Black Ice (24 page)

It was fast, it was short, and she sank back, breathless, only to have him start it all over again, building slowly, gently, into a greater intensity so that when he slid his fingers inside her she cried out this time, and the orgasm held for longer. As long as he seemed to want to hold it.

She collapsed back on the bed, panting, shaken, and reached out to touch his face. “No more,” she whispered. “I can’t…”

“Of course you can,” he whispered between her thighs. This time the simple touch of his tongue sent her into spasms, and the shocking feel of his fingers finished her. She thought she screamed, she who usually made love in discreet silence, but it didn’t matter, since he was prepared, covering her mouth with his hand, so that her cries fell into his skin and nowhere else.

And that final freedom made it complete. She didn’t have to hold anything back, she could scream, she could
cry, and could simply let go of her body and let it happen, let him do whatever he wanted, and she gave in willingly, ready to vanish into a thick maelstrom of unimaginable power.

When she fell back on the bed in a mindless, boneless heap he moved his hand from her mouth, falling back beside her, his heavy breathing matching her own, as she slowly started to come down from the inexpressible power of her climax. She lay on her back, eyes closed, listening to him, feeling him lying beside her, exactly where he should be, as her racing heart slowed infinitesimally.

“Sleep now, Chloe,” he whispered, his voice soft, soothing.

The lassitude vanished. Her eyes shot open, and she turned her head to look at him. He lay on his back, seemingly at ease, still fully dressed, the murky light drifting across him.

She spent one moment considering the possibilities. That he didn’t want her, had no need of her or her body, had only given her what he’d promised without giving anything of himself. And then she ignored it. If they were going to die, she wasn’t going to waste another moment on a rash of stupid insecurities.

She rose on one elbow, looking at him. Her muscles trembled slightly under her, but she ignored her unexpected weakness. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t open his eyes, the rat bastard. “Sleeping,” he said.

“No,” she said. “You’re not.” And she reached over and began unfastening the row of black shell buttons on his shirt.

One hand came up and caught hers, stopping her once more, but she wasn’t about to be distracted. “Let go of my hand,” she said. “We’re not finished here.”

“I am.”

She pulled her hand free, slid it down his stomach to touch him. Hard, pulsing, through the black pants. “No, you’re not,” she said, as she began to unbuckle his belt. “And neither am I.”

“Chloe…”

“Shut up,” she said ruthlessly, and she freed him, leaned over and put her mouth on him.

He was cool and smooth and silken, hard as ice in her mouth, and she had no idea where the pleasure came from that filled her as she let her mouth learn him. She only knew it made her tremble with its strength.

He’d stopped arguing. She reached a hand up to blindly rip at his shirt, but he was helping her now, unbuttoning it and pulling it off, and then his hands cupped her head, and he talked to her, whispered words in gutter French as she slowly sucked and pulled at him with her mouth, and she was sweating, shaking with the power of the response she was drawing from him, when he suddenly pulled her away, moving back against the head of the huge old bed, kicking the rest of his clothes onto the floor so that he was now as naked, as ready as she was.

“If you really want me, Chloe, you have to take me,” he said.

She sat back on her heels to look at him. And then she put her hands on his shoulders, the smooth, strong skin, and climbed on top of him, straddling him as he sat there on the bed.

She felt momentarily self-conscious. “I’ve never done this…” she said.

“Good.” He pulled her the rest of the way, positioning her over him, moving so that she could feel the head of his cock just touching her. “Now it’s up to you.”

She moved, just enough to let him enter her, and a look of almost exquisite pleasure crossed his face, and his quick intake of breath was so erotic that she pushed down, so that he filled her, so deep, so tight that she almost climaxed again.

He’d closed his eyes, but his long fingers were clutching her hips, and only the slightest pressure made her move, rise up, then slowly down again, and his guttural groan seemed to vibrate inside her own body. She rested her forehead on his shoulder as she moved, he moved, together, the rise and fall, deep and hard, and he was talking to her, telling her lies that she wanted to believe, all in French, words of praise and love and sex and the dark, spiraling need that suddenly flamed out of control as he exploded inside her. And without expecting it she lost the last tiny bit of self-control, following, and she was sobbing quietly against his skin,
shaking with the force of their joining, until she collapsed against him, gasping for breath.

She didn’t know what she expected. Not that he would turn, with her still tight in his arms, stretching her out beneath his strong body, and she knew that even though he’d climaxed inside her he was still hard, getting harder, and she didn’t think she could bear it, as she wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in deeper still, the words long gone.

She didn’t need to speak, he was kissing her again, fucking her again, and she simply gave into it, a holy wash of sin and redemption, and the snowy darkness closed around her, and time lost its meaning.

And there was nothing left between them but love, neither pure nor simple, but love it was.

C
hloe lay sprawled across his body, drained, exhausted, in a deeper, more abandoned sleep than he’d given her with his cocktail of drugs. She was practically boneless, so relaxed that he doubted even gunshots would wake her.

He couldn’t afford to test that theory. He’d lived to the ripe old age of thirty-four always being aware that failure was an option, and looking out for it. If a stray bullet managed to hit him then she was doomed, and he wasn’t about to let that happen. She was sexually infatuated with him, he accepted that with a strange combination of fatalism and gratitude, and he’d given himself over to her with single-minded dedication and a total lack of restraint. The result was that she was half-dead with pleasure and his own body still trembled occasionally from the aftermath.

She’d get over it. She was a practical young woman, a born survivor, and once he disappeared, either into the
murky netherworld of the Committee or the more solid answer of a grave, she’d be able to move on.

But she was never going to get better sex in her life.

It was the one selfish bastard thing he’d kept for himself. He hoped and prayed he’d spoiled her for anyone else. She’d sleep with other men, she’d marry and have children and orgasms with someone other than him. But no one would ever be able to make her body sing as he did, and no matter how ruthless that was, he rejoiced in it.

He let his hand trail down her arm. Her skin was smooth, flawless, with Gilles Hakim’s brutality nothing more than a distant nightmare. If he ever returned to the Committee, Thomason was going to scream bloody murder that he’d wasted that liquid platinum on a civilian. Fuck him. He’d give Chloe anything he could get away with giving her.

Including the safety and freedom that could only come from his complete absence in her life.

Monique was the last danger. He still didn’t know how she’d managed to survive, but she was the most unstable of anyone he’d dealt with while he was working for the Committee. The most unstable of those still alive, that was. People like her didn’t last long in the business—you don’t let personal feelings get in the way of the mission, you didn’t kill for anything other than a job, you didn’t hate, you didn’t love.

But Monique was so eaten up with hatred that she’d
managed to survive when no one else had. And instead of rebuilding her power base, she was hunting for Chloe Underwood, simply because she knew it would hurt him. Lure him out of hiding, so that she could kill him as well.

Once Bastien had stopped Monique there would be no more problem, at least for Chloe. Even if he had to go and cut Harry Thomason’s throat to make sure of it.

He knew when her heartbeat shifted, the faint shiver across her skin, and he knew her eyes fluttered open, even though her face was turned away from him. He was strangely attuned to her—they’d slept together only a few times and yet he knew her body, her pulses, the rhythm of her heartbeat and her breathing so well that his own matched hers. He let his hand dance along her arm, just the faintest of caresses, and he could feel her instant response. She wanted more. And, God help him, so did he.

“They’re coming soon,” he said gently. “We need to get dressed.”

She turned her head to look at him, and he could see the dried trace of tears on her face, the mussed hair, the total lack of makeup. She looked younger than ever, innocent in a way that had nothing to do with the inventive hours they’d just shared. Innocent deep in her heart, where he was nothing but an empty core.

“Do we have to?” Her voice was low, husky, sexy. He couldn’t believe he could be wanting her again, so
quickly. It was a good thing he was going to be either dead or gone in the next few hours. Now that he’d let down his guard it was more and more difficult to build it up again. And their lives depended on his well-honed talents, that had nothing to do with vulnerability at all.

“We have to,” he said, pushing her hair away from her face. She reached up and caught his hand, bringing it to her mouth, her lips. He had bite marks on his wrist, where he’d had her use her teeth rather than make the noises he was drawing from her, and she’d drawn blood. It gave him a deep, strange satisfaction. “If we’re to have any chance of survival we need to be ready.”

“Any chance? How likely is it?”

He shrugged. “Stranger things have been known to happen.”

“You could always lie to me.”

“Why?”

She pushed away from him, sitting up in the bed. She looked beautiful in the moonlight, no longer self-conscious. He’d marked her as well—love bites at the side of her breast, the roughness of his beard scratching her thighs. It would heal. They would both heal.

“If we’re going to die there’s no harm in telling me pretty lies,” she said. “In the end it won’t matter, and I’ll die happy.”

“I have no intention of letting either of us die. And then where would the lies get us?”

“If you manage to keep us alive then I promise I’ll
forget. Just tell me you care about me. If we’re going to die then how important is the truth?”

“It’s because we might die that the truth is particularly important,” he said, making no effort to touch her. “And telling you that I care about you is a waste of time. I wouldn’t have crossed the ocean, come out of hiding and tracked you down if you didn’t matter to me.”

Her smile was tentative, so sweet that if he had a heart it would have broken in it. “Then come up with a better lie. Tell me you love me.”

“You don’t need lies, Chloe,” he said. “I do love you.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. And then, of course, she didn’t believe him—he could see it in the doubtful expression in her beautiful brown eyes.

“I shouldn’t have asked you,” she said unhappily, starting to move away. “Just forget it…”

He pulled her back, off balance so that she fell against him, and he took her face in his two hands and held it very still while his eyes looked down into hers. Somber, truthful, painfully honest. “I love you, Chloe,” he said. “Which is the most dangerous thing I could do.”

“I’m not the one who wants to kill you,” she whispered.

“Maybe not today,” he replied with a faint smile. “At least that’s a change from our usual relationship.” He kissed her, lightly, and then pushed her away.

He didn’t give her a chance to say anything more, to
ask more questions. He couldn’t be sorry he told her—if he died he’d regret that he’d held that back from her. She didn’t believe him. He didn’t know if he was relieved or annoyed. She probably believed it was his soft heart that made him lie to her and tell her that he loved her. Even after the days they’d spent together, the things she’d seen him do, she still thought he was capable of kind lies. When kindness had no part of his being, and lies were only to get what he wanted.

They dressed quickly, in the dark. He couldn’t tell if the sky was beginning to turn light—sunrise was sometime after six, but before long it would soon be spreading over the hilly countryside. He wondered if the snow had stopped. Monique would want to be in and out before the full light of dawn, and he could tell they were nearby. Not by any kind of proof, just his instincts at full force.

He’d left the light on in the hall—the usual light an absent house owner would leave to scare off burglars. It went out, and a moment later he heard the muffled explosion with a kind of cold satisfaction.

“They’re here,” he said. “And they should be down one.”

“What do you mean?” He couldn’t see her in the newly minted darkness, but he recognized the faint thread of fear in her voice, one she was trying to hide from him.

“I sabotaged the security system. I knew they were
going to try to cut the power, but whoever actually did it isn’t going to survive to do anything more. Which leaves Monique and four others at most.”

She didn’t ask him how he knew that—she accepted it. If she continued being that unnaturally docile then they might have a fighting chance.

She was dressed in that shapeless outfit again, and yet he could see the clean, strong lines of her body beneath the soft fleece as if he could see through cloth. No woman should look that sexy in sweat clothes. No woman should look that sexy when people were trying very hard to kill him.

There was another muffled explosion, and the bright glow sent a rosy shadow into the room. He could see her face again, the doubt and worry that he wanted to kiss away. “What was that?”

“The guest house. Their information is top of the line—they’d know you were supposed to be there, and they would have gone there first. I’m hoping it took at least one more of them, but I can’t count on that.”

“The guest house is burning?” she said, moving toward the window. “Everything I care about is in there….”

He caught her around the waist, pulling her back into the shadows. Monique and her cohorts would be stationed around the house, watching the windows for any sign of occupation. It wouldn’t take much to tip them off. “Things can be replaced,” he said. “I need to go.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “You need to go? You’re leaving me?”

“You’ll just hold me back. You’re going to need to hide while I go hunting. I can work better if I don’t have to worry about you at the same time. If I succeed I’ll come back for you.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then, my sweet,
au revoir.
I’ll be going straight to hell, and I don’t expect to see you there,” he said, his voice light.

“Then you’re not leaving me.”

He should have known that was coming. She was fully dressed except for her shoes, and she had a stubborn expression on her face, and he knew that he had one chance and one chance only of keeping her alive.

In the shadowy darkness of the bedroom it was easy enough for him to pick up the supplies he’d stashed there earlier. He knew her better than she knew herself, knew she’d object, and he was ruthless enough to do what needed to be done. He came up to her in the darkness, and for the first time she didn’t flinch, didn’t back away. She would kiss him if he asked her to, she would take her clothes back off and lie down on the bed once more, and he only wished life could be that simple. But it never was.

“I’m sorry, love,” he said, cupping her face with one hand. Slapping the duct tape over her mouth before she had any idea what was happening, capturing her hands
as they flew up to fight him, wrapping the rope around them. She was struggling now, but he was much bigger and stronger than she was, and he had her down on the floor, tying her quickly, efficiently despite her struggles. He didn’t need to see her eyes to know they were blazing with fury. Maybe it would help her get over him. Especially when she was faced with the worst part of this.

He hauled her upright, and she tried to hit him with her bound hands, but it threw her off balance, and he caught her before she fell. He should have just hit her, knocked her out, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that to her again. Even if, in fact, it would have been a kindness.

“Don’t fight me, Chloe,” he whispered in her ear. “I have no choice. When I’m finished with them I’ll set you free. Either that, or someone will find you before long. As long as it’s not Monique.”

She wasn’t in the mood to listen, and he didn’t expect it. He picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and left the room, nothing more than a shadow on the edge of dawn.

She’d stopped fighting, a small grace, until she began to realize where he was taking her. Down two flights of stairs, into the pitch-dark confines of the basement. He could feel the tremors begin to run through her body as the claustrophobia took hold once more, but he ignored it. There was always a price to be paid, and when he opened the crawl space he’d broken into ear
lier that day her struggles became so fierce that he could no longer hold her, and she fell onto the concrete floor with a muffled cry.

He couldn’t afford to waste time with gentleness. He pushed her into the tiny crawl space—there was just enough room for her, none for him, but he could touch her, put his hand on her cold, damp forehead, run his thumb against her temple in a useless, soothing gesture. “It’s the best I could come up with, Chloe,” he whispered. “Close your eyes and don’t think about the darkness. Think about how you’re going to kick my ass when you get out of here.”

She was trembling, and he doubted she even heard his words. He could see just enough to know her eyes were wide with panic, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Instead he leaned down and put his lips against the silver tape that covered her mouth, a strange, muffled kiss that he couldn’t resist. And for a moment her shaking stilled, and she leaned toward him, into the kiss.

“I’m sorry,” he said. And moving back, he put the solid door back in place, closing her in there, in the coffinlike space with no light, closing her into her worst fear.

He half expected to hear her kicking at the panel, struggling. The silence was deep and cold as death. He kissed the wood, a soundless goodbye, and went out into the predawn air, ready to kill once more.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She didn’t dare move, terrified that she would do something that might endanger Bastien. She sat huddled, trussed and gagged in the dark, tiny space and tried to keep from screaming. Knowing that no scream would be heard.