Behind Closed Doors m&f-1

by Shannon McKenna

  “You can't control me. I don't give a shit anymore. I won't do it.”

  Novak held up his hand, fluttered it impatiently. “If the prospect of punishing Victor and saving your own miserable life is not sufficiently motivating, then let me tell you this. You may not be aware of the company your daughter Erin is keeping.”

  Riggs had thought it impossible to feel more afraid. What an idiot. Fear was an abyss that had no bottom, and he was falling. Down, down.

  “Remember Erin's ski trip? To Crystal Mountain, up on Mt. Rainier? With her girlfriends... Marika, and Bella, and Sasha.”

  “Yes,” he replied. His voice was reduced to a rasping thread.

  “Erin met a young man yesterday, while drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace. A dashing fellow, with a romantic foreign accent and long blond hair. Georg was the name he gave her.”

  “No,” he croaked.

  “The young lady is surprisingly resistant, to her credit, and yours, if I may say so. But Georg is confident in his powers of seduction. He will eventually make it into her bedroom. He will take her to bed. And you, my friend, will be the key to the quality of that experience for her”

  “You can't”

  “Oh, but I have. You decide, Edward. It could be just a bittersweet memory of new love found and then, inexplicably, lost... or with one short call on my cell phone, it could become something else entirely. Something that a loving father should do absolutely everything in his power to spare his innocent child.”

  Riggs closed his eyes. He saw Erin, in the wading pool. Helping him rake the leaves. Curled up in the window seat with her journal. Sweet, quiet Erin, who always tried so hard to please, to be good.

  “By all means, take your time,” Novak said softly. “Think about it. There's no rush. Georg is very aroused by Erin's maidenly reluctance. She is a beautiful girl. This is his favorite kind of assignment.”

  “Don't you dare touch my girl.” His words were flat and hollow, followed by Novak's soft chuckle. “Oh, God,” he whispered. As if God gave a damn about him, after what he had done, after what he had become.

  “One phone call.” Novak's faintly accented voice burned like corrosive acid against Riggs's nerves.

  The bloody red roadhouse light wavered in his watering eyes. “If I cooperate with you, this man won't touch Erin?”

  Novak laughed. “Oh, I can't promise you that. I'm afraid that depends upon Erin herself. Georg is very attractive, very persuasive. What I can promise is that if you cooperate, she will have nothing to complain about. Georg is a skilled professional. No matter which way you decide, he will carry out his duties with enthusiasm.”

  “Promise me he won't touch her, and I'll do it” Riggs hated himself for the hoarse, pleading tone of his voice.

  “Don't be foolish. Erin must take her chances with sex and love, like every other woman. And if you are considering calling the Cave, be aware. My men are watching Crystal Mountain very carefully. I have spared no expense in my

  planning. The slightest wrong move, an intercepted phone call, and poor Erin's fate will be sealed in a heartbeat. And I have not yet even begun to devise something special for your other daughter, little Cindy. And there is your wife to think of, too.” He sighed, shook his head. “An infinity of details.”

  “No,” he repeated stupidly.

  Novak patted his shoulder. He was too numb, too cold, to even flinch away. It was almost as if he were dead already.

  “Come now, Edward. Let's move ahead. Raine Cameron. Out with it. Tell me everything, my friend. Everything.”

  “Not your friend,” he mumbled.

  “Eh? What was that you said?”

  He took a deep breath. “I'm not your friend,” he said more clearly.

  Novak gave him an approving smile, as if he were a dull child that had just gotten a difficult math problem right. “That is absolutely correct, Edward,” he said. “You are not my friend. You are my slave.”

  Jesse was standing on the boat, wearing Seth's black leather jacket. He knew it was his jacket became it was far too big for Jesse. The shoulders drooped off Jesse's narrow shoulders, the sleeves hung down all the way to his fingertips.

  He was very pale, freckles standing out sharply against his skin, his green eyes somber. “Be careful,” he said. “The circle is getting smaller.”

  In the dream, Seth understood perfectly what that meant. “How small? “ he asked.

  Jesse held up his hand, thumb and forefinger touching in a circle. Then he was a child again, dwindled down to the size of the five-year-old he had been when he came to live with them. The jacket now hung down past his knees. “Very small,” he repeated, and the water behind him glittered as a bolt of sunlight pierced the clouds. Something was dangling from Jesse's little-boy fingers, flashing green and blue fire. Raine's grandmother's necklace.

  Seth slid into waking consciousness, fixing the details of the dream in his mind as he registered the luxurious sheets he was tangled in, the flower-petal softness of Raine cuddled in his arms. She stirred, trying not to wake him, and he feigned sleep as she dropped a kiss on his shoulder. She slid out of his arms. The door to the adjoining bath opened. The toilet flushed. The shower began to hiss.

  He had resisted sleep to the very end, but Raine had been as fierce and demanding as he was; and after hours of wild lovemaking, sleep had finally claimed him. He stretched, enjoying the remarkable comfort of the huge bed until the bathroom door opened, then the armoire. He heard a gasp, and opened his eyes.

  Raine was standing in front of the closet, wearing nothing but a towel. Her wet hair hung all the way down to her perfect ass, and he was relieved to see that the curls were back in full force. He tried to see what had alarmed her, but all he saw was plastic-wrapped clothes.

  “What's the problem?” he asked.

  She smiled over her shoulder at him, but her eyes were anxious. “Those bastards took my glasses! And my clothes are gone, too! I left my suit here, and my shoes, but now there's just... this other stuff.”

  “So? Those glasses were pretty weird anyhow, sweetheart. You've got the contacts you wore last night, right? No problem. Pick something out of the stuff that's there “ he suggested. “I'm sure it's all for you.”

  She rifled through the clothes. “Lord. I can't take these. Armani, Gianfranco Ferre, Nannini, Prada... there's a fortune in this closet”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  She scowled at him. “I don't like being shoved around, Seth! I want my cheap blue suit back. I paid for it, and it's mine.”

  The movement had caused the towel to slip, catching on the top of her nipples. His morning erection throbbed urgently, as if he hadn't spent the night having the hottest, most prolonged sex of his whole life. He threw the covers off mid lunged for her. She backed away, but there was no place to run, and he was all over her, dizzy with the fragrance of soap and shampoo and Raine. Honey and violets. Good enough to eat.

  “I'm too nervous to make love again, Seth,” she whispered.

  He stared over her shoulder into the mirror at the graceful curve of her back and cupped her round, rosy buttocks in both his hands. “Don't be nervous,” he urged. “It doesn't matter what you wear. You always look gorgeous. I like you best stark naked anyway.”

  Her arms stole around his waist, and she nuzzled his chest tentatively. “I can't go out there stark naked.”

  He tossed her down onto the rumpled bed. “Sweetheart, your outfit is the least of your worries this morning.”

  She took his words more seriously than he had meant her to, and her face clouded with real fear. “You're absolutely right,” she said. “Seth, I'm not sure if I can—about the—”

  He kissed her hard and put his mouth to her ear. “Not one word.”

  Her mouth trembled. She closed her eyes, and two crystal bright tears squeezed out between her lashes, flashing down her face. “But—”

  He covered her mouth with his hand and kissed the tears away, trying to communicate withou
t words that it was a done deal, no going back, no longer negotiable. She stared into his eyes. Her breath came in short, panting gasps, trapped beneath his weight.

  It seemed as natural as breathing to push her legs apart and start petting her. She moved against his fingers, getting slick and wet for him almost instantly, and he eased me head of his cock inside her, kissing her as she tried to speak again. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, muffling the cry she made as he forged into her. The almost scalding heat of her body shocked him. He hadn't put on a condom.

  But it was so good Amazing. Just a few strokes, careful and controlled. He wouldn't come inside her, just enjoy some unprotected bliss for a few delirious moments. She loved it, too. He could feel her soft body quiver beneath him. But the intensity of his bare flesh inside hers was driving him out of his head. His thrusts grew harder, deeper.

  She was trying to speak again. He kissed her words away, didn't want to hear them, wanted to stay in the spell. But she was shoving him, pushing his face away. “Please, don't,” she said.

  Seth stared down at her, horrified at the tears trembling in her eyes. He could have sworn she'd liked it. “What?” he demanded.

  “Don't use sex to control me.” Her voice shook with anger.

  He was dumbfounded. He studied her for a long moment. “I didn’t know I was doing that,” he said. “I just wanted you.”

  “You're good at manipulating. You use whatever weapon comes to hand. But don't use sex against me.”

  He was shivering, even though he still felt as hard and hot as a brand inside her. He withdrew from her clinging heat, flopping onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. All his past relationship fiascos paraded through his mind. The air felt cold and inhospitable on his dick, which lay, wet and disconsolate against his belly. He tried to think of something to say, some way to convince her that it was different than she thought No words came to him.

  “I'm sorry,” he said finally, just to say something. Anything.

  Raine pulled herself up onto her knees and looked down at him silently. She laid her hand on his chest. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  “For what?” His voice sounded gruff and ungracious, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  “That was a very nice apology,” she said. “I liked that there were no ifs, ands or buts attached to it. It was very simple and effective.”

  “Oh.” He squinted, bewildered. “I'm, uh, glad you liked For the first time, he'd gotten something like this right, but not by intelligence, or sensitivity, or technique. Just by pure, dumb luck.

  The thought was not a comforting one.

  “So you're, uh, not mad at me anymore?” he asked cautiously.

  Raine smothered a laugh with her hands, and shook her head. She leaned over, and placed her hands on either side of his head, gazing into his eyes with searching tenderness. Her hair hung around them like a perfumed tent and her breasts dangled like lush, ripe fruit above him. All he wanted was to seize them, stroke them. She leaned down, dropped a kiss on his lips, a light, brushing touch.

  He thought that was his cue to pull her closer, but he got it wrong again. She stiffened, pulling back with a nervous murmur.

  He let his arms drop and opened his hands. Afraid to speak, afraid to breathe. No threat, he fried to say with his body, with his eyes. No moves, no agenda, your call He couldn't bear to feel her flinch away from him again, so evidently frightened.

  She gave him a tremulous, uncertain smile, and he let out a sigh of relief, which turned into a gasp when her hand slid down and seized his cock. “Lie still,” she whispered.

  She twisted her hair into a loose spiral behind her neck and seized him in both hands, stroking and pulling with a bold caress that made him gasp and jerk up onto his elbows. A drop of moisture formed on the end of it. She bent down and licked it off.

  “God,” he muttered. “What is this, Raine? Are you trying to prove something? Trying to get back at me?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I want to give you pleasure.”

  The warm brush of her bream against his cock as she spoke was the sweetest caress he'd ever felt, until she put her mouth to him. It was so wet and soft, deliciously tender. Her eager tongue darted and swirled, under, over and all around. Oh, God, he was in for it.

  She had lost all her awkwardness. She cupped his ass with one hand, pulling him even closer to her luscious, suckling mouth, and the other cradled his balls, rolling them tenderly around in her fingers. She licked around and over the head of his cock, then up and down the whole length of him until he was slippery and wet; and then accompanied her mouth with her hand, gripping and sliding as she took him in. Her hot mouth clutched and pulled, tongue swirling lazily as if she were savoring something very good to eat, then sucking him into another long, gliding caress.

  He'd gotten plenty of blow jobs in his time, and he'd thoroughly enjoyed every one of them, but this was different. This was so tender and intimate, it was almost agonizing.

  He couldn't afford to feel so vulnerable. Not in Lazar's house. He slid his fingers into the cascading tresses on either side of her face and stopped her.

  She lifted her head. “You don't like it?”

  The irony almost made him smile. He tried to speak, but his vocal cords wouldn't connect. He took a deep breath and tried again. “It's incredible. But I'm wide open. I can't take it. We've got to get away from here. Try this wild, sexy stuff once we get to someplace safe.”

  Her eyes were soft with perfect understanding. She reached across him and seized a foil packet from the bedstand. She knelt beside him and smoothed the condom over his cock with tender, careful strokes. Still, he waited, afraid to make another wrong move. She seized his hands, lifting them up and pressing them against her breasts. “You can touch me now,” she said shyly. “I've calmed down.”

  He touched her as carefully as if she were made of fragile glass. He couldn't afford to mess up again. Raine had to make all the moves this time.

  She lay down alongside him and tugged his body on top of hers. “Let's go back to our tropical paradise, Seth “ she whispered.

  He poised himself above her so that the whole surface of his body was in light, kissing contact with hers. He let her do it all. She was the one who opened up and adjusted herself, she was the one who reached down and guided his penis into her body. He even waited until she grabbed his ass and pulled him in before he took the plunge.

  They wound their arms around each other. At first it was slow and careful and tender, men it melted like a spring flood and rushed them over an endless fall, united body and soul. He finally understood the futility of trying to batter his way towards the fusion that he craved.

  They clung to each other for a long time, until Raine began to disentangle herself. She sat up and perched on the edge of the bed. “There's a ship on the horizon “ she said.

  “Huh?”

  She looked back over her shoulder. “One morning the pirate queen and her sailor stud are making love on the beach. They look up, and there's a full-rigged ship on the horizon. Their idyll is over. You can't run away from the world forever. Sooner or later it always catches up.”

  He sat up, chilled by a sudden feeling that something precious was slipping away from him.

  She got up. “I need another shower.”

  “I'll shower with you.” He reached out for her.

  She dodged his hand. "No, you will not.”

  They got ready in absolute silence. She chose some stuff from the armoire, which of course looked great on her. Everything did.

  They were dressed and ready. There was no putting it off any longer. Seth took the kit out of his bag and fished out the transmitter. She took it, turning it over in her hands. She started to speak, but he put his finger over her lips, and shook his head.

  Raine's lips pinched into a quivering line. She slipped the tiny transmitter into her pants pocket.

  He shrugged on his jacket, suddenly thinking of his dream.

 
The circle is getting smaller. He didn't know what it meant, but he could feel it happening. Like fingers tightening around his neck.

  Chapter 20

  Raine picked at her breakfast, acutely conscious of the clothes on her body. A blue cashmere sweater by Armani. Boots by Prada. It seemed ungracious to complain when the clothes were so beautiful and fit so much better than her own, but they still made her nervous.

  Seth sat down across from her and set down his third plate from the breakfast buffet, loaded with a seafood omelet, bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon, fried potatoes, sausage and biscuits. He dug in his fork and nodded at her plate. “Eat, Raine,” he said quietly. “Hanging with this crowd really burns those calories.”

  “You're the one who makes me burn calories “ she murmured.

  Seth's gaze focused over her shoulder. She turned, and saw Victor shaking hands with the museum curator she had talked with at dinner. Sergio. She waved and smiled at him, and he waved back.

  Victor got himself a cup of coffee from the urn and came towards them, beaming. “Good morning, my dear. How lovely you look in that color. I trust you both slept well?”

  Raine blushed helplessly.

  “Well enough.” Seth forked a bite of sausage into his mouth.

  “And what is your agenda for the day, Mr. Mackey?” Victor asked.

  “Raine and I will be going back to Seattle.”

  Victor sipped his coffee, his eyes calculating above the rim of the cup. “Actually, I planned to spend some time with Raine this morning. I'm sure you'll understand. I'm coming back to the city myself this afternoon, so it will be no problem at all to bring her—”

  “That's OK,” Seth said. “I can wait. She can go back with me.”

  “I hate to think of your valuable time being wasted.”

  “No problem,” Seth said. “I've got my laptop. I can amuse myself just fine while you guys have your family bonding experience. If you want, I can design a more up-to-date surveillance system for your guest bedrooms. A lot of the stuff I dismantled last night was pretty passé”