Under the Surface

by Anne Calhoun

  The white-hot threat didn’t disappear from his eyes this time. She lifted her chin defiantly and waited. Bring it on. For once, for just once in their ill-timed relationship riddled with lies and fictional identities, she wanted the man locked away in Matt Dorchester’s soul.

  She wanted the truth of him.

  In the next instant, he was against her. He trapped her body between his and the door and kissed her. The pressure of his mouth on hers, demanding she open to him, was near enough to brutal to make her gasp in fierce delight. She kissed him back, hard enough to draw blood from her inner lip. He gripped her wrists in one hand and with the other held her jaw and throat for his demanding kiss.

  His arm slid down around her waist, lifting her against his hard torso to walk into the bedroom and fall onto her bed with her underneath him. Air rushed out of her at the sudden impact. The old metal frame squawked in protest but held. Again he trapped her wrists over her head and with his free hand he yanked at the tie of her wrap dress and spread it open so she lay in a pool of red silk. His eyes were fierce and desolate as he straddled her, opened his jeans, rolled down a condom, and dealt with her panties with a swift yank of his fist.

  She threw back her head in adulation. Then she couldn’t talk because he’d shoved himself inside her, the impact of his thick shaft inside her and the pressure of his chest against her breasts forcing the air from her lungs. Her vocal cords turned the gasp into a whimper as the pressure sharpened to pain. She willed herself to stay open to him, and the edge softened into a swell of pleasure that rolled from her center into the pitch-blackness, where it melded with the tempestuous emotion emanating from Matt.

  Every time they’d had sex, all she’d sensed from him was a firm grip on his control. Even in the most intense, heated, erotic moments when sheer masculine need seethed under his skin, he’d never let himself go. But now he was actually feeling—anger, fear, desire, a soul-deep longing she didn’t dare put into words.

  It was wildly, compellingly real.

  She stripped his shirt over his head, leaving his carved torso bare to her hands. In response he shoved her bra to her collarbone and braced his elbows just above her shoulders to hold her in place. The searing touch of skin against skin brought a rough groan from his throat as he began to move.

  There was no clawing at his back, no pitching and heaving under him, no sexy pleading. She gripped his biceps and lifted her hips to meet each thrust, every nerve ending in her soft channel screaming with heightened awareness. He pounded into her, a soft grunt huffing from his throat with each impact. It was raw, it was purely male dominance in search of release, and she loved every moment of it.

  Emotion and sexual heat twined together and spiraled through her body, until, without warning, the tight fist at her core flew open and flung her into a star-spattered blackness. As if from a distance she heard her stuttering gasps of release. He buried himself deep inside her and shuddered, jaw clenched, to his own orgasm.

  Long moments passed as he lay on top of her, sweat trickling from his ribs to hers, his breath gusting in her ear. Then he pulled away and went into the bathroom. She slipped her arms from the sleeves of her dress and curled up naked on her side, ribbons of pleasure fluttering against her nerves as she waited for him to return.

  He didn’t. Her stomach seized when she heard him pull on his Army running shorts, then lace up his shoes. “I’ll be downstairs,” he said abruptly from the doorway.

  She pushed herself up on one elbow. “Matt, what’s—”

  “Not now,” he said. Then he turned and left.

  When the door closed with the faintest of clicks she understood. He might not be able to resist her, but giving in to her didn’t feel like a respite from the staggering burdens he shouldered. Giving in to an impulse, giving in to her felt like a failure of character, a weakness. She might be his drug, but he hated the addiction as much as he craved the rush.

  She loved him.

  Being with her was tearing him apart.

  * * *

  He got as far as the top of the spiral staircase before his knees gave way. His palm slipped on the wrought iron banister, nearly pitching him down the stairs before he caught himself and sank down on the landing. The edges of the posts dug into his spine, and he latched onto the pain, welcomed it, braced his foot against the opposite railing and shoved. Hard.

  What had he done? What had he just done?

  You just made the worst mistake a man can make.

  Cool air drifted over damp skin, triggering tiny flashpoints of memory—her soft mouth under his; the sharp, exhilarating tang of blood; the visceral, terrifying rush when he embedded himself deep inside her and everything disappeared, he disappeared, in an obliterating wave of infinite black energy. Into Eve.

  So that’s what it was like to feel.

  He must have hurt her. No way he hadn’t hurt her. He should go back and apologize. Except his mouth wasn’t shaped around “I’m sorry” but rather words he could never speak, never take back.

  The air conditioner thunked off, leaving only a ringing silence. No sound from the apartment. No sound from the bar below. Only the rush of breath and blood in his ears and that strange heaving in his chest, like a wild, caged thing gripped his ribs and rammed shoulder to breastbone like the bars of a prison, testing for weaknesses, seeking a way out.

  He took a deep breath. Unfisted his hands. Consciously relaxed the muscles in his thigh until the pain grinding into his back eased. Control surfaced, familiar and comforting. He shaped his mind around it, felt the struggling thing inside him recede as iron gray steel reasserted itself under his skin, encasing his muscles and bones. His pulse slowed, and he got to his feet, found his shoulders squaring, his body once again under his command.

  He took the first step, then the next. All systems go. She’d be asleep by now. They were both exhausted. Under duress. She needed sleep more than she needed to debrief what just happened. What he’d just done. In the morning he’d apologize for losing control and essentially brutalizing her.

  The hell of it was, he knew walking out the door had hurt her more.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Noise. An intrusive, annoying clanging, too close to her head to be her alarm because her phone was charging in the kitchen. She’d have to get out of bed to turn off the alarm.

  The bed shifted as the warm body beside her reached for the nightstand. Through the stupor of sleep she heard Matt fumbling for his iPhone in the mess on top, then a solid thunk as something hit the carpeted floor—the Sig or his department-issued Glock, probably. Maybe the knife. Possibly the economy-sized bottle of lotion she slathered on her hands before she went to bed. Most likely a gun.

  “I’ll take it,” she said, her voice thick, trusting he’d hand her the shrill electronic device, not a semiautomatic.

  He dropped the vibrating, buzzing phone on her abdomen and rolled onto his back. “Christ,” he muttered.

  She sat up, then paid the price for moving. He’d held her in place by gripping the hip that hit the linoleum the night someone shot out her windows, so when she sat up fresh twinges shot through the joint. Muscles in her thighs and calves protested vehemently when she moved.

  None of that compared to the shredded ache she felt in her heart.

  She swiped at the screen to shut off the alarm, then automatically checked various accounts without really seeing the comments and replies. It was something to buffer her against the turbulent emotions eddying in the air.

  “Time is it?” he asked, his voice morning thick.

  “Noon. Sorry. I should have set it back an hour, but I fell asleep instead.” And she’d forgotten to charge the phone as well. She’d lain awake, unwilling to follow him down into the bar and badger him further but exhaustion finally won.

  She felt like she would never be rested again.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I think that’s my line,” she said.

  His arm covered his eyes, and his chest rose and
fell evenly. Too evenly. In for a count of four, out for a count of four. Repeat. She looked at the hand loosely curled on his chest. The thin skin covering his knuckles looked like her heart felt.

  He wasn’t going to answer her. Finally she said, “I’m fine.” Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes. She blinked hard, and after a few moments the sensation faded. “I’m sorry, Matt. I pushed when I shouldn’t have.”

  I wanted something I shouldn’t want … something I can’t have.

  “I’m sorry too.” He lifted his arm from across his face, looked her right in the eye. “I was too rough.”

  “It was fine. You were fine.” She could handle that. Handle more. “I won’t break, Matt.”

  “I might.”

  She knew he’d meant to make a joke and defuse the tension, but the words sounded like he’d forced them out through steel wool. A wave of mortified regret crawled up her throat. Ten seconds earlier she’d told herself she had to stop pushing, and here she was … pushing.

  Give him some space, some time. “I’m going to get in the shower.”

  “Okay.”

  She untangled her legs from the light quilt and managed to walk to the bathroom without stumbling, then managed to shower without crying. Fifteen minutes later she stood in front of her tiny closet with her hair wrapped in a towel, wearing her bra and the short black skirt with the small front pocket for her iPhone. She pulled out a white sleeveless cashmere turtleneck, yanked off the towel, pulled the sweater over her head, and slid the phone into the pocket so she’d remember to charge it. She looked over her shoulder at him. Matt was steadily going about his business, avoiding her eyes. “Make sure you charge that,” he said.

  “It’ll be fine as long as I don’t make a call,” she replied. “I need makeup more.”

  She stood back to let him into the shower, the thin plastic curtain like a brick wall between them. She dried her hair and scrunched the waves into a simple style. She’d begun to dab concealer under her eyes when she heard a soft thump and a single knock at the door.

  The UPS guy, delivering her latest shipment of boxed groceries she’d ordered online. She walked out of the bathroom, gently unchained and unbolted the door to the landing, and crouched down to grab the small white box.

  She looked up into the barrel of a dull black gun. Lyle held it, staring down at her, expressionless. Staring at a gun looked just as unremarkable on television as getting shot at, but in real life Eve’s entire body went numb.

  Lyle took the box from her and shoved it onto the counter beside the door. “Downstairs. Now.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, as her brain kicked into overdrive. In a split second she ran through the circumstances. Matt’s small arsenal was in the bedroom on the nightstand. He was in the shower, defenseless. She was an idiot.

  “Sure you are, Evie,” he said gently. He gave her a smile so full of toothy malice the hair stood up on her arms. “Because if you don’t I’ll shoot you. And then I’ll leave you here and go and shoot your father, your mother, your motherfucking brother. I’m sick of this fucking bar and all the trouble it’s caused me. It ends now.”

  She went utterly still. Natalie, her best friend, or Cesar, supporting his family, or Pauli, who was just a kid. Her family.

  The shower shut off. In a few seconds Matt would dry off and walk through the bathroom door, and maybe Lyle would shoot him too.

  But he didn’t know Matt was a cop.

  Matt would find her.

  She hurried past Lyle, out the door and onto the landing.

  “Nice and quiet going down those stairs,” he said, eyeing her four-inch heels. “Don’t want lover boy getting alarmed.”

  No, they didn’t want that, not until lover boy had gone and gotten all of his biggest friends with their semiautomatic pistols and concussion grenades. Lyle gripped her arm, hustled her across the parking lot, and shoved her into the backseat of the SUV. His cell rang. “Keep an eye on her,” he snapped at Travis, sitting in the driver’s seat, then slammed her door and took the call with a snarled “Yeah?”

  Twisting sideways to fumble for the seat belt, she pulled her iPhone from the pocket of her skirt and slipped it between her thigh and the seat. After she fastened the belt she swiped her thumb across the screen to wake it, and tapped the phone button.

  “Hey, Travis,” she said as she lowered the volume. She bent over and pretended to adjust her heel, dialing a memorized phone number, praying adrenaline would make her fingers accurate.

  Voice mail. The voice was faint, audible only to her ears as the relentlessly pleasant female operator asked the caller to leave a message. She hung up, waited a few seconds, pressed Call twice to redial the number.

  Oh shit, Matt! Oh shit oh shit oh shit! Please answer your phone!

  Travis wouldn’t meet her eyes in the rearview mirror. She’d known him her whole life. He’d always worked to ingratiate himself into whatever circle was closest. The fact that he wasn’t chatting her up, let alone looking her in the eye made her stomach lurch. Driven by the most basic impulse of all—survival—she reached for the door handle.

  The locks clicked shut. She looked over the back of the driver’s seat at Travis, who still wasn’t looking at her.

  “They’ll meet us at the warehouse,” Lyle said as he slid into the Escalade’s leather seats. The truck pulled away from Eye Candy, into traffic.

  * * *

  After a firefight, routine mattered. Shower and dress. Jeans, polo, running shoes, gun at his right ankle, knife. Stick to the routine, the last stand against feelings, memories, images. Eve walking up the stairs with a sociopath. Eve taunting him, Eve trembling under him until he’d wrung every last drop of fight out of her and she turned to flame in his arms. The misery on her face this morning.

  The silence in the living room triggered a mental alarm. Maybe she was in the office, doing paperwork. He walked into the living room and saw a package on the counter, but the office door was closed.

  “Eve?” he called as he opened the door.

  The office was dark, the door leading down the spiral staircase to Eye Candy’s dance floor closed and dead-bolted from the inside. No light shone through the curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “Eve!” he called again. His voice tauntingly bounced around the cavernous space as he hauled open the door and launched himself at the stairs, his hands skidding down the curved railing. He jogged into the storeroom, the dish room, then behind the bar. Nothing.

  “Eve!”

  She’d vanished. He took the curving stairs three at a time and bolted through the office, back into her apartment. Her purse was still on the counter. The pegs by the back door held her car keys. On the landing he scanned the empty alley, then dashed down the wooden staircase and around the side of the building. The parking lot was empty but for his Jeep.

  Cold certainty crawled up his spine and settled into the base of his brain. She was gone, taken from the apartment from under his nose, while he was in the shower.

  He was drowning. He knew how it felt, a deceptive lack of feeling that marked the leading edge of a tsunami. Then the surge hit. He stood stock-still as the wave engulfed him—fear, anguish, terror, anger rising inside him, forcing their way up his chest, into his throat—then he was moving. He had to get away from this rampaging, acid-skinned, sharp-clawed thing inside him, threatening to gut him from the inside out.

  He was headed for his Jeep, when his phone, slipped into his front pocket, buzzed. Chad’s cell had a distinctive ringtone. Matt’s was an old-fashioned bell-tone ring. He pulled it from his pocket. Eve’s cell number appeared on the screen.

  Oh shit.

  He tapped Answer.

  “—a little over the top back there, don’t you think?”

  He immediately muted the call, so he could hear her but nothing from his surroundings would be audible to Eve or anyone with her. Her voice sounded distant, melded with the radio, like the phone wasn’t up to her mo
uth.

  He could make out Lyle’s voice, but his reply was too muffled to understand. But it sounded dismissive. As if Eve didn’t matter anymore.

  “Would you turn that off, please? I hear music so much at Eye Candy, I hate listening to it when I’m not at work.”

  That was bullshit, pure and simple. She must have gotten an assent, because the background noise shut off.

  “Much better,” she said. A pause, then, “Travis, I heard Maria’s working at Two Slices. Is her mom watching the kids?”

  Fight back the terror, the emotion that would get her killed. Phone to his ear, he sprinted to the sidewalk and pulled up a mental map of Thirteenth Street, running through the East Side, thirteen blocks from the river that formed the city’s eastern boundary. The next mention will either be Spattered Ink or the crazy psychic doing business out of her house with about thirty cats for company.

  “Can you believe Madame LaMoue is still in business? She gets a booth at the East Side street fair every year. Local color. That’s how I describe her to people considering opening up shop on the East Side. Every community needs someone with the eye.”

  No response from Lyle, but Matt was in the Jeep, the gas pedal floored. He used Chad’s cell to dial Sorenson.

  “Lyle’s got Eve,” he said when she answered. “Took her out of the apartment while I was in the shower. They’re moving south on Thirteenth Street. I’m on my way to the precinct.”

  “Shit is about to go down,” Sorenson said. “Caleb Webber just came in. He got an anonymous call suggesting he track down his father. Pastor Webber made it to the men’s breakfast at seven but not the volunteer lunch at noon. No one’s seen him since eight a.m.”

  “Not answering his cell?”

  “He doesn’t carry one. Caleb checked the restaurant because sometimes his dad stays and works there, and his car’s still in the parking lot, doors locked. No signs of his dad.”