by Brenda Joyce
She could feel his lust, dark and thick. She reminded herself to be careful; she didn’t want to have to kill him. But she was not sleeping with him, no matter how far this game went. “I promise it won’t happen again…not with Maclean.”
His gaze gleamed. “I’m not sure I would mind, Samantha.”
Sam stared, wondering if he meant what she thought he did.
“You arouse so much passion in so many ways. But that is your nature, is it not? To take lovers, to enjoy them, to discard them as callously as a man?”
He was letting her know that he’d investigated her. How much did he know? To test him, she murmured, “You make me sound like a femme fatale, Rupert. A girl just wants to have some fun.”
He smiled. “But you are the definition of femme fatale—and you know it.”
She decided to give up. “Yeah, I know it. And it is fun…”
“Then let the fun begin. You’ll have a private viewing…but I need a private show, too.”
Sam kept silent. Now they were getting somewhere.
He touched her cheek. “I didn’t mind watching you put your tongue down Maclean’s throat, but I look forward to watching you put it elsewhere.”
Sam decided to divert him. “And if I say yes? What do I get out of the show?”
He laughed. “Other than the viewing? Fun.”
She refused to let her smile slip. He knew she wanted into that vault and he meant to make her pay to get in—with her body. “So invite us over, Rupert.”
“You’ll bring Maclean and provide the entertainment?”
“Why not? Maybe I’ll wind up with a case of the Rothschild if I make you really happy.”
“If you make me really happy, I’ll give you a painting.”
He knew she wouldn’t sell out for a price. She had no doubts now. This was bait and trap—and she was the prey.
“You seem taken aback. You made yourself clear at Becca’s party. I realized instantly that you’re an art aficionado, like I am. Surely you prefer a painting to jewels? Although most women love the trinkets I buy them.”
There was no point in trying to get him to think she wanted a Bulgari necklace in return for his using her. “I actually meant it when I said some girls just want to have fun. Hot sex works for me.”
He seemed amused. He touched the underside of her chin with his forefinger, then began sliding it slowly down her neck. Sam tensed, but she did not move. “And does it work for Maclean? I don’t think he will be as amenable to our arrangement as you are. How is your boyfriend, by the way?”
Her tension spiraled. “Boyfriends are for teenagers. The word isn’t even in my vocabulary.”
“What a clever woman,” he said, drawing an invisible line down her chest with his finger. He paused when his finger was between her breasts. “Clever, sexy and so secretive. I have something for you.”
She knew he wasn’t talking about sex, just as she knew that Maclean was right—Hemmer was dangerous. What she didn’t know was how dangerous. “Don’t you all?” She was wry.
“You’re not afraid of me.”
“Should I be?”
“You’re one of the most unusually beautiful women I have ever seen—and I have had my share.”
“I’m all for flattery. It turns a girl on.”
“You’re hardly a girl, Samantha. You lead a dangerous life. There are cameras in front of my building.” He smiled. “There are cameras everywhere. But you know that, don’t you?”
She couldn’t help glancing up at her ceiling. It was pristine, but she got his meaning. He’d seen her break up the other night’s Rampage and destroy the subs single-handedly. She was briefly surprised and then chilled.
He hadn’t made billions by being stupid. Rupert Hemmer undoubtedly knew everything there was to know about her.
She was going to have to play this game out. “Yeah, Big Brother is usually watching.”
His eyes gleamed. “I am going to help you, my dangerous Samantha. I’ve seen how much you need pleasure. And I can give you pleasure, more than you have dreamed of. More than Ian Maclean.”
“That’s a helluva statement.” What did he mean now?
“Tomorrow you’ll find out exactly what I mean,” he said.
She wanted to step away from him. The instinct was one of self-preservation. He kept his hand between her breasts and, somehow, she did not move. “Then I’m a lucky lady.”
He was amused again and she didn’t like it. Then he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, producing a DVD. “I think I’m about to change your life. I truly look forward to our relationship,” he said, handing it to her. “I expect it will be mutually agreeable…very much so.”
Sam couldn’t imagine what was on the DVD, but she knew she wasn’t going to like it. “I look forward to it, too,” she said.
He started for the door. “I’ll see you both tomorrow at seven.”
He was leaving. Apparently, he’d gotten what he’d wanted. But what, exactly, was that?
He’d stressed that he wanted them both.
“Enjoy the wine,” he said at the door.
Sam stared as he left. Then she ran to her desktop and pushed the DVD into the drive.
Hemmer was dangerous; Maclean was right. He definitely knew too much about her. But this was also about Maclean. This was some kind of trap. He had to know that Maclean had stolen the page. He would want the page back, and he probably wanted to kill Maclean, too.
The orgasmic cries of a woman broke into her thoughts.
As she turned to the computer screen, her first thought was that Hemmer had sent her porn, but that was too silly.
And then she saw herself.
Sam sat up like a rocket. She was in the throes of rapture, holding on to a man as if for her life, completely lost in the cyclone of her climax.
And his back was a mosaic of scars.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NICK FORRESTER WAS PISSED.
It had been a really, really bad day.
He stared at his computer screen intently. The entry hall of Maclean’s fancy Park Avenue town house was vacant. He scrolled through the rooms, which were all as dead as doorknobs, until he found the butler in the kitchen. Now that was an interesting fellow. Maclean was out. Nick knew that because of his video feeds and stakeouts.
He had a huge home, with state-of-the-art everything. The stolen page could be there. However, Nick’s gut told him he’d stashed it elsewhere.
He smiled coldly to himself. Maclean was now in deep shit. He had the page; Nick wanted it. That put him on Nick’s radar 24/7.
And Nick always got his man.
Well, almost always.
“Nick, are you working?”
He was already speed dialing one of the two agents assigned to Maclean. Maclean would have his people on him like flies to flypaper. But he’d forgotten he had company, and he was briefly startled.
Nick turned, not even trying to recall her name. He was renowned for one-night stands, but the rumors were all wrong. He liked three-, four- and five-night stands—it was so much more convenient, so much less work. He could manage to stay interested for about a week. His problem was that he could not afford any mental or emotional involvements, because mental and emotional involvement was deadly. He’d learned that long ago.
Beauty without brains, that was his motto. But a great rack could only hold his attention for so long. And the moment he lost interest, it was over.
Nick faced the woman he’d picked up a night or so ago at some local club, and he forgot about being annoyed. She was built like a playmate, and clad only in a sparkly G-string, superhigh heels and a very tight, tiny T-shirt, obviously with no bra beneath. He felt his motor ignite. He’d only spent a single night with her, so on a scale of one to ten, his interest was about seven or eight. As soon as he finished working, he could probably move up to a nine or ten.
“Just for a moment, baby,” he said. Work always came first. Not that he didn’t love sex. Sex empow
ered him. His senses were always sharper afterward, and he was always stronger, faster, more telepathic. He had decided long ago that it was some kind of quirky gift from the old gods.
She sauntered over. “What did you say you do?”
“I run a hedge fund.” He cupped her silky ass and picked up his cell. When his agent answered, he barked, “Where the fuck is Maclean?”
“He just left Rose’s. We’re in traffic downtown.”
“Do not lose him,” Nick warned. He ended the call abruptly. He hated the idea, but with Maclean acting all social, he’d have to wire Sam’s loft, and maybe put in a camera or two.
The woman was wide-eyed. “Are you sure you’re not a cop or something?” she asked.
He sent her a smile. “Hey, I’m positive. Money’s my gig, babe.” Never mind that his apartment was a piece of crap. “I’ll be right in. Can you warm up the sheets for me?”
She wrapped her arms around him, fluttering her fingers across his distended groin, oblivious to the contradiction. “Hurry,” she murmured. “And while I’m waiting, I’ll warm up more than the sheets.”
Before she’d even released him, a thought had occurred to him, and he was searching through HCU’s immense database. His gut told him he’d seen something recently that could be helpful in locating the missing page. He gave Big Mama some clues: Rupert Hemmer, Ian Maclean, Aidan of Awe, the Duisean and Manhattan. Then, for good measure, he added the Highlands, the Masters of Time. Sometimes the supercomputer could find the missing piece of a really complicated puzzle. Just then, he felt like he was casting in the dark, but so what?
Nick had wired Maclean’s Park Avenue town house within an hour of learning that he was on Rupert Hemmer’s guest list, which had been early yesterday morning. Running HCU meant that nothing and no one slipped his attention. His life was the war on evil, his agents—whom he considered his kids—and HCU, in that order. He made a point of poring over the vast streams of data Big Mama continually sent him, to consider all her flags, which were in the hundreds on a daily basis, all in the context of his agents’ field assignments and reports, as well as those of the rest of CDA, the Bureau, the NYPD and the CIA—when those agencies were in a cooperative mood. Basically, that meant that he almost never slept. But sleep was a waste of time anyway.
Nick knew he was notorious within the agency. His agents feared and respected him, which was a good thing. He was both god and king at HCU, and his word was the law. Agents who understood that would retire one day with a damn good pension plan.
If they made it to retirement age.
And he instantly felt a headache coming on.
He rubbed his temples. He couldn’t afford a headache now—or worse, one of those damned flashbacks. They’d started up six months ago, when Macleod had appeared in the city. Out of the blue, as clear as if it were decades ago. No good could come from remembering the past. He’d buried everything—everyone—a long, long time ago.
But some memories served him well. Some memories burned in his gut and gave him the kind of fuel no mortal should ever have. In the several decades he’d been at HCU, running it, fifty-three agents had been murdered in the line of duty. Over a hundred had been seriously injured. Twelve had been lost in time.
And he did not want to think of the collateral damage—the families who’d suffered directly or indirectly, because of the war.
He considered every fatality, every injury, and every one of the twelve his personal fault. Which was why he attended every funeral, gave every eulogy, visited each hospital room, and always went after those classified as MIT.
He hated funerals and hospitals. He dreaded them. But nothing was as bad as an agent missing in time. It was the not knowing…
He started seeing their faces, male and female, eyes accusatory, and he had to work hard to breathe properly. The last agent who’d gone missing had been Brie Rose, but he’d found her. Even though her file had MIT stamped on it, he knew she was alive and well and living with Aidan of Awe.
He hadn’t had to think very long or hard about putting Sam Rose on Aidan’s son, Maclean. Maclean might be the son of a powerful Master, but he wasn’t one of them. His file was two inches thick. It was all flags—suspicious and ambivalent behavior. He played for himself. He hadn’t gone over to Rupert Hemmer’s for tea.
Nick tried to respect people’s privacy. It was no easy task when he could read minds easily and fluently, no matter the time or the language. But work was a different story. At HCU, he read whatever he felt like, when he felt like it, because winning the war came first. No one at HCU had any rights to privacy, just like no one there had any right to a personal life.
Because they were losing the war, big time.
But Nick didn’t want to think about the stats. He didn’t want to think about the fact that evil was a race, and this was truly a war. Evil had infiltrated every terrorist organization on the globe. Those terrorists who weren’t demonic were either mixed blood or the possessed.
But it was worse than that and Nick knew it. Evil had infiltrated governments. Some of the world’s most ruthless dictators were demons or subs. Iran really would use the nuke once it had it. Evil meant to destroy the world, step-by-step. There were demons in intelligence agencies, in defense departments, in local police forces—in the lowest levels and the highest. Nick happened to know that there was an internal investigation going on right now in the Pentagon, because CDA had determined that one of the head honchos at State was demonic. The problem was, just which official was he—or she? It had become clear that the official was so high up, he or she had the ear of the President.
The day was coming, Nick thought, when the President of the United States would be one of them. It was a terrifying thought.
The war was so huge that it almost seemed silly to be playing these little games, day after day, killing one demon here, another there, taking out this gang of subs or that one. But evil had to be contained on each and every local front, as well as on the world stage. And right now, Nick knew the power the page from the Duisean contained. It could not fall into the wrong hands.
Which was why Maclean was going to lose.
Sam Rose was one of his best agents ever. He hadn’t trained her—hell, he hadn’t even had her for very long. But it was her destiny to slay. He knew that. The moment he’d met her, he’d had to have her. And there were no regrets.
But he was sorry he’d put her on Maclean now.
He knew she found Maclean attractive, thanks to his telepathy. But he also knew Maclean infuriated her—and he knew why. He was fully aware of her little jaunt to Scotland a few months ago. She’d wanted Maclean to send her back in time to her sister; he’d refused. That was okay. It had pissed her off.
She wasn’t just the best agent he’d ever had, she was also the kind of woman to lead a man around by his dick. He’d put her on Maclean because he was one hundred and ten percent certain that she could manage Maclean and defeat him. But now, he was having second thoughts. Maclean was playing her. He seemed to be in control. And he did not want one of his kids winding up dead.
It was a miserable and rotten day because his best agent had screwed up and Maclean had stolen the damned page right out from under their noses. He’d waltzed into Hemmer’s that morning, dismantled not just the alarms and locks but all of their surveillance equipment, apparently with the blink of an eye, and then Sam had lost him in the ridiculous car chase—which happened to be the first time she’d ever shown shitty judgment in the field. Now, they didn’t know where the fuck the page was.
His agents had already checked out every possible art dealer and gallery from Montauk to Allentown. So it was time to widen the loop. The page had to be carefully maintained. It couldn’t be just anywhere—or could it?
And that was one of the problems. The experts at Sotheby’s claimed it had to be in a carefully controlled environment. Nick wasn’t so sure. After all, the page had survived over centuries—or it might have survived traveling through time
at the speed of light. He just didn’t know.
And if it could survive the leap, then Maclean could have it stashed anywhere, in any time.
Nick decided it was time for him and Ian to have a little not-so-friendly chat.
His computer chimed three times.
Nick leaned forward. The alert indicated he’d received an e-mail from Big Mama. He couldn’t believe it, but she’d responded to his inquiry. The e-mail read: Coincidental between Aidan of Awe and Rupert Hemmer. A document was attached.
Nick couldn’t imagine what kind of involvement there could be between the Master and the modern billionaire. He opened the attachment.
It was a news article with a photograph, dated twenty-eight years ago. Rupert Hemmer was on a podium, shaking hands with someone who seemed damned familiar somehow. Nick was certain he knew him—even if they’d never met. Both men were identified in the caption below. The stranger was the international mogul, Robert Moran, who resided in New York.
Warning bells rang. He punched in a search for Moran on HCU’s database. The response was instantaneous.
Robert Moran was none other than the demon who had terrorized the world for centuries, the demon once believed to be immortal, the terrifying and legendary Moray.
SHE WAS IN BED with Ian Maclean.
Sam was so shocked that she did not move. This was impossible.
He caught her waist, held her still, and moved his mouth lower and lower, taking his time. Sam moaned, long and low, writhing sensually. He slid his knee between her thighs, pushed up hard, and paused, looking at her. And he smiled…
You bastard, she said, but she was smiling, too.
Sam hit the Pause button.
What the hell was this?
She breathed hard, gripping the edge of the desk, trembling. She was in bed with Maclean. She exhaled. No. It was a fake. It had to be. She’d never been in bed with Maclean—she’d never been in that bedroom.
But she couldn’t breathe properly. Her mouth was dry. She couldn’t stop seeing him there at the foot of the bed, pausing between her legs, so hard and aroused. She hadn’t missed that steel ring, either.
