Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
Lianne turned toward her father. “What about them?”
“What was in them?”
“Three very fine pieces of the Tang erotica collection,” she said. “There were other pieces as well, but I don’t know what they were. The boxes were sealed when I picked them up in Vancouver.”
Relief swept over Johnny, taking years off his appearance. “That explains it. Daniel said some of the erotica were missing, among other things. Obviously it’s all a mistake. As soon as those boxes are returned to the Tangs, the charges will be dropped.”
“You’re not thinking very clearly,” Lianne told him. “Wen packed the boxes and gave them to me himself. He knew about the trade. Why would he file charges saying those same pieces had been stolen?”
“Maybe because the trade didn’t take place,” Kyle said. “Wen was probably pissed.”
“He was counting on Seng’s goodwill,” Johnny said reluctantly. “The Tang family needs a friend on the mainland.”
“Putting Lianne in jail won’t get you one,” Kyle said, his voice rough.
“If Wen was so desperate for Seng to get those jades,” Lianne said, “he should have passed them over himself. More importantly, Wen shouldn’t have insisted that I put my name on three of the appraisal documents, as though I had seen and approved of the entire trade. Above all else, he shouldn’t have told Daniel that I stole those jades.”
“Are you sure Wen did?” Johnny asked.
“Someone did. Daniel looked at me the way you would at a thief. It was…painful. He has your eyes.”
Johnny smiled sadly. “So do you.”
Lianne’s breath hitched, then smoothed out. She gave her father a strained smile in return.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “This has all been a misunderstanding. I’ll talk with Wen. He’ll drop the charges against you.”
Kyle didn’t think so. There was much more at stake than Seng’s goodwill and a few cartons of stone erotica. But Johnny would have to find that out the hard way.
“Are you a betting man?” Kyle asked softly.
“I’m Chinese,” Johnny said, grinning faintly.
“I’m betting that your family won’t drop the charges against Lianne.”
“But—”
Kyle kept talking. “If I’m wrong, I’ll do everything in my power to convince Archer to accept a trial partnership with the Tang Consortium.”
Johnny sat up straight. “Can you do this?”
“I give my word I’ll try.”
“Good. I’ll set up a meeting between Joe and—”
“Not yet,” Kyle interrupted. “You haven’t heard what your stakes are.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Access to the Tang jade vaults.”
“Why?” Johnny asked.
“Yes or no,” was Kyle’s only answer.
Johnny measured him for several seconds, then said, “Yes.”
“There’s only one bed,” Lianne said bluntly.
Kyle locked the door behind him and looked around his suite. The housekeeper had already been at work, which was why no dirty socks decorated the floor and no splash marks dimmed the shine of the bathroom. The bed that Lianne was objecting to was freshly made. It was also big enough to comfortably hold three Donovan brothers, if it came to that.
“That’s okay,” Kyle said. “You don’t take up much room.”
“I won’t sleep with you.”
“You slept with me just fine last night. You were yawning a few minutes ago, until Johnny called. You’ll sleep.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” Kyle’s voice was muffled because he was peeling off his sweater.
Lianne rubbed her hands up and down her arms and thought of how warm his cast-off sweater would be, his body heat plus that of the wool. Her skin was cold. Even as she turned her back on Kyle, she wanted to burrow into his heat and strength, to pull him around her, to forget that it was almost midnight and that tomorrow was another day, another ordeal.
Wen had refused to drop the charges. Even though Lianne had expected it, part of her felt as though she had been slapped across the face.
“I won’t have sex with you,” Lianne said.
“Good.”
She spun around. Kyle was smiling at her. Crookedly. There was passion in his eyes and gentleness in the hands reaching for her. His fingers skimmed over her hair, her eyelids, her cheekbones, her jaw, until her breath broke. His thumb caressed the rapidly beating pulse in her neck.
“I said I won’t—”
“And I said good,” he interrupted. “I don’t want sex with you, Lianne. Sex is something that happens between people who need a lube job.”
Without meaning to, Lianne looked from Kyle’s eyes to the dark bronze hair on his chest, to the waistband of his jeans, and beyond, to the blunt bulge of his erection straining against the worn, faded denim.
“Who are you trying to kid?” she said. “You’re rock-hard and ready to go.”
He put his hand under her chin and tipped her head up. “I spent a lot of last night this way. It didn’t interfere with your sleep then. It won’t now.” He searched her clear, cognac-colored eyes and saw that she believed him. “You want the bathroom first?”
Lianne shook her head slowly. Last night she had been shaken and furious with Kyle for taking advantage of her, for using her to get to the Tangs.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
She shook her head again. Last night she had been a fool. Archer was right. She and Kyle had been using each other. And when all was said and done, he had given more than he got. She had never had a lover like him, tender and demanding by turns, as passionate as he was strong. She doubted if she would ever find a man who suited her in so many ways as Kyle Donovan.
And if she suited him only as a lover, then she would take it and not curse the fate that made women care so much when men only desired.
Lianne gave up trying to warm her hands on her cold arms and used Kyle’s chest instead. Beneath her fingers his flesh tensed. Knowing she shouldn’t, needing it too much to care, she lowered her mouth and nuzzled against the flat disk of his nipple.
Kyle’s breath came out with a ripping sound. “Jesus. I didn’t figure you for a tease.”
Her tongue circled him with hot, wet deliberation.
“Lianne…”
Her answer was a husky, female sound of pleasure as she caught the nailhead of his nipple in her teeth and bit very, very gently.
When Kyle spoke, his voice strained, his mind a seething mix of hope and raw need. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Her fingers slid between the snaps of his jeans, through the opening in his underwear, nuzzled him, testing him.
“You’re right,” he said hoarsely. “That’s the dumbest question I ever asked. Put your tongue in my mouth before I say something really stupid.”
Even as Kyle lifted her, Lianne was winding her legs around him, combing her fingers through his hair, seeking him with her open, eager mouth. She was shivering with hunger. Part of her was shocked that he could arouse her
so easily, so completely. The rest of her cared only that he share her hunger, share her need, share her body. Tomorrow and its heartbreak were still one night away. She would take this night, this man, and damn all the rest.
She never knew how they got their clothes off. She knew only that she was astride him, riding him, and pleasure was a beautiful, savage beast clawing at her until she came apart. She would have screamed then, but she had no breath. He was slamming into her, driving her higher and higher until there was no air, no sensation, just blazing colors of ecstasy transfixing her.
When Lianne could bear it no longer, she collapsed on Kyle’s chest. She was boneless, her breath tearing and shaking her. He lay sideways on the big bed, breathing deeply, evenly, like a long-distance runner just hitting his stride. He smiled at the ceiling, blew a lock of her hair away from his lips, and traced her spine with long, clever fingers.
“Sure glad you didn’t want sex,” Kyle said lazily. “I wouldn’t have survived it.”
Lianne felt too good to be embarrassed. “Bite me.”
Then she bit him instead. Not hard or long—she needed her mouth to suck in enough air to survive. With a ragged breath she relaxed against him again.
“Come on, sweetheart. Time for a shower.”
She made her grumpy cat sound and didn’t move.
Still holding her, Kyle sat up, pivoted, and stood.
“I’ll shower in the morning,” she said.
“Okay. A person can’t be too clean.”
Lianne lifted her head from his shoulder. He was definitely headed for the shower. It was a nice one, she remembered. Big enough to dance in, with tile benches built right in. But even so…
“I’d rather sleep,” she said.
“Then you shouldn’t have bitten me.”
“It wasn’t a hard bite.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She looked at his eyes, green and gold, surrounded by
a knife-edge of black glittering like the ecstasy whose echoes still shivered through her…beautiful enough to take her breath away, to make her wish that she could die right here, right now.
“Take me back to bed and I’ll apologize,” she offered, smiling slowly.
“I’ll look forward to it,” he said, turning on the hot water in the shower. Hard.
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” Lianne asked.
“Dead serious.”
“Why?”
“Simple. The suites are soundproofed, but Archer’s bed is right on the opposite side of the wall from our bed. I figure if I turn the water on hard enough, he might not hear you scream.”
“Scream? What are you talking about? You aren’t into sadism, are you?”
Laughing, Kyle stepped into the shower, taking Lianne with him. “I’m into you, sweetheart. Can’t you tell?”
“It would be impossible to miss.”
Her breath caught as he tightened inside her, filling her until she shivered. His eyelids lowered and he flexed again. She was still hot, slick, swollen, and so sensitized that no matter how slight the movement, her breath broke each time he shifted inside her. Finally, reluctantly, he lifted her, separating their bodies.
Lianne’s eyes dilated in surprise at the sudden stab of pleasure she felt even as Kyle withdrew. She sagged against the cold tile wall of the shower and braced her feet.
Turning his back to the torrent of water, shielding her from its force, Kyle bent and kissed her lips tenderly, teasing her with his tongue. When her mouth fit his, followed his, needed his as though it had been weeks rather than seconds since they had last loved, he ended the kiss as gently as it had begun.
“You okay standing up?” Kyle asked.
She nodded and reached up on tiptoe to kiss him again. He slid through her eager arms with an ease that reminded
her just how strong he was. His mouth moved over each breast in turn, devouring her sweetly, thoroughly, sucking her nipples taut and then drawing them tighter still. When her hips began to twist against him, seeking him, he evaded her despite his thick erection and the heavy beating of his blood.
Lianne’s breath fragmented as Kyle’s hands and mouth slid down her body. He pressed her legs more widely apart, caressing and opening her with his thumbs, fitting his mouth over her, matching her sultry heat with his own, savoring her. She had never felt anything like it, never known she could be drenched and burning at the same time. Her knees shook. Her fingers clenched in his hair. She fought for balance, for breath, for understanding.
And she found only the searching, relentless, ravishing heat of his mouth. She tried to tell him to stop, she couldn’t take any more pleasure. His fingers slid deep and his mouth shifted, closing around the wildly sensitive knot of flesh, sucking hard on her until she screamed and shattered into a thousand blind, glittering pieces.
Even then he didn’t release her. He couldn’t. He was as caught in the hot coils of sensuality as she was. By the time he could force himself to stop caressing her, her knees had given way and she was on the floor of the shower. He wanted her until his guts knotted, but her pupils were dilated so much there was no color, only black, her breath raked in and out of her lungs, and all that stood between her and drowning in the driving water of the shower was his broad back.
“Lianne?” Kyle managed, fighting to keep himself from taking her the way she was, open and dazed on the tile floor.
Slowly her eyes focused on him.
“Sweetheart?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Then you better get up.”
She looked at the clouds of steam. “Is the hot water running out?”
“No. My control is. I’m about two seconds from taking you the way I did on the dock. Only this time you’d be on the bottom.”
She licked her lips, counted off two seconds, and smiled slowly. “Okay.”
L
ianne stared at the concrete-and-steel building. It wasn’t one of Seattle’s many interesting architectural statements; it was a government-issue, get-it-done-on-budget, downscale high-rise. Even if she had never been inside, she would know from the building’s exterior that the interior would be full of generic business offices with industrial-strength carpeting, plastic fig trees in dusty baskets, and middle-aged receptionists with too much dye in their hair. The only thing unusual about the building was the foyer, with its metal detector. A bored guard sat beside it.
“Don’t look so unhappy,” Kyle said to Lianne. “They won’t keep you this time.”
“How do you know?”
“We’re using the front door. Or do you want to just forget the whole thing and go back to the condo?”
Kyle’s words made Lianne realize that she was hanging back. Her chin came up and she quickened her stride. “Of course not.”
“You sure? Johnny and I could take care of identifying the—”
“If you don’t hurry up,” she said, talking over Kyle, “we’ll be late.”
He glanced down at the small, slender woman striding next to him and smiled. Anyone looking at the black pantsuit, sensible shoes, and no-nonsense hair twisted at her
nape wouldn’t believe that the last time Lianne had been in the shower, it was a miracle that either of them had gotten out alive. Just thinking about the way she had looked when she said
Okay
was enough to make him hard all over again.
Lianne went through the metal detector without a hitch. So did Kyle, after he had emptied his pockets of change and car keys. The gun and holster were back in the safe, for now.
“I told you so,” Lianne muttered as they walked up to the receptionist.
“What?”
“Too much dye.”
Kyle looked at the receptionist’s hair and thought of motorcycle helmets. But all he said was, “Donovan and Blakely to see Ms. Joy.”
“Sixth floor,” the receptionist said. “Take the elevator on your left.”
A rolling cart stuffed with files got on the elevator at the second floor. Two more file carts got in on the third floor. The file jockeys traded sports statistics until they got off on the fifth floor, leaving Lianne and Kyle alone again.
“I thought that computers were supposed to do away with the need for paper,” she said.
“Are you kidding? All computers did was make it easier to revise reports and send out revised copies to more people, who add more revisions, send out more copies, and—”
“Employ cart jockeys to haul the reports from floor to floor,” Lianne finished.
“Uncle’s answer to unemployment.”
April Joy met them on the sixth floor. She was wearing a suit as understated as Lianne’s. An ID card hung from a cheap metal chain around her neck.
“This better be good, Donovan,” she said curtly.
“Anything is better than what you already have,” Kyle said. “That’s why we’re here.”
It was true. April just didn’t like it. But then, the world
was full of things that didn’t make her smile. “Number five-eleven,” she said. “Everything is there.”
She turned and walked back down the hallway, not waiting to see if they followed. When she reached 511, she slid her ID card through a reader. A light glowed green. She opened the door and held it until Lianne and Kyle were inside.
Without a word Lianne headed for the steel conference table in the center of the room. On one end of the table sat two cartons wrapped in white paper, tied with twine whose knots looked like macramé, and covered with blotches of crimson wax. She bent over and examined the boxes closely. The knots were as complex and tight as the day they had been tied. The seals were intact. Each bore Wen’s “chop” in the center.
“If anybody has been inside these boxes,” Lianne said, “he didn’t leave any signs.”
April smiled thinly. “You should see the X-rays.”
“I’d rather see the jades. I’ll need scissors or a knife.”
“In the center drawer.”
Metal screeched when Lianne opened the drawer. The sound made her teeth ache. “Instead of pushing files around, why don’t you have some of those eager young people oil drawers?”
“I’ll bring it up at the next meeting,” April said. Her voice said that she didn’t care.
The scissors Lianne found were small, sharp enough, and had a plastic handle as red as the seals. She started cutting, working with swift, practiced motions. Very quickly, each carton grew a necklace of snipped twine and fancy knots. When she was through cutting the twine, seals, and paper, ready to open the first carton, Kyle put his hand on her arm, stopping her.
“Do you have that list she faxed you?” Kyle asked April. “Just to make sure there’s no mistake?”
“Yes. If what you think is true, there will be some interesting stuff in these cartons.”
“Go ahead,” Kyle told Lianne.
She opened the first carton, pulled out something swathed in bubble wrap, and carefully began unrolling it. After a few moments, a lovely imperial jade penis dropped into her hand. Relief rushed through her so strongly that she felt light-headed. She grinned at the jade like a proud mother.
April’s slim black eyebrows went up. “Art, huh?”
“Excellent color,” Kyle said, deadpan.
“Only if the guy’s dead,” April retorted. “All right. One green hang-down checked off the list.”
Lianne hoped her relief didn’t show. Logic had told her that Seng was being bribed with upgrades on his collection of jade erotica—excellent pieces swapped for the so-so goods she had examined on Farmer Island. But logic wasn’t as great as the fear that she could be wrong, that there might be another explanation for the substitutions she had seen in the Tang vault.
The next piece Lianne unwrapped had been made from a luminous white jade that was touched with faint blushes of lavender. The stone was carved so that the darker shade suggested folds in clothing, the curve of a limb, the shadow lying between a woman’s thighs. The fluid line of the woman’s body as she lay across her lover’s lap evoked the essence of feminine surrender. The intensity of the man as he bent down to her summed up masculine urgency to possess.
The position of the figures made it impossible to see precisely what they were doing, yet the impact of the sculpture was such that it was impossible
not
to know exactly what they were doing.
April whistled. “I’d like to have that on my bedside table.”
Reverently Lianne lifted the sculpture and turned it in her hands, savoring the satin weight of the jade. “Of the thousands of pieces of jade that the Tangs own, this is among the best. The stone is completely intact; there are no fractures, no pits, no variations in texture. This was
carved by a master and polished by hand over unimaginable hours.
“The subject matter is worthy of the stone and the artist. Sexual union is the philosophical core of Taoism, the instant of fusion between yin and yang, when all forces are balanced and the sum total of harmony in the universe increases. To a Taoist, what we in the West think of as a merely physical joining of man and woman is profoundly metaphysical, an act which affects the balance of creation itself.”
Gently Lianne set the jade on the table’s scarred metal surface.
April looked from the jade to Lianne’s face. The respect and love Lianne had for the sculpture and the tradition it represented was easy to read in her expression, in the way her fingertips traced and her palm cupped smooth stone. But there was no greed in her gestures, no hunger to possess, no bitterness that such a fine jade belonged to a man too old and blind to appreciate it.
Frowning, April glanced at Kyle. He was watching her with those odd, penetrating eyes. The look on his face said,
See? I told you. Lianne Blakely isn’t a thief.
For a time the only sound was that of Lianne unwrapping jades and making occasional comments.
“Excellent stone.” “Superior artistry.” “Look at this one carefully, Kyle. See how the veins of red coloring in the stone heighten instead of distract from the subject? A difficult thing to do with such pronounced color contrast.” “Very fine polish.” “Remarkable fluidity.” “Ah, I haven’t seen this one before. Exquisitely carved. Look at his expression, submission and ecstasy in one. Obviously she is a master of his jade flute.”
Kyle knew it was juvenile of him—this was art, after all—but he couldn’t help getting hard at the thought of having Lianne between his knees like that, his body corded and his head thrown back in blind, shattering climax.
“Yeah,” he said. “Hell of a song she’s playing.”
April gave him a sideways look. “Getting to you, big boy?”
Lianne looked up from the sculpture. The smile she gave Kyle doubled his heart rate. “I’d worry about you if you didn’t react. The purpose of these sculptures is to remind people that there are many roads to the metaphysical, and one of those roads is sublimely physical.”
“Consider me reminded,” he said. “How about you?”
“When you’re around, I don’t need reminders.”
He turned to April. “Don’t you want to get some coffee or something?”
“Tie a knot in it, Romeo.” April glanced at her watch. “All right, let’s say for the sake of argument that Lianne was sent off to make a swap with Han Seng, decided that she didn’t like the smell of the deal, and left without unpacking the cartons.”
“It would explain why she was arrested heading
back
into Canada with the Tang jades that were listed as missing,” Kyle said, not for the first time.
“It wouldn’t explain all of the missing jades. I’ve got a fax two pages long on my desk, and it’s still growing. These are only part of what’s on the list.”
“Show me the fax,” Lianne said instantly.
April ignored her. “Like I said, suppose we agree that Lianne was set up for the arrest and there’s not enough evidence to hold her. What’s in it for us?”
“A chance to make China happy and Farmer look like a fool,” Kyle said.
In a heartbeat April went from casual to full alert. “The jade burial suit?”
Kyle nodded. “Interested?”
“Yes.”
“Lianne has to be able to move freely. Drop the charges.”
“You think Farmer has smuggled the damned shroud out of the States?” April asked quickly. “We know he took it to his island, but we didn’t think he managed to get it over the border. Shit. That’s all we need, piling the
Canadian bureaucracy on top of everything else. What a Charlie Fox-trot.”
Kyle didn’t translate “Charlie Fox-trot” for Lianne. He was too busy switching over to plan B, the one where the jade suit wasn’t in Seattle. It wasn’t his preferred plan. But then, nobody had asked him to approve.
“Shit,”
April said again, with emphasis. She looked at Lianne, who had gone back to unwrapping jades. Then she glared at Kyle. “If you were anybody else’s brother, I’d kick your tight butt out the door right now.”
“I’ll tell Archer you care.”
April ignored him. She was sorting through possibilities with the speed of the well-trained, intelligent agent she was. It didn’t take long to get to the bottom line.
None of the possibilities particularly appealed to her, and only one of them might lead to a fast solution. Speed was critical. The longer the standoff between Farmer and China went on, the greater the chance that China would unzip decades of zigzag economic progress in a rush to preserve national pride.
China’s leaders wouldn’t suffer in an economic downturn. They would still have their Western toys and Eastern aesthetics. Dick Farmer wouldn’t suffer. There were other world markets to make another billion bucks in. The people who suffered would be the hundreds of millions of Chinese who would survive more gracefully in the twenty-first century, with all its drawbacks, than in the modern Bronze Age of rural China, where life was so brutally hard it stunted children in the womb.
With a mixture of bitterness and acceptance, April watched the last of the jades being unwrapped…the cream of a culture’s artistic aspirations worked in stone that was as hard as a despot’s heart. Even as she wondered how many millions had lived and died in poverty to support such an expensive, labor-intensive art, the pragmatic part of her knew it didn’t matter. That was the past. The present was a jade artifact so important to China that her
leaders were willing to kick off a trade war and self-destruct their own economy over it.
“What’s your plan?” April asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Kyle said.
She stared at him without expression, but she was thinking of Archer Donovan. He had a legendary ability to drag the hottest chestnuts out of the fire and not burn down anybody’s house in the process. “Slick, you better be as good as you think you are.”
“I hear you.”
“What do you need from us?” April said after another tense pause.
While Lianne listened to exactly what Kyle wanted from Uncle, she unwrapped the last jade. Very quickly, Bride Dreaming lay in her hands, as elemental and ethereal as her memories.
“Three rebreathers?” April asked. “You want the Navy SEALs to go with them? They’d love the exercise.”
“If I need them, you’ll be the first to know.”
“What’s a rebreather?” Lianne asked Kyle.
“Scuba gear that doesn’t leave a trail of bubbles.”
“Is one of those rebreathers for me?”
“No.”
“Make it four,” Lianne told April.
“Four it is.”
Kyle started to argue, then shrugged. It wouldn’t hurt to have an extra unit on hand in case something was defective in the first three. But if Lianne thought she was coming along, she was dead wrong.
“Anything else?” April asked.
“Get Farmer to agree to an expert appraisal of his burial shroud,” Lianne said.
“He already has.”
“Damn it. I’d like to have been there.”
“It hasn’t happened yet. China is sending its own expert.” April gave Lianne her full attention. “Do you really think Farmer’s shroud is fake?”
“I really think I’d like a close look at it,” Lianne said smoothly. “But wouldn’t it be nice if it was fake?”
“Only if China’s expert agreed,” April said. “If we had that, we wouldn’t need to screw around with you two.”