Kindred Intentions (8 page)

Uncertain, she turned to the door overlooking
the unknown room. Mike was certainly there, but he had to have finished washing
himself by now, given that he had cooked dinner.

“Mike?” She waited a few seconds for a
possible noise coming from there as reply to her call, but there was none. Most
probably he hadn’t heard her. Perhaps she should call him again, this time
louder, but she wasn’t persuaded it was a good idea. When he was ready, he
would come out on his own. And anyway, if they had to stop the light showing
outside to avoid drawing attention, the same restraint had to be applied to
sounds, too.

Excuses. The truth was that she was feeling
ashamed. As long as they had been in the middle of the wood, in the open air,
with the sun’s rays fading and under the deluge, she’d had the impression they
were equals, beside the fact that he seemed a bit more expert than her
regarding that kind of situation. But in that
hunting lodge
the balance
had changed. She was an intruder, now even without underwear; even though this
detail wasn’t visible, yet it increased her discomfort.

She took a couple of steps towards the door,
but before she reached it, it opened wide. Amelia backed off, as if she had
been surprised while doing something wrong.

Mike entered the room with an absent-minded
expression. It seemed that he hadn’t noticed her. He’d taken a shower, his hair
was still wet, but instead of wearing more comfortable clothes, he had black,
elegant trousers and a pure white, and possibly expensive, shirt. Like James
Bond, indeed. After closing the door, he turned and saw her. “Oh, here you
are.” He smiled at her, but looked tense.

Who knew why? Amelia hoped there wasn’t bad
news. Considering that they were isolated, it could be that he had noticed some
suspicious movement outside. The idea of abandoning that refuge and escaping
again made her shiver.

“Weren’t you hungry?” He pointed to the table,
where the dishes patiently waited to be eaten.

Perhaps it was just her mind that after all
that had happened during the day kept imagining menace everywhere. If there had
been a problem, Mike wouldn’t have worried about the spaghetti.

“I was waiting for you,” she heard her voice
say. She gestured with her right hand holding the shoes.

“I see you’ve got the taste for being
barefoot.” He hardly laughed at his own joke. His gaze was absent. Then he
headed for the kitchen corner and Amelia followed him.

They ate in silence. Mike was lost in his
thoughts. Instead, she always had her mouth too full to speak. She checked in
his direction a couple of times, but could never intercept his eyes.

When Amelia finished her spaghetti, he was
still halfway through. Given that he didn’t look very inclined to converse, she
resumed inspecting the environment around her. With fresh clothes and a full
stomach it was even more beautiful. “And this would be a hunting lodge …” She’d
said it inadvertently.

“Hm.”

“Is this the reason why you know the land so
well around here?” Maybe some small talk would melt the ice that had been created
between them, even if, to tell the truth, it was a monologue. “Do you go
hunting around here?”

“Hm.”

“Hm!” she remarked, but didn’t get any
apparent result. Mike kept lazily eating his pasta.

A few embarrassing minutes of silence
followed, during which Amelia wanted to rise and then go lounging on the
comfortable sofa, but she didn’t fancy moving away from him, and not just as a
matter of courtesy. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with him or which
sudden thought troubled him.

“We’d better disinfect those wounds.”

Put on the spot, she didn’t realise what he
was talking about, until she followed his gaze to her feet. “No, it’s nothing
serious.”

Mike stood up. He reached the cupboard and
took out a metal box with a red cross from a drawer. A first aid kit. “Come
here,” he said, without looking at her.

She followed him to the sofa, where he
gestured her to sit. Amelia accepted his invitation.

He took a seat at the other end. He opened the
box. He pulled out some cotton wool and poured a transparent liquid on it.
“Come on.” Those two words were accompanied by an amused glance.

Well, even if something was worrying him, he
wasn’t mad at her; in fact once more he was proving to be attentive to her
needs. With a renewed good mood Amelia raised her legs and laid them along the
sofa. Mike moved closer so that she could let her feet lie on his own legs.

“It’ll burn a bit.”

No, peroxide. She didn’t have the time to
complete that thought as she felt a fire make its way inside her flesh. “Ouch!”
She tried to move back, but Mike’s hand was firmly holding her ankle.

“Don’t behave like a child.” He laughed as he
caught Amelia’s indignation. “You’d better get a tetanus injection as soon as
possible. You never know.”

“I’m not behaving like a child.” Amelia
gritted her teeth, whilst he repeated the operation with her other foot.

“You are,” Mike retorted, with the tone of
someone certain of his own convictions. “Even if you do your best to hide
that.”

“What?” She was confused now. What was he
talking about?

“Let me guess,” he continued, passing the
cotton wool on each tiny scratch. His touches, after the initial burning, had
turned almost erotic. Amelia’s breath became short. “Raised in a good family,
maybe an only child, super-coddled. The fact you entered the police is a kind
of rebellion of which you’re very proud.”

Annoyed, Amelia withdrew her feet. “You don’t
know fuck-all about me.” She immediately regretted having been so rude.
Actually Mike had guessed right, at least concerning the first part. But she
had come to the police for some very different reasons.

“Sorry,” he hastened to say and became serious
again, whilst diverting his attention to the lights around the fireplace.

Her scorn vanished in a second, replaced by
apprehension and a strong sense of abandonment, caused by having interrupted
that pleasant contact. She slid closer to him, bending her legs sideways.

“No,
I
am sorry.” She waited for him to
turn to her. “It’s just that I don’t fancy digging up the past again.”

Mike nodded. “Right … I didn’t want to pry
into your business, I was just … making conversation.”

She grinned, getting a tired smile from him in
return. Perhaps that was the only reason for his sudden bad mood, tiredness.
Even if he looked much more accustomed than her to those situations, he was human,
or at least she hoped so. She grinned even more with that odd thought. “Anyway
you’re right, I’m an only child.”

Mike chuckled. “You get by very well having
been a spoiled child.”

“Oh, thank you!” she replied, playing along.
“Said by a spy, it’s certainly a compliment.”

He laughed harder.

“I understand that you are an MI5 agent.”

“Do you?” Mike’s blue eyes were studying her.

“And I’ve realised why you and your colleagues
haven’t informed the police about your investigations.”

He showed an interested expression, which
encouraged her to go on.

“They have nothing to do with the murders,
they concern the activities of Goldberg’s clients.” Amelia scrutinised him in
search of a micro-expression revealing how close she was to the truth, but
besides a constant smile, Mike’s face was one of a sphinx. “I bet it’s about
terrorism, it must be big stuff to involve your agency. Goldberg is the
intermediary of some boss from Al Qaeda.” She was shooting in the dark. Things
like this could be heard every day in the films and on TV. They might well be
true.

“Interesting theory,” he commented, without
changing his expression.

“Oh, come on …” Amelia sulked. “You could tell
me some tiny thing. I’m a trusted person, really. Well, I’m an officer of the
City of
London Police
. I
wouldn’t spread it around.”

Her last remark made him laugh out loud. He
wasn’t taking her seriously. No, actually, if he really was a spy, he couldn’t
say anything even to a policewoman. But what annoyed her was that he didn’t
want to say anything to
her
. She had the false perception that a bond
had been created between them, a sort of intimacy, enough to exchange
confidences. She found herself longing to tell him her story.
All of it
,
all the way. For some reason she felt he wouldn’t judge her. But on the other
hand, she wasn’t certain at all that he cared.

“What do we do now?”

“We wait.”

“For your friends?”

Mike nodded. He’d resumed
analysing
her, but with greater attention. His previous bad mood seemed to have vanished.

Amelia moved even closer. “And how long?” She
ran a finger on her lower lip and tilted her head to one side.

“At least a couple of hours.” He wouldn’t stop
staring at her, but was doing nothing else.

What the heck.

She plucked up courage and kissed him. But
right after, it occurred to her that he wasn’t returning her gesture at all,
and she backed off. She looked at him, undecided. Had she wrongly interpreted
his signals? “Sorry, I … don’t know what I was thinking.” She was feeling so
small.

“No, you don’t have to apologise.” He smiled
at her. “It’s me …” He looked torn. She was certain she could read desire in
his face, but he was restraining himself. Why?

“I get it,” she murmured, unable to hide her
disappointment. Better to back out immediately. A subsequent change of mind
would’ve been worse, surely more humiliating. “You’re tired.” Until now, she’d
thought that he behaved as a gentleman, but perhaps he wasn’t attracted to her
at all.

Mike swallowed noisily. He looked around, then
fixed her with his gaze, a new determination on his face. “I’m not that tired,”
he whispered, as his lips stretched.

Overwhelmed by desire, Amelia replied to that
invitation by literally jumping on him, without the slightest restraint.

One second later, he was removing her arms
from her sweater, whilst searching her mouth with his tongue. Then he went for
her trousers. To remove them, he had to withdraw from her and let her lie on
the sofa. They slipped away from her clean skin.

In the meantime, she had taken off her
T-shirt. Now she was lying naked in front of Mike, who was watching her with an
avid gaze, while he unbuttoned his shirt with exasperating slowness. There was
something sinister in the way he was studying her, but also exciting. How long
did he mean to take? Amelia decided the time had come for her to help him, but
preferred to turn her attention to his trousers.

“What a hurry.” He displayed a fake surprise
and raised her chin, which actually forced her to stop. Was he trying to drive
her crazy? Probably yes, somehow. Mike kissed her again, whilst completely
removing his shirt, but then all of a sudden, he backed off, leaving her with a
stabbing sensation of loss.

She wanted to say something, ask what was
wrong, but she didn’t dare to speak. She didn’t have the strength to do that.
However she was certain that her face was asking that question of him.

Mike replied by lifting her body from the
sofa. “We’ll be more comfortable over there.”

“Oh, the fabulous bed for orgies …” She almost
bit her tongue. She’d really said that.

Laughing, he covered the distance that
separated them from the other room, laid her on the bed and then dedicated himself
to removing the remainder of his clothes.

Finally.

Amelia could foretell what was waiting for
her, without diverting her attention from his body. He was quite slim, but as
she’d supposed, he had a muscular physique. Spies in the films were always in
good shape. However, his appearance conveyed a sense of being experienced. He
had scars of various sizes scattered across his skin. One was a bit more
evident; circular, it stood out on his chest, no doubt caused by weapon fire.

With slow gestures, he reached her. He kept
showing no particular hurry, although he couldn’t hide his excitement anymore.

“Who knows how many women you’ve brought to
this bed?” Amelia said, while he ran a hand on her belly, causing yet another
shiver to flit across her.

He looked her in the eye. “The only important
thing is that
you
are here now.”

She smiled. He’d said the right thing, of
course. And statements like that were what made him really dangerous, because
she could even fall in love with someone like him. And she knew well how it
ended up the few times she’d fell for someone. “You don’t need to flatter me,
I’m already on your bed.”

“Well, you know, I’m an old-fashioned man.”
Mike’s fingers had started climbing up her flank and then they caressed her
breast.

Amelia reached out to his neck, his nape, then
she drew him to her with a resolute move. “Shut up and fuck me.”

Joseph stopped crying. His little face,
streaked by tears, was relaxing as he lost consciousness.