Death is Forever (10 page)

“—help me discover on my claims,” she continued relentlessly, ignoring her father’s interruption. “Nobody will make you a better offer, because nobody will be willing to give up half the mine and the power it represents. To seal the bargain, I’ll give you this.”

She held out the green diamond, letting it shimmer and glisten on her palm.

Cole whistled softly through his teeth. His eyes focused on Erin with an intensity that was almost tangible. “‘Help you discover,’” Cole repeated. “That means you’re coming with me.”

She nodded. “The will requires it.”

“How good are you at taking orders?”

Windsor’s hard laughter was all the answer anyone needed.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Cole said. “That’s not good enough, Erin. There will be times and places where I’ll give orders and I’ll give them once because there won’t be time for explanations.”

“I can live with that.”

Cole smiled slightly. “Then pack for London.”

“Why?”

“It will make ConMin feel better.” Cole didn’t say that it would make Faulkner and the agency feel better, too. “If they think they’re going to co-opt you, they won’t be as eager to reach for more drastic measures.”

Erin didn’t like it, and it showed, but she said, “All right.”

“Second order. We’re roommates from now until the mine is discovered or you sell out your interest, whichever comes first.”

Silence stretched and stretched while Erin measured the big man who was watching her with eyes as hard and beautiful as the diamonds he loved.

“Do it,” Windsor said to his daughter. “If you’re going to be so stupid as to go through with this, you’ll need someone like Blackburn around.”

“Suite-mates,” Erin corrected, her voice clipped.

“Only if the connecting door stays open,” Cole said. “All the time, Erin. Every damned minute.”

She nodded curtly and without warning flipped Cole the stone. He caught it, his hand moving so quickly it was a blur.

“Done,” Cole said.

Faulkner slanted Cole a bleak, furious look. “
Mazel und broche,
babe. I hope you step on your cock.”

Erin sat in the window seat of her new hotel room, watching darkness descend on the Los Angeles basin. She sensed the crowded streets and sidewalks around her like a heavy weight. The hotel suite, with its two bedrooms and comfortable sitting area, was easily twice as big as her other room. She still felt confined.

She wasn’t used to sharing her living space with another human being, especially one as large and plainly masculine as Cole Blackburn. His presence in the other half of the suite was both a lure and an irritant.

Abruptly Erin stood up, giving in to her restlessness. She paced the room without seeing the luxurious fabrics with their Jacobean design or the indigo richness of the carpet. Pacing wasn’t enough. She felt like she’d been caged inside buildings forever. What she wanted was the vast, isolated sweep of the arctic. She would settle for the Pacific Ocean’s far horizon.

When Erin appeared in the open door of Cole’s bedroom, he looked up from the desk, where he’d been working over the maps he’d brought from BlackWing.

“Could we…?” Erin began, only to have her voice fade.

The husky contralto of her voice made Cole’s body quicken. She sounded like a woman with a little loving on her mind, yet she was standing in the doorway like she was poised to flee at the first sign of masculine interest. It had been that way from the beginning, conflicting signals that kept him aware of her all the time.

Not that he needed any help keeping her on his own internal radar. His body had decided after one look that it wanted to get as close as it could to Erin Shane Windsor. If it hadn’t been for her obvious nervousness at having to share a suite with him, he would have sent out some signals of his own. But he didn’t. She wasn’t acting like a woman who wanted a man.

Yet she was looking at him as though she wanted him.

“Could we…?” Cole asked.

“I need to get out. To walk. On the beach. I know it’s dark, I know you’ll tell me it’s not safe, but I have to get out and I’m going to. With or without you.”

There was no mistaking the staccato urgency in Erin’s voice. For an instant Cole ticked off the possibilities. If he’d been certain that danger was imminent, he would have tied Erin to her bed. But he wasn’t certain. ConMin was a business, not a government or a criminal clan. ConMin would try to co-opt Erin before they tried to kill her.

And he had to admit that her presence was giving him cabin fever. If he stayed in the hotel room with Erin while she was putting out all those restless signals, he’d have a hell of a time keeping his hands in his pockets. Making a pass at her wouldn’t be smart. If she wanted him, she would have to hand out a clear invitation.

She hadn’t even come close to that yet.

“I could use some fresh air myself,” Cole said.

“Three minutes,” Erin said instantly.

She headed back into her room, moving fast.

A bit less than three minutes later, she reappeared just as Cole was grabbing a black windbreaker from the closet. Without waiting for him, she headed toward the hallway door.

“Erin, wait!”

She didn’t even pause.

Cole crossed the room in a silent rush. Just as she opened the door a few inches, his hands shot over her shoulders and pinned the door. She made a choked sound. His powerful arms were braced on either side of her. He was all around her, surrounding her.

Trapping her.

Erin froze, remembering another time, another door, another big man trapping her. Memories welled up in a choking black tide, threatening her control.

“What the hell are you thinking of?” Cole demanded. “You don’t just open a door and walk through like a—”

With an incoherent cry Erin turned and attacked, the side of her palm slashing toward his throat. He barely blocked the blow in time. He deflected her knee with his thigh even as her head slammed into his jaw. Off balance, reluctant to hurt her, he went in low, scissoring her feet out from under her, pulling her down until she was flat on the rug beneath him.

Silently, savagely, Erin struggled, using everything she’d learned in the past seven years.

Nothing worked.

Cole countered the blows with his greater strength and skill, keeping her from hurting either one of them. She was wasting her strength. She went completely still and waited for him to mistake her submission for defeat.

He looked at the green eyes so close to his and felt ice move beneath his skin.

“Erin, listen to me, I’m not going to hurt you, but I can’t let you walk blithely into a hallway until I check it out. I’m not going to hurt you, honey. I’m on your side.”

He repeated the words again and again while Erin watched him with feral eyes. Gradually what he was saying sank through fear to the intelligence beneath.

“I understand,” she whispered. “You can let go of me now.”

“Not a chance,” Cole said instantly, his voice no longer soothing. “Not until you tell me why you were doing your best to kill me a minute ago.”

“I’m sorry. I…panicked.”

“I noticed. Why?”

Erin’s voice died as she realized that Cole was holding her helpless, his body heavy over hers. She should be terrified, but she wasn’t. More than his soothing words, more than anything he could have said, his restraint calmed her.

She’d attacked him. He’d done nothing more than defend himself. Even now, despite the blood oozing from a cut on his lip and the bruise on his chin where she had butted him, he was being careful of her.

“You didn’t hurt me,” she whispered. “You aren’t hurting me now.”

The wonder in her voice startled him, but before he could ask what she meant, she was trying to explain.

“When you slammed the door it was like Hans all over again, going to the door and he caught me and then he let go and I ran and he caught me and it happened over and over….”

“Hans?” Cole asked softly, but there was nothing soft about his eyes.

She shook her head slowly.

“Talk to me, Erin. We’re going to be living in each other’s pockets. I don’t want to step on a land mine again.”

She closed her eyes. He was right.

“Hans was my fiancé seven years ago. He was as big as you. As strong. Oh, God, he was so strong.” She shuddered, then went on in an odd, flat voice. “I found him going through my father’s wall safe, photographing every bit of paper. I turned around to run, but it was too late. He was so quick. Like you.”

Cole waited, his pupils dilated almost as much as hers.

“When I tried to scream, Hans hit me in the throat,” she whispered. “Then he hit my shoulders. I couldn’t scream, I could barely breathe, my arms were numb, my fingers wouldn’t work. Then he let me run to the door again but I couldn’t open it, couldn’t move my arms, couldn’t make my fingers close. When he got tired of my kicking he dislocated my knees.

“Then I couldn’t move, I could only feel and see, and whenever I closed my eyes he hurt me.” Erin’s voice dried up and then resumed again, terrible in its lack of emotion.

Cole listened despite the overwhelming need to make her stop talking. He didn’t want to hear her low voice describing just how much of a blood sport sex had been to her fiancé.

Even as Cole locked his jaw against the bile rising in his throat, he wondered at his own primitive response. He’d heard worse, seen worse, the kind of savagery that was labeled inhuman because sane people didn’t want to believe how low humanity could sink.

Cole knew he shouldn’t be surprised, shouldn’t be appalled, and he certainly shouldn’t be enraged at what had been done to Erin.

But he was.

As he listened he clenched his teeth against the turmoil of emotions ripping through him, a combination of despair and killing rage the likes of which he hadn’t felt since Lai had casually aborted his child and married another man on the command of her family.

Slowly Erin’s words faded into silence. She realized that Cole had long since rolled onto his side, removing his weight from her, touching her only in the slow sweep of his hand over her hair while she talked. She looked at his eyes and saw both rage and a sadness that made tears burn against her eyelids. Without stopping to think, she curled against him, needing the reassurance of his warmth, wondering if he ever needed reassurance in the same way.

“Are you all right?” he asked finally.

She nodded. “I thought I’d forgotten. But I hadn’t. Not really. I feel better now. Lighter. Kind of floating.” She rubbed her cheek against his chest and let out a long sigh. “Thank you for being…gentle.”

“You’re the first one who ever accused me of that,” Cole said, smiling oddly.

After a moment Erin looked up and saw a drop of blood slowly welling from Cole’s lower lip. She touched the small cut with her fingertips. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem.”

Her fingertips slid down beneath his chin, sensing the slight raised area where her head had bruised him.

“Here too,” she said. “I hurt you.”

He tried to subdue his elemental response to her touch. She frowned as she looked at the bruise. She touched him even more gently, almost caressingly. He closed his eyes and told himself she didn’t know what she was doing.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” she said, lifting her fingertips as the tension in his body communicated itself to her. “It must hurt to have me touch it.”

He made a sound that could have been a throttled laugh or an equally throttled curse.

“It doesn’t hurt. It feels good. Too damn good,” he said bluntly.

“What?”

“Your fingers. My skin. I like the combination. What about you?”

Her hand hesitated, then resumed touching him. Silently she admitted that she was caressing him rather than looking for signs of injury.

Very slowly Cole resumed stroking her hair. After a time his fingertips traced the shadows beneath her cheekbones and the outline of her mouth. She made an odd sound and looked up at him. His eyes were closed and his expression was intent, focused on the sensations coming from his fingertips while he traced again the curve of her lips.

“You’re smiling,” he said without opening his eyes.

“It tickles.”

“Does it?” He ran his fingertip across her full lower lip again. “Is that why you’re holding your breath?” He felt her body tighten as he bent down to her. “Don’t panic, honey,” he whispered against her mouth. “This won’t hurt, I promise. I won’t even hold you. I just want to know if you taste half as good as you fight. Okay?”

Surprised, caught off balance by the combination of humor and hunger in Cole’s voice, Erin waited for fear to claim her.

Nothing happened except a delicate, intriguing brush of warmth against her lips when Cole exhaled. A spear of sensation went from her breastbone to her knees, making her shiver.

“Frightened?” he whispered.

“I…”

He waited.

“After Hans…” she said, then took a deep breath.

“Afterward, the psychiatrists told me that virgins who had been brutalized the way I’d been nearly always became whores or nuns. I haven’t let a man get close to me in seven years. I don’t know if I can even now. I might panic again.”

“I’ll risk it if you will.”

“Will you…be gentle?”

“What do you think?”

She looked into the gray eyes that were only inches away and wondered how she had ever thought they were cold.

“Yes,” she whispered.

The tip of Cole’s tongue slowly traced the sensitive skin at the edge of her upper lip. At the first touch, she made a small sound. The gliding caress was unexpected, exquisite, unlike anything she’d ever known from a man. Slowly her body relaxed and softened, lifting subtly toward Cole, wanting more of his warmth. He repeated the gentle touch, tracing her whole mouth, enjoying the chaste caress with an intensity that surprised him.

When Erin felt the tip of his tongue along her lower lip, she shivered and instinctively closed her eyes, wanting to focus only on the sensations radiating through her from his touch. When he slowly outlined her lips again and yet again, lingering to probe the sensitive corners of her smile, everything shifted around her, fear vanishing, nothing existing but the warm caress.

Even when she felt the resilient heat of his biceps beneath her palms, she didn’t realize that she had reached out and was holding on to him.

“Cole…”

“Yes, like that,” he said, his tongue sliding between her open lips, touching the tip of her tongue with his own. “Let me taste you. Just a taste, honey. That’s all. I won’t hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

As he spoke he caressed her mouth again and again, not holding her, not forcing her, touching her with nothing but the tip of his tongue and the warmth of his breath.

And because it was the only way Cole permitted himself to touch her, his senses narrowed down to the tip of his tongue. He felt the heat and textures of her mouth with a sensual intensity that was as new to him as it was to her. The vividness of the experience intrigued him. He traced her tongue again, dipping into the heat and softness underneath, tasting her as he had never tasted a woman in his life, savoring and caressing until he felt like every nerve ending in his body was concentrated in the tip of his tongue.

Finally Cole forced himself to stop. He eased away and came to his feet in a lithe motion, not trusting himself to stay close to Erin any longer without trying to mold her to the hungry length of his body. He wasn’t used to kissing a woman and not having her. The experience was as new to him as discovering the astonishing sensitivity of his own tongue.

Her eyes opened slowly. Her palms felt cool without his heat to warm them. So did her lips, her mouth, her tongue.

“Cole?” she asked huskily.

“Time for that walk, honey.”

She looked at the big hand he was holding out to her. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet and slowly, deeply, interlaced their fingers. His palm was warm and hard. The inner surfaces of his fingers were smooth and hot. She caught her breath at the sensations shivering up her arm when he flexed his hand.

When he would have let go of her, she protested. “Wait.”

Cole froze.

Erin touched the cut on his lip with a fingertip that trembled very slightly. When she traced the edge of his mouth, the rasp of his stubble was pronounced, underlining the surprising smoothness of his lips. While the silence lengthened she traced his black eyebrows, his cheekbones, his chin, and then his lips again. He closed his eyes, permitting the gentle, exploratory torture for as long as he could trust himself.