Naked Risk (Shatterproof #3) (4 page)

Chapter Seven –
Catherine

Watts
called fifteen minutes later and said he was waiting outside for me. I went down to meet him.

He had parked at the entrance to my building, standing there holding
the passenger side door for me. He wore jeans and a t-shirt with a light jacket. His clothes were rumpled. He still had bed-head, the kind that was obviously splashed with water in an effort to get it under control, but failing. His eyes looked tired.

“Are you okay?” I said, throwing my arms around his waist, so glad to see him. I felt something press against my chest. I figured it was a gun, but didn’t say anything.

“I’m fine. Just a little tired.” He kissed my cheek. “You smell so good. It’s waking me up a little. Come on, get in. We’re going to my house.” He pulled away from me and put his hand on the car door.

It was then that I noticed what he was driving.
I’d been so glad to see him that I hadn’t noticed. “Where’s your car?”

“I’m driving this
rental for a few days,” he said, shrugging it off. I figured it had to do with his work, so I didn’t ask any follow-ups.

During the hour drive, he explained to me what we’d be doing once we got there.

At one point I asked, “Why were you so close when I called?”

He kept his eyes straight ahead. “You don’t want to know.”

“Work stuff?”

He nodded. “I can’t give you any details. It just puts you in more danger, especia
lly now that you’re going to face a polygraph.”

“Do you think it’s really that random
or….?”

“I don’t know,” Watts said. “I would think if they suspected anybody for anything, they would go directly to them and not conduct widespread testing like this. But we can’t be too careful.”

We drove in silence for several minutes and I thought about what he’d told me Tuesday morning—the dangers I faced, the decision I had to make, all of it. I knew he wasn’t making any of it up, but now that I was feeling the pressure it was more real than ever.

None of the emotions I felt from that realization made me
second-guess my wanting to be with Watts. And as I sat there in the passenger seat, watching him drive, I realized that’s exactly where I wanted to be. Not there in the car, specifically. Not anywhere in particular, in fact. The place didn’t matter. Where I wanted to be, now and forever, was next to Watts, no matter where we were.

. . . . .

“Good morning, Andrew,” the voice came from his next-door neighbor’s porch. I looked up as I got out of the car and saw an elderly woman sitting in a wooden rocking chair.

Watts had come around to my side of the car and opened the door for me. He
was closing it as he replied, “Morning, Mrs. Woodall.”

“Nice day not to be working
,” she said.

Watts placed a hand on my elbow, leading me, almost pushing me toward the front steps to his townhouse.

“Perfect day,” he said. “Enjoy it.”

“Are you having a daytime date?” she asked. “This is the first time I’ve seen you with a woman. Is that right or have I forgotten?”

Wow, this woman didn’t hold back at all. As secretive as Watts had always been, it surprised me that he lived next to someone who sat on her front porch blurting out questions about his personal life.

Watts slipped the key into
his front door and turned it. The door swung open.

I felt kind of bad for the lady. She clearly meant no harm. Still, it was a bit unnerving for me, and probably a hundred times more so for Watts.

“This is Allison,” he said, surprising me more than a little, my head snapping toward his direction. “You’ll probably be seeing a lot of her in the future.”

I waved. “Hi.”

The woman waved back. “Well, that’s good to know. You two enjoy your day.”

“And you as well, Mrs. Woodall.”

I waved to her again and smiled as I entered Watts’s house.

He closed the door and locked up, shaking his head.

“She seems nice,” I said. “And why the hell am I Allison?”

He emptied his pockets into a small bowl on a table next to the front door. “She is. She’s just a little
too
nice sometimes. Trust me, she doesn’t need to know anything about you, and especially about us.”

“Doesn’t respect the ‘privacy code’?” I said in jest.

Watts cut his eyes at me. “Doesn’t
know
about the code.”

“Then that’s your fault.”

He smiled for the first time all morning. “I know it’s hard for you to turn it off, but now is not the time to be all cute and flirty with me. We have some work to do.”

“Hey,” I said, forcing a disappointed and rejected look on my face. “I’m trying to lighten the mood here. Blow off a little steam.”

“There will be plenty of time for blowing things later.” His crooked smile almost made me drop to my knees right there in his foyer.

. . . . .

He led me down to his basement where he told me to take a seat in an uncomfortable, old wooden chair that was next to a desk. Watts went over to a large metal cabinet and pulled out a canvas bag. He placed it on the desk and unzipped it, then looked at me as I looked up from the bag to meet his eyes.

“Polygraph machine,” he said.

“I’ve taken one before.”

He smiled. “Well, now you’re about to do it again.”

For several minutes, he hooked me up to the machine and explained as he went.

“I assume you know what this is,” he said, placing a blood pressure cuff around my left bicep.

“Yes.”

He took two rubber tubes out of the canvas bag and placed them around my lower chest, just below my breasts. “These measure
the rate and depth of your respiration.”

Then two plastic clips on two fingers. “These measure your skin moisture.
When you’re nervous, you sweat, and it conducts electricity.”

I was silent as he switched
on the machine on the desk, until a question struck me. “Why do you have this?”

Without looking at me, he said, “When I first got here, a lot of what we did—what
I
did—involved detaining and questioning suspects. I haven’t used this in years, though.”

“Why not?”

He sat down. “Intel gathering has changed. At least for us, it has.”

I was becoming accustomed to his vague answers regarding his work, and was learnin
g fast not to ask any follow-up questions.

He placed a roll of paper on the prongs and fed it through, under the little needles that scrawled the resulting lines on the paper.

Watts’s face was serious, his eyes searching mine. “Ready?”

I nodded.

“I need you to look straight ahead. First question: Is your name Catherine Marie Kolb.”

“Yes.” I couldn’t help but let my eyes dart over to his face.

“Interesting,” he said. “That’s a lie but this indicates that you’re telling the truth.”

“It’s who I really am,” I said.

Watts nodded and smiled. “I know.”

He went on to ask me a series of questions that were simply factual: how old was I, did I live in D.C., do I drive a
2002 Volkswagen Jetta, questions he knew the answers to so that he could calibrate the machine.

Then he turned quickly to the difficult ones.

“Are you associated with anyone who is not a U.S. citizen?”

“No.”

“Have you been outside the United States in the last ten years?”

“Yes.”

He paused for a moment, then asked, “The last two times you missed work, were you really ill?”

“Yes.”

I looked at Watts again, quickly glancing at his reaction. He was looking at the needles on the paper and grinning at my response.

“
Are you currently involved in a romantic and/or sexual relationship with anyone?”

I hesitated longer than I had wanted to, but got my answer out as quickly as I could. “No.”
I was curious as hell what the readout was saying, but Watts wasn’t telling me. I looked at him and his eyes shot to mine, but he didn’t say anything. I asked him, “What did that one say?”

“Can’t tell you just yet,” Watts replied flatly, and moved on to the next question. “
Have you ever known anyone who committed a felony?”

“No.”

“Have you ever stolen anything other than office supplies from work?”

“No.”

“Have you ever stolen office supplies from work?”

I hesitated, thinking,
Who hasn’t
? But I lied: “No.”

“Have you ever known, or do you now know, anyone who has taken the life of another human being?”

“No.”

I heard Watts’s breathing change, but detected none in mine.

“Are you nervous right now?” he asked.

“No,” I lied.

“Are you currently sitting in a basement?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever used another name?”

“No.”

“Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“Do you enjoy reading fiction?”

“Yes.”

Watts paused for a long time. It seemed like more than a minute, which is a long time to sit in silence. I resisted looking over at him.

“Are you in possession of any information that the FBI would find useful in solving crimes
relating to the security of the United States?”

“No.”

He stood. My eyes flitted toward him, looking up at him, wondering what was coming next.

“You passed,” he said, and I smiled. Stepping around me he said, “I’ll be right back.”
Behind me, I heard him climb the stairs. I heard him walking around above me, his footsteps sounding quick and hard.

Several minutes passed
until he finally came back down to the basement. I didn’t see him, just heard him coming down the stairs and toward me from behind.

Then everything went black as I felt him place a blindfold over my eyes.

“It’s a sleep mask,” Watts said. “Don’t worry.”

I felt my heart rate pick up and wondered if it showed on the polygraph. Watts didn’t say.

“One of two things is going on,” he continued. “Either my machine is broken, or you are an impeccable liar. No offense. It’ll come in handy. Of course there’s a third option. Maybe you’re just good at controlling your emotions when you want to. When you
need
to.”

No doubt about that. I had self-trained to control my emotions for twenty-six years.
Almost all of my emotions, anyway. I knew it was healthy to express them sometimes, whether they were good ones or bad ones. And sometimes it was impossible to control them. Especially when it came to the emotions I felt about Watts.

I heard what sounded like a dinner plate being placed down on the desk.

“I have an idea which one of those is true,” he said. “Now we’re going to test my theory.”

When darkness filled my field of vision, a bolt of nervous anticipation had skittered through my body. Now it had turned into impatient desire.

Chapter Eight –
Watts

Catherine’s polygraph results astounded me. Not a single lie wa
s detected, even though I knew the majority of her answers were untrue. Amazing. My curiosity was piqued and I couldn’t resist playing with her.

“Do you trust me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You know I’m not going to hurt you, correct?”

“Yes.”

The polygraph indicated she was telling the truth, but at this point, how could I know if that was accurate?

I stood before her with a view of the machine’s readout, and I noticed her breathing had already changed. It was shallow and slightly more rapid.

I touched her cheek with the back of my hand, rubbing it lightly. The polygraph needles jumped for
the first time that day—first drawing a quick spike on the chart, then small ones, before evening out again.

Pulling my hand away from her, she moved her head a little.
A simple, natural reflex. She was trying to see what was about to happen next but with the sleep mask on, she was sightless and completely vulnerable to me.

I ran my hands down her arms, taking her wrists and raising her hands carefully to my face so the electrodes on her fingers would stay put. I kissed her palms, glancing over at the machine and seeing another reaction. I placed her hands back down on the arms of the chair.

I let about thirty seconds pass with no physical contact and no words. In that time, her breathing increased and her pulse quickened a little.

I moved behind her, running my fingers along her jawbone, her neck, then down her upper chest. She was wearing a lavender button-down shirt. I unfastened the top button, then the next two. The rubber tubes around her midsection made it pointless to
go any further, but having four buttons undone was enough. I spread her shirt open, exposing her bra.

I pushed her forward gently, pulling her shirt down over her shoulders, and freeing her right arm. The shirt would only go down a little over the blood pressure cuff on her left. I unclasped
her bra in the front.

Her chest heaved and her full breasts were now exposed for me.
I reached down over her shoulders and cupped them, tweaking each nipple between my thumbs and forefingers.

Looking over at the polygraph, I saw the needles jumping up and down, scrawling large jagged lines across the paper.

I reached over to the desk where I had placed a dinner plate and grabbed a cherry, then walked around so I was facing her again. Her lips were parted. Perfect.

Placing the cherry lightly just above her upper lip, I told her to smell.

“Do you know what that is?” I asked.

“Sweet. Something sweet and…cherry?”

Just as she said the word, I squeezed it. The cherry burst and juice hit her lips, running down my fingers. Her tongue darted out to taste the juice, licking it off her lips. I squeezed the cherry until it was drained, then ran my fingers along her lips.

“
Taste more,” I said, and she sucked two of my fingers into her mouth.

I reached for the plate and grabbed another one. This time when I squeezed, I let the juice drip onto her nipples. I rubbed the cherry around one, then the other.

The lie-detector needles were responding so furiously I thought they might break.

I was in complete control of her physiological reactions, watching them being recorded on paper.

I bent forward and touched her nipple with the tip of my tongue. Just barely. Just enough contact to make it tighten even more, puckering into a hard point. I repeated this with her other nipple, followed by long strokes of my tongue—flattened out, wide, lapping up the cherry juice from her breasts. I opened my mouth wide, taking in as much of her soft flesh as I could, sucking hard, then letting go.

Her lips were still parted when I looked up at them. I raised my head, my face so close our noses were almost touching. I let my tongue slip out of my mouth slowly, finally making contact with her lower lip. I licked the juice off of her mouth. When she stuck her tongue out, I sucked it into my mouth.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the polygraph registering her extreme excitement.

I pulled away from her, reaching for the plate once more. I brought the object to her face and told her to smell it. I rubbed it around her lips. It started to crumble
.

“Do you know what that is?” I asked.

“Cupcake. Chocolate cupcake.”

“Very close.”

She tried to bite it but I pulled it away just in time, lowering it down to her chest, rubbing it around one nipple, then the other, as it fell apart, leaving behind tiny morsels of chocolate cake and chocolate icing.

I licke
d some of it from her nipples, then brought my face to hers, extending my tongue, which she sucked into her mouth, greedily taking the chocolate from me.

Her face was a mess of red stains from the cherry juice, chocolate icing, and chocolate cake crumbs. She was licking it off of herself, enjoying the moment. I watched her for several long seconds before reaching for the plate again.

I used two fingers to scoop up our next item to play with and held it in front of her nose. “Do you know what this is?”

She couldn’t guess just from the smell. She shook her head. I was holding it just far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to discern the flavor or anything else about it. I wanted her physical reaction.

And when I touched the vanilla ice cream to her nipple, that’s just what I got. She shifted a little when she felt it, and her nipple became instantly erect from the cold. I spread it around in circles on one breast, then the other, finally bringing my fingers up to her mouth for a taste.

The roll of paper on the polygraph machine had run out, but I no longer cared about that. The needles scraped and scratched a wild pattern as Catherine’s body went into sensory overload from my teasing her.

I stood and bent over, close to her face, as I removed the sleep mask. Her eyes were wide and wild, darting back and forth. Her breathing intensified, more than it was just seconds before.

I lifted her from the chair and sat her on the desk, putting her legs straight up and yanking her pants and her panties down.

Rolling on the condom took less than ten seconds, far too long for what I wanted.

I started to lay her back and she accidentally knocked the polygraph off the table.

“The machine,” she said, startled.

“Fuck the machine.”

I grabbed my sheathed cock, notched it into place, and drove into her with one hard thrust, and another, another…until she told me she was coming and I could feel her clenching around me in spasms, milking me to my own release.

. . . . .

I took Catherine upstairs and ran a towel under warm water. She removed her shirt and I wiped her clean of all the remaining food on her body.

“Not quite as sexy anymore,” she said, offering a little laugh.

“Nonsense. You’re always sexy, even when you’re dirty. Especially when you’re dirty. We’ll do it again sometime.”

“Promise?” Her face was flush, her eyes sharp,
her words quick and direct. She was still turned on.

I washed her face and when
she opened her eyes again I said, “I promise. Next time, you can select the food and tease me the way I just teased you.”

“Don’t think you’re going to back out of that,” she said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. “And you were not teasing me. Believe me. That was…amazing.”

“I think you’re more than ready for the polygraph,” I said, reaching for a different towel to dry her off. “In fact, I can’t recall ever seeing anyone better suited for defeating a lie detector. Very impressive.”

“Thanks…I guess.”

“I know,” I said, kissing her forehead. “I know.”

While she was good at shutting off her emotions, the reasons behind her ability to do that were the very reasons her life had been twenty-six years of emotional wreckage.

I kissed her lips. “I have some white wine in the refrigerator. Would you like some?”

She nodded.

I started to leave the room to go down to the kitchen and she followed me. “Why don’t you stay here and get comfortable? I’ll be right back.”

She was naked when I returned to my bedroom. Her clothes were folded on a chair. She was in the bed, looking lost in thought as I entered the room.

“What’s on your mind?” I handed her the glass of wine.

She sipped from it, and
ran her tongue across her lips before answering. “You. Us. What all of this means.”

I drank from my wineglass, then placed it on the bedside table and stood to get undressed. As I removed my clothes, I said, “
You’re going to have to give me a few days to answer that.”

The happiness and contentment that had dominated her face changed suddenly to worry and a touch of sadness when she heard my answer.

“Trust, Catherine,” I said as I slipped off my pants, naked, ready to slide into bed next to her. “You said you trusted me. And so far you have. I just need a few more days.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t tell me,” she said. “I mean at least give me some kind of sign, some hint, something to hold onto that lets me know where all of this is leading.
Can’t you do that?”

I lay back on the bed, exhaling a deep sigh. “I have done that. Many times. Trust me.” I turned onto my side to face her, taking her wineglass from her and placing it next to mine on the bedside table. “Trust me.” I pulled her close to me and kissed her.

Her head dropped to the pillow, tearing away from my mouth. “Do
you
trust
me
?”

I looked down into her eyes
. They were welling up. She swallowed hard, waiting for my answer. “If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be asking you to trust me. I wouldn’t lead you on, Catherine. Ever.”

“I’m worried about what you’re doing. I worry about you every second of every day and it’s only getting worse.”

I brushed a few strands of hair away from her face and tucked them behind her ear. “It’s going to be okay. We’re both going to be okay.” I lifted her chin with my finger so she would look me in the eyes. “Have a little faith in me, huh?”