She gave him a tremulous, uncertain smile, and he let out a sigh of relief, which turned into a gasp when her hand slid down and seized his cock. “Lie still,” she whispered.
She twisted her hair into a loose spiral behind her neck and seized him in both hands, stroking and pulling with a bold caress that made him gasp and jerk up onto his elbows. A drop of moisture formed on the end of it. She bent down and licked it off.
“God,” he muttered. “What is this, Raine? Are you trying to prove something? Trying to get back at me?”
“No,” she whispered. “I want to give you pleasure.”
The warm brush of her breath against his cock as she spoke was the sweetest caress he’d ever felt, until she put her mouth to him. It was so wet and soft, deliciously tender. Her eager tongue darted and swirled, under, over and all around. Oh, God, he was in for it.
She had lost all her awkwardness. She cupped his ass with one hand, pulling him even closer to her luscious, suckling mouth, and the other cradled his balls, rolling them tenderly around in her fingers. She licked around and over the head of his cock, then up and down the whole length of him until he was slippery and wet; and then accompanied her mouth with her hand, gripping and sliding as she took him in. Her hot mouth clutched and pulled, tongue swirling lazily as if she were savoring something very good to eat, then sucking him into another long, gliding caress.
He’d gotten plenty of blow jobs in his time, and he’d thoroughly enjoyed every one of them, but this was different. This was so tender and intimate, it was almost agonizing.
He couldn’t afford to feel so vulnerable. Not in Lazar’s house. He slid his fingers into the cascading tresses on either side of her face and stopped her.
She lifted her head. “You don’t like it?”
The irony almost made him smile. He tried to speak, but his vocal cords wouldn’t connect. He took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s incredible. But I’m wide open. I can’t take it. We’ve got to get away from here. Try this wild, sexy stuff once we get to someplace safe.”
Her eyes were soft with perfect understanding. She reached across him and seized a foil packet from the bedstand. She knelt beside him and smoothed the condom over his cock with tender, careful strokes. Still, he waited, afraid to make another wrong move. She seized his hands, lifting them up and pressing them against her breasts. “You can touch me now,” she said shyly. “I’ve calmed down.”
He touched her as carefully as if she were made of fragile glass. He couldn’t afford to mess up again. Raine had to make all the moves this time.
She lay down alongside him and tugged his body on top of hers. “Let’s go back to our tropical paradise, Seth,” she whispered.
He poised himself above her so that the whole surface of his body was in light, kissing contact with hers. He let her do it all. She was the one who opened up and adjusted herself, she was the one who reached down and guided his penis into her body. He even waited until she grabbed his ass and pulled him in before he took the plunge.
They wound their arms around each other. At first it was slow and careful and tender, then it melted like a spring flood and rushed them over an endless fall, united body and soul. He finally understood the futility of trying to batter his way towards the fusion that he craved.
They clung to each other for a long time, until Raine began to disentangle herself. She sat up and perched on the edge of the bed. “There’s a ship on the horizon,” she said.
“Huh?”
She looked back over her shoulder. “One morning the pirate queen and her sailor stud are making love on the beach. They look up, and there’s a full-rigged ship on the horizon. Their idyll is over. You can’t run away from the world forever. Sooner or later it always catches up.”
He sat up, chilled by a sudden feeling that something precious was slipping away from him.
She got up. “I need another shower.”
“I’ll shower with you.” He reached out for her.
She dodged his hand. “No, you will not.”
They got ready in absolute silence. She chose some stuff from the armoire, which of course looked great on her. Everything did.
They were dressed and ready. There was no putting it off any longer. Seth took the kit out of his bag and fished out the transmitter. She took it, turning it over in her hands. She started to speak, but he put his finger over her lips, and shook his head.
Raine’s lips pinched into a quivering line. She slipped the tiny transmitter into her pants pocket.
He shrugged on his jacket, suddenly thinking of his dream.
The circle is getting smaller. He didn’t know what it meant, but he could feel it happening. Like fingers tightening around his neck.
Chapter 20
Raine picked at her breakfast, acutely conscious of the clothes on her body. A blue cashmere sweater by Armani. Boots by Prada. It seemed ungracious to complain when the clothes were so beautiful and fit so much better than her own, but they still made her nervous.
Seth sat down across from her and set down his third plate from the breakfast buffet, loaded with a seafood omelet, bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon, fried potatoes, sausage and biscuits. He dug in his fork and nodded at her plate. “Eat, Raine,” he said quietly. “Hanging with this crowd really burns those calories.”
“You’re the one who makes me burn calories,” she murmured.
Seth’s gaze focused over her shoulder. She turned, and saw Victor shaking hands with the museum curator she had talked with at dinner. Sergio. She waved and smiled at him, and he waved back.
Victor got himself a cup of coffee from the urn and came towards them, beaming. “Good morning, my dear. How lovely you look in that color. I trust you both slept well?”
Raine blushed helplessly.
“Well enough.” Seth forked a bite of sausage into his mouth.
“And what is your agenda for the day, Mr. Mackey?” Victor asked.
“Raine and I will be going back to Seattle.”
Victor sipped his coffee, his eyes calculating above the rim of the cup. “Actually, I planned to spend some time with Raine this morning. I’m sure you’ll understand. I’m coming back to the city myself this afternoon, so it will be no problem at all to bring her—”
“That’s OK,” Seth said. “I can wait. She can go back with me.”
“I hate to think of your valuable time being wasted.”
“No problem,” Seth said. “I’ve got my laptop. I can amuse myself just fine while you guys have your family bonding experience. If you want, I can design a more up-to-date surveillance system for your guest bedrooms. A lot of the stuff I dismantled last night was pretty passé.”
Victor’s gaze hardened. “How kind of you to offer, but please don’t trouble yourself. Stone Island is for relaxation, not work.”
“Suit yourself.” Seth gave him a cheerful grin.
Victor turned to Raine. “Have you finished your breakfast?”
She pushed away the yogurt and fruit and got up. “Yes,” she said.
Seth’s hand shot out and caught her wrist as she passed. He pulled her close and gave her a hard, possessive kiss. She blushed, flustered by the amusement on Victor’s face.
“There’s a bit of sun today,” Victor said. “Shall we go outside and take advantage of it?”
She followed Victor out onto the porch and down the path. They stood side by side at the dock, watching the sun glitter on the water. “You used to be afraid of the water,” Victor remarked. “Remember when I taught you to swim?”
She winced at the memory. “You were ruthless.”
“Of course I was. You didn’t want to learn. You didn’t want to learn to ride a bicycle, either. Or shoot. But I insisted.”
“Yes, you most certainly did.”
The bicycle episode had been particularly awful. She’d been scraped and bleeding and blubbering, but Victor had been pitiless. He’d forced her to get back on the hellish thing until she finally master
ed it. It had been the same with the swimming. He’d yanked her head above water, sputtering and flailing, to let her grab a breath of air and some advice. “Pump with your legs,” he ordered calmly, before letting her drop back down into the green liquid underworld.
But she had not drowned. She had learned. Even to use the pistol, although she had hated the noise, the violent kick, the bruises it left in her small hands. The concentrated violence in the small object had terrified her, but she had learned. He had given her no choice.
She turned away from the water and met Victor’s eyes. “You thought it was your duty to toughen me up,” she observed.
“Peter and Alix were lazy and soft,” Victor said. “If it had been up to your parents, you would have ended up a sniveling coward.”
It was true. She had Victor to thank for that crazy, joyful feeling of accomplishment, when her body finally understood the trick of equilibrium on the bike. And when she’d emerged from her first wobbly dive, Victor had applauded briefly, and then told her to get right back up onto those rocks and do it again until her technique was better.
Alix and her father hadn’t even bothered to come down to watch.
She gazed at the water, lost in memories. She had worshiped and feared Victor as a child. He had been unpredictable. Demanding and mocking. Sometimes cruel, sometimes kind. Always vivid and engaging. The direct opposite of her drifting, absent father, sipping his cognac, lost in his dreams and his melancholy reflections.
“I thought for a time that your mother had succeeded,” he said.
“At what?”
“Turning you into a sniveling coward. But she didn’t quite manage it. The Lazar genes breed true. She didn’t quite manage it.”
There was fierce, exultant pride in his silvery eyes. He could read her mind, follow her thoughts as if they were projected on a screen. He could understand her like no one else. Something inside her responded to it. The rest of her recoiled, horrified. She could not let herself bond with him, or care for him in any way. Not after what he had done. She groped for a way to break the spell. “Where is my father buried, Victor?”
“I was wondering when you were going to ask. He’s buried here.”
“On the island?” She was startled.
“He was cremated. I buried the ashes and raised a monument to him here,” Victor said. “Come along. I’ll show you.”
She was unprepared to confront the reality of her father’s grave in Victor’s company, but there was no escaping it. She followed Victor up the winding, rocky path that led to the crest of the island, trying to breathe. There was a small valley hidden in the windswept rocks. It was a velvety bowl of green moss, bare of trees. A tall black marble obelisk stood on a pedestal in the middle of the hollow.
Identical to the one in her dream.
She stared at the obelisk, almost expecting blood to start trickling from the words etched on the gleaming stone.
“Are you all right, Raine? You’re very pale all of a sudden.”
“I’ve dreamed of this place.” Her voice sounded strangled.
Victor’s eyes lit up. “So you have it too, then?”
“Have what?”
“The dreaming. It’s a Lazar family trait. Your mother never mentioned it to you?”
She shook her head. Her mother had complained about Raine’s crazy nightmares until Raine had learned never to mention them.
“I have it. Your grandmother, too. Vivid, recurrent dreams, sometimes of future events, sometimes the past. I often wondered if I passed it on to you.”
“You? To me?” she faltered.
“Of course, to you, from me. I would have thought that such a bright girl would have figured it out for herself by now.”
He waited patiently as she gaped. She finally found her voice again. “You’re saying that you—that my mother—”
“Your mother has many secrets.”
She felt as if the earth was opening beneath her feet. “You seduced her?”
Victor snorted. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that. Seduction would imply a certain amount of effort on my part.”
Raine was so stunned, she barely registered the insult to her mother. “Are you sure?”
Victor shrugged. “With Alix, nothing could be sure, but from your looks and your dreams, you are certainly either my daughter or Peter’s. And I, personally, am convinced that you are mine. I can feel it.”
Mine. The possessive word echoed in her head. “Why?”
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. “She was a beautiful woman,” he said casually. “And I wanted to make a point with Peter, I suppose. Not that it worked. My brother was soft. I spoiled him, did all the dirty work for him. It was a mistake. I thought he could protect my innocence for me, and in return, I would spare him the ugly side of life. But it didn’t work. He went looking for it anyway. He found it in Alix.”
She held up her hands in protest. “Victor—”
“He needed someone who could appreciate his sensitivity.” Victor’s face rigid with old anger. “Not a money-hungry bitch who would spread her legs for any man who could stare her down.”
“Enough!” Raine shouted.
He jerked away, shocked at her tone.
She forced herself to meet his blazing eyes, horrified at her own daring. “I will not tolerate you speaking of my mother that way.”
Victor applauded softly. “Brava, Katya. If that had been a test, you would have just passed it. Alix doesn’t deserve such a loyal daughter.”
“My name is Raine. Please do not mention Alix ever again.”
Victor scrutinized her stiff, averted face for a moment. “This place appears to upset you,” he observed. “Let’s go back to the house.”
She followed him down the path. Over and over, she considered the enormity of his revelation until her mind reeled—and gave up, unable to comprehend it.
The path ended at the veranda that stretched the length of the back of the house. He opened the door for her, and gestured her to precede him down the stairs. “I promised to show you my collection,” he said. “The vault is in the cellar. After you, my dear.”
The tiny transmitter in her pocket was burning a hole in her mind. She thought of Bluebeard’s castle, and her stomach clenched. Don’t think of it, she reminded herself. Just do it. She was swimming with sharks, a dagger in her teeth. She’d promised Seth. She had to at least try.
Victor opened a metal plate on the wall next to an armored door, and keyed a series of numbers into a glowing silver wall panel. “Oh, that reminds me,” he murmured. “This morning I changed my personal computer access code. I change it, on a daily basis, usually. I call the password my ‘divine override.’ It lets me into any part of the system.”
She nodded politely, as if she understood.
“One word. Minimum number of letters, four. Maximum number of letters, ten. The key is…what I want from you.”
She was bewildered. “You mean, you’re telling me your code? But what do you want from me, Victor?”
He snorted. “Oh, for God’s sake. You know me better than to ask such a question. If I tell you, it means nothing. If you figure it out for yourself”—smiled, almost wistfully—“you are divine.”
He keyed in another string of numbers. The big, heavy door popped its seal and swung open. “After you,” Victor murmured.
She walked into the room. The humid, climate-controlled air closed around her like a possessive, suffocating embrace.
Victor put away the sixteenth-century stiletto, placing it in its case with the others. He took a wooden case from a high shelf, laid it on the table and opened it. “I was told that this rapier delivered the death blow in a famous duel in seventeenth-century France,” he said. “Over an unfaithful wife, if the documentation is to be believed. The outraged husband is said to have murdered both the lover and his wife with this blade. Often these stories are fabricated to inflate the value of such items, but I have reason to believe that it’s true. The p
apers are in antiquated French, but that’s no barrier to you, of course.”
Victor watched her reaction as she inspected the rapier, the delicate tremor in her hand, the faraway look in her eyes. She really was his offspring, he exulted silently. Her dreams were solid proof.
She hefted the rapier, sliced it through the air, and turned to him. “Yes,” she said decisively. “I think it’s true, too.”
She felt it too, just like him. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. What a pleasure it was, to show his beauties to someone with the capacity to understand why he valued them.
“You feel it, don’t you?” He reached for the rapier. Raine relinquished the thing with obvious relief.
“Feel what?” Her eyes were wary.
“The stain. I would say ‘vibration,’ but the term has been so overused in New Age parlance as to become practically meaningless.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
He patted her shoulder. “You will, my dear. If you have the dreams, you probably have other sensitivities as well. That is the price you pay for being born a Lazar.”
“I’ve already paid enough,” she said.
He laughed at her, pitiless. “Don’t whine. Power carries its price. And you must learn to use power in order to appreciate its gifts.”
She looked dubious. “Bad dreams can be useful?”
He hesitated for a moment, and pulled a set of keys out of his pocket. He unlocked a drawer and pulled out a black plastic case.
“Knowledge is always power, if you are strong enough to face the truth,” he said. He laid the case on the table. “Take a look at this, my most recent acquisition. I’m curious to see the effect that it has upon you. It isn’t ancient, or beautiful, or rare, like the other items.”
“Then why do you have it?” she asked.
“I did not acquire this for myself. It’s for a client of mine.”
Raine stuck her hands in her pockets. “What’s its story?”
He popped the lid open and beckoned her closer. “You tell me. Let your mind empty. Tell me what rises in it.”
Behind Closed Doors (The Mccloud Series Book 1) Page 31