by Anne Stuart
She couldn’t see anything. Just smooth, golden flesh crisscrossed by a faint network of lines. He took her hand and placed her fingertips against his shoulder, pushing, and she could feel the scar tissue, a small knot beneath the warm skin.
She pulled her hand away. “You had a good doctor,” she said, uneasy.
“One of the best.”
“Who?”
“If you don’t want to hear the answer, then you shouldn’t ask the question.”
He still hadn’t put the shirt on, but she was past caring. “My husband,” she said in a dead voice. “That’s Stephan’s work.”
“Indeed it is. But he wasn’t your husband at the time. Granted, he was a lot more interested in stabilizing you than digging the bullet out of my shoulder, but then, I was in no particular danger of dying. You, however, had lost a hell of a lot of blood, and Stephan much preferred a challenge. Besides, even all cut up you were still pretty, and he knew I wasn’t particularly interested.”
“In me?”
“In him. Your husband was gay, remember? He gave me a shot of morphine to tide me over, and let me watch as he put you back together again. It was very impressive.”
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
“Why should I kill you? I was the one who brought you there.”
She turned away, because she couldn’t look at him a moment longer. “No,” she whispered. Knowing it was true.
“Don’t take it so hard, Isobel,” he said. “You can still hate me. I killed five men that night, three with my bare hands. Hardly the kind of heroic behavior you would have expected.”
“What five men?”
“General Matanga. I was paid to take him out and I did. His aide got in the way as I was escaping. And then there were my three confederates, the ones with the knives. After all this time I’m afraid I’ve forgotten their names.”
“Why did you kill them?”
There was no humor in his smile, no warmth in his blue-gray eyes. “They’d dragged you back to the warehouse and they were having fun with you. You weren’t conscious anymore, but you could still feel pain—each time they cut you your body twitched. This annoyed me, so I killed them.” His words were casual, his eyes watching her.
“And then you took me to Stephan?”
“Well, since I was heading there myself it seemed the gentlemanly thing to do. I have to say it was a bitch and a half carrying you with a bullet in my shoulder. On top of that I had to sit and let him save your life while I almost passed out. And then the son of a bitch decided I could spare a pint of blood, despite all the stuff that had poured out of me thanks to your bloodthirsty actions.”
“A pint of blood?”
“You needed a transfusion, and he was fresh out. We both happen to be AB negative, princess. Just one more sign we’re destined to be together.”
She wanted to throw up. His blood was running in her veins. She’d shot him, and he’d saved her life. And he was standing there, looking at her out of enigmatic eyes, and she wanted to scream.
She cleared her throat. “Interesting,” she said. “You really are full of surprises.”
“And you don’t fool me for a minute, princess. You’re ready to fall apart, but you aren’t going to let yourself do it. Part of you is wishing to God you’d killed me when you had the chance, another part knows you’d be dead as well. I’m a nightmare, a monster who saved your life when I should have left you to bleed to death. Now, how are you going to make peace with that unpleasant truth?”
“Quite easily. You’ve been trying your absolute best to manipulate me, but I’m not the puddle of emotions you seem to think I am. I know what you’re doing, and I know what’s behind it. What’s wrong with you.”
“Please share,” he said amiably. “I’ve always been interested in other people’s opinions about my sociopathic behavior.”
“You’re afraid of me.”
This time she’d managed to shock him, and she could feel her fear ebbing, the icy strength taking over. She was far from defenseless, and she’d finally realized the weakness in his armor.
“Afraid of you?” He laughed lightly. “I hate to tell you, but I’m not afraid of anyone or anything. It’s both my strength and my weakness. I don’t care if I live or die, I don’t care who I hurt. I’m not afraid.”
“You’re afraid of me,” she said again. “And I think you always have been. You kept me drugged and pliant in that hotel room in Marseille—I remember it better than you think. And you never let me touch you. It was as if you were experimenting on me, to see just what you could make me feel, and you never were there at all.”
“You were drugged, Isobel, and it was eighteen years ago—”
“And two nights ago,” she continued ruthlessly. “On board the ship. You just wanted to prove you could make me feel. But you didn’t feel anything at all. You didn’t let yourself.”
He was looking no more than remotely interested in her theory, but she wasn’t fooled. She knew the truth this time, and she wasn’t going to be distracted.
“You didn’t climax. You couldn’t. You could manipulate me enough to make me feel powerless, and then you pulled away. Is it women you’re afraid of, Killian, or just me?”
He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes hooded, unreadable. “What are you trying to do, Isobel?”
“Call your bluff. Get you to leave me the hell alone. You don’t want me, you just want to fuck with me. So here I am, you son of a bitch. Take me.”
She could feel the power coursing through her, a strangely mournful power. It was a triumph to realize he’d only been playing with her, a triumph to know that she really didn’t matter.
His smile was almost wistful. “You’re right about two things, Mary Isobel Curwen Lambert,” he said. “I absolutely want to fuck with you. I’m calling your bluff. So why don’t you go down on me and prove yourself right?”
The silence in the room was muffled, absolute, and the caffeine must have finally hit overload, because her heart was slamming so hard against her chest that surely he must have heard it. And if she turned her back, gave in, he would win, and she could never let him do that, never again.
Her knees hit the floor as she sank down in front of him. Her hands were shaking as they worked on the snap of the new jeans. He didn’t move, just stood there and let her fumble with the zipper, his hands at his sides.
He wasn’t wearing underwear. She grasped the denim and yanked it down, and in the murky light his cock was hard, bigger than she’d expected.
She looked up at him, her eyes cold and hostile. “So you can get an erection,” she said. “Too bad you can’t come.”
And she put her mouth on him, a deliberate taunt, an insult, a sly, erotic challenge that she knew she would win. She closed her mouth around him, sucking at him, pulling with her lips, letting her tongue swirl around the rigid, unfeeling length of him, as she proved to him…
She felt his hands on her head, oddly gentle, his fingers threading through her hair, pulling it loose from its tight bun so that it spilled over her shoulders. He was stroking her scalp, kneading her, letting her taste and suck and then swallow, as he froze, his body rigid, his cock pumping into her mouth as he held her there.
She fell back, shocked, wiping her hand across her mouth, and she could barely see the expression on his face in the murky light. “You’re right about something else,” he said, his voice ragged. “I’m scared to death of you. Because I want you, when common sense and a lifetime of experience tells me I should kill you. I want you, and if I give up then you’ll own me, and I’ll have nothing left to fight with.”
She said nothing. She could taste him in her mouth, feel him between her legs where he hadn’t touched her—and she was ready to climax from thinking about what she’d just done.
“But then, it’s too late, isn’t it? You win, princess. Now let’s take this to the bed and get it done right.”
20
He reached down to pull her to her
feet, but she fought him. His jeans were halfway down his legs, trapping him, and when she struggled, he fell, taking her with him onto the cold, hard floor of the apartment.
He kicked the jeans off, rolling on top of her, and he had her clothes off her, those plain, expensive clothes, in less than a minute. She fought him, hitting him, not knowing what she wanted. He was hard again, that fast, and he shoved her down on the thin carpet, kneeling between her legs, waiting for her to tell him to stop. Whether he would listen was another matter entirely.
But she didn’t. She lay in a welter of discarded clothes, her hair loose and tousled, and he looked down at her body. A body he remembered, even after all Stephan’s handiwork.
She still had pale freckles, spots of gold, dancing across her stomach. She still had red hair, and he stopped thinking about his cock and put his mouth there, kissing her, so damn grateful that something was still the same.
She put her hands in his hair and yanked his head up, hard, and her eyes were a storm of pain and confusion. “What the hell are you doing?” Her voice was no more than a raw whisper.
“You know what I’m doing. Returning the favor.” He half expected her to keep fighting, hitting at him. But she didn’t. She dropped her hands to the floor, trying to will her body into that ice-fogged state she’d lived in for so long, and he wanted to laugh. That was one battle she’d never win. He was an expert when it came to using his mouth, and he’d never done it with someone he…cared about. He was enmeshed with her, body and soul, and he knew just how to touch her, with his mouth, his tongue, to make her shatter in a matter of seconds.
And before she had a chance to come down, he was inside her, pushing into the tight wet sleekness, feeling her tighten around him, first trying to keep him out, then pulling him in deeper, and he put his hands under her butt and yanked up, hard, so that he was in so deep she could probably taste him.
She was tasting him, and the knowledge almost made him lose it again. He loved her mouth, the cold things it could say, the hot things it could do. He arched back, looking down at her, deep inside her.
He’d forgotten her breasts. Small, perfect, the nipples hard in the warm room. He’d forgotten the soft, muffled sounds she made when she was ready to come. Like she was right now.
And he’d forgotten the dark, bleak pain in her eyes when she had no defenses left, and he’d trapped her, used her, and there was no love at all.
He’d pull out. Away from her, before he could destroy her completely. That’s what he had to do—he couldn’t, he shouldn’t…
Her hands came up from the floor and touched his face, gently. Her fingers brushed his mouth, slowly slid down his tense, sweat-dampened body, light and caressing. She was crying…. A woman like Isobel Lambert shouldn’t cry. And then her hands gripped his hips and she arched, bringing him in deeper still, and she said yes to his unasked question. Yes, and yes, and yes.
He kissed her, because he couldn’t stop himself. He tried to go slowly, to make it good for her, to make it the best she’d ever had, but she was already past that point, making those strangled little cries that sent him over the edge, and there was nothing but heat and damp and the smell and the touch and the taste, and he could have no more stopped himself than he could have stopped the storm outside.
He was a man who fucked in silence. And when he climaxed, long, hard, endlessly, inside her tight body, he heard his voice in the darkness. Calling her name.
Reno stretched out on the floor, a beer cradled in his hands, his eyes drifting closed as he listened to the sound of the storm outside. Tiny pellets of icy rain were beating against the windows, mixed with the noise of the video game Mahmoud was playing.
It had been a strange day.
He opened one eye, glancing at the kid. He was sitting cross-legged on the mattress Reno had dragged out for him. The second bedroom was crowded with discarded furniture, but he could at least get out the mattress. Mahmoud would have been happy enough sleeping on the hard floor—clearly he’d slept in far worse places—but Reno had a soft spot for the kid.
Besides, he probably wasn’t going to sleep at all—he was going to stay up all night playing video games. It had been love at first sight; one taste of Mortal Kombat and the boy was hooked. Reno had battled him for hours, opponent after opponent. Sometimes he let Mahmoud win, at other times he’d simply slap his character to the ground and rip out his spinal cord. Reno didn’t let himself dwell on the eerie thought that Mahmoud would have lived in a world like that. Well, the ripping out of spinal cords was not usually seen outside of a video game, but the blood had been real for him.
He looked relaxed, happy, with his newly spiked purple hair, rude T-shirt and ripped jeans that had cost more than a child soldier would make in a lifetime. And they’d figured out how to communicate, a crazy mix of French, English, Arabic, Japanese and video game terms. After two hours of silence Mahmoud had started talking, and he hadn’t stopped, as characters battled on the HD television screen and fake blood spattered.
Reno understood only part of it, but it hadn’t mattered. Mahmoud had needed to talk, and he listened. They moved from fight games to first person shooters, and Reno found himself hopelessly out-classed by a kid fifteen years younger than he was, something he wasn’t about to put up with. Older brother kindness could only go so far, and he moved him on to RPGs, fantasy role-playing games where Mahmoud could wander through enchanted forests, kill trolls, turn into a wizard and collect potions. The kid was in heaven, and Reno could retire to his bedroom in peace.
They’d already had a solemn exchange of presents, Japanese style. He’d given Mahmoud his most prized possession, his handheld game system that was still in beta mode, unavailable on the open market and so advanced it made PS3 look like an Atari. And Mahmoud had given him a string of beads, cracked, ancient, worthless. The beads had belonged to his foster sister. He’d taken them from her dead body, and had sworn on them to kill the man who’d murdered her.
He’d given them to Reno, along with his blood oath of revenge, finally letting go. And Reno, cold, unsentimental punk that he considered himself to be, had wrapped them around his wrist, knowing he would carry them with him until the day he died.
He could hear nothing from the floor below. He’d never even realized there was a closed-off living space down there—he was just glad Peter Madsen hadn’t decided to put him in it during his training period. England was bad enough; being in a prison wouldn’t help.
Madame Lambert had looked like a different woman than the cold, efficient robot she’d appeared to be the only other time he’d been in England. But then, that had been miles away from the plain, middle-aged cult follower that had been the first disguise he’d seen her in. Maybe the robot was a disguise as well, and the bloody, torn and troubled woman who’d been waiting for them with an unconscious man and a furious Mahmoud was the real Madame Lambert.
Normally Reno wouldn’t care. It was none of his business. But it didn’t look as if he’d be getting back to Tokyo anytime soon, and he held the firm belief that if he was going to do something, even if coerced into it, then he should do it completely. And in order to accomplish that, he needed to understand the people he worked with.
What had she been doing all day with the man she’d drugged? He was more than just a hostile—Reno could figure that out by the expression in her eyes when she’d thought no one was looking. They’d dumped his unconscious body on the small bed in the closed-off apartment, and she’d stood there, looking down at him with an unreadable expression on her face.
Maybe she’d killed him at some point during this long day. But then, he would have been called to help Madsen move the body. The Committee’s operatives had gone undercover, and right now there seemed to be only the three of them.
Reno hoped Taka was looking out for himself, that son of a bitch. He was the one who’d arranged to have him shipped out of the country, and while there was no doubt Reno had made the mistake of losing his temper with some very un
forgiving people, it also had something to do with the fact that Taka’s sister-in-law was coming for a visit. He and his wife kept Reno as far away from Jilly Hawthorne as they could, even if it meant exiling him halfway across the world.
He pushed himself up off the floor, considering his annoyance with his entire family, women, the Committee, England and life in general. “I’m going to bed,” he told Mahmoud.
The boy simply nodded, staring fixedly as his video game character rode a dragon through a flame-colored sky.
“Don’t stay up all night,” Reno said, and then could have kicked himself. He’d turned into an old man. The kid could stay up for days if he wanted to, playing games, and be none the worse for it. Reno had done it often enough.
Empty Red Bull cans were piled high in the trash bin; boxes of cereal, Chinese take-out containers, bags of chips were littered all over the place. The boy hadn’t stopped eating. Reno had taught him how to use chopsticks rather than his hands, but it had been harder convincing him not to leave them stuck in the rice. Mahmoud had argued with perfect logic that it should only be bad luck to leave them stuck in Japanese rice, not Chinese. But then he’d carefully removed them.
No, the kid was okay. Tomorrow, maybe he’d take him to a video game arcade and let him try Guitar Hero and DDR. Or steal a fast car and drive out into the countryside, and maybe they could find a castle or two.
At least Reno was no longer so damn bored.
Mahmoud made no sound when they came for him. The struggle was silent, muffled, and Reno wouldn’t have woken up if they hadn’t knocked over the bin of soda cans. He came flying through the darkness toward the shadowed men, and he took out two of them with the sheer element of surprise. But then he heard the crack of his arm breaking, as if from a distance, and felt a flash of blinding pain. Then nothing at all.
Bastien Toussaint glanced around the pristine offices of Spence-Pierce, wondering what the hell was happening behind the double-thick walls. It was three in the morning, and he wasn’t any more eager to face Chloe than Madsen was to deal with his very annoyed amazon wife. They weren’t much further than they’d been when they’d started out that morning, and there was no way either of them was going to stop until they figured out what the hell was going on. So far they’d come up with bugger all.