Passionate Obsession by D.M. Mortier

Chapter Seven

Katia

It had been more than three hours into our drive when Mac woke me after he had pulled into a motel parking lot.

“Stay here. I will secure a room for the night,” Mac said quietly.

I marvelled that he still seemed unfazed by all of this. Just the man you wanted next to you in a crisis. Cool, clear-headed, and decisive under pressure.

While he was gone, I checked on the twins. I shook my head at their ability to sleep through all of this. It was almost 11 p.m., and I was not looking forward to their energetic 6 a.m. wakeup.

Mac returned to the truck with an old-fashioned key in his palm. “This is no Ritz Carlton, but it’s clean,” he muttered as he swung into the truck.

“I understand,” I assured him. “I’m not expecting luxury.”

“Good, because this is far from that.” Mac reversed the truck and drove to a parking space in front of room 197. However, we entered a room on the other side of the complex, room 304. Apparently, Mac rented room 197 but pilfered the keys to room 304. I was too tired to try deciphering his logic, and he didn’t offer an explanation.

The room was basic and contained two double beds, side tables with wall lamps, a standard television, and a desk with an office chair. With both of us working, we very quickly put the boys to bed, only taking off their shoes and jeans to make them more comfortable. After soccer practice today, Mac had taken them to his penthouse for showers before taking them out to an afternoon movie and then to Chucky Cheese. They had spent almost an hour there before heading back to the penthouse to do God-only-knew-what with Mac. He still thought it was amusing that the boys refused to tell me what they did with their dad. They would only say that “we do man-stuff,” whatever that meant. Well, whatever man-stuff was, it always zapped them. And now they were sleeping the sleep of the dead.

“Once I get you and the boys to safety, I will go back to clear up any loose ends,” Mac told me softly. “I will have to do something about getting you and the boys to a permanent place of hiding.”

We had already both taken brief showers and climbed into one of the double beds, while the boys shared the other. I was too busy trying not to hyperventilate after Mac climbed into the bed with me to really participate in any conversation with him. I wasn’t expecting him to climb into bed with me and for sure hadn’t expected him to be so nonchalant about it.

I was wearing a tank top and shorts. No drama there. However, Mac, to my shock, climbed into the bed buck naked.

I mean, really, the boys were in the bed next to us. They were not used to seeing a naked man. Hell, I wasn’t used to seeing a naked man! I was dying to tell him to put on something. His massive body took up more than half the damn bed! I was hanging onto the edge of the bed for dear life, hoping like hell that I didn’t jump him like my hormones were begging me to do.

“You don’t have to disrupt your life like this for us,” I told him breathlessly. Okay, so I wasn’t doing so well in the not-hyperventilating department. I had a naked Mac inches from me! I couldn’t wrap my brain around that fact. “It’s not right that you should even have to. I’m sure that if I asked, Trey would be—”

“Why the hell would you mention him? Are you still hung up on that guy?” His large frame stiffened, as though turned to a block of cement, and his voice sounded harsh to my ears.

“He is my fiancé,” I told him defensively. Okay, so I didn’t believe that, and Trey has moved on, but Mac didn’t know that, right? I mean, really? What was his problem? I rarely talked about Trey, while Mac was practically living with Elizabeth! A bit of an exaggeration but my point is clear.

“You are my wife,” he said in a low growl.

“No, I’m not.” I enunciated each word. Did he even know what rights a wife had? If I was his wife, I sure as hell wouldn’t be hugging the edge of the bed like this.

He suddenly moved, trapping my legs to the bed with the heavy weight of his masculine thigh draped over mine, and loomed over me with a menacing scowl. “What do you mean, no?”

I frowned up at him. Okay, so I was confused. Why was he angry? “What are you doing?” I tried to move my leg, but it was as if I were trying to move a mountain. “Don’t you understand that I’m trying to help you?” Sometimes he can be so pigheaded. “You’re my best friend, Mac. I was trying to tell you that you have done enough, have done too much for us already. Given up too much. And I am grateful for all—”

“Shut up!” he whisper-yelled. He lowered his face until his nose was inches from mine. “I don’t want your damn gratitude. We may be friends, but you’re my wife. Do you understand me? Mine.”

Well, geez, who took his lunch money?I thought peevishly.

“Do—you—understand?” He all but growled at me, sounding out each word slowly, clearly. I couldn’t miss the fierce determination in his blue eyes. His body, vibrating above me as though it were a revved engine, seemed barely leashed.

“What about Elizabeth?” I asked weakly.

He gave a harsh laugh. “From here on out, we bring no other partners into our bed. Agreed?”

Say what now? “Into our bed?” I held his gaze and felt trapped by him, seared by the fierce possessiveness that seemed to lurk within the depths of his eyes. I had to be mistaken. There was no way I was seeing what I had always hoped to see. “We have a bed?”

“Agreed? No other partners but us.” It was an emphatic demand, not a request or an ask. He was telling me what will be and ignoring my snarky questions.

“Did we miss a few steps or something?” I really wanted to agree with him. Hell, I wanted it so badly I could taste it. But I had no idea what I was agreeing to right now. I needed clarity.

“Say, ‘yes, Mac, I agree.’”

“But—”

“Lass, no one but us, from here on out. Agree.”

His blue gaze held mine captive. What the hell, it’s not as if I could deny him anyway. “Agreed,” I murmured softly, still very much confused. Talk about mixed messaging.

I felt his chest expand and contract with the large breaths he took in and breathed out.

“I will make sure you and the boys are safe before going back to Florida.” He sounded a little more civilized, as though we had cleared some invisible hurdle.

I was still in complete oblivion about what I’d just agreed to.

“I am fairly confident they will come after me with everything they have in the next few days,” Mac went on, completely oblivious to my befuddled state.

“But you said that no one knows that you have abilities like the boys. Why would they come after you?” I was impressed that I could string so many words together and didn’t sound like a woman jonesing for crack. With his massive body still trapping me to the bed, and his masculine scent clouding my mind, it wasn’t surprising that I was finding it impossible to maintain a coherent conversation or thought.

“They will come after me because they want to find you. I have to go back to find out exactly who is after us,” he continued.

I mumbled a response, having no idea what that response was. I was too busy trying to breathe oxygen into my starved lungs.

“I need to understand what kind of power they have behind them,” Mac continued, apparently oblivious to my dilemma. He frowned suddenly. “They must have gotten to Dr. Reiner and his family. That’s the only reason they would be certain to come after you now. Without Reiner, their research is dead in the water.”

“I thought he and his family were living on an island in the Caribbean with new IDs.” Wait, was Mac moving even closer? Good God! The weight of him, his hard contours sinking into me… Was I supposed to be able to breathe through this? The heat coming off his body should be outlawed it was so lethal. Even his scent seemed to wrap around me tighter, infiltrating my senses and had me throbbing in places I had no business throbbing with my sons in a bed next to me. The wanting was fierce and coalesced inside me until I thought I would go mad with it. I pressed my thighs tightly together and hugged the edge of the bed even more. Maybe this was a test, a test that I was in serious danger of failing miserably.

“They are. Our advantage has always been that those doctors hadn’t known that I exist. We have to assume that if they have Reiner that they know about me.”

“How did Dr. Reiner know?”

“Dr. Reiner thinks that I am a relative of Ronin McKenna. And thinks I have the requisite DNA to handle the serum. He came to me because of my connections and the work that I do. He’s completely unaware that I have powers from the serum.”

“Do you think the serum would have impacted me the same as you and the boys if I had been awake?” I whispered. Some how us whispering in the dark, and in this small bed together, felt like the most intimate thing I’d ever done with a man. I met Trey in high school, and we had been together all through college. We got engaged our freshman year. And with Trey some day hoping to become a minister in his father’s church, we had limited our encounters to kissing, foreplay, and oral to give each other orgasms. We had never had full intercourse. Still, even with all that oral and heavy petting, there was nothing that we did that had ever felt as intimate as this.

While Trey’s reason for not consummating our relationship had been wrapped in religion because I was going to be his wife, my reasons had been less sanctimonious. I had been petrified of getting pregnant before completing my undergrad. A degree was something I was certain my highly academic parents had wanted me to achieve, even though they died when I was so young. It was ironic that someone had taken that decision from me. Those doctors had tried to end me. However, Mac had given not just my life back, he had given me my dream back.

“It’s hard to say how the serum may have impacted you without the benefit of time or by getting medical advice,” Mac whispered back. “What I do know is that if they ever caught me, I’d rather die than spend years in captivity at their overzealous scientific mercy. And I would never willingly subject you or the boys to medical science either.”

Hearing the pain in his voice, pain and fear that seemed to radiate from his very soul, I abandoned the death grip I’d maintained at the edge of the bed to settle more fully against him.

“They’re not going to find us, much less capture us.” It was ironic that I, the most vulnerable one out of us, the person with the least powerful abilities, was trying to comfort, but there ya go. I felt so strong at that moment. From the moonlight peeking through the sliver of gap in the drapes, his face inches from mine, and my sharpened sight, I could see every detail of his strong, masculine features. Leaning partially over me, one arm propping his head up, and the other hand braced on the bed next to my waist, he looked large and so damn yummy in the quiet of the night. Only the boys’ slight snoring interrupted the stillness and quiet around us.

“Damn straight they’re not,” he agreed throatily before wrapping an arm around my waist and casually pulling me gently to drape on top of him as he rolled to his back.

I didn’t bring anything to secure my hair, so my dark hair fell in a velvety curtain around us, further giving us the illusion of being in our own world. I tried to act as though I was all cool with this, not even breathing for fear that he might put me away from him. I snuggled in closer, hoping like hell that he didn’t realize what he’d done. He couldn’t possibly be doing this with complete awareness. This wasn’t how best friends embraced.

He ran his palm slowly over my body, from my thighs over my bottom to my back and then back again. Leisurely. Reverently, as though he were trying to memorize every dip and curve. “No pink nightie, thank God,” he breathed, his voice raspy and his Irish accent thick.

Well, damn, this wasn’t real. I had to be dreaming. “What?” I could barely concentrate on what he was saying. My entire focus was on the feel of his hands on me.

“If you had on that pink nightie, I would have been buried deep inside you by now, and not giving a damn that my sons are in the bed beside us.”

“What?” I squeaked in confusion. Not the smartest conversationalist at the moment, but there is a naked sexy man in my bed! No need for conversation. I was quickly descending into mind-infused lust as his calloused palm was suddenly on my naked back and my naked stomach was pressed against his hot skin. The shocking feel of his body against mine completely melted every bone in my body. Desire deep in my pelvis had been on a low simmer since he climbed into the bed beside me but was now in a full-fledged, rippling boil.

He fingered my hair, turning his face into the fragrant strands. “You’re so damn beautiful, mo grá” he rumbled gutturally.

“You’re beautiful,” I breathed, stunned that he thought me beautiful. His husky, deep accent wrapped around my senses, and I felt as though I were drowning under a sea of sensations that I didn’t have a hope in hell of surviving. It was the first time I had ever heard him speak in his Irish Gaelic. I was dying to ask him what it meant but was too distracted by his touch, his scent, his voice.

With fingers clutching my hair tighter, he pulled my face down to his, his mouth closer to mine, and our breaths mingled. Something primitive and earthy sizzling between us. His sapphire gaze roamed my face, blazing with unholy possessiveness. “You and the boys are everything to me. No one will ever take you away from me, or me from you.” His voice rumbled deeper from his chest, his minty breath fanning my face.

“Mac?” I whispered uncertainly. It was too close to what I’d always dreamed about, what I yearned for. This was happening so fast, seemingly out of nowhere. I couldn’t believe that this amazing man could possibly want me.

He tightened his fingers around me. “I want nothing more than to make you mine in every sense of the word.”

“What?” Jesus, my brain was stuck on that one word. And all I could do was stare at him like an idiot, unable to get simple words out of my mouth. I was disgusted with my inability. “Since when?” There, I said two words. I wasn’t a complete idiot after all.

“Since forever.” His soft entreaty was turning me inside out, turning me to mush.

“Why?”

“You’re so beautiful, mo chroí. Inside and out. I know you don’t think of us like this, but—” He brushed his lips over mine once, twice, again and again before settling his lips over mine in a kiss that I seemed to have been waiting for all my life. Just a feather-light meeting of lips at first, a soft probing of his lips against mine.

I felt his erratic heartbeat, almost as fast as mine. I couldn’t quell my excitement, the wanting, as his lips melded and tasted mine again and again. He tasted so damn good. An orgy of sensations raced through my body. Desire, almost painfully, rocked me, soared through me. His masterful expertise stunned me. “Mac?” I wanted more, so much more.

“Yeah…” He kissed my lips again as though he couldn’t bear to give up the pleasure of it.

My breath caught in my throat. I had waited so long to be able to touch him like this. It was hard to believe that this was happening. “Please,” I mumbled helplessly.

He covered my lips with his again. His kiss became urgent, more demanding, deeper. His tongue sensually stroked mine, tasting, twisting, and turning my world into a mind-numbing wasteland.

He slid the rough skin of his palm along the contours of my back, my waist, and my naked bottom. My naked bottom! Oh God! I hadn’t noticed when he dispensed with my shorts. Over and over again his palm, his fingers, explored my body with a sensuality I’d never experienced before. His mouth continued owning mine in endless kisses that were carnal one moment and then soft and tender in another. He never stopped kissing me, slow wet licks and sucks, devouring us both. His tongue stroking and twisting over mine.

My world was narrowed to this euphoric moment with him. I was vaguely cognizant of our mutually damp bodies slipping and sliding over and against each other, my softness, his hardness. It was such erotic perfection. My senses seemed to electrify and then disintegrate.

With my breasts crushed against the hard walls of his chest, I abraded the aching tips, which were covered by my tank, against him, trying to assuage the growing ache, the gnawing need fast overwhelming me. I was desperate to feel my breasts against his naked chest. Skin to skin.

I pulled my lips from his, widened my thighs on either side of his chiseled stomach, and with my arms as levers, by palms on his chest, I pushed myself up to straddle him. I held his gaze as I pulled my tank top over my head and tossed the garment to the floor.

The shirt had barely left my hand before his large palms were covering my breasts. Mid-moan, I remembered our sons in the bed beside us. I had to bite my lip to prevent further sound from escaping.

“Beautiful,” he husked out. His fingers were so pale against my darker skin.

“You’re the beautiful one,” I mumbled, having to bite back telling him how much I loved him. I wanted to tell him so much, but I was still waiting for him to come to his senses and realize that he didn’t want me like this.

He suddenly flipped me to my back onto the bed and immediately covered me with his big, hard body. “I want in you so fucking bad, mo grá,” he rasped out close to my ear. “I’ve wanted you for so long.” The deep bass in his voice and his sensual words sent my senses soaring.

Well, damn, there’s no denying his words with that hard club digging into my belly.

He fused his lips with mine, kissing me as though he wanted to devour me. His lips, his tongue engaged in an erotic foray that triggered a maddening, fierce pulsing of my clit.

I returned his passionate kiss, gripped the short silky strands of his hair, held him close to me, and poured every ounce of the love that I’d felt for so long into our kiss. I wanted him, and if he wanted in me…

I widened my thighs in absolute surrender and invitation.

Trailing kisses down my neck, he wedged his hips between my legs and hooked his arms under my knees, lifting my legs high above my waist, and spread me wider to accommodate his girth. His tongue curled around my taut nipple before sucking it lustily into his mouth.

I bit my lip hard to stop involuntary scream from erupting.

Swerving his head, he treated the other hard tip of my breast to the same torturous attention and then alternated again, sucking and nipping the twin ravenously. The shadow of bristling hair on his face abraded my tender flesh and only made me want him more. He sandwiched his pulsing cock between my soaked folds and grinded erotically against me.

I pulled a pillow over my face, trying to stifle the keening sounds being wrung from me. My body bent in a helpless arch as I bucked under him hard, rolling my hips provocatively up against him. He was holding me in place only by sheer brute strength. My head was buzzing with, I want, I want… God, how I wanted.

Every glide of his granite ridged length abrading the sensitive flesh of my clit and the sensual assault on my breasts had me biting down on that damn pillow as though my life depended on it. The throbbing need low in my pelvis intensified and had me coming apart, my senses splintering into billions of sensations as my body was rocked with a white-hot, blistering orgasm.

I couldn’t suppress the scream. Thank God the pillow was there to muffle it from others in the motel hearing our raunchy activities, but it was no match for the super-sonic hearing of our sons.

“Mommy? Daddy?” The sleepy voice of our son had us both scrambling to get under the covers to conceal our nakedness.

“Ah shit,” Mac muttered, his frustration thick.

I frantically grabbed the tank top I’d tossed to the carpet so carelessly moments before and quickly wiggled into it and then my shorts. I was still pulsing, shivering in the aftermath of such an intense release and couldn’t even imagine what Mac, who had his face buried in a pillow, was going through. “Hi, baby,” I soothed when I was finally able to roll and shuffle out of the bed and moved to a sitting position on the edge of their bed where Colin sat waiting for my attention. This parenting was a bitch sometimes. I hoped like hell that their keen sense of sight hadn’t seen us in our naked glory.

Colin reached for me, wrapping his little arms around my neck and burying his face in my neck. “Thirsty, Mummy,” he complained.

“Me too.” Liam rolled over to us and crawled into my lap, joining his brother.

I heard Mac moving on our bed, and a few moments later, his husky voice filled the stillness around us.

“Here you go.” Mac stood next to the bed with a small, bottled water I had in my backpack.

I was grateful to note that he had pulled on his jeans before approaching us. The boys took turns gulping down the water and then wanted to use the bathroom. It was Liam who first realized that they weren’t in their bedroom at home. We hadn’t bothered to turn the bedside light on because all of us could see in the dark.

He frowned in confusion. “Where are we?”

Mac picked him up and placed him in his lap. “Your mother and I are taking you guys on an adventure.”

“An adventure like Percy Jackson?” Colin piped up as he scrambled from my lap to Mac’s.

“Yeah, just like that.” Mac laughed.

I listened as the boys started asking him one question after the other. It was clear that there was no way in hell we’d get them back to sleep tonight. And then I heard the voices and the sounds of approaching vehicles en masse. There were dozens of them out there, intent, and with one goal.