She felt his large hand brushing over her tangled hair, the tickle of his breath over her bare shoulder as he sighed and then nothing more as sleep claimed her.
Chapter Eleven
It was barely dawn when John awoke. He was a soldier and was used to waking up instantly alert. They used to practice it—he’d keep his men sleep-deprived for days, then test marksmanship a few minutes after waking them up, minutes into REM sleep. John himself didn’t have problems. He was good at that, good at being able to focus instantly on the new day.
Now, though his mind was alert, his body foolishly wanted to simply stay in bed, curled around Suzanne’s back.
She didn’t move when she slept. He couldn’t hear her breathing but he could feel it, one hand curled around her rib cage, fingers just brushing the soft underside of her breast. She was impossibly soft and delicate, almost too much so, for the use he’d made of her through the night. His cock stirred at the memory and he pulled her even closer, burying his face against the delicate skin of her neck. His beard rasped against that pale, fragile skin and he pulled back. He didn’t want to give her whisker burn.
He lay still, savoring the moment. That, too, was a soldier’s trick. In the field, any moment could be your last. Your senses opened, each sight, sound, taste, smell razor-sharp and intense.
This wasn’t a firebase, but danger still threatened. Which is why, though he’d rather just lie here forever, curled around Suzanne, he had to get up. Contact Bud to see if there had been any developments. Check the perimeter. Get his men in on the investigation.
Pete and Les wouldn’t be as hampered as Bud in getting info. Bud had to obey the law. Pete and Les had to obey him and he was a hell of a lot more demanding than the law. Particularly when it came to protecting Suzanne Barron.
Detaching himself from Suzanne proved harder than he thought. His hands simply didn’t want to leave her. He usually rolled out of bed two seconds after waking up, but now he simply lay there, stroking her skin, smelling her hair, feeling her warmth.
Finally, when the sky started turning pink outside the window, he forced himself out of the bed. Padding naked into the bathroom, he wet a washcloth with warm water and walked back to the bed. He stood for a moment, looking down.
There were smudges under her eyes, half-hidden by the long, lush eyelashes and a few bruises on her hips he’d given her toward the end. At some level, he knew he shouldn’t have used her as much and as hard as he had. He couldn’t regret it, however. If someone had put an AK-47 to his head last night, he would have been totally incapable of stopping.
He bent down and rolled her carefully onto her back. She was so exhausted she didn’t wake up.
He gently cleaned her between the legs. He’d come three times in her and she was sticky. He wiped her carefully, trying hard not to wake her up.
This is something he should have done last night, but he’d been too wiped out to do anything but collapse on top of her and fall into a sleep so deep it felt like a coma.
She was so beautiful, even here. The folds of her sex were soft, the palest pink, surrounded by ash-brown pubic hairs interspersed with gold. His breathing sped up as he imagined kissing her there, licking her, sucking the little clitoris he could see when he opened her a up a bit with two fingers.
Such mysterious folds of flesh, so simple and yet the source of such mind-blowing delight. He wanted to sink to his knees and bury his face between her thighs. He wanted to lick her until she shook with the force of her orgasm, as she’d done last night. God, it had been so exciting to feel her pulling on his cock with her cunt while she came, shuddering…
He had a hard-on. Again. If he followed his instincts, he’d slip back into bed with her, mount her, pull her legs apart and start moving the instant he entered her. With any other woman, he would have. He’d never, ever pulled his punches with women. They knew right upfront what to expect.
He made sure the women he had realized he had a strong sex drive and that they were going to be used hard. If that’s what they wanted, fine. If not, there were plenty of other women around.
They knew what they were in for and he hadn’t had many complaints. So if this hadn’t been Suzanne, he’d be in her right now, watching her wake up to the feel of his cock moving in her.
But this was Suzanne. He wasn’t too sure what made her different from the others, but there it was—she was different.
She was tired and needed her sleep, and that took absolute precedence over his iron-hard cock. He pulled the covers up over her, watched her for another moment, easing a pale curl away from her eyes with a movement, which became a caress, then forced himself away.
A quick shower, shave and cup of coffee later, and he was in his underground lair.
Bud wasn’t going to dance with joy at being woken up this early, but tough shit.
“Morrison.” Bud’s voice was annoyed but alert.
“John here. What have you got for me?” The long silence had John sitting up straight. “What?”
“You’re not going to like it, Midnight.”
“There are a lot of things I don’t like about the situation. So spill.”
“Suzanne worked off and on with another decorator, a guy called Todd Armstrong. And before you go off the deep end, he was gay. Nice guy, though. Smart. I met him a few times. He was fun.”
There was a bad feeling in the pit of John’s stomach. “Was?”
Bud sighed. “Yeah. Guy was wasted. Portland PD found his body about six hours ago. He’d been tortured, Midnight. It wasn’t pretty.”
Every signal John’s body could send was in overdrive. The hairs on his forearms were standing straight up. Bud was right. This was bad.
Bud’s lover, Suzanne’s girlfriend—what was her name?…Claire. That was it. “You’d better watch out for Claire, then,” John said. “It looks like everyone around Suzanne is getting wasted.”
“Done. I’ve got people watching Claire 24/7 and she’s not a happy camper.”
“Tough.” Like Bud, John had no trouble at all prioritizing. Bud’s girlfriend might not be thrilled at the prospect of being restricted in her movements, but her safety came first. Second and third, too. Bud knew that and had taken steps to make sure she’d live. Anything else was bullshit. “What about Suzanne’s parents?”
“I’m on it. They live in Baja California. I’ve contacted the Mexican police and they’ve posted discreet guards.”
“Okay.” John grappled with the size of the threat against Suzanne. If Bud had called in the Mexican police, he was scared. “What have we got to go on here?”
“Damn all.” Bud’s voice was ripe with frustration. “Everything’s a dead end. We’ve got the name of both shooters, but there must have been a cutout, because there’s no paper trail. No unusual payments in their bank account, no unusual prints in their apartment, no phone records, nothing. Nada. Zip.”
“The money’s in the Caymans. Or in Liechtenstein,” John said. “And long gone. You’re playing with your own dick.”
“Yeah, well if I am, I’m not having any fun. Goddamn it, we need to know what’s going on. Pump Suzanne, Midnight. Find out what it is that she knows, or what it is that she’s got, which is dangerous enough to kill for. And do it fast. Claire’s involved and I’m not having her exposed to danger. So find out what she knows, or I’ll have your ass in a sling.”
John could hear the ripe fear for Claire behind Bud’s hard words, otherwise he would have handed Bud his head on a stick. It wasn’t something he’d have understood a week ago, but now he did. Anything that threatened his woman was guaranteed to drive him crazy.
“Okay. I’ll be in touch.” John thumbed the off button on his cell and sat back, thinking.
This was a mission. He could do missions—he’d done them all his life. So why was this creating a problem for him?
Because it was Suzanne.
Because he couldn’t think straight around her. It wasn’t just a question of thinking with his cock,
though of course there was that. He couldn’t keep his hands off the woman but it was more than that.
Fear for her skewed his thinking processes, threw him completely off-kilter. Worse, off-mission. How could he think straight when the thought of anything happening to her had his heart pounding and provoked that swooping feeling of a mortar round exploding ten feet away?
He called Pete and pulled his men off all current cases. From this moment on, his team had to be as concentrated as a laser on Suzanne Barron. By nightfall, John knew they’d have everything that could be known about her, including her high school grades, spending patterns and menstrual cycle.
Today he needed to grill her. He’d avoided it, putting it off, distracted by the sex. He couldn’t afford that now, he thought as he headed upstairs.
But first, he needed to feed her. She hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. Though he was a lousy cook, he did keep some supplies on hand. Coffee, eggs, vacuum-packed bacon, bread. Once she’d eaten, they’d talk.
As always, it felt good to have a plan, even a half-assed one. He had bread in the toaster, eggs in a bowl and the coffee maker on when he placed the bacon in the pan. It spat, little pinpricks of fire on his chest and arms.
“Son of a bitch!” He scrambled for something to cover the pan with.
“That’s why women wear aprons,” a soft, amused voice said from behind him. “I wouldn’t advise cooking bacon bare-chested.”
He spun around, ignoring the flying grease. She was standing in the doorway. In a blue nightgown this time, a twin to the one he’d ripped. She’d showered. He could smell her across the room, over the bacon and the toast…the charred toast—shit! He burned his fingers digging the slices out of the toaster.
All the while he watched her carefully. He’d used her pretty hard last night. He hadn’t been able to control himself at the end. He had no idea what her reaction this morning would be.
But she was smiling at him, crossing the room bare-footed, brushing by him and making every hormone in his body stand up and clamor for more of what he’d had all night.
“I guess that’s not a gun and that you’re really glad to see me.”
He didn’t have to guess at what she meant. His cock did what it usually did when it saw her. Or smelled her. Or thought of her. He swelled as he watched her.
She reached across and turned down the heat. The bacon stopped spitting and settled down to cooking. She turned, humming softly, to his cabinets.
Some feminine magic led her unerringly to where he kept the plates. It was amazing. She’d never been here before and yet she moved around the little kitchenette as if she lived here. A few minutes later the table was set.
Actually set. As properly as his equipment would allow.
He usually ate over the sink. But she tore off paper towels to make mats, put the silverware on either side of the plates and placed two mugs carefully on the right hand side of each plate. She even put platters out for the bacon and the toast and the eggs. Amazing.
Sex wasn’t going to happen right now. That was okay, because they needed to talk, but his cock wasn’t too convinced. Under the table, it stayed hard and aching. He ignored it because he had to.
He poured her coffee while she filled his plate. He was starved. She must have been, too, though she managed to eat daintily.
His teeth crunched on something. “Some egg shell got into the scrambled eggs,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”
“Yes,” she said serenely, forking another clump of eggs onto his plate and then hers. “And you oversalted the eggs and burned the toast. But you’re forgiven. Have we exhausted the food supplies?”
“Pretty much. We’ll have to make a food run into Fork in the Road some time today.”
She considered him, head to one side, silver eyes observing him soberly, and then nodded. “Okay. I need to buy some stuff anyway.”
Female stuff, he’d bet. She could buy whatever she wanted as long as he didn’t have to know about it. If it was female stuff, he didn’t want to go there.
Suzanne pushed her plate to one side and leaned forward, searching his eyes. “So. Tell me the truth, John. I need to know. For my peace of mind, if nothing else. How long are we going to have to stay here?”
“As long as it takes,” he answered bluntly. He debated, briefly, telling her about Todd Armstrong, then decided against it. She had a right to know, and she’d be angry later. But now it was his call and he decided not to overwhelm her. He needed her to think straight and she wasn’t going to do that knowing a friend was dead, because of her. “We’re going to have to figure out what’s going on, honey. As long as we’re in the dark, we’re vulnerable. I need to ask you some questions.”
She nodded, poured herself another cup of coffee and folded her hands on the table. “Go ahead and ask.” She looked at him and waited.
John didn’t try to soften his words or pussyfoot around it. “Two men were sent to kill you. Do you have any idea why?”
She was still a long moment, and then shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. I’ve thought and thought and thought, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt me.”
“Okay. Let’s take it step by step. Let’s start with your job. What is it exactly that you do?”
She sighed. “I guess the easiest way to describe what I do is that I design spaces, both public and private. Not everyone has the time or inclination to decorate their office or home, so they call in a specialist. Me. I’ll visit the space to be decorated, come up with two or three alternatives and the client chooses which alternative he or she wants. Sometimes it’s an individual and sometimes it’s a committee. Then I arrange for the purchase of the furniture and with the help of a moving company, I’m there to set everything up.”
“Who are your clients?”
“Mainly people in the business community. Some private clients. I’ve helped in the design of three shops—two boutiques and a bookstore—and a couple of museums, too. It’s really tame stuff.”
John walked her through her clients over the past year, grilling her on every aspect of her job. She’d never worked for government agencies or for public procurement companies or defense manufacturers. Not even a software company. She wasn’t privy to any industrial secrets. She earned well but not spectacularly well. She had a small nest egg in the bank, but nothing that was worth killing for. John earned more than that per job. She’d built her business slowly, through word of mouth. Her clients were all solid citizens.
An hour later, frustrated, John rubbed the back of his neck. If there was any person on the face of the earth who had an innocuous job and a perfectly harmless life, looks like it was Suzanne.
Now for the biggie, the one he hated. He had to ask it and was dreading the answer.
“How about your love life? Any disgruntled ex-lovers, abusive former boyfriends?” John asked the question casually, but his fists were clenched under the table.
“Oh.” Suzanne looked surprised at the idea. “No, of course not.” She blushed, delightfully, but kept her eyes on his. “I, um—“ She stopped and drew in a big breath. “I haven’t…dated all that much. My mom was sick while I was in college and we were all pretty much caught up in her illness. Luckily, she’s fine now. And the past few years I’ve been concentrated on work.”
“Who’s the last guy you were seeing?”
“John…is this necessary?”
“Absolutely.” That was a lie. John didn’t know how necessary this was to the investigation. But it was certainly necessary to his peace of mind to have names to put to faces. The thought of another man’s hands on her made him sick with rage. As soon as he got a name or two he’d check them out and make damn sure they never approached Suzanne ever again.
“Okay. I guess the last man I dated was Marcus Freeman. He’s my bank manager. But it’s not—well, it was a very casual relationship. We never, um…we never—you know.” She shrugged. “The last man I, um, had a sexual relationship was Adrian Whitby, the director of the
Kronen Museum. I designed their new annex. That was two years ago. We broke it off and I haven’t seen him since.”
Les was going to have to check Adrian Whitby out. John would be too tempted to smash his face in. He could maybe stomach checking Marcus Freeman out, knowing he and Suzanne hadn’t gone to bed together. The thought of another man kissing Suzanne, the thought that this creep Whitby’s cock had been in her, enraged him.
Suzanne was his. No other man was ever going to get within two feet of her. John realized he’d kill to keep it that way.
He sipped his coffee, needing to get his emotions under control, get his voice calm. Rage wasn’t a productive emotion. He sipped again and forced himself to concentrate.
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