Charlotte Boyett-Compo- Wyndsheer (11 page)

She was relentless with her suckling as she drew him deep into her mouth. The pressure, the vacuum was so intense, so firm that he was beyond knowing anything except the pleasure of her lips and tongue. When he came, she swallowed him in smooth little strokes that made him growl with delight. And when he looked down at her, she swiped her tongue across her lips as though the taste of him had satisfied some deep need within her.

“I love you,” he said and the words shocked him even as he said them, for he knew them to be true.

She smiled. “And I am falling in love with you,” she replied, then slid up him.

He gathered her into his arms and felt his heart swelling as she laid her head on his shoulder--so trusting, so innocent, expecting him not to hurt her in any way. One slender finger twirled a curl of chest hair as her warm breath blew across his flesh, one shapely leg crooked at the knee over his groin, and he was as content as he had always wanted to be.

“Are they gone?” she asked and he could hear the concern in her tone.

“They will be as soon as they come down off the mountain,” he told.

“Wendt?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Him, too.”

She was silent for a moment then lifted her head to look at him. He turned his so he could see her beautiful face.

“At some point I will need to let the agency know I’m alive, Jamie,” she said quietly. “I need to hand in my resignation and deal with what I left behind.”

“He’s dead,” Jamie said. “Your husband.” When her eyes widened, he explained how the man she had been married to had met his fate in the tragic monorail accident that had claimed other lives.

She searched his gaze for a moment, then nodded. “It’s just as well, then, for there’s no reason now for me to go back.”

“You don’t want your personal things?” he asked.

“I imagine Steve’s sisters will pack up our things, store them until they learn something definite about me. I can ask them to send my stuff to Lamb’s Grove,” she said.

“Then you’d best do that before Hobart returns and tells your people you’re dead,” he told her.

“Jake’s a good man,” she said. “He’ll understand.”

“We’d best make up a plausible lie as to where you’ve been this past week,” he said. “I’d just as soon they not send more men back here after me because I mislead them.”

“No, that wouldn’t be good,” she said. “I’ll use the amnesia because that wasn’t a lie. I can say I was holed up in a cave and when my memory returned, made it down from the mountain. Is there a way to get down and come in from the opposite side of the village?”

“Aye,” he answered. “I’ll take you tomorrow.”

She returned her cheek to his shoulder. “I’ll stay in the village and then in a few days I’ll
meet
you. No one needs to know we’ve already met.” She stroked his chest. “It will be love at first sight for us.”

He chuckled. “It was for me.” His smile faded. “Elspeth knows you’re with me, but she won’t say anything.”

“Maybe I can stay with her, then.”

“She’d like that,” he said. He ran his hand down her arm, over her hip and then beneath her thigh to touch the curls at the top of her legs. “And I’d like some of this.” His fingers delved into her moistness.

“Oh, really?” she questioned.

He turned with her, sliding her under him, his thigh wedged between her legs. “Yeah, lass. Really.” He stroked her, his fingers sliding in and out of her warmth. “I can’t get enough of it.”

“It does seem that way,” she said with a long sigh.

His thumb stroked over her clit, pushing the delicate little hood upward. She arched her hips, purred like a kitten, and he smiled slowly, hungrily, his cock growing hard as the scent of her welcoming juices rose to entice him. He put his hand to his shaft and nudged her thighs farther apart.

“Come to me, baby,” he said and when she lifted herself up in offering to him, he drove himself into her with one fluid motion that went deep, filling her, stretching her, possessing her completely.

She put her arms around his neck, raised her legs to hook them around his waist and brought his lips to hers so that while he slowly thrust in and out of her warm channel, she slipped her tongue in and out of his hot mouth, swirling her tongue across his bottom lip.

“Damn!” he hissed and wedged his hands beneath her to jerk her toward him, pushing as deep inside her as he could go. He was like a man obsessed, driving into her savagely, reveling in the nails she dug into his back, the tight constriction of her legs clamped around his waist and when his release exploded, the animal within him growled with eyes flaring, pupils dilated with lust.

Her orgasm rocked her to the core of her being and she clung to him as tears filled her eyes. Ripples of pleasure tightened around his thrusting cock and drained every last spurt until he fell upon her, breathing heavily, spent, sweat coating his flesh with a fine sheen as his heart pounding brutally against hers.

“I love you,” he said on a hitching breath. “By the gods throughout the universe I love you.”

And she knew all doubt of her feelings for him had been laid to rest. She would do anything for this glorious man wrapped in her arms. His weight was like a blessing pressing upon her and she gave in to the sweetness of it. She wanted to sleep with him blanketing her, feel his heart beating, hear his breath, and absorb the warmth and scent of him. Gently she kissed his forehead and closed her eyes.

* * * *

He stumbled along the path mumbling, stopping now and again to look around, to peer at the dense vegetation, to listen for following footsteps. Cocking his head to one side he stopped breathing. Had that been a twig snapping into? Was it a footfall that had drawn his attention?

He sniffed the air like a hound then dropped to all fours, scuttling under a bush where he hunkered there shivering, further soiling his pants, keeping his eyes squeezed tightly shut lest hell open up again to breathe into his face. When after ten full minutes had passed and nothing reached out to snatch him up, he pried one eye open to look out of his hiding place.

Nothing moved in the bushes around him or on the trail. There was no sound other than water dripping off the leaves.

Yet he stayed there another ten minutes until he was sure he had nothing tracking him. Like a timid mouse he crawled out from beneath the camouflage of branches and hesitantly stood, his pale blond hair a streaky mess of mud and foul debris. He ran a filthy hand under his nose and stood there quivering for a moment before taking a cautious step forward, then another.

He paused to listen still once more before finally starting down the trail again. All the while, his eyes skipped back and forth from one side of the undergrowth to the other. His hands opened and closed at his side, his fingers flicking outward as though the nerves were being attacked by electric shocks. A tick also worked in his face while his lips constantly moved, forming phrases that were garbled, that made no sense but had meaning to him for he nodded now and again to whatever nonsensical statement he’d made.

It was close to morning now and a faint line of gray was dotting the top of the Ridge. He stopped to stare at it--eyes narrowed--until the first rays spread out over the peak with ghostly talons.

“Good,” he said and nodded. “Good. Light is good.”

He increased his pace down the trail, slipping and sliding in the muck and mud, falling once or twice but unconcerned with his appearance or the stench that clung wetly to him. His pale blue eyes mirrored nothing but the outlines of the trees he walked past. There was no thought showing there, no sanity, either.

When the lights of Lamb’s Grove came into sight, he stopped and stared at the collection of buildings for a long while, chewing on his bottom lip until it bled. He watched the little village come alive, hid behind a tree to stare at people walking about. At one point he observed a group of men putting luggage into a couple of vans and thought they looked familiar to him, but he didn’t really care. As one of the men started back into what must be a hotel, he turned to stare.

“Cody?” the man yelled and the other men stilled, looking around.

He snarled and waved an arm in dismissal.

“It’s Wendt,” Dalton said.

“Yeah, I know,” Hobart agreed and took a few steps from the car. Once more he called his partner’s name but the man at the end of the street didn’t answer, just glared back at him.

“We need to take him back with us,” Jacobson reminded the others. “Or we’ll be sent back to fetch him.”

Hobart stood in the street with his hands on his hips. “He doesn’t look sane,” he observed.

“We all saw it,” Dalton said. “Wendt got left alone with it. Would
you
be sane?”

“We didn’t see nothing,” Hobart insisted. “Not a fucking thing!”

“Well we sensed it,” Dalton snapped. “We
smelled
it!”

“We felt it,” another man said with a shudder.

“You have that tranq gun handy, Jacobson?” Hobart asked.

“I can get it ready,” came the answer.

“Then load it and go around behind Wendt. You’ll be upwind of him so aim carefully. Aim right between his shoulders and ....”

“I know where the fuck to aim,” Jacobson growled.

Hobart did not reprimand the agent. None of them would be with the Agency once they got back to headquarters. They’d seen what they knew they should not have. They’d ventured where they knew they should never have gone and each of them had had the fear of something--whether God or devil--instilled within them and not a one of them would ever be the same again.

“Just do it,” Hobart said as Jacobson went back to the van and began rummaging around inside. “Go through the hotel and out the back way and around.”

“Fuck you,” Jacobson hissed. “Don’t you think I knew to do that?”

“Do you think MacGivern has her?” Dalton asked.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think she’s dead,” Hobart said. “If he’s got her, there ain’t a damned thing we can do about it.” He put a thumbnail up to chew on it, never taking his attention from Wendt, who was now squatting down beside a tree, watching them.

Jacobson went back into the hotel with the tranq gun clutched in his hand.

“Do me a favor, Dalton,” Hobart said. “Would you collect Wendt’s things and bring them down. As long as he’s staring at me, I don’t want to lose his attention.”

Dalton shrugged. “I got nothing better to do,” he grumbled.

Hobart took a few more steps toward Wendt, but when his former partner looked as though he would run, the agent stopped, putting his hands out to the side. “I just want to talk, Cody.”

The squatting man shook his head, denying permission. He was weaving back and forth from side to side as he hunkered there, humming, poking at the ground with a twig he’d picked up but his gaze never left Hobart.

Not even when the tranq dart got him high on his right shoulder.

Wendt reached behind him as though to swat whatever had hit him then wobbled, going down to one knee. Surprise, then confusion filtered over his face just a second before he pitched forward.

Hobart and his men ran toward their fallen comrade and within minutes had him up and in the hotel where it was necessary to bathe the feces and mud from him before they could load him in the van. Before an hour had passed, the two vans were rolling out of Lamb’s Grove with eight silent men lost in their own thoughts, and one drugged agent who was lost to the world.

Chapter Seven

Jamie was the first to wake that morning and he eased from the bed so as not to wake her, scooped up his jeans and pulled them on, leaving the hook at the waistband unfastened. After a quick session behind the screen, he came out and began filling the coffeepot, quietly going about the business of making breakfast for them. He was content, but he knew they would need to have a long serious talk and he didn’t want to do that on an empty stomach.

It was the smell of bacon frying that brought her awake. She stretched and sat up, fluffing the pillow behind her and watched her lover as he puttered at the stove. Her gaze went over his shoulders and down his bare back to the brutal scar where his left kidney had been replaced with the artificial one that pained him so savagely. He wasn’t aware she was watching and when he suddenly stiffened and put his hand to that part of his body to massage it, her heart ached for him. If she had the man who had caused his torment in her hands, she would twist the little weasel’s head until it popped off.

Jamie caught that violent thought and looked around as he scrambled their eggs. “Remind me never to anger you, lass.”

She grinned at him. “I’m hell on wheels when I’m mad, Wolfman.”

He nodded and took the heavy skillet from the fire, dividing its contents onto two plates. “Breakfast is ready.”

Tossing aside the covers, she padded behind the screen and when she came back, she was wearing another of his shirts, rolling the sleeves up as she walked. The tail of the shirt reached almost to her shapely knees.

They ate in companionable silence. Once he was finished, Jamie pushed his plate to the center of the table and leaned back in his chair, the front legs off the floor as he sipped his coffee. His eyes never left her face.

“What are you thinking?” she asked as she wiped her lips with a paper napkin.

“That you will not want to live here the rest of your life,” he said.

“No,” she agreed and pushed her own plate away. Bracing her forearms on the tabletop, she sat hunched forward. “I’m really rather claustrophobic.”

“I thought about it on the way back from the Ridge,” he told her. “There is a plot of land up there where it wouldn’t be hard to run connections for electricity and water. It’s still off the beaten path and I really don’t think anyone would dare bother us up there.”

She propped her chin on the base of her right hand. “Is there any way to have telephone line or at least a satellite dish put in?”

His eyebrows drew together. “For what purpose?”

“Internet,” she told him. “And television.”

He sniffed. “Neither of which I’ve ever had the inclination to have.”