The Hand cell found them in the warehouse district south of the dojo.
Troy and Elektra had been running knife drills for two hours. She'd called the session early because she'd picked up surveillance on the walk over, a van parked on Mulberry with no plates and a roof shadow that moved against the wind. They'd rerouted through the warehouse district to lose the tail and the tail had brought friends.
Five of them. Black tactical gear, short swords, silent, trained to it, breathing without sound. They dropped from the fire escapes on either side of the alley and formed a half-circle at both ends.
"Five," Elektra said. She had her sai in her hands before he'd processed the count. "Two left, three right."
"Which side do you want?"
"Three."
She moved before he could argue. Two steps forward, the sai catching moonlight, and she was in the three-man group with a precision that made their swords look like toys. The first man swung high and she ducked under it and her sai punched into his forearm and he dropped the blade and she kicked him in the chest and he folded backward into the wall.
Troy took the two on the left.
His Speed was at 6. Their speed was trained, disciplined, coordinated, but human. The first one came with a straight thrust and Troy stepped inside it and caught the man's wrist and twisted and felt something pop under his fingers and the sword clattered to the concrete. The second was faster. His blade opened a line across Troy's jaw, shallow, hot, and Troy grabbed the man's shoulder and drove his knee into his solar plexus and the man doubled and Troy took his sword arm and hyperextended the elbow until it gave.
Two down. He turned.
Elektra had the third man against a dumpster with her sai at his throat and the other two were on the ground, one unconscious, one clutching a leg that was bending where legs don't bend. She held the third man's eyes for three seconds. Then she hit him in the temple with the butt of the sai and he crumpled.
The alley was quiet. Five men down. Twelve seconds.
Troy's jaw was bleeding. The cut ran from below his ear to his chin and blood was dripping off his jaw onto his shirt. His hands were shaking with the adrenaline dump and his breathing was loud in the silence of the alley.
Elektra was bleeding too. One of the swords had caught her across the collarbone, reopening the scar from two weeks ago. The blood was dark against her skin, running in a thin line down her chest and soaking into the neckline of her tank top.
She turned and looked at him.
Her chest rising. The blood running from the cut. Her eyes on his face and not leaving.
He'd fought beside her. He'd taken his two while she took her three and neither of them had needed to cover for the other. They were both bleeding and both standing and that meant something to her that she'd never say out loud.
She crossed the distance between them in three steps.
She kissed him.
Violent. Her mouth hit his hard enough that his head rocked back and his split lip caught against her teeth and blood smeared between their mouths. Her hands on his face, pulling him down, and her mouth was open and her tongue was in his mouth and she tasted like sweat and copper and underneath that she tasted like a woman who'd been thinking about this for longer than she'd ever admit.
He kissed her back. His hand went to the back of her head, fingers in her hair, and he pulled and she made a sound into his mouth that was all vowel and no word.
His blood and hers smearing between their mouths. Copper on his tongue. Her pulse hammering against his chest where the collarbone cut pressed into him.
"Not here," she said.
The warehouse had a loading bay with a concrete floor and a pillar thick enough to lean against and that was enough.
She pushed him through the door. The industrial space was empty, dark except for streetlight coming through the high windows.
She shoved him against the pillar. His back hit the concrete and the impact rattled his spine and she was on him before the vibration stopped. Her mouth on his neck. Biting. Real bites, her teeth sinking into the muscle below his ear hard enough that his hands went to her hips by reflex, grabbing, pulling her body flush against his.
He gave it back. His hand in her hair, pulling her head back, his mouth finding her pulse point. Her throat under his lips, the vein hammering, and he bit down on the tendon and she hissed through her teeth and her hips drove forward against his.
Her hands under his shirt. Nails on his skin, dragging lines from his sternum to his belt. He pulled the tank top up and she lifted her arms and it came off and she wasn't wearing a bra.
Her body was lean and muscled, scars across her ribs, and her stomach was flat and hard and her breasts were small and firm with dark nipples already tight and her skin was olive-dark and sheened with sweat from the fight and the blood from the collarbone cut was running between her breasts in a thin red line.
He dropped his head and licked the blood from the cut.
She shuddered. Her whole body. A full-body tremor that started in her shoulders and ran down through her hips and her hands went to his hair and held him there, his mouth on her wound, his tongue tasting copper and salt on her skin.
He kissed down from the cut. Between her breasts, the blood pooling in the valley between them. His mouth found her nipple and she grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled, hard, and the sound she made was bitten off behind her teeth so hard her jaw went white.
His hand on her other breast. Firm, fitting in his palm, the nipple pressing against the pad of his thumb. He rolled it and she flinched and her hips ground forward against his cock through his pants and he was already hard, had been hard since the kiss in the alley, and the friction of her body against his was making it difficult to think about anything except getting inside her.
She solved the problem. Her hands went to his belt, then his zipper, and she opened his pants with the speed and efficiency of someone fieldstripping a weapon. No fumbling. She reached in and pulled him out and her hand wrapped around him and she stroked once, twice, her grip strong and dry and her thumb dragging across the head and the wetness there.
She looked down at what she was holding. Her grip tightened and her thumb traced the underside and she watched her own hand move on him with an expression that was half calculation and half hunger. Then she looked up at him. Her lips parted. Her jaw tight.
"Now," she said.
She hooked her right leg over his hip. He grabbed her thigh, lifting, and she reached between them and guided him to her entrance. She was wet. He could feel it against the head, slick heat, and the contact made both of them hold still.
She angled her hips and he pushed in.
The first inch was tight. Her body resisting and then opening around him and the heat was immediate, close, gripping. She bit his shoulder to muffle the sound, her teeth breaking skin through his shirt, and he felt the pain and the heat of her simultaneously and his hands went to her ass and he pulled her onto him the rest of the way.
All of him. He felt it when he bottomed out, the limit of her depth, and she made a sound against his shoulder, guttural, muffled by his shirt and her own teeth. Her body clenched around him, walls gripping, and neither of them moved for three seconds while their bodies figured out the fit.
She started moving first. Short grinding strokes, her hips rocking forward and back with him buried deep, barely pulling out. Her forehead against his shoulder. Her breathing ragged through her nose. Every exhale hitting his collarbone like a brand.
He let her set the pace. She moved in tight circles, her clit grinding against his pelvis on every roll, and the friction was wet and audible in the empty warehouse. She was making sounds she was trying to kill. Small, bitten, strangled in her throat. "Nn." "Mm." Each one leaking through clenched teeth because her jaw wasn't strong enough to hold them in.
Her body was hot against his. Her sweat mixing with his, her skin sliding against his chest, and the blood from her collarbone was smearing between them in a warm streak he could feel every time she rocked forward. The heat where their bodies joined was spreading, slicker with every stroke, the wet sounds getting louder in the quiet warehouse. He was inside a woman who could kill him with her bare hands and she was grinding on his cock in a dark loading bay with blood on both of them and his brain was shorting out.
He grabbed her hips and changed the rhythm. Longer strokes. Pulling back until just the head was inside her, the cold air hitting his wet shaft, then driving in deep, and she gasped against his shoulder and her nails dug into his back through his shirt. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
"Ah-"
The sound escaped before she could catch it. Her jaw clenched. She pressed her face harder into his shoulder. He did it again, pulling back slow and driving in hard, and this time the sound was louder and her walls tightened around him on the thrust.
He could feel her fighting it. Her jaw working, her breathing forced steady, her body rigid against his chest. But her body was betraying her with every thrust because she was getting wetter and the sounds were getting harder to swallow and her hips were starting to move with his even though she hadn't decided to let them.
He pinned her against the pillar. Both hands under her thighs, lifting her weight, her back flat against the concrete, and he drove into her from below. The angle changed everything. Deeper. Hitting something she hadn't been reaching with her grinding, and her eyes flew open.
Her mouth opened. No sound. Her eyes locked on his face and they were wide and shocked and her lips were parted and her breathing stopped.
Then her breath came back in a rush and her hips started matching his and the sounds she'd been fighting came out one after another, raw and broken. "Ah- nn- ah-" Each one louder. Each one ripped from behind teeth she couldn't keep clenched anymore.
He watched her face. This close, pinned between his body and the concrete, she couldn't hide. Her eyebrows pulled together and her mouth was opening wider and he could see it happening in real time, Elektra Natchios dissolving against a warehouse pillar with his cock buried inside her.
Her walls clenched and released in rhythmic waves and he could feel her getting wetter with every thrust, the friction changing, slicker, louder. He looked down. Where his body entered hers, glistening, her lips stretched around him, and the sight of himself disappearing into her on each thrust made his cock twitch inside her and she felt it and her eyes snapped to his and for one second she saw what he was looking at and her face went red and her walls clamped and a sound tore out of her that she couldn't catch.
He shifted the angle. Up. A fraction.
Her eyes went wide. Her back arched off the pillar. Her mouth dropped open and she made a sound from somewhere behind her ribs, choked and broken and raw.
"There- right- don't-"
Her voice. Barely recognizable. The woman who'd put him on the floor six times and left through windows without looking back was telling him where and how and begging him not to stop.
He didn't stop.
He drove into her at that angle, steady, relentless, his hands gripping her thighs hard enough to leave marks, her back scraping against the concrete with each thrust, and she was gone. Her breathing was ragged and her sounds were continuous, a broken stream of vowels she couldn't form into words, and her nails were shredding his shirt and her legs were shaking around his waist and the wet slap of their bodies filled the loading bay.
She came silent.
Her entire body went rigid. Every muscle locked, from her jaw to her calves, and she stopped breathing and her walls clamped down on him so hard his vision blurred and she held there, three seconds, four, five, suspended, her face pulled tight like she was trying to survive it.
Then she broke.
The tremor started in her thighs and went through her body in a wave. Her mouth opened and the sound that came out was guttural and torn and ugly and she couldn't stop it and she didn't try. Her body shook against him and her walls pulsed in long waves around his cock and her arms went around his neck and she held on while the orgasm wrecked her.
He watched every second of it.
The sound she made undid him. He buried himself deep and came inside her, his forehead pressed against her collarbone, her blood on his lips, and she was still clenching around him in aftershocks as he pulsed and her legs locked tighter and she pulled him in until there was nothing left to close.
She held onto him. Arms around his neck, face in his hair. Her legs still around his waist and her breathing loud and broken against his ear. He was still inside her and she was still gripping him in small involuntary clenches and neither of them moved.
The warehouse was quiet. Streetlight made long rectangles on the concrete floor. His back was against the pillar and she was wrapped around him and somewhere outside five Hand operatives were unconscious in an alley and the blood on both of them was drying in the cool air.
She didn't let go.