They stared at each other, drenched and limp, for a long moment.
“It’s just so fucking good with you,” Sam muttered. “Why did it have to be so good?”
She responded to the note of accusation in his voice. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s my own fault, for getting all intense.”
Sam got up and headed to the bathroom. He came back with a hot wet washcloth, with which he proceeded to wipe the sticky fluid off her body. The slow rasp of hot, wet terrycloth over her belly and her sensitized breasts felt like a big, caressing tongue against her skin. She stretched voluptuously to give him better access. She’d never felt this relaxed, limp, soft. Empty, floating. Strange. Soothing.
It couldn’t last. As soon as she realized how much she liked it, it was ending. The heavy cold dragged at the bottom of her insides again.
Sam felt it, human antennae that he was, and the hot towel stopped moving. “Really?” he said, incredulous. “You’re sad again? That’s all the relief you get? That’s one hell of a narrow window, babe.”
“I know,” she admitted. “It really is.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing you’re leaving the continent,” he said. “Managing your moods with sex would probably kill me.”
She forced herself to smile. “Lucky you. Narrow escape.”
He tossed the washcloth through the bathroom door, where it landed with a wet plop in the sink. He stretched out beside her again, pulling her into his arms, and hugged her, fiercely. Defiantly.
To her utter shock, she dissolved into tears.
“Oh, God. What, Sveti?” He shook her gently. “Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, hiding her face against his chest.
“Okay, whatever.” He grabbed the tissues, put the box by her pillow.
She groped for them and mopped up the mess. She’d known this would happen. That the sex would knock down barriers that held in a huge mess of inconvenient, inappropriate, dangerous feelings.
Sam held her quietly, kissing the top of her head. So sexy, that he was unfazed by geysers of nonspecific grief. Of course, he’d get sick of it eventually. And it was good that he wouldn’t get the chance.
It had to be this way. Because she had oceans of grief inside her.
She might never plumb those depths.
CHAPTER 6
Sam stared up at the ceiling after Sveti’s tears eased off, his jaw clenched so hard, it ached. He rarely allowed himself to descend to this nadir of suck-ass misery. Under normal circumstances, he had a whole arsenal of tricks for jumping tracks, taking his mind elsewhere. He’d gotten good at it, way back, while Mom was dying. He was very deft.
Investigative work had been his drug of choice since he’d discovered it by accident back in college. The games he played with money helped. When that failed, there were video games, excessive exercise, alcohol.
Sex was a favorite, too, but not in this case. Oh, no.
But he was barred from work, and he couldn’t pump iron or suck down bourbon with Sveti’s perfect body draped over his. Her head rested in the crook of his shoulder, her hand splayed on his chest. Not asleep, barely dozing. Her body was so slim, but charged with power. Lithe and flexible, every curve and hollow a miracle of nature. He sought out the delicate throb of her pulse.
That strong, stubborn heart. Almost stolen. Rescued in the nick of time. His mysterious maiden, with all her tragic airs.
Hell, no one was as entitled as Sveti to put on tragic airs.
It occurred to him that if someone had tried to steal his heart literally right out of his chest, he might guard it a little harder than a normal person, metaphorically speaking. It made sense that she was armored, alarmed, with infrared and motion detectors and chain-link and razor-wire and control towers. Who could blame her.
A virgin, for the love of God. He should have known. She kept the whole world at arm’s length. And he’d never been able to resist a challenge. He was hardwired to leap for them, like a trout for a bug.
And he was still ready to mount right up and pound away all night long, staring down into her big, startled eyes. She’d seemed so surprised by pleasure. God, what a rush, those hot, clutching pulses around his finger, pressed to his mouth. If only it had been his cock.
He’d get her comfortable with multiple orgasms. He’d make them her nightly norm. Morning, noon, evening, whenever. It was masochistic, to fantasize about it. She’d have none of it.
Sveti sensed emotion roiling inside him, and stirred, lifting her head. “What’s wrong?”
Why even start? There was no finishing that conversation. He’d be haranguing her back as she walked up the Jetway, desperately glad to be rid of him. He shook his head.
She propped herself up onto her elbow and laid her hand over his heart. “You asked before if I wanted to be with you for the two days that I have, until I leave,” she said. “And I do want that. If you still do.”
So he’d passed the audition. The fuck-buddy-til-Thursday scenario. His cock hardened, and his face went red.
“Don’t go,” he blurted.
Her hair swung down like a curtain. The long seconds of silence gave him her answer even before she spoke. “I have to go,” she said quietly. “It’s what I’ve dreamed of doing. It’s an incredible opportunity.”
“So do it. Just not in London. There’s evil to fight wherever you turn. You don’t have to fly to another continent to find it. Join a task force, join the police bureau, start a foundation. Whatever.”
She shook her head. “Don’t start, Sam.”
He could not shut up. “Give us a chance, before you run away!”
“Give what a chance? You don’t even know me! You’ve hardly ever talked to me, in all these years!”
“You never gave me a fucking opportunity! Give me one now!”
Her back stayed turned. “My decision is made. I won’t unmake it because of a one-time hookup.”
Hookup? He sucked in air. He couldn’t even speak, for the rock in his throat.
“So,” she said, still not looking at him. “Do you want to spend the next two days with me or not?”
Two days. Mornings, afternoons, evenings. Every quality of light falling on her naked body. Breakfasts, lunches, dinners, showers. His mind was all over that idea, like a pack of starving wolves. Two days of Sveti Ardova, naked and whimpering beneath him. Oh, hell, yeah.
And then? When she walked through the security line? When he drove home from the airport alone? Two days of frantic fucking would not make that easier. It would seal his doom. He was dangerously far from his right mind already, after just hours of Sveti-style sexual mind-melt. Two days of it, and he could totally lose his shit.
He forced the words out, like jagged rocks. “I can’t do it.”
There was an awful silence, and she slid to the edge of the bed. “I see,” she said quietly. “This was a mistake. I’m so sorry. I’ll just go.”
He pulled her back, flung his leg over hers. Not. Fucking. Yet.
She wiggled. “You’re confusing me, Sam. What are you doing?”
His arms tightened. “Making a huge mistake. I’m just not quite done making it yet. Give me til morning. Don’t rush me.”
The cutoff point was still an hour or so out. He could do all kinds of catastrophic damage to himself before then.
Sveti laid her hands over his arms, which were still clamped over her chest, and stroked them, very gently. “Until dawn, then?”
He nodded against her neck.
She twisted around to face him. “Make it worth my while, then. Make love to me.”
Fresh lust flooded him. “No,” he said. “It’s too soon.”
“I want to feel that, with you,” she said. “If we had more time, I’d say sure, let’s wait a day. But as it is, we can’t.”
“No,” he resisted stubbornly. “You’re sore. It’ll hurt you.”
She shrugged. “Big deal. I’m used to things hurting me.”
Her offhand a
ttitude about pain pissed him off. “I don’t want to be the one who hurts you! Don’t set me up for that ever again!”
“Shhh.” She pressed her silk-and-velvet-textured, honey-scented self against him. “It’s not pain I want. It’s pleasure. You flood me with it. You fill me with it. Here, feel me.” She took his hand and pressed it against the slick seam of her pussy, gasping as his fingers slipped inside. She was drenched. Plush and soft and yielding. “I’m so ready,” she pleaded. “Let me feel you inside me.”
Her delicious womanly scent made him dizzy, drunk. “My cock,” he said thickly. “Be specific. Say, let me feel your cock inside me.”
She squirmed sexily around his hand and whispered obediently. “Let me feel your cock inside me.”
He looked into her eyes, and the battle was over before it began. She could see straight to forever, in there. Endless distances, horizons upon horizons, whenever she looked at him. He cringed from the pain he knew would follow this suicidal idiocy, but he was dead meat anyway, so why not finish the job? Grind that motherfucker into slop.
Sveti’s clear hazel eyes did not waver. “Do it, Sam.”
That uppity empress-of-everything tone just squeezed his nuts. He wanted to throw himself at her feet. Offer her his heart’s blood. Here, take it. It’s yours, anyway. At the same time, he wanted to drag her off that stupid pedestal. Pull her down to his earthly level, for pizza and beer. To grab and touch and hug and kiss and lick and fuck and love.
But no way. She was having none of it. She wanted a little teasing taste, that was all. Then she’d fly off again to her lonesome heights.
“I’ll try to be gentle,” he said. “But when I get started with you, I never know what’ll happen. I forget my own goddamned name.”
“I know,” she soothed. “That’s what makes it so good.” She soothed him with a rain of gentle kisses against his jaw, and his cheek, his lips. He loved it. Though it made the pain infinitely worse.
“You can’t fight me,” he warned. “I won’t do it if you fight me.”
“I’ll be good. Move off me, so I can grab a condom, okay?”
He rolled off reluctantly, as if she would vanish into smoke. She stretched to grab a condom from his stash.
He’d let her deal with the condom, but almost ended up blowing his wad right then, from her tender squeezing and stroking. She tried several times to get the thing rolled on. It kept snapping off, and after minutes of that, he was shaking with silent laughter.
She shot him an irritated glance. “You could help, you know.”
He grabbed his engorged member and held it steady for her, hissing with pleasure as she smoothed the latex down.
“You said you had a contraceptive implant,” he said.
“Yes.” She followed up with a slow twist that made him gasp.
“But you’re a virgin,” he said. “Why the implant? What for?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t happy being a virgin. I figured, my life might include sex at some point, but not babies.”
“No babies? Really? Ever? I thought you liked babies.”
“Sure, I like them. I just don’t want to have them.”
That surprised him. “But you always seemed so into the little kids,” he said. “Consumed, even. They hung off you. Like ripe fruit.”
“As coping mechanisms go, little kids are better than most,” she said. “You can’t feel sorry for yourself when you’re with them. You’re too busy, and they don’t care about your problems, no matter how bad they are. I like who I am with kids better than I like myself with adults.”
“I like who you are with me,” he said rashly.
“Sam,” she said. “I offer you my naked body, and you stall me with questions about how many babies I want. What’s wrong with you?”
“The only time you’ll really talk to me is when you’re offering me your naked body.” He cut off her reply with his mouth and bore her down onto the bed. Her body shuddered, resisting. He lifted his head.
“You promised,” he said. “Don’t fight me, Sveti. Relax.”
Her chest jerked as she tried to sigh out tension. “What if I can’t?”
“Then we wait until you do.”
“But . . . but what if I never . . .” Her throat bobbed.
“Then you’ll miss your plane.” He settled on top of her and resumed kissing. He would have this surrender, if he got nothing else.
It took a long time for him to get her there, but he’d have been happy to wind himself around her body forever. She kept dragging in all the air her lungs could take, releasing it in a shuddering sigh.
He timed his breaths to hers. Rolled onto his side to give her more air, and slid his hand between her thighs. Breathing with her. Hearts in unison. Slow, lazy, plundering kisses, as he played that pearly pink clit delicately with his thumb. Willing to wait, and wait. As long as it took.
He lifted his head later. The candle’s flame had burned to a dim glow deep in a waxen cavity. Her hair was spread out on the pillow, her lips parted from his kisses, eyes dazzled and heavy. Soft, relaxed. Ready.
He settled between her legs. Her face looked so different when she relaxed. She glowed, from the inside, with a soft-focus shimmer.
Just a short slide down to those perfect tits, and he made her nipples gleam, teasing them to sharp, shivering points. Her heart thudded against his cheek. Her fingers twisted into his scalp. He loved the delicate bite of her little nails.
The world as he knew it was buckling, shifting into something new. He was going to pay for this, but right now, he didn’t give a shit.
He settled on his knees, his cock bobbing against her decorative frill of pussy curls. He wrapped her hands around his cock. “Take me inside,” he said. “Show me how much. I don’t want to hurt you again.”
She nodded. He propped her up, shoving pillows behind her back. She shut her eyes, flung her head back, lower lip caught between her teeth. His cockhead slipped between her satiny folds. She rocked forward, forcing him deeper. So tight. Ah, God. It had to sting, but she didn’t let on, tough babe that she was.
She raised herself onto her elbows and stared into his eyes. He was balanced on a razor’s edge in a motionless, agonized state of oh-fuck-I’m-going-to-come-right-now. She surged forward, taking in a little more. Back, a slow, clutching glide. Her body said yes, again and again with each stroke. She reached out to drag him deeper . . . Yes. All in.
His heartbeat thudded in his groin, wedged in the tight, fluttering embrace of her body. He braced his hands on either side of her and breathed, struggling desperately not to come. He couldn’t lose control, not with a first timer, half his size. He hung on. Teetering.
“Does it hurt?” He got the words out, somehow.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“That’s not what I asked,” he said.
“It’s all you’re getting,” she retorted. “Shut up and move.”
She sprawled back onto the pillows and gripped his chest, bucking her hips beneath him. Heaving, to get him moving.
His body had to obey. Her gaze sliced in so deep, to places uncharted. She could see all his pointless yearning in his eyes. He should flip her over, take her from behind, but that would take a coolness that he did not possess. The next best option was the dark. He reached to snuff the candle’s flame, burning his fingers. Barely felt it.
Sveti made a protesting sound as the darkness fell. “Sam?”
“Shhh.” He stifled her objections by kissing her.
The darkness made it harder not to lose himself to the blind, mindless greed. Her pussy squeezed around his pumping cock.
He tried to slow it down, but she was so juicy and hot, and they moved together so perfectly. The frantic momentum built, and when he became conscious of how hard they were fucking, his body would not let him stop. They were locked in that pounding rhythm. Sveti’s hips braced to meet his every stroke. Energy gathered in her body, like an animal with its muscles poised to spring.
She
went off like a bomb. He held her close, to savor every jolt, every sweet shudder of helpless pleasure, the scalding rush of fresh girl juice on his cock to ease the way for his own wild finale.
Now. His climax smashed down on him like a landslide.
He drifted back, damp and destroyed, to the sensation of prodding in his shoulder. “Sam,” she whispered. “Let me breathe. You’re heavy.”
He rolled off. Sweat had chilled on his back. Dread gripped him, cold and nauseating. “You okay?” He braced himself.
“Fine,” she said softly. “Wonderful. It was so wonderful.”
Well. That was good. As far as it went. He got to his feet, stumbling drunkenly over her shoes on his way to the bathroom.
The condom had traces of blood. Not much, but it still made him feel like a jerk. He got rid of it and hid in the shower. This was the end. He didn’t trust himself yet to face it with dignity. Ice water roared down, needle-sharp. Punishment. The time of reckoning was at hand.
Bright white light spilled out over Sveti, curled on the bed when he opened the bathroom door. She flinched from it, covering her eyes. He grabbed jeans from his dresser. Strapped on his inside waist holster.
“There’s some blood again,” he said. “Not too much. Sorry.”
“I’m okay,” she said. “It was worth it. It was amazing.”
He grunted. Too late for compliments. He was not a goddamned trained seal, performing to have some dead fish flung to him.
He grabbed a sweatshirt. Sveti waited for him to say something, but he was all out of words. He flicked on the harsh overhead light.
Sveti flinched again. “Sam?” Her voice was small. “What’s wrong?”
He stared at the pink smears on the sheet, the streak of grease from the candle. “Get dressed. I’ll drive you home,” he said. “I’m done.”
Her eyes widened. “I thought you said til dawn. It’s barely . . .”
He pulled his Glock 19 out of the bedstand as her voice petered out, and tucked it into the waist holster. “Close enough.”
Sveti struggled into her dress with difficulty, being so sticky and damp. It didn’t fit anymore. Her body had changed dimensions. Her breasts felt bigger, her skin so sensitized. She was weak in the knees and angry and hurt, but for God’s sake, she was the hard-ass of this situation, not him. She had no business sniveling.
In For the Kill Page 9
