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 nipples, 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 fuck - "
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!"
"It's Nina," Kellan murmured, already rolling off Mira and throwing on his pants. He sent her a sober look. Mira scrambled out of the bed and hurried into his T-shirt and sweatpants. He glanced to make sure she was clothed, then flipped the lock with his mind and opened the door on Nina's ashen face.
"Oh, my God," the human woman gasped. "It's Vince. He - oh, my God!"
"What's going on?" Kellan demanded. "Where is he?"
"I don't know!" Nina shook her head, indigo hair tossing, sending the dozens of tiny metal loops swinging in her pierced earlobes. She was sobbing now. "Vince is gone. He took the van. He's got Ackmeyer with him."
Although Mira tried to stay in the background, she couldn't bite back her gasp of alarm. Even Kellan seemed to take the news with no small amount of shock. He went still for an instant, silent. Then seemed to shake it off like the leader he now was.
"Where?" His voice was a roll of thunder, dark and lethal, fully Breed. He stepped out into the corridor. "Where did he take him?"