by Gayle Lynds
"Aren't you going to button your waist?" Her voice was husky.
"In a minute. Are those M&M's?" He strode toward her.
His short hair was mussed. He reached up and ran long fingers through it as he approached. The knuckles of his right hand were red where another bullet had scored him. He had cut his nails flat across. She could see that even from a distance. He smelled of soap and intent.
She found herself pushing away from the desk and out of his path. The desk chair's old rollers creaked on the thin carpet. The noise was sharp and loud in the quiet house. She forced herself to breathe.
He ignored her and walked past to the desk, and she felt a pang of regret. He snapped up the M&M's package that she had shoved off to the side with the other candy when she had sorted through Olsen's papers.
He grinned at her. Again there was that light in his eyes, glowing like coals. "Come on. I have something you should try."
She could spend the rest of her life—no matter how short or how long—looking at his naked back. He had muscles even along his spine. They bunched and stretched temptingly out toward his tapered sides. There was a little gap in his jeans at the top of his tailbone where the loose waistband hung open. And then there was the back of his handsome head, the short brown hairs still damp and glistening.
She followed, not asking herself whether she should go.
42
"Aha. I thought I remembered a microwave." Jeff opened cupboard doors until he found a microwavable bowl. He ripped open the M&M's package, dumped the contents into the ceramic bowl, and slid it into the microwave. He set the timer for sixty-five seconds. "You nuke them on HIGH for a minute and five seconds. No more, because they'll burn. Too little . . . and you'll see. Now we wait. So tell me what else you found on Olsen's desk."
Her lips were dry. She resisted licking them. She made herself give a recital of her findings.
He listened carefully, his gaze entirely on her. There was nothing small about him anywhere. He bristled with energy and intelligence and good looks, and he knew it. For some reason, that made him even more attractive. There were small cuts on his cheeks and chin, probably from splinters and cement chips that had exploded from bullets that had landed near. They showed clearly now that his skin was clean. From his wide-set dark eyes to his aristocratic nose and full lips, he was male. Testosterone at its tactile best. And it was all complicated in her mind because she liked him. Actually liked him too much.
As the microwave's timer went off, he said, "Olsen's in such bad shape financially, he's prime bait for blackmail. He worked at the White House, and we think Berianov plans to kill the president. So it seems to me that the big attraction for Berianov is just what we thought—Olsen's job. Could be he needed Olsen to find out something for him or do something for him."
He opened the door, and the tempting scent of warm chocolate filled the kitchen.
She forced herself to think. "Or he needed something from Olsen."
"Right." He turned, smiling. He had even white teeth that would be worth a fortune in advertising to a major toothpaste maker. He held out the cheap ceramic bowl. Inside lay the candies in a multitude of bright colors.
"Go ahead. Try one."
Gingerly she chose a red one. It was hot. The edge had cracked, and dark brown chocolate oozed out. She dropped it into her mouth. The sugar coating was crisp, and the chocolate was warm and melting inside. The delicious taste coated her tongue.
"Like it?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Here. Have another." He chose a brown one. "Open wide."
Obediently, she parted her lips. She looked up. Their eyes locked. He slipped the chocolate into her mouth and, without looking into the bowl, picked up another and slipped it between his lips. They chewed and smiled.
"I'm practically a virgin." Her voice was thick. "It's been a long time. A real long time. I don't think this is a good idea. I don't believe in casual sex anymore. Besides, you have all these issues about how long I'm going to live. I have issues about how long I'm going to live."
"Wasn't Phil Stageman casual sex?"
"More like impetuous and stupid. At the time, I hadn't made a commitment against casualness. I'm still working on impetuous and stupid. Besides, that relationship—if you could call it that—was over long before my heart transplant. Remember, my heart's from a man. Maybe I won't know how to do it as a woman anymore."
"I'll take the chance." He chuckled. "Try another one." His black eyes were mysterious and inviting. Hypnotic.
Whatever aches and pains she had felt disappeared. He never took his gaze from hers as he reached into the bowl for a chocolate.
She gripped his hand, stopping its progress toward her mouth. "I could have cardiac arrest while we're making love and die. You'd feel guilty."
"You'd be dead a half-dozen times over the last two days from the stress and physical demands if that were true. Besides, what did the doctor say about sex?"
"He said that six weeks after surgery I could drive and have sex."
"At the same time?"
"That's what I asked him. He laughed." She loved his short, spiky black lashes. Heat radiated from him, pulling her toward him.
"You're not laughing."
"I seem to be distracted." She released his hand, and he fed her another M&M's. She chewed. "You knew we were going to have sex?"
"Thought about it," he admitted. "Does that bother you?"
"I thought about it, too. Here, my turn." She moved closer, reached into the bowl, and lifted an M&M's to his mouth.
He leaned over, and his lips took the candy and her fingers. His lips were hot and moist. Electricity jolted her.
"Oh, my." She swayed into him.
He caught her with one arm and set the bowl down with his free hand. She was still looking up into that broad face, now just an inch above her own. His breath was spicy and delicious. He wrapped his other arm around her. Naked chest. Two naked arms. So very male.
She gasped. "Now's your chance to back out. It's still not too late."
His voice dropped what seemed an octave. "Don't think that's a good idea. I have this thing about gorgeous women with brains and guts. You might say I'm a sucker for them. But I will admit to a lousy track record, so you're going to have to help me along with this . . . this—"
"Relationship?"
"That's not such a bad word, is it?" His lips brushed hers and then were gone.
She said, "Sometimes it's hard to say. I've been wanting to kiss you for a long time. You have dimples on your cheeks. I'm going to touch them. Okay?"
He swallowed. "Okay."
She slid her fingers up and pressed them against the dimples, pulling down on his face. Their lips touched. Fire swept through her. Whatever control she had retained was gone. He yanked her close and kissed her. She felt herself crawling up his body, sinking into it. She pressed closer and closer, her heart racing. He kissed her throat, her eyes, her nose, her ears. She shuddered with desire.
He slid his hands up through her short hair, cradled her head, and pulled her away so he could see her. "There's a bed in the other bedroom." His voice was hoarse. His eyes lidded. "I stripped it. Threw on a blanket that looked clean. There's a lock on the door."
She nodded mutely, unable to talk. So she broke free and ran. He followed. Their feet thundered into the small spare bedroom. A bedside lamp was alight.
He grabbed her hand and spun her around. "I'm going to undress you. Slowly. You'll like it."
She was panting. "I admire a man with opinions."
Suddenly his hands were gone. He stepped back and just stared.
She watched his gaze, the hunger in it, and felt renewed heat whip through her.
And then his hands were back. "I've changed my mind. Fast is better right now."
He pulled up her turtleneck. His fingers brushed down her scar. "Beautiful. It saved your life."
"Thank you," she whispered.
He kissed the top of it and then back
up to her neck while he unzipped her jeans. He locked his thumbs into her waist band and pushed the jeans down. She wriggled to help him. As his hands traveled lower, so did his face, his breath humid and puffing against her chest, her belly, her crotch, her thighs.
"Sit," he rasped.
She sat on the floor, and he pulled off her athletic shoes, her socks, and finally her jeans. He stood back up, towering over her. She looked up from the floor and felt giddy. He was gloriously handsome, rising above her like a mountain in his tight-fitting jeans and golden muscles. A woman's sexual fantasy.
He extended his hands. She let him pull her up.
"You're so pretty," he murmured as he drank in the sight of her in her black lace bra and black thong brief. He touched her nipples through the silk. He was riveted by the long length of her body, the flowing curves, and the paleness of her skin. Her breasts were small and high, and her belly flat. Muscles gave her a sculpted look. He inhaled sharply. His breathing was ragged.
"My turn." She fumbled with the buttons on his jeans, finally unhooking the top one, then the next, until all were open, and his pants parted. She ran a finger down the vertical line of curly light-brown hair that began just below his navel. "Talk about pretty—" Breathing erratically, she slid her hands inside the front of his jeans.
He groaned. She pulled out her hands and yanked the jeans down, kissing the insides of his thighs.
His heart hammered. He reminded himself to breathe, to slow down . . . before he exploded. She skinned down his underwear, and he dropped free. And she was kissing him. Making greedy, happy sounds and kissing him.
Blood shot to his head. He was losing control—
He grabbed her under her arms, lifted her up, kept lifting until her feet were off the carpet. He felt his muscles ache with the strain, a good distraction. He pressed his lips into her belly and tasted her, savory as buttermilk.
He carried her around to the bed, his face burrowing, his lips kissing and tasting. Above him, she moaned. When he set her feet down on the floor, their eyes met, and for a moment they were caught in each other's hot gazes. Acknowledgment and a strange kind of excited comprehension passed between them.
He reached around and unsnapped her bra. Her small breasts swung loose. He kissed one nipple then the other and peeled her thong down her legs. Panting, she kicked it off. As he rose, she wrapped herself around him, arms over his shoulders and neck, a leg around his thigh, her breasts pressed into his chest, and fell back, drawing him down with her onto the bed. If she were going to die during sex, this was as good a time as any. They kissed, touched, and moved together, skin sliding and sweating.
In the back of her mind, the fear was still there. That climaxing would mean death, and yet she could not stop. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted a man. And it was not just the sex. It was everything else, too. She had told him that risk defined life, and this was perhaps her biggest one, not that she could die but that she would live.
Still, she raised her knees and opened her legs. He leaned forward, pulled her legs up around his neck, and entered her. All her senses were ablaze. Her nails scratched down his back. He thrust, and she quickly caught his rhythm. They moved together. Stared into each other's eyes. Mesmerized by sensation and desire and each other.
Caught in that other world where one is never enough. In and out, pulsing, until she knew she was going to come. He made a guttural sound deep in his throat. His lids were half-lowered, and he stared with feral eyes. She stared back, and the first roll of her explosion began. It shook her just as he shouted with his orgasm. They rocked together, breathing, arching. Hearts pounding, alive.
Two states north, Eli Kirkhart sat with his cheek against the rough bark of a tree, swearing in the dark night at Jeff Hammond and Beth Convey and everything else in the perverse universe conspiring to get in his way. The handcuffs were biting into his wrists, and his shoulders ached from sitting with his arms lashed in front of him. He was so angry at Jeff Hammond and the dirty tricks that life had played on him that he was unaware of the pickup truck approaching along the dirt road.
Then he saw it. "Hey! Help! Stop! Help!"
Raising a cloud of dust that was only slightly lighter than the night's shadows, the pickup drew abreast of Kirkhart. All he could see was a shadowed head in the driver's seat looking straight ahead.
"Hello! Help! Over here! Stop! I need help!"
Trailing a dust cloud that floated like a towering wraith in the night, the truck passed on.
"Bloody hell and damn!" he bellowed.
In a screech of brakes, the pickup stopped up the road. It sat motionless as the dust cloud settled back down to the road's deep ruts. At last it backed up until it was next to Kirkhart. The passenger window rolled down, and a pasty face peered out.
Eli rattled the handcuffs and shouted, "FBI! I've been kidnaped. You hear? Federal Bureau of Investigation! I need help."
The face peered for another long minute, and then the motor turned off, the driver's door opened, and the man walked around the rear of the pickup, a shotgun in his hands. Squinting to see through the night, he approached warily.
"FBI," Kirkhart repeated. "I'm cuffed to this stupid tree, and—"
"What the hell you doin' sittin' out here?"
Kirkhart took a calming breath. "I'm a special agent of the FBI," he said patiently. "If you look in my jacket pocket, you'll find my badge and credentials. I was arresting a murderer, when . . ."
But the man had stopped listening, was circling around to look at the other side of the tree. "My wallet's in my pocket," Kirkhart suggested.
He felt his jacket being lifted, and then his wallet was neatly slid out. The man grunted with surprise. "Well, I'll be damned." He returned to face Eli, the shotgun resting on his shoulder, a big grin on his weather-seamed face. "Now how the hell'd you get into such a fix—you, one of America's finest?"
Kirkhart sighed. He explained again what had happened, feeling about as foolish as the man seemed to think he was. "Can you get me out of these cuffs?"
"Guess so. "He checked the credentials in the wallet one more time. "Special Agent Kirkhart. Now don't you go nowhere." Chortling, the man returned to his pickup, dug around in back, and returned to Eli, a large wire-cutter dangling from his hand. Without another word, he snapped apart the cuffs. After Eli Kirkhart was on his feet and had swung and stamped his circulation back, they walked to the truck.
The man said, "Lucky for you I was in town late. That's my place up ahead, and ain't no other on this here road."
The farmer took a hacksaw to the two bracelet parts of the cuffs and carefully sawed through. That was more difficult and took longer, but eventually they came off. Meanwhile, Eli had convinced the fellow to drive him into Gettysburg.
"So you're a G-man," the farmer chuckled as they sped away in the truck. "Must be a pretty damn exciting job. Guess you guys've got your hands full now. Your director gettin' killed and all."
Kirkhart stared. "Our director? You mean Thomas Horn?"
"That's him, all right. Stabbed, what I heard. Some kind of spy did it."
Kirkhart felt a sudden sinking in his stomach. "When was this?"
"Tonight earlier, I guess."
"You have a radio in the truck? A news station?"
The farmer reached down and turned it on, pressed a button, and a voice appeared, droning the local news. Eli waited impatiently, his fingers drumming on the door's armrest.
And then he heard it. "This bulletin just in: A massive manhunt is on for Jeffrey Hammond, the alleged assassin of FBI director Thomas Horn, who was stabbed to death at about nine o'clock tonight as he sought to arrest Hammond, who is suspected of being a mole within the Bureau. All evidence points to Hammond as both the killer and the mole, according to FBI sources. The president has. . . "
Eli Kirkhart barely heard the rest as he battled confusion and anger, battled the knowledge he had wasted his time—wasted everyone's time—trying to prove his suspicions that Hammon
d was the long-sought mole. What had been wrong with him? Pain flashed through his mind, and a deep loneliness that seemed to come from everywhere enveloped him. Aida. Oh, God, he still missed her. He was hollow without her, and he had done nothing to fill the void. Even the weeks grieving beside her bed as she faded toward death had been better than the emptiness he felt after her frail body had finally stopped breathing, an emptiness he still felt.
Now as he listened to the news report finish, he had a sickening feeling he had been too eager to bring down Jeff, who had once been almost as close to him as Aida. That since Aida had died, he had become something a little less than human, yet dangerously armed with a gun and a badge. Persecution . . . not prosecution. Was that how he had tried to block out the pain and make himself feel whole again? By making other people hurt instead?
The unpleasant truth was the Bureau was wrong now, as he had been even more wrong up until now. Obviously, Jeff Hammond was here in Pennsylvania when the director was killed. And if Hammond did not kill Director Horn, but the real mole did—
Worry flooded him. He pushed his sense of guilt aside and thought quickly. He had a lot to make up for. His mind flipped through names of the top people in the Bureau as if they were printed on flash cards. Which one could be the mole? He stopped and considered this one, then that one. Who was it? Who in hell was it?
43
An hour later in Evans Olsen's shabby cottage, the air still smelled of sex, and the bedroom was dim in the light of the small lamp. On the bed, Beth yawned and stretched. "I'm never going to think about M&M's in the same way."
"I was inspired."
