Son of the Enemy

by Ana Barrons

  Goddamn it. What was it going to take to convince her that he really did care about her? “If you don’t want to do it for me, then do it for your mother. She would want you to be safe from this maniac.”

  Hannah’s expression hardened. “You don’t know what my mother would or wouldn’t want.” She brushed past him to get to the closet. “I’m going to Marblehead because I don’t want to deal with Thornton or the FBI and because I figure anyone who can lie as well as you do must be a reasonably good agent. So if you’ve got a hunch, who am I to doubt it?”

  “You’re a pretty good liar yourself.”

  She stopped moving for a moment, then bent over to pick up some shoes and yanked a skirt off a hanger. Her movements were jerky. When she walked back to the bed to throw her things in the suitcase her cheeks were flushed.

  “You never said a word about Santini’s visit,” he pressed, knowing he’d never had the right to expect honesty or openness from her, but too churned up to stop now. “You said you didn’t want to go to the beach because your life was too complicated.”

  “Get out of here so I can get dressed.”

  He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “Like I haven’t seen it all.” Yeah, it was an asshole thing to say, but he was hurt and angry and felt like giving a little back. He gestured with his head toward the living room, where Bradshaw had been a few minutes earlier. “And I guess I’m not the only one.”

  Her control snapped before his eyes. “No, you’re sure as hell not,” she spat. “Lots of men have had me, so don’t think you’re anything special.”

  John caught her arms and pushed her backward onto the bed, then covered her body with his own. It was time she understood he wasn’t going to give up without a fight. She struggled to push him off, but he held her wrists beside her head and didn’t budge.

  “So, you and Bradshaw only had sex in limos, huh?” He tried not to clench his teeth. “Pretty kinky.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Yeah, it really turned me on doing it in a moving car. Reminded me of the old days, you know, doing it in the backseat? I’m sure you can relate.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “Sure you do. I liked it when Thornton took all my clothes off and he stayed fully dressed, especially if he was wearing a tux.”

  John’s heart was pounding. “That’s enough.”

  “He liked me to keep on my garter belt and heels, but nothing else. Not even—”

  “I’m warning you, Hannah.”

  “—my panties. Nothing. He would close the front panel, but there was always the chance that the driver would peek.”

  “No more, goddamn it!” His lips were inches from her face, and he was pressing her wrists hard into the bed. “You think I want to hear about another man fucking you in a limo? I know why you’re so pissed off. You wish you didn’t care. Well, guess what? Right now I wish I didn’t give a damn about you, either, but I do.”

  “He liked it rough,” she said, as though he hadn’t spoken. Her breath was coming fast. “He’d pull off his tie and wrap it around my wrists and then tie it to the—”

  It was his turn to lose it. “Oh, you want it rough, huh?” His heart pounded so loud it was deafening. “I’ll give you rough.” He yanked the belt off her robe, pulled her hands up over her head and tied them tight, then dragged her up to the head of the bed and fastened it to the post.

  “What the hell do you—?”

  He cut off her words with a fierce kiss that had their teeth clanking together. She tugged at the belt and thrashed her head to break the kiss but he held her face in his hands until she stopped fighting it and began to tangle her tongue with his. When she began to arch into him, he pulled his head back and demanded. “How’re we doing?”

  “John—”

  He nipped at her neck hard enough to make her gasp. “That’s right,” he said, anger and lust fueling his need to possess her. He shifted his body lower on hers and grabbed her breasts in both hands, pinching her nipples as she groaned and writhed beneath him. He pulled one into his mouth and sucked hard, using his teeth. Her cries sounded like a mix of ecstasy and pain.

  “Is that how he does it?” He barely recognized his own, savage voice.

  “No. John—”

  “Then let’s try it again.” He went to work on her other breast, biting and sucking with a ferocity he’d never felt before. His cock was so hard he felt like he was ready to explode, but he wasn’t done with her yet. Not by a long shot.

  He pushed her legs open with his, then used both hands to force her knees up almost to her chest, spreading her as wide as she could go. “Let me know if I’m getting it right.”

  She lifted her head and he could see the flush in her cheeks, the heavy lidded eyes and swollen lips—almost as swollen as the creamy lips he’d exposed between her thighs. Her breath was coming as pants, same as his. “Wait,” she rasped. “I—”

  “No waiting,” he said, and ground his stubbled face into her soft wetness. She arched into him, and he covered her with his mouth and tongue, probing, sucking, thrusting his tongue inside her, over and over as she gasped and begged. He felt her stiffen and then shudder as she cried out her release. And then he couldn’t wait anymore for his own.

  He got to his knees, undid his jeans and pulled them just low enough to release his cock. The smile he shot her felt as evil as his heart when he pushed her legs down and straddled her face. “I could get used to this,” he said, and thrust his cock into her open, waiting mouth.

  She groaned as she ran her tongue up his shaft, then sucked the purple head. Oh, Christ, it felt too good, too good. Seeing her bound beneath him, sucking his cock, gave him a sense of carnal power so intense he felt ready to explode. The jealousy that was burning a hole in his gut reared its ugly head. “Did you suck Bradshaw’s cock too?”

  She stopped, eyes wide, just for a moment, and then the fierce light returned and she nodded.

  The hole got bigger. Badder. “Did he push it in deep, like this?” He thrust and she reared her head back, then seemed to recover and sucked harder. When he was nearly blind with need he pulled out, flipped her onto her stomach and pushed his cock inside her, all the way to the hilt.

  “Here we go.” He grabbed on to her hips and fucked her hard, his balls smacking into her with each angry thrust. Beneath him she groaned and begged for more. Yeah, she liked it rough, all right. And that bastard, Bradshaw, had figured it out first.

  When he finished he pulled out of her and climbed off the bed. He was breathing heavily, like he’d run a marathon. Hannah just lay there, still bound, also struggling for breath. He untied the terry belt from the bedpost and then freed her wrists. She pulled them to her chest, but didn’t roll over.

  That’s when the guilt set in.

  “Shit,” he muttered, and sat down beside her. He stroked her hair gently. “Did I hurt you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Hannah.”

  Nothing.

  “I was jealous and pissed off, and I had no right.”

  Nothing.

  “Can you look at me, please?”

  After a moment she rolled onto her back and stretched like a cat. Then she folded her arms under her head, looked up at him and gave him a slow smile that belied the anger in her eyes.

  “So,” she said. “How did it feel to be used?”

  Philip watched in horrified fascination as John Emerson rubbed his face in Belle’s cunt. And she was bound to the bedpost!

  No!

  He pulled out his knife and was prepared to go inside until he lifted her head and— Oh, God. She was enjoying it!

  Through a haze of disbelief and pain, Philip fumbled with his zipper, needing to release his diddling pole. It was so hard it hurt. She was arching up from the bed, her head thrown back, her nipples cherry red.

  He pumped his pole as the anger washed through him. She liked it! The bitch actually liked having another man’s face in he
r cunt. And now she was saying his name, he could read her lips. He pumped harder. How could she betray him like this?

  Emerson. He’s brainwashed her.

  Emerson was kneeling now, his big, hard pole jutting out, and pushing it into her mouth.

  Philip forced himself not to cry out as he released a long spurt of hot semen onto the siding beneath the window. When he calmed down a bit, he cleaned himself off with a handkerchief, folded it neatly and put it in his back pocket. Then he put his eye to the peephole again. Emerson had flipped her over and was fucking her from behind, like a dog.

  The pain was agonizing.

  Philip’s pole was limp, so he couldn’t push any more anger out of it. Not yet. He watched until Emerson had finished and climbed off the bed, then put his lips to the peephole.

  “You’ll both be punished for this, my love,” he whispered.

  Ty slipped around the side of the pool house and inserted the spare key into the lock. If Philip didn’t have anything to hide, he wouldn’t lock the door at night, right? Hopefully Philip wouldn’t come home until after he’d had a good look at his room, but Ty knew he had to be quick, just in case. The old Mercedes he drove wasn’t in its usual spot, and the tire tracks looked pretty fresh, but for all he knew the freak had just run up to the 7-Eleven or something.

  He’d spent a lot of time thinking about Philip while he was at his grandmother’s house, since there wasn’t a hell of a lot else to do. If he could prove that Philip was up to something really bad, if he had physical evidence of it, then he could tell his father. And his father would tell the cops. And Philip would have no credibility at all when he tried to tell them what Ty had really been doing in the woods that day. And then maybe he wouldn’t go to juvie after all, even if Philip could produce the baggie with the dope and Ty’s fingerprints all over it. Of course, if he could find the baggie in Philip’s room and get rid of it, he’d feel a whole lot less worried about the bastard causing trouble for him.

  He didn’t dare turn on the lights inside the pool house, but he’d brought a small flashlight with him, and he shined it around the sauna area, then into the little kitchenette, which looked about as neat and clean as he would have expected. According to his mother, it was pretty much unnatural for a man to be neat. Not that his mother was a great judge of human nature, considering the company she kept.

  Why he was thinking about his mother right now he didn’t know. Maybe it was seeing the kitchen. Isn’t that where mothers were supposed to hang out? As opposed to in the bedroom with some buff guy ten years younger than she was?

  He shined the flashlight on the doorknob of the little bedroom Philip had taken over. He didn’t want to touch it, just in case the guy dusted for fingerprints or something. He felt for the key on the ring in his pocket. Was there some kind of weird smell coming out of the room or was it his imagination? He held his breath and inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily, but just to make sure he hadn’t been set up, he shined the light up and down the doorframe. Freako could have left a hair or something sticking out at a certain point so he’d know if someone came in while he was out. Ty didn’t spot anything. He listened for sounds outside, then wrapped the bottom of his tee shirt around his hand and turned the knob.

  It was smoky inside the room, like someone had been burning candles. He ran the beam across the nearest wall first, being careful not to shine it near the window. The blinds were closed, he knew that from trying to look inside, but… What the hell? Black plastic garbage bags had been tacked over the windows. Ty’s gut tightened a little more.

  Shit.

  Yeah, he wanted to know if Philip was up to anything, but he really wasn’t in the mood to get totally grossed out.

  On the adjoining wall, a single bed sat lengthwise beneath a window that had also been covered with plastic bags.

  “What the fuck?” Ty whispered.

  The bed was made military perfect, not a lump or wrinkle in sight. Well, at least there were no dead bodies lying on it. The flashlight beam showed nothing out of place in the whole room, other than the black garbage bags over the room’s two windows. The door to the tiny closet was closed. So was the bathroom door.

  Once again he wrapped his hand in his tee shirt and opened the closet door. Philip’s camouflage suit was hung up in there, along with a couple of ugly-ass plaid shirts and some khaki pants that still had the tags on them. A pair of shiny black army boots sat on the floor. There was nothing else in there. Ty sighed, half in relief, half in disappointment. There was something seriously wrong with Philip—he’d never been so sure of anything in his life. But his intuition wasn’t going to cut it without something tangible to back it up, so he had to poke around some more.

  There was a low dresser beside the closet, and he opened the top drawer first. Socks, perfectly rolled, and some plain white Fruit of the Looms folded in half. He shut the drawer quickly and opened the next. Empty. The bottom drawer was also empty.

  “Fuck.”

  He straightened, and the flashlight beam picked up a shiny object on the corner of the dresser. Ty held the light steady and gazed down at a small black-and-white photo in a silver frame, of a girl in some kind of costume, a long dress with a high neck, long sleeves and a big wide skirt. She was holding her hands out to someone. He squinted his eyes and bent closer.

  The girl was a younger version of Hannah, except…not quite Hannah. He couldn’t have said what was different; the likeness was so close that it actually could be her. There was just something…

  A car door slammed outside.

  “Shit!” he whispered. It might not be Philip, but what if it was? He could look out the window and see—but the plastic bags were in the way.

  “Goddamn it!” There was no way he could get out of the pool house without being seen from the driveway. So he had to hide. Where? The bathroom window faced the pool, away from the driveway. Even if there was black plastic covering it, he could rip it off and get the fuck out of there. Philip wouldn’t have to know who’d snuck in.

  He pulled open the bathroom door, stepped inside and closed it behind him. The smell of smoke and candle wax was nearly overpowering. And there was something else mingled in, a pungent, animal scent of some kind, sort of musky…

  “Aw, shit,” he whispered. The freak had been jerking off in here—recently. And what, burning candles at the same time?

  Okay, that was it. He was definitely getting the fuck out of Dodge. The window behind the shower curtain was big enough to climb out of. It was a stupid place for a full-sized window but it made it real easy to spy on naked women on summer nights. His father threw some wild pool parties in the summer with clients and lots of young chicks, and Ty figured the women knew damn well they were being watched, so they soaped up longer than necessary so everyone got a good long look.

  He pulled back the shower curtain. What he saw was so deranged he just stood there, paralyzed, staring when he should have been running.

  “You sick fuck,” he whispered.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Hannah hadn’t said a word to him since they got in the car to go to the airport. They’d sat together in the boarding area at Dulles Airport from one thirty to four thirty in the morning, saying nothing. Now she was sitting beside him on a crowded flight to Boston, and she wouldn’t even lay her arm on the armrest between them. Her eyes were closed, but John knew she wasn’t sleeping because she sighed from time to time and tightened her arms around her torso. Talk about body language. One arm was wrapped around her middle and the other was crossed over her chest to the opposite shoulder. Translation: don’t touch me, emotionally or physically. He wasn’t sure which one bothered him more.

  By the time they’d landed at Logan Airport and gone through the hoops to get a rental car, she looked ragged. She was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes. He offered to carry her bag but she turned down his help. He would gladly have carried her on his back if he’d thought she’d let him.

  She leaned
her head back against the plush seat of the new Ford Taurus and closed her eyes for a few minutes while he fiddled with the lights and windshield wipers. A light rain was falling, which was sure to snarl Sunday-morning traffic out of the airport even more than usual. Great. Just what he needed to start the day.

  “It would be good if you could get some sleep in the car,” he said as he backed out of the parking spot. “When we get to Marblehead we can get some breakfast, if you can wait that long.”

  She didn’t bother to look at him. “Coffee would be nice.”

  His stomach was empty, but the thought of eating McDonald’s breakfast food made him nauseous. He’d bought a cinnamon roll from an airport vending machine before they boarded and had a coffee and some peanuts on the plane, but Hannah hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all night. She had to be starving.

  “Tell you what. We can stop at a Mickey D’s drive-through on the way and grab a couple of coffees. Unless you’d prefer a diner.”

  “Whatever.”

  They drove up Route 1A through Boston to the north shore, passing through the familiar towns of Revere and Lynn, places that held early memories for John. He’d been to Boston a few times over the years, on FBI business, but he had never been tempted to make the trip down memory lane. He was losing the battle with fatigue, so he rolled his window halfway down, hoping the cool air would clear his head.

  They stopped at a traffic light by a corner bakery, and the smell of oven-fresh bread transported him back in time to the day he and his mother had driven down this road for the last time. A surge of desperate sadness made it hard to take in a full breath.

  The car behind him blared its horn, and he realized he hadn’t moved when the light turned green. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Hannah watching him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

  He glanced at her, saw the concern and puzzlement in her eyes, and wanted to weep. Even now, despising him as she did, she was still able to feel compassion for him. He wanted to pull the car over and beg her to cradle him in her arms.