Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances) (12 page)

So he knew from the beginning.

My brow furrowed with another concern. "The post disappeared."

His lips brushed against my ear as he whispered the password to my Endscape account.

JaneEyre.

Right -- the password could be an easy guess for someone who had spent several hours talking books with me. The surprising thing was that he had recognized the novel's importance to me and had retained that little detail. He had listened with a far greater interest than I could have imagined.

Processing the information, I drew a shaky breath in. Five seconds later, I shook my head. I still couldn't comprehend his interest or why he had sought me out and pretended to think I was a Fantasy Unit so he could…

Fuck me silly.

Make me come half a dozen times or more.

Invite me home.

Call me love.

Vance curled an arm around my shoulder. His other hand reached across my lap to secure my hip. With his cheek resting against the top of my head, he squeezed my hip. "You’re not mad, but...”

I tilted my face down, angling it toward his chest so he couldn’t possibly see my expression. "It is…uh…complicated.”

It was his own excuse used against him and Vance chuckled. "Believe me, I only want real. You, Morgan Macy, are real. The women I work around -- not real."

When my only response was to burrow closer against his chest, he pulled back a little. Robbing me of my hiding place, he gently tugged at the length of hair falling down my back until I looked at him.

"So tell me what is so complicated." He rubbed his nose along mine.

"You like me. And I…" He blinked, holding the next word at the edge of his mouth until he swallowed it down and started over. "I like you, Morgan.”

Like.

The word echoed through my thoughts. Was it really
like
that he had started to choke on? I met his gaze, held it only briefly before I had to look away. His lips brushed my cheek, loosening one of the tears I was trying to hold back.

He cupped my face, thumbed the tear away. "Don’t cry, love."

Ah,
love
. That was the word I had wanted to hear. But no one loved anymore, did they? Love was obsolete. Pleasure machines and video AI provided constant companionship. Mutual, long-term security was no longer a pact between individuals, but between employer and employee. People passed their twilight years in clean rooms and halls filled with the quiet, efficient hum of care droids.

Love had been thoroughly phased out before my parents’ generation.

"Morgan, shhh." Vance dabbed at my cheeks with his shirtsleeve, alternating between trying to shush me and kissing my closed eyelids.

"You should go," I whispered.

"No." He stopped trying to staunch my tears and grabbed my face with both hands. "Look at me, Morgan.”

I opened my eyes and saw only the blur of his face. I shook my head. "Really, just go. We can forget--"

"Maybe you can, but I can’t." Vance grabbed my hand, pulled it up to his wet cheek. He whipped a ragged breath in then drew my fingertips into his mouth, sucking his tears from them as he closed his eyes and another salty pearl escaped down his face.

I leaned forward, removing my fingers and kissing him. My heart thumped wildly in my chest. Vance
liked
me. I
liked
him -- far more than I would have allowed myself to admit before that night.

He dragged me onto his lap and I could feel the tension in his body, as if he was restraining some physical imperative to do more than just hold me.

The train’s automated voice announced Washington Heights. Vance coaxed me onto my feet. I would need to switch to the red line for the next part of my trip home. I looked at the video map on the wall and pinpointed my stop at Van Cortlandt Park. Vance tapped the screen, enlarging the location.

Holding me to him, he brushed my cheek with his lips. I heard the anticipatory pull of air into his lungs before he spoke.

"Let me come home with you tonight, Morgan.”

I nodded and warned him. "It’s just a crappy little one-room walk up.”

The doors opened and he stepped out, his arms circling my body as he pulled me from the subway car. The same possessive light that had brightened his eyes in the cube still shone, but the words we had just exchanged softened its intensity.

He dipped his head, kissing me once before leading me toward the escalators.

"So long as you’re in it, love."

Curve Cover

Black SUVs with tinted windows patrolled the quiet subdivision of Lawton Hills, Maryland, with a tactical precision. Major Amanda Child -- five months retired from the Pan-American Army -- counted four of the oversized beasts, their reconnaissance led by a more discreet but equally black sedan. She spotted the first SUV as she entered the subdivision, saw the second one two blocks later, with the other vehicles running two or three blocks apart.

She knew a federal search grid when she saw one, particularly with each of the SUVs sporting an infrared dish and whip like signal antennas a few feet long. She couldn’t tell which agency, but after the hairs on the back of her neck settled down, the team’s presence faded to a point of curiosity. She only cared that they weren't there for her. If they had been, her face already would be pushed into the asphalt. So it wasn’t her turn to disappear into the back of a black SUV with a hood over her head.

Not today at least.

Distracted, she almost missed her street and had to take a hard right onto Abingdon Lane. Six drives down, she pulled into the small, two-bedroom ranch that had become home after her divorce. She pressed an on-dash button and the garage door opened, the overhead light illuminating the interior. She scanned the area, pulling inside only after she determined its state was as clean and orderly as when she departed that morning.

She remained in the car with the motor running while the garage door closed. Shut inside, she waited another five seconds before she gathered her briefcase and cell phone and stepped from the car. Five feet forward and to her left, a door led to the kitchen but she stood outside the vehicle and waited for its gentle ticks to die out.

Amanda inhaled, slow and deep. With the hydrogen cell vehicle, no exhaust fumes tainted the air in the garage. Otherwise, she would not have noticed the faint, but new, scent of bleach in the air. She walked over to the washing machine and knelt down.

Keeping one eye on the door that led from the garage into the kitchen, she ran her fingers around the cap of the bleach bottle and pulled them back wet. Pulse jumping, she felt the warm rush of blood to her skin as she confirmed someone had been in the house while she was gone.

That, or she was as paranoid as her ex-husband claimed.

Scowling, she slipped her heels off and moved to the covered air vent next to the house door. Her ex, Ronnie, could go fuck himself -- preferably with a grenade. She’d found evidence of at least a half dozen visits to her home since her forced retirement.

This was the first visit so fresh she could still smell the intrusion.

With a stealth that came only from long hours of practice, she noiselessly popped the air vent's cover and reached inside, her hand unerringly closing around the grip of a small caliber handgun, its holster duct taped against the top of the shaft.

She removed the gun, turned the safety off and chambered a round before easing open the door to the kitchen. This time of day, with the window facing the back yard, the kitchen was the brightest room in the house. The living room was heavily draped, the curtains drawn. So were the den and back two bedrooms at the end of a short hallway.

Amanda padded soundlessly to the counter, noting that the kitchen window was intact and locked. Glancing at the butcher’s block, all of its knives in place, she opened the utility drawer and checked for the box cutters and a heavy set of scissors.

Unless the intruder had found her second stash of weapons, he had brought his own toys to the game. Which meant he was a professional and not some high school kid playing cat burglar. Moving toward the living room, she stopped at the edge of the carpet and listened intently while her eyes adjusted to the change in light.

With nothing more than the faint hum of the refrigerator and low vibrations of electricity, the house sounded empty.

She knew better.

The bleach scent cut a trail across the room toward the back of the house. Exercising caution, she cleared the living room first, checking the empty space behind the couch before inching her way down the hallway.

The door to the den was open, just as she’d left it that morning. So too were the doors to the spare bedroom and the bathroom. Her bedroom door was half shut -- the intruder’s second mistake.

She slid further down the wall until she could peek into her bedroom. The drapes were drawn, making it too dark to see inside. She froze and listened again, hearing only the almost imperceptible whisper of her own breathing.

Amanda considered her options. She could enter the room or slowly back out of the house, call the cops and let the government take care of it. She didn't like her choices any better than her odds. She would bet every last credit she had that the government already was in her home. She just didn’t know which part of it had been playing cat and mouse with her this last year, ruining her career and shredding the remains of an already fragile marriage.

Mentally, she didn't think she could take much more subterfuge without becoming as crazy as the government asserted during the private hearings that had finally expelled her from the Army.

Right -- she could go o out babbling or blazing.

The choice suddenly clear, Amanda tightened her grip on the gun. Pushing the door with her foot, she eased into the room, elbows bent so that the barrel tip hovered chest high and a foot from her chest.

She had walked through the house blindfolded a hundred times over, memorizing each exit point, light source and obstacle. Two steps to the left would bring her to the light switch. Taking the first one, she came up against a hard body.

A hand instantly seized her gun wrist, the steely fingers exerting pressure on the nerves and tendons to neutralize her control over the weapon. She tried to bring a knee up. He slammed her against the wall. His other hand darted forward, snatching the gun from her weakened grip and tossing it.

She heard it bounce once on the bed.

"Stay calm. I’m not here to hurt you."

Stay calm. Don't make a fuss or we'll grind you to dust.

She had no reason to trust a government operative and a man with the kind of training he had just demonstrated couldn't be anything other than an op. In the dark, she assessed the hard body that pressed forcefully against her soft flesh.

The man stood at least a head taller. Broad, powerful shoulders balanced a thick chest and muscular arms. With the smooth, even sound of his breathing, she doubted he had broken a sweat in maneuvering her into position.

Strong, fast and expert in hand-to-hand combat -- the man's talents exposed him as a trained killer. She tensed, a moment's fear overcoming her capacity to reason.

"Shhhh…" He dipped his head and she felt the rough brush of stubble against her cheek. "I promise I'm not here for you."

It wasn’t the words so much as the rich voice speaking them that eased enough of the tension from her that logic could flow back in. Either he was lying and the search grid outside was a complete coincidence or part of a mind fuck to throw her off, or he spoke the truth.

Knowing she needed more information to decide, she played along. "Are you the one the SUVs are looking for?"

"SUVs?" Continuing to pin her against the wall, he lightened the pressure bearing down on her plump body just enough that she could breathe without pain. "How many?"

"Four black ones, tinted windows, plus a sedan. Infrared dishes and signal antennas on the SUVs..." Her voice trailed off, waiting for him to say something. He still had his hand around her gun wrist and his lower torso pushed into her heavy breasts and rounded stomach. They could have been dancing partners as close as they were, except that his right leg and hip pushed forward to abort another attempt to knee him in the balls.

"You knew I was in here." Low, contemplative -- he had the kind of voice she could listen to all night. He probably wasn’t trying to sound sexy, probably was busy thinking about the signal antennas on the SUVs and wondering whether the vehicles were close enough to pick up their conversation.

"I knew someone was in here...the bleach."

He chuckled, the reaction unexpected.

"Yeah, you interrupted me." He edged her closer to the dresser then leaned to the side and slapped the snooze button on the alarm clock. As the sultry jazz sound of Amy White’s
In My Bed
started to fill the room, he bent his neck until his lips were against her ear. "Why didn’t you call the cops?"