Mira braced her hands on his bare chest and pushed him onto his back. She went with him, keeping him nestled inside her as she came up astride him. "Now you're under me, and maybe I'll have something to say about whether or not we get out of this bed."
She rolled her pelvis, seating him as deep as he could go. Then she began to ride him slowly, drawing out each stroke to agonizing lengths. She closed her eyes as she moved atop him, her lithe warrior's body arching and flexing with a dancer's grace as she held him inside her, rocked him toward a swiftly building cl**ax. Her small br**sts bobbed as she found her tempo, and it was all Kellan could do not to come in a rush as he watched his thick c**k disappear into her cleft with each bouncing stride.
God, she was sexy. The hottest thing he'd ever known. Tough and stubborn and courageous, tenacious in everything she'd ever taken on in life, including him.
No male - Breed or human alike - could ever hope for a better woman to call his mate. And for one crazy moment, Kellan let himself imagine that she was, in fact, his. That everything was different, and he didn't have to let her go.
That he hadn't looked into her na**d eyes eight years ago and glimpsed a future that would tear them apart. One that would brand him a traitor to everyone he'd ever loved.
The vision came back to him in ruthless detail.
Kellan arrested by Lucan and the Order, accused of conspiracy and murder, high treason. All of the charges indefensible. All of his crimes carrying capital punishments.
And Mira, standing before Lucan and the Global Nations Council in a cavernous meeting chamber, begging them for mercy.
Dissolving in grief a moment later, when the judgment was handed down.
Death.
Kellan didn't realize he'd gone still beneath her until Mira's hands stroked his face. "Are you all right? Where did you go just now?"
He shook his head, tried to purge the vision and the heavy regret that had become lodged in the pit of his stomach. "I'm right here," he said, reaching up to caress the worry from the downward twist of her mouth. "I'm good. Right now, everything is good."
She smiled, turning a kiss into his palm. She started moving on top of him again, sighing as she found her rhythm once more and rode him with beautiful abandon.
When she was moaning with arousal, arcing above him in the throes of another orgasm, Kellan tumbled her down beneath him and took her pleasure higher. He wanted to give her nothing but joy in that moment, enough to last.
Enough to last them both.
Chapter Twelve
MIRA WOKE UP SOMETIME LATER THAT MORNING, NESTLED into the crook of Kellan's strong arm. His warmth surrounded her, a cocoon of peace and contentment she hadn't known for a very long time.
Not since the morning eight years before, when she'd awakened in a similar pose, in a similar state of blissful exhaustion.
That day had ended in a nightmare of fire and ash and tears. Today she felt renewed. Hopeful. She felt happy, and that scared her more than anything. Especially when her happiness had come in the arms of Kellan Archer. Not the teenage boy she'd adored as a child. Not even the young Breed warrior who'd trained alongside her with the Order and had become her dearest, most trusted friend and confidant.
No, her happiness had been delivered by the leader of an outlaw band of rebels, who'd not only abducted an innocent civilian but defied Lucan Thorne and the entire Order by disrupting an operation and taking one of its members hostage.
A hostage who had very willingly tumbled into bed to sleep with the enemy.
Among other things.
Wicked, wonderful things.
Mira couldn't resist kissing the bulky biceps that caged her against Kellan's big body. She tongued the arcing lines of the glyphs on his arm, delighting in the flood of dark color left in the wake of her teasing kiss.
He stirred. With a low moan, he flexed his arm and tucked her farther into his embrace. His chest was a wall of solid heat against her ni**les, his ridged abdomen like sun-warmed granite against her belly. And lower still, his arousal was quite obviously apparent, nudging into her hip, stiff and hot. Much too tempting for her roaming hands.
Mira carefully traced her fingers along the smoothness of his chest and abs, past his navel, to the bristly thatch of crisp hair and the jutting girth of his sex. She stroked him once, marveling at the softness that encased so much rigid steel. And the fat plum that crowned his shaft, already weeping with a bead of moisture as she ran her fingertips over the head of his penis.
She flicked her gaze up to see if she'd woken him.
Ember-bright eyes stared back at her, blazing with wide-awake desire.
"Pleasant dreams?" she asked him, attempting innocence.
He wasn't buying it. His dark goatee stretched wickedly around his mouth, lips peeled back in a smile that was purely carnal. "Who needs dreams when reality is fondling me so sweetly?"
He rolled her beneath him, moving with a speed that startled her, even though she was well aware of the power and agility that was always at his command. Mira spread her thighs to accommodate him, ready for him again. Her heart knocking like a hammer in her breast.
Kellan bent to take her earlobe between his lips and teeth, murmuring blush-worthy plans for all the ways he intended to enjoy her in those next moments.
Mira's pulse was clamoring so urgently, her body so ripe for his taking, it took her a second to realize he'd gone suddenly still and tense above her. He lifted his head, stock-still now.
"What the f**k - "
Someone was in the corridor outside, banging on the door. The rapping came again, fast and hard. Panicked.
"Bowman! Are you in there?" A female voice, pitched high with worry. Not Candice, but the other woman of the rebel base. "Bowman, come quick!"