Tailspin

by Sandra Brown

  She shook her head.

  He watched as she sat down on the edge of the bed and gave her a long, meditative look. Eventually she noticed. “What?”

  “I do want to know about your life,” he said. “About you and Wes. Tell me why you make people think you shunned him, when it was the other way around.”

  She looked prepared to refuse, then she looked resigned, then she looked away from him, and, in a barely discernible voice, said, “It hurts too much.”

  He checked the cop car. It was still there. Nothing else beyond the window was noteworthy except hard rain. He walked over to the bed and sat down on the end of it. “What hurts too much?”

  “Rejection, and admitting to being rejected. So, I mislead people into thinking that I rejected him.” She hooked a strand of damp hair behind her ear. “The deceit began early. Whenever Dad was in, I pretended not to care. Indifference was an easy and safe barrier to hide behind. I fooled everyone into believing that I was ashamed of him, when, in truth…” Her voice hitched. She took a breath. “When all I ever wanted was to be with him.”

  She paused, ran her hand over the duvet. “He told you the truth about why he steals,” she said. “It was never about the booty, the gain. He rarely kept the things he took. They had no value to him.

  “What he loved was being a rapscallion. The challenge for him wasn’t to avoid capture, but to make friends with those who put him behind bars. Living as the town ‘character’ was more important to him than living with me.”

  She looked down at her hand where it rested. “I must have inherited my mother’s hands. Slender, long fingers. Dad’s hands have wide, stubby fingers.” She gave a soft laugh. “He had a time of it, wrestling my hair into ponytails, which as often as not were lopsided. He cursed tiny buttons that wouldn’t go into their buttonholes.”

  The light from the bathroom cast half of her face in shadow, but Rye could see how pensive her smile was.

  “Once, I picked a bouquet of wildflowers and needed a vase to put them in. Rather than steal one, which I expected, he painstakingly glued sequins onto a Mason jar. By the time he finished, the flowers were wilted, but I put them in the vase anyway. I still have it. It’s the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. But it’s the dearest thing I own.”

  She choked up, but recovered quickly. “Before tonight, the last time I saw him, he told me that since I was all grown up and doing well, it was time we cut ties and got on with our separate lives. We had been separated so many times before, you would think I had become immune.

  “But I no longer had the resilience or faith of a child. I couldn’t cling to a naïve hope that things would change, get better, that he would miss me enough to want me with him. Because that separation was voluntary, mandated only by him, it hurt much more than all the others combined.”

  She sat for several seconds, then left the bed and went into the bathroom. “Did you see a hair dryer in here?” A few seconds later one was switched on.

  Rye got up and checked outside again. “Damn it.” The police unit hadn’t gone anywhere. The officer could be sleeping through his shift. Or guarding that door. He had no way of knowing, and the only way he could test it was to show himself.

  The hair dryer went off. Brynn came out, her hair still only partially dry. She was briskly rubbing the ends of it with a towel. “Still there?”

  “Yeah. But there’s no sight of anyone else, which means he didn’t call for the cavalry or they would have been here by now.”

  “Do you think it’s safe for me to leave?”

  “Unless he’s manning a post.”

  She bowed her head and rubbed her forehead. “I can’t fail at this. I can’t.”

  “Hey.” Rye went to her, took the towel from her hand, and dropped it to the floor. “You’re not going to fail. We’ll figure a way. You’ll get to Violet with time to spare.”

  She raised her head and looked at him with damp, imploring eyes. “Do you promise?”

  “I have every faith in you.” Then he continued forward, his footsteps unchecked. She had no choice but to back up until she was against the wall. He placed both hands above her head and on either side of it.

  “What’s this about?” she asked.

  “Sharing body heat.” He bumped her middle with his.

  She dropped her head forward and left it to rest against the center of his chest. “Look, Rye, exhaustion made me nostalgic. I told you a boohoo story, but it wasn’t designed to make you feel sorry for me.”

  “Then feel sorry for me.”

  She raised her head. “What for?”

  He lifted a strand of hair lying against her chest and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers. “Because I’ve been wanting you for almost twenty-four hours, and I’m tired of it.”

  She swallowed, said huskily, “You’ve passed on several opportunities.”

  “Best I recall, the last time I made a move, you pushed me away and enforced a kissing restriction.”

  “It was intended to be a goodbye, so why should you care?”

  “I wanted that kiss.”

  “You’d said you didn’t have designs like that on me.”

  “Well…” He moved in closer, the bump graduating to a meshing. Her placed his hands at her waist and began gathering up her sweater. He took it slowly, giving her time to object, slap his hands away, stop him in any fashion. She didn’t.

  He leaned in to whisk his lips across hers as he continued to raise her sweater until it cleared her chest. Her arms went up. He pulled it over her head and let it fall where it would.

  She lowered her arms, but otherwise didn’t move. He took advantage of her passiveness to drink in the sight. The slender column of her neck, the shallow triangle at its base, a bosom made for pillowing. Her bra was the color the sky turns right before the first star comes out.

  He placed the fingertips of both hands on her collarbones, traced their width to the bra’s shoulder straps. “I believe that’s what I said. What I can’t believe…” He lowered the satin strap, dragging it down her arm with painstaking slowness until the cup of her bra caught on her nipple. “…is that you took me serious.”

  He moved his hand to the under curve of her breast and pushed it up, then lowered his head and placed his mouth on the swell above the twilight-colored fabric. He kissed it openmouthed and with leisurely sweeps of his tongue, before gently sucking the skin.

  She made a purring sound as her body went lax. Her head was back, her eyes closed. She was biting her lower lip. He whispered, “Is that permission to continue?”

  She opened her eyes and, clasping his head firmly between her hands, brought it to hers. Their mouths came at each other hungrily. This was no coy kiss. Her tongue was giving and receiving, and the way she drew his in was as erotic as hell.

  The caveman in him was awakened with a vengeance. He wanted to claim her mouth, possess it, and to inflict pain on every other man who’d had so much as a sampling of it. He wanted to kill the wild Hendrix boy.

  He reached around and unhooked her bra. It dropped between them, then fell away. When next he put his mouth to her breasts, he covered a nipple. It was hard, ripe with arousal. She arched up, offering him more. He teased, he tugged. Pleasuring her became his sole purpose in life.

  Until her hands moved to his fly and started working open the metal buttons. She was deft. In a matter of seconds, she had him in hand, almost stopping his heart, but not curbing the male instinct to thrust.

  Which he did. Into her firm grasp. The pressure she applied was perfect. The skin-to-skin friction was so incredible that, by the time she’d worked her way up to the tip, it was drum-tight and damn near bursting. Her thumb made a pass across the slit, pressed.

  “Jesus, Brynn,” he gasped. “Stop. Stop.” He moved her hand off him.

  “You’re pushing me away again?”

  He tried to laugh at the absurdity of that question, but he was breathing too hard. “Hell no. Fuck no. Take off…” He couldn’t even finish bu
t gestured at her remaining clothes.

  Holding his gaze, she sat down on the bed and pulled off her boots and socks, then stood up and removed her jeans. She pulled back the bedcovers and lay down, thighs demurely together.

  Between them was a pastel patch of lace that was expanding Rye’s veins with raw lust. He loved the thing. He wanted it gone.

  He managed to undress and wrangle a condom out of his wallet, then crawled onto the bed, parted her thighs, and settled between them. Holding her hips between his hands, he planted a solid kiss on that tantalizing terrain between navel and sex. It deserved more attention. Adoration. It warranted a shrine.

  But some other time.

  He dipped his head lower and brushed the triangle of lace with his lips, back and forth several times. Then, with Brynn working at the panties as urgently as he, they were finally cast off. Again, he forgot how to breathe. She was beautiful.

  His fingertips grazed the delta of soft hair, then he slid his hand between her thighs. His fingers dipped into warm honey, into her, then went deep and stroked. Her hips came off the bed. She fitted her mound into his palm and ground it against the heel of his hand with a feverishness that matched his.

  He withdrew his hand and stretched out on top of her. He kissed her neck, ravenously, but a bit awkwardly, as he fumbled with the wrapper and got the condom on.

  Then—God, finally—he pushed into her in one long, uninterrupted glide, until he was completely, solidly embedded. Seized again by a primal possessiveness, he clamped the slender cord of her neck between his teeth and held it for several heartbeats, then raised his head and looked down into her face.

  Her cheeks were flushed. Catching the dim light, her eyes shone silver as they looked into his. Breath rushed past her lips, made swollen and red and damp from kisses.

  “Pride be damned,” she whispered. “I wanted this. I wanted this.”

  Sliding her hands down to his butt, she secured him inside her even deeper and began a sinuous belly dance under him. The rhythmic curl and tilt of her hips started a throb in his cock that would have been painful if it hadn’t felt so damn good.

  With his nose, he pushed her hair aside and placed his lips against her ear so that she would hear every panted word, each curse, praise and blessing, every syllable of the sex-talk chant that urged her toward her orgasm, and his inarticulate, mating growl when he allowed himself to come.

  The only thing he wished he could take back, the one thing he wished he hadn’t said where she could hear it, where he could hear it, spoken on a serrated sigh as he sank onto her in sweet repletion: Brynn.

  Chapter 27

  12:37 a.m.

  Nate had gone home.

  He had the uneasy impression that the Hunts couldn’t have cared less.

  Earlier this week, Richard and Delores had pleaded tearfully with him to stick his neck out and smuggle out the dose of GX-42. “Name your price. Anything,” Richard had told him. “Get me the stuff that will beat this thing.”

  Delores had been almost too emotional to speak, but her brimming eyes had implored him. She’d managed to croak, “You’re our only hope, Nate.”

  So much for her worship. Tonight they’d looked at him with cool disdain and distrust, as though it had been he who had double-crossed them, not Brynn.

  Brynn. Trusted colleague and conspirator, she had yielded to the final choice of the recipient with disappointment, but also with an unbending devotion to this chancy move they were making as a team. It was now obvious to Nate that she had wanted the inevitable fame of a medical pioneer.

  Jonas Salk. Christiaan Barnard. Nathan Lambert.

  He had envisioned GX-42 ultimately being named for him. Never in his fantasies had it been Brynn who achieved such heights.

  Arriving at his high-rise residence building in Buckhead, he had relinquished his Jaguar to the parking garage valet and taken the soundless elevator up to the twenty-second floor. The view of the skyline from his living room was dazzling, but tonight it had been obscured by rain, and, in any case, Nate hadn’t been in the mood to admire it.

  He’d poured himself a neat whiskey. Usually, he limited himself to two drinks in an evening, and he’d had those in the Hunts’ sitting room. He’d had the third in the hope that it would either induce sleep or, even better, relieve some pressure so that his mind could free-float.

  In that semi-stuporous state sought by mad artists and drunken writers, perhaps he would be creatively inspired. His subconscious might devise a genius plan that would restore him to the Hunts’ good graces and salvage this debacle before time ran out.

  He’d finished the whiskey, gone through his routine bedtime preparation, turned off the lights, and had gotten into bed. But sleep had eluded him for more than an hour, and the alcohol hadn’t evoked any brilliant ideas.

  He’d finally slipped into a light doze when the building intercom buzzed. Initially he’d wondered if the buzzer had been part of a dream. When it went off again, he questioned why the building concierge would be calling him at this hour. If there had been a medical emergency with one of his patients, he would have been contacted on his cell phone. He decided to ignore the summons.

  But it was persistent. He threw off his cashmere blanket and walked across the silk-and-wool-blend carpet to the box on the wall. He pressed the blinking lighted button and put annoyance behind his voice. “Yes?”

  “I hate to disturb you, Dr. Lambert, but there’s a man at the main entrance, demanding to see you. He says that he’s been sent by a Mr. Hunt, that the matter is urgent, and that you’ll know what it’s regarding. Should I let him in?”

  “Did he give you his name?”

  “Goliad.”

  Nate’s heart thumped. They’d found Brynn! And the GX-42. And Goliad had been dispatched to swiftly escort him back to the mansion.

  “Send him up.”

  He slid his bare feet into his house shoes and pulled on his robe. He was hastily belting it when his doorbell chimed. He moved quickly through the apartment and eagerly pulled open the front door.

  Then he recoiled. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hey, doc.”

  Timmy planted his hand in the center of Nate’s chest and pushed him backward as he sauntered into the apartment.

  12:39 a.m.

  In Timmy’s world, reprisal wasn’t merely expected, it was compulsory.

  When someone was affronted, whether intentionally or not, the offender had better beware. The concept of forgiveness was unheard of. An insult was never forgotten. Grievances were long-lived and, if a person died before getting satisfaction for one, the grudge was passed down to his successors, heirs of hatred.

  After tonight, Timmy bore Goliad just such a grudge.

  The greaser hadn’t lifted a hand to stop Mallett from almost unmanning him, and then later had stood silently by while Richard Hunt read him the riot act like he was a nobody. As he was driving Timmy home, Goliad had used a hard-ass, boss tone to tell him that if he wanted to continue working for the Hunts, he had better grow up, lose the chip on his shoulder, and get his shit together.

  That was precisely what Timmy had done. Although, when Goliad issued that order, this wasn’t what he’d had in mind.

  When Dr. Lambert answered the door and saw Timmy, he looked like he might pee his pajama bottoms. Over the PJs he was wearing a robe made of some slick and shiny material.

  Timmy fingered the lapel. “In this movie I saw a coupla years ago, a guy was wearing a robe just like this. Big black dude. Drug kingpin. He blew somebody’s head off with a forty-five, point blank.” He put the tip of his index finger against the bridge of the doctor’s nose, jabbed it, and said, “Pow! He probably had to throw the robe away. Brains are hard to wash out.”

  The doctor blinked rapidly and nervously licked his lips. “Where’s Goliad?”

  “Last I heard, he was gonna crash on the Hunts’ sofa.” He strolled over to the bar, picked up the twenty-five-year-old special reserve scotch, uncapped it,
sniffed it, then drank directly from the bottle.

  “H…how’d you know where I live?”

  “Goliad pointed the building out to me. I’m in training, you know. I need to know these things.”

  “Did you come alone?”

  “Just me.” Timmy spread his arms wide, the movement sloshing whiskey out of the bottle. “Oops.” He looked at the splashes on the floor. “Reminds me. Down in the main lobby? How do they get the floor to glow like that?”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “It’s, uh, constructed of a translucent material and illuminated from underneath.”

  “Illuminated. Huh. Well, it’s cool-looking.”

  “I don’t think Goliad would appreciate your using his name to bluff your way into a private residence.”

  “No, he probably wouldn’t.” He cocked his head to one side and closed one eye. “I just figured it out.”

  “What?”

  “What your head reminds me of. I’ve been trying to think of it, and it just now came to me. A suppository.” He chortled. “I guess that’s how you can keep it so far up your own ass.”

  Lambert pulled the belt on his robe tighter. “Why didn’t Goliad come with you?”

  “Because I didn’t invite him.” Casually and with confidence, he turned his back on the doctor. The douche wasn’t going to do anything, but even if he stupidly attempted it, Timmy could see their reflections in the walls of glass that enwrapped the living room.

  “This is some place. On a clear night, you must have a real nice view. Being up this high, I mean.” He leaned forward slightly and looked at the street below. “Long way down. Long, long way.”

  “What do you want, Timmy? Has there been an update on Dr. O’Neal’s whereabouts?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. She’s got great tits, doesn’t she?”

  “I haven’t noticed.”

  Timmy barked a laugh at that and turned away from the window. “Why am I not surprised?”