"Catlin," Lindsay said in a strained voice, "I didn't mean "
"I know," he said, pulling her over him like a warm, living blanket, ignoring her futile attempts to resist. "I know. You weren't even really awake, were you?" he asked, opening her mouth with his hungry tongue. "Can you imagine what it does to me to know that you want me even in your dreams? Do you know that I want you the same way?"
Lindsay's eyes opened, searching Catlin's face for the truth.
"Oh, it's true," he said, watching her. "Any other woman could have been all over me like a heat rash and I would have talked to O'Donnel until I was damn good and ready to hang up. But you " Catlin shivered and moved his hips slowly, sensuously, sliding his fully aroused flesh against her thighs, feeling her satin warmth and the silken roughness of her hair.
"You make me lose control," he said huskily. "I want your mouth again. I want to watch you loving me. Do you want that? Talk to me, honey cat. Tell me what you want."
Lindsay cried out as Catlin's teeth scored gently down her neck, silently demanding an answer.
"You," she said, her breath catching. "I want you."
"Then take me," he said, his voice deep, rough. "Any way you want. Every way. Because that's what I'm going to do to you. And when we've each had a turn we'll begin all over again, you taking me and me taking you until it's like last night, no beginning and no ending, just the two of us locked together, burning down the night. Take me, Lindsay. Take me into that sleek, hot body of yours."
She made a broken sound that could have been Catlin's name, then took him with a single, slow, sliding movement, giving herself to him at the same time. As he filled her completely she tried to say his name again, but could not. Her body no longer belonged to her alone. It belonged to him, to them, to what they created when they were so deeply joined that she could not say where he ended and she began. The realization sent tiny, exquisite pulses rippling through her. She melted hotly over him, burning through his own control, fusing them into a single being. With a hoarse sound he poured himself into her, giving himself to her and to the primal ecstasy they called from each other.
The second time Catlin awakened that morning, it was to the knocking of a heavy fist on the hall door.
"Room service!" came the call.
"And I'm the tooth fairy," Catlin muttered, looking at the clock. Eight fifty-five, and the voice had sounded rather like O'Donnel's. It was hard to tell, though. He'd never heard O'Donnel yell through two closed doors.
"In a minute!" called Catlin.
The knocking stopped. Lindsay murmured sleepily. Smiling, remembering, he smoothed her hair.
"Time to get up, honey cat," he said softly.
"Breakfast?" she asked, stretching sleepily.
"More like show and tell, I'm afraid," said Catlin, pulling on his clothes.
Her eyebrows rose. "Show and tell?"
"Mug shots," Catlin said succinctly, zipping up his slacks.
"I'd rather have Eggs Benedict," she grumbled.
"Hungry?" he asked, smiling slowly.
Lindsay looked at his lips and remembered what it had felt like to have his mouth caressing every part of her. If the memories hadn't been enough, there were small, sensual aches in the secret places of her body to tell her that she had become the lover of a man whose sexuality would have been intimidating if he hadn't been as skillful as he was powerful.
Catlin saw the direction of Lindsay's glance and knew what she was thinking. His body stirred, wanting more of what it had discovered so recently. He wondered then whether he would ever be able to get enough of Lindsay. The thought disturbed him. He had been in the business long enough to know that relationships forged in the heat and complex stresses of undercover work ended when the job did. That was why he had tried to stay away from Lindsay in the first place.
But staying away simply hadn't been possible. He was a man, and all too human. She was human, and all too much a woman.
"Don't look at me like that," Catlin said, his voice gritty, half amused and half serious.
"Like what?"
"Like you were remembering how my mouth felt all over your body."
Lindsay couldn't control the shiver of response that coursed through her. Catlin saw it, swore softly and turned on his heel toward the bathroom. The pounding came again from the hall. He ignored it. He picked up the toilet tank cover from the floor, scraped the lid against the tank as though he were just removing it and fiddled with the tower. The comb came free, the toilet tank filled and the sound of running water stopped.
Catlin used the toilet, flushed and waited while the tank refilled. Everything worked normally. He replaced the cover with a generous amount of scraping and thumping, stuffed the slightly chewed comb into his pocket and, after a slight detour to the bedside table, went to answer the door.
"What's the breakfast special?" Catlin asked, standing to one side of the door.
"Eggs O'Donnel, sir," came the low, polite reply. "Chef Stone also highly recommends his own personal favorite-creamed Catlin on toast."
The words carried no farther than Catlin's ears. Smiling, he unbolted and unlocked the door; but he didn't step into the open and uncock the gun he held until O'Donnel came into the room alone, pushing a breakfast cart in front of him. Catlin shut, locked and bolted the door before he turned toward O'Donnel.
"If you fox the phone again," said O'Donnel, looking toward the closed bedroom door, "Stone will have your balls for breakfast."
"You look real nice in uniform," Catlin said gravely, eyeing O'Donnel's gaudy maroon-and-gold hotel livery. "Is that how you trolled up your no-class piece of ass last night?"
O'Donnel raised his middle finger.
Catlin laughed, then inhaled deeply as he lifted the silver lid on one of the containers and the spicy fragrance of huevos rancheros and frijoles refritos drifted up to his nostrils. He realized that he was hungry enough to eat snake and enjoy it. The sudden, insistent growl of his stomach underscored his discovery.
"The mug shots are in the bottom of the cart," O'Donnel said. "Any change in your schedule today?"
Catlin shrugged. "Lindsay and I will get out of here long enough to let the maid clean up. Other than that, nothing's on the burner. We've seen every bronze in San Francisco except the ones we want. None of the rumors about bronzes coming through Seattle or Vancouver have panned out worth a damn. We're through eating out with scumbags like Malloy. There's no point in doing any more Saps around the lowlife track. Either the thieves are satisfied with our cover by now or they won't ever be. All we can do is wait to be approached.
"Is that what Chen Yi wants to do?"
"Ask him."
"We don't have his phone number," O'Donnel said smoothly.
"He has yours. If he doesn't like the program, he'll be the first to tell you."
O'Donnel's mouth flattened. He looked at his watch. "I shouldn't stay any longer. We haven't seen anyone inside the hotel watching your room, but we can't be sure. They probably don't need a special guard. Most of the help here are Chinese." He glanced toward the bedroom. "Is Lindsay okay?"
"She's gutsy. She'll survive. But Wu was hard on her. And Malloy " Catlin made a cutting gesture with his hand. "Malloy would gag a maggot."
O'Donnel winced, thinking of the midnight showers Lindsay had been taking. He wondered if she had managed to wash off the stink of the people she had been associating with. A look at Catlin's hard face kept O'Donnel from asking. "The lady really wasn't cut out for this life, was she?" asked O'Donnel. "Stone suggests that you take the day off after you look at the mug shots."
"Hell of an idea," Catlin said, yawning. "We could both use some more time in the sack."
"I'll be back in an hour for the cart. If the maid comes before then, don't let her in."
As soon as the door shut behind O'Donnel, Catlin locked and bolted it again. He went to the bedroom. As he opened the door, the sound of the shower came to hi
m.
"Breakfast is here," he called, not trusting himself to go into the bathroom after Lindsay. The memories of sharing a shower with her were too new, too hot, too tempting.
Lindsay's muffled answer came, telling only that she had heard Catlin's words.
He went back to the living room, poured coffee and filled a plate for himself. He took it over to the small dining alcove. The only thing to indicate that day had dawned was a brilliant, very narrow stripe of blue-white light where the heavy green drapes failed to meet.
Although Catlin loved San Francisco's rare, incandescently clear mornings, he made no move to open the drapes. Too many people had died looking out of hotel windows while a sniper was looking in. Lee Tran knew that as well as Catlin did. Better, perhaps. He had lost more people to windows than Catlin had.
No more than half of Catlin's spicy eggs had disappeared before the bedroom door opened. Lindsay walked barefoot into the living room, her face flushed from the shower, her body elegant beneath the heavy silk robe that was the exact rosy color of her nipples when she was aroused. She looked good enough to eat, but Catlin kept the thought to himself one of Stone's bugs was no more than six feet away.
"Sit down," offered Catlin. "I'll get your plate for you."
"Thanks," Lindsay said. "Usually I hate breakfast, but after " Her words broke off as she remembered just why she was so unusually hungry today. She also remembered the bug that was behind the mass-produced oil painting of an English country scene.
"Yeah," Catlin said, smiling over his shoulder. "I know just what you mean. I didn't eat much dinner last night, either. Malloy is enough to take away anyone's appetite. God," continued Catlin in a disgusted voice, "the things Stone expects us to do in the hope of buying a Qin charioteer."
Catlin's eyes were anything but disgusted as he handed Lindsay her breakfast plate. When she took it he held on. She looked up, startled. Then she realized what he wanted. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. What began as a simple brush of lips ended as something much deeper and more satisfying.
"Mmmm," she said after a long moment. "Firm. Spicy. Steamy. Exactly the way I like it."
He smiled slowly. "That quick little tongue is going to get you in trouble," he whispered against her ear. Then, in a normal tone he asked, "Coffee?"
"Please," she said, sitting down with her plate and taking her first bite of omelet. It was everything she had said it was. The thought made her smile.
They ate in a comfortable silence, enjoying the undemanding moment. While Catlin showered and changed, Lindsay lingered over her second cup of coffee. A feeling of well-being pervaded her mind. At first she thought that it was simply the profound sensual satisfaction Catlin had given to her, but as she sipped her coffee she realized that what she felt was more complex than simple satiation. She felt warm, cherished safe. Yes, that was it. Safe.
The absurd thought made Lindsay laugh aloud. She was in a vortex of conspiracy and lies; she was being shunned by her former friends; she was the lover of a man who slept with a gun by his hand and awoke at the least noise with death in his eyes. Yet she felt safe for the first time since she could remember.
Lindsay hadn't heard Catlin come back into the room, but when she looked up he was there, watching her with shadows and concern in his beautiful dragon eyes. The shadows no longer disturbed her, nor did the knowledge that dragons could kill. She knew to the bottom of her soul that she had never been safer in her life than she was with Catlin.
"Ready?" he asked.
"For what?"
"Show and tell."
Lindsay's dark glance went from Catlin's short-sleeved rugby shirt to the faded jeans that faithfully showed every hard male line of his body.
"Sounds interesting. You first," she said in a husky voice.
Catlin smiled. His golden-brown eyes darkened as he read the approval in hers. "Let's do it together. The sooner we're done, the sooner we can play."
Wisely, Lindsay held her tongue. Her smile, however, said a great deal.
Catlin slid aside the metal door on the cart's lower level and pulled out two oversize ring-bound notebooks. Lindsay stacked the empty dishes on the cart, poured the last of the coffee and went back to sit at the small table.
"If you like anything you see," Catlin said, putting a pen and a small notebook on the table, "write down his number."
Lindsay opened the book and looked inside. A page of Oriental faces looked back at her. Some of the pictures had obviously been taken as part of routine police processing. Others were like snapshots taken by a paparazzo, slightly blurred because of movement or distance.
"Look at it this way," said Catlin, opening his own book. "We both have an advantage. We've lived in the Orient long enough to see subtle differences among these faces."
She looked up, surprised.
"It's true," he continued, not looking up. "The old say about "They all look alike,' is a literal fact for most people, no matter what race is being looked at. Ask any cop. He'd a hell of a lot rather take the word of a black man about what another black man looked like than that of a white man." Catlin turned a page slowly. "That's especially true with Orientals. They can tell a Korean from a Vietnamese a block away. Most Caucasians don't get past the epicanthic fold and broad facial structure."
Catlin turned another page, glancing over the pictures with a quick, practiced eye. Lindsay followed suit, but more slowly. Her first page yielded nothing. She turned the heavy sheet. More faces looked back at her. Oriental. Male. Between fifteen and fifty. No outstanding scars. There were gaps where pictures had been removed from the pages. She wondered if the men were in jail or dead. As her eye traveled down the third page, she made a startled sound.
"Something?" asked Catlin, watching Lindsay with intent yellow eyes.
"I know him. Not from last night, but from the Chinese Christian Benevolent Society. His name is Wo Feng. And this is his older brother. And his younger."
Lindsay's finger moved over the page, picking out relatives of Feng. As she turned other pages she recognized more men, people from her childhood in China, people from her lonely teenage years in San Francisco, people from her dealings as curator of ancient Chinese bronzes for the Museum of the Asias. But most of the faces were from her childhood, faces of men whom her parents had known, faces without bodies, faces pursuing her through years of restless sleep.
With each page turned, Lindsay felt herself sliding helplessly deeper and deeper into the past.
I've done this before. Pictures. Faces. When? Why?
Uneasiness moved over her, making her shiver as though it were midnight, and her nightmare surged invincibly from the dark well of repressed memory. She tried to fight it, to hold back the unwanted tide of remembrance, but could not. She had fought it for too many years, winning only in the day, losing at night; and now it was neither night nor day, only an endless twilight of faces pouring over her, pursuing her.
Grimly she turned pages, wondering why she had fought off the past so long and so successfully, only to lose the battle at a time when she had felt so safe. And she was losing. She knew it. Felt it in the chill claiming her blood. Tasted it like brass on her tongue.
Fear.
She turned the page and saw him. She whimpered like a child as the past exploded over her.
Chapter 20
Lindsay?"
As though from a great distance Lindsay heard Catlin's voice calling to her. She sensed him coming to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder at the faces welling terribly out of the open wound of her past.
"Yes," he agreed, pointing to a snapshot on the left-hand page, "That's the man."
The warmth of Catlin's hand caressing Lindsay's shoulder seeped through the chill that was making her shiver repeatedly. But the voice and the warmth were all wrong, and her body was wrong; she was a child, not a woman, and she had just killed her uncle. She saw him dying, choking, blood spurting from him over her hands as she frant
ically tried to push the bright life back into the hole in his chest. Uncle Mark was dead and she was seven and her father was holding her; and she was thirty and her lover was holding her and her father was dead.
"I'm going crazy."
Lindsay didn't know that she had spoken aloud until she felt herself lifted from the chair into Catlin's arms.
"Easy, honey cat, easy," he murmured, carrying her to the couch. He sat and held her, rocking her. "He's just a picture on a page. It's all right. He can't get to you as long as I'm here. It's all right, Lindsay. You're safe."
"I killed him. Can't you see? I killed him!"
Catlin looked into Lindsay's blank indigo eyes and saw the same thing he had seen too many times before. Nightmare.
"What are you seeing?" he asked gently.
It was the same question he had asked before, when she had awakened whimpering, wrapped in fear and nightmare. But this time she began to speak, because now she could see everything clearly. Too clearly. In a cold, tearing rush she knew what she had tried to avoid knowing for so long.
"I was supposed to stay in bed, but Ha's daughter had whispered to me that Uncle Mark was back. I couldn't wait until morning to see him. He always brought me candy, bright ribbons, laughter."
Catlin waited while Lindsay drew a long, ragged breath. He imagined her as a child quick, intelligent, a creature of her senses, hungry for the small gifts and flashes of color that poverty made so rare and so precious.
"Go on," he said softly, brushing his lips over her forehead.
"Oh, Catlin," she said brokenly, turning her face into his chest. "I killed him."
"Tell me," Catlin coaxed. "Tell me and the nightmare will end."
Lindsay's hands closed convulsively, digging through the cotton knit of Catlin's shirt to the flesh beneath. He ignored the discomfort as his hand stroked her hair and her back. He spoke soothingly, murmuring words without meaning, sounds as reassuring as his touch and the slow rocking of her body against his chest.
Tell Me No Lies Page 33
