Passionate Obsession by D.M. Mortier

Chapter Twenty-Four

Katia

Of course, the bastards had to come in the dead of night.

The boys and I had been in the bunker from early afternoon. The boys had used their super speed to retrieve our meals from our bedrooms, where we asked the staff to deliver them. Our lunch and dinner were retrieved, consumed, and empty trays taken back to our bedrooms without incident.

It was almost a relief to see the first movements on the lawn from the monitors stationed in the bunker after hours of being down here. The bunker wasn’t as well appointed as Colt and Imani’s two-bedroom safehouse. Instead, it was one room with an open plan with a simple round table, two armchairs, and a queen-sized bed that the boys and I had been sleeping in when the alarm in the room went off.

A quick glance at the digital clock on the wall of the room showed that it was ten minutes past one o’clock in the morning. It made sense that they would try to attack us now with most of the staff living off the estate and no security other than Calvin and Martha. It would seem an easy task for a kidnapping team.

Keeping the boys cooped up in this room for an hour was a challenge; keeping them in here for almost nine hours before putting them to bed had me wanting to pull my hair out. If I heard, “How much longer, Mama?” one more time, I was going to need a valium.

I briefly wondered where Mac was now, as I hadn’t heard from him in almost thirteen hours.

We watched quietly as about twenty armed men breached the perimeter, which was almost two miles away from the house, and entered the well-manicured green carpet of the lawn.

“Can we take them, Mama?” Liam asked nonchalantly.

What the hell? Should I be concerned that my five-year-olds thought that rushing out in a group of armed men was a normal response? Even though I had seen them disarm more men than this and they had their shields for protection, I was still not comfortable sending my little guys out there.

“No, baby. Not yet. Let’s see what they want.” We hadn’t warned the staff or let anyone know where we were. Calvin and Martha, the only staff staying in the house overnight, would think that we were in our rooms. “I need you guys to watch over my body as I go out there.”

“But we want to come with you,” Colin protested.

“No, I need you to keep my body safe.” They looked at me with tiny little wrinkles in their foreheads. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I smiled at how grown up my little guys looked. “My body will be asleep, so if anyone comes in the room, you will have to activate my shield. Okay?”

“Okay, Mama,” they both mumbled but still looked confused.

I didn’t have time to soothe their uncertainty. I had to take this opportunity to find out who was betraying us. I settled on the bed and assumed a sleep position.

In seconds I was roaming through the house in my astral self and saw what I expected, a quiet house settled in for the night with not a living soul about. It was unerringly quiet. And then I walked into the den, which led out to a back patio to the pool. There was a slight whistle of wind that drew my gaze to the opened French doors and windows that lined an entire wall of the room and led to the outside, making it easy for intruders to come in unimpeded. I moved as quickly as I could through the house, getting more and more angry at the betrayal and signs of internal aid before me.

Even before I came across them frantically searching Mac’s office, I knew that it had to be Calvin and Martha aiding in this attack. It still hurt deeply to realize that people who had spent more than five years in our home had betrayed us.

I returned to my body, pissed and wanting blood.

“Okay, boys,” I growled as soon as I had use of my vocal cords. I didn’t have mobility yet, so I couldn’t turn my head to look at them, but I couldn’t wait. I felt bruised, hurt, and so damn betrayed I wanted to call Mac so he could come home and squash them like bugs. “We’re going to stay here for a bit. I have to talk to your dad.” I continued talking to the boys, trying to appear calmer than I felt. I didn’t hear a sound from them. And I finally realize that I hadn’t heard anything from them since I reconnected to my body.

“Liam? Colin?”

No reply.

I breathed in and out in harsh breaths of panic. Fear for my babies was almost choking me. I was forced to wait for a minute before I was finally able to move my head. I swivelled my head around to see as much of the room as possible from my reclined position. Which only confirmed visually what I knew already. The boys were not in the room.

Another two minutes passed before I was able to sit up. I hadn’t been in my astral self long enough to need a full half an hour to regain my strength. But I was plenty scared for what my boys were up to. I knew I shouldn’t have let Mac discipline them the last time they disobeyed us by going after the soldiers. The little buggers thought they were going to get time out again. Nope! I didn’t give a damn what the psychologists said about corporal punishment. It was good enough for me, and it sure as hell was going to do it for them. Their backsides were going to get some serious belting for disobeying me.

By the time I could move to the monitors, I saw from the confusion of the men on the lawn that the boys had disabled those bastards. And they were so spooked by being disarmed by unseen forces that the men were turning back to where they had entered at the perimeter wall.

Calvin and Martha were yelling and trying to get the men to return. They clearly had no idea what had happened because the twins had removed the weapons, crushed them as though they were wads of paper, and tossed them in the greenery lining the perimeter wall.

The retreating men ignored the pissed-off yells from their inside conspirators.

With my breathing a lot easier and my fear slightly abated, I activated my shield to better locate where my little warriors were. I rolled to my feet slowly, checking that I had use of my limbs and other muscles.

From the scan in the shield, I noted the twins where dogging Calvin’s and Martha’s steps. It was as if they weren’t sure what to do with them. With the thought of what advantage such hesitancy would give the couple, I sprinted for the door of bunker.

“Liam! Colin! I’m going to tan your backsides!” I growled into the microphone of the shield, sure that the twins heard my absolute intent.

“But, Mama, Dad says we must protect you,” Liam complained.

“And those men would have hurt you,” Colin finished reasonably.

“I told you to watch over my body and not go after those men!” I was grinding my teeth to dust as I came to a screeching halt in front of my sons. “Those men could have hurt you!” I could speak to them as loudly as I wanted to without the couple being able to hear us or even knowing that we were there.

The twins gazed up at me with exasperated little frowns. “But no one can hurt us.” Colin spoke slowly and with a shrug as though he were trying to figure out why I didn’t get it.

“You don’t know that!” I muttered, irritated because my argument was significantly weakened by their success in disarming over twenty men and the fact that they were standing before me now without a scratch on them.

“What about them, Mama?” Liam looked at Calvin and Martha standing in the front doorway, still looking bewildered and stunned by their retreating partners in crime.

I glared at the couple, because both Calvin and Martha were heavily armed, and we couldn’t let them get away. I was filled with righteous indignation that these two people had been near my innocent children and had been prepared to hand them over to the highest bidder. No way was I letting them get away. “Guys, can you please—”

Before I could complete that sentence, the boys had already stripped Calvin and Martha of their guns and knives. I blinked in stunned appreciation of how agile and skilled they were at doing that.

“Dad taught us,” Colin told me calmly, giving me their father’s cool-as-a-cucumber regard. It was unnerving seeing that expression on a five-year-old. Jesus, the teenage years were going to be doozies.

Calvin and Martha were frantically looking about them, trying to figure out how their weapons were taken from them.

The sound of a helicopter closing in on the house had me panicking with fear that the hired guns were returning, until I realized that it was Mac approaching. It stunned me that I knew him by his heartbeat, a heartbeat I heard above the sound of the helicopter’s propeller and engine.

The helicopter was at least another two minutes out before Calvin and Martha would hear it. I didn’t want them to be aware of Mac’s imminent arrival, so I took their senses of hearing and sight. It gave me perverse pleasure to note their fear, their frantic stumbling about. They started screaming and only freaked themselves out further when they couldn’t hear their own screams. It did my heart good.

“What’s wrong with them, Mama?” Liam look at the thrashing couple with mild bewilderment.

“I didn’t want them to know that your father will be here shortly.” I spoke loud enough to be heard above the screaming couple. “They can’t see or hear.”

The twins deactivated their shields and stared in stunned fascination as the couple continued thrashing about the room, completely hysterical now.

It was this bedlam that Mac walked into a few minutes later.

While Mac arranged to have Calvin and Martha picked up by the authorities, I got the twins settled back into their beds to sleep the rest of the morning away. I took a hot shower in hopes of calming my frayed nerves because I just couldn’t stop thinking about how we’d been betrayed by Elizabeth and then by Calvin and Martha. Would it always be this way? Would there always be people willing to betray us for the simple promise of blood money? Not even the fact that they were selling children, children that they had known since they were babies, seemed to impede their greed. It was these depressing thoughts that consumed me as I finally placed my head on my pillow and curled into my empty bed.

I must have fallen asleep, because I certainly hadn’t intended any further astral projection tonight. I was exhausted from the sustained use of power throughout the day and tonight. That could account for why I had an involuntary projection to my former fiancé’s home.

It was early evening there, and there were men searching his home. I knew it was his home because I had visited Trey there before. It seemed surreal that I hadn’t visited Trey in almost a year. The last time I had checked in on him, he had been out on a date at a local restaurant in Atlanta. I had been happy for him because he seemed to really like the young woman.

Trey wasn’t home, thank God, but it was clear that those men were not there for a friendly visit. I watched as the men meticulously searched through every room in Trey’s house, ensuring that they put everything back in its place as though they’d never been there.

One of the men took out a cellphone, dialed a number, and spoke quietly as they started to leave the house.

“There is no sign that he has made contact with her,” the man was saying into the phone.

“That’s fine. He returns from New York on Sunday morning. You will have an opportunity to bring him in after the church service,” the voice on the other end of the phone instructed.

Chilling unease rippled through me at the sound of Dr. Everette’s voice.

I dragged my projected self back to my body and fought for consciousness. I felt the cool sweat on my forehead as I struggled for wakefulness and the use of my limbs.

“Are you okay?” Mac mumbled groggily.

I forced my eyes open, but so far that was all I was able to do. I swallowed around my dry throat.

“Kat?”

“Give me a sec,” I croaked out.

“Okay.” Mac pulled me closer and settled my back against the hard wall of his chest. His steady heartbeat and masculine heat helped calm some of my trembling, but I still couldn’t hide my fear from him. “What’s the matter, lass?”

For once, Mac’s big, hard body did not stir my sexual interest. I was too terrified for Trey. “They will hurt him.” I couldn’t stop the sob that clogged my throat.

Mac flipped me to my back on the bed and hovered over me. “Hurt who?”

“Trey!”

Mac pulled away from me as though I had struck him.

“We have to help him, Mac. I can’t let him be hurt because of me.”

Mac rolled to his feet and stalked naked toward the bathroom.

“Mac!”

He stopped in his tracks.

“Did you hear me? We have to help Trey.”

He turned slowly toward me, his gaze cool and assessing.

I wanted to flinch away under such icy blue regard. However, the sight of almost six-foot-six of massive, fiercely aroused male had me momentarily stunned with incredibility. I would have to be dead to be able to stop my body from heating on such an erotic vision. There was nothing I could do to stop my body’s predictable quivering, pulsing response. Suddenly, breathing was a struggle.

Standing unashamed and making no effort to hide the state of his sculptured body, Mac looked down at himself and then looked up at me. His eyes narrowed, not at all missing the lust that was very quickly invading my flushed body. “I haven’t kissed or made love to my wife in days,” he gritted out. “A fact that my wife seems to not care about. So, forgive me if my body doesn’t give a fuck about your ex-fiancé.” He didn’t try to hide the bitterness in his voice.

I folded my arms over my chest, hiding my erect nipples, and ruthlessly pushed down on the fire licking low in my pelvis. “A man’s life is at stake, Mac.” I tried for a calm I knew wasn’t fooling him. “Trey will die if we don’t help him.” I couldn’t get my voice above a whisper because Mac’s cold expression didn’t soften an inch.

“But that has nothing to do with your wanting to go to him, to be with him, right?”

The sardonic twist of his lips started to spark my annoyance. “That’s a stupid question.”

“Do you think I’m a fool?” Anger was coming off him in waves. “You will use any excuse to go to him.”

“What? Are you insane? That’s not remotely true,” I sputtered, unable to comprehend why he was being so unreasonable about this.

“Spare me the outraged innocent act,” he growled. “You have been trying to find an excuse to get reacquainted with that bastard from the day I rescued you, five years ago!”

“You heard what those scientists said in Cuba. You know that they were going to try another way of getting at us since they’ve lost the leverage of Justin and his family and have now lost Dr. Reiner. You know how desperate these people are. Are you seriously going to stand here and do nothing?” Forget lust or desire, my body was now vibrating with spitting, outraged anger. It galled me to have to tamp it down. I might be pissed, but I wasn’t about to dismiss Mac’s feelings, and I sure as hell couldn’t dismiss the threat against Trey, no matter how hurt Mac got over it.

He glared at me, turned sharply, and entered the bathroom with a decided snap of agitation on closing the door.

His aggression was so uncharacteristic of him, my gentle giant, that it took a few stunning moments for my brain to start functioning again. I was wrecked with indecision. The sound of the shower had me moving toward the bathroom before I knew what I was doing.

He didn’t acknowledge my presence, not when I opened the glass shower door and not when I molded my front along his back, wrapping my arms around his waist. His hot skin seared mine despite the cold water cascading from the shower. The tensing of his large frame was the only indication that he was even aware of me.

I pressed my lips at the center of his back. “Is there a reason we’re taking a cold shower?” I tried to sound teasing to cut through the angry volatile emotions emanating from him like thick suffocating smoke.

He ignored me and started soaping himself.

I let my palm run leisurely through the short hairs of his broad chest, over the soapy, smooth skin of his chiseled abdomen, his lean hips, and his muscular buttocks. His breath hitched harshly when I closed my fingers, using both hands around his impossibly granite length.

The feel of the hard velvety length in my palms and his scalding skin against the hard tips of my breasts had me shivering already in lust, but I ignored it and kept up my slow, gentle massage.

“What is this, lass? Are you going to prostitute yourself for him?” he asked bitterly.

Normally, I would have reacted by getting angry at his hateful words, as he intended, but I didn’t miss the slight vulnerability in his tone and in his words. He was hurting and hurting because of me. How could this man not know how much I loved him?

“How is helping my husband in his bath prostituting myself?” I said lightly. “Why shouldn’t I want to touch my strong, beautiful man?” I whispered. “Why shouldn’t I enjoy his golden skin?” I deliberately kept my lips from almost touching his skin, letting my warm breath caress his broad back. I roamed my fingers up and down the long column of his cock. “There is so much power in you.” His shaft jumped enthusiastically and seemed to be expanding even further in my palms, if that was even possible. “So much power in this cock.”

“What is your end game, lass?” he hissed out. “Are you going to suck my cock so I can rescue your boyfriend?”

“Is that your price? Is that what you want?”

“No!” he growled. “I want to finish my shower without being molested.”

I edged around his body, making sure that my skin was never separated from his, to stand in front of him. I looked up into his sapphire gaze, his heated gaze, fevered with need.

I slid down to my knees with his cock gripped tightly in my hands.

He looked up into the shower, refusing to look at me.

“You’re so beautiful, Ronin.” I pulled the hard tip of his cock between my lips.

“Your amateur seduction will not work.” His big body trembled helplessly.

I sucked him in deeper.

He placed his hands on the wall and husked out a tortured breath.

Curling my tongue and lips around his length, I sucked and licked him with greedy enjoyment. It was addictive hearing the raspy hisses and groans I wrung from him. I didn’t relent, didn’t give him a moment of reprieve as I used every one of his jagged breaths and earthy grunts to torment him further. In mere moments, I had him on the precipice of detonation.

He suddenly pulled away from me, fury and passion blazing from his eyes in equal parts.

“Ronin—”

“Shut up!” he gritted out. Slamming my heated body against the cold, wet wall, he drove into me, so deep, so hot. No preliminaries. No apology. There was nothing tender in his possession of me. Nothing soft. It was all hard, unforgiving passion and anger. Basic, raw sex. Dragging out of me tortured moans with each hard dig of his hips. His cock stretched me, impaled me over and over again. No matter how wet I got, I still felt incredibly stuffed as he hammered relentlessly into my heat. He made no allowances for my much more fragile flesh.

He showed me in those arduous minutes how completely, how passionately he owned me. He owned every inch of me, every thought, every one of my senses. Everything in me was focused and centered on him. His taste. His scent. His warm, masculine skin and sinewy muscle sliding erotically against me.

I had set out to seduce him, but he had turned the tables on me effortlessly. Too soon, I was trembling manically and climaxing like a fucking freight train churning off its tracks.

Broodingly silent and pulsing with barely contained fury, Mac lifted me out of the shower and strode into our bedroom with both of us still dripping wet. He threw me onto the middle of the bed and followed me down, his large body pinning me to the mattress.

I didn’t have the energy or desire to fight or even try reason with him. Truthfully, I was loving every moment of his blistering, out-of-control loving. This darker, dominant Mac had me wanting to climb him and hump his leg. Thank God, he seemed to want to hump me instead.

My body was shamelessly prepared for his possession, clamoring for more of his caveman fucking. My hot essence coated my inner thighs, my folds soaked, and the tips of my breast painfully erect in anticipation.

He glared down at me. “Are you still thinking about him?”

The suspicion and hurt in his voice slayed me. “With you like this, the only thing I can think of is you,” I told him softly and reached up to drill my fingers in the silky ebony strands of his hair. His hair was so soft, the only soft thing on him, which made the feel of it all the more alluring.

“Don’t!” he growled. Grabbing my wrists, he pushed my hands over my head and held them in one fist. “Don’t touch me and don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying, Ronin.”

“Shut up!”

Oh God, I knew what was coming before he, massively aroused, angry, and suspicious, surged into me with a powerful heavy thrust.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” I saw stars.

Unrestrained, uncompromising, and with bruising passion, he drove in and out of me. My inner walls closed around his cock, loving the pounding, loving his hard steel piercing me deep, again and again. I splintered and scattered into tiny passionate molecules, sobbing his name as I climaxed harder than I had ever climaxed before. Only to be dragged back together again, my body barely getting over that blistering climax before he was powering into me again. He played my body, my senses as if he were a damn maestro, bringing my body to one blazing orgasm after another.

Finally, he let the restraint he had been holding over his own passion go and thrust blindly into me, his lips, tongue, and teeth searing me with wild kisses, licks, and bites on the sensitive skin of my neck, my shoulders, and breasts. Flipping me over, he bit the taut flesh of my ass before surging up into me, so deep with brutal passion, riding me hard until he roared his own release.

I was done, a mass of useless skin, bones that had been liquified. Blood raced and gushed through my veins as though anxious to restore decimated cells and tissue. He destroyed me. He owned me.

“Don’t ever try to use sex to control me,” he told me darkly. “For one thing, it would never work, and for another, you’re not that skilled.” He strode from the bed and re-entered the bathroom with not only a decided slam of wood against wood but with a definite click of the lock.

He couldn’t have hurt me more if he tried. Tears slid down my cheeks hot and fast before I could even think to stop them. Never had I ever expected this from Mac. Every moment of the past minutes and hours of passion replayed in my mind, again and again. Taunting me. Mocking me. Yes, those angry passionate moments that made a mockery of the love I felt for him. Never would I have expected Mac to have angry sex with me. Was something wrong with me that I loved every minute, every second of what he did to me?

Sure, I hurt. Hell, I hurt in places I never knew a person could hurt. It was a delicious ache though. An ache that had me throbbing and wanting him to do it all over again. So, why was I crying?

I was crying because he still hurt. He was still angry, still believing that I wanted Trey instead of him. And although we’d been together for over five years, he didn’t know that my love for him was infinite. It was the kind of love that would span several lifetimes. I felt it in my bones that if we were to die today that we would somehow find each other again.

Even though he hadn’t said the words, I knew that he loved me just as fiercely. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be hurting as he was now.

“Ronin, you jealous fool,” I whispered achingly.

“I might be a fool, but I’m not fucking jealous,” he growled, stepping back into the bedroom with a towel slung around his narrow waist and lean hips. “And if you want to go rescue loverboy, you’d better get dressed and be ready to leave in twenty minutes.”