Wildfire (Fire 3)

But he didn’t. He watched her as she strolled toward the French doors, silhouetted against the coming dawn. The power was still off, so she could make it back to her room without being observed, but it could come back on at any time, and he didn’t want her caught walking out of his bedroom. That wouldn’t be good for either of them. She paused, looking back over her shoulder, and her smile was deliberately seductive. “May the best man win.”

She was gone.

He was hard. It was as if his body had been given permission to react to her once she was out of reach, and he gave a silent laugh. He didn’t like complications, but he had the suspicion he was going to enjoy this one. There was even a good chance she’d get to MacDonald before he did—she fought hard and didn’t give in.

He’d have a bruise on his side from her knee, and he glanced down at the bite mark on his upper arm. Shit. It looked like just what it was, and he’d already gone into the ocean with Archer and his bimbo without a shirt on. The sudden appearance of a bite on his body would require explanation, and he could think of no simple answer. It could easily pass for the aftermath of rough sex, but Archer would know if anyone on the island had been in Mal’s bed. He could throw Sophie under the bus, say he’d done what Archer, the sick bastard, had asked, but he needed time to decide how he was going to handle that, how he was going to turn it to his advantage.

When he’d come upstairs he was playing the full drunk, both to fool Archer and to convince Sophie he’d finished her doctored drink instead of silently pouring it into his linen napkin and dropping it under the table while Archer distracted her. He’d bumped around in the room, broken things in his subterfuge, which would easily explain any bruises. It wouldn’t explain a bite mark.

He rose and went to the closet, a grin on his face as he remembered her hiding there, foolish enough to think she could get away with it. Hauling out his suitcase, he dumped it on the rumpled bed, unlocked it, and reached into the hidden compartment for the zip knife. He knew how to use it—he’d dug bullets out of his own flesh with it, cut throats, done worse with such a small blade. He knew how to transform a wound. Without any artificial light he was going to have to go by instinct, but he was good at what he did, and he cut into his bicep without blinking, watching the blood slide down his arm. The artwork required patience, a steady hand, and precision, and by the time he was done, the early dawn light was streaming into the bedroom, and he was satisfied with the results. Folding up the knife, he put it back, then climbed into his bed, making sure he smeared his blood on the sheets. He needed an hour of sleep, maybe two, and then he’d be good to go. He closed his eyes, then opened them again with a groan.

The sheets smelled like Sophie. Like she’d smelled when he carried her—gardenias. It was just the faintest hint of the flower, probably in her shampoo, and it was only a trace that lingered in his bed. Hell, it might even be his imagination. His own blood should have overpowered the scent of her.

It didn’t matter—all he could think about was Sophie in his bed.

He should have cut her throat.

Chapter Eleven

Sophie slipped into bed, closing her eyes. She was exhausted, but her adrenaline was pumping, her heart was racing, and she wanted to go and shut herself in the bathroom so that she could pace and think about all this, but Rachel would be up soon, and she had to make everything appear normal. She wasn’t afraid Mal would give her away—he had too much to lose. He wouldn’t know that she would never give him away. Archer’s death was more important to her than her own life, although she wasn’t into noble self-sacrifice, thank you very much. She wanted to dance on that bastard’s grave and then go out and celebrate every damned thing she could—food, sex, freedom.

There was only one problem—sex involved men, and she really didn’t want to get close enough to one to be vulnerable again.

Of course, sex didn’t have to involve men. She’d been adventurous in college, and she was open-minded, but she’d come to the unhappy realization that she just happened to like cock, and substitutes wouldn’t do.

She’d worry about that once she got off the island—there was no one here, absolutely no one she’d let touch her with a ten-foot pole. Particularly not the man next door, who for some goddamned reason had kissed her, though an errant glance at Mal in his snug underwear made her consider that particular measurement. Had he suspected she could walk when he’d done it, or had he been sorry for the poor little crippled girl? Or even worse, was he turned on by the thought of a paraplegic in bed?

She wasn’t going to think about Malcolm Gunnison. He’d do what he was going to do, and she’d make her own plans. Between the two of them, Archer would die, and for now that was good enough.

By the time she woke up it had to be close to noon. The power had come back on sometime while she slept, but the clock by her bed was flashing twelve with annoying regularity. The day was overcast again—unusual past prime hurricane season. She lay perfectly still as she slowly came awake, and then the happenings of the night before hit her with a vengeance, and without realizing it, she said, “Oh, shit!” out loud and very distinctly.

Archer would have someone listening, of course. Or maybe he sat around at night and played the recordings made earlier. Or hell, maybe he just had the surveillance on but no longer bothered to check. After all, she hadn’t done much that was interesting in a long time but roll around her bedroom.

Whatever it was, in the long run it hardly mattered. She’d been terrified of showing any anomali

es, but the very normalcy of her life would appear suspicious. And Archer knew perfectly well that Mal’s entrance into their lives had changed things.

She pulled herself out of the bed and into her wheelchair, wincing slightly. Enduring Archer yesterday afternoon had been bad enough—her wild tussle with Mal left her aching all over. She was going to need a hot shower and a couple of Tylenol.

She started toward the bathroom, then caught a glimpse of herself with sudden horror. She looked dusty, disheveled, and her feet were dirty. Holy Christ, she was lucky Rachel hadn’t come traipsing in. Although if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to see much beneath the sheet, thank God. Sophie needed to scrub herself from head to foot, cover up, and get her ass downstairs by hook or by crook. The one thing she wasn’t going to do was stay locked in her room, wondering what Mal was saying or doing.

She didn’t trust him for one moment. Oh, he was Committee, all right—even though she’d been so sure he wasn’t—and he was good. Impressively so, if she had to admit it. He was utterly ruthless, charming, and completely devious, and she didn’t doubt he’d out her to Archer if he thought it would be to his advantage. She needed to keep an eye on him—she couldn’t afford to be blindsided. Things were moving too quickly now—after years of almost stultifying boredom everything had switched to overdrive. And if she didn’t adjust, she’d go down as surely as Archer would.

The hot shower went a long way toward improving her equilibrium. She was washing away Archer’s abuse. She was washing away the feel of Mal’s body as it covered hers, the grip of his arms around her, the touch of his mouth against hers. She needed to be baptized by her own determination, letting nothing get to her.

She dressed, ignoring her bruises, then rolled over to the French doors, taking a deep breath before she pushed them open. For all she knew, Mal would be there, waiting for her, and she hadn’t decided exactly how she was going to deal with him.

It was going to be tricky. It had to be handled like two porcupines making love—very carefully. Not that she wanted to think of Mal in terms of sex, but it was pretty much impossible not to. He wasn’t her type—too lean, too elegant, too subversive. She had always preferred men with broad shoulders and a rough-hewn edge. But type no longer seemed to matter, and if she tried to ignore the fact that her body seemed to respond to his, it would only complicate matters. She’d learned denial was a waste of time—you had to accept the facts, no matter how unpleasant, and get on with it.

The simple fact was that she was attracted to Malcolm Gunnison, whether she liked it or not. Attracted sexually, when she thought that part of her was dead, and attracted to his abilities. After all, he was everything she’d been training to be, and she found his talents slightly dazzling. Admitting it was the first step; knowing she wasn’t going to do a fucking thing about it was the second, more important step. She couldn’t afford to show any vulnerability right now. She couldn’t afford to ever again.

The balcony was empty, the doors to the adjoining room flung open. She listened, but there was no sound of movement from beyond. The camera would be on her until she moved past the outer edge of her door—she’d calculated that years ago—so she moved to the balustrade, looking out over the roiling sea. She saw, to her horror, that most of the household was out on the beach in that storm-tossed mess. One of Archer’s smaller boats must have come loose from its mooring—it was bobbing about in the waves, and they were trying to steady it and drag it onto the sand before it bashed against the rocks at the edge of the long, curving beach.

Bellowing orders, Archer wrestled with one of the ropes, and Mal was by his side, dressed only in rolled-up jeans, a wide white bandage around his bicep. What had he done to himself? And then she remembered the resilience of his skin beneath her teeth as she fought him, and she gave in to an entirely evil laugh. He was going to have a hard time explaining that to Archer.

No one was left in the house. She rolled farther down the balcony, out of range, and stopped by the doorway of his empty room. She was going to have to wash her feet again, but she couldn’t miss this chance. She couldn’t be sure she’d have enough time to get downstairs and reconnoiter, and the beach was too close to the house, but she could certainly finish what she started last night, secure that Mal wouldn’t be lying in wait.

In the light of day she could see where the cameras had been dismantled, roughly—the wiring still sticking from the ceiling and the wall. Why had Archer let him get away with that? It wasn’t as if other people wouldn’t be interested in his pet project. Malcolm might be there to set a trap for Archer—maybe Archer was setting a trap for him. She glanced back at the ocean, but they were still struggling with the boat, the prisoner on the second floor forgotten.