Claire dragged in a swift breath. She wasn’t sure what lay behind this sudden, Neanderthal approach to sex, but her body responded to it. Her back arched as Luis used his tongue and teeth on her. Pleasure streaked from her breasts to her belly, and her womb clenched in a tight spasm. She could feel the tension building, feel her nerves ignite every place his silky mustache prickled her skin.
His mouth was hot and demanding, his knee insistent, as he wedged it between hers and pried them apart. The psychologist in Claire analyzed the negative cognitions of sexual dominance even as the woman in her responded to his strength and unerring skill.
“Luis,” she panted, tugging at her wrists. “Let me touch you. Let me pleasure you.”
“Next time, querida. This time, I want to pleasure you.”
He was good at it. So damned good. His muscled thigh pressed against her sensitive flesh. His mouth claimed hers. When he finally released her wrists and hooked an arm around her waist to position her under him, Claire was wet and ready. And very grateful for the fact they didn’t have to resort to condoms.
She’d started birth control again before deciding to yield to Luis’s blatant attempts at seduction, but was well aware of his numerous past conquests. They’d been cautious at first, always using the extra protection of a condom. She trusted him enough now, though, to believe him when he swore she was the only woman in his life.
For the moment, anyway. She had no idea how long that would last, but until circumstances changed, she had not the slightest hesitation about welcoming him eagerly into her body.
When he entered her, she could feel each hot, ridged inch. His first thrusts were swift, hard, possessive. She lifted her hips to meet them, and they soon moved together in a rhythm that grew more urgent, more intense, with each grind of their hips.
Her climax began as a swirl of tight, dark sensation. She felt it spiraling up from her belly, tried to contain it. When the sensations exploded in a starburst of exquisite pleasure, she threw her head back, arched her spine and rode the crest.
“Well, we certainly worked up an appetite.”
Smiling, Claire sipped her frothy cappuccino and surveyed the remnants of the dinner they’d eaten on the deck. A fat candle flickered inside a glass hurricane lamp. Tiny white lights strung through the vines twisting around the trellised roof added to the glow of a full moon.
She’d pulled on lacy briefs and a celery-colored silk caftan. Luis’s scent still clung to her skin, mingling with the fragrant cherry-and-rum aroma of his thin cigarillo and the chocolaty steam rising from the cup she held cradled in both hands.
He sat across from her. He’d raked a hand through his dark hair and left his shirt hanging out, half-buttoned. She liked him this way, Claire mused, as her gaze drifted to the V of bronzed skin dusted with curling black chest air. Relaxed. Comfortable. He was usually so polished and urbane. So much in control. The colonel might have left the military years ago, but the military hadn’t left him.
“Tell me what happened in Cartoza,” she requested.
“I’m damned if I know.” He leaned back in his chair and blew out a cloud of smoke. “I thought everything was going well. President and Señora Diaz welcomed the Andrews to Cartoza with a family luncheon. That afternoon, the two presidents attended the opening session of the Organization of American States. Andrews was welcomed warmly despite the United States’ difficulties with some Latin-American countries.”
“Like Venezuela,” Claire murmured, remembering a particularly nasty op another OMEGA agent had worked on that country’s border some months back.
“Like Venezuela,” Luis echoed. “While the politicos attended to business, Señora Diaz gave Stacy a tour of the capital. They were accompanied by the fourteen-year-old girl who recently won our national spelling bee. And, of course, a full contingent of both U.S. and Cartozan security forces. I vetted every one of our people myself.”
Claire didn’t doubt it. As former chief of Cartoza’s security forces, Luis would not take the challenges associated with a visiting head of state lightly.
“The first nightmare came well after midnight, close to four a.m. I didn’t learn of it until several hours later. I also learned the physician accompanying Andrews’s party had administered a sedative and Stacy had slept for the rest of the night.”
Frowning, he rolled the thin cigar in his fingers.
“She appeared happy and quite normal the next morning, although you could see the fatigue in her eyes. We altered her schedule so it included only the events we thought she would most enjoy. Stacy and Rosa—the spelling bee champion—splashed in the Dolphin Cove with a group of other youngsters. That afternoon they attended a village fiesta. It was very colorful, crowded and noisy, but I swear to you, Claire, my people tested everything before she ate or drank it. I’m ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain no one slipped her any kind of drug or hallucinogen.”
“It certainly seems unlikely, but you and I have been in this business long enough to know anything is possible. So the second nightmare occurred that night, after the fiesta?”
“It did.”
His mouth grim, Luis stubbed out his cigarillo in the ashtray Claire kept out on the deck for his use. He never lit up inside and always took care to stand or sit downwind, so as not to expose her to secondhand smoke.
She would have liked him to give the habit up completely, but the casual nature of their relationship didn’t give her the right to request that kind of behavioral modification. Unless or until that relationship changed, she actually enjoyed an occasional whiff of the rum-and-cherry smoke.
“Did the White House fax you the results of the blood test they administered after the second nightmare?” he wanted to know.
“I had to sign and send back a confidentiality agreement first. The results may have come in in the past few hours…while I was otherwise engaged.”
“Will you inform me if the actual results are different from what I was told?”
“No.”
Her calm reply produced only a small shrug. Luis had learned enough about Claire’s profession—and about her—during their months together to have expected no other answer. He also knew she would do her best to keep him in the loop, however. Especially with his prickly macho pride and national honor at stake.
“If they are different,” she assured him, “I’ll ask Stacy or her father if I can discuss them with you.”
She tapped a nail against her cappuccino cup. A item from the notes she’d dictated tugged at her thoughts.
“Do you know what the women at the fiesta were wearing? The village women?”
The question surprised him. “Their best garments, I would guess. As you know well, the women of my county love bright colors. They would have worn ruffled skirts in red and turquoise and green. Embroidered blouses trimmed with colorful ribbons. That sort of thing.”
“What about on their heads?”
“The girls usually wear garlands of flowers, the older women lace mantillas.”
“Flowers and lace, not kerchiefs?”
“Some may have covered their hair with cloth mantles. Why do you ask this?”
“It was just something Stacy said. A fragment of the dream she remembered.”
Luis’s gaze sharpened. “You think a woman wearing a head covering may have frightened her and caused her to have these nightmares?”
“I haven’t formulated any viable theories as to their root cause yet. I had just dictated my notes and begun my research when you arrived.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll query the captain who commanded her escort and have him review the footage from the festival. If Stacy spoke to or came in contact with a woman wearing a mantle, it should be on the surveillance videos.”
Being able to take some action, any action, seemed to reenergize him.
“Are you done with your cappuccino, my heart? If so, I’ll carry the dishes into the kitchen.”
“I’m finished.”
When she rose to
help gather the plates, he nudged her aside.
“You cooked, I’ll clean. Go, finish this research I interrupted. Then we will finish what we began earlier.”
Luis made sure their second session was as slow and sweet as the first was fierce. He would have made it last until dawn, if Claire hadn’t finally driven him over the edge.
His chest heaving, he sprawled bonelessly amid the tangled sheets until the world stopped spinning. She lay with her head nested on his shoulder, her hair spilling across his chest and the musky scent of their lovemaking teasing his nostrils. Idly, he played with strands of her hair as the thoughts that had tugged at him when she’d opened the door to him earlier once again played through his mind.
Why couldn’t he seem to get enough of this slender, maddeningly independent woman? How was it that she satisfied his every carnal desire, yet left him wanting more?
God knows he was a self-professed connoisseur of women. Some he’d admired for their beauty, some for their intelligence or talent or sparkling personalities. But this one…This one stirred urges that edged dangerously close to that vague, ill-defined emotion the poets labeled love.
Luis had teetered on the brink of that emotion only once before. The affair had flamed hot and ended in a murderous cross fire. Since then, he’d limited himself to mutually satisfying liaisons with no commitments on either side. Yet lying here, stroking Claire’s hair, breathing in her scent…
“Shall I stay the night, querida?”
“What time is it?” she murmured sleepily.
He flicked a look at the bedside clock. His glance lingered on the crystal frame for a second before he replied.
“Almost two.”
“Mmm.” She buried her nose in the warm skin of his neck. “Too late for you to drive back into the city and rouse the embassy staff. Stay the night.”
“What if I stay longer?” He gave her hair another slow stroke. “Or don’t leave at all?”
The question bought her blinking awake, as he’d known it would. Pushing upright, she propped herself on an elbow. Her hair fell across her forehead. When she hooked the loose strand behind her ear, he saw her face clearly in the moonlight streaming through the top half of the plantation shutters. Saw, too, the question in her eyes.
“We agreed up front that we both need our space, Luis. We discussed boundaries.”
“Perhaps it’s time to renegotiate those boundaries.”
“Why?”
“I want more of you, Claire.”
“You have all I’m prepared to give right now,” she said quietly. “All I can give.”
He was formulating his response to that when the phone beside the bed shrilled. Rolling over, she lifted the receiver.
“Dr. Cantwell.”
A few clicks sounded, then a disembodied voice announced that the line was secure. That was followed by a terse request that came through clearly enough for Luis to overhear.
“This is Tom Fogerty, Dr. Cantwell. Can you come to the Executive Residence right away?”
“Of course. Is it Stacy?”
“Yes. She’s had another episode. She’s sobbing hysterically and asking for you.”
Chapter 3
When an aide escorted Claire into the Executive Residence, an assortment of staff members and Secret Service agents hovered in the hall outside Stacy’s bedroom.
Sandy-haired Tom Fogarty was among them looking tense, hastily dressed in jeans and a knit shirt with one edge of the collar turned under. He greeted Claire with undisguised relief, then opened the door to the same suite she’d visited the day before and stuck his head in.
“Dr. Cantwell’s here, sir.”
“Ask her to come in.”
Fogarty closed the door behind Claire, leaving her alone with the president and his daughter. They sat huddled side by side on the sofa in the sitting room. Every lamp was lit in that room and the room beyond. Claire caught a glimpse of the bed with its covers thrown off and onto the floor, as if the occupant had struggled violently with them.
The president sat beside his daughter with an arm around her shoulders. One glance told Claire that Stacy had yet to recover from her terrifying dream. Above her pink cotton sleep shirt, her face was splotchy and her eyes red from crying.
The president didn’t look much better. Claire saw no trace of his trademark boyish charm. Belted into a navy robe with the presidential seal embroidered on the pocket, he greeted her calmly, but the deep crease in his brow showed he was a very worried father.
“Thanks for coming, Dr. Cantwell. Sorry to drag you out in the middle of the night.”
“It’s not a problem, Mr. President. Hi, Stacy.” Sympathy for the girl softened her voice. “This must have been a bad one.”
The teen shuddered. “It was awful.”
“Do you feel up to telling me about it? It’s difficult, I know, but I’d like to hear whatever details you can remember before your subconscious suppresses them.”
“Will it?” she asked with a desperate need for reassurance. “Make me forget all this, I mean?”
“That’s normally what happens.”
At the president’s invitation, Claire took the chair angled toward the sofa.
“Would you like coffee?” he asked. “That’s a fresh carafe. They just brought it up a few minutes ago.”
“I’m fine for now, thanks.”
“Okay.” He glanced from Claire to his hunch-shouldered daughter. “Do you want me to leave while you talk to Dr. Cantwell, Stace? I’ll wait outside in the hall. You can call me when you’re done.”
“No.” She clutched at the lapel of his robe. “Stay, Daddy. Please.”
“Sure. If that’s okay with Dr. Cantwell?”
“Certainly. I’d like to record this session so I won’t be distracted by taking notes or have to try to remember everything later. Is that all right with you, Stacy?”
“I guess so.”
Claire extracted a microrecorder from her purse and clicked it on. After noting the time, date, location and name of the client, she slipped the recorder into the pocket of her pantsuit.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” she told the other two with a smile. “Okay, Stacy. Tell me whatever you can remember from your dream.”
In a choked whisper, the teen described a dream sequence very similar to the one she’d related to Claire earlier that day. Crowds of people surrounding around her, reaching for her. Women in aprons and kerchiefs. One man, she thought, was holding some kind of wooden pitchfork. Bit by bit, their flesh began to melt away. Their eyes became empty sockets. Until they were just rank upon rank of skulls, skeletons, disjointed bones.
“There was something else.” Forehead furrowed, she tried to remember. “Some kind of vault or crypt or something.”
Her hand crept across the sofa cushion to clutch her father. White-knuckled, she continued in a ragged whisper.
“I remember stepping down some stairs. I know I felt cold. Icy cold. I think I heard music or chanting. There were more bones. So many bones. Then I could sense…”
She gulped, breathing hard. Claire ached at the fear reflected in the girl’s eyes.
“I could sense…I could feel my own skin sagging and starting to fall off. I screamed for help. But they just looked at me, Dr. Cantwell! All those skulls, all those skeletons. They just looked at me with their dead, empty eyes. Does it mean I’m going to die?” she asked on a note of sheer panic.
“Absolutely not. We talked about this yesterday, remember? Dreams aren’t harbingers of the future. They’re an amalgam of your subconscious, fractured thoughts. Our task now is to determine what’s implanting those thoughts.”
She shifted her attention to the president.
“I told Stacy yesterday that threatening dreams like this one could stem from a number of causes. Stress might be a major factor, as could illness, sleeping disorders, drug reactions or the loss of a loved one.”
The crease between president’s brow deepened. Out of that list, the
loss of a loved one had to have hit him as hard as it had his daughter. With a tug of sympathetic understanding, Claire continued calmly.
“I think we should rule out possible physical factors first. I’d like to talk to your doctor and set up a complete physical for Stacy. I’d also like you to consider allowing me to schedule her for a sleep study.”
“What does that involve?”
“The studies generally include a polysomnogram, which records a number of body functions while the subject is sleeping. Like brain activity, eye movement, heart rate and carbon dioxide blood levels. Also, we’ll conduct a Multiple Sleep Latency Test. That measures how long it takes the subject to fall asleep.”
“Where would these tests be conducted?” Stacy wanted to know.
“In a hospital sleep lab. Georgetown University Hospital has an excellent one. So does the University of Maryland Medical Center. I’m sure Bethesda does, too, although I’m not as familiar with it as the other two.”
The president and his daughter exchanged glances. “What do you think, Stace?”
“I trust Dr. Cantwell. I’m okay with whatever she suggests.”
“Good.” Slipping a hand into her pocket, Claire clicked off the recorder. “I’ll get with your physician and set the tests up. Don’t worry, Stacy. Between us, we’ll figure what’s causing these dreams.”
“I hope so! I’m supposed to leave for camp next month.”
To redirect the teen’s thoughts from the nightmares, Claire asked her about the camp’s activities. Stacy perked up when describing the summer camp for disabled children, where she’d served as a counselor last year and hoped to again this year.
They chatted until she ran out of steam and her lids began to droop. When she put up a hand to cover a wide yawn, Claire knew it was time to end the session.
“Sleepy, Stacy?”
“Yes.”
“You hit the sack,” her father instructed. “I’ll step outside for a moment to talk to Dr. Cantwell, then I’ll bunk down here on the sofa for the rest of the night.”
“You don’t have to do that, Dad!”
Seduced by the Operative Page 3
