Lovely, Dark, and Deep (The Collectors)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Yeah, she’d see how long he laughed. She tugged off her jeans and that shut him up. Then she walked to the nightstand and pulled out the chocolate drawer.

  “Uh, you need a snack?” He raised an eyebrow as she rummaged through the drawer looking for…

  Aha. Found it. She held up two large foil-wrapped balls of chocolate she’d spotted on her earlier plunder and walked back to the bed, letting them rest on her open palm. “Let’s see. What can I do with these? Oh, I know.”

  She sat down, leaned over, and grasped the waistband of the chocolate labs. “Sorry, chocolate is very bad for dogs. These boys’ve gotta go.”

  His slight intake of breath was the only audible response she got to the gentle stroke she gave him as the dogs hit the floor. He’d propped on his elbows and watched her with hooded, glazed eyes as she slowly unwrapped the first ginormous chocolate-covered cherry, then the second, admiring them from all angles before bringing the first one to her mouth.

  She bit off the end of each one, then held them over his cock.

  “Holy shit.” He groaned as she turned both candies over and let the cherry-flavored liquid pour onto him and drizzle down the sides of her new chocolate-cherry candy cane.

  “Now, I’m ready for a snack.”

  “You are sick. Twisted. Oh my God, brilliant.” He finally lost the ability to verbalize, leaving Gillian free to lose herself in the best damned chocolate-covered cherry she’d ever eaten.

  She’d just settled in for her final assault when he quit thrashing and lunged for her, rolling her onto her back with enough force to squish the rest of the chocolate balls under her hip.

  He kissed her once, twice, and licked a dab of chocolate off his lower lip. “I hated to see you having all the fun.” He retrieved a chunk of chocolate from the bed and smeared it across her breasts, then proceeded to get even.

  God, but revenge was almost as sweet as chocolate. She held on to his head as he brought her to the edge again and again, seeming to know the second she was on the verge of coming and then pulling back and moving to a different spot.

  “You’re killing me.” She writhed as his fingers slipped inside her, trying to get closer or to get away, to find release.

  He trailed kisses down her belly, slid a hand beneath her hips…and stopped. “What the…” He looked down at his right hand, which had found the rest of the chocolate—at least what wasn’t stuck to her butt.

  “I didn’t say my methods weren’t messy.” Damn it. She’d been almost there, almost there.

  He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “I think we need to continue this in the shower.”

  “Good idea. No, bad idea. One person barely fits in that shower.”

  He herded her ahead of him into the tiny room and only managed to get the door closed behind them by herding her into the shower stall as well.

  “I’m not sure about this.” Gillian backed against the wall as he flipped on the faucet, directing the spray against the far wall until it warmed up.

  “One last thing.” He opened the medicine cabinet hidden behind the mirror over the sink and pulled out a box of condoms. He held up the little packet. “Chocolate.”

  She laughed until he rolled it over his erection and stepped into the shower with her, kissing like sin. Kissing like he might devour her, and knowing she would let him—help him, even.

  Kissing like they might have no tomorrow.

  The laughter turned to heat as he scrubbed her clean, their bodies touching in the tight space, his hands roaming and stroking. If he didn’t get inside her soon, she was going to explode.

  “Now. I need you now.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and hooked one leg around his, trying to bring him even closer.

  Finally, with a gruff moan, he lifted her so she could wrap her legs around his hips and settled her down, entering her with excruciating, delicious slowness until she was holding him inside her. She cried out as he lifted her again, and then let her fall, pinning her to the shower wall and setting up a hard, steady rhythm.

  “Fuck.” He clenched his teeth as he took the brunt of water. It had turned to ice, and then it stopped. “I’ve gotta disable that damned shower monitor.”

  She squeezed her inner walls around him as hard as she could, then released, then squeezed. “Is that warming you up?”

  He uttered something unintelligible, lifted her again, and set up a pounding rhythm. “Sorry, I can’t slow…can’t.”

  “Don’t stop.” Gillian held on, the drag of each thrust across her clit sending her closer to the edge until she finally went over, clutching him both inside her and in her arms until he came with a final jerk, his muscles straining, his head thrown back in total abandon.

  For a long time, they remained together, their breathing finally evening out. Shane seemed as reluctant as she was to have the moment end.

  But Gillian knew one thing with certainty. If tonight was all they had, if tomorrow was the end, or the next day, or the next, she’d have no regrets.

  CHAPTER 23

  Shane sat cross-legged on the flybridge with his eyes closed, reaching out with every sense but sight. Petrels flew overhead, squawking as they trolled for food around the half-moon harbor of Main-à-Dieu. A horn from another boat as it maneuvered through the light fog that had cloaked everything in a soft-focus coating of gauze. Salt-tanged, steady wind from the east that brought a touch of chill, but not enough to spoil the soft sunlight heating his face.

  The way the wind moved across his scalp with no hair to push around made him think of Gillian and her antics with shaving cream, which were not as hot as her antics with chocolate-covered cherries but still made him smile. He let his mind linger on her, surprised that last night had happened but glad of it. Surprised that this morning, he hadn’t felt guilty. Surprised that all last night had done was make him want her even more. He’d intended to scratch an itch; instead, he’d kindled a fire.

  He took a deep breath and let his senses talk to him again. The point of this exercise was to empty his mind, but if stray thoughts came in, he’d been taught to let them come, give them a few moments’ attention, and let them go.

  That wasn’t Marine Corps training, but the “Charlie Burke Guide to Life.” Clear your mind before you do serious thinking, son. He could hear that voice in his mind, even if he hadn’t been able to get it on the phone in a couple of days.

  And Shane had some serious thinking to do. Despite all appearances to the contrary, he was not a spontaneous kind of guy. He needed a plan. Maybe more than one. And all the ones he’d come up with so far ended up with somebody dead.

  They’d reached the small harbor of Main-à-Dieu early that morning, found the spot Charlie had told them to anchor, and set foot on land for the first time in a week. What they didn’t find was Chevy McKnight, but only a note left with a guy named Ricky at the building that serviced the busy little harbor.

  Chevy and his wife had gone into Sydney for supplies and would meet them at the dock at six. And if he were feeling adventurous, the note said, Charlie Burke’s son could take a look-see at the waters off Scaterie Island nearest Moque Head. Shane didn’t know if the “son” part was a mistake or if that’s how Charlie had described him, but he liked it. Charlie was his father in every way except for a few strands of DNA.

  “Can you tell me the best route to get to Scaterie, nearest Moque Head?” he’d asked Ricky.

  “Sail east hugging the coast and you’ll run into it. Kind of late in the season to be diving.” Ricky, who was manning the combination marina, tourist center, dive shop, and general store, was bald but for a tuft of white hair on top. “Never knew old Chevy McKnight had a nephew in the States but he says you’re a hotshot diver from Florida, one of those that like the adventure, eh?”

  “That I am.” Shane wondered what else Chevy had said to explain their out-of-season appearance, but the man didn’t ask anything else.

  An hour and a sandwich later, they’d headed back out with Jagger at the hel
m of The Evangeline, Gillian in the salon working on her computer and Shane on deck, watching as the relatively flat land of the harbor area gave way to rocky outcroppings and jagged, tree-covered cliffs. They sailed along the coast toward Moque Head, the easternmost point of Cape Breton.

  Today, he would dive. Get a feel for the currents. For the ocean floor. For the visibility. Old Ricky had laughed when he asked about the fog. “Not a question of whether there’ll be fog,” he said. “Just whether it’ll be easy like today or whether it’ll be so thick you can’t see far enough to spit. Why, today’s practically sunny.”

  Shane had spent the last hour in the stirrings of a predive adrenaline rush, and thus his attempt at a zen moment on the flybridge. Today’s dive would be for reconnaissance, and he had to be hyperalert, hyperobservant, and the opposite of hyperactive.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Shane looked behind him, where Gillian had climbed the ladder enough for her head to stick over the edge of the bridge. Her hands gripped the ladder rail so tightly her knuckles had turned white, and her bright red sweater flapped in the wind. She’d braided her hair and pulled it back.

  “Sure, come on up.” He grinned as she managed to ease off the top ladder rung and crab-walk in his general direction. “Not afraid of heights, are you?”

  She gave him an eat-dirt-and-die look and pushed herself into a seated position. “No, sitting unprotected atop a wave-tossed ship in a fog bank comes naturally to me. Can’t you tell? Where are we going, anyway?”

  “Moque Head. We can see Scaterie Island from there. Well, maybe.” In the fog, maybe not. “I’ll do my first recon dive from near Scaterie, maybe two dives if the weather holds. And you’ll love this—Moque Head is halfway between Burke’s Point and Campbell’s Point. How ironic is that?”

  Gillian laughed. “I wonder if that’s a good sign or bad?”

  A good sign, Shane thought. He liked the feel of this place. Not the sea itself—it was going to be a bitch of a dive. But Main-à-Dieu, and this little corner of Cape Breton. It had the same vibe as Cedar Key in its own way. Small, fierce, and unapologetic.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “About the research I’ve been doing.” Gillian tensed when a gust of wind swept over the flybridge, then relaxed when she seemed convinced that she wasn’t going to get blown off. “I did what you suggested and narrowed my list of prospects for Tex’s boss down to people with ties to the Southwest. Then I went ahead and threw out the people who didn’t look rich enough or powerful enough. Finally, I narrowed it to people with direct ties to Texas.”

  That was a hell of a lot of speculation. “You’re that sure of Tex’s accent? And what makes you think his boss is from the same place?”

  “Well, I don’t know for sure, of course.” She closed her eyes as another gust of wind blasted across them. “But I have a lot of relatives who live around Dallas, and I know that accent. It’s different than Oklahoma or even West Texas or Houston. And think about it. If you’re filthy rich and up to your neck in this kind of crap, who would you trust to do your dirty work? If you wanted to commit blackmail, extortion, kidnapping—even murder—and can’t get your own hands dirty, who would you trust not to rat you out?”

  Shane stared out at a landmass barely visible through the fog—probably Scaterie—while he considered the question. “Somebody I’d known a long time,” he finally said. “Maybe someone I grew up with, or a family member. Somebody I knew would never sell me down the river.” He smiled at her. “She’s sexy and smart too. Gotta like that in a girl.”

  “And there you go, being a guy.” She shook her head. “Okay, let’s accept that we’re making a lot of assumptions. I came up with four men and a woman who fit that profile.”

  “It’s not the woman.” Shane would bet on it.

  Gillian raised an eyebrow. “You think a woman isn’t capable of this?”

  “Not this particular mess. This kind of bullshit is too heavy-handed and artless to be a woman. A woman would be smarter about it, less”—he struggled to find the right word—“blunt. She’d use a chisel, not a sledgehammer. Who’re the guys on the list?”

  Gillian reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, only to almost lose it to a gust of wind. “Can we go inside?”

  “Sure. Here’s the easiest way to climb down.” Shane swung his legs off the edge and did a practiced pivot on the third step down, putting him in position to descend the ladder.

  Gillian followed. He didn’t wish her ill, but he half hoped she’d slip so he’d have an excuse to catch her. Touch her. Instead, he just admired the view as she climbed down much more gracefully than she’d gone up.

  “Stop looking at my ass.” She hopped off the last rung and treated him to the same devilish smile she’d worn just before the attack of the chocolate-covered cherries. His balls tightened in honor of the memory.

  “Yeah, I’m busted.” And since he was busted, he enjoyed the view all the way down the side passage and into the salon—until she turned and handed him the paper. Her expression had turned worried.

  He unfolded and scanned the list of names, and saw why. He didn’t recognize the first two names. The third and fourth made his scalp crawl.

  “Holy shit.” He sat on the bench, staring at the names, then took out his cell and called Jagger. “How close are we to Moque Head?” He paused and listened. “Okay. Take us out toward Scaterie and drop anchor. We need to meet on deck and plan today’s dive.”

  “Why on deck?” Gillian got sodas for each of them from the fridge and brought them to the table. “Wouldn’t it be easier to talk in here?”

  Hell yes. “Not really. I’ve just heard the currents here are volatile. This will give us a good chance to get a look at the water from a stationary position before I go in.”

  He drew a fair approximation of a cockroach on the backside of her paper, then tapped his ear. Under the guise of cleaning and organizing, Jagger had been combing the boat for bugs or even little surveillance cameras. He hadn’t found anything, but that didn’t mean they could be careless. The Evangeline had been out of their hands for thirty-six hours in Southport, and if Gillian’s research on the identity of Tex’s boss proved true, anything was possible. They’d be harder to hear topside.

  “Gotcha.” She nodded. “I wonder if we’ll be able to see the old lighthouse on Scaterie from here?”

  “I’m not sure which side of the island it’s on. Or how much the fog will obliterate.”

  They sat in uncomfortable silence for several minutes as the boat moved closer to shore. When the sound of the anchor line being released filled the salon, Shane nodded to Gillian and they headed to the deck.

  Jagger waited for them, sitting near the bow with his back against the rail. He’d tied back his dark hair and then stuffed it inside a fedora of green and gray Cape Breton tartan. He’d bought it at the harbor shop at Main-à-Dieu, and Shane couldn’t decide if he looked rocker-cool or dorky-psychotic with his hat, his hippie hair, and his black “Keith Richards Makes Goat’s Head Soup” t-shirt. Balancing that fine line was something his friend did well, so he’d learned to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “What’s up? You’ve already planned the dive, so I guess we’re gonna talk about something Tex can’t hear.” He kept his voice low.

  Shane handed him the paper. “Gillian has narrowed our top possibilities for Tex’s boss down to these names. I eliminated the woman; I think this has to be the work of a guy. A really arrogant guy.”

  Jagger took the paper and Shane could tell exactly when he reached the final two names by the way his eyes widened. He looked at the list again, then ripped it into tiny shreds and tossed them into the wind. “Sorry for the litter, Canada. Okay, if we ditch the woman, that leaves us with four. I don’t know those first two guys, but you can strike off number three.”

  That would be the famous oil tycoon who’d parlayed his family millio
ns into billions through savvy investments. He had a reputation as a renegade and a ruthless boardroom tyrant. Shane didn’t know much about the guy except when he’d make the news either because his company had gobbled up a competitor or he’d dumped another supermodel girlfriend.

  “Why?” Gillian asked. “He seems powerful and rich enough.”

  Jagger shook his head. “I read this article on him not long ago in a magazine—Forbes, I think. Hey”—he kicked Shane’s shin with the toe of his worn blue-and-white Nikes—“I was in the dentist’s waiting room and it was just sitting there, okay? Anyway, the story told about how he had this brother with a rare form of leukemia who died when they were kids. Now that he’s loaded, he pours tons of money into children’s medical charities. Even has a foundation set up for it.”

  “Ah.” Shane saw his point. “He might threaten us, or even burn out Harley, but he wouldn’t threaten Gillian’s niece.” He turned back to Gillian. “What can you tell us about the two we don’t know?”

  “Not much, so I need to do some more digging around. Like the others, their families made their money from oil. Both are pretty reclusive but given a little more time, surely I can find out something.”

  Shane nodded and looked out over the cliffs and rocky shoreline of Moque Head and, to their port side, the fog-shrouded rise of land that made up the western shore of Scaterie Island. The sea had grown choppier and the fog heavier. If he were going to do a dive today, it needed to be now.

  He looked back at Gillian. “You research while I do a recon dive.”

  They all got to their feet but Jagger grabbed the sleeve of Shane’s sweatshirt. “You don’t want to talk about who’s behind Door Number Five?”

  He met Jagger’s gaze, then Gillian’s. “No, because it scares the hell out of me. Trying to find a way to outmaneuver your average ruthless billionaire is bad enough. I want to disqualify everybody else before I even think about the fucking secretary of state.”