by Fiona Brand
When she walked into the lounge, Blade was seated at a desk in a corner alcove, all his concentration taken by a computer screen. She noticed he had changed his clothes, although he was still wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He also looked freshly showered, his hair still sleek with moisture. She realised there must be another bathroom in the suite, and some of her tension drained away. Blade had chosen to shower separately, letting her have her privacy. The consideration of that small act was subtly reassuring. He might be blunt in his intentions, but he wouldn't crudely rush her into bed.
When he saw her, he immediately hit the screen saver and strolled over to the couches. There was a first-aid box already set out on the coffee table.
Anna perched on the edge of a couch. Blade sat down on the coffee table and placed her forearm across his thigh.
He tipped disinfectant onto a pad of cottonwool, but before he applied it to the scratch, he caught her gaze and held it. "You recognised me that first night. Why didn't you tell me who you were? I knew you when you were a kid. Our families knew each other. I patched up your knee once. You could have trusted me."
"You remember the knee?"
"Looks like we both do. So why didn't you tell me?"
She gritted her teeth against the sting as he cleaned the scratch. "I couldn't figure out a reasonable explanation for why you had found me in Ambrose Park. I still don't know how you did it."
If she thought he was going to tell her, he thought wryly, she was wrong. He reached for a tube of ointment and smoothed it on the scratch.
A yawn took her by surprise. "I was suspicious of everybody. I couldn't afford not to be."
His gaze pinned her. "Do you trust me now?"
"Yes."
Blade controlled the extent of his relief, his exaltation that he had finally gained her trust – even if he still had the feeling he'd forced her into it. He finished the dressing and rose to his feet. She was still wary, and bone tired.
He wanted to take her to bed tonight. He had planned to take her to bed. He was burning up inside, his arousal hard and painful, his skin hot and sensitive, but he knew now he wasn't going to do it.
Anna was exhausted, her eyes drooping with fatigue. The rich coppery gleam in her hair made her skin look almost translucently pale. The yellowish bruise on her forehead and the bandage on her arm made her look even more fragile. She needed to sleep, and if she got into bed with him, they wouldn't be doing much sleeping.
He had wanted Anna and ruthlessly set out to have her. She was with him now, but he'd found out almost nothing about her likes and dislikes, what she liked to read, what music she listened to. He had almost lost her twice in the space of two days.
Two days! The short span of time stunned Blade, even as he acknowledged its relative unimportance. He had known more beautiful women than Anna over a period of years, women who had made it clear they were available to him, yet who had left him cold emotionally. Anna had stirred him from the first. Even without the added mystery and frustration of the dreams, he would have wanted her.
Having her sleeping so close to him, yet not in his bed, was going to be torture. He knew that once he had Anna in his bed, she wouldn't find it easy to leave him. For Anna, making love would be a commitment, and he was determined to use it to bind her to him. But not at the expense of her trust.
He felt a moment of incredulity that he was actually reduced to this kind of manipulation to keep a woman. There was a word for it, and that word was "desperate."
She was watching him sleepily, still perched on the edge of the couch, as if afraid that the second she relaxed he would be on her. She wasn't far wrong.
"I'll go and make your bed up. You look dead on your feet."
Her eyes widened in surprise, but her reaction was dazed, so far gone with fatigue she could barely function. When he came back from putting fresh sheets on the bed in the room he'd chosen for her, she was curled up asleep, her cheek resting on one arm of the couch, her knees drawn up beneath his shirt, so that only the toes of one foot peeked out.
Blade shook her gently, and when she didn't rouse, bent and lifted her into his arms. She was as light as a child, baby-soft and gently curved. It seemed incredible to Blade that she had eluded Henry for so many years, escaped death so many times.
Her head lolled against his shoulder, hair spilling in a fragrant tumble, lashes dark against her skin. She muttered something indistinct, and he automatically cradled her closer, soothing her with his voice. She nuzzled into his chest, cuddling closer still, as if she needed to be touched, needed to be held; then she relaxed back into boneless sleep.
Blade's gaze fixed on her mouth, and his stomach clenched in a mixture of tenderness and gut-wrenching desire. He'd kissed her tonight and lost control like a teenager; he had been close to making love to her in the cab of the Jeep, where any passer-by could have seen what was happening. Although the windows had been steamed up. It had been an all-round steamy situation.
Anna hadn't attempted to stop him, although she was still wary of him.
The wariness cut both ways. He carried her to her bed and gently tucked her in. What she had told him about her past tallied with the dreams he'd had, which meant everything he had "dreamed" or "seen" at various times had been real.
He didn't know how it happened, or why he was the recipient of whatever Anna "broadcasted," but he didn't like it.
As fiercely as he was drawn to Anna, as much as he cared for her, he didn't want anyone messing with his mind.
*
Eric Seber pulled his car into the breakdown lane and parked. He sat, considering the torrential rain exploding off his windscreen, the careening headlights as traffic spilled down the motorway like brilliantly lighted flotsam skimming the surface of a river in full flood. Stoically, he considered his second mistake.
He had been made.
The big dark guy with Anna Johnson had been savvy. He'd been taken by surprise. Apart from the one incident just days ago, when Anna Johnson had eluded him, that hadn't happened for years. Seber didn't like surprises; he liked being alive better.
The windscreen began to fog. Methodically, he flicked the fan on full and adjusted it to demist; then he picked up his mobile phone. He had made a second mistake, this one with stronger repercussions. He couldn't assume that Anna Johnson and the guy she was with couldn't describe him.
De Rocheford picked up on the fourth ring.
Seber listened as his client rolled out his name. The man had a voice like a radio personality or a television presenter. He enunciated "de Rocheford" as if he were presenting it as a damn gift, all trussed up with a satin bow and coated in cream. Seber normally didn't waste much time thinking about any of his clients after he'd checked them out to his satisfaction, but de Rocheford had got under his skin from the first. Money aside, the slick bastard was a pain in the ass.
He made his report.
There was a lengthy silence. The demister whirred loudly; the condensation on the window was clearing in patches.
"You say she had a man with her?"
Seber noticed that this time there was no cream coating de Rocheford's voice. "Yeah. Big stud, with long black hair, looked familiar, but I can't quite place him. Drove a black Jeep, late model. I got a partial on the plates."
De Rocheford bit out a short, hard word.
Seber would have smiled if he hadn't been so ticked himself. Now the great man was using the "f" word.
"I think I know who she's with," said de Rocheford. "Give me what you've got on the plates and I'll check it out. Meet me at my house. Now."
Seber stiffened. He only met clients once, for an initial consultation at a location of his choosing. He liked to keep his anonymity firmly in place, structure the payments so he didn't get ripped off, and do the job clean and neat. He also liked to tape his clients as a little additional insurance, just in case they tried to change the rules. Coldly, he eyed the glistening stream of traffic that had slowed to a crawl. "That's not in our agreement."
De Rocheford told him what he could do with the agreement.
Seber took it on the jaw. Reluctantly, he repeated the two letters and one number he'd managed to get on the Jeep, then took down de Rocheford's address. He had made the mistakes; it was up to him to fix the situation. If that meant meeting with de Rocheford again, he had no choice. If word got around that he didn't meet his obligations, he was washed up in this line of work. But he didn't have to like it. Meeting de Rocheford would expose him needlessly, and he'd already caught a police tail on him more than once. Damn.
De Rocheford had said he thought he knew who Anna Johnson was with, and now Seber was willing to bet he wanted another kill. Seber had a bad feeling about this; nothing had gone according to plan. All he wanted to do was put distance between himself and de Rocheford, ditch this car and disappear for a while.
Resolutely, he consulted his road map and pulled out onto the highway, aimed in a direction he didn't want to go. He would meet with de Rocheford and rectify his mistakes. His mind automatically ran through a list of useful contacts he periodically used when he needed backup.
When the job was done, he would collect his payment, liquidate his assets and leave the country.
And before he went, he decided, he might do de Rocheford, too. Just for the hell of it.
Chapter 10
The dream seeped into Blade's consciousness sometime in the dark hours before dawn.
It was Anna, his ghost, the woman who had haunted him for more years than he cared to count. The woman who had frustrated him. Tormented him. Made him furious. Made him long for her.
He felt her touch, whisper-soft. She brushed close, then pressed against him, her skin silky smooth, soft and cool. His hands settled at her waist, anticipation tightening every muscle in his body as his nostrils flared, drinking in the female scent of her.
She was bolder than she'd ever been before, winding her arms around his neck and reaching up to kiss his mouth, his jaw, his neck. Her expression was dreamy, absorbed as her hands slid smoothly over his skin, examining him, petting him.
His breath rasped inwards when she reached down and cupped him, wrapping around the broad base of his shaft, stroking gently, until he was heavy and throbbing, and he had to wonder if this time he would go mad, if this time he would lose control.
Desire poured through him, filled him, until he had to set his teeth against the aching need to pull her close and make love to her without preliminaries – without even the barest foreplay. His hands had tightened on her waist, and he was lifting her, before he brought himself under control.
Her hands gripped his shoulders. The silken swath of her hair swung against his jaw, and her breasts brushed his chest, the nipples firm. Heat rolled through him, wrenching a groan from deep in his belly.
He clasped her buttocks, encouraging her to wrap her legs around his waist. Her arms twined his neck as she buried her face against his shoulder.
He cupped her nape, dragging her mouth to his. She came without resistance, hungry for his touch. A shudder rippled through him as her mouth parted beneath his. He reached down without preliminaries and guided himself to her opening, felt her readiness for him.
Blade had been wanted by many women, but to his knowledge, he had never been needed like this. Her need was seductive, fierce; it undermined him as nothing else could, and it matched his own.
It was his own need that confused him the most, because it bound him to her, chained him as effectively as if he'd been manacled to her side. He couldn't feel this way for anyone else, couldn't desire any other woman the way he desired Anna.
Her mouth glided over his, clung, soft, lush, hesitant, and his attention shifted.
"Do it," he demanded.
Her mouth nuzzled his lips apart. He felt the tentative incursion of her tongue, shyly stroking against his. Her taste shimmered through him, and his knees almost buckled, the pleasure of that simple caress dizzying. "Yes."
Her very directness and lack of guile cut through Blade's defences, breached his control. If she had been skilful in the art of seduction, a part of him would always have held back. He was too well-versed in the subtle nuances of relationship games to be controlled by sex.
Her fingers clenched in his hair as he began to enter her. The constriction made him break out in a sweat, his heart pounding, dark heat flushing his skin as he withdrew, then shoved deep. She arched on a shivering cry and he bent and closed his mouth over one beaded nipple, suckling gently. He felt the moment when she tightened almost painfully hard around him, the wild, convulsive clenching of delicate inner muscles. He shuddered, cradling her close, straining against his own incipient release, straining not to lose himself in the shuddering whirlpool of need.
*
Anna came awake, a cry echoing in the stillness of her room. Her cheeks were cold, and she was startled to find them wet with tears. She jackknifed upright, hugging her knees, burying her face in the covers. The rest of her wasn't cold. She was hot, aching inside, the emptiness between her legs throbbing.
Blade.
Her head came up. She stared wildly, searching every corner of the room. It was empty, but his presence was a palpable weight. The dream had been powerful, real…
She climbed out of the tangled nest she'd made of the bed and stumbled to the bifold doors, shoving back the filmy sheers so that moonlight flooded the room more brightly. It had stopped raining, although the terrace still gleamed with moisture. She opened the doors and stepped outside.
It was cold and clear, the sky a glittering bed of stars in stark contrast to the murky, violent squall that had swept through just hours before. She welcomed the chill, the icy cut of the breeze.
She lifted a hand to push hair back from her face and considered the dream.
Anna had already faced the fact that the depth of what she felt for Blade might never be returned. Her dream man was a man who had fulfilled many women's fantasies, not just her own. He wanted her. He had been blunt about exactly how much, but that didn't mean he needed her, or that he would want her forever.
But when he left, would she be able to stop dreaming about him? Would she ever be able to get him out of her head?
She stared at the moon and felt hot tears pool in her eyes. Why had she bothered with the question, when she'd known the answer all along? No. She would never forget him, never stop loving him. She had taken one look at him as a child and settled on him then.
She heard a sound and turned. Blade was walking toward her, clad in nothing but a pair of jeans. Her gaze fastened on the broad span of his chest. The sight of his naked torso was subtly shocking.
He stopped just short of touching her, his gaze locked on hers, sharply male, fiercely intent.
"Bad dream?" he enquired on a low, silky rumble, reaching out to cradle her face between both hands.
The deliberation of the act, the warmth of his palms, sent heat flashing through her, along with the knowledge that he knew.
He knew about the dreams.
His fingers drifted down her throat, trailing fire, then paused between her breasts, so that they swelled and throbbed. Anna went rigid with shock as he began undoing her shirt buttons.
Her hands clamped over his. "What are you doing?" Her voice was thin, strained.
"You called me." His words were soft, biting. "You called me the night I found you in Ambrose Park. You've been calling me for years. Now I'm here."
She shook her head, as much in rejection of what he'd said as of that puzzling, underlying note of fury. "I dreamed—"
His fingers covered her mouth. "We're not going to talk about it." His lashes lowered, shading the hot glitter in his eyes almost completely, but she could feel his ferocious attention centred on her mouth. "We're going to do it."
The low words went through her with the hot, abrupt force of an electric shock. She had wondered what it would take for Blade's control to break, and now she knew.
He was watching her closely, and she realised that de
spite his raw demand, he was holding back enough to gauge her reaction, giving her a chance to say no.
When she didn't answer, his fingers slipped from her lips and brushed the tangled fall of her hair aside. His palm cupped the tender skin of her nape, urging her closer. She braced her hands against his rib cage. Now that it was finally going to happen, she felt lost and panicky.
He was going to make love to her. He was going to fulfil the fantasy that had haunted her all of her adult life, the fantasy he said he had shared in, and she didn't know if she could bear it. The emotions in the dreams were so intense, desperate and wild – the pleasure piercing.
His raw need beat at her, poured over and around her. His focus was wholly on her.
She lifted her face to him. Her gaze was direct, her voice steady. "I'm a virgin."
Shock briefly registered in his gaze. She heard his rough intake of air, then he dropped his forehead until it rested on hers, the gesture oddly whimsical and tender.
"I must be losing my touch. I take it all back, you don't have to do this."
Anna shook her head and deliberately rubbed her hands over his chest, pausing at the tight, hard nubs of his nipples. She felt the tremor that ran through him, and his unexpected vulnerability gave her the courage she needed. "I want to make love with you. I'm going to have what I want for once."
"If you're going to have me at all," he said, lifting her into his arms and carrying her into his room, "I can tell you it's going to be more than once."
He set her down next to the bed, shut the doors against the cool night air, then jerked all the curtains open, so that moonlight flooded the room.
She watched as he unfastened his jeans, pushed them down his thighs and stepped out of them.
He was beautifully made: his shoulders sleek, his chest broad and beautifully muscled, his stomach flat, hips whipcord lean, flaring to long, powerful legs. In the moonlight, his skin was copper-dark, every lean curve and hard-packed swell of muscle etched in shadowy relief. But it was the centre of his body that compelled her attention and held it. His sex was thick, muscular in appearance, and it jutted boldly from the apex of his thighs.
