Into the Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I don’t know what to do now, because making love to you tonight was so incredible, I’m not sure I can go back to that friend place without going completely insane. I want you endlessly, Joan.”

  She looked up at him. God, that was such a romantic thing to say.

  And he looked the part of the romantic hero, with the soft light from the hotel parking lot casting shadows on his beautiful face.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted. “I can’t seem to keep my hands off of you, and I love spending time with you, I really do…”

  “Then spend time with me,” he said. “Spend lots of time with me. Starting right now. Let’s go back to your room.”

  “And have sex? Again?”

  “No,” he said, absolutely. “I want us to make love.”

  Okay, that was another really romantic thing to say. He was wearing her down, and he knew it.

  He touched her lightly, pushing her hair back from her face with just one finger. “Invite me to your room.”

  Madness. It was total madness. The idea of any kind of relationship with this man scared her to death. There were so many reasons why she should get out of this truck and run like hell.

  “There’s not enough time to get any real sleep before we both need to be up and in the shower,” he persisted. “Think of what we could do with this next hour.”

  Oh, she was thinking about that, all right.

  Cheerful Muldoon was always hard to resist, but this decisive, determined Muldoon was impossible to turn down. He just sat there, watching her, waiting for her to speak.

  Joan cleared her throat. “Please,” she said. “Will you come up to my room?”

  He kissed her. Oh, baby, the man could kiss.

  “I’ll come up on one condition,” he said, as if she were the one talking him into going upstairs. “It’s a little kinky—you might not want to do this.”

  Was he serious? God, he was.

  “You have to promise to do whatever I want,” he said. “We make love exactly the way I want to. You know, from my script.”

  His script… He’d told her that, in his experience, most women’s sexual fantasies followed a script.

  “You have a script?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. She could tell from his slow smile that he knew she was completely intrigued. “It’s kind of new. It’s something I’ve kind of figured out over the past few days. And since you’re the star in it, I thought…I might as well ask.”

  She was the star of his fantasy script. “Wow. Is it just you and me or there any special guest stars?”

  He laughed. “No barnyard animals, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Do I, like, have lines?”

  “A few,” he said. “But they’re pretty easy. You mostly say yes. You can improvise and embellish it if you want.”

  “This is a little weird,” Joan admitted.

  “If you get the least bit uncomfortable, we can stop. At any time, okay?” He was smiling at her as if he knew she wasn’t going to say no.

  Maybe she was a little bit kinky. She was the star of his fantasy script. “What’s the first thing you’re going to ask me to do?”

  “Take off your clothes.”

  Muldoon watched as Joan followed his first order. T-shirt, sneakers, bra, and jeans. She actually folded her jeans before turning back to him, standing up straight, chin held high as she let him look at her.

  “What next?” she asked. It was pretty warm in her hotel room, which meant…she was getting into this.

  Good.

  “Kiss me,” he said.

  She started toward him, but then stopped. “Where?” She was trying not to smile, but the edges of her lips kept twitching.

  “You can start with my mouth,” he told her.

  She kissed him sweetly at first, then deeper, longer, as he pulled her into his arms and ran his hands over and across all that soft, bare skin.

  “Help me get out of my clothes,” he said.

  In truth, she was more of a hindrance than a help—she couldn’t quite get his belt to unbuckle. But it was fun to let her try.

  And finally he was naked, too.

  She was sitting on the floor, having just pulled off his sneakers and socks, and she smiled up at him, waiting for his next command.

  Yeah, she was definitely getting into this.

  “I think we better have a condom on hand,” he told her. “Can you get one?”

  “Just one?” she asked, on her way into the bathroom.

  He laughed. “We’ve got only an hour.”

  “Forty-eight minutes now,” she called back to him.

  Yikes. He had to speed this up.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  She did, which was incredible to watch.

  “On the bed,” he said.

  She climbed onto the bed, and knelt there, looking at him questioningly. God, she was sexy.

  “Time for you to say one of your lines,” he said. “Okay?”

  “Yes,” she said. She held out her arms to him. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Muldoon admitted. “I lied a little bit about the lines. There’s more to them than just yes. I want you to ask me, well…” He laughed. “To go down on you. You can say it however you want.”

  “But aren’t I supposed to…”

  “My script doesn’t say, ‘And then she argued,’” he countered.

  She laughed as she shrugged. “Okay. I mean, if that’s really what you want. I think I’m getting the better end of the deal, but it’s your fantasy.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

  She lay back on the bed, blushing slightly. “I don’t know exactly what you want me to say…How about…Kiss me, baby, where the sun don’t shine. I need you to kiss me. I’m dying for you to kiss me.” She extended one foot toward him, let her other leg fall open. Oh, yeah. “Starting with my instep and then my ankle and so on and so on and just keep heading north until I tell you to stop.”

  “Perfect,” he said, doing just that.

  “Stop,” she said. “I mean, don’t stop…”

  Oh, yeah.

  She was soft, she was sweet, and he was setting her on fire.

  “Please,” she moaned. “Oh, please!”

  It was close enough to what he’d wanted her to say next, without any prompting at all. He covered himself with the condom, and buried himself deeply inside of her.

  Joan made a sound that was identical to the way he was feeling. Somehow she opened her eyes and looked up at him, obviously struggling to keep this about him and what he wanted. “Do you want me to get on top?”

  “No.” He wanted to be in control. He wanted to be face-to-face with her, to look into her eyes. He moved slowly, setting a rhythm that made her eyelids close halfway.

  “Mmmm,” she said.

  “You have another line,” he said.

  Her eyes opened a little wider. “Now?”

  “Yeah. You say, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s make this long-distance thing work.’”

  She closed her eyes. “Oh, God, Mike…”

  “Come on. It’s my fantasy. My script. You promised you’d make it good for me.”

  “Okay,” she said. “All right. I’ll try. I’m willing to try to make this work.”

  “That’s not the line. It’s ‘Let’s do it,’” he repeated. “‘Let’s make this long-distance thing work.’ If you want something done, you do it,” he reminded her. “You don’t try.”

  “Let’s do it,” she gasped. “This is not fair. This is coercion…Let’s make this long-distance thing work!”

  He kissed her. “Thank you.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “There’re no more lines except for the part where I scream yes, right?”

  “Actually, there are a few more, but we can do it pretty quickly. You say, ‘I understand that our age difference is inconsequential, that it doesn’t matter to you, and it doesn’t matter to me, either. Seven years is nothing in the grand scheme of things.�
�”

  “Mike…”

  “You promised.”

  Joan groaned and closed her eyes. “Seven years is nothing in the grand scheme of things and if you don’t fuck me harder, I’m going to die.”

  “Close enough.” He did as she asked. “Better?”

  “Uhhhh,” she said. “Oh, God!”

  “My turn for a line.” It was getting harder for him to think, let alone talk. “I say, ‘If you’re worried about what people will think when they see us together, don’t be.’ You say, ‘Why not?’”

  “Why…not…?”

  “Because people will think, ‘Wow, he really loves her.’ And they’ll be right.”

  She opened her eyes and looked right up at him, shock on her face. “Did you just say…?”

  “I love you,” he said. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  He reached between them, knowing exactly where to touch her to push her over the edge.

  “Oh, Michael,” Joan gasped as she exploded.

  He had to grit his teeth and think about differential equations to keep from joining her.

  And when she finally lay beneath him, limp and exhausted, he was still hard inside of her.

  Her eyelids fluttered open in surprise as he began moving again. “You didn’t…?”

  He shook his head. “No. We have a little time left, and, well, I still have this one thing that I really want you to do. Something that’ll completely get me off. Something that’ll rock my world for a long, long time.”

  “Ask me,” she said. “I’ll do it. Just tell me what to do.”

  Muldoon nodded. “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  He took a deep breath and said it. “Marry me.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  AS MARY LOU drove to work, she saw Ihbraham walking along the road that led to the base.

  What was he doing, walking?

  She passed him, but then pulled over, out of the heavy stream of traffic, reaching to roll down the passenger’s-side window as she waited for him to catch up.

  “Where are you going?” she called.

  He came and leaned in the window. “To see the President speak at the Navy base,” he told her. “I knew there would be much traffic and trouble with parking, and it’s a nice enough day to walk, so…”

  “Hop in. I’ll give you a lift.”

  “That’s not necessary.” He started backing away.

  “But I wanted to talk to you. It’s important. I had dinner with Bob Schwegel last night.”

  Ihbraham stopped moving, but he didn’t lean back down so she could see his face. “And you are telling me this because…?”

  “You were right about him,” she said to his blue T-shirt. “He’s a creep. I think he’s a con artist. He asked me to run away with him to New York—can you believe that? I was supposed to pack a bag and bring it to work today. He said he’d meet me here and then we’d go pick up Haley and leave town. Of course, we’d make a quick stop and clear out all of Sam and my bank accounts before we hit the road. I called Medway Insurance—that’s where he said he worked—and they never even heard of a Bob Schwegel. He was scamming me right from the start.”

  Ihbraham sighed, and then crouched down next to the car. “I’m sorry.”

  “Will you please get in?” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

  “Don’t be a dope. I’m not going to jump you in the short amount of time it takes to drive to the base. I mean, while I’m driving? In busy traffic? I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

  He sighed again, then opened the door and climbed in.

  Mary Lou put the car into gear and signaled her intent to move back into the line of cars. It was moving even more slowly now, looking to be stop-and-go all the way to the base. But that was okay. She was very early, and the more time she could spend with Ihbraham, the better.

  “Did you call the police about this Bob?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You must.”

  “How’m I supposed to do that without everyone in the world finding out I had dinner with a scumball?” She sighed. “I don’t know…maybe it doesn’t matter who finds out. Sam asked me last night if I was screwing around with my next-door neighbor. You know, Crazy Donny? Can you believe that? He actually thought…But he wasn’t even angry or even the slightest bit jealous. Just kind of curious about it—which is pretty depressing, don’t you think?” She glanced at Ihbraham. “So I went to see a lawyer this morning, about a divorce.”

  Well, now she had his attention.

  “She said I’d get child support from Sam, and alimony, too. I had no idea it would be as much as this lawyer said—at least until I get married again. If I get married again.” She sneaked another look at him.

  He was silent as they rolled up another few car lengths. “Sam may not agree to give you this divorce.”

  “Yeah, he will,” Mary Lou said. “I’m, like, 99.999 percent certain this is what he wants.”

  “You seem quite certain it’s what you want, as well.”

  “I am,” she told him. “I’m scared, sure, but, see, well…I’m not in love with Sam anymore. And I wasn’t even remotely interested in Bob—I was just real mad. At you.” She glanced at him again.

  He was just silently watching her, a slight furrow in his brow as if he were struggling to understand what she was saying. She didn’t really blame him for not getting it. She hadn’t been particularly clear.

  “I was mad because, well, you’ve been hiding from me, and…I’ve gotten kind of used to you being around.” Come on, girl, just say it. “I’m kind of in love with you,” she told him.

  But he still didn’t utter a sound, didn’t move, didn’t jump up and down or cheer.

  So Mary Lou forced a laugh. “How’d that happen, huh? I mean, we’re so different from each other, and, well, different. In every way. But…if you maybe still have feelings for me, I thought…After Sam and I separate, which will probably be tonight or tomorrow…maybe you could come over sometime and I could cook you dinner. If you want.”

  She was actually blushing. She could feel her cheeks heat, remembering that conversation they’d had when she’d invited him in for iced tea. She wondered if he thought she was inviting him over for more than dinner—and if he would mind very much if she was.

  But when she glanced at him again, he was shaking his head. “I was sure you would never leave him,” he admitted. “I promised my brothers…”

  “What?” she asked, but he just shook his head.

  They were in a line of cars waiting to get into the base. The guards at the gate were doing full searches, both of the interior and the trunk. They were even checking under the hood.

  Ihbraham opened his door. “I should get out here. They’ll check your car more carefully and take twice as long if I’m riding with you.”

  “I don’t care,” she said, knowing that he was talking about more than just passing this checkpoint.

  “My sons may have skin as dark as mine,” he told her. “You said you don’t want that. You said—”

  “I wanted life to be easy,” she said. “But there’s no such thing. You’re the best person I’ve ever met, Ihbraham. And if you want to be with me, then…But if you’ve changed your mind—”

  “No, I didn’t, but I also didn’t expect you to change yours,” Ihbraham said. “I’ve agreed to help my brothers and…You must give me some time to figure out what to do. Will you do that, please?”

  She nodded. “Help them how?”

  “It has to do with a woman,” he said, and her heart sank. “I’m supposed to take her to dinner tonight and then…But I’ll get out of it—I’ll get out of all of it.” He climbed out of her car.

  She leaned over so she could see him. “Will you call me tonight?”

  “Yes—if I can.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  He smiled, and her morning got even brighter. “It is a day, I think, for miracles al
l around.”

  “How are you, Lieutenant?” Vince said as he greeted Mike Muldoon in front of the VIP dais that was set up catty-corner to the spectator stands. “Crazy night last night. Thanks for being there for Joanie.”

  He nodded. “It was my pleasure, sir.”

  Vince nodded, looking out onto the field where SEALs from Team Sixteen would fast-rope down from two helicopters and take out a large piece of artillery. He knew from his own experience that it wouldn’t take much to prevent a gun like that from firing. Putting all of the various parts out of commission would take a little more effort. He suspected that was what they were going to be doing here today.

  Either way, it was going to be so fast that most people would have no idea exactly what they had witnessed.

  This entire shindig had a carnival-type atmosphere. Families with little kids and tourists of all shapes and sizes had come out in force on this gorgeous—but hot—day to see this show.

  “Did you get any sleep at all last night?” he asked the kid.

  Muldoon smiled and answered him honestly. “No, sir.”

  That was some smile. It must’ve been one hell of a night. “Ask her to marry you yet?”

  The kid seemed surprised for only a second. But then nodded. “Yes, sir. She’s, um, thinking about it.”

  Vince turned to face him. “Really?” Joanie, thinking about getting married? “I’m impressed.”

  Every now and then a chopper flew overhead, making it impossible to hear. Muldoon waited for this latest one to move off a bit before answering. “Yes, sir. I, uh, kind of put her in a position where she didn’t want to, um, disappoint me by saying no right away. So she said maybe. I consider that to be something of a victory.”

  “I’d say so,” Vince said. “How on earth did you…?”

  Muldoon was shaking his head. “Sorry, sir. I can’t, uh…”

  Oh ho, so it was like that, was it? Vince had to work to keep from laughing. Good for him. Good for Joanie, too. “Well, if you want some advice from an old man, persistence triumphs. Just keep coming back—whatever she throws at you. Don’t quit. Just keep showing up.”

  “That’s my plan,” Muldoon said. “Do me a favor and don’t tell her we talked about this, okay?”