Mind Games (36 page)

“Watch out!” Otto points at my feet, and I look down just in time to avoid tripping over the corner of a lounge chair.

“Oh!” I step carefully around it, eyeing the ground. I deposit my stuff on the fat, white cushions of the divan and go over to Otto, who gazes up, wet and magnificent. “How’s the water?”

“Perfect,” he says.

Concentrate, I tell myself, dipping in my toe. The pool seems almost carved into the stone floor, with interesting steps and angles, and it’s covered in a mosaic of small brown tiles, some with a luminescent sheen. I sit down by him on the edge and slowly ease myself into the hot water next to his fabulously thick calves. “Ah.” I settle onto an underwater ledge-seat. The heat feels wonderful after the chill of the air.

The Engineer slides down next to me, still with his hat on, and I touch his warm, solid chest, just because I can. He leans his head back on the stepped edge and takes a deep breath, gazing up into the night, letting me touch him.

“You are such a surprise,” I say.

He smiles. “Did Helmut give you a negative report of some sort?”

“No. Just a surprise of a person.”

He scoops up a handful of water and drizzles it over my dry shoulders. I wish so badly I could concentrate on having an enjoyable time with him instead of what I’m about to do. I wish so badly that he wasn’t evil. He touches my thigh and slides his other hand around my waist. “Come here,” he says, gliding me onto his lap.

I don’t have to zing him right away. That’s my thought as I enjoy myself on his lap in the warm water. Why not zing him later? I lean back against him and stare up at the stars as he kisses my neck and snakes his hands around my waist, resting them near my belly button.

We relax together. It’s nice just to relax.

“Just one thing I don’t understand,” he says, in an odd tone. “Why did you call her so suddenly?”

“What?”

“In the restaurant. You called your friend Shelby after I told you the story about my apprenticeship in Vindahar.”

My stomach drops clear through me. “What makes you think I called her?”

“I’m a detective, Justine. I know what a chance meeting looks like. I can tell when people are playacting.” He tightens his hold on my stomach, and I can hear the smile in his voice, lips to my ear: “I know when people are posing as something other than they are. I know when they’re nervous. And I know when they’re hiding things. The timing of the call is the only part I can’t figure out.”

The
only
part? I fight to keep from stiffening, or worse, jerking away from him. I’m thankful he can’t see my face, but he surely feels my heart, which is beating with enough force to fly me into orbit.

“The police chief,” I say coolly, “needs a vacation.” Why did I think I could fool a superstar detective and
crime boss? Now he knows I’m up to something. Just as he knew the man with the gouged eyes was up to something.

“The police chief is never on vacation,” Otto says. “Truly, Justine, of all the anecdotes about my life, the story of my apprenticeship is …”
Relatively undisturbing
, I think.
Surprisingly free of gore
. Lazily, he slides his thumb in circles around my belly button. “So tell me, why did you jump up and call her?”

It’s here I get clear on what I’m dealing with. He knows I’m an enemy, but he doesn’t know what kind. If he knew, he wouldn’t let me touch him. I have to zing him profoundly, deeply, and immediately—it’s my only hope. “Sometimes girls call their friends, Otto.”

“But why right then, and with such urgency? Tell me, Justine.” And then, “You know, I do have ways of making you talk.”

I feel sick. I never imagined I’d hear this line and have it not be a joke. He even says it humorously, as people will, and he seems to expect some reaction.
He loves to toy with his prey
, Packard said. Otto’s certainly having fun now. No, make that Henji.

Praying he doesn’t sense my terror, I turn, straddle his lap, and give him a hard look. Casually, I say, “It was when I knew.”

I’d meant to throw him off balance with this comment, make him think I know something he should be worried about. Instead he smiles broadly, brown eyes lit with pleasure. Why did I think I was any match for this man?

Arrogantly, he whispers, “I knew the minute I met you.”

I think back to the way he looked at me—that air of discovery. He knew I was an enemy from the first. What I don’t understand is why he’s letting this go on, why he
hasn’t turned on me. Then again, where could I go? I’m literally in his clutches.

I focus fuzzily on what I once knew: Otto is a hypochondriac who is vulnerable to me. I am here to zing him. I have to get the hat off. And it will take every single one of my big guns to do it. I slide my fingers over his cheeks, gazing into his gold-flecked brown eyes. I touch his hair, close my fingers around a lock on either side of his head. It’s strange—I’ve lived with terror as my companion for so long that it hardly affects my intense desire for him. Maybe it’s even heightening it. I breathe in the scent of his skin in the moist night air, struck dumb with a mix of fear and arousal. And just like that I kiss him.

I half think he’ll stop me, but instead he makes a rumbly sound and pulls me close. His hands slide heavily on my neck, my shoulders, my arms. My world is so simple suddenly. His skin, warm and wet under my fingertips, and the exciting sensation of his erection through my swimsuit. My entire being sighs into him, curling around his deliciously cucumbery cock like it’s my new center of gravity.

Vaguely, it comes to me that I’m spinning out of control.
Focus!
I think.
You have one chance of getting out of this
.

With my awareness I push onto the surface of his energy dimension. It’s easy to find. But it’s not enough to touch it; I have to make this devastating. So I loosen my hold and I plunge in, as Simon taught me, accepting Otto’s energy dimension as my own, letting the otherness fall away. I breathe, conscious of my pulse, his pulse. Finally I feel it: the vertiginous
whoosh
where the walls of my individuality blow out and I’m sinking fast and deep, drenched in his cool masculinity.

I’ve only ever been deep in the Alchemist, and that was bewildering and frightening. This is the opposite.
Otto is unexpectedly lush and orderly inside. I get this hit of honesty and sincerity as I move my awareness deeper. I slide along his skin, inside and outside him. I don’t know where I stop and where he starts.

His thighs tense, and he makes a rough throaty sound as he pushes his hands under my bathing suit top, rolls his thumbs over my nipples, sending shivers through me, and then I feel the shivers go through him and then come back to me, back to him, like we’re inside the same feeling. Maybe we are.

“Oh,” he gasps. “I’ve never felt like this.” This swell of potency overwhelms me, and somehow I know it’s coming from him. Is this what it’s like for a guy, being exuberantly hard, wanting to fuck? I want to fuck, that’s for sure.

The desire builds between us, and every new way he touches me satisfies and stokes it higher, and I laugh and Otto smiles through a kiss, like we’re both lost in the mirrors reflecting back and forth in an erotic infinity tunnel.

He slides his hands against the tender skin of my bottom—I enjoy the magnificent pulse of male potency as he pushes my suit bottom off. A few swishes of water and both our suits are off. I can tell he wants to switch and be on top but I can’t let him. I need his head by the pool edge. I’m not lost yet.

“I have never felt so on fire. It’s like I’m being consumed,” he says, taking my nipple into his mouth, a light touch of teeth. I gasp; the sensation flying between us is too much. His chest is warm and solid, and I grip his shoulders. He scratches my thighs, long drags up and down, as I slide against his hard length between my legs. The combination of his fingernails and his cock are slowly disabling my mind. I need to get going; get his hat off and zing him to Neverland. I feel like a praying mantis.

I reach down and grasp the hard length of him, and he grabs my hips and enters me. The inside-out pressure of just his tip in me makes my senses reel; I come down on him slowly, exquisitely, letting him fill me, all fat and wonderful. Slowly I slide down on him, again, and then again, as the urgency builds.

I sink lower in his energy dimension—it’s criminal, how deep I am in him—and it adds a mad intimacy to the sex I wasn’t ready for. I feel him inside me, and I feel me from inside him, the slick squeeze of me when I grip my pelvis, and I’m exuberant with the urge to fuck further and deeper and feel more of his lushness.

Otto seems positively inebriated. He kisses me and I move on him slowly—maddeningly, perfectly slowly, getting my senses back.

I have to do it. I settle my hand onto the damp wool cap. I pull away and create a sensory distraction by biting his earlobe and tightening my pelvic muscles around him. He inhales sharply as I slip the hat off.

Slowly I coax his head up above the hard corner of the pool, up and up into a kiss, supporting us with my knee on the underwater shelf, burning the hole between us all the while, deep inside us. And then I pretend to slip, smashing his head backward onto the tile edge—not enough to knock him out, but a strong, surprisingly loud clunk at the exact moment I release a fierce stream of fear into his deepest core.

Otto stops moving and opens his eyes—wide. Panic drains his face. “Did I just hit my head?” He pulls out of me, bringing his hand to his head. “My hat! Did I just hit my head without my hat on?”

I move away, looking hazy. Like I don’t get it. I do feel sort of hazy.

He grabs my shoulders. “Justine, this is important. Did I hit my head just now? Did you hear a smack?”

“Otto, I wasn’t really paying attention.” I kneel on the ledge next to him. “Are you okay?”

He stares past me, eyes shining with fear. He swallows. “It’s happening.” He hoists himself out of the water and onto the side. “It’s happening.” He seems to have forgotten all about my status as enemy.

I clamber out and wrap a big, fluffy towel around his shoulders, then tuck one around me. Cautiously, I kneel next to him on the side of the pool. I’m off-kilter from the abrupt halt of our sexual energy, even though it was my doing. Part of me wants badly to get back to it. Actually lots of me does. I’m glorying.

“This cannot be happening,” he says softly, more to himself than to me.

“Is this a vein star issue?”

“It’s not a vein star issue. It’s a
vein star
. I’m more vulnerable to them than I let on to you the other night, and it’s critical I protect my head. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s just, hitting my head with my hat off is the worst possible thing that can happen. I know it may seem silly to you, putting so much stock in the protective qualities of a simple beret. But I just … I—”

“No, no, Otto, I understand. I do.”

“Maybe I should go to the ER. But once it’s leaking it’s too late, of course.” He looks at me quickly. “I know it’s true. My God!” He touches the place again. “The worst possible thing.”

“Hey,” I say, rubbing his back, hating what I did to him. But he’s Henji, the dangerous madman, and I have to push him even further. “Can you get up? I want you all the way out of the hot water, even your legs.”

“Oh, right, right. Thinning the blood.” He’s so distracted, so pliable.

“Shhh, you’re okay,” I say.

He stands and tucks the towel around his waist, and we settle together onto the cushiony divan.

“Now take a deep breath.”

He complies. I can’t stand the desperation in his face. It’s what I wanted, but now I feel terrible. And that just makes me like him all the more. My hands find their way to his shoulders. I squeeze, knead, gazing at his ear-lobe, thinking about taking it into my mouth. I want to take everything into my mouth. I want to taste and feel him completely. I want to twine my limbs to his; I want to open for him, be penetrated utterly by him, to live and die in our ecstatic union. …

Shit! Glory hour. I remove my hands and straighten up. “Pinpoint pain?”

“I wouldn’t characterize it as pinpoint.”

“Otto, an impact like that doesn’t necessarily cause a vein star to rupture. I agree it is dangerous, but it doesn’t have to cause a bleedout in all cases.” The trick here will be to appear to comfort him, but not actually comfort him. And then get the hell away.

“Bleedout,” he mumbles.

“Not one hundred percent of the time.”

“For me, the least impact is dangerous. The problem is that I have more cranial pressure than most people.”

I place a hand on his strong, bare back, taking care to keep my touch clinical instead of sexual. “Extra cranial pressure? I’ve never heard of that. Do you mean high blood pressure?”

“Something else entirely.” He turns to me. “I’m sorry.” He gestures toward the pool. “That was terrible, but at the same time, I felt—I don’t want to embarrass you, but I felt so connected to you. I wanted to never stop—” He winces, touches his head.

I spy his hat in the pool on a shallow ledge. I get it, wring it out, and hand it to him, wondering again if I was reading him wrong. Oh, God, I so want to be wrong. And I’m dizzy with desire.

“Thanks.” He pulls his hat gently over his head. “I
wanted to know everything about you,” he continues. “I wanted to see you live out that motto of yours. My God, how can it be that I’m dying the moment I’ve met you?”

“You’re not dying.” I’m breathlessly unsure what to do with the other part of the comment. I wrap a comforting arm around him; I want to wrap my whole self around him, to tell him the fear is fake, that it came from me. “You’re not dying. I’ve seen dying people.” I brush a dark lock of hair from his strong jaw, tuck it behind his ear. “You are not dying, Otto.” He doesn’t need to think he’s dying this exact moment to be weak and destabilized.

“There are some things you don’t understand, Justine. Please, know that the connection I just felt with you, the connection I’ve been feeling ever since that first night, it’s given me a taste of something beyond what I knew, and that means so much to me. I never expected it.”