Consumed by Fire

by Anne Stuart

  Of course he shouldn’t have kissed her this morning. He’d done an excellent job of making sure they were enemies again, but her presence had just been too tempting, and he’d wanted nothing more than to slam her against the wall and take her standing up. He didn’t, but he gave in to the temptation to kiss the shit out of her. She was still just as vulnerable to his kisses—he’d felt her body soften, relax against his, and if he’d reached between her legs, he was sure she would have been wet.

  She’d always been incredibly responsive to everything he did, and he used to wonder how many ways he could make her come. With his mouth, of course, with straightforward fucking, with his hand on her clit. Her tits had never been that responsive, but he hadn’t had time to give them the attention they deserved, and he wondered whether she was one of those rare women who could come simply by having him play with her beautiful breasts. He wanted to catalogue her and their time together in the crudest possible terms. He liked to fuck her, he liked fucking. For some damned reason the term “making love” kept creeping in, and he ruthlessly shut it out, coming up with the rudest words he could think of, but he kept going back to her breasts, not her tits.

  He wouldn’t have the chance to find out about them, he reminded himself. Last night had been bad enough—there would be no repeats or variations.

  He’d never been able to talk her into going down on him, and he’d accepted her refusal easily enough. He could get a blow job anywhere.

  That was before he knew about her ancient, molesting professor. She said she’d had to help him, and she’d had disgust in her voice. She would have used her mouth on the old bastard, and it was just one more reason it was a good thing the man was dead, or he’d rip him apart. He knew how to kill, quietly and efficiently, but he also knew how to make it hurt, make it last, and he would have outdone Claudia in inventiveness if he’d been able to get his hands on the old man.

  No, she’d never take him in her mouth, and he wouldn’t ask her. Besides, he intended to make sure they never ended up in the same bed again, so the question was moot.

  He had to stop thinking about it. He switched on the satellite radio. Part of him was in the mood for heavy metal, but that would probably get him worked up again. All he had to do was hear Nine Inch Nails sing “Closer” and he’d be on her like white on rice. Cool jazz was the safer choice. He didn’t have to worry about it putting him to sleep—he’d developed the ability to go for days without much more than a couple of hours’ sleep, and the three he’d gotten this morning, after the time he’d spent between Evangeline’s legs, had left him relaxed and refreshed.

  Okay, the erection was an annoyance but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it, short of parking somewhere along the barren Texas landscape, going into the back of the camper, and fucking the shit out of her, which was a very bad idea on both their parts. He’d sleep alone tonight, assuming he even slept at all. He wasn’t sure whether he’d go with the farmhouse or the RV—it depended on his usually reliable instincts. Wherever he and Evangeline were, they’d be apart. He’d wait till she fell asleep on the narrow bed before going to bed himself, and if she heard him, she’d ignore him and pretend to be asleep. He knew her so damned well.

  He heard her moving around in the back, and he wanted to tell her to sit the fuck down, but he knew she wouldn’t, so he didn’t bother; instead he tried to concentrate on the landscape, on the road, on the music, and on what was waiting for him once he reached New Orleans.

  He’d been looking forward to it, but that was before he’d come close to Evangeline again. He hadn’t counted on being so affected by her, though he’d done his best to hide it. At least she was keeping her distance. He had another three hundred miles to go before he reached his planned stopping place north of Dallas—an abandoned farmhouse on an abandoned road that required all-wheel drive to traverse it. This vehicle had the mobility of a tank—it could go anywhere despite its appearance—and they’d be safe for the night, safe long enough for him to check in with Ryder and Peter Madsen; and if the place was habitable, there’d be enough space to keep away from Evangeline, from making her want things she shouldn’t want. It was easy enough to keep her hating him—getting her in bed was a little more of a challenge. He had to remember what was best for both of them, and that didn’t involve the exchange of bodily fluids.

  Speaking of which, he didn’t have any condoms on hand. He already knew she was using a monthly contraceptive pill, though given she hadn’t slept with anyone in the three years she’d been divorced, he wondered why. Probably to regulate her periods. He hadn’t checked into her medical records but there’d been no red flags in the general surveillance, and he wasn’t worried.

  He’d been a bit more diligent when it came to the men she’d gone through. In his spare time, simply out of curiosity, of course, he’d checked out every one of the men she’d gone through the first year after he disappeared, and they were all clean, at least when she’d gone to bed with them. She’d been self-destructive, but she would have insisted on a condom—he knew that much. Same with that dickwad she married.

  She hadn’t said a word about a condom last night, which was a good thing because he deliberately hadn’t brought any, thinking that would keep him out of her bed. He’d overestimated his willpower. Problem was, he already knew he was clean and that she had been conscientious and was protected from pregnancy. There would be no dangerous aftereffects from last night.

  At least, not physically. The fact that he couldn’t take his mind off his dick was a disadvantage, but something he could move past easily enough if there was the slightest hint of danger. His instinct, his ridiculously primal urge, was to protect Evangeline at all costs. He’d married her, he’d watched her, he’d given her his best friend, Merlin, all to keep her safe.

  Which begged the question, what the fuck was wrong with him? Why did she matter when so many people had to be disposed of, regretfully on his part, but necessarily?

  Peter Madsen had never questioned him, never begrudged him hijacking the state-of-the-art surveillance network to keep a close watch on her. He’d made no comment when Bishop had decided to go to Canada to lure Clement out of the woodwork, and if he knew Bishop’s plan involved crashing into Evangeline Morrissey’s life again, he hadn’t said anything. The argument that getting rid of a threat like Clement, tied as he was to the Corsinis, was justification enough.

  Of course Madsen knew. He was one scary bastard, and he knew everything. An injury had sidelined him to a predominantly desk-job position, and when he’d taken over the Committee, things ran even more smoothly than they had under the Ice Queen, Isobel Lambert. Madsen trusted Bishop and Matthew Ryder to complete their mission—dispose of His Eminence for one thing, and set up the new branch of the Committee for another. This branch was going to be different than Peter Madsen’s Committee—there would be no old-boy MPs looking over his shoulder. Of course, Madsen paid absolutely no attention to those MPs any more than Isobel had, but they were still a pain.

  New Orleans would be more self-contained—Madsen had no intention of informing his so-called overseers of its existence until absolutely necessary. After all, it was nothing more than one covert operation. Just one that was a little permanent, and considering how fucked-up New Orleans was, the American branch could probably find enough to do just taking care of local stuff.

  But it was also a busy port, where drugs and guns and sex slaves could be shipped all over the world, or be off-loaded to the US, not to mention the holds full of illegal immigrants that came in. Once the Committee succeeded in smashing the Corsinis, they’d still have their hands full with the increasingly inventive and dedicated terrorists, both foreign and native-born.

  With Dimitri Corsini’s death, they’d only dealt a glancing blow, and in the last five years, they’d been at a stalemate. Their task in New Orleans would deliver a crippling strike, but it wouldn’t destroy the Corsinis complet
ely, simply because he, Madsen, and Ryder still didn’t know how far the human trafficking reached into the organized crime community, if you could call anything, including crime, organized in New Orleans. It was a free-for-all when it came to corruption.

  He couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted by Evangeline Morrissey’s magic twat. She was a woman, nothing more, and he had no idea why she stirred some random protective instinct in him, any more than he knew why she seemed to have a supernatural power over his dick. There were so many women who were more beautiful and far less trouble, and yet he couldn’t keep away from her.

  One more night on the road and he’d be home free. Once they made it to New Orleans, he could hand her off to someone—anyone. Ryder would know someone who could take over, make sure no one could get to her, and then Bishop could concentrate on his job. Once he made sure his connection to Evangeline disappeared, she could return to her safe little world of academia, where no one would breach her ivory tower. And this time, when he left her, he wouldn’t look back.

  The man slid down in the seat of the rental car, his forehead creased in frustration. Where the fuck had Bishop disappeared to? And he’d taken that woman. Why, after five years, had he gone back for the woman he’d supposedly married and then abandoned? It made no sense.

  Not that he’d ever believed the marriage was real. Problem was, he couldn’t prove it was a lie, and until he could, little miss Evangeline Morrissey was off-limits. To Claudia, maybe. But not to him.

  Evangeline Morrissey was a ticking bomb, and letting her go was a mistake of major proportions. The last five years the girl had been living on borrowed time, whether or not she’d put two and two together or had any idea what she’d seen.

  Everything was taken care of; no problem existed as far as anyone else was concerned. The girl knew nothing, everyone was safe, or so that pussy Madsen had decreed.

  Except he didn’t agree. He knew there was a fucking problem, and it had been eating at him for five years. Now, finally, he’d been given the chance to do something about it.

  He knew exactly where they were going—intercepting Bishop’s reports to Madsen had been dead easy if you knew where to look in the vast galaxy of cyberspace. She’d already had someone try to kill her—the Corsinis had sent that fool Clement, who’d always tended to underestimate his enemies.

  He was just as happy Clement had failed. After so long the man figured he’d earned the right to snuff out her inconvenient life himself, and he had every intention of taking his time with it. She owed it to him.

  All he had to decide were the details. Was he going to try to get her away from Bishop, finish her off and disappear? It would be better that way—Bishop was damned good at what he did, and the Committee wouldn’t work as well without him. Besides, Bishop was going to be stationed in the US from now on, and their paths would be unlikely to cross.

  But if the man went with that plan, he’d have to kill Evangeline Morrissey silently and swiftly, and that didn’t work with his long-put-off desires. He shrugged. He could play it by ear. Bishop and the woman were spending that night at a safe house outside of Dallas, one that was just about impossible to get to. He’d be waiting there for them, and if he could pick off the girl without involving Bishop he’d do so, even though he owed Bishop a 9mm bullet between the eyes for getting in his way one too many times.

  By tonight this would be over. If he ended up having to make explanations to Peter Madsen, so be it. He would only be doing what he had to do, and he suspected Madsen would agree. Madsen had put new rules in place, new protocols for minimizing collateral damage, but the man suspected that deep down Madsen would be just as glad to get this loose end tied up, even if it cost him one of his best operatives.

  Maybe that wouldn’t have to happen. Maybe he could spin it so well that Madsen wouldn’t even realize the man had been behind it, though Madsen was scary-smart. He’d deal with all that when he came to it.

  For right now, he was looking forward to Evangeline Morrissey’s last few minutes on this earth. She was already five years overdue to meet her maker.

  Evangeline tried to ignore Bishop. He had jazz on the satellite radio, something a little too cerebral, but anything else would have probably gotten on her last nerve. And yes, she only had one left, and it was hanging by a thread.

  Why had he kissed her like that? Her mouth still burned from it, she could feel him, taste him, and her body was in an uproar she had every intention of ignoring. So he had a certain practiced effect on her. So what? Sometimes people just struck sparks off each other. It was entirely possible to have insane sexual chemistry and hate each other the rest of the time.

  At least she assumed so. When she’d returned to the US five years ago she’d been broken in every sense of the word, and she’d done what she could to wipe James Bishop out of her system. After that wretched year she was hardly an innocent—she should know a thing or two about sexual attraction and desire. She’d lost count of the men she’d slept with, but she did know she hadn’t liked any of them. Surely that was proof she could have sex with Bishop and still despise him.

  Except there was a big difference between those awful one-night stands and the kind of conflagration Bishop aroused in her.

  She turned her back on him and headed for the refrigerator. They had bottles of Guinness there. She had no idea if these mysterious Powers That Be knew it was her favorite mass-produced beer or whether she happened to share that preference with Bishop. If so, she was going to pick a new favorite beer immediately.

  She pulled out a bottle and opened it, breathing in the thick, yeasty scent of it. If she ever became gluten intolerant she’d kill herself, she thought, taking a deep swig.

  “Bring me one while you’re at it.”

  Damn, the man had ears like a bat. Assuming bats had ears. Or didn’t they communicate by sonar? “You’re driving,” she tossed back, heading for the dinette.

  “And you seriously think a beer is going to impair me? I can be dead drunk and still shoot the heart out of an ace of spades at five hundred yards.”

  “A regular Robin Hood. Why do you need to shoot cards?”

  “So I can shoot people and not miss.”

  She felt a chill run over her at his flat words, starting with the icy beer in her hand. “It’s probably against the law to have an open container . . .”

  “We’re in Texas. You really think they have a law like that? They’re worse than Colorado. And you really think I’d give a flying fuck if they did? Bring me a beer and join me.”

  “When pigs fly.”

  “If you do, maybe I’ll answer some of your questions.” She knew he regretted the words as soon as he said them, but she also knew he’d stick to them. She was beginning to realize he had a peculiar sense of honor. He might have killed people—she didn’t want to think how many—but he wouldn’t go back on his word.

  Opening the tiny stainless-steel fridge again, she pulled out another Guinness, opened it, and carefully made her way to the front of the camper. She dropped into the passenger seat, then glanced around her. The front of the Winnebego looked its age, though she knew that was deceptive. The vinyl seats were cracked and mended with duct tape, the dashboard was dusty, and some of the dials were cracked or simply not working. There was no such thing as a cup holder.

  Without taking his eyes from the road, he reached out and took the Guinness from her, taking a long pull before settling it between his legs. Naturally her eyes followed, and she jerked them away, determinedly staring out the window. She didn’t want to be looking at his crotch, thinking about his crotch.

  “I thought you were a dedicated believer in seat belts,” he drawled easily.

  Of course she looked back, surprised to see he was wearing his, and she hastily reached for hers. She had no choice but to tuck her bottle between her own thighs, and the icy chill of the glass was an odd stimulation,
one she had no intention of letting him see. She leaned back in her seat, took another drink, and glanced over at him. At his face, not where he’d set his bottle of beer.

  “You said you’d answer questions.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” He sounded faintly disgruntled.

  “So let’s start with the most obvious one. Exactly who and what are you?” She made it sound like he was an alien artifact or a lost species of snake, which wasn’t far from the truth.

  “I think we’d better get some ground rules established. If you think I’m going to while away the next five hours telling you the story of my life and a whole lot of the kinds of secrets I’d need to kill you for, you’re mistaken. I didn’t go this far to protect you only to have to turn around and cap you myself. I’ll give you . . . let’s say five questions, which I’ll answer to the best of my ability, as long as it won’t put you in more jeopardy.”

  She stared at him, his elegant profile so familiar and yet so different without that mop of dark hair. His short blond hair was growing out a bit, and the roots were darker, but not the mahogany shade his hair had been in Italy, and his scruffy beard was brown and flecked with bits of gray, which shocked her.

  “Exactly what color is your hair?” she demanded. “Your eyes, for that matter? Sometimes you look like a complete stranger, and other times I know you far too well.”

  “My real hair, last time I saw it, was a sandy brown and I’m not wearing contacts right now. What you see is what you get. That’s two.”

  “Two what?” Of course he’d end up having gorgeous eyes. The deep ocean blue of them was almost unbelievable, but she’d somehow known they were the real thing.

  “Two questions, Angel. You’ve got three more.”

  “That’s not fair!” she said, outraged.