He could have had her.
Constantine knew if he’d pushed it he could have had her a dozen times,
including on the back seat of the limo while Tessa slept on.
He’d considered shoving her up against
her door, pulling up her vintage Balenciaga and fucking her senseless.
He’d seen the digital recorder in her
purse, and she would have dropped it as she was caught up in the fury he knew
he could inspire in her.
Knew,
because he was feeling that same rage, a maelstrom of need that threatened to
burn him up.
He was semi-erect and he didn’t give a damn if it showed, though the
chauffeur, who was gay, was much too polite to gaze at his employer’s
boyfriend’s crotch.
And Tessa was
too spaced to be aware of anything.
The smart thing to do was take her home, close his eyes and screw the
hell out of her while she dreamed, only half awake, picturing Madison
Banks’s
ripe, creamy flesh instead of the bony mass beneath
him.
The loose dress had exposed
Madison’s shoulders and the tops of her breasts, and he’d been enchanted,
mesmerized, in love in the best possible way.
A fantasy he could dismiss with a snap of his fingers, but a
lush one while it lasted.
That was, if he were smart.
Right then he wasn’t feeling smart.
He’d killed two men today.
He’d told an inquisitive reporter too much of the truth and
too many lies as well, and allowed her to record it.
There were people skilled enough to hack their way through
the voice distortion, leaving him exposed.
No, he needed to retrieve that recorder.
And smart or not, he needed to get inside Madison Banks and
see if he could make her come as hard as he was planning to.
Simmons drove them home through the rain-damp streets, the lamplights
reflecting off the water and sending strange shadows into the car.
The chauffeur was driving fast, but
there were no paparazzi following them.
They were a bunch of pussies—give them a heavy rain and they’d
rather spend their time in some bar, drinking, than chasing their meal tickets.
Just as well.
He didn’t
want cameras anywhere around him tonight.
Not when he considered what he was planning to do.
He carried Tessa’s frail body into the back elevator used for the
hotel’s more famous guests, up to her suite of rooms.
He laid her down on the bed, stripping off her clothes.
She wasn’t wearing underwear, and she
didn’t own any nightclothes.
He
pulled the covers up to her chin, then brushed her hair out of her exquisite
face.
Her handlers would yell at
her tomorrow for sleeping in her makeup, and she’d pout at him, and he’d enact
the enraged lover and then there would be the tender rapprochement.
He could play the part perfectly.
He brushed a kiss against her forehead, then stripped off his jacket,
tie and vest and tossed them across a chair.
For a brief moment he considered his work clothes –
the all concealing black would be perfect for what he’d suddenly decided, but
there was some, unlikely part of him that was repulsed by the idea.
Sex and death.
Fucking and killing.
So different, and yet so alike.
He shoved his key in his pocket and headed out, the hunter in search
of a different kind of prey.
Knowing he had lost his mind.
Maddy took another shower but it did absolutely no good.
Her skin still felt
hypersensitized
.
Was there such a thing as Spanish
Fly?
She felt as if she’d ingested
some.
She was aroused, on fire,
edgy and restless.
The thought of
going to bed was unbearable – it was still early, after all.
Her mind was going round and round, and
the more she tried to avoid it the more obvious it became.
Sex.
It was all she could
think about.
It had started with
that terrifying interview, the sly questions that the anonymous, distorted
voice had asked oh-so-gently instead of the other way around.
And then, mere hours later,
D’Angelo’s
dark eyes, his touch on her skin, his outrageous
conversation.
She was hardly his type, she thought with a rough laugh.
Her breasts were full and high, her
hips rounded, her thighs and calves muscled from walking but definitely
there.
She was a woman, not a
stick-thin waif, and she was comfortable in her body.
Except when she thought of his eyes, comparing her to Tessa Parker.
Fuck that, she thought, pushing him from her mind with her usual firm
discipline.
She wasn’t interested
in having sex with either an assassin or a playboy.
She was just interested in having sex.
Which was perfectly normal.
An appetite, like any other, and it wasn’t her fault that it had come
over her like a PMS craving for chocolate.
She could deal with it.
She took the ancient flannel robe from the bathroom door and wrapped
it around her plain white underwear.
She’d stolen it from Drake, and it was so soft and comfortable it would
wrap her in a cocoon of safety.
How could you feel aroused in white cotton and ancient flannel?
She poured herself a nice glass of Beaujolais, just because.
She didn’t like to drink alone, but
there were times when it was the best thing to do.
She turned her stereo on, to a mix of French and English
music, Charles
Aznavour
and Marc
Lavoine
,
Jacques
Brel
and
Florent
Pagny
.
And of
course Piaf.
And still she felt it. That clawing, aching feeling, the need to have
sex, to have it right now.
She
headed for her phone, desperate to hear the sound of Drake’s voice.
Desperate to have him there.
And then she put down the phone without dialing.
She wanted him to blot out all the
confusing, overwhelming, arousing feelings that were swamping her.
But she knew it wasn’t Drake she
wanted.
The flannel had been a bad idea after all.
The familiar softness, instead of soothing her, aroused her,
the touch on her skin more erotic than silk.
She moved around the apartment, lighting the candles she kept but
seldom used.
She felt hot, and she
went over to the doors leading to the narrow balcony, pushing them open to wet
night air.
She leaned over the iron railing, looking out into the night.
She loved Paris when it rained, the
smell of the water on the sidewalks and buildings, the soft wind that usually
came with it.
Paris had brought
her senses alive.
It was no one’s
fault that tonight, for some unknown reason, they were suddenly overloaded.
She turned away, pouring herself another glass of wine. She’d already
turned off the electric lights, and she moved to the high-backed wing chair
she’d found at an antique store.
There was no hurry.
She
could sit here and listen to the rain and drink her wine.
The night was hers.
She might have drifted off to sleep.
The wind picked up, and the candles fluttered in the breeze,
as the heavy rain followed, beating against her windows.
It was coming in the open balcony, and
a fine spray covered her.
She
closed her eyes, reveling in it, awash in the sheer sensuality of it.
And when she opened them he stood there, on the narrow little
balcony.
He was soaking wet, the
rain running down his stark, beautiful face in rivulets, plastering his white
shirt to his chest.
He was there,
as she somehow knew he would be.
He was everything she hungered for, everything that was wrong. She
looked into his eyes, and her body convulsed in a tiny, shocking climax.
She was in deep trouble.
CHAPTER FOUR
“What the hell are you doing here?”
she demanded when she managed to catch her breath.
He didn’t move in out of the rain, he simply let it pound down over
him, oblivious to it as he leaned back against the railing.
He didn’t speak, and she was suddenly,
irrationally afraid.
She had no
fear that he would hurt her, though it wasn’t as if he seemed harmless.
He was a very dangerous man indeed
– she instinctively knew that, for all his indolent playboy facade.
It was something else, something deeper, something infinitely more
troubling.
She managed to surge to
her feet, ignoring her shaky legs, moving to shut the doors to the balcony,
locking danger out in the storm.
He caught her wrist in one strong hand, halting her, and she stared up
at him, the touch of his skin a shock.
In the cold spring air he was hot, burning.
He pulled her, and she didn’t fight him.
Pulled her out onto that narrow sliver of a balcony, out
into the driving rain, and kissed her, his mouth hot and heavy on hers, wet,
demanding.
It was a lover’s kiss.
The kiss of man who was ready to climax, and her hands, the ones that should
have pushed him away, clutched his shoulders, holding on, as she surrendered to
him.
Surrender.
There was no
other word for it.
His tongue was
inside her mouth, pushing, demanding a response.
This was no gentle seduction, this was a claiming, dark and
carnal, and she gave in, willingly, feeling the rain beat down on both of them
with the night air of Paris all around.
He lifted his mouth, and everything went sideways, as her feet left
the ground, and she had the sudden, crazy fear that he was going to throw her
over the balcony, down four stories to be smashed against the pavement.
A moment later they were out of the rain, and he was carrying her
through her candlelit apartment, the scent of something rich on the air. She
could hear Charles
Aznavour
on the stereo, and she
thought of Piaf.
“Non, je ne
regrette
rien
.”
No, I regret nothing.
All the mistakes, the wrong moves, the
wrong lovers, I regret none of them.
She wouldn’t regret this.
It made no sense, it wasn’t her, but she could no more fight it than she
could battle a tidal wave.
He seemed to know her apartment, another impossibility.
He carried her up the two steps into
her darkened bedroom and tossed her down on the unmade bed, still covered with
the clothes she’d discarded earlier in the day.
She sat there, the flannel robe clutched tight around her,
and stared up at him.
She could
see the whiteness of his teeth as he flashed a grin, and he began unbuttoning
his soaked shirt.
“You might want to get out of those wet clothes,
ma belle
,”
he finally spoke, in Italian-accented
French, his voice not much more than a whisper in the night air.
She couldn’t move.
Somehow her acquiescence had gotten her this far; she wasn’t sure how
much further it could take her.
He came towards the bed, still wearing rain-splattered formal
trousers, and took some of her discarded clothes and threw them on the
floor.
And then the bed sagged
beneath him, as he knelt on the mattress and reached for the ties of the
flannel robe.
Instinctively her hands moved to stop him, covering his, but the touch
of his hard hands was oddly more arousing.
She didn’t want him touching Drake’s robe – it didn’t
seem right or fair.
“You’re doing this,”
he
whispered, and sensed his impatience.
“You know you are.
You
already made up your mind when you saw me on the balcony.
You came then, didn’t you?
I could see it in your eyes, in the way
your body jerked.
You already knew
you were going to take me then, didn’t you?”
She did, but she wouldn’t admit it.
How had he known about that tiny, unbidden climax that had
hit her?
“It had nothing to do
with you,”
she said
defensively.
“
This
has
nothing to do with you.
I’m simply
…”
The words trailed off, too
damning to admit.
“Aroused?”
he
supplied.
“You were sitting there
waiting for a lover.
You had the
candles and the wine and the music.
But where was the man?”
His
voice was low and persuasive.
“I don’t need a man.”
She could see his smile quite clearly now as her eyes grew accustomed
to the murky darkness.
“You don’t
need anything or anyone, do you?
I
think that’s what draws me to you.
You just don’t give a fuck.
But you will.”
He leaned
forward, putting his mouth against her ear, and she shivered in reaction.
“You will give a fuck, won’t you?”
he whispered, his breath hot against
her.
He bit her earlobe, and she
felt a jolt of pure, animal response.
She closed her eyes, knowing she should fight it, but he’d untied the
robe, and the night air was hitting her skin.
He pushed the soft flannel off her shoulders, down her arms,
and he was looking at her, at the plain white underwear she was wearing, at the
voluptuous curves that dieting couldn’t help.
He slide his long fingers under white bra straps and began to pull
them down her arms.
“Denial,”
he said with a soft laugh.
“You knew I was coming and still you
dress in a nun’s underwear.
A
nun’s, or a virgin’s.
What does
your lover think about this schoolgirl stuff?”
Her lover.
She could see
Drake’s handsome, earnest face.
She could see it above her, his expression set in rigid lines when he
came.
The memory should stop her,
make her tell this man to go away.
But Drake’s face vanished, as the straps reached her elbows, her breasts
half-spilling from the utilitarian bra.
He sat back.
“You know,
I’m finding these quite erotic after all.”
One of his long fingers slid down her skin, from her parted
lips, down her jaw and neck to the round tops of her breasts.
He leaned forward, his rain-wet hair
brushing against her skin, and put his mouth where his fingers had been.
She could feel the rasp of his tongue
against the beaded swell, and then his teeth, as they caught the edge of the
bra and pulled it down further, so that her breasts spilled out completely, no
longer shielded by the scrap of cloth.
She knew the bra straps weren’t restricting her arms, but she felt
oddly bound, unable to move as he dipped his head down further, and his teeth
surrounded one nipple, a tiny pain that was oddly arousing, and she gave a
little squeak of reaction as her legs shifted restlessly.
“Ah, you’re a talker,”
he
murmured, lifting his head slightly to run his tongue over the puckered flesh,
and she stifled her instinctive moan.
“Are you a screamer as well?”
She gritted her teeth as he blew on the damp skin, another level of
arousal.
She was so wet she could
feel it, hotter than she’d ever been for Drake, hotter than she’d ever felt
before.
She needed to open her
mouth, to tell him she wasn’t doing this, when he moved to her other breast,
and this time his bite was harder, and she squeaked again, though whether it
was in pain or pleasure she couldn’t tell.
She wanted to lift her arms, to put them around his neck, but the bra
straps were just enough to stop her, trap her.
The room was
suffocatingly
warm,
and she was covered with a thin film of sweat.
“Do you want me to take the bra off you?”
he whispered.
“Or do you like bondage?
I’m certain I can find something to tie you up with if you want to
pretend you had no choice.”
He’d lifted his head, and she met his gaze as steadily as she
could.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course you do,
ma belle
.
But you already made your choice, when you kissed me
back.”
His warm, strong arms slid
around her, and she felt her bra come free, and she was no longer bound. He
leaned back, pulling it off her and tossing it to the floor along with the
other clothes.
“Can I change my mind?”
He gave a soft laugh.
“Impossible.
You won’t be
able to.
You have my permission to
say no, of course.
I’ve never
forced a woman in my life.
But I
really don’t you think you could.
Not when I do this.”
He put
both hands on her breasts, still damp from his tongue, his deft fingers
plucking at them, wickedly skillful, and she wanted his mouth, sucking at her,
pulling at her, and she knew it hadn’t been arrogance on his part, merely the
truth.
She was too far gone.
She couldn’t, wouldn’t stop.
He had to have felt the last of her resistance vanish, because his
smile was full of erotic promise.
“That’s my girl,”
he said
in his soft French.
He
pushed her back on the pillows with surprising gentleness.
“Now let’s get rid of these absurd
panties.”
She let him slide the cotton down and off, and then he pushed her legs
apart, exposing her to his liquid gaze.
Again, that shiver of fear danced across her, as he touched her, fingers
parting her delicately.
She was
about to protest when he leaned forward and put his mouth between her legs, his
tongue swirling, touching and tasting, his teeth, oh my god, his teeth, biting
her again, a sharp little pain that made her cry out in pleasure.
He made her climax, too easily, her hands fisted tight in her sheets
as she tried to catch her breath, tight shudders rippling through her.
He raised his head, and in the shadows she could only see his eyes,
gleaming in the darkness.
“Not
good enough,”
he murmured, and put
his mouth against her again.
She was absurdly sensitive from her climax, and she protested, not
sure she could bear to be touched, but he ignored her.
This time he only used his tongue, and
when she started to climax once more he pushed his fingers inside her, sliding,
pumping, until she dug her heels into the mattress, arching off the bed with a
scream of helpless pleasure, her body shaking, hard, as he kept tonguing her.
He pulled away, collapsing on the bed beside her, panting.
“I almost came against the
sheets,”
he said.
“You have a dangerous effect on me,
ma
belle
.”
A moment later he rolled off the bed with disconcerting energy.
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
he asked her with perfect
courtesy.
“Yes?
No?
I’ll bring you one anyway.
You look like you need it.”
He left her room, and she couldn’t move.
Had her brain melted along with her
morals?
What in hell had just
happened?
She knew she should get
up, lock the door, call someone, call the police, get him away from her before
she destroyed her life completely, before she lost everything.
It was too late.
She managed to get to her feet, and she glanced down at the bed.
She’d lain on Drake’s discarded robe
while he’d tongued her.
Betrayal
was already complete.
She followed the candlelight into the living room and stopped,
shocked, when she couldn’t see him.
Had he left?
The idea was
both absurd and reasonable, and then he moved in the shadows.
He was lounging on her sofa, a glass of
wine in one long-fingered hand, watching the rain come down.
She stood in the candlelight, naked, past feeling shy.
She heard his swift intake of breath as
he looked at her.
“Christ,”
he said.
“You’re fucking gorgeous.”
He started to rise, but she was already
beside the sofa, her touch on his shoulder urging him back down.