Dead End (32 page)

“Is a sauna good for that?” he asked. For his nonchalance, she thought, he should get an Oscar.

Reb considered. “Yes, very good. Should loosen up the joints and relax the muscles. Afterward you’d sleep better. Why don’t you do that?”

Marc waved a hand. “Not for me. I’m too tired. But I make sure the thing’s kept fired up and ready to go. It’s right where it used to be, only it’s been cleaned up. It’s good in there. You go ahead.”

“I might do that. Pepper Leach has to be talked to as well. Will that be hard to pull off, d’you think?”

He was as anxious to get at Leach as Reb was. “I’m not sure. I don’t think there’ll be a problem if he agrees to see us. We never went to the same schools, but I did know him a bit. I’m hoping he’ll talk to me.”

“I knew him,” Reb said. “One of the nicest, quietest boys I ever met. And he can paint.”

Marc got up. “You don’t look so hot. Go take that sauna. There are all kinds of towels down there, and anything else you need.”

She looked at him long and hard, got up, and left the room with Gaston under her arm.

He was, Marc thought, a reliable, mature man. Never, ever would he look for a way to sneak up on a woman in a sauna. Nope, he’d finish his Scotch and wait for Reb to come back up, just to make sure she was okay. He’d only go near the sauna if she was gone longer than he thought she should be.

Marble steps to the basement had stood the test of time. Creamy and veined with coffee color, they shone. Marc got to matching tiles that covered most of the basement and stood, listening. The house was built on a slope. At the back, French doors opened onto lush vegetation and a terrace surrounding a pool. A problem with the pipes would have to be corrected before it could be filled with water again. On the far side of the pool stood a long cabana, also in need of repair. Necessities came first—like the sauna, steam room, and showers. Marc turned up the corners of his mouth, but as quickly turned them down. Too much self-confidence wouldn’t win any popularity contests with Reb.

He called, “Reb,” before walking toward a pattern of light through the sauna doors and across the floor outside. She wouldn’t hear him. Curled up in a soft white towel, Gaston heard, but went right back to sleep.

Standing beside the door, Marc stretched out a hand and knocked on the glass. Then he opened the room a fraction and said, “Reb? You okay? You’ve been in there ages.”

She didn’t answer him.

He let the door close, but his stomach did jumping jacks. Some people passed out in saunas. Once more he rapped on the glass and waited for a response—in vain.

She could be in the steam room or the shower. He averted his head and strode past to see if he could find her elsewhere. She wasn’t elsewhere.

Enough pussyfooting around.
He returned to the sauna and threw open the door. In the gloom inside, Reb lay, full length, on one of the wood benches that ran along two walls.

“Changed your mind about this?” she said, sounding dreamy. “You can’t come in with your clothes on. Unless you want to.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to do that.”

Naked, she rolled onto one side and propped her head on a hand. “I think it would be good for you. Relax you, and soften up your muscles.”

Some things might never soften up again, he thought. Beads of perspiration stood out on her skin. She ran her fingers over a rounded hip and flipped off the water. Her belly and breasts shone wetly.

“The heat’s gone to my head,” she told him softly. “I’ve got these feelings I can’t even explain.”

His erection was beautifully painful. He pulled his shirt off over his head. “Try to explain,” he told her, and ladled more water over the stones. They spat and hissed. “Explain your feelings.” He was already in too deep to crawl out. She was…he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Her eyes drifted shut. “Excited,” she said, pressing long fingers into her against the part of her she was probably feeling most. “A little puzzled. We’re in a crazy, dangerous nightmare, but I can look at you and I don’t care about anything else.”

Marc dragged in a hot, airless breath. “Me, too, cher. From where I’m lookin’ at you right now I can’t imagine ever wantin’ to move out of this sauna.” He stripped off the rest of his clothes and threw them all outside the door, together with his shoes. White towels were on a cabinet, and he took one, only he didn’t wrap it around him. His wounded leg felt stiff but not painful.

“Telling a man too much is supposed to be dumb, but I don’t have to look at you—or be with you—to feel the biggest charge. Okay, straight talk. Thinking about you makes me ache. I get wet. For the first time in my life I’ve had…”

“Yeah?” This was too damn serious to be a grinning manner.

“Spontaneous orgasms.”

“Oh, baby. I wish I’d been there.”

“I touched myself, my breasts, and here—” She pushed her fingers between her legs. “It happened again down here while I thought of you upstairs sipping Scotch.”

She studied his face as if she intended to paint him, then moved on to his body. She could call that canvas “Study of a Ready Man.” Her eyes reached his penis and stayed there. She ran her tongue over her lips, and his already beleaguered legs turned rubbery.

The thought of her getting off on him—all on her own—drove him wild. He tossed another ladle of water onto the stones and listened to them sizzle.

“You got the sexiest rear I ever saw,” Reb said from behind him.

He looked at her over his shoulder and was mesmerized. With her free hand, she pushed her curly red hair back. Moisture had turned it dark auburn. Marc faced her.

She closed her eyes and rubbed circles over her belly.

Marc saw one detail, sweat beaded at the tips of her nipples, beaded and slowly getting ready to fall. He knelt beside her licked away each drop. Reb shuddered and fell to her back with both hands in her hair.

Almost imperceptible was the rise of hips, the sucking in of her belly. Marc stroked her, as gently as he could. Kissing her was a salty trip. Her chin rose, and her mouth opened beneath his. She played the tips of their tongues together and panted when he caressed her. Her face and shoulders, her arms, legs, and feet. Then he settled his mouth on hers again and kissed her hard this time. He kissed her and paid attention to the parts of her he’d missed on the first pass.

Doing something important really well took time. This was important and Marc took his time. Several times he thought he’d climax alone, but he pulled back from the brink and concentrated on his lady.

“Enough,” she said finally. “Please, Marc, I’m begging you, don’t keep me on the edge like this.”

Settling his chest on hers, he kissed her to silence while he massaged her thighs all the way to that happy place where he brought his thumbs together and in two light moves had her bucking off the bench.

She sank back and he left her, stretched himself out on the other bench with their feet touching.

“Marc?”

He jumped. She was staring at him, eating him up with her eyes again, holding the tip of her tongue between her teeth. “Love the view,” she said. “I wish I had a great excuse to make you come down here and lie there naked—often.”

“You surely don’t think I’d need an excuse as long as you were going to be here, too?”

They tapped their toes together, then concentrated on lacing them. The result was shared laughter. Marc’s turned to a howl when she ran an apricot-colored toenail along the bottom of his right foot.

She was too fast for him. Before he could leap up, she was upon him and probably thought she was holding him down. This time he closed his eyes. She rubbed her hands over him from head to toe and picked favored parts to kiss, lick, or blow upon.

“You’re sensual,” he murmured. “Or just plain sexy.”

Rather than answer, her mouth slipped swiftly over him, and he grabbed for her, but just as quickly she withdrew, grinning, and moved out of his reach. “I’m going to take a quick shower and walk outside. I haven’t done that in forever.”

He was
dying
but managed to nod. She took off and left the sauna, too. Shivering, he waited outside the shower for her to finish. To go in would be to take away the control she seemed to be enjoying—not that he hated it.

Reb emerged, dripping, and paused to make sure nothing about him had changed in the past five minutes. It hadn’t.

“Want to come with me?” She pointed outside. “If you do, be quick in the shower.”

He didn’t waste time arguing. In minutes he walked through the French doors and onto wet grass.

The outdoor lights weren’t working, but the moon was, and it splattered shards of silver light through the trees and onto Reb’s body. He knew he’d never get tired of seeing the way her breasts turned up at their tips.

She began to hum and clap her hands; she moved in time to the jazz she heard in her head, and when she went into an exaggerated stomp, she offered him her hand. “Yo-yo, the grass is cool, but the earth is warm.”

They danced, side by side, whirling together in something that was half Cajun two-step, half polka. That was before they fell together and went into the swing. Her feet hardly touched the grass. Marc didn’t care if his leg throbbed. Opportunities to dance naked under the moon—with Reb—might not come around too often.

“We’ve got our own strobe ball,” she said, twirling. “Look at you. You should always have white highlights. You have no idea what it does for shoulders like yours. And your buns. You work out, don’t you?”

“Yep,” he said. “Enough to stop myself from falling apart. What’s your excuse for being Princess Turn-on?”

“Hard work,” she told him, coming to a standstill with her hands at his waist.”

“You’ve got a fixation,” he said, talking to the top of her head. “I’d say it was penis envy, only I’ve already told you it’s yours if you want it.”

“I enjoy looking at it,” she told him. “If you can’t cope with that, say so; otherwise keep your opinions to yourself.”

Layering herself to him, she started them on a slow dance. Breasts to chest, her belly pressing another place, they revolved, and revolved, and when he raised her face he kissed her, long, long kisses that churned up his insides.

The doubts tried to force a way in. Marc pushed them away. He loved the woman, and she might just love him, too. If she didn’t, he’d have to see if he could persuade her she did after all.

“Your leg,” she said sharply, and stopped. “What is the matter with me? Inside at once. You should have reminded me.”

He stopped her from rushing toward the house, put an arm around her, and walked with measured steps. “I should have reminded you? I didn’t know you really thought I was stupid.”

Once inside, she faced him again and studied him critically. “Are you weak?”

He tried, unsuccessfully, to camouflage a grin. “No, I’m not weak.”

“That’s good, then. I know better than to allow a person who could be in shock to overexert. I’m being selfish. We should say goodnight.”

Marc whistled “Keep Your Hands off My Tout Tout” with his hands laced behind his back.

“Yes, well, I’ll see you for breakfast—unless I’m called out.”

“Where did you plan on going now, Dr. Tease?”

She shrugged. Marc thought she had the most beautiful shrugs he’d ever seen. “I’m going to try out the steam room—if that’s okay with you. Don’t worry, I’ve always loved all this. I never get lightheaded. And I’m not a tease.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, and she walked away, her sweet bottom doing its thing with each step.

She went into the showers, and he heard the door to the steam room open and close on the other side.

“Now run along,” he said, catching Gaston’s eye. “And you quit peeping, boy.”

He couldn’t go. Couldn’t just leave her down here and walk away to what? A night of twisting himself up in his sheets and getting no sleep while he made love to her all on his own?

Okay, he’d be straight, just as she’d been. If she sent him away, so be it.

The steam room and showers had a common wall made of etched glass. Fish swimming under water, bubbles rising, weeds waving—he’d drawn the design himself and liked the way it made him feel.

Once more he tried knocking on doors.

Reb slid the heavy slab of glass open and waved him inside. He shut them in, and she said, “What?”

“You straight-talked. Now it’s my turn.”

“We’ve got to get them before they get us, haven’t we?”

He nodded slowly. “Uh huh. And I don’t think we’ve got much time left. Scared people do impulsive things, and we’re tangling with some real scared folks.” This wasn’t the straight talk he’d had in mind.

“Oiseau should be talked to as well.” She stood with her weight on one leg, apparently very comfortable being with him like this. “Spike will have a lot to say to her. The van business is too weird.”

Reb stared up at him, and, slowly, she slipped a hand around his neck and pulled his face down to hers. Their kisses might be gentle, but they were also urgent. Her nipples felt like smooth rocks against him and when she stepped in real close, it was with her legs spread so she could straddle his good thigh.

Every move was slow. Steam billowed, they slipped together, deliberately rubbed skin to skin.

“Was that what you meant by straight talk?” she asked him. “The things we’ve got to do.”

“The things we’ve got to do, yes. But nothing to do with killers, or concentrating, or being responsible. I want to make love to you again.”

With one arm she hugged him close; the other hand she slid down to hold him. “No more,” Marc said. “I can’t take it.”

“Neither can I.”

“I love you, Reb.”

Steam blurred her features. She didn’t answer him, but she did grip his neck and lift her legs around his waist.

Marc gasped. There were things the doc could learn about a man’s restraint, or lack of it. Or maybe she already knew them all…

He staggered, and she rubbed her fingertips across his lips. “You’re too tired for this.”

“I…no, I’m not too tired. I’m too tired
not
to do this. Hold on, cher.”