The logs scratched at my buttocks, thighs, knees. This was one of Corbin’s twisted sex punishments. So many ways to hurt me.
Even more paths to pleasure.
He pushed himself up, then gently pulled free from my mouth. His hands cradled the back of my head, giving my aching neck relief.
Smiling, he bent over and brushed his lips against mine. He tasted and smelled like me.
Mine. Somehow, inexplicably.
~~~
Corbin walked me back to the cabin. He hadn’t needed to, but I appreciated it. Little things like that were the reason I was completely addicted to him.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, leaning against the door frame like he had walked me home. It charmed me. “Make yourself comfortable.” He walked away, boots crunching through the snow.
I slumped on the creaky bench and clumsily attacked my bootlaces with frozen fingers. I hadn’t felt the cold while we were in the shed, but I sure did now.
After I worked the boots off my feet, I scrunched up my toes, flexed them. These socks had kept my feet warm and dry. Really not bad for pink.
I stretched my arms, then my cramped hamstrings, and felt pleasurably sore all over. Wouldn’t need to go to the gym for a month.
Because it was too cold to just sit in one place, I made a slow exploration, starting with the small recreational area. Old TV, deeper than it was tall, dust like a velour blanket along the top. Dartboard, the cork looking like it had been chewed up. A chess board ready for a game, but a third of the pieces missing. I opened one of the nearest closet doors and found more board games, puzzles, an honest-to-goodness VCR, and some tapes. I looked through them. The Shining. The Evil Dead. Friday the 13th. Never would have taken Corbin for a horror buff, but then I didn’t know if this was his cabin.
Next was the bedroom, at the end of a small hallway that was lined with closets. The bed was large, and when I tentatively sat on it, quite comfortable. It felt like heaven to my aching butt. The solid blue flannel sheets were clean and soft—not at all mothbally.
An absurdly large clock, three times the size it needed to be, hung crookedly on the wall.
I closed my eyes and lay back. Despite being sore and exhausted, I felt good. Really good. Strong. Healthy. And I couldn’t be sure if it was from the exercise and fresh air or the orgasms.
Rolling over, I got to my feet and continued exploring the bedroom. I found a stack of folded blankets in a closet that smelled like sawdust. The closet also contained a minuscule flat screen TV and an enormous DVD player, probably the first model ever produced.
I stuck my head in the bathroom—small but it included a tub—then exited the bedroom and made my way back to the kitchen. Poor Corbin. Though maybe he would see the lack of luxury appliances as a challenge rather than a hindrance. Turning, I surveyed the cabin from this angle and realized that playing darts would mean throwing them from the kitchen. Or, more likely, standing so close that there wasn’t any challenge. No wonder the board was chewed up.
And where was Corbin, anyway? It had been almost half an hour. I grabbed a battered Steinbeck paperback and fell onto one of the couches. Wind thrashed the trees outside, but the cabin seemed well insulated.
Corbin came in on a gust of Arctic air, his arms full of logs and long twigs of various colors. “Temperature’s falling fast,” he said, dumping his haul next to the potbelly stove. “Cold night tonight, I bet.”
I let the book rest on my chest. “We gonna be ok?”
He smiled and raised a cocky eyebrow. “Baby, I’m a protector and a provider. So long as I’m around, you’ll never want for anything.”
And even though he hadn’t managed to say it with a straight face, his words made me think of that moment in the forest, when I’d wanted to see him on one knee. “Forget I asked,” I said too loudly. I could feel that my face had turned red.
Grinning, Corbin checked the stove’s flue, then he lit a match and stuck it inside the stove. He stared at it a moment, though I wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Satisfied, he dropped the match, shoved two logs and a fair number of twigs into the stove, then lit two twigs, holding them until the hungry flames burned bright. He carefully placed them in the wooden nest he’d built.
Soon the fire had taken hold, and Corbin closed the stove’s main door. He brushed his large hands against his pants and turned to me, his cheeks still red from the cold. “You see the roof?”
“See it doing what?”
“Grab your boots and coat.”
He went to a door that I hadn’t opened. I’d assumed it was just another closet, but then Corbin flipped the light on, illuminating a narrow flight of stairs leading upward.
I followed him as I zipped up the coat, all the while appreciating how firm his ass and legs were. Good for thrusting. Knew that from firsthand experience, though I was more than ready for a refresher.
He pushed a door up and out, then stepped onto the slanted roof. “Not icy,” he said, turning to help me off the last step.
Good thing it wasn’t icy. A puny wooden rail was all that would keep someone from toppling headfirst over the side.
Corbin rooted around in the snow, then suddenly shoveled it to the side, revealing a little padded seat attached to the roof. He indicated it with a flourish.
“My burning thighs thank you.” I wasn’t aware of how dirty it might sound until after I’d said it. Corbin, watching the sun dipping behind the mountains, didn’t seem to notice.
Everything was now bathed in purple. The sort of light that would only last for a few moments. It was so beautiful that there was nothing to say. I absorbed the trees, the moon appearing in the sky like a pale ghost, the fading light. Even the cold didn’t bother me.
“Should keep an eye on the stove,” Corbin said, turning to go back. “You can stay if you like.” His voice was gentle. He disappeared down the steps.
A moment later he returned, though, and handed me a blanket. He dug around in the snow again and cleared off another seat.
“What about the stove?”
He held up a phone. “Hope you don’t mind, but I put your phone on fire duty.”
“Fire duty?”
He pushed a button, and his phone turned into a camera. Except it was showing the stove, which wasn’t doing anything interesting.
“There’s cell service up here?” I asked.
“There is, but that’s not what I’m using.” Corbin arranged the blanket over my legs. “Different technology. We get the good stuff before it’s mainstream.” He cleared his throat. “I would like to transfer your number to the other phone.”
“Uh…” I shifted to face him. “Why?”
“It’s more reliable.”
“And you can track it,” I said, needling him.
“That’s true. I can track it. Though I wouldn’t except in case of emergency.”
“I’ve been using the new one more and more anyway,” I said, pondering this. If we got into a huge fight and never spoke to each other again, it wouldn’t be a problem for me to get another crappy cell phone. “Yes. But only if I can give you the money that I would have spent otherwise.”
Corbin grunted, likely sensing that I wouldn’t budge on that. “I’ll set it up tonight,” he said.
“So if I wanted to sell that phone on the black market, what’s it worth?”
“Nothing. I can brick it from afar, short the circuits and leave you with a smoldering mess. Shooting star,” Corbin said, pointing. It was a brief streak in the darkening sky.
There was only one thing I wanted, though it would take some crazy powerful magic to make it happen. “Did you make a wish?” I asked.
He slanted a reproachful look my way. “You know if I tell you, I won’t get it.”
“You’re so full of secrets.” I settled back on the roof and stared up at the sky.
“Enough secrets between us, I think,” Corbin said. “The job is the job, but things not related to that… I think you deserve to know. If
you still want to.”
I didn’t dare look at him, afraid of breaking the spell. “Like what?” I whispered.
“My wife. If you’d rather not know…”
“I want to know,” I said quickly.
~~~
Corbin didn’t say anything for several minutes. In the meantime, the cold was settling in, fast. I snuggled under the blanket and wished Corbin were closer.
“I knew she was the one the moment I saw her.”
His words were like a kick in the gut. The one. As in, the only one. Ever.
Foolish thoughts, I knew, and certainly ungenerous. The woman was dead, yet I was jealous of her.
“We met shortly before I turned eighteen. My father was a diplomat, and because of that we moved every few years. I’d left a trail of friends all over the world, and I couldn’t wait to get to college, be in the same place for a bit. And then I saw her, and I knew that Paris was it.”
“Love at first sight.” And it took every ounce of my self-control to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“It wasn’t just that she was pretty, though of course she was.” He looked over at me. “Obviously I only date beauties.”
“Need your eyes checked,” I mumbled. “Continue,” I said louder.
“Her family lived in the same building that mine did. The first time I saw her, she was in the street in front of the building, on her hands and knees, helping the concierge’s daughter fix her scooter while an officious little man yelled at them about propriety. Because that wasn’t acceptable for a proper young lady in l’Arrondissement de Passy.”
“The what now?”
“It’s the neighborhood where we lived. Politicians’ kids, diplomats’ kids. The fellow stood there with his hands on his hips, his upper body bent forward like a hen while he scolded, over and over, ‘Ça ne se fait pas, ça ne se fait pas.’ Telling her that her behavior was inappropriate. I saw her again the next day. She was with a group of her friends, and I was with two brothers I’d known years earlier, in Suriname. As our groups passed, I noticed that she was surreptitiously trying to adjust her bra, and I said, ‘Ça ne se fait pas, mademoiselle.’ In the same nasally tone as the man the day before, of course. She started laughing, though all our friends were quite confused.”
“She was French?”
“Yes. Well, a quarter Algerian.”
No wonder I hadn’t been able to find anything about her. Wrong country. Countries. Hell, wrong continents, wrong languages. I could see her now, though. Probably a tall, small-boned, dark-haired beauty with luminous eyes. Like Audrey Hepburn or that French actress whose name I could never remember. She would have a charming accent and be flawlessly dressed all the time.
Except when fixing scooters. Or adjusting her bra. Ok, so maybe she sounded human and perfectly likable, but the gnawing worry didn’t want to hear it.
“We started dating, and we both knew it wasn’t just a fling. She was a year younger, and when I finished school, I stuck around. Did two years at a technical school while I worked for a chef, a friend of the family who encouraged me to pursue the culinary arts.” He glanced at me. “Everywhere we had lived, I learned the local cuisine. Roger, the family friend, was quite impressed by what he had thought was some uncanny aptitude but was really the result of a childhood spent in kitchens around the world. He used his leverage to get me a job as a sous-chef at one of the top restaurants, which ruffled quite a few feathers. When I had the chance to open my own restaurant in New York—a fresh start—I took it. I was twenty-three then, and Audrey and I had been married for a year.”
“Why can’t I find anything about you online? Surely there should be something if the restaurant was so popular.”
“There were a few articles, but I’ve always prized my privacy. I never joined social media, and I always used my initials for business dealings. But you won’t find anything. It was erased.”
“So you’re officially dead?”
“No. More like a ghost.”
“I heard that drug dealers and pimps have to pay taxes, so you must, too.”
“Nice parallels. And yes, I do pay taxes. I’m a private chef.” He stretched and stood. “Speaking of which, I should rustle up dinner.”
As I followed him down the steps, I cursed myself for jumping in with so many questions. I really did want to know about his wife, the mysterious other Audrey, but I was terrified. I knew he wasn’t over her yet, or not over her death at least, and it was clear from the way he talked that he missed her.
The cabin had grown quite warm in our absence. “Not bad work for a little stove,” I said as I pulled off my boots and coat. I also removed the snow pants because they made too much noise when I walked. Long underwear served quite fine as pants. “Guess there’s not so much space to heat.”
Corbin raised an amused eyebrow. “Electric heat. I switched it on when we arrived.”
“Electric…” But there were lamps, and the stove and refrigerator. Hell, there were appliances everywhere. I just hadn’t thought about it. “Thought we were in the middle of nowhere.”
He looked even more tickled.
“What?”
“You’re going to be surprised tomorrow.” Whistling, he started pulling out pans.
“Why surprised?”
That made him laugh. “Don’t want to ruin it.”
I narrowed my eyes as I coiled myself into one of the chairs so that I could watch him. “I don’t get the sense that it’s a good surprise.”
“I know I’m going to enjoy it.” Corbin grabbed a red onion, removed the ends and the skin, and began chopping it coarsely, his large hands nimble.
“So what happened? To your wife? Was she sick?”
“No. She… later. Another time.”
Damn. Who knew if I’d be able to get him talking again? Me and my big, interrupting mouth.
Still, I could take solace in one thing: Corbin had once had a nice, normal life.
If he didn’t want to talk about his wife, there were plenty of other mysteries that he could solve. “Whose cabin is this?”
“Mine. Paid cash for the cabin and everything in it. It’s completely off the radar. There’s a woman who owns the surrounding land. If anyone showed up asking questions, she’d play the sweet old grandmother on them. If that failed, she’d probably unload both barrels. Though there’s no reason for anyone to come here. I pay her yearly for utilities. Safe haven.” He grinned. “You should feel special.”
“Oh, believe me, I do. Just being in your presence is like winning the lotto.”
“Can’t hear sarcasm when I’m cooking, so thank you.”
I was about to ask more questions about the houses and vehicles, but there was something I’d been thinking about a lot. “What was the thing in your wallet that you almost showed me?”
Corbin poured oil into the pan on the burner. A moment later, he added some orangish powder, then scraped the onions in. “I promised myself that I would answer all your questions from now on, but it’s not so easy,” he admitted somberly. “I dislike talking about the past.”
“Promised yourself when?” I asked, hoping to lighten his mood a bit. “Come on, that’s an easy question!”
He shot me an aggrieved look. “While we were walking. Though I can always change my mind again.”
I held my hands up in surrender.
“Several things in my wallet. You’re still welcome to look, but the most important is my wedding photo. No matter how far undercover I am, I have it on me.”
And that was another kick in the gut, much harder than the first one. He had flat-out told me that he was still dealing with losing her, but I had buried that fact. Convenient… until it wasn’t.
I realized that I needed to respond. Since I absolutely didn’t want to see that picture, I asked, “What did she do for a living?” There. An easy, neutral question.
“Thought she was a journalist, but she was a spy.”
“That… I didn’t… Really?”
<
br /> He laughed, a brief snort. “It’s not so uncommon for diplomats’ kids who grow up like we did, living all over the world and speaking multiple languages. These days it’s more multinational corporations spying on each other, all in the name of national security, of course.”
“Corporate spy?” I frowned. “Doing what?”
“A corporate spy is something else entirely, a legitimate business that operates in daylight. You could open up a browser and submit an application to do that. She wasn’t that kind of spy. And to answer your question, we never talked about it. I didn’t want to put her in the position of having to lie to me outright.” His tone had turned darker.
It seemed he really didn’t like being lied to. He was all about trust and respect. Funny virtues, considering what he did for a living. “Trying to imagine what that’s like, you know? Pillow talk at the end of a long day.”
“She never lived in New York. We had decided that when I turned thirty, we’d find a way to be in the same place. But of course that never happened.”
He was thirty now. That must have been a particularly difficult birthday, knowing he was supposed to be building his life.
“She was kidnapped in Nigeria.”
Corbin’s words snapped me to the present. “Kidnapped?”
“For ransom.” His voice had gotten rough. He pulled the pan off the stove again, set it on an unused burner, and turned to face me. He had pushed up the sleeves of the skintight black shirt, and when he crossed his arms over his chest, his muscular forearms bulged. “We—her parents and I—sent it, of course, even though we were advised not to.”
I felt I might pass out. I couldn’t imagine. “That’s terrifying.”
“Yes.” A single word to encompass unbearable grief. “It wasn’t about money. That was a pretext.” He stared at me, but said nothing. It was completely disconcerting. Couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or if he was lost in the past.
“Guess you wish you’d talked her out of it,” I said nervously when his blank stare started to make my skin crawl.
Tempted by a Dangerous Man Page 5