by Alison Kent
Swallowing the gagging ball of snot in his throat, Woody turned his attention to the other man. A nice enough lookin' guy. Younger than he'd figured—a thought that made him want to laugh since everyone he met said the same thing about him.
Except he suddenly doubted he'd ever laugh again. Not after getting a look into Deacon's eyes.
And then being twenty-four years old and having a doctorate meant nothing because he was back in first grade again, the big-eared, big-footed playground target getting slammed from all sides with the dodgeball. His palm was sweating when he shook the other man's hand.
"Nice to meet you, dude," he said and cringed. Dude. He'd called him dude. He was such freakin' cement-shoe fish bait. Or whatever ways guys like those in The Sopranos did away with scum. He really should've boned up on the show and given up his Xena reruns before coming here.
Deacon's brow went up. His grip tightened. His expression cut into Woody's gut like the edge of Xena's Chakram. "Ditto. I'm looking forward to our association."
"Uh, yeah. Me, too." Woody ran a hand back over the hair he couldn't remember if he'd combed. "Should be a kick."
"Natasha? Please, come sit before Mrs. Courtney feeds our dinner to the dogs," Dr. Bow said.
Woody pulled out his own chair, then felt like a complete dork when Deacon walked Natasha around to hers.
Not that Woody thought he had a chance with her, but he would do just about anything to have her look at him the way she was looking at the Sopranos dude, her eyes all soft and her mouth open and sweet and wet.
He squirmed in his seat, tugged at the fly of his pants. Yeah. He'd do anything, he mused, smiling at the sick thought that he might even take a cue from the company he was keeping and knock off the competition permanently.
In this place? Surrounded by these people?
How hard could it possibly be to get away with murder?
Natasha lost her appetite ten minutes into the meal. An ebullient Mrs. Courtney served plates laden with poached salmon, mustard dill sauce drizzled over steamed asparagus, and garlic new potatoes. The aro-mas were mouthwatering. The ambience was tasteful. Dr. Jinks took one bite of his food and broke out in hives.
The following minutes were a flurry of activity as Wick excused them all in order to give Woody privacy, sending Mrs. Courtney for the younger man's medicat-ion. In the chaos, Peter vanished without saying a word. Once Natasha realized her charge didn't require her services and that Wick's nurse-cum-housekeeper had her new patient well in hand, she left the house for a breath of fresh air.
After the last few hours, air was the very least she needed. Sleep sounded damn good. Alcohol even better. But when she pulled her shawl tighter against the night's subtle chill, she had to force herself to admit it wasn't the weather responsible for the tremor running from her nape to her fingertips.
It was her intuitive sexual response to Peter Deacon.
Confined on the estate and assigned to see to his every need . . . She shook her head. Fate was tempting her cruelly, bringing him into her life after she'd determined to be more tortoise than hare when it came to taking any relationship to an intimate level. Yet she was quite certain that staying out of this man's bed was going to drive her mad.
Her heels clicked against the flagstones as she walked along the lower edge of the tiered terrace that wrapped around the front of the house like stair steps. She remembered the cocktail parties Wick had once thrown here, and her father, believing baby-sitters to be the devil's spawn, sneaking her in. What days those had been! Ladies in hats and gloves and smart dresses. Men in their same racetrack finery.
The talk had been of horses and handicaps, and Natasha had crouched beneath umbrella tables wearing yellow dotted Swiss and white patent leather, pretend-ing invisibility as she soaked up the conversation, the bubbly laughter, the dynamics of power and position determined by love, lust, lucre, and loathing. The later those hours had reached into the night, the further from the hub of the parties she'd drifted. Her father, how-ever, had always known where to find her once he'd deemed her bedtime at hand.
Today, Mr. Courtney, the gardener, still fertilized, weeded, and pruned, but the terrace gardens hadn't heard more than the chatter of chipmunks and squirrels for years. Instead of the occasional cigarette butt or soiled cocktail napkin, the ground was now littered with acorn hulls and birdseed. She hated the loss of Wick's social life, feared the effect on his emotional health, but selfishly enjoyed claiming the terrace as her own private retreat.
Reaching the half-moon bench farthest from the house, she sat and slipped off her shoes. The flagstones beneath her feet held the warmth of the day's sun, as did the cement of the seat. But remembering her earlier encounter with Peter there on the foyer staircase, she couldn't help but shiver and draw her fringed shawl close.
"You're welcome to my coat if you need it."
His coat that smelled of a strangely exquisite herbal elegance and his body's heat. She staved off the shudders that threatened to permanently settle into her bones. "Are you following me, Mr. Deacon?"
"Peter."
"Peter, then."
"Following, no. I've been standing here watching you for ten minutes at least." He stepped out of the shadows, from the dark corner where the terrace ended and the dense woods began. "One might wonder if you were following me."
"One might." Though what she really wondered was what he was doing down here so far from the house. No one visited this corner of the estate any longer. And even with Dr. Jinks not feeling well, she didn't understand why Peter had yet to go downstairs and check out the lab.
Like she'd thought earlier, something here was very, very wrong.
She sat unmoving, barely breathing inside the half-moon's center, waiting as he walked behind her along the bench's long outside curve. To look at him now, she would have to turn her head. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest and tightened the hold on her shawl.
It offered little in the way of a defense against the tug of attraction, especially when he sat down beside her, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, temptation so close she could taste it. She looked toward him. He looked toward her. Their gazes caught and held.
And she said the safest thing on her mind. "I wasn't expecting to see you again before breakfast. I assumed you had gone underground."
"The lab's not going anywhere." He reached his far hand toward her and ran the backs of his fingers down her arm. "You, I wasn't so sure about."
She couldn't help it. She trembled. The sheer silk of her shawl only heightened the sensation of his touch. "Why would you think that when Wick made it clear I'm to be at your beck and call?"
He canted his head to the side; his eyes flashed. "Put like that, you don't seem thrilled with the prospect."
She shook her head, avoiding his searching gaze. "It's not that. It's just. . ."
His fingers made another trip from her shoulder to the bend of her elbow. "Just what?"
She had to fight her eyelashes from fluttering down. Repeatedly tonight, she'd fallen prey to his touch, his words, to the idea that he didn't know her from Eve, yet he wanted her. But there was the small matter of trust. Not to mention that tortoise thing.
Still, she'd always felt the pull of a mystery. And when it came with a man attached . . . "You're not a lab rat, but you're still here to do business with the boys in the basement. It would only make sense that you moni-tor your investment closely. Especially considering the money you claim is at stake."
For a long moment, he didn't react. He only stared into her eyes unblinking, leaving her again with the feeling that she was forensic evidence laid bare beneath his microscope. But then a chuckle rumbled low in his chest, and at long last she remembered that she needed to breathe.
"The boys in the basement," he repeated. "Is that what you call them?"
She nodded, fought a grin, leaned instinctively toward him, even though he'd blown off addressing the rest of her speech. Her shoulder brushed his as she sai
d, "I've been known to call them worse. Especially when they keep Wick up all hours of the night. They forget that he's not as young as they are, or as invincible as they consider themselves. Though, since Dr. Jinks arrived, no one else has been up here to work."
His eyes narrowing, Peter seemed to mull over that tidbit before saying, "I'm not so sure Dr. Jinks is considering himself anything but human at the moment."
She sighed, shook her head. "It's a good thing he wasn't very hungry. I can't imagine how much worse his reaction would have been if he'd actually eaten more."
"It wasn't a lack of appetite that kept him from eating," Peter said, his voice having dropped to a low, seductive, toe-curling tone. This time when he touched her, he slid his hand beneath the fringe of her shawl, caressing bare skin from forearm to shoulder.
This time she allowed the resulting shiver to run its course, allowed the flutters between her legs to blossom. God, but she felt alive like she hadn't in . . . in . . . if ever. "What was it then?"
"It was the distraction of sitting across the table from you."
When he pulled the fringed silk from her near shoulder, she let him. When he leaned down and breathed in the scent of her skin, she watched him. When he parted his lips to taste her, to kiss the skin between her arm and the swell of her breast, she very simply wanted him.
"Am I a distraction?" she asked once he'd straightened and faced her.
He spoke with his eyes. The blue-green irises shimmered. The lids above grew heavy as if desire drew his thick lashes down. "Since watching you circle the Ferrari, I've thought of nothing but tasting you."
Oh, but she was in trouble, what with the images his claim brought to mind. She barely managed a whisper to ask, "And how do I taste?" <
"Like I want more." He angled his body across hers then, trapping her with a hand on the bench at her hip. His biceps brushed the taut peak of one breast when he leaned forward and moved his mouth to her ear. "Like you're wearing too many clothes for me to get to you the way I want."
Her eyelids drifted down and her imagination ran wild, working to catch up with her body, which sizzled and steamed. This was insane, this physical need he inspired with his suggestively sexy words. Any other man she would've had the strength to push away. Inexplicably, she wanted to pull this one near.
She turned her cheek into his, rubbed her tender skin over his beard, which was coarse. His breath on her face was warm, as was the trail of nips he left along her jaw as he made his searching way to her mouth.
She opened her eyes only far enough to see his lips hover over her own. Her heart beat frantically in her aching chest. Her skin burned with the fire of anticipation. Her tongue slipped out to bathe her lips, and his parted. Yet when she would have leaned into his kiss, he pulled back.
"Are you sure this is what you want?" he asked, his voice low, his eyes dark.
Right here and right now? Yes, without question. She released her shawl, sensed it fluttering to the ground behind her, and pressed her hand to the center of his chest. "What do you want?"
"I want it all," he said, and then his mouth was on hers, his hand in her hair holding her head.
Her first thought was magic. Her second was thrilling fun. After that, she stopped thinking and lost herself in the kiss. He was hard even as he was gentle, both the pressure of his fingers and that of his mouth.
She parted her lips freely, welcomed the intrusion of his tongue, wished boldly, then shyly, to feel that same probing pressure between her legs. She kissed him back, sliding her tongue over his and filling his mouth as she worked to free the buttons of his shirt. Her hands shook, and she gasped with relief the moment her fingers found skin.
He ground his mouth harder against hers in response to her tactile exploration of his collarbone and the corded tendons of his neck. She cupped his throat, her thumbs humming with the reverb of his pulse. She drank of his mouth, loving the way he so expertly swept his tongue along the length of hers, the give-and-take pressure of his lips as he coaxed her to reach for more.
No other kiss, no other man . . . This made no sense, this burning need to know him. Yet even more so, she wanted him to know her in ways they couldn't manage from here. And so, reluctantly, she reached for her inner tortoise and began to ease away. She wanted to go wherever he chose to take her, but sex on a cold cement bench held little appeal.
She wanted to explore him, to arouse him, to do so much more than get the both of them off with a quick groping fuck managed through opened flies and raised skirts, and told him by trailing her fingertips down the column of his throat, over his Adam's apple to the hollow beneath. His chest rose and fell like a bellows, and she quite enjoyed knowing she wasn't the only one struggling to breathe.
It was when she returned her gaze to his that she realized the good luck of her timing. Had she looked up first and seen that soulful hunger, she'd never have been able to tell herself no. He looked like a man longing for a woman's healing, soothing touch, and it was the hardest thing she'd ever done to make herself wait. She wanted more than anything to settle her naked bottom over his naked lap and rock his pain away, rock the both of them into a state of physical bliss.
"Want to know a secret?" she finally asked to break the darkly moody silence.
He lifted a brow, said nothing.
She tried the smile again. "I think the backs of my thighs have frozen to this bench."
This time it worked. The corner of his mouth crooked upward, and even his frown softened. And then he stood and straddled the bench, stepping across to the side where she sat and helping her to her feet with a hand at her elbow.
Her thighs, of course, were just fine. "Come here. I want to show you something."
She led him to the edge of the terrace and the waist-high iron fencing that separated the lawn from the estate's undeveloped acreage. The thickly wooded terrain seemed to fall away from the house and manicured grounds, leaving the gothic gingerbread sitting above as if on a pedestal cake plate.
Peter had released her arm as they crossed the short width of the terrace, but she sensed him hovering when she leaned her forearms on the rail of the ornamental barrier. Her feet still bare, her shoes dangled from her fingers as she looked off into the distance.
"Between those two stands of trees?" She pointed in that direction. "Can you see the lake?"
"Sure. That's the lake from earlier."
She nodded. "It's not as easy to see as it was when I was a girl. The forest is so much thicker now. And I'm definitely taller. Anyway, this used to be one of my favorite spots to come sit when hiding from my father."
"You lived here then?"
"No. My father and Wick were friends long before he inherited this place. My parents divorced when I was eleven, and my father had custody. He used to bring me out here when he'd come to visit. I was pretty much a permanent fixture any time he and Wick got together, and they eventually forgot to censor their discussions." She chuckled. "That was when I decided my favorite hobby was eavesdropping."
"And when you started flirting with the first of your nine lives?"
She laughed again. "Could very well be. Eventually, though, either Wick or my father would snap back to reality long enough to order me to bed. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. It felt like punishment, not parenting."
"And you wouldn't go."
"I would, but I'd sneak out here later." She'd loved it out here, the darkness, the solitude, the time spent alone to pick apart and digest the questions raised by the conversations she'd heard. She supposed Peter was right, that those days had given birth to her curious nature.
"I'd be furious that I wasn't allowed to stay up as long as I wanted and just knew I was going to miss something good. So I'd come out here and pretend I was being held against my will. This fence was my prison. And if I could make it to the lake, I'd be free and never have to go to bed again."
She rubbed her palms up and down her bare arms, now wishing for her shawl, or at least for Peter's
coat; surely he could see that she was cold. Or maybe not, as the moon had dipped behind a bank of encroaching clouds.
Sighing, she turned with a smile to make her request—only to find him gone. Not walking away. Not returned to the shadows. Not sitting on the bench waiting for her to join him.
He was simply gone.
Five
Christian clutched a highball glass in one hand and braced the palm of his other on the window frame as he stared out from his second-story suite at the same view Natasha had shown him below. From behind the fence she'd likened to prison bars. Off toward the lake where she'd looked for freedom.
It was his second drink, and he was well on his way to a third, possibly a fourth. Or he would've been. Except that while he watched her cross the terrace for her wrap and head back to the house, the reality of where he was and why he was here came crashing in.
And goddamn if he didn't need to get a grip.
He was Peter Deacon. He was not Christian Bane. And he didn't like the fact that one night in Natasha's company was blurring those lines. A lack of focus was a death sentence for an SG-5 operative, but he had to face it. The facts of this assignment were no longer crystal clear.
Neither was his line of attack.
He'd admitted the absolute truth when he'd told her he'd wanted to get his hands and mouth on her from the moment they'd met. Making that admission hadn't exactly been a moment of thrilling self-enlightenment. Especially since he was the operative who avoided mission-casual entanglements with the opposite sex.
Hell, who was he kidding? His entanglements with the opposite sex had been nothing but mutually mind-bending and anonymous fucks for years now.
It wouldn't be that way when he took Natasha to bed. He would . . . and soon. As much as he was look-ing forward to enjoying her body as Peter Deacon, however, he was not the least bit gung-ho about the price he, Christian Bane, would have to pay personally, privately, and painfully for getting emotionally naked.
