That was thanks to Cooper. No doubt about it. It was impossible to feel fear around him. He had sat in the kitchen, silently watching her out of dark eyes, large and still, an immensely reassuring presence. It was like having a huge guard dog watching over her.
She sneaked a look at him. He was squinting against the sun, large hands easy on the wheel, the tanned skin around his eyes lined and weather beaten, the line of that angular cheekbone oddly elegant in profile. The late afternoon sun picked out silver highlights in the jet-black mane.
Well, maybe not a guard dog so much as a battle-scarred wolf.
But he was here and she felt watched over, protected by his very presence.
He felt her gaze and flicked a glance her way. She gave him a dazzling smile.
The black Blazer swerved slightly. “What?” he asked.
“Just a smile, Cooper,” Julia said, astonished at how safe and free she felt with him, as if she could do or say anything. “For no reason at all. I guess you don’t smile much, do you?”
“Nope.” But there was a half curve to his lips.
“Or talk much, either.”
“Nope.”
“That’s okay,” she said cheerfully. “I talk and smile enough for two so I guess it all evens itself out.”
Julia looked back out the window and, for the first time, allowed herself to really see the countryside. The trip to Rupert had been such a nightmare. She hadn’t seen anything at all of the landscape itself. All she had done was crouch anxiously over the steering wheel, painfully aware of the fact that the long sweeps of prairie grass afforded a potential gunman a clear view through the crosshairs of a telescopic lens. The long, lonely stretches of road through pine forest had been almost designed for ambushes.
It had been easy enough to imagine a murderer lurking behind every tree. By the time she reached Rupert, she had been bathed in sweat.
Now that she wasn’t seeing the landscape through the prism of terror, she could see that the countryside had a kind of raw, untamed splendor. A strong wind sent light fluffy clouds scurrying across the deep blue sky. The scale of the landscape was so vast she could follow the shadows of the clouds as they raced across the grass. She could even see weather coming, in the form of dark clouds gathering on the horizon.
“What are those?” Julia pointed to a stand of particularly handsome trees.
“Northern prickly ash.” Cooper slowed the Blazer down as they approached the town limits. “But its popular name is the toothache tree.”
“The toothache tree.” Julia turned the name over in her mind. “Now how do you suppose it got that name?”
“Don’t know,” Cooper mused. “Never thought about it before. Maybe the taxonomist had a toothache the day he named the tree.”
“Or else some trapper was hard up for food and boiled the bark and cracked a tooth.” Julia could imagine all too well the brutal lives of the early settlers. “Or…or someone in a surveying party had a toothache the day they discovered the tree. Wait, here’s a better one—someone had a hangover the day they discovered the tree and thought it looked like a tooth.”
Cooper pulled up in front of Julia’s house and braked to a stop. “I guess we’ll never know for sure. Here we are.”
“Well,” Julia began, “thanks for driving me—”
But Cooper was already circling the Blazer. In an instant, he was at her door with a large, outstretched hand. It was a long step down from the cabin of the vehicle and she was grateful that she wore jeans and for the support of his hand. Once down, she lifted her eyes to his and again felt like falling towards him. He was safety and excitement and a host of other feelings she couldn’t sort out. With the exception of fear. She felt no fear at all.
With a start, Julia realized that her hand was still in his. Almost reluctantly, she withdrew it.
“Would you, ahm…” Her throat was suddenly dry. “Would you like to come in for some coffee? Or try out one of the tea recipes I’ll be giving Alice?”
“Yeah.” The deep voice was soft. He answered immediately, which made her think he really did want to come inside with her, though she couldn’t tell anything by his expression. He was totally unreadable to her.
The second porch stair creaked and Julia remembered Cooper had promised to fix it. Just the fact that she knew she’d be seeing him again made her feel better.
Fred was waiting for them at the top of the steps and slithered in, wriggling with happiness when she opened the door.
Inside her shabby little living room, Julia took off her coat and turned to Cooper. He was standing just inside the door, huge and broad, watching her. He wasn’t moving, he didn’t say anything and yet her heart pounded. She was drowning in those dark, dark eyes.
Something wet touching her hand made her start. “Oh!” She looked down to see Fred licking her hand.
Cooper crouched, stretching his jeans across his thighs. He held out his hand. “Here, boy,” he murmured, and Fred limped over to him. Fred placed his muzzle on Cooper’s thigh while Cooper patted his head. When Julia found herself envying Fred because he was able to rest his head on those amazing muscles, she knew it was time for tea.
Her hands trembled as she brewed Earl Grey in a teapot, adding vanilla beans. She placed the pot, two mugs, the sugar canister and two spoons on a tea tray. The familiar routine and the fragrant fumes calmed her a little. Cooper was sitting at the small table in her living room when she walked back in.
He’d taken his jacket off. Julia could see the massive muscles of his chest and biceps through the wool of his dark gray sweater. He stood immediately when she entered the room, a gesture of courtesy that had died out back east but which still survived out here, she’d noticed. He sat down again only after she’d taken her seat.
She had to work to keep her hands steady as she poured the tea, concentrating so hard she couldn’t talk. They sipped in silence, gazes locked.
She found it impossible to make light conversation. To say anything at all.
Julia had never been so aware of absolutely everything in her environment as she was at this moment. All her senses were wide open. It had started sleeting and little needles of ice made a light pinging noise against her windowpanes. Fred had fallen deeply asleep and was dreaming of hunting conquests, limbs quivering as he yipped gently in his sleep. The tea was strong; she could taste the underlying bergamot blending with the sweet vanilla. She could hear Cooper’s breathing and her own.
She could hear her own heartbeat, thumping triple-time.
She couldn’t talk. There was a huge lump of something in her throat that choked her words. A ball of emotions burned in her chest in a painful tangle. Fear, loneliness, despair. A desire so intense it blazed hot and strong throughout her body. She felt all of them. All of them hurt.
Cooper drained his cup and stood. He was leaving.
Julia panicked.
Suddenly she knew that she couldn’t spend the night alone, shaking and lost, huddled in on herself for comfort in the dark. Simply couldn’t. She needed Cooper like she needed air and sunlight. She had no idea whether she needed him for sex or to keep the deep lonely darkness of the night at bay, or a combination of both. She only knew she couldn’t be alone tonight and the only person she wanted was Cooper, no one else.
He was standing, looking down at her, unmoving, one big hand flat on the table.
Julia placed her hand over his. It flexed once, strongly, under hers, then stilled. His hand was warm, hard, powerful. Her eyes met his, sky to night.
“Please stay,” she whispered.
Chapter Six
There is a man in Norway. The professional liked to imagine him as a little gray man in a little gray room, hunched over a little gray laptop, but the truth was, the professional had no inkling what the man looked like. No one knew what he looked like.
It was enough to know, as a choice few scattered throughout the world did, that the man in Norway had a service to offer. For a reasonable fee, the Norwegian
would route any message, anonymity guaranteed. No one would ever, ever be able to trace the message back, either way.
The professional picked up the printout of the file hacked from the U.S. Marshal’s office and looked at the first name that had come up: Richard M. Abt. Quickly, the professional scanned over the bare facts of the case and easily reconstructed the story.
Richard M. Abt, had been chief accountant for RRT Accountancy Corp, a group of upscale CPAs who just happened to front for the mob, Richard Abt’s fingerprints all over the illegalities. The FBI investigation, the arrest. It was all there. The professional understood quite well what had happened. It was clear that Richard Abt had been set up as a fall guy, looking at ten to twenty with no parole in the ultimate gated community—prison. Then last July, Richard Abt turned into a canary and sang a lovely, lovely tune, a siren song guaranteed to put the senior partners of RRT behind bars for life. No doubt those senior partners would be willing to pay good money to stop the canary from singing in court.
It was two o’clock in the morning in Norway, but as far as the professional could tell, the Norwegian never slept.
The professional typed out the message to the main partner, via the Norwegian: MESSAGE TO SIMON LEDBETTER, RRT. INFORMATION RE LOCATION AND NEW IDENTITY OF RICHARD ABT AVAILABLE UPON RECEIPT OF NOTIFICATION OF DEPOSIT OF FORTY THOUSAND US DOLLARS IN ACCOUNT N° GHQ 115 Y BANQUE POPULAIRE SUISSE GENEVA HEAD OFFICE. HIT MUST LOOK LIKE ACCIDENT. And sat back to enjoy some smoked breast of pheasant and put on a CD of La Bohème.
Luciano Pavarotti’s Rodolfo was to die for.
Stay.
Cooper had big hands, strong hands. Hands that could field strip an M16 in seven seconds, hands that could subdue an unbroken stallion, hands that could lift a 300-pound bale of hay. Sally Andersen’s pale delicate hand was almost half the size of his. Her hand couldn’t match his in strength in any way.
And yet, when she placed her hand over his, it was as if she’d driven a stake through it, spearing him in place. He couldn’t move if his life depended on it.
As it had been the day before, her small hand was icy cold and trembled faintly.
He could understand the trembling because he felt shaky himself, but he wasn’t icy cold. He was boiling hot.
All the sexual desire he hadn’t felt in two years was geysering up in one huge flood of heat and sex. Every single cell of his body was swollen with hot, slick lust. His hard-on felt ten times bigger than it usually did. It pulsed painfully against his jeans.
She looked up at him anxiously, obviously feeling she’d done something overly bold, wondering if he was going to refuse.
No. No, he wasn’t going to refuse her.
There was no power on earth strong enough to peel him away from her now.
Slowly, mindful of the massive hard-on that made moving painful, Cooper hunkered down until he was crouching in front of Sally, at eye level. Her eyes were amazing. Close-up, the irises were a stunning mixture of blues and greens that, at a distance, became turquoise. They were filled with anxiety, which he hated.
She withdrew her hand from his but he didn’t dare touch her. Not yet, not while he had such a tenuous hold on his control. He gripped the corner of her chair with one hand and the edge of the table with the other. She was trapped between the table and him, in his embrace, though he wasn’t touching her.
They watched each other in silence, Cooper trying to keep his breathing under control. He didn’t know what moves he could make, what words he could say. So he remained immobile and silent. Sally’s gaze dropped to his clenched hands. Her eyes widened when she saw the tight grip, the white knuckles, the effort he was making to keep his hands off her. Her gaze traveled upward, and stopped at his mouth.
A sign. Finally.
Cooper moved forward slowly, oh so slowly, and touched his mouth to hers. They both exhaled shakily.
Sally’s mouth was everything he thought it would be. Soft, gentle, exciting as hell. Cooper’s neck muscles ached with the effort of not pushing forward, not eating at her mouth, biting her.
He wanted his tongue in her, in that soft mouth. He wanted his cock there, too, but now wasn’t the time to be thinking of that. He was way too excited as it was.
Cooper opened his mouth, just a little, heart pounding when she opened hers, too. He slanted his head for a better fit, licking the inside of her lower lip, angling his head again for a better, deeper taste of her. He nearly came in his pants when her tongue met his, shyly.
This was not going to turn out well when a simple kiss was turning him on so much he could hardly breathe. His hand gripped the chair harder as he opened his mouth over hers, tongue exploring. She tasted as wonderful as he imagined, her taste slightly sweet, either from the sugar in the tea or some innate Sally-like quality of sweetness.
Cooper released the edge of the table. Slowly, as if he were pushing his hand against a rushing powerful stream of water, he brought his hand to Sally’s neck. Still kissing her, he ran the back of his forefinger along the soft skin of her neck, tracing the delicate line of her collarbone.
Sally’s mouth softened at his touch and he nearly lost it, right there. She was so responsive he could feel her reaction to his touch in her mouth.
Touching her in two points was too much for him to take right now. His mouth lifted from hers. It took Sally a few seconds to register the loss of the kiss. Her eyes were still closed, mouth wet and slightly open. There was a slight rosy cast to the ivory and cream tones of her face. Her eyes fluttered open. They searched his, looking for something in his face. Something he didn’t know how to give.
“Cooper?” she whispered.
He couldn’t answer. His throat was closed tight, there was an iron band around his chest. He made a noise deep in his chest and even he didn’t know what it meant. Every muscle he had was tight with sexual tension. He felt exactly like Grayhawk must have felt, with the smell of Leyla in his nostrils and every instinct screaming to get at her quickly and having a wooden wall in the way.
The wooden wall was the near-violence of his desire. Cooper was going to hurt this beautiful woman if he wasn’t careful. He’d never in his life wanted to be as gentle as he wanted to be now, with Sally Andersen. He’d never in his life felt this bloodlust before, raging hot and nearly out of control. If he hurt her, in any way, he’d never forgive himself.
Carefully, Cooper opened his hand to cup it around her neck. The skin was soft, softer than the finest silk. He had rough, callused hands and almost expected the skin of his hands to catch on her skin, as it would on a fine material. He ran his hand up until his fingers caught in her short brown hair, feeling the delicate structure of her skull.
It was, perhaps, a good thing Sally wasn’t a redhead. He loved red hair; it had always turned him on. Everything about her pleased him so much, if she had red hair, he’d probably come in his jeans.
Watching her eyes, Cooper ran his open hand back down, over the fragile bones of her shoulder, then around to the buttons of her sweater. It took every ounce of willpower not to rip her sweater open.
He could do it, too. She’d let him. He could see that in her eyes. She was a little hesitant, a little shy but she definitely wanted him.
She might even find it exciting if he ripped her clothes off. But if he started ripping, he’d tear a huge hole in his shaky self-control and the lust would come gushing out, like water punching through a cracked dam.
He wouldn’t stop at ripping her sweater and bra and jeans and panties off. No, once he started down that slippery road and allowed instincts to swamp the tight clamp he held on himself, he’d simply drag her to the floor, open her with his fingers and shove his cock in, whether she was ready or not. Hold her legs so far apart she couldn’t move. Start fucking her hard, pounding into her, grinding her into the floor…
She wasn’t ready for a fast and furious fucking, might not ever be ready for that. Cooper would take whatever it was she was willing to give, but she had to give it willingly, whe
n she was ready.
So instead of ripping her clothes to shreds, throwing her on the floor and mounting her, Cooper ran his forefinger around the neck of the sweater and fingered the top little pearl button, watching Sally carefully. Her expression didn’t change. He slowly undid the button, his big hand a little clumsy.
When it opened, revealing an inch of creamy skin, her face relaxed. If he hadn’t been watching so carefully he might not have seen it. It wasn’t a smile; it was more subtle than that. Her tension dissipated a fraction, just enough to let him know they were moving in a direction she recognized. And welcomed.
At the animal level, Sally had sensed how violent his desire was. She could see the tension of his muscles, how tightly he held her chair. She was like a filly prancing with unease while the stallion approached. Fillies knew that the mating would be wild, furious, brutal. And somehow Sally knew her own coupling with him could turn brutal, too.
The first steps towards sex—the restrained kiss and the slow opening of the button of her sweater—showed her that she could, after all, expect some control from him.
Fuck, he hoped she was right.
Another button. Another and another. Cooper’s trembling hand started to fumble. Luckily there were only six buttons in all. Sally’s expression became more welcoming with each button coming undone. When he carefully opened the sweater and slid it off her shoulders, she let her breath out on a sigh.
Her white bra had a front catch, which Cooper was grateful for. If he had had to put his arms around her to undo her bra at the back, it might have set him off. Sally dropped her arms and the bra fell, caught against chair back, on top of the sweater. She was naked from the waist up.
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