Cold as Ice

by Anne Stuart

  In fact, she was starting to feel a little exposed. She crossed the room to the king-size bed and slid beneath the six hundred thread-count sheets.

  “No,” he said, and stripped the covers off, tossing them out of reach on the floor. “Lie back.”

  What would he do if she tried to run? Would he come after her, hurt her? Or even worse, would he let her go?

  She lay back against the pillows, and for once she was glad she couldn’t see that clearly. She wished she were drunk, knocked out on pills, in some kind of place and time where panic didn’t dance through her veins.

  He moved to the side of the bed, reached under the mattress and pulled out the butcher knife, laying it on the mattress beside her. “Just in case you think you need it,” he said. “Feel free to try.”

  “Is that what turns you on?” she said, unable to keep the anger from her voice.

  “Don’t be coy. You turn me on. And you know it.”

  “I could stab you.”

  “You could try. But I don’t think you’ll even remember there’s a knife within reach. I don’t think you’ll want to do anything to stop me.”

  She reached out and took the knife, wrapping her fingers around the carved wooden handle. German steel—it would slice through flesh quite easily. His beautiful, golden flesh.

  “Try me,” she said, belligerent.

  He walked over to the door, locking it, then turned to look at her from the foot of the massive bed. “I intend to.”

  She wasn’t liking this, not one bit. She felt hot and cold all over, stretched out in lingerie that was meant to entice when that was the last thing she wanted. She forced herself to watch him as he stripped off the white linen, not looking away when she wanted to. She was uncomfortable looking at naked men, particularly aroused ones—in the past she usually tried to keep her eyes averted.

  But she couldn’t this time. He was beautiful—there was no denying it, and she wondered how that would affect her. The better looking the man, the more selfish his lovemaking, or so she’d discovered in her limited experience. If that held true, then Peter Jensen was going to be the worst lover she ever had.

  “Very brave, Genevieve,” he murmured, knowing her too well. “You’d much rather be blindfolded, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not that kinky.”

  “I don’t know—you might be surprised.”

  He moved with such quick, lethal grace that she hadn’t even realized he was coming, moving over her from the bottom of the bed, one hand gripping her wrist as she clutched the knife. He stretched over her, and she could feel him touching every part of her body—heated flesh against her pounding heart, his long, bare legs against her, erection at the juncture of her thighs, hard and full against her. His face hovered over hers, his mouth too close, and he looked cool and uninvolved.

  “I thought you weren’t afraid of the knife.” She summoned up one last bit of resistance.

  “It doesn’t hurt to be careful,” he said, bringing her wrist up to his mouth, kissing it. She could have turned the knife, slashed at him—he barely seemed to be using any strength at all to control her. “But you’re not going to stab me, Genevieve. You know what you’re going to do, whether you want to or not.”

  Her grip tightened on the knife automatically, and his hand tightened as well, so that her fingers felt numb. She wasn’t going to answer him, since she had no answers.

  The bra was nothing more than bits of lace and ribbon, and he unhooked it and pulled it away, then caught the thong bikini and simply tore it, so that she was naked, exposed beneath him. “That’s better,” he murmured. “It levels the playing field.”

  She closed her eyes, terrified, and she wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t going to hurt her—she’d be less frightened if that was what she expected. She summoned one last ounce of fight. “Just get it over with,” she said. “I’m getting bored.” Her breath caught in her throat, belying her cool words, but then, she hadn’t really hoped to fool him.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. And without any warning he pulled her legs apart and pushed inside her with a suddenness that left her shocked and breathless.

  Neither of them moved for a moment. “Now, why doesn’t it surprise me that you’re wet?” he murmured, looking down at her.

  She struggled to find something, anything to say. She felt his strong hands on her legs, pulling them around his hips. She was clutching the sheet beneath her, and once he’d gotten her legs wrapped around him he prised her hands loose and placed them on his shoulders.

  “I think you’d better hold on to me, Ms. Spenser. It’s going to be quite a ride.”

  This wasn’t going to work, she thought blindly. He’d barely kissed her, hadn’t even touched her, he’d done nothing in terms of standard foreplay.

  And yet she was wet. Aroused, in a way she’d never felt before. And he hadn’t even moved.

  “Don’t look so stricken, sweetheart. You’re supposed to like it.” He pulled out, just a little, then sank back in again, a small shimmer of movement that left her gasping for breath.

  “I don’t want…” she said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  Yes, she did. He began to move, slowly, too slowly, as if the only part of him involved was what was between his legs, between hers. She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out, but he was everywhere, on top of her, beneath her, inside her.

  She told herself it didn’t matter. He was just trying to make a point, trying to strip away anything she had left, but she could fight it, fight him, fight the slow, insidious buildup of response that was shimmering through her body. She caught her breath, a hoarse gasp that seemed to draw him in deeper, and she made the terrible mistake of opening her eyes.

  He was bracing himself against the mattress, his hands on either side of her, and his icy blue eyes were open, staring down at her face with single-minded intensity as he kept up the steady, wicked rhythm, rocking, rocking, thick and full and deep.

  “Come on, Ms. Spenser,” he whispered. “Prove me wrong. You don’t want to come with me inside you—you don’t want me to have that satisfaction. You want to hold it back from me, don’t you? Prove to me what an arrogant, conceited prick I am. You can withhold this part of yourself, can’t you? You want to, don’t you?”

  How could he be doing this, with the slow, steady thrust of his cock inside her, his hands on the bed, not touching her, his voice teasing her with those soft, taunting words?

  She couldn’t answer him because she didn’t know what he was asking her, why he was baiting her.

  “Your nipples are hard, Ms. Spenser,” he whispered, “and the room is warm. Why are your nipples hard?”

  She closed her eyes again, trying to shut him out, but she slid her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, fully on top of her, body to body, not just the joining between them. He was hot, covered with a thin film of sweat, but his heartbeat was steady, unmoved.

  Things were tumbling out of control. Her body was trembling and there was nothing she could do to stop it. He’d taken over, and her body no longer belonged to her. It was his, to do with what he liked. If she relaxed, that first wash of pleasure would happen, she knew it, and he’d be satisfied and leave her alone, but she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t let go. Couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give him that victory. The tension was rippling through her, and she clutched at him in desperation, her fingernails digging in, clawing at him, fighting for something just out of reach.

  “Who’s going to win, Ms. Spenser?” he whispered in her ear. “Your body or your mind?”

  She could have answered that with no hesitation, but she’d lost her voice. He was moving faster now, and she was meeting his thrusts because she had to. His hands cupped her hips, pulling her up against him, so that he was deeper, deeper still, wet and slippery and hot and strong, and she wanted to cry out, but there was no sound, just a strangled gasp.

  “I think you want to,” he whispered, his voice soft and steady. “You’re fighting it, but you want it
. It’s only a small death—nothing permanent. Give it to me, Genevieve. Give it to me now.”

  It shouldn’t have been like that. It went through her like a bolt of lightning, an electric shock, and her body arched on the bed, her head flung back as she opened her mouth to scream.

  He slapped his hand over her face to silence her, and she was gone, lost, as her body convulsed around him, an endless surge that kept moving, renewing, drowning. She couldn’t breathe, and she bit down on his hand, hard, as her body dissolved into electric sparks that vanished in the night air, until there was nothing left at all.

  She couldn’t move. All she could do was lie there and breathe as she slowly began to drift back to this darkened bedroom, this rumpled bed, to the man on top of her, still inside her. Still hard. She blinked her eyes open, dazed.

  He was looking down at her, his blue eyes cool and assessing, and he wasn’t even breathing deeply. “Would you mind letting go of my hand?” he asked in the most polite of voices.

  Her teeth were still clenched tight on his hand. She released him, shocked that she hadn’t even realized what she was doing, shocked at the blood on his hand, the taste of his blood in her mouth.

  He slid off her, lying on his side next to her, sweaty but seemingly unmoved. “I’m sorry, I didn’t use a condom,” he said. “I usually prefer not to leave a mess behind.”

  “Given the circumstances I hardly think it matters.” Unfortunately it came out in a choked whisper, hardly the blasé tone she was searching for. That answered her question. She’d been so caught up in her own overpowering response that she wasn’t even sure he’d bothered to finish. The wetness between her legs told her that he had.

  She turned to look at him, and she put her hand on his chest, where his heart was supposed to be. Nothing but a calm, steady heartbeat. Her eyes met his, and he shrugged, and his slight smile was almost apologetic. “I warned you,” he said.

  “You did,” she agreed, staring at him. The eyes were a window to the soul, they said, but in his case no one was home.

  She managed to sit up, though she felt weak, shaky. She had to get away from him, even if it meant crawling across the floor. He’d climaxed, there was no question, but he was still hard. He hadn’t let go completely, of course he hadn’t. He’d proved his point magnificently—he could make her come and have only the mildest physical response.

  She just didn’t want him to prove it again.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” she said. He couldn’t very well object to that.

  “You can’t wash me away, Genny,” he said in a soft voice, closing his eyes. “You’ll never be able to, no matter how hard you try.”

  She didn’t answer. There was nothing she could say, when she knew he was right. Had been right about everything.

  She pulled the sheet from the pile of covers and wrapped it around her. Peter didn’t move. He must have fallen asleep, a dubious sign that he might be human after all.

  She didn’t care. She was lost, drained. There was nothing left of her but a bedraggled girl in a sheet, wandering through the darkened house at the very edge of dawn, knowing that today was a good day to die.

  She dropped the sheet by the edge of the pool and stepped into the water, feeling it wrap around her like a mother’s arms.

  And she went under, letting it close over her head.

  The girl would be dead by now, Madame Lambert thought, picking at her egg sandwich, if Peter had decided to follow his orders. It had been an ugly decision, but in the end, necessary. One of those horrible choices a commander in chief had to make for the sake of the greater good. She’d never had to make one of those decisions before, and it haunted her, when little else did.

  Maybe Peter never received her instructions. He hadn’t responded to the last transmission, though he might have been too busy. Or maybe he got the instructions and decided to disobey them. He’d never done that before—he took orders like a machine, with no sorrow or pleasure, his soul and his conscience frozen in a block of ice.

  Oh, God, she hoped so. She hoped for once Peter went with his gut rather than his orders. Isobel had no choice but to make that order. If Peter delayed, or chose not to kill the girl, there might be enough time to prove she was harmless.

  Time. They were running out of time. They had another clue to the Rule of Seven—Takashi O’Brien was in place at Harry’s main residence and managed to come up with a connection to a diamond mine in Africa that employed thousands of workers. Again, owned by Harry, and he’d made no effort to divest himself of it. If the planned explosion went through, the carnage would be hideous, and no one would think Harry had anything to do with it. He’d lose a bundle.

  So why was he doing this, if it wasn’t for money? Lust, revenge, sheer boredom? It could be all of those things. Harry was a spoiled baby who liked shiny toys and big explosions.

  And Isobel had finally found out for certain when some of those noisy explosions were scheduled to take place. April twentieth. And the knowledge chilled her to the bone.

  11

  Peter Jensen didn’t let himself sleep. That was an indulgence for the weak, something that could wait until the assignment was complete. In the meantime he could close his eyes and let the feeling of physical satisfaction drain through his body, shutting off his mind at the same time. He wasn’t the kind of man to let regrets and mistakes interfere with his life. Taking Genevieve Spenser to bed was most definitely a mistake. And he didn’t regret it for a moment.

  She’d looked so stricken. From the admittedly hurried intel he’d received on her it was a pretty sure thing that he’d just given her the best ride of her life, and instead of purring she’d looked shattered.

  He’d expected to fuck her to sleep so that he had a few hours to figure out what the hell he was going to do about her. And instead, he was the one lying in a postcoital daze, while she must be wide awake wherever she was.

  She wasn’t the best he’d ever had, far from it. He’d had sex with women trained for just such high-level work, he’d had affairs with women who loved sex and their own bodies and knew how to make the most of both. He’d had sex with women madly, desperately in love with him, and he’d even had sex with women who hated him. He wondered if Genevieve fit in that category. Probably.

  He’d even made love, long, long ago. Helena had been a frail, doe-eyed waif with the softest mouth, and he’d gotten her out of war-torn Sarajevo and fallen in love by the time they’d reached England. She’d been a sweet, generous lover and he would have died for her. And almost did.

  He was younger then, of course. And in his thirty-eight years of hard living, that was the only time he’d ever let himself be vulnerable. He still had the knife scar from when she tried to gut him. The Committee had neglected to inform him that beneath that innocent exterior was a traitor and a killer, one whose skills matched his. Almost.

  Genevieve Spenser had been angry, resentful and remarkably inexperienced, if he could trust his judgment, and he usually could. He’d planned how he was going to take her, and there were no surprises— she’d responded exactly as he meant her to. No, scratch that. There was one major surprise.

  His own response.

  He was adept at turning off any distracting thoughts, and he did so now. He couldn’t afford to be lying in bed, mooning over an uptight lawyer who was going to cease to exist for him in a few short hours.

  And she’d been gone too long. His instincts came awake, full force, and he jumped out of bed, and he felt colder than he had in his entire life.

  She was floating facedown in the pool, her long hair spread around her like a halo. A moment later he was in the pool with her, hauling her up, cursing as he pushed the hair out of her face.

  She was limp, pale, and he was so angry he shook her, hard, as he continued to curse at her. “You idiot! You fucking stupid bitch! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  She coughed, dumping water all over him, and her eyes blinked open. “Saving you the trouble,” s
he said.

  He shook her again, harder. He didn’t care if he was hurting her, didn’t care if he left bruises. His red-hot fury blinded him to everything. “Why?” he said. “So we had sex—that’s no reason to go all Ophelia on me. For Christ’s sake, Genevieve, it was just a fuck.”

  But she still had that broken look in her eyes. The eyes that had been glaring at him, defying him for the last forty-eight hours. The eyes that were now filled with tears.

  “How could you do that to me?” she whispered. “You took everything. How could you?”

  He really had no choice. He pulled her into his arms, holding her tight against his body. He’d broken her completely. It had been the smartest thing he could do, what he was best at. He should feel satisfaction. Mission accomplished. And instead, he felt as if he’d lost everything as well.

  She didn’t fight him—she had no fight left. She let him hold her, her face buried against his chest in the waist-deep water.

  “Your heart is pounding,” she whispered against his shoulder after a moment. “Why?”

  He didn’t want to think about it. He was shaking, and the air and the water were warm. “Don’t do that again,” he said in a gruff voice.

  “I’m not going to have the chance, am I?”

  He put his hand under her chin, tilting her face up to his. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers for a long moment. And then he kissed her.

  It was a far worse mistake than sex. She’d knocked his defenses sideways, and he had no protection left. He kissed her deeply, fully, holding nothing back, kissed her as if he loved her. Kissed her as he’d never kissed anyone in his life.

  If he were anything but what he was, he would have wanted to weep. As it was, he simply kissed her, her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids, her neck. And she kissed him back, clinging to him as he moved out into the deeper water, bringing her with him until they were floating in the middle of the pool. She kissed him as she felt him grow hard, threaded her hands through his long wet hair and kissed him again. Kissed him as her body floated up, her legs wrapped around him, kissed him as he brought them together.