She stood there, caught between attraction and repulsion, the need to get away and the necessity of staying by his side.
“Natalie?”
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer
. So went the old saying. Could she? Was she capable of staying in the same room with him, sleeping in the same bed, tolerating the lies that flew out of his corrupt mouth?
She’d force herself. She’d do it for Nonnie, to get the necklace back. And she’d do it for herself, because Eric McDougal deserved a comeuppance. She’d do it to get back her self-respect.
“Natalie, please . . .”
God, he was good! He must take sincerity pills every morning. Eric looked as if he were about to drop to his knees and beg her to stay.
“I don’t know, Eric,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d be stupid to believe you. How do I know you’re for real?” She produced a wistful expression, mined the genuine emotions she’d tried to banish.
He started toward her, took her hands in his own strong, warm ones. Her body reacted with a surge of longing, and she ruthlessly used it, hating herself for curdling what had been a good and pure and innocent love.
“You can’t know I’m for real,” he said gently, and kissed her on the lips. “You have to take it on faith. Please, give me another chance.”
Faith? You shattered my faith.
She kept her face angled up toward his, her eyes closed so that he couldn’t discern her deep, well-founded cynicism.
He kissed her again, deeply this time, and her whole body responded, pleasure seeping through every pore. But she separated her mind from it, kept it fenced off.
He wasn’t stupid. He noticed. But the beauty of the deception was that she had every reason to hold back, and he had every reason to understand why.
Eric picked her up, one hand under her knees and one under her back. He held her tightly to his body as he walked back down the hallway with her and nudged open the door to their room, which he’d left wedged open with the security bar. With infinite tenderness, he laid her on the bed.
Unexpectedly, her eyes welled with tears and her cynicism formed a hard, unyielding lump in her throat. The ache returned, a desperate, yearning ache.
Weak! You’re weak, Natalie. Stop it.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured, smoothing back her hair.
“I want this to be real,” she said, brokenly. “Oh, God, I want this to be real.”
“It is real.” And Eric went out into the hall and brought her suitcase back into the room.
Appalled at herself, Natalie let him make love to her. He took off his shirt, unbuckled his belt, and threw them on the floor. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the hard muscle of his shoulders and arms, the ripped expanse of his chest, and the golden hair that lightly sprinkled it.
He kissed her, his tongue seducing hers, searching for a mate. Eric smelled so deceptively clean, so honest—like lemon soap and leather and hard male.
She wanted to believe that he wanted her, that she wasn’t just a convenient body in a convenient bed, and he made that easy. He pushed up her sweater and her bra, worshipping her breasts with that hot, clever mouth of his and tracing around her nipples with his tongue. Her tiny moans seemed to excite him, even as they disgusted her.
She had no self-control, no self-respect when it came to this man. She wanted him without reservation, wanted him thick and hard and pulsing between her thighs. She wanted to lose her mind with him . . . before she lost him deliberately, and for good.
He pulled the sweater over her head and tossed it, with the bra following suit. Then his hands went to her waist, dipping inside her jeans and brushing her skin before he unbuttoned them, unzipped them, and tugged them down her legs like a caress.
She was almost completely bare to his gaze now, her panties the only shield. They were yellow with tiny pink strawberries on them, and the corners of his mouth turned up at the sight.
“Mmm, strawberries,” he said. Then he pulled them off, slowly, as if unwrapping a package.
He pushed her knees apart and slid his hands under her bottom. He blew gently where she was most sensitive, and a shiver overtook her. “What do you want, baby?”
What do you think I want?
She stirred restlessly.
“Should I lick this little strawberry, here?” His mouth came within a hairsbreadth of her core—she could actually feel his stubble on her inner thighs—but still, he didn’t touch her.
Anticipation made her thighs tremble, and another shiver stirred all her nerve endings. His breath, hot and hungry, caressed her again.
She raised up shamelessly for him, hating herself as she did so.
“That’s one ripe strawberry, isn’t it?”
He was close, so close to touching her, the tease. He chuckled, and the short puffs of breath on her made her almost insane with wanting him.
“I’ll bet it’s sweet, so sweet . . .”
Oh, God!
“Juicy.”
She could come just listening to him, to that husky, dirty innuendo. To the gentle suggestion of her thighs being held apart against her will—though she knew it was only a suggestion. He’d let her go at any moment. The problem was that she didn’t want him to.
“What do you want, baby? Tell me.” Just a whisper of his lips against her and she was as taut as a bow, teetering on the brink of madness.
She let out an involuntary moan, and he blew on her again, then shucked out of his pants. Then one slow, long lick and she fell crazily into the abyss of pleasure.
He slid inside her as she came, and the sensation of being impaled and stroked internally set off a whole new chain of reactions. Completely out of control of her own body, she jerked, spasmed, shivered, convulsed. She cried out.
Within moments his body, too, went rigid and then pulsed with relief. He groaned softly, lifted himself up onto his elbows, and stared down at her. “I love you, Natalie.”
How easy it would be to believe him. She traced his jaw with a finger and searched his face for answers that she wouldn’t find.
“I . . . love you, too, Eric.”
You stupid, stupid girl
. If only she weren’t telling the truth.
Thirty-five
McDougal was up well before dawn the next morning, since he’d never shut his eyes. Natalie was fast asleep. He looked over at her, so sweet and graceful even in unconsciousness.
I . . . love you, too, Eric.
She loved him.
He rubbed at his eyes, trying to take it in. Did she? Could she really have forgiven him that easily?
She’d gone from punching him to making love with him in the space of what, thirty minutes? It seemed too quick a transition for her, but then, she was a woman and he didn’t pretend to truly understand them.
He could charm them, seduce them, persuade them . . . but comprehend them? Not a chance. Mysterious, mercurial creatures, every last one.
McDougal dressed in the dark and then let himself out of the room without a sound other than the snick of the door as it shut. His first order of business was to get back to Ivan’s restaurant and retrieve the necklace without anyone knowing he’d been there or anyone tailing him back to the hotel.
He exited the hotel through a rear service door and turned up the collar of his coat as the chilly March air circled the bare skin of his neck. It was still pitch-black outside and would be for some time.
There were no sounds other than the hum of compressors, the sway of branches in a determined breeze, and the barely audible pats of his rubber-soled shoes on concrete. He walked a couple of blocks west and borrowed another car, a newer-model Saab this time that smelled of cigarettes and men’s hair product.
Again, he parked a couple of streets away from Ivan’s restaurant and slipped through the shadows until he reached the building.
A little finagling with his trusty lock picks had him inside the back door within a few moments. He shut it behind him and stood still, just listening, for a moment.
He heard a rhythmic noise that sounded like a yak in labor. What the hell? Someone was snoring. In the damned kitchen. At—he checked his watch—4:49 a.m.
And in order to get to the bathroom, he had to walk right by the kitchen, in full view, with nowhere to hide. Beautiful.
McDougal thought about it. Clearly the occupant of the kitchen was asleep, but how deeply? Would the creak of a floorboard wake him? Or was he comatose from booze?
Eric gambled on the latter. Why else would anyone sleep in a kitchen instead of in the comfort of his own bed at home?
He cracked his neck to relieve tension and then stepped forward in the dark. Only a small creak gave him away, and the snoring continued undisturbed. He crept forward a few more steps and then eased around the corner to the narrow hallway he remembered from the evening before. The bathroom door was only twelve feet away.
Eric resumed his progress, inching past the open door to the kitchen, where the dark shape of a man slumped in an uncomfortable-looking chair, his head leaning back against the wall and his arms dangling to either side.
McDougal got out of sight quickly, tiptoeing past the far jamb. He’d just lifted his foot and set it down again when something dark and solid wound through his ankles and a hideously loud meow echoed up to the rafters.
Shit!
The snoring segued into a sort of pig snort and then stopped.
“Dmitri? Is that you?”
“Da,” Eric replied. Then he made a retching noise and stumbled toward the bathroom, hurling himself inside and slamming the door. He made more retching noises as footsteps sounded outside in the hallway.
“You will throw up your organs,” Ivan’s voice commented.
Eric just groaned and flushed the toilet.
“Don’t pass out in there, eh? I have to pee.”
“Piss in the sink,” Eric said, muffling his voice through his hand. “Piss anywhere you want. Just go away.”
Ivan chuckled. “You sound terrible.”
A few more fake retches and his footsteps finally retreated. McDougal breathed a sigh of relief and then quickly dug the necklace out of its makeshift pocket in the old cornice board. He slipped it into his jacket and then eyed the tiny square of glass with some misgiving.
He had no choice but to go out the window.
Kelso called right as McDougal landed headfirst in a bed of what looked like kale and turnips outside the restaurant’s bathroom.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered as he got to his feet, shut the window behind him, and lurched forward into a getaway run. He took the precaution of diving into some bushes fifty yards away before answering.
“McDougal.”
“Why, Eric, how are you?” said Disney’s Donald Duck.
Eh-wic
. Kelso communicated out of the ether, usually via text but sometimes using electronically altered voices.
“Fine, sir, and you?” McD resisted the urge to reply in Daisy Duck’s dulcet tones.
“You sound out of breath.”
Bweth.
Jesus, this was surreal.
“Just made an exit via window, sir. A very small window.”
“Good, good,” Donald Duck said genially. “Glad to hear it. Listen, I’ve got some excellent information for you. High-voltage stuff, so be judicious in how you apply it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you someplace private?”
McDougal raised his eyebrows and peered out from under the bush. “Sure.”
“All right. Here goes. Turns out that your Suzdal is a pretty nasty guy. No surprise there, right? He’s made very few missteps in his rise to power with one notable exception. In 2005, it seems that he cooked up a plan to have Vasily Somov, his former mentor, assassinated along with his heir apparent so that Somov’s faction would be vulnerable to takeover. Suspicion did turn on Suzdal when the plot failed, but he managed to convince Somov that the danger came from another source. To prove his ‘loyalty’ to Somov, Suzdal even took this other man out by murdering him in his bed as an early Christmas present.”
“Nice,” said McDougal.
“Oh, very. Word is that he presented the man’s terrified wife as a holiday gift, too. She was still wearing lingerie splattered with her husband’s blood.”
The hair on McDougal’s arms stood up. “Sweet Jesus.”
“Indeed. I’ll spare you the details of how she was found later.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Suffice it to say that she is now living in the U.S. under a blanket of terror and an assumed identity.”
“I see. She provided the information?”
“Some of it. Mostly she corroborated intel mined from a source inside Suzdal’s organization. At any rate, she’ll live in fear for the rest of her life. But you can use this secret of Suzdal’s to—”
“Blackmail him,” McDougal said flatly. “Neutralize him. Get him off my back for good.”
“Your back, or Natalie Rosen’s?” Donald Duck asked slyly.
“Both.” Mother of God! Did
everyone
in the company have to know his personal business?
“Be careful. It’s advisable that you have copies of this info with ARTemis and your lawyer before you go near Suzdal.”
“Oh, you can bet on that, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think you’ve just saved my ass.”
“I haven’t saved it. I’ve just given you the right tool, Eric. Stay in one piece, you hear me? I have no desire whatsoever to go to your Scots-Irish wake and sing ‘Danny Boy.’ ”
McDougal emerged from the bush, found his borrowed car once again, and drove it back to where it belonged. This time he left enough money inside to cover a tank of gas. He locked it back up again and sauntered away, whistling.
A quick gander at the entrance to the Savoy two blocks over told him that his Russian honor guard was back, and he was thankful that he’d soon be rid of them, courtesy of Kelso.
He dodged away and found a café, where he ordered some steaming chai and sat for a moment to think. He would give the necklace back to Nonnie, and damn the $200,000 commission. Within the next year he’d probably get an assignment or two that would be just as lucrative.