In Too Deep: A Romantic Suspense Novel (30 page)

"I want you to fuck me until you fill me with your cream," I sighed, stepping backward until my knees bumped against the edge of the bed and I sat down. I spread my legs, feeling my juices already start to soak into the thick cotton. I pulled my hand out of my shorts and brought it under my nose, inhaling the spicy thickness. "Don't you want to taste?"

My last question broke Mark's reservations, and he walked over to the door of the room, double checking both locks before jamming the chair he'd been sitting in against the door. The window had security bars, which wouldn't stop a bullet but would stop an intruder at least momentarily, I guessed. Turning to me, he knelt down, quickly unlacing his boots before taking them off and placing them at the foot of the bed. He stood, unbuckling his belt and letting his cargo pants fall down his hips, his cock already straining against his underpants. I noticed he was wearing compression shorts. "Were you dressed for war or something?" I asked, propping myself up on my elbows. "You don't happen to have a knife or gun hidden anywhere on that body of yours, do you?"

"Just two," Mark teased, pulling his t-shirt off. I could see the first knife, a small little blade on a chain around his neck, and he knelt down to take off the other one, which had been strapped unseen near his right ankle. "There, now I'm unarmed."

"Except for that gun in your underpants," I teased, reaching out with my right foot. The Lycra of his shorts let my foot slide over his bulging cock like it was covered in oil. "Now tell me."

"Tell you?" Mark asked, a small smile on his face. He knew what I wanted. "I suppose you want me to tell you that you're the most beautiful woman in the world, and that every time I see your soft, beautiful skin it drives me wild?"

"Hmmmm, it's a start," I cooed, sliding my foot over his cock again. I hooked my big toe into the waistband and started to pull it down, which was more difficult than I had anticipated. After a few seconds, Mark helped, pushing the tight shorts down and off, his cock springing free. "But that, as sexy as it is, is not what I wanted to hear."

Mark smiled, pushing my legs to the side and crawling up on the bed next to me. "Maybe," he whispered as his hand came up to lift my t-shirt, cupping my left breast and driving the breath out of me when his thumb brushed my nipple, "what you want to hear is that if you give me the chance, I'm going to spoil you, and give you every little fantasy you've ever imagined, every little gift your heart desires."

"You know what my heart desires," I replied, pulling him in and kissing him. Our tongues met, and we slowly kissed for what seemed like hours. Mark ran his hand down my body to slide my soaked cotton shorts off, leaving both of us in just our t-shirts. I wrapped my hand around the hard shaft of his cock, pumping him slowly while his fingers rubbed me. "But that's not what I want to hear."

Mark lifted my left leg up, sliding in between, forcing me to let him go. Taking his cock in his hand, he traced the thick head up and down my wet slit, teasing me with his eyes and with his cock. "I know what you want me to say. I want the same thing," he said honestly, his eyes deep with emotion. "I love you, Sophie White."

When he said my name, Mark pushed inside me, filling me with one stroke. Propping himself up on his knees, he lifted my hips up to him, then lifted me until I was sitting in his lap, stretched and filled by his wonderful cock. "I love you Sophie, and I always will."

The position we were in allowed me to control the pace of our lovemaking. Lifting myself up and down slowly, I luxuriated in the feeling of his cock slowly sliding in and out, each perfect inch different from the last it seemed, and each wonderful. Mark held me in his arms while I rode him, before I noticed a slight grimace on his face. "What is it?" I asked, pausing. "Am I hurting you?"

"No," Mark chuckled. "I did it to myself. My calves have gone to sleep kneeling like this."

We both ended up laughing, falling to the side so that I could keep Mark's cock inside me while still allowing him to stretch out his legs. Once on the mattress, I grinned and rolled him over onto his back, straddling his waist. "You didn't think I'd let go of such a wonderful position, did you?" I groaned, riding his cock. "It feels too good to let that happen."

Mark brought his hands up to cup my breasts, pinching and rolling the nipples between his fingers, and I threw my head back, crying out at the pleasure. My hips sped up, faster and faster until I was riding him as hard as I could. Leaning forward, I planted my hands on either side of his head while my breasts dangled in his face, letting my ass buck up and down, his cock filling me over and over. My clit rubbed against the hard muscles right above his cock, and I saw stars shoot across my vision.

Mark's lips never hesitated, sucking my nipple deep into his mouth and licking the sensitive tip with his tongue. I couldn't hold out much longer, so I poured my heart out as I rode him. "I love you, I love you," I said over and over as I plunged myself upon his cock.

Finally, I could take no more. Pushing back as hard as I could, I impaled myself on him, burying my face in his shoulder and screaming as a deep, hard orgasm gripped me. Mark held me tight, letting my body tense and quiver, until I started to relax. He suddenly held my hips tightly and bucked up, his legs propped up on the bed as he sought his own orgasm. In only four more strokes, he groaned and found his own release. I sagged against him, utterly spent.

I
woke
up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, in which the gunmen had shot first through the door, hitting Mark, before they came after me. I woke up with a short, startled scream before I felt Mark's presence behind me, holding me in his arms and soothing the fears away. "Shhh, you're safe," he whispered in my ear. Even in my half asleep state I could feel that he had changed back into his clothes, and was awake and aware. "Go back to sleep, I'll protect you all night. I love you."

Before I could protest, sleep hammered me back into the blackness, and I felt myself go. At least that time there weren't any more dreams.

T
he next morning
, we had breakfast at a nearby Burger King, since I much prefer their breakfast burrito over anything on the McDonald's menu. As I munched, I lamented. "You know, it's been almost a decade since I left the South, but I miss Hardee's," I said as I squirted a bit of ketchup onto the eggs inside the tortilla. "They may say they merged with Carl's Jr, but it's not quite the same, I don't think."

"Never had either," Sophie replied, munching on her sausage biscuit. "In fact, this is the first fast food I've had in months."

"You've got a better diet than I do," I admitted, swallowing another bite. "They say you can't out train a bad diet, but I've been giving it my best shot for quite a while."

"I've noticed your training," Sophie said, half smiling. "Trust me, I enjoy it." We ate in comfortable silence for a bit before she swallowed the last of her breakfast and set her hands down on the table top, waiting for me. "So, what's next?"

"Well," I said, taking a sip of my orange juice, "it kind of depends on what you want to do. If you want to just disappear, I can arrange that. I have a few alternate IDs already, and know who I can talk to that can get one for you. Financially we are set, and I can get access to all of my accounts without them knowing what to look for. If you want to go back, things will be a bit more hands on, but we can start plans for that too."

"How will you get access? Can't they track you somehow?" Sophie asked, curious.

I grinned and reached into the thigh pocket on my pants. "Only if they know what to look for. I left my desktop at my apartment, to throw them off the trail. Even if they did trace my IP, they'd never see a single visit to any financial website where I have real money stashed, just a small account and some poker websites I throw some cash away on as a distraction. Instead, I did all my work on this." I pulled out what I called my smartbox, something Sophie had never seen before. "I know, it's not what you've seen, and there's been a reason for that. This little thing has in it a processor and about a two hundred gigabytes of memory, all able to be powered by a simple universal AC adapter. I can plug it into anything with an HDMI port, and connect through USB a keyboard and mouse. I'm running an encrypted Linux on it, and can jack into just about any WiFi I can find with its onboard cracking systems."

Sophie took the black plastic box from my hand, turning it over, looking at it. "It looks like a deck of cards. I mean, it's smaller than most tablets I've seen."

"More secure, too," I added. "The tradeoff is that I need to physically connect it to a keyboard and monitor."

"But can you get Netflix on it?" Sophie joked, smirking. "Seriously, though, that's pretty cool. What about physically, where are you wanting to go?"

"We can go just about anywhere," I replied, "although staying away from the big cities or places with a strong organization presence would be safer. While I've done most of my work in this half of the USA, I've pulled a few contracts overseas. The networks are more intertwined than you would imagine, and the farther I can get away from that the better."

"Hmmmm, well, I have always wanted to go to Fiji," Sophie said, before cocking her eyebrow. When I gave her no reaction one way or another, her face gaped in wonder. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"As long as I can get a satellite Internet connection I am," I said, tucking my smartbox back in my pocket. "And before you ask, yes I have a backup to the smartbox. Without one of those, however, nobody can get into my accounts. We're set for life if you want, Sophie."

Sophie thought it over for a bit, then looked at me. "Can I get in touch with my friends? I'm not saying permanently, but Tabby in particular has been my friend for years. I should at least tell her goodbye or something."

I thought about the safety risk. If the Confederation knew about Tabby, and if they had put a trace on her e-mail accounts, there was a chance that the mail could be traced back. This was especially true if Sophie's laptop had been hacked by Owen Lynch or the Confederation, and a tracer placed on it. Honestly, it was just one too many ifs to worry about. After all, they could already safely assume she was alive, and most likely with me, after the two men didn't report back successfully. I'd dumped their bodies in a river the night before, so they couldn't even be technically traced back to her place. "Not from just anywhere," I said, thinking quickly. "It'll need to be from a public place, few security cameras, public terminal, stuff like that. Is your e-mail accessible from a web browser?"

"Sure. Where then?"

About an hour later, we pulled up to a Best Buy, where Sophie gave me a suspicious look. "Keep your ball cap on, and we'll be fine," I said. "They sell prepaid phones here, I put it on my Mark Snow ID, and even if they trace it, they'll just know it was me. That's all."

We were in and out in a half-hour, and the clerk, a somewhat pimply faced high school kid, didn't even ask to see my ID. I filled out the form with total lies, and we walked out with a little web capable phone. As soon as we got to my truck, we plugged in the charger to my USB port I had replaced the cigarette lighter with, and turned it on. Two minutes later, Sophie was on the web, loading her mail. "The service here really sucks," she said as we drove down the road. "I mean, this thing is loading slowly.”

"Well, what can you expect for a hundred dollars. The phone's probably cheap as hell too. Glad you're good with a stylus."

Sophie nodded, her head stilling as she loaded her message. "Mark, pull over."

"What is it?" I asked, pulling into a dry cleaners and putting the truck in park. "What's wrong?"

Sophie handed me her phone, which had an e-mail message up. "They took Tabby."

"
W
hat's
with all the cheesy lines?" I asked as I handed the phone back. "Nobody I worked with talked like that."

Sophie nodded and sighed. "A sign that they actually have or know Tabby. Back when we were in college Tabby went through a bit of a Goth-lite phase. She watched that old Brandon Lee movie
The Crow
at least twenty or thirty times on her computer, to the point that we could both quote lines to each other constantly. Last time I was over at her place, she still had a Brandon Lee poster and a copy of the DVD."

I didn't want to tell Sophie what I knew, which was that for any of the senders of the e-mail to get that information, they most likely tortured Tabby for it. I reached across the table and took her hand in mine. "What do you want to do?"

Sophie squeezed my hand and looked me in the eye. "Can you save Tabby?"

I thought it over, then nodded. "Maybe. I'd need some help and some luck, though."

"If you can't save her, what can you do?" she asked quietly, her eyes intense and her mouth tight. I squeezed her hand and looked her straight in the eye.

"If I answer, and you ask me to, you'll never be the same," I replied. "I'm not joking at all. I told you, I've got my own little corner of Hell on reservation. I'm willing to deal with that. Are you?"

I
looked
Mark in the eyes, and spoke from my heart. "You've done a lot of wrong things, Mark. They may not have been innocent, but you still helped men even more evil than the ones you handled to get stronger. You built up a huge debt, my love. And I will love you, no matter what. But in my opinion, you need to start paying off that debt. I don't know if you can ever fully repay it. We can start by saving Tabby, and making those bastards pay. If that damns me alongside you in the process, so be it."

We were on the road back within fifteen minutes, Mark letting me drive while he napped in the passenger seat. He hadn't slept at all the night before, even after the exhausting sex, staying awake to keep watch over me. I kept my eyes glued to the road, letting Phil Collins keep me company for the next three and a half hours back to the city. I pulled off across the river from the Tunnel, filling up on gas and waking Mark up. "Okay, we're close to the city now. Where do you want me to take us?"

"I'll drive," Mark said, yawning and stretching. He did a few jumping jacks, squats and other exercises while the gas filled up, and chugged a huge black iced coffee after we paid. "I'd go for a Monster or a Rockstar, but they tend to leave my hands jittery. That is not what I need right now," he explained as he grimaced and shotgunned the rest of the cup. He pulled into the driver's seat and started up the engine, pulling back into traffic. As he drove, he talked.

"I set up around the city five different bases of operation in addition to my condo. Three of them I used on a regular basis, the fourth I used rarely, and the fifth I set up, but never went to after initial setup. It was my emergency base, the one that I prepared for one reason only, and that was betrayal from inside the Confederation. We'll be going there, it's the safest place I know in the city."

"Where is it?" I asked, watching as the Tunnel gave way to Central Avenue. "And how do you know it is safe?"

"There's no place really safe," Mark replied, "But this place I only went to twice before. The building is totally owned by me, under one of my shell corporations. The building has motion detectors and alarms that never tripped. Also, this inside is very hard to access. Even if the Confederation knew about it, they'd probably not know what the hell it was for."

"So where is it?" I asked again, and Mark grinned and looked at me.

"You talked about redemption and paying my debts before, right? Well, I can't think of a better place to start than from Mount Zion."

"No way. Mount Zion?" Mount Zion was one of those sites that every city of sufficient age has. Built in the mid-1800's, it was originally a Methodist seminary before becoming an insane asylum (excuse me, hospital for the mentally disturbed) around World War I. After the war, the Methodist church wanted to unload the property, and it went into that limbo old properties tended to do. It was too old to get fixed up, but not quite old enough to become a historical monument. Besides, mental hospitals didn't exactly make good historical landmarks. There were dozens of stories about Mount Zion, your standard ghost story fare, but nobody really knew what was up with the property. "You're the owner of Mount Zion?"

"Well, the main church at least, with the minister's quarters upstairs," Mark replied. "The rest of the property I placed into a trust in order to take care of the taxes. The hospital is under an option to buy from three different developers who want to tear it down in order to put up things ranging from a strip mall to an apartment building. My shell corporation that controls the trust is playing them against each other, and the game could have gone on for a few more years."

We drove over to the Heights section of town, the rolling hills that the city had first been founded on, and Mark drove us to Mount Zion. As we approached I could see how perfect it was as a location. Relatively centrally located in the city, it was still isolated in the hills, with acres of unoccupied land around it. The driveway was nearly a half mile long, giving us plenty of isolation and warning if anyone wanted to drive up to the site. In addition, the ghost stories and other superstitions limited the number of teenage lovers or homeless who'd be willing to try and use the old buildings for unauthorized purposes. Mark pulled in, and shut off the engine.

"After I purchased the building, I used my corporation to hire a very discreet handyman, who came up here and did some renovations to the bell tower of the church. The old door was replaced with a steel core security door, and the stairs were reinforced along with the room at the top being cleaned and sparsely furnished. I apologize there is only a single thin mattress, but it was created as an emergency base, not a permanent residence."

"It'll be fine," I said, looking up at the old church. It still looked abandoned, but solid, in a Neo-Gothic style that intimidated. I thought about Tabby's fixation with
The Crow
, and thought it was an appropriate place to start from. "When we get Tabby back, we should bring her here. She'd like this place."

We went inside with our bags, and I was surprised. While the main sanctuary was still an abandoned mess, the stairwell to the belfry was concealed well, looking like the door frame had been bricked over. Mark used a remote control that looked just like one for a car door to unlock the entrance. It even beeped like a car door system would. "Yeah, I copied it. A lot of supposedly high-tech gadgets are nothing more than applying old solutions in new ways."

The belfry itself was spartan, mostly scrubbed down hardwood that was stained almost black. "The handyman sent the lawyer for my shell corporation a few pics of what it was before, and I liked the old color, so I just had him seal all the wood after making sure none of it was rotted out. They built the platforms of cedar, actually, so it's still solid as a rock. I don't know if the color is a result of the original stain they used, age, bat guano, or a combination of all of them, but I liked it."