His hot, humid breath caressed her belly as Cruz bent his head, cool strands of his long hair caressing her skin. Mia sucked in a shaking breath, body tensed, anticipating his mouth closing on her. Instead he inhaled, breathing her in.
Body so tight she thought she’d shatter at any moment, her hips instinctively rose to get closer to his lips. “I hate you.” Her voice wobbled with tension, and she meant it, as her body drew impossibly tighter and he did nothing more than fricking breathe in her.
The only sound in the room was their harsh breathing, and his was as ragged as hers. Her hips started moving as though he were inside her.
Cruz’s dark eyes moved from her mound to her eyes, and he gave her a smile. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light, because she blinked and it was gone.
“You’re gorgeous,” he muttered before he slid down the sheets. He lay on his belly between her legs, using his shoulders to prop up her hips, and draped her legs over his back. He closed his lips over her clit, tonguing it as he slid two fingers inside her.
An orgasm hit her body in a rush of sweet release. He made it last, drawing it out like a maestro. Mia sobbed. The headboard rattled against the wall. Her heels dug into his back. Wave after wave hit her body.
She screamed as she came again, a never-ending succession of small and large, rolling waves that pounded into her until she arched and bucked against the pleasure-pain.
He was just getting started. Cruz’s tongue, lips, teeth, and fingers brought new sensations to her. He pulled away when she was on the precipice, and increased pressure when she began to fade. She stopped counting her orgasms. She was melting. Dying from oral sex overload, if such a thing was possible. Drifting in and out of consciousness, and still he was eating her like a man who was starved, as though gaining sustenance from her juices, energy from her orgasms.
“You win,” she said between breaths that didn’t seem to provide enough oxygen. “I’ve screamed. I’m passing out with pleasure. You can stop.”
In response, he shoved two fingers into her and bit her clit until she came with her most intense orgasm yet.
Finally, his face was over hers, his lips gleaming with her juices. He drew a deep breath, then closed his mouth over hers as he pounded his hard shaft into her. She felt his hands at her neck but couldn’t think of anything but his cock filling her, exploding into her as she came again.
Cruz wrapped his fingers around her throat.
Mia passed out mid-climax.
• • •
It was a dirty trick, but he’d known exactly how much pressure to exert on her carotid.
More.
More would’ve killed her.
He’d pressed . . . less.
Last-moment decision.
Less.
She hadn’t been hurt.
With the taste of her on his lips, he’d found her computer on the floor on the other side of the bed, downloaded the hard drive, and was gone before she woke up.
Now he was in his truck en route to a busy McDonald’s off the highway in Houma about fifteen minutes away. He’d left Oso in the house with Mia. He needed somewhere to access more intel away from prying eyes and to see what she had on her hard drive. No prying eyes and a solid, private Internet connection.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find her,” Cruz assured the distorted synthesized phone voice of his client. Less than fifteen minutes after he pulled away from Mia’s house, the call came in on the phone he kept in a lockbox under the floorboard of the truck. There was a gun in there, too, but he used that even less than he used the phone.
“I still have four days,” he told his client, none of his irritation evident in his voice. He didn’t like being rushed, and he sure as shit didn’t appreciate being questioned or checked up on.
“With your reputation I expected it before then.”
“Certainly,” Cruz said, voice Sahara dry. “Give me her exact location and I’ll take care of it immediately.”
“She could be anywhere in the fucking world, for God’s sake! Time’s running out, asshole. Where are you now?”
“Somewhere she’s not. I’ll contact you when the job’s done.”
“You have until noon Friday or I’ll hire someone else!”
Four days. Cruz disconnected. He was the best. He didn’t mind being called an asshole—it wasn’t the first time—but the client was pissed and panicky. Panicky meant not thinking clearly. The ticking clock was very real. He didn’t have to like the client, nor was it necessary for him not to have the hots for his mark, in order to get the job done efficiently.
“What’s happening on Friday?” he asked rhetorically, cruising down Highway 90 at just below the posted speed limit. Horse farms and cane fields filled the miles along the blacktop highway, and where there wasn’t pasture or crop fields, there was bayou. “What will she do—or not do—that’ll impact you?”