Murphy's Law (2 page)

Then he nipped her, a sharp little bite, and her back arched again, her arms and legs fell away, and he shifted his hips and entered her, hard and fast.

It was too much, simply too much. She clenched hard around him, then began contracting in electric spurts, every cell of her being awash in something that was almost too intense to be pleasure but wasn’t quite pain.

But Nick had reared up on his forearms and he wasn’t looking happy.

Oh God! Had she done something wrong? Or not done something she should have done? How could he look so stern when she was drenched in delight?

“Hey,” he said, black eyebrows drawn together over the blade of his nose. Hell, even his eyebrows were gorgeous. “You’re not a virgin, are you?”

A lifetime of suppressing her emotions came to Faith’s rescue, because he was close enough to the truth to be embarrassing.

“Of course not!” Faith rolled her eyes and blew her breath out, making a little disparaging
phhht!
sound. “How can you say that?”

The sternness left his face, his eyelids drooped sexily. “’Cause you’re tight, baby.” He pulled almost all of the way out, then slid back in. Faith’s breath stopped in her chest. Nick’s head dropped back to her neck as he repeated the motion. “But it’s working.”

I’ll say
. She didn’t say the words but her body spoke for her. She wrapped herself around Nick’s body like ivy around a tree, fingers clenched hard on his shoulder muscles, legs wrapped around his. He felt like a tree trunk, only smooth and sleek. But there was that feeling of something elemental, grounded in the earth that made her forget everything as he started moving fast, then faster.

Each thrust was like lightning and she moved into another orgasm before having finished the first one. He was moving so fast, so strongly the bed creaked, the headboard beating against the wall, a hard fast rhythm that echoed her heartbeat until she couldn’t distinguish between the two. Until the entire world was reduced to that thumping rhythm inside and outside and she had to cling to Nick because everything else was dark and out of control. There was a wild noise in the darkness and it took her a long minute to realize it came from her throat. It only stopped when Nick covered her mouth with his, stifling her cries in his own mouth.

Something changed in him. The muscles under her hands were straining so hard she could feel his sinews, his breathing speeded up, a rough sound coming from deep in his throat and he stiffened, gasping, moving in her in hard little jerks, so unlike the smooth piston-like movements of before.

And then it was over.

Nick fell on her with all his weight, as if he’d been felled by a blow and exhaled loudly.

Faith stared up at the ceiling, a changed woman. So this was sex. No wonder people thought about it, fought about it, sought it out. If she’d known she’d have tried harder. But who knew?

The pleasure was just…mind boggling. Amazing.

And, this was
Nick
. Nick who’d made love to her. She’d spent all winter in his entourage, watching him date girl after girl, but the constants were always Faith and his sister Lou.

And now, she’d landed him. God. It was almost an abundance of bounty. He was so gorgeous, so charming, and so much fun. Being around him was like being at the circus. If she was going to be his girlfriend, though, she’d have to up her game. Buy new clothes. Maybe go to a hairdresser. Learn how to apply make-up.

It all felt daunting, but Nick was totally worth it. They would have fun all the time and then come home and do
this
. Oh God.

A whole new vista of her life opened up and she contemplated all the new delights in store for her. In a sudden frenzy of happiness, she clutched him hard and kissed his shoulder, his neck, every bit of him she could reach, while pinned beneath him. He felt so wonderful. He even tasted wonderful, she found when she licked him. Salty and sweet at the same time.

Well, of course. He was Nick Rossi. Who was so gorgeous and attractive.

But heavy. Really, really heavy. She had to wheeze to breathe. Faith tried to wiggle her way out from under him but it was impossible. He weighed a ton.

“Nick?” she whispered. “Could you move a little?”

Silence.

“Nick?” She spoke a little more loudly.

There was a rhinoceros snort next to her ear and Nick began snoring. Very loudly. She could feel his chest vibrating.

It looked like waking him up briefly to ask whether he could move wasn’t an option. She shifted her chest out a bit from under his so she could at least breathe and with one last sniff of his luscious skin, she fell smiling into a deep, luscious sleep.

The telephone rang.

Nick Rossi wanted to groan and roll over in bed but didn’t. The noise of the bell had nearly taken the top of his head off. Moving might break bones.

Through the greasily nauseous roiling going on inside, he tried to take stock, but it wasn’t pretty.

His hair hurt. His eyelashes hurt. His fucking
toenails
hurt.

The telephone rang again and hammered sharply pointed spikes into his skull. He tried to bring a hand up to his head, but there was something on his arm. Nick moved his hand—even that small movement caused pain—and touched a soft, springy mass. Hair. Human hair. He hoped.

He opened one eye. Cautiously.

Yeah. A human. The way he felt maybe he’d had sex with an orc. But no, it was a girl. He lifted his head slightly, grimacing at the pain, to see if he knew her.

She was sleeping slightly turned away from him. All he could see was a finely-drawn pale profile surrounded by a cloud of brandy-colored hair.

Ok. He knew her. He knew he knew her. If only his brain could shoot him some info through the thick fog that fucked with his head he’d figure out who she was. As it was, merely trying to conjure up the memory of the face—and of last night—taxed his pain threshold.

The phone rang again, the bell echoing shrilly in his head for long seconds. Each second seemed like a lifetime. Everything was happening in an unsteady, sickening slow motion, as if he were on a boat at sea. The girl turned over in bed, the rustling noise of the sheets sounding like thunder. She looked at him, wide-eyed, all fresh and innocent and not at all as if she was in the bed of a hundred-year-old man, which is what he felt like.

He took in her features one by one, his brain too blasted to put the parts together. Pale skin, with a spattering of freckles across her nose. High cheekbones. He knew—without knowing how he knew—that she blushed easily.

Her eyes were large, the same brandy color as her hair and the whites were milky-white, like a child’s. Small straight nose, arching sandy eyebrows, lips which he knew were full, but were now compressed in a thin line.

It was an unusual face, not conventionally pretty but…arresting. He knew her, a friend of Lou’s, fuck…her name was going to break through the cobwebs. Any second now…

A loud noise made him start in pain. It was his answering machine kicking in in the next room. The answering machine Lou bought him and installed because he never answered his cell and never ever checked his voicemail. His recorded voice sounded preternaturally loud in the room. “Hi, this is Nick Rossi. Sorry I can’t come to the phone, but if you leave a message and a phone number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

There was a hum, and then a high, breathy, impossibly sexy female voice came on, making loud kissy kissy noises. “Nick, love, sorry I couldn’t make it last night, but I was held up. I hope you didn’t go looking somewhere else for fun and excitement because, believe me, I’m going to make it up to you tonight and I want you fresh.” Another spectacular phone kiss ended the message. Nick winced.

The girl bolted up in bed like a startled fawn. Nick tried to think of something to say. Something, anything. But nothing was happening up there.

“Y-You—” she stammered softly. “You…and I…last night, we…and all the time—you were supposed to be
with someone else
?”

“Huh,” he replied, trying to jumpstart his head.
Who is she?
It was
on the tip of his furred tongue. He would remember in just a minute…

But he wasn’t going to have that minute. She was pulling on clothes in a hurry, her movements jerky and awkward, as if she weren’t used to dressing in front of someone. Whoa.

He should be saying something, but what? He sat up in bed, regretting the movement instantly. The contents of his stomach—mostly liquid, very sour—were moving up his gullet. By the time the room stopped spinning and he breathed the bile back down, she was fully dressed and halfway to the door.

Fuck.

He didn’t know why he wanted to stop her, he only knew that he did. “No, wait, ah—”

And then, horribly, his mind pulled a complete blank. Utterly empty, like the rink in summer.

She turned and her light brown eyes widened even more. “Oh—my—
God
.” She brought her small fist to her mouth. “You don’t even remember my
name
.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course I do, ah—” But it was too late. She had gone and the sound of the door slamming behind her was so painful he couldn’t even breathe for a full minute.

Then he ran to the porcelain god, fell to his knees and emptied his stomach.

By the time he could think again, he could hear the elevator slowly taking her down to the ground floor. Then, suddenly, his treacherous memory kicked in. Images from the previous night blossomed in his mind. It had been wonderful, extraordinary…and he had the horrible feeling that he had just cut himself off from the sweetest thing in his life.

“Faith,” he groaned as he fell back onto the mattress. “Faith Murphy.”

Chapter Two

Smile. Tomorrow will be worse.

Thirty hours later, Certosa di Ponteremoli near Siena, Italy.

Faith was expecting Professor Roland Kane to be cold and unresponsive to her request.

She wasn’t expecting him to be dead.

At first, it wasn’t entirely clear he was dead. The door to Professor Kane’s cell had swung open unexpectedly at her tentative knock. Unsure what to do next, Faith peeked into the room where generations of monks had lived out lives of prayer and meditation.

The cell was familiar—an exact replica of the one she was inhabiting during the yearly Quantitative Methods Seminar at the
Certosa di Ponteremoli
near Siena, Italy, a former monastery
.
The cell was simple and spare as befitted the monastic life.

One small metal cot, one laminated desk and wardrobe combination, one wicker-seat chair.

One full Professor of Applied Mathematics, stretched out on his back on the floor, eyes closed.

At least he was fully dressed. Faith could remember once entering the office of Professor Harlan White, another mathematical genius, and finding him in the lotus position. Naked. With a full view of what looked like an acorn nestled in dry leaves.

It was like the old joke.
Why do universities have math departments? Because it’s cheaper than institutionalizing them all.

So, for all she knew, Professor Kane was working out a new quantitative theory stretched out on the terracotta tiles with the buttery Italian sunshine streaming in through the open window.

Indeed, what better place to meditate on the infinite than in this former Franciscan monastery perched picturesquely atop a Tuscan hill, with Siena a russet turreted vision on the horizon and the very air redolent with the echoes of centuries of chants by monks?

Of course, Professor Roland Kane, for all his genius, was anything but a monk. Though in mathematical terms he was a genius, in human terms he was a pig. A monstrously intelligent pig. A drunkard and a lecher and a despot and an opportunist.

And a pig.

And a genius.

Which was why Faith was here. Only Roland Kane had enough clout to get her a few minutes of time with Southbury’s 500 Teraflop array
. S
he desperately needed access for her paper. She had been shoehorned into the conference at the very last minute as a replacement for Tim Gresham, sick with the flu.

Some of her calculations were still incomplete. Otherwise, there was nothing on this earth that would have her knocking on Roland Kane’s door at eight a.m. on a sunny Italian morning.

Faith stood in the doorway and made polite humming sounds. Then she coughed. Professor Kane didn’t show a flicker of response. “I, ah—” Faith coughed again, louder. “Professor Kane?”

Faith took two steps into the room and wrinkled her nose, overwhelmed by the smell of alcohol. An open bottle of Glenfiddich, three-quarters empty, stood on the laminated plastic desk next to another full bottle, still sealed.

Faith remembered the incredible fuss Roland Kane had made at Rome Fiumicino Airport when the customs officer had halted him to check the clinking sounds in a carry-on bag and discovered four bottles of Glenfiddich.

Four bottles for a three-day seminar. God forbid he should run out.

Bottle number one was almost finished by day one. Kane’s liver probably looked like pus-filled custard at this point.

Faith stood in the doorway a moment longer then stepped cautiously into the room. Professor Kane didn’t seem to be paying her any attention so she edged over to the left, rising a little on tiptoe, eager to get a look at the view through his window.

The Southbury contingent had arrived late the previous night and so far all Faith had seen of Italy was Rome Fiumicino Airport, the Florence Airport, and some of the dark Tuscan countryside from Florence to Siena from the minivan which had picked them up.

All she’d seen of fabled Tuscany was the rather dingy outskirts of Florence and a few hilltop towns on the dark horizon. They had arrived very late at the Certosa and their Italian hosts had been so anxious to feed them that they hadn’t seen anything at all but the refectory and the cell each mathematician had been assigned.

Her cell was on the other side of the large quadrangle where the monks had lived and prayed. It had a view over a small, charming cloister with an ivy-bedecked stone well. Right now she wanted to see something of Tuscany in the daylight.