kissed him. She didn’t know the difference. There was simply the burn to touch him, to taste him, to feel him closer. Until they were both panting as they shoved away his boxers, and he held her steady, so that she could slide down the hard length of him. He filled her, stretched her, completed her in a way that she didn’t try to understand. It simply was… as they were.

  “Are you with me now?” he asked, sliding his hand down her back and molding her against
him.

  “Oh yes,” she assured him. “I am definitely with you now.”

  ***

  A good while later, Damion turned Lara on her stomach and kissed a path from one ankle to her gorgeous backside, and then all the way to her neck. He dusted the hair from her neck and traced the two circles etched on her nape with his finger, then pressed his body down over hers and kissed the delicate skin where the mark appeared.

  “I know…” he said softly by her ear, “that I shouldn’t say things like ‘you’re mine.’ I know I sound like a caveman, but I can’t seem to help myself. When I look at this mark, with you beneath me, it’s what I feel.”

  She whispered his name, and he slid inside her, pressing deeply, melding his body with hers as the circles on her neck melded their souls as well. He was hot and hard, and something primitive and demanding ripped through his body. “Say you’re mine, even if it’s just for right here and right now.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I’m yours.”

  He thrust into her, sensation sliding from his balls to his cock, twisting him in knots of pleasure.

  “Yes,” she panted. “I’m yours. Harder, Damion.”

  “You want harder, baby,” he growled. “You get harder.” He pumped into her, his hands traveling her body, curving under her to cup her breasts. More. He wanted more. She wanted more.

  He wanted this to be about sex, about nothing but sex—sex didn’t mean commitment. Sex didn’t mean loss, or pain, or the opportunity to screw up and hurt the other person. Lara was the best sex of his life, but damn it, he knew this wasn’t about sex. It was about a bond, a need, a connection that was so much more than sex. What they shared defied his vow. When he’d committed himself as a soldier for life, he’d promised never to let any woman mean anything to him but sex.

  Lara cried out and stiffened beneath him, her hands pressing his hands to her breasts, her hips arching into his. She shattered around him, milking his cock with tight, hard spasms that ripped his orgasm from him. Damion arched his back with a roar of pleasure, his body shaking as he spilled himself inside her.

  Long moments later, the two of them collapsed together, and Damion rolled to his side, Lara with him. He curled around her and brushed the hair from her eyes. “Next time you belong to me,” she murmured groggily.

  He smiled and nuzzled her hair, the soft strands tickling his chin. “Then you better sleep,” he said, “because it’s going to take a tough cavewoman to control this caveman.”

  “I’ll be ready,” she vowed softly, the words trailing off, her breathing slipping into a slow, rhythmic pattern.

  Damion’s chest expanded with a hard-earned breath. Lara had begun to matter to him. If he was honest with himself, it wasn’t the bikini that had really worked him over. He’d started falling for her the moment she’d disobeyed orders and protected the Russian. She’d proven then what he now knew, and what she didn’t seem to understand. That she was more than the sum of whoever controlled her, more than the façade of memories etched in her mind. He was falling in love with Lara, and it scared the hell out of him, and made him resist the blood bond, that final step in their Lifebonding—because at least physically, that meant every step he took, every action he put into play that might get him killed, would get her killed as well. No way. He’d lived that hell with his brother. It was one thing to play a sex game where she belonged to him, or he to her, but forever wasn’t a game. He wasn’t the man Lara needed in the long run, not once she found herself again. He knew it, and he was sure she knew it too, or she wouldn’t be so freaked out about being bonded to him.

  He had to tread cautiously with Lara, because Cassandra had told her the truth. Eventually their bodies would take over, and their final bond would be formed, whether they liked it or not.

  Dorian’s warning replayed in his head, the promise that without the blood bond, Lara would die from whatever Powell had done to her. If that were true, then there was no escape for Lara—Damion had become both her life… and her death. Conflicted didn’t begin to describe what he felt, because after lying there, thinking about all the reasons he shouldn’t want that to be the case, he found himself holding her closer, unwilling to let go.

  Chapter 21

  Lara woke on her stomach, the masculine, wonderful scent of Damion filling her nostrils—on her skin, on the pillow, in the air. God, she loved how he smelled, all spicy and deliciously male. Her lips lifted, satisfaction filling her. For just a moment, she simply lay there, drinking in a few moments of the naughty, wonderful, intimate things she and Damion had done together. Trying not to let herself think beyond this instant, beyond last night, not wanting to accept what, on some instinctive level, she already knew. She remembered nothing beyond a certain confined circle of information. That meant her headaches wouldn’t be gone, not if things were as they were before her recent sleep. Cautiously, she resisted the urge to move, waiting a moment to see how her head felt, and then sighing with relief when there was no pain. In the background, she registered the sound of the television, and what she thought was the voice of a sports announcer.

  “Morning.”

  Lara lifted her head at the brandy-rich male voice and turned to her right to find Damion sitting beside her, his long, muscular legs, stretched in front of him, and pressed to her side. He was touching her, and instantly her heart softened. He was trying to keep her headaches at bay so she could heal. Too bad, she thought, that her memories were still at bay as well.

  She rolled to her side to face him, taking in his cleanly shaven square jaw and his handsome face. He wore faded jeans and an army-green T-shirt that told her she’d outslept him once again. She’d never thought army-green was sexy, but, oh man, had she been wrong. On Damion, army-green was downright sinful.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Seven hours,” he said, setting the computer that was in his lap on the nightstand.

  “Seven hours?” she gaped and sat straight up, ignoring her nudity. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen everything about ten times over. She didn’t feel shy with Damion, and she knew that meant something, but she couldn’t focus on that right now. Urgency rose inside her. She had to find Powell. She had to find answers. “I can’t believe I keep sleeping so long.”

  “Easy,” he said, catching her wrist and pulling her to him, his hand sliding around her butt cheek as he molded her to his side. “You need the rest to heal. And don’t panic. You didn’t miss the NFL draft. I recorded it.”

  “NFL draft?” she asked, confused a moment, before she laughed despite herself, remembering the argument about football she’d shared with Damion and Chale. “You know that’s not why I’m panicked.” She shook her head. “And you recorded the NFL draft to prove you were right and I was wrong about the top picks, didn’t you?”

  “That’d be a yes.”

  “And was I right, and you were wrong?”

  “I haven’t watched it. I was waiting for you.”

  She had no idea why that announcement meant so much to her, but it did. Maybe because it felt like such a normal thing to do, and she felt so far from normal. Or maybe it was simply that he’d waited for her, that he was sitting by her, caring for her.

  She kissed his cheek. “I’ll kiss you right—once I have a toothbrush.”

  “I’ll hold you to it,” he said, and released her. “And considering you’re driving me crazy pressed up against me with nothing on, I highly suggest you go now, if you’re going to go at all. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about your toothbrush.”

  Lara bit back a smile and scooted off the bed to hurry toward the bathroom, all too aware of his eyes following her every step. She was about to shut the door when he called out, “I’ll get you some food and call Cassandra, so we can get you tested again.”

  She stilled in front of the vanity. Another brain wave test. She didn’t want another test. She wasn’t taking another test. She felt fine, and even if she wasn’t fine, there was nothing anyone could do for her. She
didn’t reply. She’d wait until she was dressed and ready to take on a real battle, be it with Damion, or her real enemy, Powell—the man who she was now certain had stolen her life, and all those she’d loved with it.

  And no matter what Sabrina’s role in all of this, no matter how much Lara wanted her blood, it was Powell she wanted the most, Powell she was going after. Determination formed inside her, and Lara quickly turned on the shower, praying Damion wouldn’t join her, and then praying he would. No. She didn’t want him to join her. He distracted her and made her want things she didn’t dare want—a fairy tale of some happily-ever-after story that she clearly didn’t have in her cards. She pulled back the curtain, and suddenly Damion was there, smacking her on the ass. Lara yelped and glanced over her shoulder. “Hey!”

  “I owed you that from last night.” He disappeared from the room.

  She laughed and stepped behind the curtain, thinking of all the ways she’d teased him mercilessly. He was right. He owed her. God, how she wished she could turn back time and just live that night one more time. But she couldn’t, and forty-five minutes later, Lara inspected herself in front of the vanity, ready to face the one real thing in her world outside of Damion. She was involved in a war, and not the one where she took orders from Powell, but the one against him.

  Still, she found herself studying her reflection in the mirror. “Who are you?” she whispered, no answer coming to her beyond the superficial. Her skin was pale, her long dark hair straight and silky, compliments of her favorite shampoo and conditioner, which she’d been shocked to discover were available on the Sunrise Strip. Actually, she’d been as surprised by the development of this underground world as knowing that the coconut hair products were her favorite. It was just so darn odd that she knew so many things about herself, but had no idea where they originated.