Asylum

Chapter 54: Asylum

His words hit me an instant before my lips rose to meet his, insistent, searing, all my fear and doubts burnt away. My arms flew around his neck, weaving into his hair and pulling him closer to me. I felt my back hit the wall and heard paper begin to tear away as he pushed his body against me, reaching one hand up to cup the back of my head, the other behind my back.

I raised my leg to encircle his waist, climbing up and wrapping the other leg around him without breaking our impassioned kiss. His tongue plundered my open mouth, his moan meeting my whimper as he grabbed hold of me and carried me across the hall to the bedroom.

He was DEA, my befuddled brain screamed at me. I wasn't crazy after all; he really was a good guy. An actual Good Guy. I reeled from the combined assault on my sense and my senses. I wasn't giving up everything in my life in a desperate bid to love and perhaps to save a hardened criminal; we were already ... had always been ... on the same side.

He kicked the door closed behind us and together we tumbled onto the bed, hands grabbing and groping frantically, mouths desperately seeking more skin.

"Why are you wearing so many clothes?" he growled as he pushed the bulk of my sweater up over my breasts and ran his hot tongue over the salty warm skin of my belly.

I gasped out a laugh, pulling my hands off of him just long enough to pull the offending garment off over my head. "I was trying to get here as quickly as I could; I didn't stop for a wardrobe change."

His deft fingers slipped under my waistband and nimbly unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans, then peeled everything off of me in one rough, very thorough swipe – jeans, panties, boots, socks – and dumped them in a pile on the tiled floor. His wet swim trunks plopped down beside them. I took a second to admire his hard, sculpted body – sleek and gorgeous and so obviously ready for me – before I arched my back and twisted to unhook my bra, stripping it off and tossing it against the side wall as he climbed back on top of me, his arms sliding under my shoulders and lifting me to meet his ardent kiss.

I felt him press, hard and hot, between my legs, the length of him gliding through my wet folds, and I shuddered with the wave of ecstasy that washed over me. He continued to stroke and slide over the tiny pearl of my pleasure, his breath coming almost as fast as mine as the pressure inside me grew, as his hand sought out my breast, kneading and pulling and stroking before sliding up my chest and neck to caress my face.

"Inside," I begged. "I want you inside me." I reached my hand down to grasp his shaft, already slick with my juices, and guide him into me. A groan escaped his mouth as it covered mine, and he sank himself into me up to the hilt. I convulsed around him as he withdrew, and cried out as he plunged in again, even deeper.

"I can't believe you found me," he whispered against my lips. "I can't believe you're here with me now."

"I will always find you," I promised him, clenching his sculpted buttocks to pull him deeper inside. "I will always be with you."

He rocked against me again, pushing me up the bed with the force of his thrust, and I reached up a hand to brace myself against the headboard. His lean hips ground into me with every push, and my breath quickened as my climax built inexorably within me.

"Oh, god, I'm ... now. I ..." I shattered around him, my mouth open in a silent scream, my cheek pressed against his, colors and light racing along my nerves, dancing beneath my eyelids and crackling from my fingertips as I bucked and writhed beneath him. He muffled his guttural shout against the smooth column of my neck as my sex gripped and pulled him to orgasm, every muscle in his body tensing to quivering rigidity, then collapsing into me with his final release.

Time ticked by without me as I cast away everything but the feel of him on me, in me, around me. He was my everything, everything good, my escape from everything wrong with this world, my refuge, my beautiful sanctuary, my asylum ...

I started laughing softly, breathlessly.

"Not the reaction I was hoping for," he admitted ruefully.

"It's ... nothing. It's nothing important. I'll tell you later," I assured him as I pressed my lips to his cheek, his jaw, his sensuous lips that parted to meet my kiss and opened my mouth to allow his tongue to make love to mine.

After an eternity and all too soon, he lifted his head and ran a trembling hand over my moonlit hair, his elbows propped under my shoulders.

His gaze devoured my face in the dim light filtering through the glass doors from the grounds outside. His eyes narrowed slightly as they bored into mine. "I love you, Lärke Hellström," he murmured.

My smile was pure radiance as I gazed up at him. "I love you, Nikolai Ivanov," I said, savoring the unfamiliar name in my mouth.

Nikolai bent his head down to kiss me again, then rolled off of me and onto his back, his solidly muscled arms pulling me gently on top of him. I smiled through my kisses, moving from his lips along his jaw, over his cheek to his gently closed eyes, across to his other cheek and over to his ear and down his neck, but then suddenly I stopped, lifting my head to look at him.

"Is that why you had such a strange look on your face when I told you my cello's name was Nikolai?"

He laughed, the music of it nearly bringing me back to tears. "Well, it was a pretty jarring coincidence. I thought for second that you somehow knew who I was and were playing with me."

I settled back on top of him, tucking my face against his warm neck. "No, your cover was flawless – I had no idea," I assured him, and lightly traced the length of his throat with the tip of my tongue. "Although I couldn't understand how I had fallen so deeply in love with someone who was supposed to be a Bad Guy." I planted several gentle kisses beneath his ear and over his jaw. "Maybe on some profoundly unconscious level, I always knew you couldn't be that. That would certainly excuse a lot."

He wrapped his arms more firmly around me and twined our legs more securely together. "I'd like to think that was it. I really didn't know how I could be falling for someone who could be so attracted to a Bad Guy," he muttered, mirroring my inflection. He laughed as I lightly slapped his chest. "Or how I could be dragging someone I thought was an innocent civilian into such dangerous situations with me. Perhaps ..." he mused, pressing a soft kiss on my forehead, before moving down to hover over my lips. "Perhaps on some level, I knew about you as well."

"It's my air of quiet competence," I assured him. "You couldn't help but believe that I could keep up with you."

"Was that it?"

"Most assuredly, because my cover was also flawless."

He kissed me again, capturing my bruised lips and slowly possessing me once more as his fingers traced slow, lazy circles on my shoulders, around the small of my back. I pressed closer into him and relished the feel of his heartbeat thudding softly beneath my hand. Mine, it pounded steadily. Mine, my heart responded against his ribs.

I pulled back. "Huh," I grunted.

"What now?"

"That's what I'm wondering," I muttered. "What now?"

He sighed and looked lost in thought as he pulled his fingers gently through my pale hair. "Yeah. This kind of changes everything."

"For the better, I hope."

He slid his hand beneath my chin to make sure I could see his eyes as he spoke. "Definitely for the better," Nikolai assured me. "We'll make sure it's for the better."

And as he kissed me – Lärke – again, deeply, passionately, reverently, we knew that from this moment, our lives would never be the same, but that whatever happened, we would get through it together.

Lärke and Nikolai's story continues in "Vertigo," Book Three of the Hellstorm series.