Moonrise (27 page)

The world was past saving. The meal was finished, followed by espresso and a tiny glass of amaretto. “I shouldn’t drink coffee so late at night,” Win murmured with a gentle, lover’s smile. “It keeps me up. But I expect I won’t have to worry about that.”

James stared at him, wanting to scream, wanting to beg. “No,” he said. “You won’t have to worry about sleeping tonight.”

Win nodded. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we? It’s a glorious night. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Jamey?”

No one ever called him Jamey, but Win managed to get away with it. “I wouldn’t mind.”

They walked the perimeter of the property, he and Win, in perfect, companionable silence, knowing each other too well to speak. They climbed the outside stairs to the second-floor porch, and when they reached the top Win turned to look at him, and the moonlight was like a silver halo.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why, James?” he murmured gently.

“No. I don’t really want to know.”

Win smiled. “You never cease to amaze me, James. I wish things had been different.”

“So do I.”

“I’m glad it’s you, you know,” he murmured, his voice low and soothing. “I’ve loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. Put your hands on me, my boy.”

For a long moment he hadn’t moved, staring into the face of his mentor, his father. Win reached down and caught his hands in a lover’s grip, bringing them up to cup his lined neck. “Use your hands on me, Jamey. Do it. Do it now.”

And James had broken his neck, killing him instantly.

His voice came to her from a distance, cold and deadly, and she’d almost forgotten her question. “I broke his neck first, Annie. As he knew I would. Fast, painless, efficient.”

She absorbed that knowledge with silent horror. “Then if it’s all the same to you, that’s how I’d prefer to die,” she said politely, like a young child asking for a sweet.

“I’ll see what I can do about it.” There was no missing the undertone of savagery in his voice now, and he jerked the wheel toward a small, brightly lit building, pulling the car to a stop.

He turned to look at her. “This place looks
secluded enough. I’ll see if I can get us a room.” He opened the door, then glanced back at her. “You can make a run for it if you want. The moon should set before long—I might not be able to find you.”

“I’ll wait,” she said.

His smile was brief and cool, and he disappeared into the inn, leaving the car still running.

It would have been simple enough for her to jump into the other seat, to take off into the night, leaving him stranded. She’d never driven a British car, but the roads were narrow and empty, and most likely she’d survive.

Until someone else caught up with her. Like the man who had killed clancy. Or one of the men who had come for her last night. She couldn’t count on Martin to save her. She couldn’t count on anyone.

She didn’t move. The only person who’d been capable of protecting her was James. If he was going to be the one to kill her, so be it.

He wanted to kill her. He wanted to do exactly what he’d told her he wouldn’t—he wanted to wrap his fingers around her throat and choke her until she screamed.

He’d never been so angry in his entire life. The rage suffused his body so that he shook with it, and he could only be glad he was able
to get out of the car, away from her, before he lost his control entirely.

It took a few minutes and the cool, biting night air for the irony of it to hit him. He was furious with her for thinking he could kill her.

The knowledge that he might have to kill her had never been far from his mind since she’d shown up on his doorstep looking like a long-lost dream. He’d known that it could end up this way.

And yet the calmness with which she accepted the inevitable … the way she looked at him out of those damnable, knowing eyes, and thought him capable of making love to her one night and strangling her the next …

And he could do it, he reminded himself. He was a cold-blooded bastard, and she had seen him clearly. He would kill her because he had no choice. It was a fitting penance that she would look at him out of those haunting eyes and know what was coming.

She was still waiting for him, as he knew she would be. “They’re almost empty,” he said, climbing in. “I had them give us a room in the carriage house. We’ll be away from everyone.”

“How nice,” she said faintly.

He wanted to goad her. He wanted her to scream at him, demand to know how he could be such a soulless monster. “They think we need solitude for boisterous sex.”

“Won’t they be surprised,” she murmured. “Tell me, James, was there ever a time when you couldn’t do it? When your orders were just too sickening and you couldn’t bring yourself to kill? Couldn’t get it up, so to speak?”

“No,” he said.

“And does fucking me make the slightest bit of difference?” she persisted.

“No,” he said.

“Well” she said brightly, “I can think of only one thing I regret at this moment.”

He waited. For her hatred, her fear, her disgust to brim over. Waited for it with a twisted kind of longing. But she said nothing, forcing him to ask.

“What do you regret, Annie?”

“That I’m about to see my father again. I’m not particularly in the mood to,” she said with icy calm.

She managed to startle him. “Trust me, Annie. You won’t be going to the same place.”

The room was small, cozy, the gas fire sending out waves of heat on the cold, deadly night. There was one double bed beneath the eaves, and the wind howled outside, like a thousand lost souls. She watched him turn on the lights against the gathering darkness; she watched him move with calm, soothing grace.

He had touched her, taking her arm solicitously
as he took her upstairs to their room in the carriage house of the old inn. He settled her comfortably on the sofa, wrapping a cover around her as she shivered, unable to help herself. He lit the fire, talking to her in a soft, soothing voice. Telling her about his childhood in Ireland, his mother, sweet and hardworking, possessed of a fierce temper and a fiercer faith. She sat and listened in a daze as he moved around the room, readying it.

“I’ve ordered us up a dinner,” he said. “And a decent bottle of wine. It’ll help you relax.”

“I’m relaxed,” she said, and oddly enough, it was true. She felt no anxiety, no impatience. She simply waited for him to put his hands on her, as she knew he would.

He turned on the radio, and the music was soft and lilting, Irish music. Haunting. Death was all around in Ireland, James had said. And she could hear the banshees outside her window, calling to her, waiting for her.

He met the maid at the door, refusing to let her in when she brought the dinner, and Annie knew he didn’t want any witnesses who could identify her body when it was found. She didn’t mind. She sat, peaceful in the cozy room, as he set the table, opened the bottle of wine, and poured her a glass. He didn’t pour one for himself, she noticed as she sat
across from him, his hands brushing gently against her as he held the chair for her.

The wine was dry and wonderful. “You aren’t having any?” she asked him.

“I don’t drink when I’ve got a job to do,” he said, and if she hadn’t known better she would have thought he was taunting her.

“Very wise,” she murmured. “I want you to do your best work.”

“I plan to. Eat your dinner, Annie. There’s nothing better than Irish lamb.”

She ate. Oddly enough, she had an appetite for her last meal. She drank as well—James’s taste in wine rivaled her father’s legendary excellence, and the brandy that followed was smooth and crisp.

Perhaps the wine and brandy weren’t the wisest move on her part, but she was past the point of wisdom. She looked across the table at James, at his untouched plate. “You remind me of a vampire,” she said.

“Do I?”

“You never eat. And you feed off the blood of innocence.”

“Are you innocent, Annie?”

“I’m not dead yet either,” she snapped, finding her temper had returned.

“True enough,” he murmured.

“How many people have you killed, James?”

“I told you, I don’t remember.”

“How many more people are you going to kill?”

“Apart from you, Annie? I don’t know. As many as I have to, I suppose.”

She looked at him. At his dark, austere face, his bleak eyes. There was gray in his hair, she realized. In the time she’d been with him he’d gone from old to young to old again. Older than time.

She pushed the table away from her, and the dishes rattled. She was a little drunk, she supposed, but given the circumstances she was entitled. “Then do it,” she said. “Foreplay seems to be greatly overrated in these circumstances. Just do it.” And she sank to her knees, her head bowed, waiting for him.

She felt him move, his shadow looming over her. She closed her eyes, feeling easy tears start, and she hated them. Hated him.

He sank down in front of her, kneeling, and slid his long hand around her neck, under her hair. Tipping her head back with effortless ease, so that she had no choice but to look up at him, as the damnable tears slid hotly across her face. Oddly enough, she felt no fear as he looked down at her, his hands touching, caressing, ready to finish it all. “Any final words from the doomed lady-in-waiting?” he murmured, still mocking. He reached out a thumb to brush the tears away from her face,
but she had no doubt the large hand that still cradled her neck could take care of the job.

A thousand cries of anger and despair rushed through her. But there was only one thing she could say.

“I love you, James.”

His fingers tightened almost reflexively, and she felt the blackness begin. She took a deep breath, steeling herself, only to find herself sprawling back on the hardwood floor where he’d flung her.

He was halfway across the room, breathing deeply, glaring at her. “I ought to fucking kill you,” he said furiously. “You stupid little bitch, if I had any sense I’d cut your throat and have done with it.”

She stared at him in shock, unable to move, even when he spun back, so fast she barely saw him, and caught her arm, yanking her up tightly against him. “Damn you damn you damn you,” he said, a muttered litany that no longer sounded Irish, no longer sounded Texan. It was simply pain. “I can’t let you do this to me.”

“Do what, James?” she whispered, shock and confusion knocking her sideways. She’d been ready to die. Ready to die at his hands. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to live.

He didn’t answer. He simply caught his
hands in her hair, holding her against him, and she felt him shake.

She didn’t know what to do. Her arms came up, around him, and her fear, her acceptance had vanished, and she was alive again, filled with a dark, moonlit fury.

He tried to disentangle himself, to push her away, but her emotions had erupted, and she fought back, her hands hard and angry, refusing to let him pull away. He shoved her, and she fell back, knocking the light over and plunging the room into murky darkness, lit only by the chill silver light of the Irish moon.

“What’s the matter, James?” she demanded, her voice harsh and breathless. “Can’t you do it? Is it a different matter when it’s someone you’ve known most of your life? Is it a little harder to kill someone you’ve made love to? Or is it just because I know what you’re going to do and you can’t deal with the knowledge in my eyes?”

“I can’t deal with your flapping tongue,” he shot back, making no effort to come closer.

“Then finish it, James,” she said fiercely. “You’ve killed for me. You’ve killed the man who was a father to us both. Why don’t you finish the job?”

“If you don’t shut up,” he said viciously, “I will.”

“Do it!” She pushed away from the wall and
crossed the room. He didn’t move as she came right up to him, and her anger was too great to let the fear back in. He was staring down at her with cold, undisguised rage, and she knew if she didn’t push him now, to the very limits, she would never be safe again.

“I’m not afraid of you, James,” she said, and her voice didn’t waver.

“Prove it.”

She went cold. The stakes were so high, beyond life and death, beyond love and redemption. They were fighting for his soul, and for hers. “What do you want from me?”

“You said you love me? Prove it. Put your hands on me, Annie. Put your mouth on me. Now.”

S
he was a woman who hated oral sex. Who made love in the dark, and each lover had been carefully programmed by her father to be just what she expected. She was a woman who lay passively beneath a man and allowed him to pleasure her.

She looked at the man who could kill her, the man who could destroy her far more easily by simply dying himself, and she put her hands on the wide leather belt at his waist, fumbling at the brass buckle.

He didn’t move. He let her struggle with the belt, her fingers clumsy, trembling, as she pulled the leather free from the belt loops of his faded black jeans.

His body was hard, hot beneath her hands. Outside, the banshees wailed; inside, Annie Sutherland sank to her knees in front of him, sliding her trembling hands up under the loose black T-shirt.

His skin was smooth, warm, silky. She pressed her mouth against his stomach and felt the pulses leap beneath his flesh. She put her tongue out tentatively, tasting him, and he was warm, salty, male.

She glanced up at him, hoping for approval, for reaction, but he simply stood there, looking over her head, his hands at his sides as she pressed her face against him.

She sat back on her heels, suddenly nervous, and he looked down at her. “Keep on, Annie,” he taunted. “Show me how much you love me.”

She wanted to hit him. “Take off your shirt,” she said in a harsh voice. To her utter amazement he did as she ordered, pulling it over his head and tossing it in the corner. And then he leaned back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, watching her once more.

I can’t do this
, she thought, blindly reaching for the snap of his jeans. Her hands dropped in her lap.
He can’t expect this of me. I don’t want …