by Linda Howard
He pulled her nipples, gently pinching, and the sensation was just sharp enough to send a bolt of sheer sexual excitement straight to her groin. She felt herself reaching up and back, her body arching instinctively into his hands as her fingers slid around the back of his neck, feeling the hardness, the thickness of muscle. She clung, hearing the soft sounds of invitation she was making, feeling the hard ridge in his pants as she rolled her bottom across it. Her stomach muscles contracted again, this time in blind anticipation, and she tried to turn toward him.
He stayed her, holding her facing the rail, the city spread out before and around them. She felt him tugging on the elastic waistband of her pants, felt the sudden coolness of air on her bare ass as he dragged the silk downward, felt the tension of the elastic around her thighs.
Panic surged again, once more mixed with disbelief and horror. Here? On the balcony, in the open, where anyone might see them? The street was too far below for anyone down there to see, but what about people in the neighboring buildings? Telescopes abounded in this city, thousands upon thousands of people spying on their neighbors, on the buildings across the street, and surely the FBI or the DEA or someone was watching Rafael, which meant they were also watching her—and this man had her half-naked on the balcony.
He moved closer again, murmuring something low and soothing. He pressed against her nakedness, and his hand moved between them. She heard the muted rasp of a zipper, his knuckles briefly pushing between her buttocks, startling her into a stifled shriek, then she was aware of nothing except her own excruciating exposure and the heavy pressure of his bared penis at the opening of her body.
“Bend over a little.”
His hand on the back of her neck made sure she obeyed. His feet were between hers, pushing them as far apart as possible given the restriction of her pants around her thighs. He bent his knees, lowering himself for a better angle, and with his other hand he worked the thick head back and forth against her opening, moistening both her and himself. Then he pushed up and in, the intrusion slow and difficult.
Drea writhed, caught like a worm on a hook. Her thigh muscles tensed and relaxed, trembling. He caught her, pulled her back to him, held her braced as he slowly withdrew and thrust forward again. His right arm held her locked to him, while with his left hand he reached down and delved between her soft vaginal lips. He scissored his fingers around her clitoris, holding it captive as he moved inside her, back and forth, back and forth, the thick, hard length of his penis touching something inside her—her G spot, maybe—God, she didn’t know, all she knew was that she was rocketing toward climax so fast she couldn’t think, then she was coming, hard, her inner muscles milking him, and raw animal sounds of completion were tearing from her throat.
She would have collapsed forward if not for his grip. He eased out of her and turned her around, holding her until she stopped gasping and shuddering, until she stopped crying. Why was she crying? She never cried, at least not for real. Yet now her cheeks were wet, her breathing hard and jerky. She fought for control and, when she could, she opened her eyes and looked up, met his gaze, and lost her breath all over again.
She’d thought his eyes were brown, but now she saw they were hazel, which was a completely inadequate word for the colors she saw there: not just brown and green and gold, but blue and gray and black added in, then shot with white striations. Up close the color reminded her of dark opals, full of surprising color. Nor was his gaze cold; she felt burned by the heat she saw there, the intensity of desire. He hadn’t cooled down any, which ran contrary to any experience she’d ever had. Once a man came, he lost interest in continuing to play. But this man was still hard, still ready, and—
“You didn’t come,” she blurted, struck by the abrupt realization.
He began walking her backward toward the open glass door, lifting her off her feet when her lowered pants threatened to trip her. “Just one time, remember?” he said, his gaze glittering with both heat and fierce intent. “Until I come, all of this counts as just once.”
* * *
2
IN A BUILDING ANGLED ACROSS FROM RAFAEL’S APARTMENT, a federal agent blinked at his monitor, then announced in a tone of astonishment: “Hey, the girlfriend has a boyfriend.”
“What?” The senior agent walked over to the monitor and stared at it, at the couple on the balcony. He whistled. “Talk about cutting it close; Salinas just left the building.” He frowned, studying the images. “I don’t remember seeing that guy before. Can we ID him?”
“I don’t think so; not yet, anyway. He hasn’t given us a good angle.” Despite that, the first agent, Xavier Jackson, danced his fingers across the keyboard, trying to clean up the resolution. Salinas had chosen his penthouse well; the angle, the height, the distance, all worked to make visual surveillance, at best, somewhat difficult—and as bad as visual was, what they had there was still a damn sight better than any audio they’d managed to get. Not only was the apartment soundproofed, but Salinas had also installed sophisticated equipment that thwarted all their attempts to eavesdrop. Nor had they been cleared to tap any of his lines, which to Jackson’s way of thinking meant that some high-level judges were in Salinas’s well-tailored pocket. That royally pissed Jackson off, because it ran contrary to his sense of justice, of right and wrong. Judges were human; they could be stupid, biased, just plain bad, but, damn it, they weren’t supposed to be dirty.
He froze a snapshot of the couple and sent it to the face recognition program, but he didn’t have much hope.
The senior agent was Rick Cotton; he’d been with the Bureau almost twenty-eight years, had gone gray in its service. He was a quiet man, competent in his work, but neither talented enough at what he did nor politically savvy enough to rise any higher than his present position. He would retire in another year or so, collect his pension, and his absence wouldn’t leave a gap, but at the same time the people who had worked with him would remember him as a solid agent.
In his own six years with the Bureau, Jackson had worked with some brilliant people who were also assholes, or, worse, slackers who were brilliant at ass-kissing, so he had no complaints about Cotton. There were a lot worse things in the world than working with a decent, competent man.
“This might be our break,” Cotton said as they waited to see if the computer program could put a name to the unknown man’s face. Until now, they hadn’t found a chink in Salinas’s wall of security, but filming the girlfriend getting it on with some other dude was leverage they could use against her. Getting to someone on the inside would be an unbelievable break—not that it would shine up Cotton’s reputation any, because some slick and savvy operator sitting in an office would find a way to take credit for it, and Cotton wouldn’t protest, just plod on in his dependable way.
Jackson thought that he himself just might be that slick and savvy operator, because damned if he’d let someone else take all the credit after the insufferably long, boring hours he and Cotton had put in on this assignment. He wouldn’t leave Cotton behind, though; the man deserved better than that.
Jackson kept an eye on the split screen, looking for a better angle, but it was as if the bastard knew exactly where they were, because not once did he reveal more than a partial view of his face. His right ear, though—Jackson froze a very good image of the ear. Ears were good; they varied from person to person in shape, size, the way they were positioned on the head, and the interior whorls. People who disguised themselves often completely forgot about the ears.
The facial identification program surrendered, telling him there was no match, which he’d expected. “Come on, look at the birdie,” he murmured to the man. “Let me take your picture.”
He was focused so intently on his task that, until Cotton gave an uncomfortable cough, Jackson didn’t realize what he was watching. “Damn,” he muttered. “He’s doing her right there, out in the open.” Not that they could really see anything, but it was obvious from the couple’s positions and movements what was h
appening on that balcony.
Then the unknown man swung them around, presenting his back to the camera, and half-walked, half-carried the girlfriend into the penthouse, pulling the sliding glass door shut behind him.
Not once had he provided them with a clear look at his face.
AFTER THE BRIGHTNESS and warmth of the sun-drenched balcony, the penthouse was blessedly cool and dim, and private. Drea clung to him for support; her legs were like cooked noodles and her brain felt like mush. He dipped his head to trail a line of slow kisses down her throat and across her collarbone. “Is this place bugged?” he asked in that low, half-audible tone of his, his lips moving against her shoulder as he murmured the words on her skin. “Cameras anywhere?”
“Not now,” Drea replied, then a sharp surge of combined lust and fear turned her insides to water. She worked hard to make people see her as ornamental, self-absorbed, and more than a little dumb: in short, nonthreatening. Having people underestimate her gave her an enormous advantage…but he didn’t seem to underestimate her at all, and that both pleased and frightened her. If he could see the brains beneath the act, then others might, too. At the same time, his easy assumption that she’d know the answer to a question so crucial fed a need that she hadn’t realized was there, a hunger to be treated as an equal on some level.
At any rate, it was too late now to continue the dumb act. Recklessly she added, “He used to, but he decided having a record of anything could be dangerous to him.”
At first, Rafael had had her followed everywhere she went, and hidden cameras had recorded her in her bedroom, as well as her bathroom. She’d had no privacy at all, and she had simply gone with the flow, keeping her activities completely innocuous and boring. She had been with him for almost five months when she overheard him telling Orlando Dumas, his electronics whiz, to get rid of all the cameras and microphones, and to burn the tapes. Orlando hadn’t bothered to tell him it was all digital, and there were no tapes, but Drea had had a private laugh at Rafael’s expense.
If Rafael wanted to know how often she had her nails and hair done, fine, let him waste time having her followed. She shopped, she watched television, and she made a habit of going to the nearest library and checking out coffee table books of other countries. She would pore over the pictures, and in a deliberately careful manner read snippets about different customs and geographical features aloud to Rafael, until he impatiently told her he wasn’t interested in ferrets and lemurs, nor did he care which waterfall was the highest in the world. Drea had managed to look faintly hurt, but thereafter kept the tidbits to herself. Shortly afterward, he’d stopped having her followed whenever she left the penthouse.
Most of the time, Drea didn’t take chances, and behaved as she had when she’d been followed. She really did get her nails and/or hair done frequently, and she spent a lot of time shopping, both in person and on the Internet. She kept her bedroom television on a shopping channel, and a pad lying there with item numbers scribbled on it—numbers that she frequently scratched through, or changed, just in case Rafael had someone check. There were even real item numbers for clothing, should he check that far. She spent a lot of time doing exactly what Rafael expected her to be doing.
Occasionally, however, she did something entirely different. Rafael was ruthless and street smart, but he didn’t think she was intelligent enough to slip anything by him, so she managed to slip quite a lot.
But this man, this killer holding her in his arms, saw beneath her carefully constructed façade, stripping away her defenses and exposing her as effortlessly as he’d stripped down her pants. She stared up into his narrowed gaze, wondering what else he saw. Was her secret safe with him, or did he see it as a card he could play whenever it was strategically useful? Maybe he’d want her to give him information about Rafael. Whatever he wanted her to do, she’d have to do it; she had no choice. That was actually an easy decision to make, because this man was one of the few people she’d bet on against Rafael.
Her thoughts had wrenched her from the control of her overloaded senses, and as clarity returned she again felt the icy finger of panic. He wasn’t finished with her. So far he hadn’t hurt her—the opposite, in fact—but that didn’t mean she was safe. Maybe he was just playing with her, getting her to lower her guard, relax. Maybe he got his jollies from sucker punches.
“You’re thinking too much,” he murmured. “You just tensed up again.”
Think! she commanded herself, willing the panic away. She had to think, get herself under control. God, how stupid could she be? Instead of acting like some twit who didn’t know what her body was for, she should be using it, doing what she did best, which was make a man feel special.
She stared at her own hands, her fingers digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders as she clung to him, and tried to force them into action. She should be stroking him, with both words and actions. She should go down on him, make him come, then—please, God—he would leave, and she could use the time to decide on her best course of action. She should be doing a lot of things, all of which right now seemed to be beyond her.
“Where’s a bedroom?” he asked, lifting his head to survey their surroundings, his eyes alert. “Not where you sleep with Salinas. Somewhere else.”
“We don’t…we don’t sleep together,” she mumbled, once more jolted into telling the truth. His gaze returned to her and narrowed even more, and she shivered at the threat she felt lurking behind his every action. “Sleep. We don’t sleep. I have my own room.”
Her heartbeat thudded as he waited a beat before saying, “You go to his room.”
It was a statement, not a question, as if he had also read Rafael with uncanny accuracy. Still, she nodded in confirmation. She did go to Rafael’s room whenever he wanted sex. That was the way it was; people went to Rafael, he didn’t go to them. Afterward she always returned to her own room, which she had deliberately made as feminine and frou-frou as possible, in keeping with the Barbie doll persona she’d cultivated.
“Your room,” he prompted.
Drea glanced to the right. “Down this hall.”
He leaned down and stripped her pants to her ankles. “Step,” he said, and she did, lifting her feet out of the pools of filmy white fabric. She didn’t have time to feel awkward for wearing a tank top and a pair of four-inch heels and nothing else, because he simply hoisted her up so she had to lock her legs around his hips to anchor herself, and he carried her down the hall.
His rock-hard erection rode her cleft, every step he took rocking him against her softly swollen flesh. Drea tightened the grip of her thighs and rubbed herself against the thick length, spreading her own dampness on it, trying to push him past the limits of his control. A hot pool of sensation gathered at the point of contact, then rapidly spread through her, taking her by surprise. She’d already climaxed, so she hadn’t expected to get turned on again. Hell, she hadn’t expected to get turned on at all. Nothing about this situation was what she’d expected, and though she kept struggling to gain control she kept getting her feet knocked out from under her and she’d go under yet again.
He reached her door and she managed to say “Here” in a strangled tone, but she couldn’t make herself release him so she could turn the doorknob. He did that himself, pulling her more tightly to him with one arm under her bottom, while he opened the door with his other hand. The motion adjusted their positions just enough that abruptly his erection slipped into her; hot tingles shot along every nerve. The sensation was so electric that she moaned, every muscle in her body tightening. Helplessly she began rising and falling, trying to get as much of him as possible, her range of motion limited by his grip on her. At this angle she could get only two or three inches of his penis inside her, and though the thick ridge of the head set off mini-explosions as she worked herself back and forth on it, that wasn’t enough, she wanted more, she wanted all of it, deep and hard and fast.
The rhythm of his breathing hitched a little, the only sign he’d given, ot
her than his erection, that he was the least bit excited. Abruptly Drea burned with humiliation at this evidence that, while he obviously wanted sex, he had no particular interest in her; she was here, she was available, and that was the extent of her use to him. She froze, and to her horror felt tears burn her eyes again. Doggedly she blinked them away.
What was happening? She wasn’t the one who lost control; she used sex to control men, to get what she wanted from them. What was wrong with her, that she let this one man frighten her so much that all her usual defenses came tumbling down? Okay, so he was, like, king of the badasses, but she’d dealt with badasses all her life, and if there was one thing she’d learned, it was that when the little head lifted and took charge, the big head stopped thinking.
That didn’t seem to have happened with him, but if she had a chance she could make him lose control; she knew she could. She wanted him to be as helpless as she felt, she wanted him fierce and hot and trembling, at her mercy instead of her being at his, but she wouldn’t have any mercy for him at all, any more than he did for her.
He reached the side of the bed, lifted her off him, and tossed her onto the mattress. By the time she stopped bouncing, he had most of his clothes off, and she held her breath as she watched him strip out of the rest. Naked, he was hard and muscled, almost lean. His chest was lightly haired, and at some time he’d been naked in the sun because he was tanned all over. For some reason, thinking of him naked and relaxed, drowsy in the sun, sent both her stomach and nerves trembling.
He bent over her and tugged her tank top up and off, leaving her only in those lethal heels. His dark opal gaze fastened on her breasts, a look so loaded with male interest that her nipples puckered as if he’d licked them. She jerked, fighting an inexplicable urge to cross her arms over her breasts to shield them. Somehow she felt more exposed, more vulnerable, more naked, when he looked at her.
