Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) (24 page)

It was heaven.

It was hell.

It was better, hotter, more glorious than all his fantasies, all his dreams had ever been.

Then he heard the telltale catch at the back of her throat. She was there, once more teetering on the brink. He quickened his thrusts and reached around to play with the hard points of her breasts. Gently biting her shoulder, he closed his eyes and let the sensations roll over him, through him. So that this time, when she threw herself off the erotic cliffs, he gladly let her take him with her.

12:35 a.m.…

“So why did you become a movie buff?” Bran asked curiously, wondering why he’d never thought to ask before.

They were stretched out on the little twin bed, his arm under her head, her leg thrown over his unwounded thigh. And even though his fingers were going numb, he couldn’t make himself move. Lying with Maddy was the closest thing to nirvana he’d ever known.

“Hmm,” she murmured. “I guess I’ve never thought about it before.” She absently played with his nipple. Every time she feathered her fingers across the hardened tip, blood surged to his cock.

He glanced at his watch.

Damn. Just two more hours.

Long enough for him to make love to her two, maybe three more times.

But two or three more times wasn’t going to be enough. Just as he’d feared, a thousand times wasn’t going to be enough.

“But I guess it probably has somethin’ to do with me bein’ the only girl in the family,” she mused. “And the youngest to boot. Watchin’ movies was the only way I could get my brothers to hang out with me. I didn’t hunt or play football, but I could do a pretty mean
Footloose
dance. I’ve got the moves,” she assured him, pinching his nipple and making his toes curl.

“Don’t I know it.” He slapped her ass.

She squealed, her eyes threatening murder. He smacked a kiss on her mouth and soothed the sting of his hand with a gentle caress.
Soft.
She was so unspeakably soft. He couldn’t get over it. Couldn’t stop touching her. Couldn’t stop
wanting
her.

Twisting her lips, she tucked her head beneath his chin and lifted her thigh higher. It brushed the base of his semi-hard shaft. Of course, his erection withered a bit when she asked, “So why did
you
become a movie buff?”

He could have evaded the question, he supposed, kept the tone light and flirty. But he didn’t. “Desperation,” he told her.

She pushed up on one elbow to stare at him. Her eyes were soft and warm, like summer storm clouds swirling in a hot sky. “What does
that
mean?”

“It means I started sneaking into my local movie theater ’cause it was a warm place to sleep in the winter and a cool place to sleep in the summer. After my parents died, and after I ran away from my third foster home because the middle-aged, chain-smoking woman there kept trying to come into my bedroom at night, I took to the streets.”

“Good Lord, Bran.” She searched his face.

“It wasn’t as bad as you think,” he assured her. “I couch-surfed in the homes of friends. I worked odd jobs and spent time in the library studying for my GED. Sleeping at the movie theater was always a last resort. And I found I actually
liked
watching all those movies. At night, after closing, I’d go into the storage room and shuffle through the old reels. I think I watched every one they had from
Doctor Zhivago
to
The Matrix
.”

She smoothed the hair back from his forehead. He closed his eyes and leaned into her hand, loving the feel of her. Loving
her.

When he opened his eyes, it was to find a question burning in hers. He knew what it was before she asked it.

“Murder-suicide,” he told her and watched her throat work over a hard swallow. They were just two words. Alone they were awful. Put together they were reprehensible. “After a month in the shelter, Dad convinced Mom to come and talk things over.”

And why did you go, Mom? Why?
It was a question he continued to ask himself even though he already knew the agonizing answer. She’d gone because she couldn’t stay away. As sick as it was, as perverse as it was, she’d loved his father. Loved
all
of him. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

But she hadn’t known just
how
bad and ugly Dad could be.

Bran
had known. Even then, he’d known because the same badness, the same ugliness lived in him.

“Remember that shotgun I told you I borrowed from Joey Santorini’s father?” He watched Maddy nod jerkily. “Well, my father used one barrel on my mother and the other on himself. And you wanna know the crazy thing?”

She swallowed, a lone tear sliding down her delicate cheek.

“She was
happy
. Before she hopped on the bus, she was wearing her
Little House on the Prairie
smile.”

Maddy blinked, not understanding. And as he explained, the memory of that day, the last time he ever saw his mother, washed over him…

“Don’t go, Mom,” he pleaded, grabbing her hand.

Spring had arrived early, and even though the leaves
hadn’t bloomed on the trees, the sun was warm and bright.
It reflected in his mother’s dark eyes when she smiled at him.

He grimaced because it was her
real
smile. Not her fake one. And it wasn’t for him. It was for his rat bastard of a father. To make matters worse, she’d put on her best dress and had splurged on new lipstick for the occasion.

“Bran, baby.” She pulled him into a hug. He was taller than she was now. Bigger too. But he still felt like a child in her arms. “I hafta go.”

“Why?” he demanded, bitterly pushing out of her embrace. “Why do you have to go?”

She shook her head. “I know you don’t understand, but the bad parts of him don’t outweigh the good. I love him, Bran. And if there’s a chance…” She drifted off, not finishing the sentence.

Frustration and fury were twin fires in Bran’s chest. They licked flames into his face. “What’s
wrong
with you?” he demanded hoarsely. “How can you still love him after…after…” He didn’t finish. He was too busy angrily wiping away tears that made his eyes feel like they were filled with fine-grained sand.

His mother placed gentle hands on his cheeks. “Because that’s how love works,” she whispered. “No matter what, it doesn’t go away. It remains part of you. Forever. Someday you’ll understand.”

“No, I won’t,” he swore, disgusted when his voice
broke and more impotent tears filled his eyes. “Because if
love is what you say it is, if it makes a man beat his wife—”

“Brando Pallidino,” she tsked, glancing around the bus stop. “Keep your voice down.” But they were alone on the sidewalk, the garbage truck across the way and the lonely sparrow chirping on a nearby limb their only audience.

“If it makes a woman stay with a husband who calls her names,” he went on like she hadn’t spoken, “and is so eaten up with jealousy that he can’t help but hurt her, then I want no part of it.”

“Don’t blame that on love, baby.” Her expression was sad. “That doesn’t have anything to do with love. It has to do with…” She paused to drag in a deep breath. “Your daddy didn’t have it easy growing up. There were things that…” She didn’t finish, just shook her head again.

“And that makes it
okay
?” He blinked at her, realizing just how…
crazy
she was, how deluded. And
blind.
She didn’t see. She’d never see.

“It doesn’t make it okay,” she told him. “But it should give you comfort to know that when you fall in love, it’ll be different for you because
you’re
different from him. Different from me too.”

Bran stumbled away from her. “You’re wrong about a lotta things, but you’re
really
wrong about that,” he told her as the crosstown bus turned the corner and rumbled in their direction. “What’s in him is in me too.” He beat a closed fist against his chest. “All that fury. All that rage. I got it too, Momma.” Some of it was flaming inside
him even now, shouting for his father’s head on a pike.

“No.” She let her gaze run over his flaring nostrils and bloodshot eyes. “You’re all our good parts, Bran, and none of our bad. You’re all our loyalty and none of our jealousy. All our courage and none of our cowardice. I thank God every day for that.”

She was deranged. Completely, utterly deranged. He had
all
of their bad parts in him, and he opened his mouth to tell her as much, tell her she didn’t have the first fucking clue, but with a squeal of air brakes, the bus stopped beside them and the door popped wide with a
squeak
and a
shhhh
of sound
.

Panic set in. His heart skipped a beat. “Let me come with you,” he begged, a dark sense of foreboding wrapping cold fingers around his throat until he could barely breathe. “Let me—”

“Your father and I need some time alone,” she said, cutting him off.

“But—”

“Bran.” She grabbed his hands, giving them a squeeze. “Please stay. I’ll be—”

“In or out, lady?” the bus driver called, chewing noisily on a monster-sized piece of pink gum. He blew a bubble bigger than his face as he waited on Bran’s mother’s reply.

“In!” she yelled, hopping onto the bus’s first step. Before she turned away to pay for her ticket, she smiled down at Bran, the hem of her new dress tangling around her slim ankles as the wind suddenly blew up with serious intent. But it wasn’t the breeze that made Bran nervous. It was whatever he sensed was following close on its heels. “Don’t worry, baby.” She smiled so sweetly, with so much
…
hope
in her eyes. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“And that was the last time I saw her,” he said, coming out of the memory slowly, like a person wading to shore.

Maddy lovingly stroked his hair. “I’m so sorry.”

When it came to his past, Bran had formed a psychological callus—at least that’s what the Navy headshrinker had called it. But Maddy had no such protection. Tears rolled freely down her soft cheeks to drip from her chin and land on his chest, right above his heart. Each hot, salty drop felt like a benediction. Was he fanciful to think maybe they’d be enough to wash all the blackness inside him clean?

He pulled her down so he could kiss her tears, sip their saltiness between his lips. “I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me,” he whispered. “I told you ’cause you’re my friend. My
true
friend. And I want you to…
know.
To know…
me
.”

She pushed away and opened her mouth to say something, but the cutter abruptly changed course, nearly toppling them from the bed.

“What in blue blazes?” she huffed, dragging the backs of her hands over her wet cheeks before wincing and looking down at his bandage. “Did I bump into—”

“No,” he cut her off, glancing toward the door. Everything in him wanted to stay here in this warm room, in this warm bed, talking, making love. Unfortunately, his operator’s sixth sense told him something was up. A familiar sensation prickled over his skin like an icy kiss of cold wind.

A hard knock sounded on the metal door. “I hate to disturb you guys,” Mason said from the opposite side, “but we’ve got a fuckin’ situation up here. I think you should both come to the bridge.”

Bran exchanged a look with Maddy. She didn’t have to say anything. Her thoughts were written all over her face:
Not again.

“What’s up?” he called to Mason, his body nearly crying out at the loss of contact with Maddy’s warm skin when he slid from the bed to grab his boxers and shorts.

“Picked up a Mayday from a nearby motor yacht,” Mason said through the door. “Apparently two guys in a dinghy boarded it about an hour ago, roughed up a couple of the folks onboard, and took off again after they stole some fuel cans.”

Bran and Maddy exchanged another look. This one said:
Two men in a dinghy? That’s no coincidence.
Apparently after the fishing boat ran out of gas, they’d used the skiff to go in search of more. He hadn’t banked on that. Regretted not putting bullets in their brains when he had the chance.

“They’re requesting emergency medical help and Webber has to oblige,” Mason continued.

When Maddy bent to grab her clothes, Bran got an eyeful of her plump ass. It didn’t matter what was happening, who was talking, or where they were. He zeroed in on the round hemispheres like a heat-seeking missile.

She turned and caught him staring—his tongue hanging down around his knees—and shook her head. Her eyes were still red and puffy, but there was a grin twitching her lips. “Stop givin’ me the Big Bad Wolf, all-the-better-to-eat-you-with-my-dear stare right now, or we’ll never leave this room.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Bran whispered, buttoning his shorts over his burgeoning erection. One look at Maddy’s bare butt and he was raring to go. Bad guys in dinghies and teammates standing outside the door be damned!

She got a pained look on her face. “We’ll be right there!” she called to Mason. Then she stepped into her panties and fastened her bra, covering up all her beautiful, feminine flesh.

And now
he
was the one who felt the need to cry.

* * *

1:08 a.m.…

“I got a bad feeling about this,” Maddy heard Bran whisper to Mason.

Mason grunted his agreement.

“What did he say?” Alex asked Maddy from the side of her mouth.

They were standing shoulder to shoulder on the bridge, watching as four of the six crew members on the Coast Guard boat scrambled around the deck, throwing over bumpers in preparation for tying up next to the motor yacht, which was the kind of ship owned by the one-percenters of the world but not the one percent of the one-percenters. With a main deck for seating, dining, and a small galley, and a lower level that was likely separated into a couple of cramped cabins, the vessel was nice without being ostentatious like her father’s yacht, the
Black Gold
.

Running lights on both ships cast a cool, dim glow over the dark water surrounding them. And Maddy noticed two of the people on the motor yacht were standing on the narrow front deck, watching the activity aboard the cutter. They were both men, both dressed in what she’d come to recognize as standard yachting wear—Polo shirts and blindingly white shorts—and neither of them seemed to be injured. For that, she breathed a sigh of relief and hoped whoever
was
injured wasn’t hurt terribly bad.