again.
Her gaze narrowed. “I rather like the idea of you on your knees. Maybe even with your hands tied behind your back.”
“And then what?” His eyes glittered like shards of broken mirror.
“I would...present...various body parts for you to...”
“Make love to with my mouth?”
“Exactly.”
“And if I do this for you? What will you do for me in return? Sex is, at its core, a trade, after all.”
She leaned back against the banquette. “That’s where you and I differ. For me, sex is a gift. Something I give freely to you. I don’t necessarily expect anything back in return. Of course, I generally do get plenty back. But it’s not like I think to myself, ‘Okay, if I give Alex x amount of pleasure, then he owes me y amount back.’”
He asked, amused, “Are you implying that I’m a selfish male?”
“I’m just saying your mind-set is different than mine. I don’t know if all men treat sex the same way you do or not.” She shrugged. “Frankly, you treat everything as a bargain, not just sex.”
“Do I, now?”
Interestingly enough, he didn’t seem offended. Thoughtful, maybe, but not angry. They finished the meal, and Alex ordered chocolate mousse for her without having to ask if she wanted any or not. The creamy dessert was, bar none, her favorite food on earth.
He let her get well into the mousse before he commented, “Sex has always been a transaction for me. I pay a prostitute, she gives me what I want.”
Katie waved her spoon at him. “You don’t want them to like it, do you? You go out of your way to make sure they don’t enjoy themselves.” Alex arched an eyebrow at her in mild warning that she was treading on dangerous ground. But she’d had one glass of wine too many to heed his eyebrow. “I think you’re taking out your anger over your mother’s abandonment on those prostitutes.”
Whoops. Predator Alex went still. Alert. Ready to attack. The scale of her mistake finally cut through the wine buzz to register on her.
“Are you finished?” he asked. His voice was cold. Precise. Controlled.
Crap. She trailed after him in silence to their room when he didn’t slow down to wait for her. He grabbed a couple minibottles of whiskey out of the refrigerator and moved over to the big plateglass window-wall, where he sprawled in one of the armchairs there.
Was their uneasy truce over, then? She knew how much Alex hated the idea of her going with him on this trip. Almost as much as she hated the idea of him going. He’d been mature and quit fighting about it when it became clear he was going to lose the argument. But she by no means thought he’d made peace with the idea.
God knew what else was rattling around in his head and messing with his mind after the past year. She’d read enough spy novels and seen enough spy movies to have an inkling of what he’d been through.
She waited until he’d downed the whiskey and the tension had left his shoulders somewhat to go stand behind him. “I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Nothing.
She might as well not have been in the room with him. Okay, she could deal with him being mad at her for saying something to him he really didn’t want to hear, but she would not stand for him ignoring her. That was just rude. She marched around in front of his chair, wedging herself between his knees and the cold glass at her back.
She put on her best kindergarten teacher lecture voice. “Alex Peters, that is quite enough sulking out of you. It’s not nice to ignore people when they speak to you. So shake out of this snit of yours, right now. Got it?”
His gaze lifted to hers. Had she not already been plastered against the window at her back, she’d have staggered back a step from the utter emptiness in his eyes. Where had her Alex gone? This man was...dead.
Remorse and fear roared through her and she fell to her knees and flung her arms around his neck. She hung on to him like a tornado was trying to tear them apart. At first, he did not respond at all. But eventually, his arms came up around her waist. He pulled her into his lap. They sat like that for a long time. Long enough for the city to grow quiet below them and the streets to empty of cars.
Without warning, he commenced tearing her clothes off her. Some he tore off figuratively. Others that didn’t give way easily enough, he literally tore off her. And when she was naked, he surged to his feet and shoved her face-first against the glass. She heard a zipper rip down, and then he was slamming into her from behind. No foreplay. No words of endearment. No kisses or caresses. Just his hard, hot body invading hers.
Her breasts and right cheek mashed against the cold window. Rain struck it hard enough on the other side for her to feel the tiny impacts. The drops came so close but didn’t touch her. Sort of like her trying to reach Alex’s soul. An invisible but impenetrable barrier blocked her way.
If someone happened to look up at this building and zero in on this particular room, they were getting quite a show. And yet, she couldn’t spare the mental energy to care. Her attention was entirely focused on the agonized man behind her. She wasn’t fooled for a second by his angry outburst. This was pain, not punishment. Anguish, not rage. And if he needed to dump it into her body, she was fine with absorbing it from him.
He was being rough with her, but as always, some part of him held back just enough not to actually hurt her. Relieved that whatever barriers held the beast at bay had worked one more time, she did her best to open her body to him. To relax and not fight the aggressive invasion. To convey an unspoken sense of welcome and acceptance to him.
By arching her back and thrusting back toward him, their bodies fit perfectly. He grasped her hips to pull her back harder, and she groaned her pleasure. He growled under his breath, probably irritated that she was enjoying this. But the harder and deeper he drove, the better it felt.
Finally, as she moaned with too much pleasure to bear, he collapsed against her back, panting in her ear, crushing her against the window. His hands came up to cover hers where they pressed into the glass by her head.
“Come to bed,” he eventually murmured. “You’re cold.”
She was frozen with fear for his soul. Did that count as cold? He tucked her under the covers gently enough, though, and then pulled on jeans and a sweater in the dark.
“You’re not coming to bed?” she asked from her cocoon of warmth.
“In a while, maybe.”
Translation: I’m going to be up all night, brooding. She sighed, rolled onto her side and drifted to sleep wondering what it would take to get him to shed the darkness in his soul and choose to be happy.
OVERNIGHT, HURRICANE GISELLE slammed into Cuba with a vengeance. It tore the island to bits from east to west. Even in a region accustomed to tropical storms, Giselle was a monster. Death tolls were unknown, but television commentators speculated that thousands had perished. Always secretive, the Cuban government declined to share details or let any foreign journalists
