“Running again, Lena,” came his deep and familiar voice from over my shoulder.

  “I need a shower,” I said in way of reply. Stopping my rapid footsteps and forcing myself to turn and meet his eyes. I lifted my chin and held his mesmerising gaze. A dryness invading my mouth.

  I licked my lips instinctively and was rewarded with a darkening of Trent’s blue eyes.

  “Not so fast this time,” he commented and for a second I didn’t know what he meant.

  He smiled, it was nowhere near mirthful, more sardonic in nature. Then he simply looked back at the door to Si’s tech room, which wasn’t that far away, and then turned and looked purposely over my shoulder at the corner of the hallway, which still seemed a bloody mile away.

  I smiled back. It was all Elite.

  “You have something else you’d like to say to me?” he asked. “Anything you need to get off your chest. We’re alone,” he added, indicating the deserted hallway with a sweep of his hand. “Fire away.”

  “And give you a chance to grandstand again?”

  His smile fell and I silently cursed myself.

  “Is that what you think I was doing, Lena?”

  No. No it’s not.

  “What do you think you were doing, Trent?”

  His smile returned. Mine didn’t.

  He threw me off-balance, this man. He’d always thrown me off-balance. These past two weeks more so than ever. And I wasn’t sure why.

  He took a step closer, right into my personal space. I didn’t retreat. I refused to retreat.

  Instead I inhaled softly, hopefully undetected, and let the smell of his cologne, of him, wash through me, touch me in a way I could allow. But not in the way I truly wanted.

  “Let’s see,” he murmured, his rough, low voice feeling like a physical thing. “Had I known you were standing right outside the door…”

  “I wasn’t right outside the door.”

  “…I would have said something along the lines of ‘I have proven abilities in converting Elite.’”

  “You didn’t convert me.”

  “Also, the fact that I have superior skills that enable me to infiltrate the upper echelon of our society’s mindset and turn their goals to mine.”

  “My goals are my own.”

  “Or maybe, I would have mentioned that it was me who caught the notorious cat-burglar…”

  “You did not catch me!”

  “…who brought her to our side…”

  “Right now, I’m not on your side.”

  “…who continues to keep luring her back…”

  I just crossed my arms over my chest and glowered.

  “…who can make her pale cheeks flush pink with emotion…”

  My glower turned into an arch of surprise.

  “…her beautiful pale blue eyes darken with desire…”

  “You cocky, self-indulgent…”

  “…who can make her come alive.”

  “…puppy!”

  We stared at each other and I noticed he was as angry as me. He’d hidden it well. Beneath the sardonic smiles and careless, almost teasing words, he was fuming. The deep blue bottomless ocean now a churning storm tossed sea. His hands deceptively loose at his sides, but within inches of several weapons.

  Not that I thought he’d pull one on me. Trent alone was weapon enough. But the desire to have his arsenal within easy reach right then was clearly too much to ignore. He stood before me like a duellist, ready to draw on his opponent. When had we become opponents?

  When had we returned to the distrust?

  But I did trust him. I trusted him enough to come back every morning, after spending the nights running, like he’d claimed just now that I did.

  I trusted him enough to want him. To hurt for him when he suffered. To ache for him when he was in pain.

  I trusted him enough to fall for him. Even when he was prickly. Especially when he was gruff. Definitely when he put his foot in his mouth and appeared so inexperienced. Something that Trent Masters absolutely was not.

  I just trusted him.

  But I was also so mad at him.

  Where had he been?

  “You got something to say to me, Elite?” he semi-repeated, his voice that deceptive quiet again.

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, don’t back down now, Tiger. Show me what you’ve got.”

  I stared at him with what I hoped was an impassive look.

  “Nothing?”

  I raised one eyebrow only.

  “How about this? You think I don’t care about anything else. You think I’m a fucking island or some such bullshit and nothing touches me.”

  Both eyebrows rose on that one.

  “You think I don’t wish it was me out there instead of you.”

  My head started shaking again; agitated denial.

  “Oh yeah, that’s the one. You think I’m happy to sit back in the room with Si and let everyone else risk their lives for a cause I eat, sleep, and breathe. A cause that I’m blinded by.”

  “I don’t think that at all.”

  “Then what do you think, Lena?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, believe me, it fucking does.”

  “Since when do I answer to you?”

  “Since I’m the leader of this fucked up little rebel army, with or without the add-ons.”

  “This is ridiculous” I declared and started to turn.

  “Running again,” he spat. “Why don’t you just take a stab at me.” I heard him slap a palm against his chest. I turned back in time to see him do it again. “Right here. Hold on!”

  He started taking off his weapons; knives, gun, a pile of metallic items on the cold concrete floor at our feet.

  “Right here,” he repeated, once he’d disarmed. “I’m weaponless. Let me have it, Lena. Tell me what’s got you so fucking angry at me all of a sudden.”

  “I’m not…”

  “Don’t lie!” And this time his volume was not controlled. The words bounced off the walls, echoed down the hall, and reverberated right through me.

  My ears rang.

  My heart beat too quickly.

  My breaths raced themselves out of my chest.

  “Tell me!” he yelled, when I took too long to answer.

  I snapped.

  I stepped toward him; nose to nose, flaring chest to flaring chest. I clenched my fists, stood up on the tip of my toes and growled, “You almost died! You almost died in my arms and you think I want you out there! But you also think I blame you for being stuck in here. You think everyone sees you as some sort of failure and not up to the task, so you give up! You give in! You shut down and shut us out and let it all fester and there’s nothing I can do to stop you. You won’t let me. You won’t let anyone.

  “You are a fucking island, Trent. You’re a bigger fucking island than Wánměi.”

  Silence. Which seemed to encompass the entire bunker it was so still.

  We stared at each other, so close we were touching in parts. Not even aware until that second that we we swaying slightly, in time, together, as our breaths rasped in and lashed back out.

  My eyes met his. Deep blue to my pale. Trapped. No escape.

  And it might have been me, or it could have been him. But we came together; lips to lips; tongue wrapped around tongue; hot breath mixed with hotter breath; seeking; taking; needing. A kiss that lit a hundred fires. That set off a thousand fireworks. That stole into the moment in such swift and exacting measures that it might have belonged there from the very beginning.

  From the second he walked out of that room and found me eavesdropping. From the minute I started hearing him speak; my Trent, the Trent I’d come to love, the one I hadn’t even realised I missed.

  It consumed us. It consumed the moment, the argument, the whole long, hard night. It washed away everything, but then also left us feeling even more raw than before it began. It owned us.

  And with desperation we let it guide us; down the hall, around the corner, lips and tongues still tangling, hands hungrily seeking, teeth connecting, soft moans lifting free on the air, until we came to Trent’s makeshift room and stumbled through the door.

  Chapter 15

  This Woman Completely Undid Me

  Trent

  Lena. Just one word on repeat inside my head. A steady drumbeat to match my rapid breaths. A bass accompaniment to the music she was creating with her touch. Her hot hands greedily seeking skin on skin contact, her hungry lips laying kisses across my throat, up under my chin, against my stubble.

  We’d done this before. Kissed. Touched. Groped even. Things had gotten heavy between us on more than one occasion, but always, always, one of us pulled back.

  Dear fucking God, please don’t let that happen today.

  I needed her. I needed this. I needed for us to finally commit to this… thing we had between us. This inexorable draw that defied the rules, that ignored the constrictions of our society, that was so far removed from model behaviour that it shouted its presence from the rooftops.

  I wanted to shout from the rooftops. Lena.

  We tumbled to the bed, my wound, underneath its bandage, stretching with the movement, enough to cause a grimace and a gasp to slip from my lips.

  She drank it down. Fuck me, the woman was amazing. Her tongue stroking mine, her lips melded to mine, her body a blissful blanket I wanted to wrap around me, forever. If she noticed I was still in pain, she didn’t show it. She kept kissing me, tasting me, letting me taste her. She kept touching me, filling me, consuming me from the outside in. Pain seemed not so important, after all.

  I tugged at her stab-proof vest, felt her knives dig into my thighs, my groin. Instinct had me shifting all pertinent areas out of direct contact. Desire had me shifting back immediately and to hell with a blade to the balls.

  God, I’d wanted her from the moment I saw her somersault off the rooftop of Wántel. I’d meticulously set out to seduce her not long afterwards. It had taken less than a week to know I had to have her. And for the very first time in my life it had taken a whole fucking month longer to get her right where I wanted her. On my bed. Under me. Desperate for what came next as much as I was.

  Lena.

  The vest came off, she pulled back enough for the movement, but plastered against my chest in the next breath. Her hunger, her need, it fuelled something inside me. Something big and powerful and mind-blowingly possessive. She wanted me. Dear fucking God, I’d never get sick of that thought.

  I’d never stop craving her need.

  Her fingers deftly undid my belt buckle. She hadn’t gone for the obvious and stripped off my t-shirt. I wondered if that was because one look at the big as shit bandage underneath would remind her I’m not physically healed. Like me, she was ignoring that fact.

  Going straight for Nirvana.

  Mine or hers, I couldn’t say, but when her eager hand wrapped around my cock, stroking, squeezing, damn near making me come right then and there in my boxers, I forgot all about my injury, I forgot even my name for a second. My head tipped back, my body fell with it, until I was laid out flat on the bed and Lena was moving over me.

  I lifted my hips and let her pull my jeans and boxers down, didn’t fight her removal of my boots, which she manged in quick, frantic, almost angry tugs, and then I was in nothing but a t-shirt, and Lena was still dressed and I remembered myself enough to reach for her and reciprocate. But one slender hand in the middle of my chest, carefully placed to avoid those areas we were conveniently ignoring, and she pushed me back against the bed.

  “Lena,” I started and then moaned loud and long as her lips wrapped around the head of my cock without so much as an Elite by your leave. “Fuck, Lena,” I exclaimed as she scraped her teeth up the underside of my dick, a twist and squeeze with her hand at the base, followed by a slow lick and suck up the length of the shaft. And I swear I grew another two inches.

  The woman was hungry. She sucked and licked and bit and, fuck me, almost ate every single jerk and twitch and drop of pre-come with eager relish. I lost my mind. I laid back and floated up towards heaven; a fallen angel sucking my cock and giving me the best head I had ever experienced in my life.

  I should have been returning the favour. I should have been buried between her thighs making her sigh and moan and wriggle. And I would be. Soon. Very soon. Just a little longer.

  My cock reached the back of her throat and she swallowed around it. In a split second my hands were in her hair. Pulling her back. Holding her there. Fuck, I don’t know. It was torture. It was sheer bliss. And then she started a rhythm I had no hope of surviving.

  A bob of her head, a squeeze and stroke of both her hands, a wet glide of intense pleasure as she hollowed her cheeks and sucked like a champion. Lena. My Elite. Who was so far from model it was fucking brilliant.

  “Lena,” I warned in what had to have been the raspiest fucking voice I’d ever used mid-coitus.

  I didn’t care.

  “Lena, baby. I’m gonna come.”

  Nope. No stopping her. In fact, I swear the woman took that as incentive to send me out of my ever loving mind.

  My hips had started to rock up into her. My breaths were coming in short, sharp, hard, desperate pants. A moan or two was interspersed between them; loud, guttural, desperate. My fingers were wrapped up around the strands of her glorious hair, having somehow, at sometime, pulled it all down from the braid she’d been wearing.

  Some of the white and black layers were drifting down around her face, hiding her gorgeous flushed skin, concaved cheeks, kiss swollen lips from my eyes. I reached down, still rocking up into her hot, sweet mouth, and brushed some up and away to see my cock, glistening, straining, rigid with the need to come, sliding in and out of that fuck-me mouth.

  I lost it. The sight of Lena sucking so studiously, so devotedly, on my cock, the moisture she had created, the veins bulging on the sides, the obvious threat of explosion imminent in every jerk of the muscle she enticed with such masterful strokes and sheer magnificent suction.

  Dear fucking God, she was marvellous.

  And my cock in her mouth was spectacular.

  I rocked up, my hands fisting in her hair, making me have to purposely relax them enough to cup her head instead. Encourage her on. But encouragement wasn’t needed.

  Her stunning lust-filled pale blue eyes lifted up my body to connect with mine.

  She hummed around my cock and then dipped her head down one final time.

  And I exploded. Shot up off the bed and shouted my release. My wound stinging with the stretch and sudden arch of my body. My heart beating faster than a racehorse at the Wánměi derby. My skin tight with desire and flushed with the un-fucking-believable ejaculation Lena had just wrung from me.

  I was… astounded.

  I was… wrecked.

  This woman completely undid me.

  Chapter 16

  And That Frightened Me

  Lena

  He looked shocked. Totally overwhelmed. Lying there, t-shirt sliding halfway up his body, the bandage on his injury peeking out from beneath the hem. His arousal still semi-hard and glistening; lying resplendent against his lower stomach. His eyes a wicked dark blue, filled with a mixture of lust and possibly awe. I’d surprised him. Trent had expected an Elite in his bed.

  But he’d gotten me.

  For a stunned moment he stared at my face, lips slightly parted, breaths sawing in and out of his mouth, sweat beading across his skin in an electrifying tease; I wanted to lick it. He shook his head, blinked his eyes.

  And then said, “Lena,” as though that was the only word he could think of right then.

  I smiled, wiped the back of my hand across my lips and received a growl in reply, and then started to strip.

  “Oh, fuck me,” he murmured as my t-shirt came off, swiftly followed by my bra.

  I stood up from the bed and kicked my boots and socks off, then slowly peeled my black fitted pants and underwear down, offering a view that had his semi-erect penis straightening into a proud and rigid mast in a flash. His hand came down automatically and wrapped around the shaft. One stroke. Two. And then he was up off the bed in a glide I would have thought impossible, with an injury sensitive enough to make him grimace when we’d first fallen to the bed. But he didn’t show any discomfort now. At least, not that kind of discomfort. He was certainly showing the urgent need to come again.

  And, oh my God, wasn’t he magnificent? The way he’d climaxed. The way he’d moved and sounded and tasted. My mouth watered with the memory. My fingers twitched with the need to take him again.

  We needed this. We needed a break from reality. I wasn’t naive enough to think this changed anything. A simple release. A much needed culmination of unfulfilled desires. Kisses we’d shared. Touches we’d managed to sneak. Moments when we’d wanted but couldn’t have finally leading us to this.

  No. It might not change anything, but then it also changed everything. Inside.

  He wanted me as much as I wanted him. So I watched him stalk across his bedroom, sex fully aroused again, and accepted that, for now, this splendid man was mine.

  “My turn,” he growled, his lips finding the curve of my neck where it met my shoulder as his hands danced across my skin. One up into my hair, the other around my back and then down to cup my butt cheek in his hot palm, pulling me closer.

  “I need a shower,” I countered, but not convincingly.

  “That can be arranged,” he murmured against my throat. “I’d like to see your skin wet with water. I’d like to lick every drop off and then taste you. Here.” His hand cupped me between my legs. I felt my knees ridiculously weaken.

  “The showers aren’t big enough.” They were also cubicles in a shared bathroom. Anyone could walk in.

  “Semantics,” he growled. “We’ll fit, believe me. We will fit.” It was as much a declaration as a promise. “You’re not running away.”

  “I have no intention of…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, his lips met mine. I wondered if he was shutting me up, but when his tongue delved in, accompanied by a groan of hunger from the back of his throat, I thought perhaps it didn’t matter.

  He walked me backwards towards the wall of his room. I let him. And I kissed him back; my hands fisted in his hair, possibly pulling strands out of his scalp, I was holding on so tightly. He bit my bottom lip. A nip, but also a punishment. My hands eased up on their death grip and he chuckled. It was a beautiful sound; deep, resonant, right from the stomach.