Chapter 10
TEN
Seattle
Early morning
“Christ, hurry up.” Montez hopped from foot to foot, breath pluming in the frigid air. He wasn’t dressed for an op and it was fucking cold up here on Cougar Mountain, ten miles from Seattle.
Driving up, they’d stopped at a hardware-fishing gear-grocery store in the sticks and bought two shovels, gloves and a big tarp.
He hadn’t actually been here when his men had buried the body, but his men had sent him the GPS coordinates, precise to the inch.
Once they were over the spot, Montez had started to dig side by side with Piet, but Piet had simply held up his hand and motioned him to one side.
O-kay.
Truth be told, he wasn’t unhappy that he wasn’t allowed to grub around in the peaty soil, unearthing a dead body. Piet wanted to work alone? Fine.
Piet must have done a lot of grave-digging in his life, because he worked as steadily and regularly as a machine. Inside of half an hour, there was a huge pile of dark loamy earth piled up next to a coffin-shaped hole with clumpy dark sides.
With half an ear, Montez had been listening to the sounds Piet was making, like a sort of music, with the background a steady whistling noise through the pines.
Slide-hiss, clunk, patter. Slide-hiss, clunk, patter.
The iron of the shovel biting the earth, shovelling under a clump of earth, being tossed to the side.
The sounds changed and Montez walked to the side of the hole.
Piet was digging around something. Something that was appearing minute by minute as he dug, like an image coming out of a photographic bath.
Soon, Piet had dug all around and a body was exposed.
Montez looked down, shining his flashlight.
Blond hair, now dark with clumps of soil, a fancy designer jacket, creased and filthy, brand-new boots, still shiny.
He recognized those. He didn’t recognize anything else.
Skin sloughing off from bones. Skin dark, features bloated beyond recognition. Montez frowned.
Piet glanced up briefly, without stopping his movements.
“Looks different, been in the ground a week, yeah?” He spread the big tarp around the right side of the hole, letting some of the tarp dangle down over the side.
“Help me,” Piet grunted and Montez jumped in with him into the hole.
They muscled the dead weight of Roddy Fisher up onto the tarp, rolling him up in it.
At the end of the exercise was a long, sausage-shaped plastic roll that Piet heaved up onto his shoulders as easily as hefting a shovel.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Go where?” Montez had no idea why he needed the body.
Piet settled the body onto his shoulder. “To stake it out, as bait.”
San Diego
Harry usually woke up abruptly, coming up out of sleep like a deep sea diver cresting the surface at the last second with a gasp. He had nightmares, often, and coming awake instantly was a self-defence mechanism.
Get me out of this fucking hellhole, fast.
But now he woke up in swoops, each stage with a little more sensory input, each stage better than the last.
First, eyes closed. A sensation of warmth.
He usually woke up from his nightmares icy cold, no matter what the weather outside was like.
Now, he felt warm all over. There was a soft warm weight on his right side, spreading warmth throughout his body.
He moved his hand, cupped around something soft and warm.
He felt…good. Fantastic, in fact. He rarely slept through the night and was usually tired when he woke up. It wasn’t until he had his second or third hit of coffee that he felt ready to face the world. Now he woke up so refreshed he felt like a lion.
There was something soft and gently rounded attracting the palm of his hand like a magnet. He ran his hand up and down, encountering warm…woman.
His eyes popped open. He hadn’t any sex since before being blown up. He’d been living in Nosexistan for two years.
The sex he’d had before was technically okay, but impersonal.
He never wanted to stay the night and he never had women in his own house.
Her place or a hotel room, he didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t his own space.
And he always left after the sex, before falling asleep.
Sleeping the night through with a woman made him vulnerable.
He never knew when he’d have one of his nightmares, waking up screaming in the night. No one could know how messed up he was, and he couldn’t mask it asleep. In the night, he was exposed and open.
So the feel of a woman under his hand was surprising. Terrifying actually, because it felt so damned good.
He looked down and smiled. A mass of shiny, red-brown hair was spilled over his chest. He saw a pale, perfect profile, lashes so long they cast a little shadow, skin like cream with a touch of rose underneath, so unlike the icy white color she’d had while he’d sat vigil beside her.
She was a quiet sleeper. Even with her head on his chest, he couldn’t hear her breathing, but he could feel the slight rise and fall of her narrow ribcage. She was tickling a few chest hairs with her exhalations.
A slender arm crossed his chest, a narrow long-fingered hand curled around his ribcage, holding him even in her sleep.
His skin tingled where it touched hers, all along his side.
One bended leg was thrown across his, knee just under his crotch.
If he hadn’t had a massive hard-on, the knee would have been right over his dick.
He hadn’t gone down even for a second since they’d kissed. Not even close. It was like he was plugged into this electricity socket called Ellen that made everything in him stand up.
Last night flashed through his mind in one pulsing red-hot memory and his dick lengthened and thickened. He couldn’t see his dick because sometime in the night he’d pulled the covers up over Ellen’s shoulders, but by God he could feel it.
After being essentially dead meat, a hanging piece of flesh he forgot about for days at a time, useful only as a conduit for pissing, his dick now throbbed with feeling. It had had a taste of something it wanted more of. Much more. So much he couldn’t imagine ever being sated.
He obviously was pumping something into the air because Ellen stirred, eyes moving back and forth behind her lids. Suddenly, her eyes opened wide and they found themselves staring at each other.
He watched her as she blinked, trying to put together the unfamiliar pieces. His face, the fact that they were both naked, that she was plastered against his side. She stirred, her leg glancing across his dick. His very hard dick.
She turned stop-light red. It was amazing to watch.
One pulse and her color changed completely, down to her breasts.
Or at least what he could see of her breasts.
Harry would have happily checked to see whether the red ran down to her nipples but she was suddenly clutching the blanket around her as if it were a lifeline.
He tried not to sigh. If it were up to him, he’d simply turn her a little, lift her leg with his hand and slide right in. Oh yeah. That first, fiery moment when he entered her…oh man. Nothing in his experience of fucking had come even close.
Was she sore? She had to be. She’d been so fucking tight that first time he entered. Good thing he’d come immediately and lubricated things a little. Harry had no idea how much time he’d spent in her—even the concept of time passing had fled his mind—but it had been a lot. She had to be sore.
And, come to think about it, most of last night had been about him, not her. The level of excitement he’d felt had simply fried his brain.
He was always in control while fucking, it was Harry’s Law. He had always been big and strong, and…well…big all over. It was always possible to hurt a woman while fucking—squeeze too hard with his hands, hold her too tightly, plow her too hard.
The thought made him really sick so from that very first time standing in a doorway, he made sure he was in control and not hurting her. That was Rule Number One.
And, alas, there was also Rule Number Two which was—don’t let her get too close.
Fucking was great, a fabulous stress reliever. Mostly fun, always exciting.
Relationships, not so much. He’d never really had a relationship, actually. Being someone’s partner meant…talking. Opening up. Letting her into his head.
Letting her see the demons.
No. Absolutely not. What was in his head was going to stay there. The only people he let see his vulnerabilities were his brothers. They knew and they weren’t talking.
So fucking was great and if the lady wanted more than that, here’s the door, the world’s full of men.
Last night had been an eye-opener. First, he hadn’t been as much in control as he’d like.
Actually, he hadn’t been in control at all.
Not once had he thought his moves through, parcelling out the intimacy, this much and no further.
There hadn’t been any governing mechanism at all up in his head, it had all been in his body, and not just his dick.
There had been this enormous sense of…letting go. He hadn’t held anything back, not emotionally and, unfortunately, not physically. He’d quit when Ellen had become practically comatose.
She hadn’t complained, though. She’d smiled at him, stroked him gently, touched him in a way that…oh man. There weren’t any words. The emotions roiling around in him felt good but really unsettling and brand-new.
Well, enough navel gazing. He was ready for Round Two—or was it Round 5?—but she wouldn’t be.
Still, that left a lot of room for other things.
Kissing her neck, nuzzling her collarbones, down to those small yet spectacular white breasts with the deep pink nipples…he got sidetracked at the nipples because they tasted so fucking good. Like a cross between vanilla ice cream and the ocean.
Yeah.
Ellen’s hands were on the back of his head, fingers deep in his hair, and that felt really good, too.
It all felt good. Incredibly good, in fact. Touching her pale skin, the taste of her, her hands on him…