Chapter 21
“Please slow down,” Liv asked him for the fourth time. He didn’t ease off the accelerator on the car Davy had rented for him. He was showing admirable restraint by staying below ninety.
“If you don’t like how I’m driving, tough shit,” he said. “You should have stayed with Tam, where you’d have been safe.”
“I don’t want to sit on the shelf like a china doll,” she said. “So far I’ve contributed exactly nothing to the solving of our problem. Other than servicing you sexually, of course.”
He gave her a sidelong glance, caught the teasing gleam in her eye. “Not that it’s such a chore,” she added. “It’s excellent. Even so, I don’t want to spend this whole investigation with my legs in the air.”
He started to speak, but she cut him off. “Yes, you’re the super commando whiz with a zillion languages, but I have some ideas, too.”
“I never said you didn’t.” He slowed down as they entered Garnett. “I think you’re brilliant. Which is why you should be working on Kev’s drawings. I stared at those suckers until I went batshit fifteen years ago. I have no ideas left. You might see something fresh.”
“I’ll study them all you want. I would have studied them all night, if you hadn’t kept distracting me.”
“Distracting you? There’s a brand new euphemism. Actually, it was you who distracted me. I remember lying helpless, flat on my back, with a sweaty, dominating bitch goddess riding me hard.”
“You were hardly helpless. And that was after over an hour of being distracted by you, Sean,” she pointed out. “But I suggest we don’t discuss it now. This is a dangerous road, and we’re almost there.”
“We could pull over in the woods,” he suggested hopefully. “I could distract you up against a tree. Or we could try the backseat.”
“I want to talk to Trung, and so do you,” she said. “Concentrate.”
He appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood, but it just didn’t seem right to him, wandering around under a big, open sky with Liv beside him and no squadron of Special Ops soldiers flanking her.
He didn’t know how to deal with this fear. Usually he faced danger with the what-the-fuck attitude of a guy who wasn’t particularly afraid of death. He was afraid for Liv, though. Pissing himself afraid.
He was nervous as an alley cat, constantly checking the rearview. Peering into the sky to check for helicopters, for fuck’s sake. This was the flip side of what happened when a guy allowed himself to give a shit. It clouded his brain, made him stupid and thick and useless.
“It’s not safe,” he said. “I can’t concentrate. I could get us killed.”
She reached over, touched his thigh. “I feel safest with you.”
His throat went hot and hard as a fist. “Please, don’t say that.” He forced the words out with difficulty. “Don’t set me up.”
“I’m sorry if it makes you nervous, but we got into this thing together, and we need to figure it out together.”
He forestalled the rest of her bracing inspirational lecture by tossing the e-mail from Con onto her lap. “Read me the directions.”
“Why should I, Mr. Photographic Memory?”
“You wanted to make yourself useful? Be useful,” he growled.
They pulled up in front of a seedy-looking grocery store. Sean parked and got out, turning a slow three-sixty. He grabbed Liv and hustled towards the store. He didn’t want her out in the open. Not that she was recognizable in that blond wig, but even so.
A pimply teenaged boy manned the counter. Sean gave the kid a bland smile. “I’m looking for a man named Mr. Trung.”
The boy went motionless, eyes big. He scampered out of the room.
That was unnerving. He slid his arm around Liv’s waist while he waited. She was so soft and warm and vibrant. It made his breath snag, his chest tighten. Awareness of her throbbed in his groin. In spite of how tense he was. In spite of the fact that he’d been at her all night. He couldn’t get enough. He craved that sensuous dream world they slid into when they got it on. He could live in that world with her forever.
A middle-aged Vietnamese man came out, followed by a fortyish woman. They regarded Sean and Liv as if they were poisonous snakes.
The woman spoke mechanically, as if she’d rehearsed the words. “I am Helen Trung. This is John, my husband. My father is not here. He is gone back to Vietnam six months ago. He is not come back.”
Sean looked at the blank wall of the couple’s faces, tightening his arm around Liv, and followed his first impulse. “Fifteen years ago, I believe there were people who threatened Mr. Trung,” he said. “These same people killed my brother, and are threatening me, and her.” He nodded at Liv. “I want to find them.”
The man and woman looked at each other. The woman turned back. “My father is gone. He is not come back,” she repeated.
Sean waited, letting the silence speak for him.
The woman began to mutter angrily in Vietnamese. He dredged up his memories of the language that Crazy Eamon had drilled into him and his brothers, the language his father had learned in the four tours he’d served, in the war that had broken his mind.
“Please help us, if you know about these men,” he said, in halting Vietnamese. “My wife is in danger from these men. We will not endanger your family. You have my word.”
The couple’s eyes widened. He was startled at the impulse that had moved him to identify Liv as his wife. “Girlfriend” sounded frivolous. And he didn’t have a word for that concept in Vietnamese anyway. He hadn’t used the language since he was twelve, when Dad died, and the word girlfriend had not entered his active vocabulary, in any language.
The word wife had such a different weight to it. “Wife” made it sound like her welfare and safety was his, by God, business. He liked it.
He was just about to give up and leave when a wheezing voice came through the curtain that divided the store from the back room.
“Bring them in to me,” someone said, in Vietnamese.
They followed the woman through the curtained door, through a cramped hall and into a small kitchen. A swift glance around revealed a oneway mirror to monitor the shop outside, and a wizened guy in his late sixties, sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. He flicked an appraising glance over Liv, and then fixed his gaze on Sean.
Sean waited patiently for the older man to speak first.
“I thought they had killed you,” he said slowly.
Sean suppressed a surge of wild excitement. “Perhaps you mistake me for my twin brother,” he said. “He was killed, fifteen years ago. I wish to find this killer, and avenge my brother.”
Trung’s face twitched. “You sound like my old great-aunt from Khanh Hung,” he wheezed. His laughter turned to a coughing fit. He rapped a command to his daughter, who hurried in with a fresh pack of cigarettes. She looked like she was trying not to smile, too.
Liv nudged at him. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Me, I guess,” he said ruefully. “My backwoods yokel accent.”
“Those who are curious about death often find more than they wanted to know,” Trung intoned, his head wreathed with smoke.
“So be it,” Sean replied quietly.
The daughter whispered furiously into her father’s ear. He shook his head. “Sit down,” he said to Sean, gesturing at the table.
There was only one chair, and Sean gestured for Liv to sit. The man’s daughter made some explosive comment under her breath, and disappeared into the other room, coming back with folding chairs.
She crowded them into the narrow space around the table.
“Coffee,” Trung said to his daughter.
The old man hunched over the table, staring at the smoke curling up between his gnarled fingers. “I never saw you,” he said slowly.
“I understand.” Sean shot a reassuring glance at Liv, wishing he could translate for her, but he needed all his concentration for this.
“I thought you were your brother,” Trung said. “He always spoke to me courteously, in my own language, when he saw me. He was a good boy, kind and polite. I will tell you what I saw, for his sake.”
“I thank you,” Sean said, inclining his head.
“I worked for three weeks at that building,” Trung said. “One day, I go into one of the rooms, and I find the table broken, chairs on the floor. Glass, everywhere. No one told me what had happened. I did not ask. I seldom saw the people who used the building. I did not know what they did.” He finished his smoke. “One morning, I went in early.” The old man stopped, his eyes far away. He groped for the cigarettes.
Sean pushed them across the table into his hand.
He shook another out, lit up. His fingers had a constant tremor. “I was going down the hall,” he resumed. “The light was on in one of the rooms. I thought I had forgotten to turn it out. I opened the door.”
He paused. “There was a man,” he went on. “A big man. His hands were red. There was a body on the floor. He had been putting it into a plastic bag. There was blood leading to the door, where another body had been dragged before.” Smoke trickled between his fingers. “Then he said, ‘Since you are here, come help me. This one is heavy.’”
The room was quiet for several seconds.
“I helped him.” Trung’s voice was flat. “We dragged the body to a van. There were other bodies in the van. Then he pointed a gun at me, told me to clean up. I could hardly work, my hands shook so.” He held up his hands. “They have not stopped shaking since that day.”
“I am sorry,” Sean said. “And after?”
The man sighed, papery eyelids fluttering. “He put a knife to my eye. He said, ‘Leave this place. If you tell anyone, I will eat the liver of the youngest member of your family while you watch. Then I will cut out your eyes, your tongue.’ He cut me, under my eye.” He indicated a scar that distorted his lower eyelid. “My grandson was two years old. We left that day.”
“This man spoke Vietnamese?” Sean asked.
Trung’s mouth twitched. “No, he did not,” he said, in English.
Sean nodded, grateful to switch from Vietnamese. “Did you see others? Did you know their names?”
Trung’s smile vanished. “I had no reason to be curious before. I had many, many reasons not to be curious after.”
“Could you identify the man you saw?” Sean asked.
The old man had another coughing fit. Helen Trung poured him a glass of water. He gulped it, wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. “No, you fool,” he said. “Have you not heard anything that I said?”
“If you were asked to testify, you would have protection.”
The man leaned across the table, touched a thickened yellow fingertip to the scab on Sean’s forehead. He gestured toward the bruises on Liv’s jaw. “If these people can beat a man like you and his wife, what would they do to her?” He gestured towards his daughter. “Or him?” He waved towards the teenager lurking in the door. The kid ducked out. “You are only one man. Look to your wife. Now go, please. You are not welcome to return. I want no more visits from anyone.”
His wording made Sean pause. “Wait. I’m not the first person to ask you about this?”
Trung’s shoulders jerked, in a short, angry shrug. “There was a reporter, soon after we came here. He wanted to write a story about boys who had disappeared at that place. I told him nothing.”
“I am grateful for what you have told us, for my brother’s sake,” Sean said. “But who was the reporter?”
The elderly man frowned at his persistance. “I don’t remember. He wrote for a big paper. Maybe the Washingtonian. He wanted to become famous.” He snorted. “Writing in the blood of my grandchildren. Fool.”
“When exactly did he come to see you?” Liv asked.
Trung gave her a startled glance. “I don’t remember.”
“He bought a pumpkin,” Helen Trung spoke up. “To carve, for Halloween.” She came forward, and began clearing the coffee cups.
Sean thanked the man, nodded to his daughter and son-in-law.
He and Liv took their leave, gulping oxygen. He bundled Liv into the car, seeing that van door yawning wide in his mind’s eye, plastic-wrapped bodies piled inside. Liv was speaking, so he shook himself out of his grisly reverie. “Huh?”
She made an impatient sound. “I said, the next step is obvious.”
That stumped him, being how nothing in his entire life since birth had ever been particularly obvious. “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”
Her smile was brimming with satisfaction. “We go to a library.”
They stopped at the first decent-sized library they found. Liv engaged in shop talk with the librarian, and they were soon ensconced in the microfiche room and alone. He was grateful Liv was taking over, because his brain had gone into hiding.
The older editions of the newspapers were not digitally stored, and that meant doing research the hard way. But Liv scrolled through microfiche with a speed that made his eyes water, keeping up a soft patter to chill him out, make him feel included.
“…October fifteenth through November fifteenth, and if I have no luck, I’ll keep going forward. I don’t think anybody ever carves a pumpkin before the middle of October.”
“Yeah. Sure,” he muttered distracted.
There was only one functioning microfiche reader. Just as well. All he could do was contemplate the ache in his stomach. So like, and yet so horribly unlike the ache he usually had when staring at a woman he’d been boffing for a few days. Usually by now he was casting around for a gentle, non-hurtful way to extricate himself. Though he knew, in practical terms, that no such thing existed. It always hurt.
But looking at Liv’s elegant back seated at the microfiche reader, he realized it was backwards. He wanted to handcuff her to his body, he was so anxious to keep her safe. He was so afraid of failing.
His track record sucked, so far. He’d never gotten there on time to save anyone. He’d been too small, when Mom died. He still remembered his fury. He’d dreamt of saving her with some act of glorious heroism. Woken up crying because it wasn’t real.
He’d been the one to find his father lying in the crushed bean vines, staring up at the sky. Eamon’s body had still been warm.
Kev had been burned to ash by the time he galloped to the rescue. He’d been too late to help his older brothers when they got into their messes, too. Thank God, they’d pulled themselves out of the shit with their skins largely intact. No thanks to him.
“Sean.” Liv’s voice vibrated with excitement. “Take a look at this.”
He leaped up, and stared over her shoulder at the screen, displaying an editorial, by Jeremy Ivers, dated November 2.
The Brain Drain: Young Geniuses Vanish.
Micky Wheeler was puzzled. Sunday morning, bright and early, his friend and classmate, Heath Frankel, a doctoral candidate in applied physics at the University of Washington, didn’t show for their climbing date. Messages were unanswered. His apartment was deserted. When Micky tried to get in touch with Heath’s only close relative, an uncle in San Diego, he found the uncle away on business. After days of worry, Micky went to the police and filed a missing persons report.
That same day, he heard of another acquaintance, Craig Alden, a computer engineering student at University of Washington. According to Alden’s girlfriend, he’d disappeared at the same time. Coincidentally, Alden also had little family to sound the alarm. As one friend put it, “He’s a genius, but he parties hard. He’s probably sleeping off a bender in a hotel in Reno.”
Sean skimmed the rest, pulled out his cell, and dialed Davy.
“Yeah?” Davy demanded. “So? What did the janitor say?”
“He saw bodies, blood, and a guy who threatened to eat his grandkids’ livers. He doesn’t want to be involved. Find me a guy named Jeremy Ivers. Reporter. Wrote for the Washingtonian fifteen years ago. Have Nick check on the status of these missing persons. Heath Frankel and Craig Alden.” He hung up, before Davy could bust his balls.
Liv blinked up at him. “And now?”
“Now Davy does his magic thing and finds the reporter.”
She looked up through her eyelashes. “I don’t suppose we could do anything so mundane as get some lunch in the meantime?”
He opened his mouth to say no when his stomach growled.
The seafood restaurant Liv picked had a great view of the surf. There was something surreal about ordering food in a restaurant with a woman. Like they were playing make-believe at being a normal couple.
He felt much more anchored to the ground after his combo platter. Lobsters in drawn butter, plus smaller portions of barbecued shrimp, pan fried oysters, grilled swordfish and batter fried halibut, with baked potato and Ceasar salad for sides.
Afterwards, Liv tried to drag him down to the beach, which is where he drew the line. “No way,” he told her. “We’re lying low.”
“Oh, come on,” she coaxed. “We’re just another couple on the beach. No one knows we’re here. We didn’t even know we were coming.”
That was when he saw it, and practically broke his own neck twisting to look. A stunt kite, the kind that could pick an unwary man off his feet on a blustery day and carry him to his death. He had several himself, but this one made his heart jump out of his chest. He recognized the hypnotic mandala on it. Kev had painted that design onto their bedroom ceiling the year their father had died. He’d spent hours lying on his cot, staring at it.
He took off after it, feet churning in the sand, dragging Liv behind him, his hand clamped like an iron manacle over her slender wrist.
“Sean? Sean!” she protested. “Hey! Ouch! Where are you going?”
He couldn’t answer. His heart was going to explode like a grenade. The guy flying the kite had a pointy goatee. He wore tie-dye, baggy canvas shorts. He saw Sean heading towards him. His eyes went big.
“Where did you get that kite?” Sean gasped out.
The guy’s jaw flapped. “I didn’t steal it—”
“I never said you did.” Sean could not control the snarling edge in his voice. “Just tell me who you got it from.”
The guy kept backing away to keep his kite aloft. “Uh…uh, at a sporting goods shop, in San Francisco. They specialize in—”
“Who designed it?” he barked out.
The kite sagged, and the guy scuttled backwards to take out the slack. “I dunno. I’d, uh, have to look at the packaging. Some outfit in the Bay Area. Hey, dude. I gotta catch this breeze. Take it easy.”
He darted away, casting nervous glances back over his shoulder.
Sean stared after him, heart pounding. Liv was saying something, but he could only make out the soothing tone. He hugged her fiercely.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” she was murmuring, over and over.
He shook his head. It wasn’t OK. He was losing it.
“…was that all about?” she was asking him gently.
He took a deep breath, and blurted out the truth. “That kite,” he said, exhausted. “That black and orange design. It’s one of Kev’s. He painted it on the ceiling of our bedroom when we were kids.”
“Ah.” Her arms tightened. She pressed her warm, soft lips against his shoulder. “And did you think that—”
“No,” he broke in savagely. “I didn’t think. Kev’s been dead fifteen years. And I still didn’t think. See? That’s my problem. I never think.”
“No.” Her soft voice was stubborn. “You don’t have a problem. You think just fine. You just think…differently. But you’re brilliant.”
The burst of laughter hurt his throat. “Brilliant. Freaking out over a kite while I’m supposed to be protecting you? Yeah, babe. Genius.”
He stared into those black-fringed gray eyes. Felt sweaty-palmed hunger grip him, revving his engines. Adrenaline, shifting into lust.
She sensed it, and stiffened. “Don’t you give me that look, you sex freak. You’re not going to get lucky with me on a public beach in broad daylight, so get it out of your head.”
He saw a solution. Made for it, towing her behind him.
“And just where do you think you’re taking me?” she asked.
He jerked his chin at the building. “That hotel.”
Liv stumbled into the hotel room, backing up as Sean advanced on her. She circled the bed, putting it between them. He pulled the drapes closed with a hard yank. They stared at each other in the dimness.
That predatory look in his eyes made her feel like a quivering virgin who could barely guess what was in store for her. Heart hammering, belly tightening, breathless excitement. Her lips, her breasts, her crotch, all tingled and buzzed. Her laughing, teasing, playful Sean who wheedled and coaxed and patiently, skilfully seduced her into sex was nowhere to be seen.
This man would not coax. He would take what he wanted.
He made her stammering and stupid; his big, gorgeous body, the stark beauty of his battered face. Those eyes. He could ignite desperate yearning inside her with just one smoldering look.
And it was all the more potent for the silence, the waiting.
He ripped off the shirt he’d bought that morning. She just couldn’t get used to the lean, sinewy perfection of his body.
“You’re wearing some of that sexy underwear under that dress?” The seductive rasp of his voice dragged over her nerves like silken fur.
She tried to reply, but her breath was too uneven. A stuttering squeak came out. She opted for a nervous nod.
“Strip,” he said softly. “Show me.”
She leaned down, began unbuckling the delicate ankle straps.
“No,” he said. “Leave on the shoes.”
She straightened, running her hands over the curves of her body, modeling the stretchy sheath dress for him. It was sexy, comfy, a blend of rust, orange and brown. The nine hundred dollar price tag that had dangled from the sleeve was a blatant provocation. “Do you like my dress?” she asked shakily. “I hope so, because you paid enough for it.”
“I like it fine,” he growled. “Get it off.”
She took her time, tugging up the clinging skirt, in no hurry to reveal the lingerie she’d put on that morning. The thigh-high brown stockings, trimmed with brown and gilt lace that by some freak of masterful design actually stayed up. The chiffon panties, the sheer, clinging chemise. The transparent demi-bra, which hoisted her boobs up to unheard-of heights while still managing to look delicate.
She pulled the dress over her head, careful not to dislodge the wig, and shook the unfamiliar wavy locks loose over her shoulders.
“Take off the wig,” he commanded.
Liv ran her fingers through the curls. “I kind of like it. Pretending to be someone else is freeing, you know? I’m just some anonymous blonde in a hotel room. Who knows which way I’ll jump?”
“I’ve fucked lots of anonymous blondes in hotel rooms,” he said. “I’m bored with it. I want to fuck you. Lose the wig. Now.”
She peeled the wig off, muttering under her breath as she plucked out pins, and shook the dark mass of hair down into a kinky, tangled cloud over her back. She lifted her chin. “Happy now?”
“I’m getting there,” he rasped. “Soon. I’ll be happy very soon.”
She backed up against the vanity. He loomed over her, stealing all the oxygen, blocking all the light. Her bottom pressed hard against the cool, varnished wood. He kicked her legs apart and stood between them. The fine chiffon snagged on the rough spots on his hands.
He sank down onto his knees in front of her, took one of her feet, caressing it in his big, warm hands before draping it over his shoulder.
“Pull the crotch away,” he directed her. “Show me your pussy.”
She shivered with dizzy excitement as she tugged the damp scrap of chiffon out of the way. She was so aroused, puffy and pink and wet.
He let out a long sigh of delight. “Wow. So shiny and pink. You glow. Put your finger inside your pussy. Show me how wet you are.”
She bit her lip, shaking uncontrollably as she parted her labia and slid her finger inside herself. She wanted to do it seductively, like a strip tease, but she was too aroused to choreograph herself.
She pulled her finger out. Sean seized her hand, dragged her finger into his mouth. The hot, tight suction sent delicious shivers of longing through her. He pulled her finger out of his mouth.
“Hold your panties out of the way while I get my fix,” he ordered.
She couldn’t speak, or breathe, or do anything but watch. Her arm trembled at the strain of supporting her body while her other hand held the gusset of her panties aside so that he could have at her with his skillful, ravenous tongue.
He gripped her hips while his tongue lashed and thrust into her juicy folds, swirling around, stabbing deep, then trilling deliciously with his tongue. His position was submissive, but he was anything but. He took what was all his, laying claim to her pleasure. Every time demanding more from her, every time a deeper, wider surrender.
She quivered in his ruthless grip, pushing herself eagerly against his face. The mirror was cold and hard against her back, the edge of the vanity cut into her bottom, she didn’t even know anymore which way gravity was supposed to be pulling her except closer to his hungry, sucking mouth, closer, whipping her up to a screaming intensity—
Wave after wave of sweet hot pleasure throbbed through her, lapping over every nerve.
Far too soon after that, he pulled her up onto her rubbery legs, turning her so they both faced the mirror. She caught herself with her hands on the edge of the dresser, panting through flushed, shaking red lips as he kicked off his jeans. Naked and hard and huge.
“I like the mirror,” he said. “I want you to watch your own face while I fuck you. I want you to see how hot you look when you’re sighing and moaning and coming. Pull your panties down, Liv.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do it like this, standing up,” she said breathlessly. “No way. I’m…I’m jelly. I’ll melt. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” A merciless smile curved his mouth. “You will. You’ll do whatever I want. You like it that way. You like me this way.”
He had her, the arrogant bastard, but there was nothing she could do when he touched her like that, nuzzling the hair away from the nape of her neck while he yanked her panties halfway down her thighs.
“You jerk. You’re b-being ridiculous,” she forced out.
“Works for me.” He tugged her arms until they folded. “Prop yourself up on your elbows. I love your ass at that angle. I can see your pussy lips kissing my cock. I like to see your legs shake. I want to fuck you until you’re tottering on those heels.” He kissed her nape. The scorching contact of his skin against her body made her gasp.
“I love to make you tremble,” he murmured. “I love to make you weak, to make you wet.” His voice was hypnotic, almost chanting. “I love to make you moan and whimper.” He fitted the blunt head of his penis against her, easing it with licking, back-and-forth strokes between her labia. “Make some noise when I shove my cock into you.”
He followed words with action, driving himself deep, and jolting a gasping cry out of her. He waited, motionless, until she could feel his heartbeat throbbing deep inside her against her womb, until she started moving, twitching her bottom against his groin to get him going.
He let out a soft sigh. She realized that he’d been holding his breath, afraid that he’d hurt her. Not that he would ever admit it while he was playing his macho caveman games. She wanted to smack that arrogant look off his gorgeous face, but she needed that injection of heat and energy he was giving to her even more. His deep, thrusting strokes, made her feel so female, so alive. Their eyes were locked in the mirror. He slid his hand between her leg and stroked her clit as he pumped, pulsed, stoking that yearning glow with slow, sure skill.
On and on, until still more unbearable pleasure wrenched through her.
When she looked up, he’d withdrawn from her shaking body, and was waiting, massaging his rigid member with a rough fist. He scooped his arm around her belly and spun her to face him, leaning his damp forehead against hers. His thick erection prodded her thigh, insistently.
“Make me come,” he begged.
She sank to her knees, pulling him into her mouth, clutching his hips. She sucked him hard, flicking her tongue along the sensitive flare, swirling, teasing. Just a few long, voluptuous strokes, as deep as she could take him, deeper than she’d ever dreamed she could.
He exploded, pumping his salty male essence into her mouth.
He sank to his knees and wrapped his arms around her, giving her something to cling to so she wouldn’t melt into a puddle.
Some minutes later, she felt him shift and move, pawing at the bedclothes. He got up, and pulled her body down on top of his on the bed. Still in her shoes and stockings. Panties wound around her thighs.
She must have slept for a while, and woke up disoriented. Her only point of reference in the world was Sean’s big, hard body, holding her tightly against him. It felt so safe, so warm. But nature was calling.
He protested sleepily as she extricated herself, but she insisted, murmuring something soothing. She pried the sandals off and padded into the bathroom, took care of her business, and stood there staring at herself in the mirror for a long time. As if she’d never seen that woman before. Makeup smeared, hair big and wild and tangled. Tricked out in whorish lingerie. Private parts throbbing and hot and slippery, from hard, prolonged use. Badly in need of a wash.
She set the water running into the big tub and peeled off the underwear. The panties were a lost cause. Unwearable.
She went back to the bed and tugged Sean’s arm. “I ran us a bath,” she told him. “Come on.”
He followed obediently enough, and climbed into the tub. She shut off the roaring tap, sudsed her hands up and started in on his chest, his muscular arms, his long, gorgeous hands. Loving the way the soapy water made his streaks and whorls of dark blond body hair so sleek, so deliciously touchable, strokable. Kissable.
His penis rose up again, indefatigable. She gazed at it, impressed. He shrugged, gave her a what-do-you-want-from-me look, and closed his eyes. Well, fine. If he could ignore it, so could she.
She stepped into the tub, sank down and wound her legs around his. “So did you get your ya-yas out? Do you feel better now?”
He opened one eye. “Fucking you definitely helped,” he said blandly. “Do you mean, am I going apeshit? I don’t know, Liv. That kite was a dirty trick. I swear to God, it was the exact same image.”
“I believe you. But maybe Kev saw the image somewhere else.”
“Our father never let us off that place, except to go to town for supplies,” Sean said. “It’s not likely he would have seen it elsewhere.”
“That kite cannot have anything to do with Kev,” she persisted gently. “You do know that, right?” She waited. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.” He covered his eyes. “I just wish I could make it stop.”
“Make what stop?”
“This feeling.” He shook his head. “It was a twin thing. When one of us was in trouble, the other one knew it. It was like an itch, inside my mind. Fire ants, crawling through my nerves.”
“Brr,” she murmured. “Sounds uncomfortable.”
“Yeah. Anyhow, you’d figure that when he died, the feeling would die with him, right?”
She felt a shivery rush of goose bumps. “You mean…it didn’t?”
He closed his eyes, shook his head. “I feel it all the time. Not so much now as in the beginning. It drove me stark raving nuts the first few years. I had to distract myself by pulling crazy shit like jumping out of airplanes, blowing up buildings, getting tortured by warlords. That was what it took.” He leaned back against the tub, staring up at the ceiling. “They say people still feel pain and itching in limbs that have been amputated. Phantom pain. I guess that’s what I’ve got.”
“I’m sorry it hurts, but I envy you. I have good friends, but I’ve never been as close to anyone as what you’re describing.”
A faint frown creased his brow. “Guess what? You are now, babe.”
She blinked at him. “Hmm?”
“How do you think I knew to come after you? I woke out of a sound sleep full of adrenaline right before T-Rex stopped your car.”
Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Ah—I—”
“Get used to it.” There was a possessive gleam in his eyes. “You can’t hide anything from me.”
“I have nothing to hide,” she said. “Not from you. You always get uptight when I say things like this, but that makes me feel…safe.”
Predictably, his smile faded. “Oh, God. Don’t jinx me, babe.”
“Why are you so twitchy about that?” she asked crabbily. “I couldn’t imagine a guy more protective or vigilant or heroic than you.”
“My father was, too,” he said. “But my mom wasn’t safe with him.”
“Tell me.”
“He didn’t hit her. Fuck, no. Dad would sooner have drowned himself than hit a woman. She was everything to him. But he fucked up. Kept her up there, pregnant, in the winter. Impassable roads. She paid the price.”
Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away. “That’s terribly sad, but I don’t see what that has to do with us,” she said cautiously.
“Look at us, Liv. I’m doing the same thing to you that my dad did to her. I whisked you away, hid you, decided I’m the only one on earth who can keep you safe. Where have I heard this song before?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not like that.”
He shrugged. “I’m scared shitless those bastards will get you if you go back to your folks. I don’t think the cops have the resources to protect you, either. They’re spread too thin to intercept anybody as focused as T-Rex. That’s my gut instinct, but I can’t trust it completely. Not after watching what happened to my dad.”
“You put all the responsibility for what happened on your dad,” she said. “What about your mom? Did she have any opinions?”
His shrug was eloquent. “You didn’t know my dad.”
“No, but I know you. Besides, you’re my responsibility now, too.”
His eyes widened. “Hell of a responsibility. Ask my brothers.”
“High maintenance,” she teased. “Like a Ferrari. Or a fighter jet.”
“Speaking of high maintenance…” He leaned forward, and grasped her hips, pulling until she straddled him. He prodded the head of his penis against her, and let her sink down, enveloping him. “I’ve got a part that needs some focused attention.”
She wiggled in his grasp, giggling. “But I’m exhausted.”
“So rest.” A lazy grin made his dimple deepen. “You don’t have to do a thing. But if we’re going to lie around reminiscing and telling secrets, I’d just as soon do it with my cock shoved way up inside you.”
She wiggled around him. “You can converse in this condition?”
“Best condition there is. Hugged and kissed by the princess’s tight, cushy pussy. I can’t believe how good it feels.”
“I can’t think a coherent thought,” she confessed, shivering.
“So don’t think.” Sean jerked her down so her breasts dangled in his face. Her hair created a mysterious perfumed veil around them. He blew a lock of hair out of his mouth. “This is all your fault, you know.”
She giggled at his hot, tickling mouth. “Oh, yeah? How is that?”
“You keep saying sweet things to me.” He suckled her nipple into his mouth, swirling and pulling. “Makes my dick hard.”
“Get real. You get equally hard when I scream and pound on you.”
He pondered that. “Well, hell. That’s true,” he said, in a tone of mock discovery. “I’ll be damned. That’s remarkable. Angle yourself so your clit’s rubbing up against my…yeah. Just like that. Perfect. Ah.”
She gave in, moving over him, stretched taut between two poles of melting pleasure, the greedy suckling of his mouth against her breasts, and his thick phallus massaging inside her, with that slow, skillful glide and plunge. Her hair fanned out in floating clouds of suds. There was no sounds but the lap and splash and slosh of the water, the wet sounds of his suckling mouth against her, her gasping breaths.
The climax was long, and liquid, and endlessly lovely.
When her eyes fluttered open, he pulled her up and out of the tub, scooped her up into his arms. She clutched his shoulders with a squeak. She just couldn’t get used to this being swept up routine.
He carried her into the other room and laid her down on the rumpled bed, dripping wet. He spread her legs, smoothed the clinging wet hair back off her face. “I want to fill you up with my come.”
She tried to speak. The jerky hiccups were shaking her apart.
“Shake your head, if you don’t want it.” His voice was raw.
She caressed his face. He made a harsh sound, and let go of his control. Oh, God, she loved it when he went wild, when the tendons on his neck stood out, when he lost himself, ramming into her with deep, hard strokes that satisfied some crazy savage primordial urge.
The explosive rush of life-giving delight fused them together.
When she started noticing things again, she saw him rolling something small between his fingers. It glittered and flashed.
She peered at it. “Your earring,” she said. “Did it fall out?”
He held it out to her. “It’s yours.”
She shrank back. “Oh, no. I’ve never seen you without it.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s always been yours. I bought this stone for you fifteen years ago.”
She gaped, the protest she was about to make evaporating.
“I spent every dime I made that summer to buy it,” he said. “It was the biggest one I could afford. I opted for just the stone. Anything I could have gotten with a setting would have been just a pin-prick of a thing.” His eyes slid away. “I know it’s not a huge rock, but it’s good quality.” He pushed her wet hair back, fastened it into her earlobe.
Desperate questions welled up. She was afraid to let them out. Was it like an engagement ring? Was it just a sweet postcoital impulse?
She opened her mouth to ask, when his cell phone rang.
He flicked it open and barked into it. “You got something?…Grissom? Yeah, I know it. What’s the address?…I’m on it. Later.”
He clicked the phone shut. His eyes had focused, sharp and cool.
“Get dressed, princess,” he said. “Davy’s found our reporter.”