“No.”
He took her mouth, slowly, deliberately, knowing that, whatever happened, he was going to remember this moment for the rest of his life. Her arms went around his neck; tightened. And then she was kissing him back, leaning into him, pressing him against the trunk of the tree.
The light around her flared into a glowing aurora. Waves of unnamed colors ebbed and flowed, clashing and resonating with his own energy. The incredibly intimate sensation had a lot in common with putting a match to a dry forest in August. The night was suddenly on fire.
He’d thought he was already jacked. Now he was at flashpoint. The rush dazzled his senses. It was also disorienting. The only thing that kept him on his feet was the tree at his back. Come to think of it, he did not want to be on his feet, anyway. He’d much rather be down on the ground, on top of Grace.
He had intended this first kiss to be gentle, nonthreatening. After all, the woman hadn’t touched anyone in a year, at least not without shocking her senses. A gentleman would go slowly in a situation like this. Instead, he was in hand-to-hand combat with the forces of his own self-control. A devouring urgency cascaded through him.
Grace seemed to be as caught up in the whirlwind as he was. Her arms were wound fiercely around him. Her mouth was soft and open beneath his. Maybe her desire for him was just the result of being freed from a year of misery. He’d worry about that later. Right now the only thing that mattered was that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
The scorching kiss blazed across his senses, hotter than any sex he’d ever had.
“I could come right now,” he muttered against her mouth. “Just kissing you is enough.”
“This is amazing.” She shuddered in his arms and pulled back a little to look at him. “I haven’t ever felt like this, not even before my senses got fried. It must have something to do with the fact that we’re both aura talents. Nothing else explains it.”
“Do me a favor. Stop trying to analyze it.”
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that it’s all so weird—”
He crushed her mouth with his own to silence her. She responded by wrapping her right leg around his calf as if she intended to climb up onto his erection.
He reached down, found the zipper of her pants and lowered it. She made a small, desperate little sound when he got his hand inside her panties and between her legs. She was hot and wet and full. He found the tight little bundle of nerve endings with his thumb. She gasped.
He slid a finger inside her tight core. She clenched around him immediately, as if she had been waiting for him forever.
“Yes.” Her hands tightened around his shoulders.
“Yes.”
He stroked her, learning her. It was almost impossible to concentrate but he forced himself to pay attention to her aura, watching for the extra spikes of heat that told him he was touching the right places, using the right amount of pressure.
“Luther.”
She sounded shocked. There was no other word to describe her startled, breathless gasp. For one awful instant he thought that her senses had rebelled after all. The possibility that he was giving her pain, not pleasure, was too terrible to contemplate.
But she did not try to escape. Instead, she buried her face against his neck and clung to him. He felt the small contractions of her climax ripple through her body; sensed them flashing through her aura.
When it was over he was almost as relieved as she was.
“Hell,” he said into her hair. “Don’t ever scare me like that again. For a second there I thought I was hurting you.”
She made a weak, muffled sound into his shirt. It took him a while to realize that she was laughing. She was limp against him. Her breathing was that of a swimmer who had just made it back to the surface after nearly drowning.
He held her tightly, trying to get his own breathing as well as his raging need under control.
After a while he realized that she was no longer laughing. The front of his shirt was soaked with tears.
“Grace?”
“Don’t worry.” She did not raise her face from his shirtfront. “I’m all right. It’s just that I haven’t felt anything quite like that before.”
He smiled into her hair. “Neither have I.”
She stilled and then raised her head. “But you didn’t—”
“It’s okay.” He stroked the wings of her hair back behind her ears. “I think you need some time to process this.”
“I think you’re right. I feel like I’ve been on a roller coaster all day.”
“You’re not the only one.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, chagrined. “I never meant that to happen. I realize it’s highly unprofessional.”
He covered her mouth with his fingertips, silencing her.
“Whatever you do,” he growled, “don’t tell me you’re sorry about what just happened. That’s the one thing I do not want to hear. Are we clear on that?”
She hesitated and then nodded once.
He took his hand off her mouth, eased her away from him and grabbed the cane. They walked back to the hotel in moonlight and silence, not touching.
TEN
Harry Sweetwater felt the faint vibration of his cell phone just as he left the beach path and started up the steps to his hotel. He checked the incoming number and then stopped in the shadows of a large palm to take the call.
“Hello, Gorgeous,” he said.
“Hello, Handsome,” Alison said.
The ritual greeting between them was as old as their relationship. It had started on their first date thirty-four years earlier.
“Are you in position?” Alison asked.
He pictured his wife at her pristine desk, heavily encrypted computer and phones neatly at hand. The desk was in a small, anonymous office housed in a large commercial tower located on a convenient, offshore island. Most of the other firms in the building offered financial assistance to those who found it necessary to give their money a thorough cleansing before investing it in legitimate enterprises. Among such a group of discreetly run businesses, a small, family-owned enterprise that offered special services to an exclusive clientele went unnoticed.
“All set,” he said. “Got a room in the hotel next to the one the target is going to check into tomorrow.”
“I’m starting to think that we may have a problem with the client, Harry.”
He didn’t question the conclusion. Alison was a high-level intuitive.
“We’ve done a lot of work for Number Two,” he said.
They only had two clients. It kept things simple in the customer relations department.
“Everything looks right,” Alison said. “Two is using the right security codes. I’m not sure what’s bothering me about this job. Maybe something to do with the way the client is trying to micromanage it.”
“You got another e-mail?”
“Yes. It came in a few minutes ago requesting another update. That’s not routine. In the past, once Two has commissioned a job, there has been no further contact unless something changes. When the contract is completed, the money shows up in our account and that’s the end of the matter.”
That was true. In his experience, neither of the two clients ever wanted to know anything more than what was absolutely necessary about the details of the work that had been commissioned. Ignorance was bliss or maybe it just let the clients sleep better at night.
“Did you initiate a reverse security check?” he asked.
“Yes. I got the right response but something just doesn’t feel right.”
“Think we’ve been hacked?”
“I’ve got Jon checking that angle now. He doesn’t think our computers have been invaded but there’s always the possibility that someone has gotten inside Two’s system.”
He felt a flash of fatherly pride. His youngest son was brilliant when it came to computers; preternaturally so. Jon was a crypto, a strat talent with a twist that made it possible for him to plot patterns and follow complex paths in the new dimension that was cyberspace. He wasn’t a true hunter like most of the other males in the Sweetwater family, but he possessed all the right instincts. If anyone could track a hacker back to his lair, he could.