His gaze was heavy, nearly tactile, as it followed her hand to her chest. He didn’t look away, didn’t even blink, just stood there waiting and watching.
As if his attention made her brain disconnect from her fingers, the zipper caught on fabric and jammed. Each attempt to free the teeth rubbed her wrist across her chest. The friction of her inner arm even through her clothes combined with the weight of his stare to make her wobbly. She sucked in air, but it didn’t help the feeling of lightheadedness.
She should concentrate on her real problem, the zipper, not on Stig. All she had to do was return his cuff links and cover herself with this tent’s worth of fabric, because doing anything else at all, even thinking about possibilities naturally flowing from clothing removal, was crazy self-destructive bullshit.
Looking down, she saw that the hand not tugging uselessly on her zipper had curved in the air above her breasts, as if independently preparing to cup the weight and offer it to him. Whether the jam was due to her fingers or the metal no longer mattered, because her arms squeezed closer to the sides of her breasts and the pressure was exquisite.
“Keep trying.” His voice vibrated across her skin as distinct as a touch, raising the hair on her neck and sending sensations to the points of her nipples.
The three feet of space between them shrank, or their needs filled the void, because suddenly she didn’t feel separated from him. Evading his pull was about as likely as leaving those green foil-wrapped chocolate mints untouched next to a restaurant check. While her fingers fiddled with the little metal tab, her wrist fretted across the fabric over her nipple, pressing against it in tiny up-and-down motions, a stand-in for touching him, and for letting him touch her.
He knew what she was doing. What she was feeling. She could read his knowledge in the way the skin stretched taut on his cheekbones and his breath came louder through his parted lips.
Then the zipper jumped and moved freely until she had the coverall open, the air cooling her at the same time it revealed her. Whether the final result was better or worse for her equilibrium didn’t matter, because the spell had broken.
He looked away.
She was released. In a delirium she felt inside her clothes, found her purse chain and followed it to the oblong of her purse. The bag contained the familiar shapes of a lipstick tube, a prickly brush, her wallet and her friend’s passport, reeling her back to sanity finger by finger, until she found the corners of his cuff links. Her voice failed the first attempt to tell him she had them. The cuff links gleamed in the light, too shiny to be silver. Platinum, perhaps, and the black onyx chip on one side and diamond on the other were simultaneously formal and masculine.
“Here.” Their hands didn’t touch as she dropped the links into his outstretched palm.
Achieving her goal, desperate as it had seemed for a moment, released her, and a question tickled at the edges of her thoughts. “You knew your shirt would be ruined when you gave them to me?”
“I hoped we’d end up in an ambulance. I wanted to know these were safe.”
“They’re special to you?” The seesaw of tension and release was exhausting, or maybe that was however many hours she’d been awake with only the nap at Bodeby’s.
“They survived the sinking of the Titanic.” In the candlelight she saw his eyes shift toward the turned-around painting that he hadn’t wanted her to touch.
She stopped herself before doubting him out loud. Anyone could buy an antique.
“I have small item for you too.” He reached into the pocket of his discarded pants, and the sudden memory of watching him undress minutes ago made her borrowed clothes feel constricting and scratchy. This was crazy, but before she could shift her eyes to the paintings or other inanimate objects that she ought to stare at, his hand reemerged.
The ring in his open palm looked tiny and plain compared to the cuff links. Worn as the silver band was, the sight of the single pearl took her voice away.
“Where...How did you...” She wanted to grab it, but a superstitious part of her heart warned that the ring might disappear if she moved. She swallowed back tears. “My mother’s ring.” Nothing would ever be like getting her mother back, but for a moment the mistakes she’d made in the past twenty-four hours were erased. This one thing had been fixed.
“I crossed paths with a person wearing a dress I recognized.” He reached for her hand, and then he was sliding the silver band on her finger. His fingers were strong and surprisingly warm in the cool air. Or maybe hers had gone cold with shock. “Didn’t think you’d want the rag back, but I’d noticed you like to touch this ring.”
“Thank you.” She breathed the words. Unexpected gifts were rare in her life since Big Frank had died. Her twenty-ninth birthday had been celebrated with cupcakes at her store and a quick phone call from her baby brother at boot camp.
“Girl with Pearl Ring.” His eyes locked with hers, freezing her in place. Then he lifted a hand to cup her chin and the pad of his thumb crossed her lower lip, making the problems outside this room recede even further. She couldn’t remember why she should keep her distance. “You’re radiant.”
With his unfastened white cuffs flopped back, Stig’s wrists were illuminated by the candles as dramatically as the hand of the man reaching from the wall painting over his shoulder. His wrists were bare. “Your watch?”
“Probably at a pawn shop.” He shrugged, as if it hadn’t been worth thousands of dollars. “Better it than your ring.”
He’d traded his watch for her ring, an uneven exchange that made it hard to recall her annoyance about his lies and non-explanations, and easy to see him as an attractive man. Her hurt over his ridiculous claim to be immortal faded with the return of her mother’s ring.
Even as her shoulders leaned forward toward him, her exhaustion-fuzzed mind caught up with her simpler physical responses. That doubtful voice that was hard to silence, the one deep inside that hadn’t forgotten everything he’d said to her at Bodeby’s, piped up with the reminder that he was a man who churned with plans. A man who thought so many steps ahead that he’d given her the cuff links to preserve them. A man who did nothing without a goal, and his current one was suspicious. “I’m not sleeping with you.”
There. She’d said it, as much to herself as to him.
And he laughed. “I didn’t think you would.”
She pursed her lips, almost insulted. “Liar.”
“So you keep accusing me.” He crossed his hands dramatically over his heart, the intense focus of moments before submerged under the joking façade she was becoming used to. “My only plan right now is to cross London unseen.”
“Why do I suspect the abandoned tunnel figures in this?”
“Because you think like I do.” His smile broadened to look like a fairy tale wolf. “You’re one of the fraternity.”
Not a chance. She was honest and hardworking. Stig had probably never filed taxes, unlike her, who spent what felt like six months dotting her i’s and crossing her t’s for the federal and state governments.
“An old firefighter kit.” He handed her a tan canvas bag with two buckles over the front flap. “Stow that bottle of Perlus you’re so excited about and let’s hop to it.”
They really were taking the wine, but that wasn’t what made her heart pound as he snuffed the nurturing candle flames, shut the entrance to the hidden room and led her into the close-pressing tunnel. They were heading back to being mice evading a tribe of cats. As they crossed underneath the grate, she noticed the bars of light streaming from overhead were brighter now, indicating the advancing day. A hundred worries rushed her, and she stumbled, the impact of the fake wines and the police search pressing her once again.
Then she followed Stig out of the tunnel into a larger airspace, where a flash of light blinded her.
“What the—” She threw her arm over
her eyes but retained the impression of a long platform.
“Lights activated by passive infrared motion sensors.” He was already lifting the hood of a miniature train engine that was about the size of the front of a tractor. Painted red and attached to a matching red open-sided wagon, it looked like something preschoolers rode to a pumpkin patch, minus the preschoolers. “Don’t worry. In the decade since the service closed, I’ve never encountered them being live-monitored.”
The space had the feeling of a movie set about a city hit by a plague or zombies. It had the familiar elements of a government office, from the Golden Rules of Safety sign posted on the white-paneled wall to the junky plastic rolling chair with a tilted seat, office debris around the world. Yet the thick dust contradicted the bright lights, turning the crushed coffee cup along the wall into a symbol of what had disappeared from the set. People. Small white stalactites marked the gaps between ceiling tiles, as if the world underneath the city was trying to reclaim its territory.
“Mind the gap, as they say painfully often in this town.” His fingers were black from fiddling under the hood. “The third rail’s off, shutting down the electric power for safety, but the last chaps cleverly parked a battery-powered engine at each end when they mothballed the system. We don’t have to walk.”
“I don’t think this train is going to France.” She wasn’t either, but that discussion could wait until they were out of the tunnel system.
The engine started with a muted version of a familiar sound, transporting her to the vineyards of her childhood riding beside Big Frank on a tractor pulling in boxes of grapes.
“I say, mademoiselle.” His accent was an exaggeratedly deep bass rumble to complement the engine. He turned to her with a completely proper expression, his chin dropped and jaw elongated to create a disapproving look as he touched a nonexistent cap. “All aboard.”
She laughed as she stepped into the miniature wagon. A compartment-dividing bar reached her waist, and there was nowhere to sit but the dirty floor. “Thank goodness I still have the coveralls.”
He settled next to her, several greasy fingers held up. “Since I don’t, could you lend me your sleeve?”
She shouldn’t let his English manners lull her into forgetting that he was a swindler, but the way he phrased simple requests was musical to a woman used to California’s casualness.
Their ride chugged away from the platform into the circular mouth of a tunnel. Returning to the absolute darkness was disorienting after the fluorescent lights, and she inched closer to Stig while also trying to find a comfortable position. “Where are we going?”
“Now that you ask —”
“You’ve got a plan,” she said at the same time as he said, “I have a plan.”
As they both laughed, her elbow bumped the low metal side of the car, and she pulled back sharply. “What—” Then her skull thunked into an equally hard object, which caused her to bite her tongue. “Oww.”
“Unn.” Next to her, Stig grunted and flicked on the flashlight, revealing that he had one hand pressed to his chin and lower cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said through her own fingers.
“I’m glad that was an accident.” He removed his hand and turned his cheek toward her. “D’you want to kiss it better?”
“No.” Yes. She straightened and tried to move away, but holding a stiff pose against the swaying of the little wagon was a losing battle when last night’s tackle made itself felt in her aching shoulders and left knee, which throbbed in time to the rotations of the steel wheels.
“You must be sore.” His hand squeezed the clenched triangle of muscle where her neck and shoulder met. The rhythmic pressure and release made the motor’s whine recede enough to feel more like white noise. It was much warmer in the small tunnel than it had been in the larger platform space. A lack of ventilation, she assumed.
“Close your eyes.” He spoke so close to her ear that she could feel his breath move her hair. “We’re about to reach Bird Street station and another flash.”
She saw the flicker of bright colors through her eyelids, but instead of worrying about cameras, her head bobbed forward. As they reentered another section of dark tunnel, he used both hands on her shoulders and rearranged her position. Instead of sitting side by side, she was turned at an angle so his hands could access more of her back.
Heavenly.
“Wimpole Street, next stop.” If his murmur was played for bus stop announcements, females between fifteen and ninety-five would ride transit just to listen. Especially if the ride included a massage. The rhythmic motion was lulling her into forgetting why she should move away from him and bringing up thoughts of what would happen if she turned to face him. His hands took her to the world of not-quite-sleep, the point where she could sense events happening around her, but through a veil.
“The total ride takes less than twenty-five minutes.”
“That’s—” Her mind was a blank, the sibilant final sound stretching between them as she wondered what she’d intended to say, her words all chased away by the overwhelming urge to sink deeper into his arms.
“Not enough time.” Then he turned her around and his lips replaced the questions she might have asked with one simple need: him.
She arched toward him, wanting to press herself harder against his chest, but she couldn’t untwist her legs. Their bodies touched at only a few points, each of those connections clocking overtime to send sensation to the untouched places that yearned for more. The stubble on his cheek was intoxicating. She stroked his jaw to feel the rasp of his skin, so different from hers. Her other hand traced his shoulder through the smooth shirt fabric, the contrast of textures making her melt.
Colors flashed behind her eyelids, the sensor-triggered lights exactly mirroring her desire. Her breasts grew heavy and she pushed her body closer to him at the same time she pulled his head and shoulders lower, but the yearned-for friction eluded her, blocked by clothing.
As if he sensed her need, either from her moan or her movements, he laid a hand at the exact spot where she wanted pressure.
“Yes.” Her voice was small, but he must have heard it over the churning of the train because he rubbed her nipple hard enough to be felt through the remaining layers of fabric, sending her deeper into the dark forbidden place. What they were doing was illicit and sexy, wicked and yet as necessary as breathing, all at the same time. She’d been too busy with competitions to be a defiant teenager, and then in her twenties she’d raised her half brother and started her business, but suddenly she understood the allure of making mistakes. Of jumping.
“Christina.” He trailed kisses down her neck and murmured her name in that perfect voice. Her head grew too heavy for her weakened muscles, so she let it slip to the side. Which exposed more skin for his mouth. His mouth came, hot and wet, sucking lightly at a spot on her neck that immediately connected with every frisson running across her skin. She could feel the touch of his lips in her throbbing breasts, even in her clenched thighs, but she needed more. She yearned to be unrestrained. To be free. To be greedy.
He understood and his skillful fingers went for her chest zipper. The rush as he slipped his hand inside, past the jacket to the flimsy obstacle of her T-shirt and bra, was exquisite. She moaned and threw her head back as yet another strobe of light pounded her eyelids. This flash couldn’t possibly be a station. It must be caused by the push and tug of his fingers through the thin covering. This light was him.
She was hanging from his shoulders, opened, ready, as he ran both hands on her body. One still at her breasts, the other tracing the curve of her waist to her hip, pushing aside her purse and thrusting her jacket higher so he could touch her skin, her hot skin, damp with sweat and desire but not as hot as the fingers that stroked her waist. She was about to get what her breasts, so heavy and aching, wanted. His touch.
Their ride jerked to a stop, knocking her forward and then back. She opened her eyes. Another station, bigger, brightly lit.
The end. The enclosed space had been a respite between what had happened before and what would happen next, giving them freedom to exist only in the now, but the ride had finished.
“Time to move on.” Shallow, panting breaths interrupted his usual smooth delivery. He seemed distracted and looked away from her as he stood to step out of the mail car. “That’s the price, I’m afraid.”
Somehow she’d ended up stretched across the wagon floor on one hip. Without his body for support, the position was uncomfortable and a hard object dug into her side below her ribcage. The phone she’d taken from the junkie’s backpack. It brought her back to reality. She sat up.
“Price of what?” Hot kisser or not, when they got out of this tunnel, she’d find a way to use the phone and call Elaine Johnson. Probably better to ask the older lady for help than to approach the police, given her own status. Maybe she could ride back to California on the Johnsons’ private jet. She bet immigration never looked closely at people who arrived that way.
“Our profession.” He held a hand to help her rise. His eyes looked sad, not like a man who’d been passionately kissing her.
“Yours. Not mine.” She didn’t have energy to spare dissecting their embrace, not until she’d slept for ten hours, so if he was going to pretend that kiss didn’t happen, she’d gratefully ignore it too.
“Where are we?” Away from the heat of his body, she felt cold standing on the platform with her coveralls gaping open.
“Whitechapel Eastern Delivery Office,” he said. “A short walk from Traitor’s Gate.”
She shuddered as she tucked her purse into place and pulled up her zipper. “That wasn’t supposed to reassure me, was it?”
“It was a bit of self-loathing aimed more at myself, I fear.” He brushed dirt off his dark pants. “Look lively. We have to get out of here without being spotted. No time to waste.”
The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) Page 10
