Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
5
The room was dipped in midday light like an artisanal ice cream cone, hot with the sultriness of too much sex and not enough windows open. Her perfectly manicured short nails dug into the broad shoulders above her—just the one set, as she dug five additional crescents into her own thigh. Focus. Stay focused, Meghna reminded herself for what felt like the thousandth time in the past thirty-six hours. It was a struggle to listen to that stern inner voice, drowned out as it was by her ragged breaths and the husky voice murmuring beautiful filth in her ear.
“That’s it, baby,” the man who’d called himself Mack urged as he rocked into her. “Let me make it good. Let me make you come.”
She was making all the appropriate noises, rising up to meet his vigorous thrusts, telling him he was “so big” and “so hard” and “the best I’ve ever had.” And really, really trying not to think about how much of that might actually be true. The blow job she’d given him in the Manhattan Grand’s hall closet had been engineered to put him in her power, not the other way around. She’d learned that at twenty-one…while other young women were doing internships and on European vacations. With the help of an enterprising jinn and a willing test subject in a virile gandharva named Atul. “Once you have their balls in your hand, you have everything,” her teacher had purred, demonstrating her own technique. Meghna and Atul had spent the rest of the summer practicing. Two enthusiastic Vidrohi agents learning spy craft and sex craft in one go.
But now…? Here? Almost a decade and a half later? Meghna was so screwed. In more ways than one. Six months into her operation, she was no closer to the intel she sought—to the information the man above her was literally pumping her for. How ironic that she was frustrated in every way but sexually.
“Am I boring you?” Her new mark’s words were a glorious rumble, hitting her as deep as his cock, sending vibrations rippling down her spine.
“I’m multitasking,” she said with a gasp of pleasure that wasn’t entirely fake.
To his credit, the man who’d introduced himself to her less than forty-eight hours ago as Mack Wilson knew what he was doing—even if he didn’t know who he was doing. He’d compelled her immediately. Impressed her. Aroused her. So much so that it hadn’t surprised her when the network had verified his fingerprints. Elijah Richter, former British Army, current cofounder of a security firm known as Third Shift. As she’d noted from the first moment she saw him, he was a beautiful man. A powerful one too. The average human would not feel what he hid under human skin, the growl of the creature just below the surface, begging to run wild. But she’d understood it. She’d heard the beast and known its name. Lion. Singha. Sher. That secret, she told herself now, was why she’d entertained his pursuit. Why she’d allowed his mission to potentially endanger hers. Utilize every asset, take every avenue and every advantage. And so, she’d taken and taken and taken…
“Hurts a man’s ego, don’t you know? We like to be the sole focus when we’ve a lady in our arms.” His deep-brown eyes twinkled with mirth. She pushed aside the warmth that twinkle sparked in her belly. She had no room for a real connection. No time. Neither did he…though he didn’t want her to know that.
“I think your ego will survive,” she assured dryly.
Like most men, he had confidence to spare. That confidence had given him the inroads his organization wanted—her, her bed, a possible path to the other man in her life—and also kept him ignorant to the truth of her. What he saw, what everyone saw, was precisely what she allowed them to see. A beautiful woman who set fashion trends and made headlines. Rich, useless, ornamental. Arm candy to the who’s who of Hollywood and DC political elites alike. Meghna Saxena-Saunders was only as important as the men she was tied to after all. Her ex-husband, Chase, her father, RK, and his defense company, and of course Mirko—arms dealer to the terrorist stars.
“Mack” wouldn’t be trying to make her come, would never have met her at all, were it not for Mirko Aston. It was almost funny, considering the Vidrohi was comprised of women and of nonbinary and gender-nonconforming supernaturals, and they had little use for cis heterosexual men. Except the one use she was currently engaged in. The gloriously distracting exercise that was sex. A means to an end. Sometimes a happy one…sometimes a permanent one.
But she didn’t want to kill this man. Was that a weakness on her part? Everything she’d been so determined to avoid? Meghna couldn’t stop to war with that question. Not when Elijah Richter’s fingers found her clit and teased it exquisitely. Not when he angled his cock just so. God, he was good. The kind of lover she hadn’t had in years. One who actually cared about her pleasure. He wouldn’t be satisfied with breathy moans and tremors. With the theater of sex. He wanted the reality. He wanted her to come apart. Meghna had done it for him countless times already, and she was poised to do it again.
Of course, she couldn’t surrender. Not completely. Because that was too big of a risk. It’s just sex, she reminded herself as she opened for him, as she rose to meet him. Sex is your weapon. And she couldn’t let it be her undoing. If nothing else, because the General would say “I told you so.” The woman had loved to lord her savvy and her skills over each crop of new recruits. She’d been hardest on Meghna, for obvious reasons. But she wasn’t going to think about any of those reasons right now.
Elijah Richter deserved her complete attention. The arch of her body under his broad, long-fingered hands. The genuine cries of pleasure he could wring from her throat. The fruit of his lusty labors. He wasn’t boring her. Far from it. And it was time for her to pay him back in kind.
* * *
For all the mental preparation, for all the advice from those far more experienced in such matters, Elijah was still completely and utterly lost. Being with this woman was like nothing he’d ever felt before. Her nails dug into his back like tiny bits of shrapnel. The sounds she made were needy and hungry and demanding. Calling to him on every level. Her thighs hugged his hips. She panted the false name he’d given her and it went directly to his groin, making him piston harder and drive her back and back and back until she teetered on the edge. Sweat beaded his skin while his fur prickled beneath it. The fight to keep the change back was rougher than it had been in decades. But she was his hardest fight. Because she, and this, was an actual challenge. Anchoring her in the present instead of letting her wander away mentally to wherever she’d just been. Pleasing her. Satisfying her. Making sure she remembered this more than anything else.
Meghna was supposed to be his way in. His gorgeous longish con. The team had pulled from what was left of Aleksei Vasiliev’s connections in South Brooklyn…learning that Aston had something dangerous and classified that he was planning to sell to the highest bidder. All they needed was someone on the inside…and Lije inside her. A few days into their beautifully filthy affair, he could “confess” he was really after Aston’s stash, planning to steal the loot before the auction and sell it back to American military contractors. A partial truth. And given how little affection she held for her boyfriend, she’d probably pretend to feel betrayed for all of five seconds before she kissed him like she was kissing him now.
Like it meant everything.
Like they’d both die if she stopped.
Hedidn’t stop. He took it down a notch, making it perversely slow, keeping her at the brink of her orgasm and staving off his own. Because she was beautiful like this. Tangled with him, her throat bared and her hair spilling all over them both. More careful than they’d been at the party, this time she’d stayed away from the suite’s door. Met him at the bedroom after he let himself in. All that hair loose and welcoming. Her soft purple robe hanging open to reveal a sinful scrap of matching lace that could barely be called a nightgown.
“This round two or goodbye?” he’d growled, hooking an arm around her waist and maneuvering her up against the wall.
“It’s whatever you want it to be,” she’d said.
Goodbye. Au revoir. Until I fucking see you again. Until you give me everything I’m looking for. Elijah hadn’t come yet. He could draw it out further still, hold out for when she’d come three or four times over, but she started to spasm around his cock, pulling on him with each little quake of her quim, so he gave in. Thrusting in with one last grunt. Filling the latex sheath he’d barely remembered to put on before she dragged him to the sheets. She went to pieces around him, against him, like they’d run a marathon together and collapsed at the finish line. “Meghna.” Her name was a groan he muffled along the sharp line of her collarbone. “Ah, Meg. This is fucking brilliant.”
“Brilliant fucking, you mean.” Her eyes shone like black diamonds. Her skin smelled like expensive perfume and sweat and him. She kneaded his shoulders with her fists and then pushed at him, which he took as a hint to lever himself up and off her body. “Is this what you wanted from me? Why you were watching me the other night? Are you satisfied?”
“Not nearly,” he told her as he pinched off the condom and dropped it into the bin next to the bed. “Not bloody nearly.”
And he had to prove that, had to punctuate it, with one more openmouthed kiss. His senses were still so full of her—her smell, her taste, her filthy-gorgeous sounds of pleasure—that he didn’t hear the intruder until it was too late. Until he’d already come down the hall to the bedroom. Until the litany of Russian and English curses and the whisper-slide noise beneath them, of a gun being drawn from a holster. One of Aston’s men. Here. He and Meghna sprang apart, kiss broken, spell broken, twisting to look at the weasel-faced blond man who’d caught them completely unaware.
“You traitorous bitch!” the man snarled. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted.”
Shorter than him. Solid build. He smelled like a shifter, but he was human. No less dangerous for being so. Elijah processed it all in wasted seconds as he rolled forward, shoving Meghna behind him with one hand as the other popped and shifted to a claw. He didn’t waste any more time feeling or thinking. He just launched from the bed with a roar. Swiped at the man who stank of gun oil and cologne and murder. Knocked the weapon away before he could fire it. Sliced his throat before he could spit another threat.
Blood spattered the wall like a macabre bit of modern art. The hot spray hit Elijah’s face. His arms. Dripped from his paw. So much blood…and so much death. Because the gunman instantly crumpled to the floor, an empty sack of bones and flesh. It was only then, when time slowed back to normal speed, when the lion was quiet and the fur at his ruff receded, that Elijah remembered Meghna. She hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t made a sound after he shoved her out of the way, off the far side of the bed.
Did he…? Is she…?
He whipped around, only to find her standing by the night table. Unharmed. Still naked. Entirely unconcerned about seeing him shift, seeing him kill someone. Staring at the henchman’s body with the dispassion of a person who’d seen more than one corpse in her time. “Well, that was excessive,” she said crisply before looking at back at him. “Are you satisfied now?”
For the second time in less than five minutes, Elijah was totally off his game.