Lethal Reaction

by S A Gardner

  Then his hands were around me, under me, completing his exploitation, stroking me into another blinding orgasm. On the final abrading twitches he joined me, exploding into a roar of completion, his seed filling me to overflowing.

  I lay there, pressed between now-warm, moist wood and warmer, moister living steel, fused, fulfilled, wishing to remain there forever, to forget that a world outside us existed.

  But he was ending it. I felt him receding from me. In every way. The moment he completed our separation, I struggled up from the desk, turned, saw him turning away from me.

  He gestured to a door at the far end of the room.

  “That’s a bathroom. Help yourself. Then help yourself out.”

  Then he strode out the double doors.

  Eight

  Staring at empty doors was becoming a pattern in my relationship with Damian.

  I stared at this one for about ten seconds. Then I was chasing after him.

  Even with the short-lived delay, I still caught up with him after he’d cleared a hangar-huge reception, entered another distributing corridor. It didn’t even enter my mind that we were both stark naked, that Suz or anyone else who might be around would see us. I snatched at his arm.

  It didn’t even slow him down. I clung to it and he only towed me after him. I punched him, hard, right between his scapulas. This caught his attention. He turned on me.

  “You got what you came for, didn’t you? The sex fix? So why don’t you get going? And next time, when you get the urge, call. I may consider home delivery.”

  I slapped him. He’d known I would, had decided to take it. But when I followed up by a one-two combo, he let me get only one blow in, dodging to let me tag him without inflicting damage, then made me miss the second, had my fist impacting air. Then he caught my fists, slammed me into the wall, stretched my arms over my head and plastered our still buzzing bodies.

  A smirk twisted his painstakingly sculpted mouth.

  “What’s with the virtue-fluttering, Calista? Doesn’t become you at all.”

  “The day my virtue flutters is the day I fall on my scalpel, buster. I happen to have a severe allergic reaction to ugly insults. You know you just got off pretty lightly.”

  “What’s so ugly or insulting about the truth? You wanted me, you came and got me. Repeatedly. Not that I’m complaining. I just extended an invitation for you to enlist my services at your pleasure. I’m even wondering why you haven’t before. Judging by what happened back there, you could have used them.”

  I kneed him. He again read my intention, dodged, secured me.

  I gave a pointed glance to the intact-as-ever erection digging a furrow into my abdomen then shredded my retort the way I was itching to shred him. “I could say the same about you.”

  He didn’t answer that, left me to wonder if his condition was due to dammed hunger, too, or just a manifestation of his limitless stamina. Damn him.

  “As for ‘enlisting your services’ I seem to remember a comment about a vibrator.”

  He answered that, his expression wry. “That must have been temporary testosterone depletion talking. You could have gotten me to change my tune in a half an hour. Less.”

  “And how was I supposed to do that? How could I have ‘enlisted your services’ when I had no idea if you were still on the same planet?”

  “You found me easily enough now.”

  “Easily? How about accidentally? It took Lucia stumbling on you. Buying lingerie. And you asked her about everything but me. You wanted her to tell me that, didn’t you?”

  “That I was buying lingerie or that I didn’t ask about you?”

  “Both, you bastard.” He raised his eyebrows. “Can it, Damian. You know you’re a bastard by behavior, not by birth. You left me, wouldn’t let me find you.”

  Something bleak stormed in his eyes. He had it under control in a second. “You had me, and the more you realized just how much you had me, you wanted nothing to do with me. Then I was gone and suddenly I had value?”

  “That’s a fucking lie. I wanted everything to do with you. Always. Even when I shouldn’t have, when you were Mel’s, when you hated me, when you got me kicked out of GCA and medicine.”

  He let go of my arms so suddenly I jerked with the loss of his support. He turned and walked to the door feet away. I stumbled after him into a bedroom. Gigantic, dim lit , sparsely-furnished, bed-dominated. And Suz wasn’t there. And what was it with him and circular, swimming pool-sized beds?

  Focus on the important issue here.

  I did. “You can’t even think I don’t value you, Damian. I do, more than I have words for, in every way.”

  “Talk is cheap, Calista. But then you didn’t even give me talk. You didn’t even think me worth a halfhearted word of encouragement or recognition. Whatever I did to atone, it was never even a step in the right direction. You told me, showed me, over and over, how much you distrust me, how you blame me for everything that was happening. I’m the first to admit I gave you reason, but you took it out of context, took it to extremes, and were unspecific and unjust in your punishment. But I would have taken it, indefinitely, if I hadn’t finally admitted to myself that you’ll never love me as I loved you.”

  As I loved you? As in…past tense?

  I couldn’t vent the fear, wouldn’t survive an affirmation. I only rasped, “That’s a damned stupid thing to say. To think.”

  He opened a drawer, pulled fresh boxers. “Is it?”

  “Yes, dammit, it is.” And here I went, jumping without a net. “I loved you every bit as much.”

  So I was a coward. I attached that ‘ed’ to love as a survival contingency.

  He gave me another unfathomable glance. “Well, that’s all in the past now, isn’t it? How about we keep it there?”

  God—I was destroying my chances with him, saying and doing all the wrong things. I couldn’t safeguard myself from the devastation of his rejection at the cost of the remotest possibility of restoration. I had to tell him.

  Everything.

  “I can’t leave it in the past when it’s my present. The one thing I want or need in my future.” He went dead still, and I choked on, “I love you, Damian, even if you no longer love me.”

  He moved now, to the bed, went down on it as if he’d collapse if he didn’t.

  Collapse? Damian? Nah. But wonder of wonders, he did look shaken. Did that mean…?

  “You know what, Calista? I think you were right all along.” Everything inside me revved, all set to pounce on him. Until his next words deflated all elation and power out of me. “People like us shouldn’t even think of love.” He turned to me then, gave me a look that had lust inundating me again even through the oppression. “Maybe we should just enjoy each other—binge on each other like we just did, whenever we have the chance.”

  My heartbeats went off like a string of detonations, flinging me over to him.

  “So you’ve decided to be a casual bastard now? Or have you always been one and the one-woman man you’ve been with Mel and me was another of your masks, master chameleon agent De Luna?”

  For answer, he grabbed me around the waist, his big, rough hands fanning, cupping my buttocks, propelling me forward. Then he buried his face in my belly, rubbed his beard into my screaming skin, his tongue into my belly button.

  I struggled against the mushrooming arousal, my hands convulsing in the length of his hair, trying to tear him away. He just poured more strength in his grip, opening me, latching his lips to my core, his tongue and teeth taking over, suckling and nipping in just the right places, in just the right pressure and speed. I didn’t even last a minute before another orgasm shredded through me.

  I collapsed in his arms, like a demolished building.

  He spread me over the navy blue sheets, stroking me, completing my pleasure, soothing me back into my body.

  Then he rose over me, still sweeping me in caresses.

  “It might be better this way. No emotions to mess us up, no expect
ations of any sort—except of total pleasure, of course. Of which I just gave you a sample. Several samples.”

  I bit indignation into the pectoral I was nestled against. “It was total pleasure only because of my emotions. If they’re not there on your side, if this is a promiscuous thing…”

  His finger on my lips silenced me at the price of another punishing nip. “I don’t do promiscuous. I’d go as far as say I’m incapable of it. My parents’ genes must have skipped me. If I’m with you, I’m with you alone. That’s the deal.”

  But he hadn’t been “with me” the past three months.

  And I wasn’t asking. “No deal. No matter how much I want you, and—hell, I just showed you again how much—I’m damned if I touch you again if this is all there is to it.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “No sex without love? Is that a rule of yours? Strange. You had sex with me without love in Russia.”

  I tried to squirm out of the intimacy of our position, failed. My volition wasn’t coming back online. ”Without admitting love. I fell for you during our first meeting by the time I rammed my head back in your teeth.”

  His tongue ran behind said perfect teeth in a reminiscent sweep. “I started a bit earlier in the meeting, but Dios—that ram clinched the deal for me, too.”

  So he still loved me? Or was he just reminiscing about ancient history? I couldn’t take any more of this.

  But I could move now, and I did, extricating myself from the steel and satin drape of his limbs. I teetered up, looked back at him as he reclined in abandon like a god of decadence.

  What was I doing turning down his offer? I’d still have him, he’d still be the same one-on-a-planet lover, and…

  No. No.

  I wanted him down to his last spark of thought and emotion. With all the mess of aggravations and uncertainties and dangers. All or none.

  It was in my genes.

  “This demeaning proposition aside, do you know what I’m really mad about? That you let our personal problems interfere with the bigger picture. If Lucia hadn’t stumbled on you…”

  Words backed up in my throat as it hit me, almost keeled me over. God, how hadn’t it before?

  Nobody stumbled on Damian. In the universe he inhabited and controlled, everything happened because he willed it to happen.

  I stormed back to him, stabbed four fingers into his sternum. “You planned this. You showed her yourself, let her tail you!”

  His gaze remained unchanged. Bingo. I knew him enough to know this was his way of saying yes.

  “You knew I’ve been looking for you. You let me run around in circles. Then for reasons that will no doubt remain locked in that impenetrable skull of yours, you decided to let me find you, didn’t you? But because you’re a son of a bitch with a steep theatrical bent, you constructed this convoluted charade.”

  He rose off the bed, passed me in all nonchalance.

  I tore him back to face me. “All this, all this—you were getting your pound of flesh, weren’t you?”

  He pouted in derision. “I’m not interested in pounds of flesh. Except if they’re your one hundred thirty pounds of flesh and fire. And I got them, delivered all the way up to my doorstep.”

  He was admitting it!

  “You’ve been jerking me around ever since you walked out on me! You said it wasn’t about manipulation but it was. You lied. Again.” I threw my hands in the air. “God, when will I ever learn? If there’s one thing you’re genetically incapable of, it’s telling the truth.”

  He gave me a patient look. “What truth do you want me to tell you now, Calista?”

  My temperature gauge clinked beyond the danger zone. “There are many?”

  He nodded, all-serious. “An endless number.”

  His nose was too tailored for his looks. It was time someone gave it ‘character’ with a compound fracture!

  “How about the truth of your former bosses and men murdering innocents to pressure my team into giving up the secret you and I possess?”

  “Actually, it’s Sir Ashton who possesses it.” State the obvious, why don’t you? Compound fracture time. I pulled back my fist and he stepped away, reading my intention. “That is one truth. What do you suppose I should have done about it?”

  “I swear, Damian…” I stopped, picturing my head bursting all over this pristine hardwood floor of his.

  His dispassionate gaze assessed my distress. “Are you suggesting I could have stopped them and chose not to?” Put that way, no. A thousand times no. “You believe Jake’s accusation in Colombia, then? That I tried to eliminate your friends and support system so you’d have no one but me to turn to, be in my power? You think I now let innocents die so you’d again need me, run to me, all the past forgiven in the face of a far more sweeping and immediate danger? Like you did now? You think I’m that much of a monster?”

  Torrents of denial collided with the confusion of not knowing how things had really happened. Before I could extricate my thoughts from the mire of facts and fabrications, assumptions and suspicions, he turned and crossed to the en suite bathroom, his implacable back an open invitation to piss the hell off.

  I followed him to the bathroom door instead, stood at the marble threshold watching him stepping into a shower cubicle out of the next century. And I had an epiphany.

  Not only would I never fathom Damian, I shouldn’t even try.

  Damian would forever keep levels of himself from me, from the whole world. And it shouldn’t make a difference.

  I didn’t have many facts, and it seemed I’d never have them, but I had way more. I had an instinctive knowledge of him, of his inherent nobility, his core of integrity and stability, emotional and mental. In every way that counted, he wasn’t only good—he was a formidable force for good.

  I leaned against the doorframe, shaking as the big picture settled in my mind for the first time. I now needed minor details.

  I pushed away from the door, entered the bathroom. “If you knew I was looking for you, avoided me on purpose, this means you had me under surveillance all this time. Again.” He finished lathering his loofa, just looked at me. I pressed on. “How? I would have felt you.”

  He only huffed. This was another answer I wasn’t getting, huh? I could think what I liked. Though if I had to guess, he probably had everything I owned, everyplace I frequented tagged.

  But I had to know this. “Did you help me, too?”

  Another think-what-you-like glance.

  He had!

  Last time he’d told me he’d helped me, in spite of me, I’d been thankful for the outcome but enraged at the license he took with my life and decisions. This time—I was just ecstatic.

  But how had he helped this time? Judging by the devastation we were experiencing, it didn’t seem his help had been effective. Or had he only followed me, protected me? Was that the reason he hadn’t anticipated or prevented the murders?

  This would have been understandable if he’d been operating solo, but since Suz was here, he wasn’t. He might have even gotten hold of the rest of his team, was operating at optimum again.

  So I asked again, “How did you help me?”

  He went on washing his hair until I knew he wouldn’t answer, found my focus drooling down his body, envying every bubble and drop entangling in his mane, sliding down his skin.

  Then he suddenly said, “I had to extricate Nina and Pierro from tight spots while putting my team back together. Shad, José and Dan were a bit easier to round up, if not by much. Suz was the only one who walked back unaided.”

  Uh—and the point of this cut-and-paste piece of info?

  “That’s what postponed getting the lowdown on TOP and PACT puppeteers. Then I turned towards preempting. The sweeps I made took care of players involved in your current crisis.”

  Ah. I see. I should have some patience. Not so possible with him in my life. I wanted to scream: Talk already.

  He went on lathering his hair. “I eliminated commanders before they specified t
argets or gave orders for elimination, and foot soldiers before they carried them out. I had to make the hits look incidental and not part of an organized elimination plan. But the real problem was that the intended hits were suddenly planned two weeks ago and I couldn’t get hold of a target list. All I knew was that the first liquidation wave was going to be two victims for each of your Colombian team members. Overkill, in case one dead loved one wasn’t enough to convince them. I had to do lots of guesswork and gambling anticipating who would kill whom and when. It’s been a fifty-fifty hit and miss.”

  Fifty-fifty was right. Two each made the victim list twelve. Only six had died. He’d saved half of the targets.

  He had helped. He hadn’t left me and mine to our fates.

  But… “Why didn’t you warn us?”

  “And you would have done what?” I growled and he shrugged. “I gave whether to warn you and your team or not long, hard thought. I knew if I did that you’d go out there trying to pre-empt the enemy while trying to round up all possible targets. The only result I could project was that you’d fail, expose yourselves and get destroyed.”

  I frowned at him. “Why should we have failed? I’d already given Dad a full list of those in danger and he will protect them. We could have protected those who got killed.”

  “To protect those people he’ll have to uproot them from their lives, manufacture new ones for them, for as long as it takes. If any of your team had walked up to their loved ones, who must consider them crazy in the first place, and told them of the danger without unsubstantiated proof, do you think they would have agreed to what they’ll agree to now, now they know that the danger is real?”

  I gaped at him. “You mean some had to die so the others would agree to let themselves be protected?”

  He shrugged again. “You’ll find that I did warn them, offered protection. No one listened. I couldn’t make my warning compelling enough without divulging the whole scenario and exposing you. My only other option was to resort to mass kidnappings and the logistics of that proved unworkable. Another major possibility if I’d told you was that one or more of your team would have broken down under their fear for their loved ones, like Ed has, and done something stupid that would have also resulted in your exposure and destruction. So—I decided to do what I could without warning you.”