Authors: Linda Howard
Death Angel (3 page)
The facial identification program surrendered, telling him there was no match, which he’d expected. “Come on, look at the birdie,” he murmured to the man. “Let me take your picture.”
He was focused so intently on his task that, until Cotton gave an uncomfortable cough,
Then the unknown man swung them around, presenting his back to the camera, and half-walked, half-carried the girlfriend into the penthouse, pulling the sliding glass door shut behind him.
Not once had he provided them with a clear look at his face.
AFTER THE BRIGHTNESS and warmth of the sun-drenched balcony, the penthouse was blessedly cool and dim, and private. Drea clung to him for support; her legs were like cooked noodles and her brain felt like mush. He dipped his head to trail a line of slow kisses down her throat and across her collarbone. “Is this place bugged?” he asked in that low, half-audible tone of his, his lips moving against her shoulder as he murmured the words on her skin. “Cameras anywhere?”
“Not now,” Drea replied, then a sharp surge of combined lust and fear turned her insides to water. She worked hard to make people see her as ornamental, self-absorbed, and more than a little dumb: in short, nonthreatening. Having people underestimate her gave her an enormous advantage…but he didn’t seem to underestimate her at all, and that both pleased and frightened her. If he could see the brains beneath the act, then others might, too. At the same time, his easy assumption that she’d know the answer to a question so crucial fed a need that she hadn’t realized was there, a hunger to be treated as an equal on some level.
At any rate, it was too late now to continue the dumb act. Recklessly she added, “He used to, but he decided having a record of anything could be dangerous to him.”
At first, Rafael had had her followed everywhere she went, and hidden cameras had recorded her in her bedroom, as well as her bathroom. She’d had no privacy at all, and she had simply gone with the flow, keeping her activities completely innocuous and boring. She had been with him for almost five months when she overheard him telling Orlando Dumas, his electronics whiz, to get rid of all the cameras and microphones, and to burn the tapes.
If Rafael wanted to know how often she had her nails and hair done, fine, let him waste time having her followed. She shopped, she watched television, and she made a habit of going to the nearest library and checking out coffee table books of other countries. She would pore over the pictures, and in a deliberately careful manner read snippets about different customs and geographical features aloud to Rafael, until he impatiently told her he wasn’t interested in ferrets and lemurs, nor did he care which waterfall was the highest in the world. Drea had managed to look faintly hurt, but thereafter kept the tidbits to herself. Shortly afterward, he’d stopped having her followed whenever she left the penthouse.
Most of the time, Drea didn’t take chances, and behaved as she had when she’d been followed. She really did get her nails and/or hair done frequently, and she spent a lot of time shopping, both in person and on the Internet. She kept her bedroom television on a shopping channel, and a pad lying there with item numbers scribbled on it—numbers that she frequently scratched through, or changed, just in case Rafael had someone check. There were even real item numbers for clothing, should he check that far. She spent a lot of time doing exactly what Rafael expected her to be doing.
Occasionally, however, she did something entirely different. Rafael was ruthless and street smart, but he didn’t think she was intelligent enough to slip anything by him, so she managed to slip quite a lot.
But this man, this killer holding her in his arms, saw beneath her carefully constructed façade, stripping away her defenses and exposing her as effortlessly as he’d stripped down her pants. She stared up into his narrowed gaze, wondering what else he saw. Was her secret safe with him, or did he see it as a card he could play whenever it was strategically useful? Maybe he’d want her to give him information about Rafael. Whatever he wanted her to do, she’d have to do it; she had no choice. That was actually an easy decision to make, because this man was one of the few people she’d bet on against Rafael.
Her thoughts had wrenched her from the control of her overloaded senses, and as clarity returned she again felt the icy finger of panic. He wasn’t finished with her. So far he hadn’t hurt her—the opposite, in fact—but that didn’t mean she was safe. Maybe he was just playing with her, getting her to lower her guard, relax. Maybe he got his jollies from sucker punches.
“You’re thinking too much,” he murmured. “You just tensed up again.”
Think! she commanded herself, willing the panic away. She had to think, get herself under control. God, how stupid could she be? Instead of acting like some twit who didn’t know what her body was for, she should be using it, doing what she did best, which was make a man feel special.
She stared at her own hands, her fingers digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders as she clung to him, and tried to force them into action. She should be stroking him, with both words and actions. She should go down on him, make him come, then—please, God—he would leave, and she could use the time to decide on her best course of action. She should be doing a lot of things, all of which right now seemed to be beyond her.
“Where’s a bedroom?” he asked, lifting his head to survey their surroundings, his eyes alert. “Not where you sleep with
“We don’t…we don’t sleep together,” she mumbled, once more jolted into telling the truth. His gaze returned to her and narrowed even more, and she shivered at the threat she felt lurking behind his every action. “Sleep. We don’t sleep. I have my own room.”
Her heartbeat thudded as he waited a beat before saying, “You go to his room.”
It was a statement, not a question, as if he had also read Rafael with uncanny accuracy. Still, she nodded in confirmation. She did go to Rafael’s room whenever he wanted sex. That was the way it was; people went to Rafael, he didn’t go to them. Afterward she always returned to her own room, which she had deliberately made as feminine and frou-frou as possible, in keeping with the Barbie doll persona she’d cultivated.
“Your room,” he prompted.
Drea glanced to the right. “Down this hall.”
He leaned down and stripped her pants to her ankles. “Step,” he said, and she did, lifting her feet out of the pools of filmy white fabric. She didn’t have time to feel awkward for wearing a tank top and a pair of four-inch heels and nothing else, because he simply hoisted her up so she had to lock her legs around his hips to anchor herself, and he carried her down the hall.
His rock-hard erection rode her cleft, every step he took rocking him against her softly swollen flesh. Drea tightened the grip of her thighs and rubbed herself against the thick length, spreading her own dampness on it, trying to push him past the limits of his control. A hot pool of sensation gathered at the point of contact, then rapidly spread through her, taking her by surprise. She’d already climaxed, so she hadn’t expected to get turned on again. Hell, she hadn’t expected to get turned on at all. Nothing about this situation was what she’d expected, and though she kept struggling to gain control she kept getting her feet knocked out from under her and she’d go under yet again.
He reached her door and she managed to say “Here” in a strangled tone, but she couldn’t make herself release him so she could turn the doorknob. He did that himself, pulling her more tightly to him with one arm under her bottom, while he opened the door with his other hand. The motion adjusted their positions just enough that abruptly his erection slipped into her; hot tingles shot along every nerve. The sensation was so electric that she moaned, every muscle in her body tightening. Helplessly she began rising and falling, trying to get as much of him as possible, her range of motion limited by his grip on her. At this angle she could get only two or three inches of his penis inside her, and though the thick ridge of the head set off mini-explosions as she worked herself back and forth on it, that wasn’t enough, she wanted more, she wanted all of it, deep and hard and fast.
The rhythm of his breathing hitched a little, the only sign he’d given, other than his erection, that he was the least bit excited. Abruptly Drea burned with humiliation at this evidence that, while he obviously wanted sex, he had no particular interest in her; she was here, she was available, and that was the extent of her use to him. She froze, and to her horror felt tears burn her eyes again. Doggedly she blinked them away.
What was happening? She wasn’t the one who lost control; she used sex to control men, to get what she wanted from them. What was wrong with her, that she let this one man frighten her so much that all her usual defenses came tumbling down? Okay, so he was, like, king of the badasses, but she’d dealt with badasses all her life, and if there was one thing she’d learned, it was that when the little head lifted and took charge, the big head stopped thinking.
That didn’t seem to have happened with him, but if she had a chance she could make him lose control; she knew she could. She wanted him to be as helpless as she felt, she wanted him fierce and hot and trembling, at her mercy instead of her being at his, but she wouldn’t have any mercy for him at all, any more than he did for her.
He reached the side of the bed, lifted her off him, and tossed her onto the mattress. By the time she stopped bouncing, he had most of his clothes off, and she held her breath as she watched him strip out of the rest. Naked, he was hard and muscled, almost lean. His chest was lightly haired, and at some time he’d been naked in the sun because he was tanned all over. For some reason, thinking of him naked and relaxed, drowsy in the sun, sent both her stomach and nerves trembling.
He bent over her and tugged her tank top up and off, leaving her only in those lethal heels. His dark opal gaze fastened on her breasts, a look so loaded with male interest that her nipples puckered as if he’d licked them. She jerked, fighting an inexplicable urge to cross her arms over her breasts to shield them. Somehow she felt more exposed, more vulnerable, more naked, when he looked at her.
Reaching out, he lightly traced one fingertip around both nipples, then braced his hands on each side of her and leaned down to suck each breast in turn, his mouth so gentle on her that she felt the heat more than the pressure.
Her breath caught and her body arched upward, seeking more than he was giving her.
Desperately she groped for his erection, wanting, needing to seize some of the power, to balance the scales. Her fingers closed around the thick shaft, and a split second later his iron grip was on her wrist, firmly moving her hand away from him. “No,” he said as calmly as if she’d offered him a slice of toast.
“Yes,” she insisted recklessly, reaching for him again. “I want you in my mouth.” In her experience, no man could resist that offer.
But the hard line of his lips curved in faint amusement as he caught her hand and anchored it to the bed with an unbreakable grip. “So you can make me come? You’re in a hurry to get rid of me.”
Drea stared up at him, her emotions in such a roiling storm of lust and anger and ever-present fear that she trembled.
He secured her other hand, too, holding her firm as he moved over her and took what he wanted.
THE HOURS THAT followed were a blur of lust and sex and fatigue, but a few moments were crystal clear. After her third climax she tried to squirm away from him, exhausted and overstimulated and unable to bear any more. “Leave me alone,” she said fretfully, slapping at his hands as he drew her back to him, and he laughed.