Eve sat at the kitchen table, hunched over the pictures of all the people who had populated her nighttime life. Some of them she could never suspect, others she kept in the backburner of her mind as real possibilities, and others were so glaringly obvious that she discarded them right away. Three weeks in, and she still had pretty much no idea who could have been behind the attack on the Diamondbacks. She would be lying, however, if she said she wasn’t beginning to enjoy the investigation.
She froze as soon as the thought entered her mind?
Christ. What’s wrong with me?
Why couldn’t she be happy with her life? Her daytime life, her real life. Most of the people she knew would kill for that life. She had a great job in an architecture firm; she was paid well; and, she had good credit. She had a loving family who had made sure she had never wanted for anything. She had a devoted boyfriend who was dying to marry her. What more could a girl want? What more could Eve want?
She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she didn’t want this. Her life felt like a t-shirt several sizes too small. It felt tight and suffocating. On paper, Eve’s life was perfect, but she had long since realized that she didn’t want perfection.
What Eve wanted was passion and adventure. She wanted a life that kept her guessing, where not everything was already said and done and where her path wasn’t set out for her. She wanted a life full of surprises. She didn’t want a white picket fence. She didn’t want a corporate job. She didn’t want all comforts.
Comfortable. That was really the key word, wasn’t it? Eve didn’t want to be comfortable. She wanted to be alive.
The front door opened then, and she watched as Lind walked in, a tired expression on his handsome face. Still, even with that tension that kept his whole figure so taut, he looked hotter than any other man she had ever seen.
“How did it go?” she asked.
Lind shrugged. “Jacob is nowhere closer to narrowing down his suspicions than we are.”
He tossed his leather jacket onto the couch, and Eve did her best not to notice the way the white t-shirt fell on his torso, outlining every hard muscle. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and went to sit next to her at the table, peering over her shoulder to look down at the scattered pictures and files they had gathered over the past three weeks.
“Did you come to any new conclusion?” he asked.
His face was very close to her, so much so that his warm breath ghosted over her ear. Eve tried to suppress a shiver.
“Not really,” she said, doing her best not to show what his closeness was doing to her body.
Lind sighed in frustration and sat back. He casually leaned one arm on the back of Eve’s chair, almost encircling her shoulders.
“This is starting to piss me off,” he said darkly, taking a swig from his beer.
“Same here,” Eve echoed absently. She tried downing some of the now-cool coffee from the mug sitting next to the various papers, hoping that the blackness of the liquid would help keep her suddenly rising urges in check. “I’m really tired of being cooped up here.”
“I hear ya,” Lind admitted. “But guess what? I brought you another movie.”
Eve rolled her eyes. Lind brought her DVDs to watch from time to time. They would pop them into the player and watch them together, pretending like they were spending a normal evening together. Except that there was nothing normal about the situation, and the stillness of her predicament coupled with her rising attraction for Lind were really starting to take their toll.
“I don’t want to watch a movie,” she said curtly.
Lind nodded. “OK. What do you want to do then?”
There was something cheeky about that question. It was a barely discernible note in Lind’s voice, but it was there and Eve caught it. She stared at him, incredulous. Her heart pounded in her chest, sounding like war drums.
Lind’s impossibly blue eyes were boring holes into her. He leaned in closer, but she wasn’t quite sure he noticed. Instinctively, she also leaned a little more toward him.
“You are very beautiful,” he said, his voice quiet and soft and gravelly.
Eve watched, hypnotized, as he reached out with one hand and pushed an errant lock of her blonde hair behind her ear. She swallowed hard, unable to say anything. She couldn’t move. She hardly dared to breathe for fear that this might go away. That he might go away.
Lind’s hand cupped her cheek, and Eve’s heart did a wild somersault in her chest. Was this really happening? And if it was, could she let it happen?
His lips landing on hers a split second later completely short-circuited her brain and silenced all doubts and questions. Suddenly, it seemed just unfathomable to not let this happen. He tasted like beer and cigarette smoke, and it was intoxicating.
“Stop me if you don’t want this,” he said, the words vibrating against her mouth.
Eve shook her head. “I want this,” she heard herself say with a gasp, and she realized then and there just how true it was. She did want this. She wanted him. She wanted to feel his body against her, and she wanted him to make her moan.
He was all too happy to oblige. Before she even had the chance to realize what was happening, Lind was picking her up and carrying her to the bedroom. He had his palms spread firmly across her butt cheeks, as her legs wrapped around his waist.
He dropped her unceremoniously onto the mattress, but Eve didn’t protest at the rough treatment: this was exactly the kind of passion she had been longing for without even realizing. She realized it now, however, and the knowledge that the passion that she craved was literally at her fingertips filled her with electricity. She felt wired, electrically charged. She felt like her whole body was filled with a kind of raw, primordial energy that she never suspected she could possess.
She tugged at Lind’s t-shirt impatiently, and she helped him strip at record speed, all the while clawing at his flesh and fingering his muscles, clutching to him like she was afraid it would all disappear if she let go even for a minute.
When he was finally naked, Eve reached up to grasp the back of his neck and pulled him down for the hungriest kiss she had ever given anyone—including her fiancé. When they finally pulled apart, they were both breathless.
Lind grinned down at her. “Wow,” he said. “You really want this.”
Normally, Eve would feel embarrassed. She would feel ashamed at letting her desire show so wholly and wildly. But nothing about her recent situation was normal, not even this. Especially not this. So, instead of feeling embarrassed, Eve lifted her chin a fraction and proudly owned her lust.
“Yes,” she said, with the confidence and firmness of voice of a woman who finally came into her own. “I really want this.”
Once again, he didn’t leave her hanging.
“Darlin’, you don’t need to ask twice,” he said, his voice a rough whisper that shot straight down to her groin.
His mouth descended on hers once again, both his hands reaching into her hair, his fingers getting lost amongst the long golden locks. She felt him press against her and she responded by arching up into him, her hips grinding against his erection. His enlarged cock was so firm and proud against her thigh that she almost came from the knowledge that she was the one responsible for his arousal.
“I’m going to do things to you nobody has done before,” he growled into her ear.
Eve gasped in surprise at the sudden, thrilling chill that ran from her chest down to her belly and then all the way to her vagina. If just his voice was able to do this to her, she didn’t dare to imagine what his full touch would do. She knew she didn’t have to imagine. She knew she was about to find out, and that knowledge filled her with an all-consuming anticipation.
“I’m counting on it,” she all but purred back.
She caught a flash of his grin before he pulled away from her mouth to guide his lips on a full exploration of her body.
As it turned out, her imagination could have never done this experience justice. Lind’s lips were a thing of magic. They kissed and licked in all the right places, at the right pace, at the right moment. His teeth would tease from time to time, delivering small bites that brought on small pinches, which in turn sent electric waves of pleasure running through her whole body in the sweetest ripple effect.
When he finally reached her sex, Eve was already so far gone that she feared one more well-placed kiss would send her over the edge.
He looked up at her and smirked. “Don’t fight it, sweetheart.”
But Eve couldn’t do otherwise. She didn’t want to come just yet. She wanted to prolong the sweet torture of hovering on the brink of orgasm for as long as possible.
“Just touch me,” she said, her whole body taut with the beautiful tension of holding on. “Please.”
Lind’s smirk grew wider. “You got it,” he murmured, kissing the inside of her thigh.
His tongue found her engorged lips then, and it gave all its attention to her aroused clitoris.
Eve soon found out that he was not boasting; he truly did things to her that nobody had ever done before. His tongue traced swirls and pattern that were unlike any other man who had ever touched her. It was like Lind knew her body in a way that even Eve didn’t—a profound, intimate, deeply sensual way.
Eve had never come from oral sex. She had dreamed about finding someone, someday, who would upturn her whole world enough that she would. Someone whose lips and tongue would be skilled enough to send her into the throes of pleasure with no need to involve the action of hands or cock.
Lind’s lips and tongue gave her two orgasms so close to each other that she almost didn’t have the time to recover from the first one before the second came rippling through her body like lightning through the ground during a thunderstorm.
He’s thunderstorms.
The lyrics to the Arctic Monkeys song came unbidden to her mind, and she finally understood it. Lind was thunderstorms.
He gave her just enough time to recover from the experience before he finally took her—wholly and completely. She felt him slip past her wet entrance and inside of her with a gentle and yet determined push, and she spread her legs a little wider still to accommodate him. God, but she had never wanted anyone more.
She gave in with a small gasp, pressing the back of her neck into the pillow, as he pushed deeper into her. She took a moment to admire his figure hovering above her—his sculpted chest and shoulders, his narrow hips. She reached out to pull him closer and felt the strong muscles of his perfect back underneath her fingertips. It was like having sex with a Greek god.
Lind’s thrusts were tentative at first—not from lack of confidence but, Eve realized in surprise, from gentleness. He was finding his pace, their pace, the rhythm and pressure that wouldn’t hurt her. He was showing a consideration that Eve didn’t think even existed in casual sex.
She threw her head back and moaned when he hit just the right spot.
“Ah, there we go,” he murmured in satisfaction.
The sureness came back to his movements then, and soon he was setting up the rhythm of a wild dance that Eve was only too happy to dance to. He thrust into her repeatedly, alternating slow, languid strokes to fast, frantic ones. In both cases, he moved like he couldn’t get enough of her.
On her part, Eve couldn’t get enough of him. She couldn’t get enough of this. She wanted it to go on forever. She never wanted Lind to stop and for the outside world to creep back from the sexy cocoon they had just created for themselves.
But no matter how much she tried to delay the inevitable, bittersweet moment of release, she couldn’t hold on. It was just impossible to claim any form of self-control when Lind was inside of her, on top of her, all around her. He filled her whole world, her perceptions and sensations. And Eve gave in to him, because there was nothing else she could do.
She felt him shudder as he, too, hovered dangerously close to the edge, and she took it as her cue to finally let go. She came with a gasp and a cry, barely aware of Lind still thrusting into her as she got lost in her own pleasure. It came to her wave after wave, intense and all-consuming like nothing else she had ever experienced. Her whole body was on fire with it.
She had barely entered the aftershocks when Lind came, too. She felt him shudder and tense against her with the strength of his own release, and then he went limp against her. Instinctively, Eve reached up and wrapped her arms around him.
They stayed like that for she didn’t know how long, perfectly still and interlocked. Finally, he moved and broke the spell. He pulled back and out of her. Then, he rolled off of her and back onto the mattress. When he turned to look at her, his eyes were sparkling.
“Well, that was something,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
She laughed. “I’ll say.”
He suddenly paled. “Shit,” he muttered, the curse so heartfelt that Eve was suddenly alarmed.
“What?” she asked. “What is it?”
“We didn’t use a condom.”
“Oh.” She breathed in relief. “That’s okay. I’m on the pill.”
Lind blew out a relieved sigh of his own and relaxed back onto the bed.
“So that was unexpected,” he said after a moment of surprisingly comfortable silence.
“The pill?”
“No. That. What just happened between us.”
Eve turned her head to look at him. “Was it really?” She grinned. “I think it borders on cliché.”
Lind rolled his eyes. “You really saw it coming?”
“Not necessarily,” Eve admitted. “But I would’ve had to be very oblivious not to notice the sexual tension before.”
Lind smiled. “Fair enough.” He hesitated. “Are you okay?”
Eve frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be?” You just gave me the most mind-blowing orgasms of my life. Of course, she knew better than to say that out loud.
“You just cheated on your fiancé.”
Eve blinked. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her before. “Shit,” she said quietly. The fact that Alan had never entered her mind once during the whole thing probably spoke volumes.
“I’m sorry,” Lind said. “I probably should’ve stopped. It’s just…I…you…well, I just couldn’t.”
Eve shrugged. “Keeping me faithful is not your responsibility. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.”
He looked at her curiously. “You don’t seem particularly brokenhearted about just jeopardizing your relationship.” When Eve said nothing, he asked, “Do you love him?”
Eve thought about it. “No,” she said, because it was the truth, and it felt good to say it. For once, it felt good to admit it freely. Her engagement was loveable. It was convenient.
“Does he love you?”
“I don’t know,” Eve admitted. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“And you’re still going to marry him anyway?”
“Why not?”
Lind stared at her uncomprehendingly. “You’re not in love with him.”
“He’s a good man.”
“But you don’t love him.”
Eve sat up. “Look, things work differently in my world. You marry the one who’s best suited for you. It’s not about love.”
Lind looked at her like she came from a different planet. Given the situation, she might as well have. “Sounds like your world is stuck in the 1800s.”
Eve shrugged again, noncommittally.
Lind sat up to better look at her. “It really doesn’t bother you?”
“Honestly, I could’ve ended up with a worse man than Alan Sutherland. He may not be in love with me, but he’s good to me.”
“Does he satisfy you?”
Eve blinked, taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”
“Sexually, I mean,” Lind clarify. “Does he satisfy you sexually?”
“I…what kind of question is that?” Eve cried, shocked.
Lind shrugged. “Back there it felt like you hadn’t been touched in a long time. So either you guys have little to no sex, or it isn’t that great.”
Eve glared daggers at him. “My sexual life is none of your concerns.”
“It just was.” He grinned infuriatingly.
“You’re impossible!”
Eve climbed out of bed, gathered her clothes and marched to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
As she took a shower, she steamed as furiously, as the hot water flowed from the spray. How dare he? How dare he analyze her relationship, her life? Who did he think he was?
And what was it to him, anyway? What was it to Lind Addams if Eve Robinson married someone whom she didn’t love and who almost certainly was not in love with her?
It suddenly hit her. As she stood naked under the shower spray, her life also lay bared. She was willingly walking into a loveless marriage, and it didn’t bother her one bit. How sad was that? How empty was she? How meaningless was her life that she would not blink as it got thrown away?
She thought about the man who was waiting for her at home. (But was he? Was Alan even looking for her? Was he worried? Or was he relieved that she had disappeared and he wouldn’t have to get stuck into a loveless marriage?) Then, she thought about the man waiting for her in the other room. (Was he? Was Lind still sitting on the bed, waiting for her to get out of the bathroom? Or was he sprawled on the couch in front of whatever movie he had rented for that night, his mind already far away from the sexual—and sensual—experience they had just shared, and far away from their conversation?) It suddenly seemed completely absurd to Eve that she would even consider going back to Alan when a man like Lind had entered her life.
How could she even think about going back to her old life? And how could she even do it? It would never be the same, she knew that. Not now that she had seen what was on the other side of that line she had so often played at crossing. Now that she had crossed it for real, it seemed unfathomable to ever turn away. Even while being cooped up into this godforsaken apartment, Eve had experienced more excitement in the past three weeks than in the past three years of her life. How could she ever say goodbye to all of it?
And yet she had to. She knew that it was only a matter of time before whatever had really happened that night at the Cobra was finally made clear. It was only a matter of time before whoever was responsible for the attack on the Diamondbacks was found. And then she would be safe, and Lind would have no reason to keep her in his life any longer.
She let the hot water hit her back long after she was done washing the remains of the best sex of her life off her body. She hoped the hot spray would beat the confusion out of her, but when she finally stepped out of the shower stall her mind was no clearer than it had been when she had stepped in.
She dried her hair, put on pajama pants and a tank top, and went back out into the bedroom. Lind was sound asleep, and she watched him incredulously. How could he sleep after all that had happened that night?
She shook her head firmly. Don’t be stupid, Eve. This was probably just another day at the office for the Viper. She would not and could not delude herself into think that this meant the same to him as it had meant to her.
Unable to even consider getting to sleep, Eve walked out of the bedroom and closed the door gently behind her. She padded to the kitchen and made herself a fresh pot of coffee. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well do something productive and get some more work done in piecing together all the information they had. (What little of it they did have, anyway.)
Just as she was about to sit down at the table, there was a soft knock at the door. Eve swallowed hard, heart suddenly pounding in her chest. She walked noiselessly to the front door and grabbed the gun that was on the shelf near the entrance. She didn’t know how to shoot it, but she would figure it out if she needed to.
She spied through the peephole and was relieved to see Jacob standing on the other side. She opened the door and let him in, quickly shutting it back behind her. She knew the drill by now; the less movement people noticed, the better.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, somewhat anxiously, as he followed him back into the kitchen. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes,” Jacob said. “We better move you somewhere else. Alec has found out about this apartment, and he wants to use it as a retreat for club meetings until the situation with the cartel is sorted out. He says it’ll be safer here.”
Eve frowned. “How did he find out?”
“He was wondering aloud about finding a new place for the time being and somebody remembered about my recently deceased grandpa living in Pasadena. They asked what I was doing with the apartment.”
“Couldn’t you have made something up?” Eve asked, incredulous.
“No,” Jacob said sharply. “I’m lying enough as it is.” He shrugged out of his jacket and placed it on the back of a chair at the table. “Where’s Lind?”
“Asleep.”
Jacob stared at her. For a moment he looked like he wanted to say something, but then he just shook his head. “I’m gonna go get him. You’d better start packing.”
Eve stared after him. She had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she just couldn’t put her finger on it. She picked up Jacob’s jacket to reach the sweater she had left on the back of the chair underneath, and that’s when she saw it. A thick packet of bills fell from the inside pocket of the jacket and landed on the floor with a smack that might as well have been a slap to her face.
Eve picked it up and gingerly turned it into her hands. There was a note attached to the bills—a glaring yellow post-it note. Eve read it. The rest will come after you have given us your President. There will be no mistakes this time.
Heart pounding, Eve put the bills and the jacket back. So, there were two traitors involved. One from the nightclub and one from the Diamondbacks’ own ranks. Eve could hardly believe it. And if she could hardly believe it, she couldn’t even imagine how Lind would feel about it.
She spun around when she heard a noise behind her.
Jacob held up his hands in reassurance. “Easy. It’s just me.”
In spite of her best efforts, she watched him suspiciously.
“Why so jumpy?” he asked.
Eve shrugged and did her best to appear nonchalant. “It’s been a tense few weeks.”
Jacob nodded. “Indeed.”
“Where’s Lind?” she asked.
“Asleep. I figured we’d let him rest and take a ride, just you and me.”
Eve swallowed hard. She tasted fear on her tongue; it tasted like bile. “Why?”
“Because,”—Jacob took a step toward her—“it really pisses me off when people go through my stuff.”
Eve’s eyes widened in alarm. She opened her mouth to scream, but Jacob was faster. He took a swing and the back of his hand cracked against Eve’s skull, sending her sprawling. The world faded to black in an instant.