Double Cross [2] (15 page)

It’s the ultimate ticking-time-bomb condition. And it can be hereditary.

My mom died of vein star syndrome, so I’m more likely to have it than most. Terror of vein stars used to rule my life; most days I felt sure I was one heartbeat away from a bleedout. Every head sensation sent me to the ER.

Then Packard taught me to zing out my fear, and my paranoia about vein stars stopped.

Too bad he didn’t warn me that it would forever change my neural pathways.

There are times I wish I could go back to the old way—terrified but free. But being here with Otto makes me grateful I don’t have to sink into that dark, hopeless hole again and again. Actually, the hole he’s in seems deeper than usual.

Otto was abandoned as a child, so vein star could run in his family just as well as mine. What if he has the hereditary weakness,
and
he’s stressing his craniovascular system by holding prisoners? We have to hurry up and release them, release the pressure.

I move my fingers over his thick, silky hair, and the curves of his skull beneath it.

“Soften your shoulders,” I command.

He softens. Takes a deep breath. Good. That will tell his parasympathetic nervous system to ratchet down, which should help.

“You’re okay,” I say, warm into his hair. “You’re okay.”

But not really. I can’t believe I ever zinged him, ever attacked him. Packard says I generate twice as much fear as any other human or highcap he’s met. How in the world did Otto endure it? If I zinged him now, it would destroy him.

This thought wobbles me.

“You’re okay,” I repeat firmly.

He shakes his head.

“Yes,” I say. “Let this work.”

He puts his hands over mine and pulls me down to him and kisses my cheek.

I smile. “What are you doing?”

“Come here.”

I climb onto the chair with him, half on his lap, and
give him his beret. He puts it back on and I snuggle into him, the way I love to do.

“This is what’s working,” he says. “This is what’s helping.”

“This?”

“Just this. When we touch.”

I gaze into his brown eyes and sense the truth of it. I put my hands on his arms, push them up under his sleeves.

“I touch a lot of people during the course of my day, Justine, but when I touch you, it’s different. When I touch you, I’m not alone.”

“You’re
not
,” I whisper, with all the seriousness I have in me. “I’m right here.” I hold his arms under his sleeves, thrilled and honored that I actually help him. He makes me feel safe and good, but I make him feel not alone. I lay my head on his chest, awash in his goodness.

We sit entwined as the fire roars. I could stay forever, I think, ensconced in his strong arms, safe in his fortress penthouse.

We need each other. We fit.

And sure, it’s not all breathless, pulse-pounding excitement, but when you’re a lifelong hypochondriac, breathless pulse-pounding excitement is something you don’t mind leaving behind. It’s this that I’ve always wanted. Just this.

He gets up once and brings back lemonades and teriyaki crackers. Another time he gets up to put more logs on, and then we squish back together.

“Maybe we can just stay like this for the rest of the week,” I suggest.

He draws a finger down my cheek, my neck. It’s a new touch. Slightly playful. “Stay how exactly?”

I give him a saucy look. “Like this.”

His eyes gleam as he snakes his hands around me, one down into my jeans back pocket. He pulls me closer and
kisses my neck, light little kisses that make a feathery sensation inside me. “How about like this?”

Softly, I say, “That would be good.”

“Or this?” he says, finding my mouth.

I kiss him back, sliding deeper into him, and we move together in a deliciously heavy rhythm that rolls his erection against my thigh. I kiss him deep and dirty, sucking his tongue into my mouth.

“Mmm,” I say as we shift and move against each other.

“Do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Not precisely.”

He pushes his hands under my sweater, draws his fingers up my bare stomach. “You don’t know what I’m thinking?” he asks.

I smile into our kiss.

“I suspect you do.”

I grab his wrists, because the sensation is too much, and I gaze into his eyes. A question.

“I want you to stay tonight,” he says.

“I’m here,” I reply. And then, so that he understands it in the deep way that I meant it, I say, “I want that, too.” It’s sort of a weird exchange, but our meaning is contained in touch and tone now. He presses into me, sighs into our kiss, and we move against each other in a wavelike rhythm that builds, then swells and breaks, then builds again, all deep currents and power. He pulls away and pushes up my sweater and I help him, tearing my shirt and bra off in the same go.

When he pushes his whiskery face into my breasts, I tense a little for the excitement of it.

“You,” he says, in a way that makes me feel slightly roguish, as I maul him through his clothes, trying to get the sudden, unbidden thought of Packard out of my mind. Quickly I start unbuttoning his shirt. I feel strange, like there’s an unformed, unfinished, sad little emotion bottled up in me, and I need to fuck it away.

He rises and I slide back into the big chair. My heart pounds as he stands up to his full height and roughly pulls off the rest of his clothes. I try to focus back on him, on his body, taut as a tree trunk. He kneels down in front of the chair and slides his hands up my thigh. “What is it?” he says. “Where’d you go just now?”

I sit up, kiss his neck, and take his warm, smooth cock into my hand. “Here,” I whisper. Then I lean sideways, over the chair arm, cock still in my hand, and fumble for my purse, pulling out a condom. Letting him go, I unwrap it while he nuzzles my neck and moves around on me everywhere but where I want him. Because I want him in me—badly. I finally pull out the condom and unroll it over him, leaving the little bit at the top like you’re supposed to, and smoothing it down. I love touching him. I can’t believe we’re going to do this, after all these months of being apart, and the chaste dates. I say nothing, so as not to jinx it.

Otto looms above me, hand on each of the armrests. “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” I say. “Are you?”

With the firelight behind him, his face is completely shadowed, but I don’t need to see his expression, because he leans down to kiss me long and strong, his thick hair brushing my cheeks, making a kind of erotic cave for my face.

I lay back, head hitting the backrest; he stays with me, between me, kissing my neck, my ear, but not in me. My whole pelvis sings to attention as he presses a hand onto my belly, and lower, reaching his thumb onto my clit. We kiss like that, and I want to fuck his thumb and every other possible part of him. He draws nearer, presses me back.

“Oh, Justine,” he says when I reach down to guide him into me. The slow, sure way he pushes into me feels like a kind of heaven. An all-encompassing, fully complete, and perfect heaven. I let out a whoosh.

He stills. “Too hard?”

“Too good.” I touch his hips in the darkness, moving with him, gazing into the velvety blackness of his face. We move slowly together, luxuriating in each other’s bodies. Eventually his breath becomes ragged. He props himself up over me and moves into me from a higher angle that’s a whole new language of goodness. I moan, possibly loudly; it’s like he’s plunging into my very core. I rise; I want every part of him in me, and touching me. We luxuriate in each other until the fucking takes on its own rhythm.

“I need you,” he says. “I need you.”

“I need you, too,” I whisper as he lowers onto me, pushing into me. Our movement catches fire.

“Oh, God, I need you.” He spreads a hand over my shoulder, grips me there, and pushes faster, harder. I’m on the brink of coming—I feel it taking over, that glorious autopilot where sensation drives everything and it’s too late to think. I still can’t see his face, but I feel him, feel the state he’s in: lost, senseless, transported like me.

“You’re the only one who makes me feel better,” he mumbles, panting, covering me with kisses. “The only one who stops the darkness.”

I try to conceal my shock—try to keep moving and not appear to waken from the sexual dream, but I have.
The darkness?
What does that mean? Does he mean his fear of darkness? Is he talking about the stress of the prisoners, battering against his mind? Or something else? I think what Shelby said, about him seeming grimmer. If anybody knows grimness, it’s her.

I kiss him, but really, it’s killing me that he’d be suffering and alone in it. And what does he mean,
stop it
? Not light the darkness but stop it, as if it’s a force.

“Oh, Otto,” I breathe. He’s lost in the fucking. I feel
sure he doesn’t know what he just said, which is probably for the best. Though now I’m too worried and freaked out to enjoy myself. And I wanted our first time back together to be so perfect! I try to get back in the mood, but it’s no good, so I make a decision. Clutch his hair.

“Oh-oh,” I say, squeezing my pelvis violently around his cock. “Oh!” I do it again, and thank goodness he starts getting off, and doesn’t know. He pushes deep, then jolts inside me, ecstatic, as I fake on. He comes exuberantly.

“Oh,” I say, hating myself for what I just did. But he’ll never know.

After, I scoot over to make room for him and he sinks in beside me.

“That was amazing,” he says.

I touch his cheek. “It was.” But all I can think about is what he said about me stopping the darkness. I alone help him. I marvel at that a little. I’ve always been so hopeless, barely even able to take care of myself, but now here’s Otto, looking at me full of faith. He needs me, and hell if I’ll let him down.

He pulls up the quilt and tucks us in together and we sit there naked and cozy.

After a long, lazy span of watching the logs burn and shift, he says, “I heard about what you did today.”

My first feeling is guilt. “What did you hear?” God, why am I always so guilty around him?

“The lead. The glasses. Brilliant work. Absolutely brilliant.”

“It was more blunder than brilliance.”

“You followed your instincts, and you took the suspect to the place he needed to go.”

“It was luck he revealed anything. Seriously, he revealed the secret of the glasses in spite of me.”

“No, not in spite of you—
because
of you. Sometimes
the best interrogators let the wind take them. You went in there, and when you came out, you had the information.”

I want to say,
I wasn’t interrogating him
, but I know Otto meant it as praise. “I can’t help but feel like I screwed him over,” I confess.

“One of the many things I admire about you,” he says, “is your empathy.”

“Empathy for the guy I just screwed over? I doubt he’ll be thanking me.”

“Maybe not. But others will.” His eyes shine. “Keep your attention on the big picture, Justine. Sometimes, extreme circumstances call us to do things we’d prefer not to have to do. But the Dorks are killing people. They’re killing more often now.”

“I know. We have to move fast.”

“No, you have to move smart. Let it take as long as it takes. I read the report on the manufacturing operation you’re infiltrating tomorrow. If you head in there with any sense of urgency, you’ll spook them and squander the lead. Move in there and lie in wait. Let the opportunity or the moment come to you.”

I nod grimly.

“Like a spider,” he says. “Your job is
not
to create the moment. It’s about having everything in place when the moment arrives, and being ready to strike.”

“So I’m a spider?”

He laughs his rumbly, sexy vibrato and takes my hand, kissing my knuckles.

About an hour later, the doorman rings up that a package has arrived for me. The laptop. It’s late, but I fire it up and spend the time it takes to get familiar with the software while Otto reads.

It’s midnight by the time we’re washing up for bed. Otto reminds me that Covian is going to be released from the hospital tomorrow. Covian’s family had to go
back to Oklahoma, so Otto’s going to pick him up. Apparently Covian’s healing beautifully, and driving the nurses crazy.

“Driving them crazy how?” I ask, trying to be mindful about not brushing my gums too hard. Eroded gums can lead to heart disease.

“With his mania to get up and out of there. He ruined several wound dressings trying to walk around. Thank God he’s all right.”

“It’s not your fault he was shot,” I say for the umpteenth time.

In bed, I prop my head up on my hand and trace the curve of his biceps as he stares at the polished bronze chandelier, which casts a warm glow all around us. This is the ultimate man’s bedroom, I sometimes think. All the furnishings are as solid and darkly burnished as Otto is.

“I have something for you,” he says mysteriously.

“What?” I’m thinking something dirty, but he grabs a book from his nightstand. “Bedtime story?”

“Of a sort.” He shows it to me.
Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini.
“Renaissance sculptor.” Otto opens the book to a ribbon bookmark. “I think you’ll find a particular passage in here every bit as interesting as I did.”

I settle back to listen as he reads aloud. It seems the sculptor made enemies of the Pope and the Pope’s son back in the mid-1500s. Then the Pope’s son threw Benvenuto in jail.

I lay my head on Otto’s shoulder and close my eyes, luxuriating in the warmth of his voice. He’s like a warm, living mountain that resonates goodness. I also find it pleasantly coincidental that Otto, whom I see as a type of Renaissance man, would read to me from a book about a Renaissance man. Soon we get to this passage where Benvenuto is in his dungeon cell eating a meal. Suddenly, Benvenuto notices something sparkly in his food. He is
alarmed; he assumes he has just ingested pounded diamonds.

I lift my head. “Oh my God!”

Otto reads on. Benvenuto has heard that diamond dust can kill a man. Otto pauses to tell me that, according to his online research, the tiny particles supposedly lodge in the intestines, creating tiny perforations that become increasingly inflamed, leading to horrible pain and infection. He returns to the text. Benvenuto is freaked; he’s already eaten half the food.