She’d felt nothing but fear for so long, curled up like a seed in a pod. His touch made everything inside explode outward in a wild riot of color, scent, sensation.
Dangerous. Of course. This man was a luxury that she could not afford, and there would be a reckoning. Yes. Yes, she knew that. Fuck it. The knowing was just a shrill yapping in the back of her head. What was happening was all that mattered.
His arms were steely hard. His erection prodded her belly, made her ache and squirm, thighs squeezing around the hot, surprised glow. Shivering waves of tension convulsed and released, each new almost-orgasm blooming from the one before, each new one deeper. Noah Gallagher was a vast, undiscovered realm, and she wanted to discover him, all of him. To lose herself and stay lost. Seeing him and being seen. Tasting him and being tasted.
Their hands were all over each other. His grip was so warm and strong, gripping and caressing. Hers skittered, frustrated by that damn tailored jacket, trying to dig into the thick muscles of his massive shoulders. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, showing her how wonderful his sensual mastery was going to feel when he entered her.
He lifted his mouth, slowly. The tiny, liquid pop that their mouths made as they disengaged made Caro’s eyes flutter open. She was lost instantly, hypnotized by those bright, astonishing eyes that seemed to see all the way into forever.
He spun her around, so that her back was pressed to his front. She felt disoriented until he lifted the weight of her hair and pressed his lips against the side of her neck, and started systematically unraveling her with his slow, dragging kisses, his breath so hot, his teeth gently nipping each and every exquisitely sensitive nerve ending.
His hand slipped inside her belt. Her jeans were very loose, since chronic fear was as much of an appetite killer as her current grocery budget. He caressed her belly, her hip, kissing and nibbling her neck as his hand moved over her mound, his long fingers pressing the springy curls beneath her nylon panties.
He made a low, inquisitive sound, giving her throat velvety, questioning kisses. Wordlessly asking permission to go further, with each touch, everywhere he touched. In no hurry at all. Patiently waiting for a sign. She wanted to give him one, desperately, but her voice was locked in place. Like her muscles, jammed and frozen.
“Can I?” His low voice rumbled in her ear as startled pleasure rippled down her entire body, right down to her fingers and toes.
She nodded, and clung to his thick forearm pressed against her belly, moaning inaudibly as his hand teased beneath the waistband of her panties and then lower, where she was damp and hot. His fingertips slid slowly around the bud of her clitoris until she began to shake with excitement.
He just kept at it, lazy and languorous, as if he would be happy to spend the rest of his life making slow, sweet love to the nape of her neck while petting her into an erotic frenzy. Sweet torment: his melting kiss, the sure touch of his hand. He leaned back against his desk and perched her against his thigh so that he could slide his finger deeper inside her, and found her swollen and slick. She clenched his finger eagerly at each gentle intrusion. Every caress took her higher. Made her want him more.
His erection prodded her ass, his teeth grazed the curve of her neck. She worked herself against him with sobbing gasps, taking his hand into her as deeply as they both wanted it to go.
Explosive waves wrenched her. She wailed and shook, but he held her together with unwavering, implacable strength.
Caro just floated for a little while, unmoored. Forgetting who or where she was. Blushing pink and shy with nameless emotions. Glowing echoes of delight still throbbed through her body.
He turned her, shifting her to face him and settled her on his desk. It all rushed back to her, with a cold thud. Who she was. What was at stake. How crazy this was.
He pressed her gently down, flat onto her back against the cool, gleaming expanse of fine wood. He was backlit by the glittering city lights outside the huge windows again, a dark silhouette looming over her as he pushed her legs wider and pressed the bulge of his groin against the crotch of her jeans. He pushed her shirt up high, stroking up her belly, her breasts. And more.
Even through the layers of cloth that separated them, he got the pressure against her labia just right. Not too hard . . . around and around . . . a well timed, rocking shove . . . and oh. Oh.
His hips surged against her as if he were inside her. Still in that suit and tie, for God’s sake. Perfectly composed and put together as he slowly, skillfully dry-humped her to molten bliss. She felt so exposed, her back arched and legs spread, the bared skin of her belly and breasts goosebumped in the cool air.
He made a low, feral sound in his throat. “You want to come like this?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, yes. Please. Please.”
“Then come,” he insisted. “Come now. Give it to me.”
Whatever she was going to say lost itself in the rising surge of terrifying pleasure. It crested, broke, and thundered through her once again. Shattering her.
She came back from that one to find him collapsed over her. His breath was ragged and hot against her chest. He cupped her breasts, kissing between them as his fingertips circled over her hyperstimulated flesh. His erection was still pressed against her labia. She could felt his heartbeat in that hot bulge, quick and strong.
She felt so soft now. Like a faint, golden mist.
Caro shifted her hips to wrap her legs around his waist and reached to touch his cheek. She felt it all so keenly. The damp sheen on his hot, supple skin, the fine rasp of beard stubble, the sculpted angles of his cheekbone and jaw. She sensed his unfulfilled need, straining to be released, but he held it in fierce check.
He pressed her fingers to his lips. “God,” he murmured. “That was amazing.”
She couldn’t reply for a minute. The wires weren’t connected. When she she found her voice again, she whispered. “You. The amazing part is you.”
“This is the thing,” he said. “I want you so bad, but I don’t have condoms here. I don’t carry them around with me and I never assumed that I’d get lucky enough to end up in this situation tonight. With you.”
She licked her dry lips. “Um. I don’t have one, either.”
Noah sagged over her, gave a sharp sigh. “Ah. OK. Let me make you come again, at least. Here, at home, in the car, wherever, however you want. Say the word.”
She cradled his head against her chest, feeling his sweat on her fingertips. It was true. He would just keep at it, making her come until she totally melted, and just wait for his own satisfaction indefinitely. Until she demanded that he take it.
“I want to go down on you,” he coaxed. “Let me get those jeans off you.”
She stroked his hair, soothing the rigid tension in his shoulders. He’d just driven her to a blinding orgasm twice, in minutes. An orgasm that redefined for her what an orgasm was. With her luck, it might never happen again. She intended to make the most of this.
“I think I could relax a little more if we were someplace private,” she said shyly. “It’s weird, having your admin staff right outside the door.”
“Fine.” He lifted himself up, and grabbed the phone as she adjusted her clothing. “Harriet? Yes, we’re all done here. You, Karen and Aurelia can all go. I appreciate you staying so late. Don’t forget to put in for overtime. Stanley’s waiting downstairs for you, and . . . . yes, thanks very much. Say hi to Philip for me.” He set down the phone. “Our chaperones are leaving.”
Caro’s face heated as she slid off the desk. “Do you think they heard?”
“No. I had the room soundproofed a while ago. For corporate security,” he added when she looked at him sideways. “Not for this.”
She burst into laughter. “So what was the point of chaperones in the first place?”
“Hey. Give me credit for going through the motions.” He retrieved her coat from the floor, and held it up, feeling the layered hump of foam padding sewn into it. “Looks very natural,” he comm
ented. “Professional work.”
“No questions,” she reminded him swiftly.
“Right.” He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a small bottle that contained contact lenses. In a few practiced moves, he’d applied them. He shrugged on a coat, slid his dark glasses into the pocket, and picked up her duffel bag. “Shall we?”
Sure enough, the luminous gold glints of his eyes were gone, transformed into inky darkness. She shook herself out of her fascinated trance. “One moment, please.”
She twisted up her loosened hair and tugged her wig on over it. Jammed the wide-brimmed hat over the top. Then the jaw-changing thing for her mouth. Pop, suck, and it was in. Then the glasses. Done.
They were both wearing their respective armor now.
He scrutinized her. “Are you trying to beat facial recog bots?” he asked. “I could give you pointers on how to do it better.”
“Don’t get tricky with me,” she warned. “The rules are the rules.”
“I’ll be good,” he said easily.
“You saw through my outfit this afternoon,” she said. “How did you do that?”
“Any kind of disguise jumps out at me. You know those online ads with GIFs that jiggle? Disguises look like that to me. But your camouflauge is pretty effective, all in all. Inappropriate for this context, but good in theory.”
Great. She’d managed to get herself seduced by the guy with X-ray eyes.
They walked through the deserted offices, and waited for the elevator. She kept her gaze down, partly because of the security cameras, but mostly out of embarrassment.
The silent walk out to the parking garage felt so purposeful, so deliberate. Never in her life had she gone after sex so shamelessly. Just met a guy, and decided to do the deed. That had always happened in the context of a relationship. One that she could fool herself into thinking had a chance to go somewhere.
They never did, of course. Sooner or later, she managed to scare any would-be boyfriend away. She eventually got blindsided by a stress-induced vision, and could never hide her reaction fast enough. It freaked them out. Invariably.
She hoped she could manage not to scare this guy away, at least not tonight. Not until she had gotten herself a nice stiff dose of his sexy magic. Something suggested to her that he was way different from any of the other guys she’d been with.
It was ironic, that this relationship had no place to go at all.
She’d blocked all the exits herself.
* * *
Mark stared down at the GodsEye safe that Lydia had failed to open for him. It was squat and ugly. He’d even say it looked smug, sitting on the floor. Taunting him.
He mentally reviewed every word of the conversation he’d had with. Masks, the general said. Caroline invited him to an art show that featured masks. It made sense. She was a rabbit, a coward. She needed a mask to cringe behind.
Masks. To find something hidden, all one needed was the right filter.
Mark adjusted the light on his monitor. It would look like a dead screen to an unmod, but anything brighter than near black and his AVP would zap him into a fugue state.
He’d woken to some gory messes after fugue freak-outs, but he’d gotten expert at cleaning up after himself. Mayhem drained excess toxic energy. It allowed him to masquerade as a normal member of society. When he bothered to.
He took off his glasses and peeled off his shirt, to mitigate the AVP temperature spike. He popped out his shield lenses. Naked eyes were better for digital info dumps. Worth the nervous jitters that followed. It wasn’t as if he slept, anyway.
He logged into Caroline’s Facebook page, though there wasn’t much point in it. She hadn’t posted since she disappeared eight months ago, but he still periodically prowled her feeds. Mostly posts from her nothing friends’ pathetic lives.
Checking her page was a ritual. Mark liked rituals. They soothed the screaming inside his brain.
Noah had lectured them ad nauseam about stress flashback management. Know-it-all prick. He’d busted them out of that place, so he thought he owned their asses.
Yessir nossir anything you say sir Captain Gallagher, hup hup! Be good soldiers, now, and never use your powers against the unmods because of ethics and morals and blah blah blah di-fucking-blah! Right.
Noah’s AVP management techniques had never worked for Mark. He couldn’t stand being motionless, concentrating on the inside of his own head. Slow death by boredom. He’d been tortured enough already, at Midlands. Fuck that shit.
Rebellion day had taught him all he needed to know about AVP management. That day had been a mind-opening crash course. Killing those researchers had helped him like nothing else possibly could. Struggle. Blood. Death. Yes.
Afterwards, in hiding with Noah’s group, he’d begun to slip out alone, hunting for what he needed to calm the constant inner screaming. And he had found it.
He’d been careful. Restrained. He’d picked only lost, wrecked people. Ones that no one would miss. He’d used his AVP to clean up the scenes. The cops never had a clue, but Noah . . . he could read a sig like no one else. Noah had been on to him.
After a few moments of staring at Caroline’s boring feed, Mark stopped and scrolled back, nerves tingling.
Caroline was tagged in a photo posted by a dark-haired, toothy woman named Gina Minafra. In the photo, the two women held up masks of dragon’s heads. The text read, A blast from the past! Caroline’s magic, from the summer stock production of The Littlest Dragon!
Masks. Theater. The filter was getting more specific.
Mark set the machine to search for images of masks in recent theatrical productions, and dove back into the data stream. It scrolled on the screen in a blur, over fifty images per second. After a while, he saw it.
Stop. He stopped, worked backwards until he found it again. Not a mask. A costume, of a night moth. Blue-black stretch velvet over a wire frame, ragged edges fluttering. A muscular black girl wore the wings over a black leotard. She was leaping as if she were taking flight. Those wings had Caroline written all over them.
He’d seen enough of her stuff to know her tics, her obsessions. Her so-called “art” was worthless crap made of paper or cloth, wire hangers, pipe-cleaners, chicken-wire. It was full of elements that fluttered and bobbed and swung. Mismatched colors, recycled materials. Her pieces looked like they had been cobbled from repurposed garbage. They bothered him on a visceral level. He wanted to sweep them off his field of vision.
He compared Caroline’s eccentricities with the moth costume the way that a criminologist would compare fingerprints, point for point. After fifteen seconds he was convinced that Caroline had designed it.
The website was of a community youth theater group in Seattle, the Mean Streets Players, doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The moth was Titania, Queen of the Fairies. He scrolled around until he could find a clickable playbill with credits. There it was. Costumes by Bounce Entertainment.
Bingo.
In Bounce’s online inventory, dozens more pieces bore Caroline’s distinctive stamp. Productions of Beauty and the Beast and Thumbelina. The Blue Feather Playhouse’s interpretation of The Tempest. The Bremen Town Musicians, again by the Mean Streets Players.
Mark studied the owner’s smiling headshot. Gareth Wickham. The name sounded kind of fake. He looked fake, too, like a soap opera heartthrob. There was a landline and a cell number. It was after business hours, so he dialed the cell phone.
Wickham picked up promptly. “This is Gareth Wickham.” A crisp, professional male voice. Young, artsy, gay.
Mark instantly manufactured his own young, artsy gay persona. “Hi! My name is Rob Vasquez, from the Vermilion Players in New York City? I’m producing a dance piece? And I saw images of masks that your designers at Bounce created for Beauty and the Beast and The Bremen Town Musicians. It’s just beautiful work!”
“Glad you liked it,” Gareth said. “What can I do for you, Mr. Vasquez?”
“Please, call me Rob. I was wond
ering if you could hook me up with that designer. I loved Titania’s moth wings. Our director is looking for that ethereal quality. Those wings were built by the same designer who did the Bremen Town and the Beauty and the Beast masks, right?”
“Ah . . . uh . . .” The guy stammered. “I, um . . . well, we all worked on those.”
Mark smiled thinly. What a moron. “But who designed the basic concept? The style is sooo distinctive!”
“Actually, those costumes were a ragbag collection of stuff we had in stock,” Gareth’s voice gained strength as he figured out his response on the fly. “Mean Streets has a shoestring budget, and they couldn’t afford custom designed—”
“Could you put me in touch with the designer? I’d love to talk to him. Or her.”
Gareth hesitated a beat too long. “I don’t appreciate people poaching my staff.”
“Oh, no!” Mark injected mortified distress into his voice. “I’m sorry if I gave that impression! I certainly didn’t mean to—”
“Leave your name and number—no, better yet, go to the website form, and do it via email. Tell us what you want and when you need it. We’ll send you a quote.”
“But—”
The line went dead. That prick. No one spoke to Mark Olund like that.
He turned back to the computer screen, and dove deep into the data banks again, until he had gleaned Gareth Wickham’s home address. He was going to get a surprise visit sometime tonight, from a fast-assembled team of serious thugs.
Nighty-night, motherfucker.
Chapter 9
Noah wanted to take her arm as they walked, but didn’t dare touch her. As wound up as he was, he’d end up bending her over the hood of someone’s car.
The contact lenses and shield specs should have blocked enough of the light to zero out his AVP under normal conditions, but proximity to this woman did not constitute normal conditions. His AVP was revved. Data scrolled in a constant stream down both sides of his inner field of vision. He processed it all, crunching numbers, taking measurements, running probabilities. None particularly relevant to the situation.
Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1) Page 9