Passionate Obsession by D.M. Mortier
Chapter Twelve
Katia
I woke up in a cold sweat! I hadn’t been honest with Ronin, and now I didn’t know how to tell him what I knew and have him believe me. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost noon.
I rolled from the bed, now fully alert. It was quiet. Still. Whenever that occurs around my boys, it’s never a good thing. And even with my heightened senses, I detected nothing. That was definitely not good. I rushed through my morning ablutions trying to prepare myself mentally for whatever mischief the boys had gotten into.
Imani had let them try on their shields yesterday. I had to threaten them with reduced life expectancy if they didn’t take the damn shields off. The boys had thought it a lark to run around the house at top supernova speed, knowing that Imani, her children or the staff in the house wouldn’t be aware of it. Mac and I had cautioned them enough times on never revealing their powers from the time they could talk and understand. They had come close several times but had never revealed their abilities to others.
As soon as I stepped back into the bedroom, my anxiety eased a little on seeing Mac talking quietly into his cell, obviously waiting on me. The sudden explosion of butterflies in my stomach at the sight of him should not have rocked me back on my heels as it did, but it was stunning how powerfully my emotions had grown after what had happened between us. It was a sensory recognition that had not been there before. Sure, his scent had always affected me, compelled me, but now, it triggered an instant ripple of intense sexual awareness.
The sight of his big body in a lazy repose and in no way detracting from his inherent raw power reduced me to a mass of quivering nerve endings. He wore a fitted black T-shirt and blue jeans that hid nothing, not an inch of his massive, chiseled, hard frame. I let out a breathy sigh, knowing that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to hide his affect on me. After knowing his touch, his possession, it seemed as though every molecule, every cell in my body was clamoring for him. My responses to him were even more visceral, more intense.
“Where are the boys?” I congratulated myself on at least appearing halfway normal.
Mac looked back at me through long dark lashes with barely banked fire in his blue eyes. He sat back slowly, his gaze a smoldering caress as he took in every inch of me, lazily, deliberately. I could only imagine the image I presented since I hadn’t looked into the steam-covered mirror before leaving the bathroom clad in a towel wrapped around my body, which barely covered my bosom and thighs.
He finally spoke, his voice deep and gravelly. “They’re waiting in the helicopter.”
I frowned. “Wait, what? What happened? And why did you wait so long to wake me?”
He shook his head as though he were trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind. “I was only able to find them ten minutes ago, after I’d put on my shield. Long story. I will fill you in on the plane, but we have to get out of here.”
I looked around the room and noted that a pair of jeans, blouse, and underwear were already on the bed. Assuming that Mac had left them there for me, I grabbed them and headed back into the bathroom to change.
Mac’s low chuckle had me looking at him over my shoulder in confusion.
“I had this delicious fantasy of you dropping that towel and sliding into those panties in front of me.” He grinned wickedly.
“Well, I would love to indulge your fantasy, but something tells me that I need to get dressed and attend to my motherly duties instead.” The thought of the havoc the twins could have gotten into had me anxious to see them. I closed the bathroom door softly behind me. No way was I okay with stripping down in front of him. I wasn’t that comfortable with my body to do that so easily. Besides, he was only the second man to see me naked. Well, I wasn’t exactly naked with Trey, and he had been more boy than the man Mac is.
We were headed out through another tunnel. I had my backpack slung on my shoulder, and again I was frustrated. Mac had refused to answer any of my questions. Why do we suddenly have to leave? Why can’t I say goodbye to Imani? Is it safe for us to be outside? Every question was met with “later” or with stoic silence.
When I climbed into the helicopter, the boys immediately climbed into my lap and tried explaining themselves. Okay, so that was familiar. While Mac would never spank the boys to discipline them, his dark brooding silence of displeasure was enough to make the boys squirm. I didn’t have such restraint. Before she died, I remembered my mother tapping me up but good when I misbehaved, and I remembered her loving me completely. So, I wasn’t shy about tanning their butts. They might be faster and stronger than a normal human, might even heal faster, but they felt pain like any other mischievous child needing discipline.
Mac ordered them back to their seats.
They scrambled to their seats but only after covering my face with kisses and telling me that they loved me.
Fighting to hide my amusement at their antics, I gave them a stern look. I could demand that they tell now what they did, but I knew that making them wait and anticipate punishment was a better tactic. So, I sat back in my seat waiting on their confession with a patience I was far from feeling.
“It wasn’t our fault, Mama.” That was Liam whisper-yelling the first plea.
“No, Mama. It wasn’t,” Colin immediately supported.
“We heard Uncle Colt and Dad talking about the bad men,” Liam whispered.
Hearing them quite clearly despite the noise from the helicopter rotor with my keen hearing, I didn’t offer a word of encouragement for more information or show any reaction to what they were saying to me. I learned very early that if I ever wanted a full story from them to never interrupt or react prematurely to anything outrageous that they might say or do.
“We could help, Mommy,” Colin offered. “We couldn’t let them hurt you, Aunty Imani, and Imogen. You are girls. We have to protect you.”
“Yeah.” Liam backed up his twin.
I wanted to roll my eyes at their budding chauvinistic viewpoint.
“I mean they wouldn’t expect us, right?” Liam continued animatingly. “Aunty Imani gave us these cool shields for a reason!” Liam’s voice rose with his excitement.
“Yeah!” Colin agreed. “We zapped in and out of there…zoom…zoom…zoom…” He thrust his hands through the air in imitation of an airplane.
“Did you get permission from your dad to go zoom, zoom, zoom?” I asked calmly.
They shook their heads no and then launched into another round of explanations. “We heard them, Mommy. They were going to attack us,” Liam insisted.
Colin nodded enthusiastically, agreeing with his twin.
“Dad didn’t want them to know he was there.” Liam again.
“So, we had to do something!” Colin was emphatic.
Mac quietly herded us off the helicopter into the waiting jet on the tarmac.
“Seriously? I’m not getting to say goodbye to Imani?” I asked Mac.
“Colt is taking his family to safety,” Mac told me after ensuring that the boys were comfortable in the rear of the jet. He indicated an area toward the front of the jet where four leather recliners were stationed around a round mahogany table.
“What’s going on, Mac? And why did we have to leave so suddenly?” I trailed behind him.
“My name is Mac now?” The teasing in his voice made my step faulter in the aisle of the jet. That fast, that simply, I was remembering our passion of the night before. And from the stiffening of his back, it seemed he was remembering too.
He turned suddenly and pulled me into his arms so quickly I barely had time to react before he was kissing me as though starved. For a few brief seconds I heard the boys giggling at their first sight of us kissing. I also heard two flight attendants in another room preparing food on trays and the pilots performing last-minute checks on the flight. And then I heard nothing. I could only feel. Feel his hard body next to mine. Feel how the taste of him drew such obliterating passion from me. I didn’t care, nor did I even think of what was happening around us.
His kiss deepened even as he palmed my butt, pulling me closer to him. Rolling my hips and grinding shameless against his hard length, I didn’t care where we were or who was there to see us. A rough palm slid over my naked stomach and then to the thin lace of my bra.
I moaned in blissful approval, trying to get even closer to him.
And then he abruptly removed his lips from mine and his hand from my breast. Before I could show my disgust at being so brutally deprived, he smiled down into my face. “We have to take our seats. They are ready for takeoff.”
I was still floundering, unable to put any coherent thought together when Mac placed me in one of the leather recliners. He fastened me in before taking a seat beside me. When my heart finally slowed, the plane was already airborne. It was only then that I realized that Mac had my hand in his, caressing my skin in a soothing manner with his thumb.
“Sorry, this is not how I wanted our day to begin, especially after last night,” Mac told me softly.
“I guess I’d better get used to the unexpected, given the kind of people after us.” I tried to make light of our third bid for escape in less than a week.
“We were going to leave today but not so dramatically. The boys made our departure a little more complicated than I anticipated.”
“I still don’t understand what happened.”
“I don’t think I understand it either.” Mac chuckled. Over the next ten minutes, Mac told me how the boys activated their shields and stripped the soldiers surrounding the house of their weapons and cellphones. The boys disabled the soldiers’ vehicles and basically caused mayhem within seconds without the soldiers understanding what was happening or how any of it was possible. Apparently, they were moving so fast that they accomplished all of this without Mac realizing that the twins were missing or what they were doing.
“Did you know that they were capable of that?” To say that I was stunned and more than concerned was putting it mildly. I was hit with such fear for my children. Their powers seemed to be growing stronger, the same as mine. I was terrified of what their powers would look like in a few years. I knew that I had to tell Mac of my own growing powers as well.
“I experienced some of it when I train them and at their soccer trials,” he said mildly. “I had a hell of a time keeping them contained.” Mac chuckled with remembered humor. “They didn’t understand why they had to pretend that they were slower than the other boys.”
“Wait, you’re training them? Training them to do what?”
“Training them to protect you when I’m not there. They need to know how to use their powers without being seen doing so.”
“We have warned them over and repeatedly not to reveal their powers to anyone. What if those people realize that it was them with that kind of power? What did Colt and Imani think? They must have had a lot of questions.”
“They don’t know what happened exactly. They know that there is a possibility that the boys have some of my powers, but they don’t know for sure. The boys were moving too fast for the human eye. Colt and Imani saw the mayhem and then followed my instruction without question when I told them that we had to leave immediately. They know that I have some abnormal abilities, their knowledge limited to what they’ve seen me do, and given that limitation, they know very little and can only speculate on the rest.”
“No one saw us, Mama,” Colin chimed in. He and his brother climbed into my lap and snuggled against my breasts, one on the left and the other on the right.
Their warm sturdy little bodies in my arms always brought me such joy, such peace. To know that they were safe, that they were happy, meant everything to me. I hugged them close and breathed in their active little-boy earthy scents.
“We were too fast, Mama,” Liam promised.
“You are both still grounded,” I told them softly, but sternly. “However, I reserve the right to tan your backsides if anyone even suspects what you guys did today.”
“We wanted to help Dad protect you.” Colin kissed me on my cheek and then snuggled sleepily against me.
“You don’t have our powers, Mama,” Liam observed, frowning and doing some snuggling of his own. “You can’t run and fight like us.”
I never realized that they worried that I didn’t have powers like them. It wasn’t something that we talked about. I had always wanted them to have a normal childhood and rarely referred to their abilities. In fact, with Calvin, Martha, and sometimes the gardener at the house, the boys were always careful to not use their powers when anyone was around.
“Yeah. Dad says we have to always protect you. We’re the men of the house when Dad’s not there.” Colin rubbed his cheek against the soft cushion of my bosom.
“The little fraudsters,” Mac teased as he stared down at his sons, at their attempts to appear quite angelic with their heads using my breasts as pillows. “Clearly their father’s sons.”
“Anymore chauvinistic views you care to teach our sons?” I rolled my eyes at him, knowing he was referring to his sons’ habit of snuggling against my breast whenever they think that they’re in trouble. I smiled down at them. “Never put yourselves in danger like that again. Your dad and I are here to protect you. And if we’re not around, you guys protect each other. But under no circumstance must you ever do something like that again.”
Wearing a much more sober and serious expression, Mac squatted down so that he could look each boy in the eye. “You guys are strong and fast, but you’re not old enough or trained enough to handle armed men like that. We don’t know what a bullet would do to you. And neither your mother nor I want to find out. So, the next time you feel the need to help, talk to us first.” Mac held their gazes steadily before saying in a hard voice, “Am I clear?”
Both boys nodded solemnly, their eyes bright with tears.
Mac and I both knew not to give in to their tears. The little buggers knew just how to play on our heartstrings. They were in no way as intimidated by us as they were now pretending to be.
Almost an hour later, after the boys had eaten a light meal, Mac reclined two of the seats into flat beds in an alcove on the jet, and the boys were out for the count within minutes. I knew it was time that I came clean to Mac about my abilities. We had too many secrets already between us. The life that we now had to lead on the run, looking over our shoulders, we should have no secrets. We needed to be able to trust each other implicitly.
I waited for him to return from speaking to the pilots. He had received a phone call earlier, which he had taken in another compartment of the jet, clearly not wanting me or the boys in on his conversation. There was nowhere on this jet that the boys and I wouldn’t be able to hear him. Mac knew this. So, I wasn’t surprised that his end of the conversation was very cryptic. I still could have listened in on his conversation if I’d wanted. In fact, I had heard the woman’s voice when she’d first greeted Mac before I stopped listening. I had decided years ago, when I had used my gift to spy on Mac and saw him making love to Elizabeth, that I would never do that to him again. The heartache I suffered for months after was not worth that. No, we needed to both come clean if we had any hope of making this marriage work.
Mac swaggered lazily toward me a few minutes later, his expression blank. I had no way of knowing whether the phone call was good news or distressing news from his body language or from the look on his face. I was kicking myself now for not listening to his conversation, because it was clear that Mac had every intention of keeping me in the dark about it.
“What’s going on, Mac?” I sipped my after-lunch wine, silently seething.
He gazed down at me with a smirk before taking a seat facing me, his still untouched glass of red wine on the table between us. “You know how I feel about my wife calling me Mac,” he said softly.
I narrowed my eyes, pissed that he was deliberately trying to distract me and not telling me what his phone call was about. Did he think I was that stupid to fall for his tactic? “Maybe I don’t feel like a wife.” I tried to keep my emotions out of my tone, but I knew he sensed that I was pissed. I hated his secrecy. I didn’t think he would cheat on me. No, that was not Mac’s style. He was inherently honest and trustworthy. He had too much integrity to resort to something as sleazy as cheating. No, there was something else going on here. I wished he would just tell me.
He downed the entire glass of wine in one gulp and carefully placed the glass back on the table before standing to tower over me. “I didn’t realize that I was so lacking in my husbandly duties that my wife was feeling neglected already,” he drawled.
“Don’t try it, Mac. I know you’re trying to distract me from that phone call you just had. Don’t do that. Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
He caged me in on the recliner. “I am trying to distract you. True.” He bent his head and brushed his lips over mine. “But it has nothing to do with the phone call and everything to do with my years of celibacy.”
“What? You had Elizabeth. You were not celibate.”
He arched a brow at my absolute confidence in what I was saying. I was confident. I’d seen them together. In her apartment. In her bed. God, I wish I could scrub that sight, that knowledge from my mind.
“Like I told you last night, I stopped having sex with Elizabeth after she tried to come between us. I haven’t been with anyone since. And last night was only an appetizer.” He brushed his lips over mine again and again. “I want so much more of you.” His kisses were brief but became more probing with each pass of his lips over mine. “I don’t want to talk about Elizabeth or anyone else right now.” He deepened the kiss. The taste of him exploded on my senses, but I fought it with no success. I was drowning in him, drowning in sensations that I couldn’t resurface from.
He was doing it to me again. Distracting me from that phone call. I knew it, but I couldn’t stop what was happening. I wrapped my arms around his neck and returned his kiss blindly.
He lifted me in his arms and took me to another compartment on the jet, which turned out to be a bedroom dominated with large bed. We never made it to that bed the first time, or even the second time. The night before was about our expressing our love in our touch, in our passion even if it was never voiced. However, this time was about lust, pure unadulterated lust, that we explored fully, giving ourselves up to the erotic sensuality of this obsessive passion between us, an obsession neither of us had owned up to until now. We could explore and feast on it, and we did, passionately. Over the next few hours, he took me in ways I never thought possible. We didn’t emerge from the bedroom until the pilot announced that we were on the descent.
Hours later, the jet had been refueled, we were back in the air, and Mac had deplaned, leaving me and the boys to continue to our destination without him. I was too stunned that, after fucking me nine ways to Sunday, he was determined to keep his secrets.
I still had not told Mac of my abilities or that the scientists were now determined to capture all of us. When we emerged from the bedroom, the twins demanded my attention, and the crew demanded Mac’s. We were on the ground being refueled when Mac, dressed in a dark suit with black dress shirt, came to where the twins and I were enjoying dinner, which had been delivered from an Italian restaurant near the airport. I had no idea which airport we were in. I had been so distracted by the newness of being loved so completely by Mac, I hadn’t even asked the question.
“I didn’t know that we had to dress for dinner,” I teased, even though I had known even then that he was leaving us. I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that after everything we had shared that he would leave without telling me what was going on.
“Something has come up, and I need to disembark here,” he told me quietly. There was nothing in his expression that even hinted at the passionate hours we had just spent together. “The pilot will take you and the boys to my home. I have a private airstrip. My staff will meet you and make sure you guys settle in. I will be there as soon as I can.”
“Is that all the explanation I’m going to get from you? Something has come up. Really?” I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice, especially since the boys were looking between us with concern. They were already worried about my wellbeing. Mac’s disappearing act wasn’t going to help.
“Don’t worry, Mama. Me and Colin will protect you.” The boys immediately scrambled from their seats and climbed into my lap, assuming their favorite positions.
I kissed both of them on their foreheads. “You’re my little protectors, aren’t you?”
They giggled and snuggled against me.
“You will all be safe on my estate,” Mac said, sighing distractedly as he stared down at his watch. “The quicker I leave, the quicker I’ll be back with you.”
“Well then, don’t let us keep you.” Yeah, I wasn’t very good at hiding my hurt. The boys seemed to sense it and hugged me tighter.
“We will talk when I get back. This was unavoidable. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be leaving you.” Mac hovered over us, appearing torn with his decision to leave. He bent to kiss the boys on their cheeks and then pressed his lips to mine. Coaxing with a slide of his tongue over the seam of my lips, he ploughed in deep once I opened my mouth.
In seconds, every nerve ending in my body was alive and buzzing. It was all I could do to not climb his big body again. It didn’t matter that we’d just spent hours fucking each other’s brains out. My nipples were as sore as they’d been after a week of nursing the twins, and my sex was so sensitive I could still feel the imprint of his cock. None of that dampened the wanting now.
He released my lips. “Trust me, lass,” he murmured.
“Be safe, Ronin,” I had whispered as he deplaned and slid into the waiting Mercedes on the tarmac. I didn’t worry about him hearing me. With our hyper-hearing, I was certain that he did hear me, especially when he whispered back.
“That’s the plan, lass.”
It’s ironic that that was the first time Mac had ever asked me to trust him. Because up until this trip I never doubted him, nor was there ever a moment of distrust between us. However, ten minutes after the jet was airborne, I left the boys playing a board game and went to the bedroom to do what I had promised myself to never do. I used my abilities to eavesdrop on Mac.