“It would be a shame to waste you,” she said. “Don’t you think you matter more than a few highly specialized skills?”
He turned to look at her, and the murky light fell across his face, revealing his faintly ironic smile. “No,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I thought I gave you enough to knock you out for twelve hours at least, but you always were a stubborn woman.”
“You drugged me?”
“It wasn’t the first time. And I can do a lot worse if you annoy me. Be quiet and let me think. I’ll keep watch, and you’ll be safe enough. Believe me, they won’t come without warning.”
“When are they coming?”
“If it weren’t for the storm they would have been here by midnight. As it is, I expect they’ll be here sometime between four and five in the morning. It will still be dark enough to cover their movements. They’ve probably planned a simple assault—get in fast, complete their mission and out again in no more than twenty minutes. Monique would only hire the best.”
“And you’re enough to stop them?”
“Yes. Now go back to sleep.”
“What time is it now?”
“Just after eleven.”
“And they won’t be coming for another five hours?”
“Six if we’re lucky, four if we’re not.”
“Then why don’t you lie down and try to get some rest? It’s a huge bed. You won’t have to worry about accidentally touching me.” She hadn’t expected anything more than a cutting response, but without a word he rose, moving around to the other side of the huge bed, and lay down on it, kicking off his shoes. He didn’t get under the covers, but he was there, within reach.
“Have you been having trouble sleeping since you got back?” His voice was just a whisper on the night wind, closer than she realized.
“Yes. And you?”
“I never have trouble sleeping. I’ll sleep for exactly one hour now, and wake up feeling rested and alert. Don’t forget, what happened in Paris was nothing new for me.”
She was nothing new for him, she thought. And she was an idiot to be thinking about such things, when she could be dead in a matter of hours, but somehow the imminent possibility of dying only made living more important. Made loving more important. And all the psychobabble and rationalizations didn’t mean a thing when it came right down to it.
“It wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome,” she said in a muffled voice, turning her back on him in the vast expanse of the king-size bed. There might as well be an ocean between them.
“I know,” he said, and he sounded oddly gentle. “I told you, Stockholm Syndrome is a myth.”
She turned over to look at him, and he was much closer than she’d realized. So close she could reach out and touch him. “Then why do I still feel this way?” she whispered.
He said nothing, but for the first time his face looked unguarded in the moonlight. “Are we going to die in a few hours?” she asked.
“Quite possibly,” he said. “But not right now.” And he reached out and touched her face, his hand incredibly gentle. She stared at him, frozen, as he leaned over and kissed her with heartbreaking tenderness.
“What’s this?” she asked, trying to sound cynical and failing miserably. “My reward?”
“No,” he said. “It’s mine.” He caught her face with his hands, cradling it, looking down at her. The stillness was complete, magical, and she felt everything seem to fade away, the blood, the pain, the danger. For a moment there was just the two of them, alone in the night, and there was no barrier, no cool defenses in his dark eyes. She could see past the calm, dispassionate surface, to something deep and hard and frightening inside him. Something he felt for her.
She closed her eyes, reaching up to slide her arms around his neck. He moved over her, a heavy, warm weight that kept the monsters at bay, and began to kiss her, slowly seducing her with his mouth, his lips, his teeth, his tongue. She’d never been kissed like that, with such dedicated concentration, as if kissing her was all that mattered in the world, an end in itself, and she gave herself up to it, opening her mouth for him, kissing him back with single-minded concentration that was slowly turning into a kind of panicked fire. Then she reached for his shirt, her fingers fumbling at the buttons.
He caught her hands in one of his strong ones, holding her still. “Shh, Chloe. This time there’s no need for rush. No need for fear or pain. There’s all the time in the world to just enjoy yourself. Pleasure—that’s all you need to think about. Close your eyes and let me bring it to you.”
His voice was low, hypnotic, soothing her sudden uprush of tension, and she lay back against the pillows, staring up at him.
He held her hands, more as a reassurance than a restraint, as he brought his mouth down the side of her neck, and he was reaching under the baggy sweatshirt, to touch her skin, his fingers cool against her heated flesh. She was so l
ost in his kisses, the taste of his mouth, that she barely noticed when he pulled the sweatshirt over her shoulders and tossed it away, when he slid the baggy pants down her legs and off her. He’d left her underwear on—the French bra and lace panties that her well-meaning parents had gotten her for Christmas. She hadn’t even paid any attention when she’d put them on, but when his hand slid up her body to cover her breast she knew she’d done it on purpose. He followed with his mouth, sucking at her through the lace, and her body trembled as the need blossomed through her body in a rush of heat. He’d released her hands, and they lay beside her on the wide bed, where he’d placed them. She felt strange, filled with a dreamy lassitude, able to only lie there and let him touch her, kiss her. It must be the hangover from the drug, she thought dizzily, as he put his mouth on her hip bones, just above the lace band of the panties. That, or he’d managed to hypnotize her with his mouth, his eyes, her own longing.
She felt as if they were in a snow globe—roughly shaken, but now all was still and silent with the flakes drifting down around them in their safe little glass jar. She could always try to fight her way out of that strange surrender, but she didn’t want to. He was right. They could be dead in a matter of hours. She could have what she wanted, needed, right now, and there might be no consequences to live with. No life to live with. And if she was going to die she wanted to spend the last hours of her life in bed with a man whose name she didn’t even know.