Standing in the Shadows (32 page)

He stared at her bare breasts, bright streaks of color in his cheeks. "You're pissed at me, and you're coming onto me at the same time. What's that all about, Erin? What's the catch?"

She smiled at him, merciless. "It's a mystery," she said. "You've got to take your chances." She shucked her panties and walked naked in the burning spotlight of his gaze to the bed. She slid between the sheets. Looked at him. Lifted a questioning eyebrow.

He shook his head. "I don't know what to do next," he said. "I can't figure you out."

"So why don't you stop trying, and get your clothes off?"

His shoulders jerked in silent laughter. He opened up his duffel, which she had not even noticed him bring in with him. He pulled out one of his squealers and mounted it swiftly onto the door.

He sauntered over to the bed. He stared at her as he placed his gun on the bedside table and started yanking off his clothes. Seconds later he stood before her naked, smoothing a condom over his jutting erection. She scooted over to make room for him.

He shook his head. "This thing is even narrower than a twin bed. Do you want to be on top, or on the bottom?"

He loomed over her. She stared at the shadows that limned every curve and cut of his muscular, powerful body. He emanated a blast of fierce, macho energy that infuriated and excited her at the same time.

"Oh, go ahead. You be on top, Connor. Why fool ourselves?"

He wrenched the quilt down and shoved her flat on her back. "Where the hell did that crack come from?" he demanded.

Oops. Very smooth move. Now he was furious again. She placed her hands against his scorching chest, her breath quickening. "I don't know. It just comes to me. I can't help it."

He put his thigh between her legs and shoved them open. She was already wet, and he hadn't even touched her. She had transformed in the last thirty-six hours, and Connor was the catalyst. He was so volatile and bossy and sexually insatiable. He didn't politely disappear when she climaxed, like her fantasy Connor had. He stayed with her, his arms jealously tight. Taking up space, demanding attention.

She almost wanted him to shove himself inside her with crude force so her restless, prickly anger could be justified. She was hungry for his strength, his heat. Breathless with anticipation. Maddened.

"What?" she snapped. "Come on, Connor. Aren't you going to show me who's lord and master?"

He cupped her face in his hands. "Is that what you want?"

She wiggled against him. "Since when has what I wanted mattered to you?"

"That's not fair. I may have pushed you around about your millionaire, but I never forced you in bed. You came to me, remember?"

Did she ever. It was maddening, how much she wanted him, and how much power he wielded over her because of it. "What are you waiting for, Connor? Now who's being the tease?" she demanded.

"You're too angry," he said calmly. "You're setting me up."

She thrashed beneath him. "Oh, please. For God's sake," she flared. "I'm not that treacherous!"

"You don't even know how treacherous you are. This is wilderness territory. For both of us."

"Connor—"

"Tell me exactly what you want, Erin," he said. "Don't set me up to be the asshole, because it's not fair. If you want me to be rough, I'll be rough."

That did it. His arrogant, self-righteous tone infuriated her. She shoved at him. "Oh, don't do me any goddamn favors!"

He seized her wrists and wrenched them up over her head. "OK. I think I've nailed the vibe you want tonight, sweetheart. No favors. That can be arranged." He let out his breath in a sharp sigh when he slid his fingers between her legs and found her wet. "God, look at you. You are such a wild thing, Erin Riggs. You just can't wait, can you?"

"No!" she snapped. "So hurry."

He was still laughing when he kissed her, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth. She could barely move. She was stretched out, every muscle straining beneath his weight, arms yanked up high.

He took himself in hand, pressed himself against her, and slid just the tip of himself inside her. He teased her with tiny, teasing thrusts, bathing himself with her slick moisture, and then drove inside her. She clenched around him with a muffled cry. He let her move just enough to find her body's answer to his sensual invasion, the tight, clinging demands of her secret flesh upon his thick shaft.

Finally he gave her what she wanted, grinding his hips against her. Each deep, heavy thrust pushed her closer to the resolution of the enigma burning in her mind. She needed all his strength for ballast to drive her toward the answer to all this aching, screaming tension. She struggled closer, straining up, almost there—

"No."

Her eyes popped open. He shifted, and lifted the pressure away from where she so desperately needed it. She clenched her legs around him to draw him deeper. "Connor, I need this! What—"

"No favors."

She almost screamed with rage. "Are you punishing me?"

"No favors, Erin. You'll come when I let you come. Not before."

"Why are you doing this?" She thrashed wildly beneath him.

He subdued her effortlessly. "Because I can."

"I hate you," she hissed. "You evil, controlling bastard. This isn't fair. I give you an inch and you take a mile. Every damn time."

He shook his head. "No. Give me an inch, and I take everything."

There was absolutely nothing she could do. She was spread so helplessly open beneath him that there was no way to clench herself around him and work herself to climax of her own volition. She was at his mercy.

Three more times, he brought her to the brink and then drew back. When he began again the fourth time, she was too exhausted to thrash and writhe. She just squeezed her eyes shut and trembled. He leaned down and kissed her. "Beg me," he said.

"Forget it," she murmured. "Bastard. I'd rather die."

"Just beg me, and I'll give it to you," he coaxed. "It's worth it."

She opened her eyes, stared into the pure, hypnotic green depths of his eyes, and he pulled her in. "Please," she whispered.

He released her arms and surged against her so deep and strong it almost hurt. But the pain was just a glowing delineation around a deeper, hotter pleasure that grew and swelled until it broke, sending all the tension he had wrought with such cruel skill crashing down on her.

Violent spasms of pleasure jerked and shuddered through her.

She didn't open her eyes for a long time afterwards. It was the only privacy she could maintain, with her body so penetrated, his eyes so intent upon her face. He waited patiently, curved over her body.

The ripples widened, spread, softened to her chest, her throat, her eyes, and suddenly she was weeping, a soothing rush like a summer rainstorm. The enigma had been solved, but the solving of it had uncovered an even bigger mystery, one that mere love games could not resolve. She draped her arms around his neck, pulling his face to hers. "That's enough of that," she whispered. "Be gentle with me now."

He stiffened, and hid his face against her neck. "Oh, no," he muttered. "Erin, I thought this was what you wanted. I thought—"

"I did. I did want it," she reassured him. She grabbed a hank of his hair and pulled him up so she could pet the anxious furrow between his brows with her fingertip. "And you gave it to me. And now I want something different, that's all. No big deal. Just ease off."

"Did I hurt you? Do you want me to stop?"

She kissed him. "Would you relax? There is no hidden message here. No code to decipher. I do not want to stop. Read my lips, OK?"

He jerked his head away, but she wound the hair around her fingers, trapping him. "You are so fucking complicated," he snapped.

She sighed. "Just keep making love to me. Gently. And stop being ridiculous and anxious. What's complicated about that?"

He pried her fingers out of his hair and pressed his face against her neck, burrowing closer. "I just want to please you."

She was moved by the ragged tremor in his voice. "Oh, but you do," she soothed him. "Didn't you feel what happened? What you did to me? It was intense, but it worked. Just like you knew that it would."

"I thought I went too far," he admitted. "With that stupid lord and master crap. I thought I'd screwed up."

"No. You didn't. I trust you, Connor." Her words softened to a senseless croon as she covered his hot face with kisses. She moved beneath him, caressing his shaft with every delicate, clinging muscle inside her sheath. It was a lazy, licking, tender kiss between their sexes. Their lips joined to match it, hungry for sweet reassurance.

Their power games had transformed into something infinitely more beautiful and treacherous. His dominating energy was rendered down to desperate, shaking need. Now she was the strong one who clasped and held, with the power to give or to withhold. But there was no question of withholding. He was inside her mind, he was everywhere. Her heart glowed for him. Every part of her was liquid and soft, merging with him, surging and heaving like the sea.

Much later, he murmured and lifted himself off her body, and stumbled away into the dark to dispose of the condom. She didn't have the strength to turn her head and tell him where she kept the trash basket. He lifted the quilt, slid into bed again, rolling her on top of him.

"I'll squish you," she protested, without much force.

"Nah. This is another one of my classic Erin fantasies. Sleeping with your naked body on top of me. Your hair draped all over me, your hand against my chest, your breath mixing with mine. Your skin…"

The rest of his whispered words blended into her dreams like a swirl of melting honey.

Kurt Novak and Georg Luksch were not worth this pain and humiliation. They had used him, and thrown him away. He could feel it.

The police flung Martin into the holding cell, and the gate clanged shut. He fell heavily to his knees, retching.

Just his luck, that he should get rough, brutal types for his interrogation, but he had been prepared. He had been very strong. He had told the police exactly what his employers had ordered him to say. He had made the police torture it out of him, as instructed. He had held back as long as he could before finally gasping out where he had last seen Novak and Luksch, and when. He had been desperate, very convincing.

Then he had repeated the same story, no matter how hard they hit him. He had been strong, but there was no one to bear witness to his loyalty. Novak and Luksch would never know or care how brave he had been for them. No one would ever know. He was sure of this.

He was disposable, and they had thrown him away.

His bosses had told him that if he did this for them, that his parents and his uncle would be spared, and that two million euro would be transferred to a private numbered account for him in a bank in Zurich upon his release. His very rapid release. We own the judges, they had told him. It will be arranged quickly, more quickly than the last time. We need you, Martin. That was why we arranged your escape with Luksch and Novak in America. Only you are strong enough for this task. Do not fear. Be strong, Martin. You will be rewarded.

Rewarded. He laughed, but the pain of his cracked ribs stopped him. He huddled in the fetal position on the frigid concrete and wiggled his teeth, one by one. He would lose some of them. The left front, and the incisor. His mouth was full of blood. His tongue ran over the smooth capsule they had soldered to a filling in his back molar.

A microchip, they had told him. So that we can always find you, always rescue you. Just a precaution. It will do you no harm. It is for your protection, Martin. Trust us.

He suppressed another laugh, wiggling the loose molar with his tongue. Two million euro could replace lost teeth, he told himself. Two million euro could make up for a great many things.

But not all, something whispered. Six months in an American prison, and now this. He was shrinking, curled up on a floor that smelled of urine and vomit. Smaller and smaller until he was the size of a child's doll, with tiny balls like shriveled raisins.

Too small to be seen by the bank personnel in Zurich.

He pressed his tongue against the smooth capsule and wondered if they could listen to him through it, if there could be a microphone so small. He started, hysterically, to laugh again, even though every jolt of his diaphragm hurt like knives stabbing.

"Fuck you," he muttered, just in case they could hear him. And then, for good measure. "Fuck you both. Fuck Kurt Novak. Fuck Georg Luksch. Fuck your mothers, your grandmothers. Fuck you all."

It happened immediately, as if in answer to his words. A
pop
inside his mouth, a burning. A sharp, bitter taste, and his heart froze in his chest. Arrested, in midbeat.

The pain was huge, but he felt no surprise. He understood a million things in that timeless moment that his heart ceased to beat. The choices that had led him to this stinking concrete floor. The boredom and greed and restless anger that had gotten him mixed up with that murderous scum. The many cruel things that he had done with them, for them. It raced through his mind, together with all the choices that he could have made, and had not.

He could have married Sophie, joined his uncle's wine business. Sunday mornings strolling in the village square, he with their young son on his shoulders, she with the baby carriage, their infant daughter asleep beneath her pink blanket. A splendid lunch, and then lazy afternoon sex with his wife while the children napped. A game of cards at the club, a beer with the friends watching soccer on TV Weddings, baptisms, funerals.

The ordinary seasons of a blameless life.

He watched it spin by, until real time caught up with him. The iron fist closed, and crushed his heart out of existence, and what could have been and what truly was were both extinguished.