Wilderness of Mirrors (21 page)

“I hate socks,” she explained when he stared at her reddened toes, scrunched in cold shame against the black stone.

“Shhh.” He came to his full height using her thighs like the rails of a ladder. Softly, slowly, she took hold of his shirt and peeled it from him until it hung inside out from his waist. The jolt of his heated skin surprised her.

He forced open her fingers and pressed the spread palms against his chest. She calibrated her effect on him by his expression. Those eyes crackled with nuclear energy.

She dragged her palms over the expanse of his chest marveling at how well made he was. The sensation of his heart hammering beat the bones from her wrists. They slid further, one stopping at his hip, the other at his waistband. He was even hotter there, the blaze of his skin seeping through the back of her hands.

His fingers were in her hair now, running in long streaming rows until they were hopelessly tangled. His scent was strong – just right – and she started to slide down the door’s slickly varnished surface, her legs giving out at last.

Before she had a second to think about anything beyond the fact his teeth were sunk into the rigid tendons of her neck, they were lying on the cold, hard floor. She was helpless, thrashing under his erotic bite, mindful enough only to thrust a hand between them, down the front of his jeans, until she felt the heat of his cock.

It was hard against her palm, and her hips surrendered, opening to the pressure of his insistent thighs. At her touch, he bucked and flattened her further. She felt his growl through the thin fabric of their clothing, and her own purr of desire echoed back.

Then there was a race of hands, fabric and buttons lost in the short war. At last, their skin met, her nipples tight with the unfamiliar brush and crush of him.

She traced his jaw with her tongue. It tasted of salt, and the prick of his invisible stubble rubbed her lower lip raw. She raked his torso with her nails and licked the torn corner of his mouth.

He touched a thumb to her lower lip. “Ever since that first moment– ” His breath was uneven. “I’ve imagined how you would feel…how it would be to kiss you. Ten years, Sam. I asked and – God help me now that I know why – you refused.”

“I waited for you to turn around.” Her words were grave.

His jaw clenched with newfound confidence and power. Then his mouth descended on hers, rough and sweet, and she felt his fingers travel the length of her torso until he slipped them between their straining bodies.

Her mouth tasted of brandy, of other things too. Her breath sped up and he felt her teeth sink into his lower lip. He pushed at his jeans and felt her do the same, her nails biting his thighs as she frantically twisted beneath him.

They were naked when he suddenly became aware of their vulnerability. Reaching over her head, he set the lock. She used the moment to tongue his exposed abdomen, the upshot being a loss of any strength he might have had. His hands dropped and his forehead fell against the door. He let her take him into her mouth, seriously considering staying on his knees and losing his sanity to her lips and tongue.

Eventually, he came to his senses and fell back upon her, palming her breast until its nipple rose up between his bent knuckles. He tongued the red tip before grazing it with his teeth.

She thrashed and spread her legs wide, topaz eyes wild with lust. He’d never seen anything so sexy in his whole fucking life. She lifted her hips and pulled him toward her, fingernails imbedded in the muscle of his thighs. He felt his cock meet the molten warmth of her and closed his eyes when her legs came up and around him.

Bloody hell
.

Only now her mouth was too far from him, so he curved over her, plastering himself against each long line and curve as he drove faster and faster, no thoughts beyond making the moment last.

In the end, he managed to get a hand loose and palm the side of her face.

She turned into his caress, and their lips hovered fractionally apart. “Nigel.”

Her whisper, poignant and seductive, was so soft he nearly missed it. She rocked upward and he sunk deep, just as her teeth speared the surface of his straining neck. Then everything went white and he was lost, a massive oak swept away by wildfire.

Wellington sat in the luxurious confines of his BMW listening in shock to the flush of a toilet on the tiny mic Hawkes had unintentionally dropped in a loo.

Samantha and her boy toy had left the bog nearly an hour before, and still Wellington remained motionless wondering how the fuck everything had gone so bloody wrong.

Farrington Hawkes was a consummate professional, not some bloody Essex boy who’d seen too many films. Yet the fucker had gone and gotten himself arrested by a couple of pimple-faced hotel bouncers.

Turner tapped the lambskin wrapped wheel, keyed up from too many cigarettes and a half-bottle of rum. “Fucking whore!” he finally shouted, his mind swimming with mental images and sounds he’d never be able to erase.

Who the fuck was this sod, this Nigel, who appeared from nowhere with the key to Samantha’s knickers?

Punching a number into his mobile, Turner waited, his mind turning over a million possible paths he could take. When Blaise finally answered, he said, “Find out the surnames of all registered members of The Liberal Club whose first names are Nigel. Match them to this description: six foot, blond, blue-eyed, lean build, about forty. I want all pertinent information: job, family, address – everything – fast as you can.”

Then Turner clicked off and went through a mental list of bent coppers he knew. Finally, deciding on Carruthers, the prick with a heroin habit and a penchant for murder, Turner placed the call. Hawkes would be dead before the prison’s morning janitor made his rounds.

Four minutes later, reasonably pleased with his changing luck, Turner put the coupe in gear and headed for the shitty little garage he rented on the slummy side of Windsor.

He felt like getting his hands dirty tonight.

And after that, maybe he’d drive over to Eaton Place and satiate other parts of him.

He took a swig of rum and careened around a slower vehicle, cutting the car off as he took the next turn, narrowly missing two pedestrians and their dog.

A
t eight minutes past two in the morning, William Rhys-Chamber had two things on his mind. The tramp stamp winking over the top of the hip-hugging custom jeans and the fact those jeans and their brilliant cargo were fast disappearing into a taxi piled high with equally gorgeous women. His hand shot up. The next taxi swooped down the heavily trafficked Windsor street and was his.

He had time to pop the door and flick a cigarette, when the cab shrieked away from the embankment.

“Fucking hell, mate, you don’t even know where –”

A simmering voice, reminiscent of movies and the beaters his father employed for the Christmas pheasant shoot, urged him quiet.

But it was the man beside him, the older one in the shadows with a mean grin and an even meaner gun, who sealed his tense jaw. William lunged and tried for the door, but the gun cracked into his thick skull and girls with plenty to offer, vanished.

I want one last day with him.

Sam pressed her lips together.

The scent of his mouth lingered.

Amazed she’d been able to brush her teeth and miss destroying it, she contemplated the cylinder of lipstick caught between her forefinger and thumb. There was an art to nude lips and it involved more than nothing.

The tip of her tongue edged in on Nigel’s territory.

He tastes of granite.
Snapping the cap closed, Sam went for a naked mouth.

The lipstick landed somewhere at the bottom of her black nylon Prada tote. She tore the keys from their hook and jammed on a pair of old riding boots. Her waxed canvas jacket smelled of horse and hay, and the wicker of her rarely used hamper felt foreign beneath the thickness of wool mittens.

She pulled the door to her mudroom closed and shoved on it twice for good measure. The air was sharp with the promise of spring, and the heat of the day’s early rays warmed her chin and cheek. Sun glittered up from the shoots of frosty grass, knocked flat by the dog’s morning excursions

She popped the Audi’s hatch and waited for Tam to join the picnic hamper. A few lingering thoughts later, they were on their way to Windsor. She picked up the M4, glad traffic was light and the day so clement. The ancient mellow walls of Eton College would embrace the weak February light, and the fields would sparkle with the modern Ton: Bentleys, bubbly and Burberry.

Families of players.

Nigel.

And her.

I will not think of danger. Of Marc.

Too soon and not soon enough, Sam pulled off the side road into a car park. There were vignettes of movement: socks being tugged over shin guards, last minute items being yanked from under seats and behind them and children racing off only to be caught again by long-armed adults.

All at once, she felt awkward in the middle of the happy chaos.
This is what people do for fun
. Then she and Tam disembarked, his eyes eager for dropped food and maybe a mitten or two, and began to roll along with the others, slowed up now and again by chatting groups and wonky-wheeled prams.

At last, they poured out onto the meticulous turf, breaking like tributaries around the wide, winter-yellowed grasses.

He’d told her to meet him on one of the lower fields. Said, “Down the footpath and on your left. Dutchman’s. Brad’s favorite.”

“Not yours?”

“I’ve never been a team player.”

“The lonely track more your style?”

“No. It goes round and round.” He’d run a thumb in circles over her skin. “I like moving in crooked, meandering ways.”

Which his mouth and hands had made plain.

Then she saw the trio, like two aristocratic stick insects counterbalancing a golden Hunting Spider. Tam pretended not to notice Kate’s labs and concentrated instead on what might be to the west.

No one had seen her yet, their eyes still on hampers and the field.

Were the boys out there? She wondered if William and Dylan had inherited any of Nigel’s father’s looks. Unless perhaps, Nigel took after his late mother.

Her mittens were unexpectedly clammy. What would her clients think when she turned up? Kate didn’t seem the sort to share her Grey Poupon.

Sam contemplated giving ground.

Regrettably, Tam caught Nigel’s scent.

Not so oblivious to her, Nigel snapped his fingers. The dog bolted, ears flat, tail low. Maximus Decimus Meridius’s dog ditching her.

Retreat cut off, she squared her shoulders and headed for a picnicker’s paradise.

Nigel caught her perfume before his eyes snatched a foretaste of the capped tresses. She’d paused at the field’s edge looking like she might bolt. Now he had a pair of giddy retrievers and one indifferently affectionate weapon orbiting his legs. He had meant to disarm her. Not himself.

“Oh, he’s lovely. Isn’t he Nige? Looks like Samantha’s chap.” Kate waded through the mass at knee-height, biscuits ready for all.

David’s chortle mixed in and Nigel was layered in familial joviality. Oddly satisfied, he waved a hand in Sam’s direction.

He watched as she crossed the space, aware everyone’s eyes surreptitiously followed her. She was elegant and sexy and as complex as a cuckoo clock. She was perfectly flawed and even the discomfort in his ribs and thigh was locked away where it could only thump and whine. The sordid world was slumbering somewhere out beyond the 1400 year-old walls, and not even Africa was clawing at his soul.

At least this morning, Nigel discovered, he could call himself content. “It
is
Sam’s dog. I invited her.”

Kate’s head shot up, narrowly missing his chin. “You what?”

Then the women in his life eddied round and his sister surprised him by briefly clutching his hand. He couldn’t think of the last time she’d done that. If she’d ever done it.

“Samantha. How lovely to have you join us.” She planted a pair of awkward kisses on Sam’s flushed cheeks. “We couldn’t be happier with the way the ballroom has come out. It’s only too bad you weren’t able to stay for the tea.”

Nigel refrained from saying Sam lacked an invitation.

“There’s a good girl.” David took it upon himself to grab Sam’s hamper and peck her cheeks. “Good of you to bring something. You know how boys get. Eat everything in sight. I wonder sometimes if the dogs will survive them coming down weekends.”

Kate scoffed and shooed away her husband.

Sam was grinning, which cheered Nigel no end, and she dropped free hands to the sloppy kisses of lab joy. “It was the least I could do. Thank you for having me, Kate.”

His sister brushed aside the unearned gratitude. “I’m just glad you could make it. Nigel rarely comes home, and given his flu, I didn’t think he’d be well enough to come. You can keep him company and help him remember which fork to use.”

Sam registered true terror. “I’m afraid I only brought finger food. Very American of me.”

But today Kate was all British warmth and forgiveness. “So wise of you. William and Dylan don’t bother with forks when they can help it.” They all laughed and Kate added, “You’re from New York, aren’t you?”

Nigel let her bend Kate’s ear a bit. There’d be time later. He stared out over the playing fields, watching teams stretch and wondering how long it had been since he dropped in for a post-graduation game.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed being Nigel Forsythe. Most oft, he took pleasure being everyone and anyone else. It kept his mind from the frighteningly devoid texture of his real life. No anchors; not him. He’d gone and cut them all, hoping drifting and duty would keep the dyke from flooding his soul with disappointment at his own impiety.

Yet here he was, tied to something not unlike normalcy.

Sam’s hand brushed his. Covered in wool. It was enough. He swallowed and tried to keep his face impassive. The last thing he wanted was Kate sticking her nose into his business.