by Amelia Autin
They fell onto the bed, still locked in each other’s embrace, and Savannah surfaced just long enough to realize the frantic hands tearing at his clothes belonged to her. Just as he was stripping off her jeans, her sweater, her panties and bra. He left her just long enough to retrieve a condom and roll it on, then tested her readiness with two fingers that drove her insane.
“Please,” she panted, aware she would have said anything, done anything, if he would just—
She arched to take him deeper when he slid inside, moaning at the incredible sensation that never failed to surprise her, no matter how many times he—
Pleasure rocketed through her as her body tightened involuntarily. Again. And again. Throbbing around him as he continued his steady pace of shallow, shallow, shallow, deep.
He gave her no respite. “Yes,” he whispered against her ear when the second orgasm whipped through her, something she couldn’t possibly hide because she sobbed and clung to him, but he never stopped. She was mindless now, every nerve ending clamoring for more. More of everything. More of Niall. Knowing he loved her was the more she needed, an aphrodisiac she’d never imagined.
But finally even Niall’s willpower cracked, and the intensity of his thrusts told her he was close. “Yes,” she gasped as her third orgasm overtook her. “Yes.”
He arched deep one last time, an inarticulate cry on his lips as he came with her.
* * *
Niall’s arms were trembling and his lungs rasped for breath as he collapsed onto Savannah, totally drained of everything, including any strength whatsoever. Then he quickly shifted to the side, taking his weight off her so she could breathe, too.
Still embedded within her, he caught her chin and turned her face to his. “I didn’t want to wear a condom this time either,” he said, his voice husky with meaning. Pressing himself deep one more time for emphasis.
She blinked. “You didn’t?”
He shook his head. “Not this time. Not any time with you.” He saw the dawning wonder in her eyes, but quickly nipped it in the bud by adding, “Just because that’s what I want, doesn’t mean I can ever let it happen. I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?” Her voice was small.
“I told you. We have no future.”
“Oh. Right.” He thought that was the end of it, but he should have known better. “Why is that again?”
Chapter 17
Niall groaned Savannah’s name, his arms tightening around her as he ruthlessly quashed his hopeless dream. “Children just aren’t possible for me.” The shocked expression on her face told him she’d misunderstood, and he quickly amended, “They’re possible, or I wouldn’t need a condom. But raising a child is a huge commitment, not just in terms of time and money, but in emotional support, as well. The job I do...it’s not compatible with a family.”
He wondered what she was thinking when she gazed up at him with those sorrowful gray eyes, but all she said was, “I understand.”
“Good.” Not good, part of him insisted, but he ignored that little voice. He gently withdrew, then climbed out of bed to discard the condom.
He stepped into the shower for a minute, and once again found a towel waiting for him in Savannah’s hand when he came out. They exchanged places, and though he told himself not to, he couldn’t help it. He watched, the breath catching in his throat when her hand went between her legs with the bar of soap.
He cursed himself for a pervert and stomped into the other room, savagely tugging his clothes on as fast as Savannah had taken them off. Then just stood there in the middle of the room, his imagination working overtime as the water in the shower continued to run.
Finally he couldn’t take it anymore and headed for the door. “I’m going to get your hot chocolate,” he called. “Bolt the door after me.”
He ran into the Thompsons at the coffee bar. “Hi, Niall,” Mary Beth said in that breathless way she spoke, as she filled a cup from the urn marked Decaf. “Isn’t it nice we have this right here on our deck and don’t have to go up or down for a late-night coffee run?”
“Your stateroom is on this deck?” he asked slowly. With all their comings and goings, he and Savannah hadn’t run into the Thompsons in the corridor. And his boss hadn’t yet sent him the passenger manifest with the stateroom assignments, so he hadn’t known.
“Oh my yes.” She handed the cup of coffee to her husband. “Rooms on this deck are more expensive, but Herb insisted, isn’t that right, honey?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Nothing but the best for us, just like you and Savannah.”
She served herself a cup of coffee from the urn marked Regular. “And before you warn me, let me say I can drink caffeine any time of the day or night, and it never bothers me at all. Never interferes with my sleep. Not Herb, though. He can’t drink anything with caffeine after three in the afternoon, or else he’s awake all night, poor baby.”
Niall glanced at the poor baby, whose expression conveyed embarrassment about having his personal limitations exposed to a relative stranger, but long-suffering. Niall smiled in commiseration. Mary Beth was still talking.
“I wish they’d planned some kind of entertainment for this evening,” she complained. “Who wants to watch a four-hour lock transition? Fifteen minutes was enough for Herb and me, wasn’t that right, honey? We noticed you and Savannah didn’t stay long, either. Guess you had something better to do.” She didn’t waggle her eyebrows, but he knew exactly what she meant.
“Of course in the old days, people didn’t go on cruises together unless they were married,” she confided, as if she were eighty instead of fiftysomething. “But nowadays...” She sipped at her coffee. “I was just saying to Herb the other day, we have to hand it to you and Savannah, booking separate rooms at the hotels and on this cruise. Maintaining the conventions even though it’s obvious to everyone the two of you are a couple.”
Niall almost rolled his eyes, but then he focused on what she’d just said. Mary Beth and Herb knew he and Savannah had separate rooms. And their stateroom was on Deck Five. Which meant...
He surreptitiously gave Herb the once-over. Could he have been the man on Savannah’s balcony? he wondered. Possible. Herb was in decent shape and looked strong enough. And the henpecked husband could be an act. Mary Beth and Herb were such stereotypes it was almost as if they wanted him to think they couldn’t possibly be the bad guys.
“More money, of course,” Mary Beth continued. “A lot more. But this way no one’s sensibilities are ruffled.” She sipped at her coffee again. “So...” she said archly. “Are we going to be celebrating some happy news on this cruise? I was just saying to Herb the other day that the way you look at Savannah reminds me of the way he looked at me when we got engaged.” She giggled. “So incredibly romantic. Is there an engagement in the near future?”
A sudden urge to throttle Mary Beth before she could put that question to Savannah possessed him, and he quickly turned to empty a packet of hot chocolate mix in a cup, then fill it from the Hot Water urn. “We’re discussing it,” he said evenly. If the Thompsons were the attempted kidnappers, it wouldn’t hurt for them to think he and Savannah were a couple headed for the altar, so they wouldn’t suspect he was an agent who just might know more than they wanted him to know.
He stirred the powder mix until it was completely dissolved, then threw away the stirrer and popped a lid into place. “I’d better get back to Savannah,” he told Mary Beth with a smile. “She’s waiting for her hot chocolate.”
“Isn’t that sweet, Herb?” Mary Beth gushed to her husband. “So chivalrous, just like you. Bye for now,” she said, looking at Niall again. “Are you and Savannah taking the tour of the Three Gorges Dam? The buses depart right after breakfast, you know. Maybe we’ll be on the same bus—wouldn’t that be fun?”
Fun like a dose of poison ivy, he thought, but merely smile
d again and said, “Anything’s possible. Good night.”
* * *
“Remind me to tell you something,” Niall said when she opened the door at his knock. “But drink your hot chocolate first.”
“Thanks.” She took the cup from him and dutifully drank it while he powered up his laptop and checked his email, unwilling to inform him that she only drank hot chocolate when she was upset, and she wasn’t upset anymore. Okay, yes, he’d told her they didn’t have a future. And he’d told her children weren’t on his To Do list. But...
He’d admitted he loved her. How incredibly uplifting, even if nothing ever came of it. He’d also confessed he didn’t want to wear a condom with her...and he’d never not worn one before. Which meant two things, both of them glorious. First, he didn’t want there to be a barrier between them of any kind, physical or emotional. Second, if he could allow himself to have children, he wanted to have them with her.
So no, she wasn’t upset any longer. She had an uphill battle ahead of her, knocking down those walls he’d constructed around himself, getting him to confide in her the secrets he thought put him beyond forgiveness.
But she’d fought uphill battles all her life—her career was a perfect example. Her enochlophobia was another. As Niall had reminded her, she’d made great strides in overcoming it. No one who’d never experienced unreasoning fear could truly understand how debilitating it was. But she’d fought her fear down numerous times. She hadn’t conquered it, and maybe she never would. But she’d never stop trying. Just as she’d never stop trying with Niall, now that she knew she was loved.
* * *
“So you think it’s the Thompsons?” Savannah asked Niall after he’d disclosed his encounter with them. They were sitting on the small sofa in the living area, the drapes open to the night sky and the lights on the shore, but the balcony doors closed against the cold night air. She held two fingers against her lips as she tried to reconcile the shadow she’d seen cast in dark relief against the drapes with her memory of Herb Thompson.
“Not saying it is, not saying it isn’t,” he replied. “Just that circumstantial evidence doesn’t exclude them. Could Herb have been the man you saw?”
Skeptical for no reason she could name, she compromised. “Maybe. I only got a glimpse of him, so I can’t swear one way or the other.” But she didn’t really think so. Herb was roughly the right height, give or take an inch, and he was roughly the right weight, give or take a few pounds. But it just didn’t seem right. Like the equation the other day, the one with the backward sign. “Let me think about it for a bit.”
“While you’re thinking, I’ll keep checking.”
She thought of something else. “None of the fingerprints have helped?” She remembered sneaking the juice glasses out of the dining room and then back in. Sneaking them back in had been much more difficult.
He shook his head. “Not exactly. None of the prints are on file. And I wasn’t able to lift a print from the stairwell or your balcony or the railing on the top deck. So I can’t even cross-match to the fingerprints I do have.”
“That tells us something anyway, that none of the fingerprints are on file.”
“Yeah. It tells us that either none of the fingerprints we’ve obtained belong to the kidnappers, or—”
“Or they’re not known to the police or any federal agency.”
He smiled in admiration. “Exactly.”
“Do you buy that the kidnappers are neophytes?” As soon as she’d used the word she thought better of it. “That means—”
“I know what it means. And no, I don’t think they’re newbies at this. Could they be good enough or lucky enough to never have been caught before, and therefore never been fingerprinted before? Maybe. But if they’re not in one of the databases, that tells us a couple of other things, too.”
It only took her a minute to figure one of them out. “They’ve never held a job where they had to be fingerprinted, either. Like me. I had to do that for my security clearance.”
“Right. But a lot more people are being fingerprinted for their jobs these days, and not just those with security clearances. Teachers, for example. It’s a sad commentary on the world we live in. And yet, you wouldn’t want a convicted rapist or pedophile to be hired as a teacher, would you? Of course not.
“And one other thing,” he continued. “Whoever they are, they’re not legal US immigrants. All legal immigrants have to be fingerprinted.” He was silent for a moment. “With more and more people being added to the databases, we’re drawing closer to the day when everyone will have to be fingerprinted and have their DNA on file, not just those who’re arrested for a crime. Good in one way, because—”
“Because if all these fingerprints you lifted were on file, we’d know if they really are who they say they are.”
“Yeah, but on the other hand, it’s a frightening loss of freedom for those who haven’t done anything wrong.” Niall sighed heavily, and Savannah squeezed his arm in empathy.
“So what’s our next step?” she asked softly.
“Spencer Davies is under observation. I can’t go into the details, but before you ask, yes, they obtained a court order.”
She considered asking how he knew but decided against it. He’d probably lie to her again, and she didn’t want that. He already had enough on his conscience. “Yes, but what are we supposed to do?”
“Keep doing what we’re doing. Stay vigilant. Obtain a few more fingerprints. Sorry,” he told her. “We’re back to that for now. And we need to review the background reports I have, see if we can spot a discrepancy.”
“We? You mean you’re going to let me help?”
He smiled faintly. “It’s your life on the line, and you’re the smartest woman I know. Smarter even than my sister. So yeah, I’d be stupid if I didn’t recruit your assistance with the investigation.” He hesitated. “This has to stay confidential, though. You can’t talk about anything you learn.”
“Don’t be insulting. The US government has entrusted me with information maybe a thousand people in the world know. I’ve never leaked a word.”
A rueful smile touched the corners of his mouth. “I stand corrected.” Then his smile faded and he was dead serious. “That’s why you’re a target, Savannah. Why Spencer Davies thought he could get away with kidnapping you and throwing suspicion on the Chinese government. Because of what you know, not just because you’re smart enough to help him salvage his obsolete missile.”
* * *
Savannah woke the next morning with the feeling she’d forgotten something but had no idea what. That happened sometimes when she was working on one of the complex algorithms that were incorporated into the software of a missile. It had happened when she’d come up with the breakthrough design that was the basis for her latest patent application. She’d struggled for endless days trying to figure out why her idea didn’t work and had pretty much given it up as a worthless cause. Then—ta-da!—the solution had appeared in her sleep.
So she knew there was no point in trying to force herself to remember. It would come to her, she was sure.
Niall was still sleeping, so she lay there quietly, hardly daring to breathe, as the early light of dawn crept around the edges of the drapes and into the room. He’d looked so exhausted when they’d gone to bed last night, and though he’d made preliminary moves indicating he intended to make love to her again, she’d called a halt.
“The spirit is willing—” she’d murmured in a teasing fashion, reminding him they’d been burning the candle at both ends for the last few days “—but I’d kill for an uninterrupted night’s sleep.”
He’d laughed, but he’d acquiesced. And she could have sworn there was a trace of relief in his laugh. So instead they’d just snuggled together under the covers until they’d fallen asleep. Or rather, until he’d fallen asleep as
if a light switch had been turned off. She’d watched him for a few minutes, cherishing this private time with him when all his defenses were down.
Then she’d realized something momentous. Niall trusted her. Really trusted her. He would never have let himself fall asleep before her if he didn’t, would never have left himself vulnerable that way. Which was a glorious revelation where a man like Niall was concerned, and meant she was one step closer to her goal of convincing him they had a future.
She’d smiled tenderly at that thought and had eventually drifted off, still smiling.
Now she was awake before him, which meant he really had been bone-tired last night; even Niall’s iron constitution had limits. She held off getting up as long as she could, but finally the call of nature couldn’t be ignored. She tried to slip out from under the weight of his arm without waking him, but the moment she moved, his eyes shot open and he was instantly alert.
“Shh,” she whispered. “Everything’s okay, I just have to use the bathroom.”
“What time is it?”
“Early.” She didn’t know exactly without turning to look, but she could tell from the amount of light in the room that dawn was just breaking. “Go back to sleep.”
He was standing right outside the bathroom door when she opened it. One arm was propped against the doorjamb and a yawn cracked his face. He was still naked, and—she peeked—semiaroused.
“I wanted you to go back to sleep,” she protested.
When he finished yawning he slid his free arm around her waist, pulled her close for a good-morning kiss, then murmured in her ear as he nuzzled her, “When I’m awake, I’m awake.”
She shivered from the nuzzling and his hands, not to mention he smelled heavenly. Testosterone? she thought distractedly. Pheromones? Whatever it was, it was working. Before she could become too aroused, however, he tugged down the oversize T-shirt she wore that had inexplicably—okay, not inexplicably—ridden upward when his hands had made a foray north.
