Play It Safe (The Safe House Series Book 2) Read online

  Her mouth went dry. Purple veins bulged along his substantial shaft, a span impossible to fit inside her. His erection throbbed under her scrutiny. She reached for his cock, sating a need to feel the man who would soon fill her, running her fingertips from the nexus of hair at his body to his engorged, spade-like tip.

  His skin was positively volcanic.

  Samson dropped his head back and groaned. At that moment, Angela knew addiction. She decided she would do anything—anything—to summon that musical note of pleasure, again and again and again.

  “Easy, Angel. We have eight-thousand miles to cover. And it’s my choice.”

  She bit her lip, simultaneously aroused and fearful of his next request.

  “Lay back on the bed, knees wide, and touch yourself.”

  A thread of uncertainty cinched her stomach. She had used a vibrator before. Never her bare fingers. She didn’t even know how that part of her body would feel. But he had been a good sport about her curiosity. And she did love a fair competition. She backed her heels to the bed and crawled up to the middle of the mattress. Samson remained in a wide-legged stance, in all his perpendicular glory, his eyes devouring her every movement. When she was in position, the cinch around her stomach tightened. She hesitated.

  He crawled up on the bed beside her and leaned close, caressing her ear with his pillowy lips before he whispered. “You are exquisite. Soon, I will be there, inside you, but for now, pretend your fingers are my fingers, my tongue, my cock.”

  All the words in her two hundred page dissertations never amounted to the power of his directness married to his lustful, pressing directives. She discovered that his voice wrapped around words she had always thought of as forbidden established a stark and powerful connection between her eardrum and the sensitive folds within her reach.

  He watched as she drew the crotch of her panties aside and made her first tentative exploration. She hadn’t expected there to be so many facets and folds, and she didn’t anticipate the surge of decadence at her own touch.

  Had he not been watching, she might have stopped. She had fulfilled her commitment, and there was so much more on her wish list, but at random intervals of his focused concentration, he dipped his head low and pressed feathered kisses to her inner thighs that drove her mindless, breathless, careless. When his kisses reached her damp curls, he took her saturated fingers in his and sealed them inside his mouth. His tongue laved every last drop of silky wetness before he spoke.

  “You taste like sweet perfection.”

  Watching him devour her nectar was an energizing jolt straight to her clit. The game of back and forth was no longer enough. She found it a challenge to hold back her greed. At this rate, she would go insane with need.

  “Sam—?” Her want had reduced her to syllables.

  “Yes?”

  “I need more.” More of what she couldn’t say. More heady sensations. More expert instruction. More of him touching her. Just more.

  At her plea, his fingers plunged inside her tight channel. A scorching ache spiked through her and settled around the steady, practiced movement of his digits. She arched beneath his touch, learning the precise angle to leverage that ache against the spot inside that made her breath come fast and hard. Piston enough to bring her to the brink of an attack.

  He must have heard the crackle in her whimpers, too, for he stopped his ambitious probing and said, “Easy, Angel. Breathe…”

  She remembered the precise thing that had stopped an attack before—imagining his Samson’s hands all over her—and smiled. Imagining hadn’t come close to the real thing. The cadence of her breaths eased.

  “Good?”

  “Majestic.”

  He laughed and sat back on his haunches, knees wide. He reached for her eyeglasses to remove them.

  She brought a hand up to stop him. “I want to see everything. Nothing blurred.”

  “Then I’d better give you a good show.”

  His warm hand splayed across her belly and marked a random trail of her wetness higher, higher, higher. With each languid centimeter, her nipples stretched the confines of her bra in anticipation. A fresh, hot ache settled low in the hypersensitive folds he had just forsaken. He undressed her with his eyes first, his hands second. When she had wiggled free of all garments and thought she might combust from waiting for him to touch her breasts, his voice came, hoarse and tortured, like a man struggling with his own measure of control

  “Ladies first.”

  This time, she didn’t hesitate to pleasure herself. He knew her body better than she, and she was completely at his mercy. She corralled her nipples between her first two fingers but was hard-pressed to feel the reward she craved.

  “Like this.” He took her hands in his and tutored her on the fine art of sensitized pressure. “Tell me how it feels…”

  She was embarrassed to put it to words. After having his fingers inside her, she doubted any other exploration would take her breath away. But the more he guided and clamped and squeezed the taut nub of her breast the more readily the words came.

  “Electrical impulses that race down…”

  “Where, Angel? Say it.”

  She shook her head.

  “The moment you say the word, I take them in my mouth, one by one until you’re begging me to feast lower. Say it.”

  “P-uss-y.” One word, three distinct syllables on the heavy pants his expert touch prompted.

  He pulled one diamond-hard nipple into his mouth while he continued to draw the other to a bright red, toe-curling peak. Her sensitive tip nestled inflexible, unyielding, against the palette of his mouth as he pulled her in, driving her higher and higher. She arched her back to grant him equal access to the other nipple, begging to not be forgotten. His wide, capable hands cupped the slight weight of her breasts into two prominent mounds of cleavage while he licked and toyed and sucked her nipples in tandem. Every turn of attention shot a spiral of gravity and a fresh wash of need straight between her legs.

  “Please…”

  “Anything.”

  “Lower.”

  “On your knees, Angel.”

  She thought he might want her to beg, but that wasn’t Samson and nothing so far had been about him. She wanted it to be—god, how she wanted to please him—but his attention on her was relentless. From behind, he used his knee to urge her legs spread wide. The stiff line of his cock teased the ridge of her ass then pulled away. His body heat disappeared. She glanced over her shoulder to discover he had settled on his back. He positioned her knees at his shoulders, her saturated mound above his lips.

  He dotted her thighs with chaste kisses, prolonging the inevitable. She might have cursed him had his hands not clenched the cheeks of her ass. He aligned her into position. Down the plane of her belly, her gaze collided with his. Gone was the glimmer of play, all hint of a game, replaced by an unmistakable cloud of lust. Arms wrapped around her thighs, he anchored her in place.

  “So fucking perfect.” Puffs of air from his word teased her flesh.

  Angela shivered.

  His tongue danced one firm flick across her pleats, nearly severing her ability to keep her knees firmly planted. The sleek arch of the jet’s body offered no purchase for her to grab, catapulting her further into a pleasured abyss of his creation. He alternated probing with his tongue and drawing her into his mouth, much as he had with her nipples, until she could no more kneel than she could speak. She braced her palms against the bed and twisted the duvet cover in her grip.

  Still, it wasn’t enough. Somehow, she knew the only thing to combat the mounting ache was him, inside her. She begged one final time, directing everything he had taught her—the command over her body, asking for precisely what she wanted, using words far beyond any she had ever uttered—into a fevered plea for relief from the relentless rush toward…something she couldn’t imagine.

  And then he was gone. A sigh of protest escaped her. She mourned the loss of him where her need weighed heaviest. She coul
dn’t imagine anything that would surpass the mind-numbing ecstasy that had befallen her, but in the next moment, she heard the rip of a package, watched Samson sheathe himself in one practiced stroke, and knew the overloaded sensation of his warm hand at the small of her back and his thick, rigid cock parting her cleft from behind.

  She tossed an inquisitive stare over her shoulder. Observing the slow, hypnotic rhythm of her body taking him deeper and him edging out of her, his carbon-strength cock shiny with her liquid, threatened her sanity more than his intense gaze, a gaze that rivaled the moment of their alley escape, six hundred horsepower at his mercy. In, out, in, out… The friction of his thrusts impaled her far, far out of her head, past thought or reason.

  Her channel alternated squeezing and spreading, accommodating his thick head more and more with each upward thrust of his hips. She wiggled her ass, an unabashed invitation to accept him to improbable depths. One tan, masculine hand gripped her hipbone for maximum control, the other reached between them and established a thumb-stroking rhythm against her throbbing membrane that, in tandem with his powerful width, threatened to shatter her.

  “Nothing…left. Please.” Her words were ravenous, frantic, punctuated by gluttonous pulls of oxygen into her lungs, not from the brokenness of her body, but from the soaring realization that he had given her everything she wanted and more.

  “Come for me, Angela. Don’t think, just let go.”

  She hadn’t needed his permission, but she craved it. His request had no more left his lips than she stepped off the ledge that threatened to engulf her. Inside, her flesh clenched and rippled against his length. He slid inside her one final time, diving past any last fragment of resistance, one final probing invitation to an explosion that nearly ruptured every nerve in her body and carried her away to a place of convulsing surrender.

  He came, right along with her, moaning and gasping for air. And when her limbs failed her, he reached his strong arm beneath her and held her to him until the soul-fragmenting waves subsided.

  Immediately, a tide of regret washed over her.

  She hadn’t stopped in her quest for pleasure to become a student of him—his turn-ons, his threshold for control, the places and strokes that detached his mind from his body, as he had shown her. Everything had been about her. And as grateful as she was, she found that making love to Samson had only increased her appetite to know more, do more, be more. With him.

  Which was, of course, impossible.

  He had all but told her he was a season.

  Samson peeled back the coverlet and wrapped them up together, sheltered in the protection of his arms. This, she realized, was his most enduring gift of all. Five years ago, she had balled up her ripped, white tights, lowered her dress back in place and emerged from a dusty, chemical storage closet to find her teaching assistant grading papers.

  “Lock the door on your way out, will you?” He hadn’t bothered to look up from his task.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dust rose from the tracks their tires carved through the reddish-brown African clay. Despite the early hour, the earth baked with the promise of an oppressive day. A trickle of sweat plunged between Angela’s breasts, and her unruly waves spiraled around her face at the speed with which Samson had instructed their driver, Augustine, to carry them to Pamuromo, which translated to mouth. According to Samson, the word encapsulated the region—food, voices, song—and the most generous part of the river that saturated the valley with life.

  Angela twisted in the Jeep’s back seat. She needed proof of where she had been. In the spring-worn seats—mercifully tethering her by a belt low across her lap—in the surroundings she had only ever discovered in the pages of a book, in the tribal Xhosa beat canting from a lone speaker mounted on the dashboard, she tasted a freedom she couldn’t have imagined mere days ago. Danger and uncertainty loomed past the fertile, tree-soaked horizon, but she had made it this far and found she had never felt more alive.

  Samson traveled beside her, his arm lazed on her seat back. His chin was high, and his body absorbed the terrain of his homeland with ease. The quiet confidence from which he operated was never more evident than the moment he turned the driver’s reservations at traveling into such uncertain territory into a good-humored reassurance that he would be well-compensated. In a mystifying blend of English and local dialect that slipped from Samson’s tongue as if he had never left Africa, he had secured safe passage into the devil’s heart of regional conflict.

  But that wasn’t the only safe passage on her mind.

  They had passed the remaining flight hours in Julian’s bed, alternating sleep and love making at intervals she had once thought quite a feat for a guy, but that barely satisfied Samson’s mission to teach her everything about her body and the pleasure she had denied it in her quest to be cautious and safe. Near dawn, as darkness lifted and the planet cycled once more into streaks of cobalt and manganese pink, Samson confessed that he felt something close to whole again. At that moment, Angela opened a passage into her heart.

  Neither pretended what they were doing was safe.

  At an elevated clearing, a house came into view—mustard yellow, flat-roofed, as small as Samson’s gun closet. The Jeep’s engine protested the challenge. With a squeal of brakes, Augustine brought her journey to an abrupt end.

  Samson was leaving her here.

  The freedom she had so recently captured uncoiled from her gut and snaked back down the hill. No doubt the crew alerted Julian to her presence on the plane. Samson had to take her somewhere no one would find her.

  “Fana will take good care of you until I return tonight,” said Samson. “She is well-respected, a maternal elder. The surrounding villages watch out for her. You’ll be safe here.”

  “What about your safety?” Angela’s need for protection had never extended so acutely to another before Samson. That, more than being in a harsh foreign land, made her want to suggest they escape, run, hide. So long as it was together.

  “Let’s just say my motivation to return is high, all systems fully intact.” His mouth took on a slight, mischievous curve. He kissed her full on the lips, a hot and heavy reassurance that rivaled the air against her skin and didn’t end until a crackling and cooing of female voices spilled from the house.

  “How will I communicate?”

  “Her daughter, Nahyea, in blue, lives here with her. Nahyea studied at university in Pretoria. She will translate.”

  Three women, each a generational stepladder of the same physical traits—hair stretched tight into a high curl, prominently set eyes and the most beautiful cocoa skin Angela had ever seen—gravitated to Samson as if he were the messiah in brown camouflage pants and a ridiculously tight t-shirt. They were all hands and vigorous hugs, all words pregnant with joyful emphasis, and completely and totally adoring of her companion.

  Samson beamed. He lavished the most attention on the elderly woman beneath the shade of the tiny porch, taking the time to drop down to one knee and kiss the back of her knotty hand. Her eyes shrunk to crescent moons; her lips parted to a snaggle-toothed smile. She uttered words that didn’t require translation—they already conveyed love in their notes.

  “Fana, this is Angela.”

  “Engel?” said the old woman.

  He turned back to Angela, squinting against the morning sun. “Yes. She is an angel, isn’t she?”

  Angela took the woman’s fragile hand in hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. She couldn’t help but return Fana’s infectious smile. The remaining women gathered in the shade of the porch and exchanged words with Samson she didn’t understand. His expression turned grave.

  The younger women nodded, their eyes drifting often to Angela. Being the subject of the conversation peppered with English words like secret and danger made her feel like she had donned a heavy parka in the stifling heat, so she sat beside Fana and preoccupied herself with the woman’s impressive collection of hand-hewn bracelets. To say this pleased Fana was an understatement. Her ey
es alighted as Angela studied each and every facet as if she were studying the molecular sequence for an element named perfection.

  When Samson finished his discussion, he corralled Angela’s hand again. She knew he didn’t want to leave her there. He’d had the same look countless times—at the plaza, when Julian’s men overcame him at his compound, the moment she presented herself on the plane and there was no turning back.

  Words would have been trivial. They were far past any that weren’t silly placations in the face of enormous odds. Instead, his eyes transcended language.

  “Umkhululi.” He kissed her hand the way he had Fana’s then hurried back to the Jeep without turning around. She heard his strangled command—“Go-go-go” to Augustine, who nodded fiercely, turned the off-road vehicle inside a torrential dust spiral, and raced off down the hill.

  Nahyea settled beside Angela.

  “What does that mean? Umkhululi?” Angela did her best not to butcher the word.

  “’Tis old Zulu.” Nahyea’s mouth stretched to a knowing smile. “It means liberator.”

  ***

  The GPS coordinates in Julian’s instructions led to a school for young children. Samson and Augustine exited the Jeep and picked their way through the playground. Two steel swings twisted together on a wind gust brought on by an impending thunderstorm, scratching out a dry, repetitive sound through the inner compound. Littered at their feet: brick fragments from the bombed-out west wing of classrooms, broken window panes, weeds high enough to pass for trees. And clothing. Bloody, child-sized clothing.

  Everywhere, insects swarmed and foraged and laid claim to the decomposition.

  A wave of nausea boiled in Samson’s stomach. The black case felt like a goddamned armored tank in his hand.

  “This can’t be right.” He checked Julian’s instructions again.

  Augustine tapped his shoulder and pointed toward a glow of light in the east wing.