Do You Trust Me? (16 page)

And then it was
there, shaking her, spinning her in space, violent spasms that clutched and
released, clutched and released.

“Beautiful,” he
breathed. “Just beautiful.”

As the aftershocks
still raced through her, McCall reached into the nightstand drawer and she
heard the tearing of foil, the snap of latex as he sheathed himself.

She reached between
them and took his shaft in her hand, feeling the pulsing waves even through the
shield of the condom. She remembered how he’d felt in her mouth, how he tasted,
and she wanted to rip away the latex and put her lips to him again.

“Show me the way,” he
whispered hoarsely. “I need to be inside you. Now.”

She guided him to the
opening of her pussy, widening her legs as much as possible to give him access.
Although she was wet and soft from her climax, she was still very tight. Inch
by inch, he slid inside her.

She wrapped her legs
around him, pulling him closer with the pressure of her ankles. Faster, faster,
she urged silently, moving to meet his rhythm. The pressure began to build in
her body again, the unbearable sensation of him inside her, the increase in
tempo. More, more.

Rina felt as if she’d
been dropped into a void, surrounded by a blackness that heightened rather than
diminished her senses. The crisp hair on his chest rubbed against her
sensitized breasts, the grip of his lean, hard hands flattening hers to the
mattress. The rasping sounds of their breathing and the slide of their sweat-slicked
bodies filled the room as they drove for fulfillment.

When the climax hit,
it took them both, like the drop of a roller coaster on a steep slide, robbing them of everything except the convulsing of their bodies. The walls of her cunt milked him
through the thin latex until the throbbing of the hard shaft subsided, and her
own body shuddered one last time.

At last, she fell
limply back on the pillows, her body sated and exhausted. He left the bed, and
she heard him in the bathroom disposing of the condom. Then he was back,
pulling her into his arms again.

“Think you can relax
now?”

She felt herself sink
into sleep, a tiny smile on her face.

****

Three cartons of
books were sitting on the kitchen table by the time Rina came downstairs in the
morning. Shar was waiting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee.

“McCall let me in,”
she said. “I picked up the books for you to sign myself, and he oh-so-kindly
carried them inside.” She searched Rina’s face with a critical eye. “So, how’s
it going today, kiddo? You look pretty good for someone who barely escaped a
kidnapping.” She paused. “And are you ready to tell me about those bruises on
your face? Without all that makeup you look like someone used you for a
punching bag.”

“It wasn’t McCall,”
Rina told her again. “I had a run-in with a brick wall. And don’t tell me how
lame that sounds, because I know it.” She turned away as heat rose in her face,
found a mug, and filled it from the pot. “I just can’t tell you, Shar, and I’m
sorry about that. But I’m fine. Really.”

As fine as you can be
when someone’s trying to kill you.

When she turned back
to the table, Shar was grinning. “Okay. I’ll take your word for it. For now. So
if he didn’t give you the bruises, would the hunk have anything to do with you
being so fine?”

“I plead the fifth.”

The hunk. Would she
ever figure him out? So emotionally remote yet so fiery in bed. When he said
rough sex, he meant it, but last night he had been so unbelievably tender she’d
wondered if the wrong man had slipped into her room. Whatever baggage he was
carrying from his past, it weighed more than an elephant.

She settled herself
in a chair. “So. I guess we need to be on the lookout for obsessed fans today.”

“Honey, you can sell
that story to everyone else, but you know me. I’m not buying it. I can’t get a
thing out of McCall. You want to tell me what the hell is going on? Is someone
after you for some reason?”

“Everything’s fine,
Shar.” Rina sipped at her coffee, hoping her hands wouldn’t shake. “I guess my
celebrity’s just catching up with me.”

Shar leaned across
the table. “Rina, who
is
McCall? What’s he really doing here?”

Rina touched her
friend’s hand. “I can tell you don’t like him, but trust me. McCall is a man
who knows what he’s doing. And what he’s doing is taking care of me. Whatever
this is about, he’ll make it go away. So just relax.”

“Relax,” Shar
grumbled. “I’ll relax when
this
is all over.” She looked at Rina and
smiled. “Meanwhile, I’ll haul out my sunniest personality and make nice with
the store manager and customers today.”

“That’s fine. I
appreciate it.”

Shar rose. “Have the
muscle men bring the books when you show up for the signing. I’ll have
everything set like McCall wants.”

Rina stood up and
hugged her friend. “Thanks for everything. I mean it.”

When her agent had
gone, she poured more coffee into her mug and sat down to sign the books. She
sensed rather than heard McCall enter the room and looked up.

“You okay today?” Although
his eyes searched her face for any traces of fatigue or fear, his face was as expressionless
as always, as if last night had never happened.

Rina swallowed a
sigh.

Back to our daytime
personalities. Is that a personal or professional question? Is he asking the
woman he’s guarding or the woman he has great sex with?

“I’m fine. No problem.”
She went back to her task, wishing he’d give her some space. Trying to figure
him out wasn’t helping the tension that had her strung tight as a wire.

“Rina.” He sat down
in the chair Shar had used. “I have to ask you again. Is there something I
should know? If you think you’re helping John by keeping something to yourself,
think again.”

“Nothing. There’s
nothing.” She set the pen down and looked up. “I have to ask you something.”

“Okay.” His voice was
wary.

“Are you sleeping
with me because you think you can get information from me?”

His eyes turned so
dark they were almost black, and his face hardened to granite. He stared at her
for a long time before he stood up. Without saying a word, he walked out to the
patio, slamming the sliding door so hard she wondered it didn’t shatter.

He didn’t answer my
question.

****

“Hanes, I’m not
pleased with the way things are going.”

Andrew Brechtel’s
voice was colder than Alaska. He clipped off the end of one of his ever-present
cigars, lit it, and leaned back in his chair. He reached out with one hand to
switch on the small air filter on his desk, his only concession to the people
who bitched about his cigar smoke. The look he gave the man across from him was
cold and unsympathetic.

“We have to be
careful how we do this,” Hanes told him. “This last episode was a fiasco.”

“Yes. I heard.” Brechtel
slammed his hand on his desk. “Most unfortunate. Our inside source assured us
there wouldn’t be a problem. Now all this will make getting closer to her that
much harder.”

Everett Hanes
frowned. “I don’t understand why we can’t just go ahead with our original plan
and not worry about her.”

“Because, you idiot,
we still don’t know what Devargas did with his evidence. If the president gets
killed and that stuff shows up after the fact, we won’t have to worry about who’s
getting what contracts. The only thing we’ll be getting is three squares a day
in some godforsaken prison. Can I be any plainer?”

“No. No, you’re
right.” Hanes stood up. “I just have to make sure our friend, Bryce, settles
down.”

“Worried about
getting his hands dirty, is he?” He gritted his teeth. “He doesn’t worry about
how clean the money is that he gets.”

Hanes shook his head.
“Andrew, there’s a big difference between sending your paid assassin after
someone in another part of the world or a corporate thief and offing the
president of the United States. You’ll pardon us if we’re a touch nervous.”

“I’m running out of
time, Everett.” Brechtel puffed on his cigar, eyeing the man across from him
angrily. “I have to do what I have to do. Rina Devargas is expendable. We’re
not.”

“I know, I know. I’m
doing my best.”

The congressman walked
heavily from the room, a sour taste rising from his stomach. He didn’t have to
wonder how he’d gotten himself into this situation. Too greedy for easy money.
That was how.

The door had barely
closed behind him before Andrew Brechtel lifted his phone and pressed a button.

“William? We need to talk. I’m getting more than a little worried about some things our friends
are doing.”

“I’ll be right there,”
his son answered.

****

McCall parked in the
reserved space at the rear of the book store and waited until Gage pulled into
the space next to him before opening the door.

“We walk in together,”
he told Rina. “Once we get you situated in place, Gage will have someone come
back and get the books you’ve already signed. I don’t leave your side. Got it?”

“No problem.”
Unconsciously, she fingered the silver locket. When she realized what she was
doing, she dropped her hand, sliding a furtive glance at McCall. If he noticed,
he gave no indication, his eyes busy scanning the area.

Shar and the store
manager were waiting for her at the rear entrance. Just like the previous day,
they could see the book store was already jammed. Rina headed immediately for the
area set up for the signing, flanked by McCall and Gage. She would have giggled
at the absurdity of the situation if it hadn’t been so serious. Only the specter
of John’s death reminded her she herself was far from safe.

“We’re delighted to
have you, Miss Devargas,” the manager told her. “I promise you we won’t have
any episodes like you had yesterday. We’ve checked everything out thoroughly.
Even hired two security guards.”

McCall tensed at her
words. A silent message passed between him and Gage, and the other man nodded.

“If you’ll just tell
us where you’ve placed them,” Gage told the manager, “we’ll introduce ourselves
and see what their arrangements are.”

“Oh. Of course. They’re
both at the front of the store. Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

McCall stationed
himself close to Rina, their bodies almost touching. She knew his eyes would be
roaming the crowd constantly. The mention of the security guards made him
nervous; he hated unknown quantities. Gage’s assessment of them would be
important.

“I guess the guards
are all right,” he reported five minutes later. “I checked their credentials,
but people we don’t choose ourselves always make me nervous as hell. I radioed
Addison and Pedrosa to keep an eye on them.”

McCall nodded. “Good.”

“I think we’re ready
now.” The manager hurried up to the table, slightly out of breath. “If it’s all
right, we’ll go ahead and get started.”

McCall and Rina both
nodded, the manager made her announcement, the two salespeople working the line
motioned the first group through, and the procession of fans began. Rina smiled
and exchanged words with everyone as they came through the line, signed books,
posed for pictures. Whenever she stole a glance at McCall, his gaze was
constantly moving, but his body never changed from its deceptively relaxed
stance.

The signing process
seemed to go on forever.

“I don’t know how you
do it,” he muttered in her ear when she stopped to drink from a bottle of
water. “I’d have killed half of these women by this time, but you never lose your
cool.”

“It’s how I make my
living,” she told him. “Meeting me is important to these people, and every one
of them will keep buying my books. And tell others to buy them.”

She knew he was
worried that the crowd never seemed to thin out. People took their books but still
hung around, watching her or chatting in groups.

“I’ll be damned glad
when we can get out of here,” he told her when she signed the last book.

And finally it was
over, without an incident of any kind. When Rina asked to use the restroom,
Gage went in and checked it thoroughly first, then blocked anyone else from
entering.

When she came back
out into the hallway, McCall gripped her arm and they headed toward the back
door, Gage moving in front of them. As they headed toward their vehicle in the
parking lot, they were stopped by one of the temporary security guards. He held
one of Rina’s books in his hand.

“Miss Devargas?
Excuse me, but I wondered if you’d sign this book for my mother,” he asked
earnestly.

“Sorry, she’s through
for the day,” McCall said.

At the same time,
Rina replied, “Of course.”

She tugged her arm
from McCall’s grip and reached into her purse for a pen.