Midnight Man (18 page)

He remembered every second his cock had been in her, everything about it. The tightness, the heat, the wetness…she’d been thinking about sex just as much as he had over dinner.

Suzanne sighed in her sleep, shifting slightly, slithering over his cock. He froze. Sweat broke out on his face, though there was still a slight chill in the air the heating system hadn’t managed to dispel.

A good soldier visualized, running what he wanted to do through his head until he could see and feel the moves, until the moves were second nature, running a successful future battle through his mind so many times that by the time the real thing rolled around, the op went down smooth as ice.

John was damned good at visualizing, at projecting himself forward in time to an op, going over the details again and again. It wasn’t something he could turn off, just like he couldn't turn off his ability to prepare for future danger or countering danger when he met it.

Right now he was visualizing like crazy. Visualizing doing all the things to her he hadn’t had time to do the other night because he’d been nearly half-crazy with lust. Not that he wasn’t in the same state right now. There had to be some point in the future in which he was going to be able to make love to Suzanne Barron instead of fucking her blind. When he'd had her enough times to assuage this burning hunger, when he’d come inside her often enough that he could savor the feel of her instead of craving it…then maybe he’d settle down some.

Maybe.

But he’d already been too rough the other night and that was without post-fight adrenaline raging through his system. Now he suspected he’d hurt her. Enter her too quickly, thrust too hard, Jesus maybe even bite her.

That thought made him back down a little.

Some women liked rough sex. John knew that for a fact and he’d had his share of them. Women who bit and scratched, who didn’t mind being sore afterwards. Who got off on barely controlled violence.

That wasn’t Suzanne. She’d been shocked the other night at the roughness, though maybe she’d been shocked at her reaction, too. And what a reaction. He remembered every ripple of her sheath contracting sharply around his cock. Her excited pants, the dilated pupils.

No, he might have made her come, explosively even, but rough sex wasn’t her thing.

And right now he wasn’t capable of anything but rough sex.

He wasn’t the only one coming down off an adrenaline high. She’d shown clear signs of it with the desperate, frantic apologies and the crying. She didn’t have the right equipment for a hard-on, but tears bled out stress, too.

He looked down at her in his arms, a tear still drying on that high perfect cheekbone, crystal over purest white marble.

Jesus but the woman was gorgeous. She’d been enticing when they’d met, and he’d been blown away by the sleekly beautiful confident woman—successful, completely together—across the desk. But the woman in his arms, now—bedraggled, without makeup, eyes swollen with tears—that woman was a heartbreaker. He wanted her, every way there was.

He rose with her in his arms and curved down to put her in the bed. She barely stirred when he tucked her in and he stood for a long moment, watching her sleep. Feeling things shifting inside him, things he had no words for. The only thing he remotely recognized amongst the thousand emotions rolling inside himself was lust. He had a steel hard-on and he headed, relieved, for the bathroom because at least he knew what to do about that.

He had no frigging clue what to do about his heart but he knew exactly what to do about his cock.

Luckily he kept spare clothes up here in his mountain hideaway. He’d bought the place his second week in Portland. Just a shack with a big, insulated cellar, which was the main reason he’d got it.

He’d decorated it in exactly one extremely painful and clueless hour at the closest Wal-Mart, choosing the first pieces of furniture he’d come across, not knowing what the hell he was doing, and having three beers afterwards to calm his nerves.

He stripped, leaving his clothes with their funk of the sweat of battle on the floor and got under the shower. The water was only luke-warm but that was okay. He should have a cold shower, actually, but he was suffering enough as it was.

Here he was, naked and raring to go, Suzanne Barron was in his bed not ten feet from here and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. If that wasn’t torture, he didn’t know what was.

He dropped his hand to his groin, and remembered.

She had a little chocolate beauty spot right next to her ear. He’d licked it as he was taking her. Then he’d licked her ear and she moaned and it had been as if he’d had another gear and she’d kicked it. He’d almost doubled the speed of his strokes before the moan had finished its echo.

His heart pounded and his hand worked as he remembered every inch of her, the taste of her nipples, her tongue against his, the soft ash-brown pubic hair covering her mound. He’d done her so hard that if she shaved there as some women did, his trousers would have abraded the skin.

His fist was working hard and fast now, pumping, as he remembered her tightness, how her breath had exploded in a little puff with each thrust, how somehow halfway through she’d managed to open her legs even wider for him, how he’d clutched her perfect ass, trying to pull her closer to him, even as he was pounding into her so hard it was a miracle the wall held.

She’d screamed, her voice muffled by his coat, as she came. As John remembered in exquisite detail how he’d fucked her through her climax before exploding himself, he could feel the prickles in the backs of his legs, rising up through his spine. His cock swelled and he leaned one-handedly against the wall, weak-kneed and breathless, as he came in one long endless spurt.

He stayed under the shower for a long time, leaning against his hand, head bowed under the now-cold water thinking—I’m in deep shit.

He was in trouble—real bad trouble—if jerking off to the thought of Suzanne Barron was ten times more exciting than actually having sex with any other woman.

* * * * *

“Okay, Bud, talk to me.” John leaned back in the rolling leather chair holding an untraceable cell phone to his ear.

When he’d felt his legs would hold him up—and that had taken more time than he was comfortable thinking about—he’d pulled on a black tee shirt and faded gray sweatpants and padded barefoot into the living room. Nudging aside the cheap supermarket rug, he’d reached down and put his thumb to a scanner. A blue steel panel opened up seamlessly, while a stainless steel ladder stretched down to the floor of the cellar.

As always, John felt a glow of satisfaction entering his little high-tech lair. Upstairs he sort of realized that the shack was bleak though he had no frigging clue what to do about it, but downstairs in the cellar—well, there everything was top of the line, as perfect as it could be. He’d had access to the best in the world in the Teams and damned if he was going to settle for less in civilian life.

Downstairs was his little playground, row after row of gleaming electronics, monitors, keyboards, gizmos and widgets up the ying-yang. You name it, he had it.

He’d waited until Suzanne had fallen asleep before heading down here to his spy kingdom. She was spooked enough as it was, without seeing that he had what looked like Houston Mission Control down here.

He was perfectly aware that most civilians were absolutely clueless about the dangers of the world, the big scary things out there. He’d trained for vigilance his entire life and it was now as much a part of him as breathing.

But if you weren’t a soldier, if your life didn’t depend on fanatic attention to detail and an underlying awareness that enemies were out there and could strike at any time, if nothing bad had ever happened to you, why then he came off as a totally paranoid freak. A number of women had been completely turned off by his constant awareness of danger, the precautions he took.

The way he wouldn’t let a woman walk on the side closest to the road. Not out of chivalry but because women stupidly carried purses dangling right there off their shoulders, hanging by a thin leather strap. Big brightly colored purses screaming, “Hey! I’ve got money and credit cards right here!”

Why the hell did they do that? He could never figure it out. It was such a dumbass thing to do, like walking around with a bull’s eye on your back. Any passing scumbag on a bike or motorcycle with a flick knife could slash and grab and that was why he walked on the outside. They’d think twice about slashing and grabbing him.

He never even paid lip service to the ridiculous notion that a woman could defend herself against a mugger. He didn’t care how many self-defense courses she took and no matter what her shrink said. If she was his date for the night—even if they would never see each other again after the sex—then she was under his protection and he acted accordingly. It made a lot of women angry that he couldn’t pretend the world wasn’t full of predators and that nature had made women prey. So he was used to making most of his precautions as invisible as possible.

He’d been called a dinosaur often enough, not that he cared, except that it was inaccurate. Dinosaurs didn’t know how to keep up with the times and he did. He knew exactly what to do and how to do it and he’d stayed alive so far under the most dangerous conditions life had been able to throw at him because of it.

Like now.

No one but Bud and the police could know Suzanne was with him. No one had followed them. Even if someone was looking for him, it would take a long time to connect this shack with him, and that included Bud and the police and all the resources they could muster.

John was good at what he did, good at arranging security. He knew the security here was about as tight as that of a nuclear power plant. Maybe tighter. They were safe as safe can be. But a good soldier always double-checks and he was still alive because he never ever took anything for granted. Ever.

So he sat down and checked his equipment.

He had the sweetest new toy and he loved it. A series of sensors with a special microchip programmed with an algorithm to detect heartbeats. And not just any heartbeat, oh no. That was the beauty of the little gizmo invented by Crazy Mac Rowan, the Team computer geek. The chip could distinguish human heartbeats from the heartbeat of 10 mammalian species by the frequency, so the alarm wasn’t tripped by a deer or a bear. The system had been bought for a cool ten million dollars by the INS for use by the Border Patrol but Crazy Mac had given him the prototype. John ran his special program and found exactly what he was hoping to find.

Nada. Zip.

Next step, the motion sensors. Then the bank of monitors connected to weatherproofed cameras all around the perimeter of his land. Then the sensors along the dirt road leading up to the shack. Nothing, nothing and nothing.

No one here, no one coming. Great.

Okay. Now he could call Bud.

Bud sounded tired. “We’re in trouble, John,” he said. “Big time. Both guys’ prints came up immediately on NCIS. First shooter’s a street punk, been in and out of the cooler all his life starting from juvie when he was fourteen. Assault, rape—“

John’s blood ran cold. Rape. Once a rapist always a rapist. Jesus Christ, the guy would have had Suzanne at his mercy. He would have raped her before killing her.

He was surprised his hands didn’t leave prints on the phone, he was clutching it so hard.

“Armed robbery, drugs…you name it. And he was a hophead to boot, had tracks on his arms, so give him some spare cash to shoot up with and he’d have taken out a school of kids for you. We’re talking walking loaded gun here, man. Pay, aim and fire. Though looks like he was the kind of weapon that can blow up in your face, flip on a dime. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the second shooter was a real pro. FBI’s been all over me this past hour, the Portland Special Agent in Charge is here with me right now. They had a red flag for anyone asking for his prints. They’ve been tracking him for ten years. He’s the prime suspect behind the assassination of Senator Lesley eight years ago. He’s wanted for a couple of other big-name take-outs, too.

“Someone seriously wants Suzanne dead, big guy, and this someone’s prepared to pay major bucks for it. I don’t know who it is, but whoever he is, he’s hired a pro, a real expensive one from what the Feebs are saying. We need to talk to Suzanne, Midnight. We need you to bring her in. Now.”

Bud was crazy. The police weren’t going anywhere near her. No one was.

“No way, Bud,” John said coldly. “You’ll see her if and when you figure out what’s going on and then convince me you’ve figured out a way to stop it. Not before. You’ll hear from me tomorrow and you’d better have some hard facts and a pretty good plan for dealing with this. And you post two men outside Suzanne’s house, front and back. No one gets in.”