Esther said, “He’s supposed to be the rightful prince. I don’t know anymore.”
“Is that why it was so easy to get you to leave him?”
“No, that’s because I was bored! And because your—coercion took me by surprise. I won’t be so easy to manipulate again.”
He smiled. The golden flames leapt in his eyes, scorching her. “You think not? Perhaps we’ll experiment with that later on.”
His hand slid down the column of her throat, making her shiver, and spread across her shoulder, inched inwards over her chest. Her breath caught as his palm moved over the upper swell of her breast. A fresh flood of moisture began to trickle down her leg. And then his hand fell away.
“So you didn’t come to Costanzo looking for him. And you didn’t come looking for me.” Thoughtfully, his gaze never leaving hers, he dipped one finger into his cup, stirring the wine. “So why did you come to Costanzo?”
“I didn’t mean to. I—I don’t understand why or how I’m here. I—I thought I was dreaming.”
“So where were you?” he asked, removing his finger from the cup and at once tracing a deliberate, thin line of red across the exposed skin of her breasts, his finger rising and falling with the shape of her body. Tiny trickles like red tears began to spill downward from the line. “In the ten years between your appearance in my old bed chamber and yesterday—where did you go?”
All five fingers were in the cup now, and when he withdrew them, he deliberately spattered the wine across her breasts. One spot landed on her chin, several on the bodice of her gown. Instinctively, she wiped at it with her hand, saw his eyes avidly watching her hand draw back and forth across the upper mounds of her breasts. Experimentally, she slid her hand lower, pushed one finger down her cleavage to catch a drip of wine, and heard his breath catch.
New excitement flooded her. Whatever he was doing so deliberately to her, he was definitely not immune to it himself.
How many times can one man die?
Killing Joe
© 2008 Marie Treanor
To professional assassin Joe, life is cheap, and crash researcher Anna just another hit. Until his own unplanned car crash changes everything.
Dr. Anna Baird, dedicated to the point of obsession, suddenly finds her state-of-the-art crash test dummy haunted by a weird and exciting stranger—who seems doomed to repeatedly experience the fate he’d intended for Anna.
Lost in a reality only he and Anna inhabit, Joe finds himself falling in love with his intended victim, and ultimately fighting to save her life—because whoever hired him still wants her dead.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Killing Joe:
Anna licked the last drop of whisky from her upper lip. Joe’s eyes followed the gesture, making her self-conscious.
Hastily, she hid her tongue again. “This is weird. But the whole situation’s so weird that I’m going to tell you anyway. Do you know what we do here?”
“Automobile crash research.”
“Yep. We do mock-ups of various situations to test car safety and try to improve standards. Well, we had one such mock-up today, using the dummy that has now disappeared. Just before the impact I saw…I thought I saw the dummy’s face change. It became—it seemed to become a man’s face. Yours.”
His eyes searched hers, but not with either surprise or derision. As if the idea had already occurred to him.
Oh, Jesus Christ…
How could either of them believe such a thing? There had to be a rational explanation.
He was in an accident—sustained some head injury I’m not qualified to discover. Somehow, he wandered in here unseen and fell asleep…
So where are his clothes?
He took them off somewhere, obviously in a daze. They’re probably in a corridor or something…
But his face…I saw his face on the dummy!
“I’m wondering,” she said shakily, “if that—seeing your face—was some kind of warning. When did your accident happen?”
He shrugged again. “About nine-thirty, I suppose.”
She drew in a breath. “That’s when we tested.” And the dummy had gone. Was it lying around the building somewhere with Joe’s clothes? Why would he have moved it? It didn’t make any sense. None of it made any sense, unless…but that was impossible.
Forcing herself, she met his gaze once more. “Joe, what does this mean?”
He said nothing. So she poured herself some more whisky and drank gratefully. He hadn’t touched his. At last he said, “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”
Anything like what? Like suspecting a man of changing bodies with a crash test dummy? Was she really that insane?
No! So pull yourself together, woman. Think logically.
She shook her head. “No. At least not really…” She slid her eyes away from his penetrating gaze. “When I first worked here and we set up the crashes…I should tell you my family died in a car crash. I saw it happen from a bus stop where they’d just dropped me. Anyway, I used to…imagine…the dummies were family members. But it wasn’t really like that today. Then I knew what I was doing—the test just brought back the memory with extra vividness. This today was…it was like it was really you. And I’ve never seen you before in my life, have I?”
“No,” he agreed. “No, you haven’t.” She had no idea what he was thinking, how mad he thought she was, how scared he was by his own situation. Not very, it seemed. She could find no trace now of the despair she had sensed earlier. He seemed almost resigned, though to what, she still had very little clue.
She returned to her own more immediate alarm. “You know my name.”
He nodded.
“And you know where I work.”
“Yes.”
She took a breath. “Were you stalking me, Joe?”
“Yes.”
“No you weren’t!” she disputed, perversely. “Stalkers like their victims to know about them.”
“Perhaps I was waiting for my moment to get you alone, ask you out for dinner, sweep you off your feet…”
“Aye, right,” said Anna derisively, resorting to the language of childhood, which at least lightened his hard eyes, brought a faint curve to his lips.
“You find that difficult to believe?”
“Impossible, actually.”
“Why? You are a beautiful girl and when I’m not wearing overalls, I’m reasonably presentable.”
“You’re pretty presentable without them, too,” she retorted, then flushed with embarrassment. His dark eyes glinted acknowledgement, but before he could say anything, she rushed into speech herself.
“But you’re avoiding the question. How long have you been watching me?”
He shrugged. “A couple of days.”
“But why?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Oh, trust me, I do!”
“Then let’s say I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?” she flashed back.
He hesitated. “Because it’s got nothing to do with this weird situation.” His eyes fell. “And because, for once, I nee— like the company.”
She stared at him. His vulnerability was suddenly terrifying, because it gave credence to her own impossible suspicion. “You think I’ll leave you to your fate if you tell me? Is it really that bad?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a man of few words, aren’t you?”
He didn’t say anything at all to that, so with conscious courage she asked, “What exactly do you think your fate is, Joe? The one I would leave you to?”
He looked up at the light bulb, as if deliberately dazzling himself. “Hell.” His lips twisted. “Not the fiery hell children are taught about in school—or at least in the schools I went to. My hell is continually reliving—re-dying—in car crashes.”
Her throat tightened unbearably. Oh, Jesus, Jesus, we both believe the same thing… And her own doubts, her own sanity, counted for nothing beside his pain. Instinctively, she lea
ned over and with a feeling of great daring put both her arms around his broad, strong shoulders.
Damn it, feel sorry for yourself!
His body was unyielding, hard as she’d known it would be, but warm, strangely exciting. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder, knowing somehow that it was sheer surprise that held him so rigid. He wasn’t used to being embraced for reasons of comfort.
“You really believe you deserve to suffer such a punishment? Joe, no one is that bad, no one…”
He jerked in her hold. “You don’t have a clue, do you?” The words burst out of him with violence, frightening her all over again. Panicked, she pulled back, but his arms lifted suddenly, seizing her, holding her hard against his chest, his hand tangling in her hair to keep her still. “You really have no idea what people do to each other, for no reason worth a damn…”
Her heart thundered. Behind the fear came a hot, leaping surge of desire. She whispered, “What was done to you?”
“Done to me? Nothing I haven’t given back worse. I’m not the victim here.”
His fingers in her hair, fisting, made her every nerve tingle with warning as well as excitement. Twisting her head in his hold, she gazed up into his face, absorbing each tiny line around his dark, almond-shaped eyes, every crease in his forehead, the texture of his lips suddenly so close to hers that her stomach began to burn. His eyes, the cold, opaque eyes that she was sure never let anyone in, were suddenly a maelstrom you could drown in.
She said, “If your—soul—is trapped inside a crash test dummy, then victim’s exactly what you are.”
“I don’t do victim,” he said savagely, and kissed her mouth before she could draw breath.
It was rough, bruising, his purpose to shut her up, even punish her for her unacceptable view of him. Knowing it, she slid her hands up over his thickly muscled arms to his shoulders and pushed. It was like shoving at a mountain. Truly panicked now, she tried to speak under his mouth, but the movement of her lips only excited him to delve deeper. While his big hand held her head steady, his tongue, strong and insistent, swept around her mouth, pressing behind her teeth as if to pull her closer.
Bombarded, devoured, Anna could do nothing but let him. Yet as soon as she relaxed, sensation flooded her, sweet and raging. Her whole body burned, the fire spreading from her mouth to her groin, devastating her. She was so wet she could feel it on her thighs. And suddenly his motive didn’t matter. She’d had sex while less turned on than this.
Faintly, almost shyly at first, she moved her lips under his, dared to touch his tongue with hers, caress it, and then she was kissing him back fully, passionately, and his arms tightened, pressing her breasts to his chest. She clung around his neck, exploring his mouth with the same urgency he did hers, shivering with delight as his hand caressed her back, her waist, the curve of her hip, then slid up her side and over the curve of her breast.
The pleasure of that made her moan into his mouth. His hand moved, softly kneading, until his palm discovered her rigid, pleading nipple pressing through her shirt. And as abruptly as he’d seized her, he released her mouth.
Her glasses had steamed up. Deftly, he removed them, and his eyes, hot and clouded, stared into hers. Slowly, unable to help it, she touched his face with her fingertips, the lean line of his jaw, the hollows of his cheeks, the corners of his lips.
He spoke with fierce triumph. “You want me.”
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