Out of Control (6 page)

He lifted his hands in a placating gesture. “I'm not suggesting—”

“I don't do one night stands, either. I can't deal with no strings sex. So where does that leave us?” She answered her own question just as his lips moved to respond to it. “Nowhere! Nothing more to discuss! So? Buh-bye, OK?”

He pulled out his wallet, took out a card and laid it on the counter. “Call me if you get any more presents from the Crypt.”

He headed for the door. Not hurrying, not embarrassed, not pissed. She almost wished he would slam it. It would make her feel like she'd gotten past his guard, scored some sort of a point against him.

He didn't. She hadn't. The door clicked softly shut behind him.

The dark pressed hard against her windows now that she had only the gently snoring Mikey for company.

She felt so flat as she brushed her teeth and set the alarm clock. Let down, after all that fizzy tension. Nothing to do but try to get some rest, but she tossed and twisted on her thin pallet.

She felt hot, restless. Tormented by an ache of sensual yearning.

All she needed to make her misery complete.

God, how she wanted her life back. To be Mag Callahan again, with her nice little house on the lake, her web design business that had finally been humming along after years of patient struggling. Her sharp wardrobe, her wine rack, her stained glass lamp, her orthopedic mattress, her Social Security number, her credit cards. Her future.

She wanted her girlfriends. To watch chick flick DVD's on her big squishy couch while pigging out on chips and margaritas with Jenny and Chris and Pia. She was even nostalgic about the problems she used to stress about. Dates, or lack thereof. Panty lines. Calories. PMS. Tax write-offs. Ants in the kitchen. Mold on the bathroom grout. Hah.

She wanted to cancel out the ugly memories in her head.

She felt so small and powerless. Sex was unthinkable under those conditions, but that didn't stop her longing to be touched.

Wrecked as she was, she couldn't even remember how it felt to be confident enough to take on a guy like McCloud. Maybe she never had been. He was so damn big, after all. Ultra-macho. She'd always made a point of staying away from those types. They were way too problematic.

She had to let her sexual imagination run hog wild to encompass the idea of sex with Davy McCloud. The farther from reality, the better. Along the lines of…a barbarian queen and her captured enemy warrior. Yeah. That was just silly and improbable enough to work. Him wearing nothing but a sword belt and a raggedy loincloth over his manly parts. Chained hand and foot, eyes hot with helpless fury. Fresh out of battle, all jacked up and desperate. Yummy. This could be really good.

And herself, sporting lots of cleavage in a teeny weeny chain mail bikini top. A filmy skirt slit up to both thighs dangling from her jewel-studded belt. She dreamed her hair back to its original coppery red, grew it out to instant hip length, slathered on makeup; shadowy bronze tints that made her look feverish and slutty. Like the covers of those fantasy novels she used to devour, except that she was the one brandishing the sword looking tough, and he was the one on his knees, clutching her thigh. The image was so silly, it made her giggle.

Big mistake. The laughter shoved her almost over the edge into tears. She rolled over, pressing her hot face into the pillow, and slid her hand into her panties. She was wet already, squirming around a damp glow of arousal. She didn't even need the vibrator. She was teetering on the brink of a screaming orgasm just thinking about his eyes.

She shut her eyes tightly, caught her clit between two fingers, and clenched her trembling thighs together. She had to get some relief from this ache. It scared her. Her whole damned life scared her.

The barbarian queen wasn't scared. She had the power to enforce her slightest whim. Armies at her beck and call. Lucky her.

Exotic images formed, broke, and reformed in her head. McCloud on his knees, his eyes furious. Unable to hide his excitement under that skimpy loincloth. She imagined touching him as she caressed herself, her hands sliding over his tense, straining muscles, his hot face.

He was slick with sweat, trembling. She slid her hand beneath the loincloth, grasped his hard penis and stroked it boldly. He jerked, gasped, arched back in a helpless spasm of pleasure.

Images blurred and shifted in her mind, the myriad possibilities pulling her in every direction. The fantasy refocused. She stood over him naked, legs wide, his face cupped in her hands. Telling him with her eyes,
get to work, soldier, and make it good for me if you know what's good for you.

And it was. Oh, it was. She'd never had a fantasy so clear, every nerve alive and thrumming like it was actually happening. His strong tongue thrust and lapped, sliding up and down her slit and suckling her ravenously, and the glorious feeling was building, higher and hotter, almost there, almost…there…

The tension dropped a notch, and left her dangling. Unfulfilled.

She was furious. This was bizarre. She'd never been so turned on in her life. It made no sense at all that she couldn't make herself come.

Onward, take two. Segue to the lavish, curtained bed, the light of a flickering fire. He was stark naked now, tied with silken cords to the carved posts. First she went the kinky route and had a bunch of her sexy barbarian ladies-in-waiting teasing and tormenting him to prepare him for the main event. That lasted about a nanosecond. She sent the silly bitches packing. Poof, they disappeared.

This one was for her alone. Every last drop of him.

The silent room was charged with desperate tension. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the low, strangled moans of the man beneath her. He writhed, cords standing out on his neck, muscles hard and flexing with desperate tension against his bonds, but she was merciless. She gripped his penis in her oiled hands, sliding her hands up and down his shaft, swirling and squeezing her fist around the swollen head. Hypnotizing even herself with the rhythmic caress.

It was time. She straddled him, guided his penis to the soft, swollen opening of her sex, and flung her head back with a moan of delight as she forced herself over the thick, throbbing club. Taking him, claiming him. She stared down into his eyes, silently demanding that he acknowledge her supremacy.

He would not. He bucked and writhed, pounding up into her body, but his eyes stared back up, glittering bright and wild and absolutely unconquered.

And the orgasm kept eluding her. She would get so close, heart pounding, ready to fling herself into that well of dark oblivion, and suddenly, whoosh, gone. It evaporated, and he gazed up at her, eyes gleaming with wicked amusement. He was doing this on purpose.

Damn him. This was insane. This was her own fantasy, in the privacy of her own mind, and he had no right to mess with it.

But it was more than a fantasy now. It was more like a trance, or a waking dream with its own crazy momentum. She was helpless to guide or command it. She reached for the knife hidden in the sumptuous bed hangings. Held it in her hand just long enough to make that sly gleam in his eyes fade, to be replaced by wary uncertainty.

She reached back and cut the silken cords that bound his ankles…one, two. She leaned over him, dangling her breasts in his face, and sliced through the cords that bound his wrists. She rocked back, letting his penis slide inside her, as deeply as it could lodge. She laid the knife in the pillows at the head of the bed, well within his reach.

It was all up to him. She stared down at his astonished face.

The paralyzed part of her mind locked behind the swirling dream images was aghast. Was she out of her skull? Did she not deserve even the artificial luxury of running the show in a silly sexual fantasy?

The fantasy thundered on. He gripped her waist with his big hands and rolled her over, a guttural snarl sounding deep in his throat. He pinned her beneath his big body and thrust deep, driving her hard.

Unleashing his passion unleashed hers too, and sent her soaring.

When she regained her awareness, she was still clenching around the pulses of residual pleasure. Dazed, gasping for breath.

And still alone in her bed. Alone in her wrecked life. Aching for the loss of something she'd never even had.

What an idiot. Torturing herself with fantasies. She fought back the tears. She'd cried enough for a lifetime already.

M
arcus Worthington was in a killing mood.

Years of meticulous conditioning that Marcus had instilled into his younger brother, Faris, wiped away as if by a vicious computer virus.

All that Callahan bitch's fault.

He would be glad when the woman was safely dead, though disappointment could drive Faris over the edge. Few people were aware of Faris's unique abilities, and the tremendous risks involved. So far Marcus had always prevailed in a battle of wills. Still, it worried him.

The only thing that calmed Marcus when he was so agitated was puttering in his lab, playing with what Priscilla, his late father's fourth and worst wife, was pleased to call his “toys.” She would learn soon how wrong she was about him. Just as his father had learned. The wife that had preceded Priscilla had learned as well. They all had, in the end.

But Priscilla would get a very special lesson.

Marcus teased the gelatinous mold of Dr. Driscoll's hand out of the cast. His whimsical choice of livid, corpselike green coloring for the hand amused him, insofar as he could be amused in his current mental state. He adjusted the light to better admire the fingerprints. The loops, whorls and arches were so well reproduced, even the minute pattern of sweat glands on each ridge were duplicated.

Not perfectly, but well within the parameters of the sensor.

He pressed the hand against the Krell Systems Biolock Identipad Sensor. His own database was loaded with the same template as the Calix Research Laboratories, thanks to Caruso's evil genius.

Negative. The machine beeped in protest.
No match found.

It worked just as the Krell sales staff had promised that it would. Proof against fraud because of a complex, multi-system battery of “live and well” detection, a combination of ECG, pulse oximetry, temperature, electric resistance, and detection under the epidermis.

The Biolock Identipad wanted all five fingers, and moist, multilayered skin. It would settle for nothing else. Kudos to Krell. It was one of the most costly biometric systems on the market. Caruso himself had designed it. Marcus felt a twinge of regret that he'd been so quick to have the man killed. Craig had been useful. He'd been the one to recommend making a gummy hand with each mold, to test which image was the clearest. Marcus always followed his instructions to the letter.

But Craig had begun to play power games. Playing hide and seek with the mold of Priscilla's hand. Talking about “full partnership.”

Marcus sprayed the inside of the negative mold with a light lubricant, and painted a thin coat of Caruso's wizard's brew of liquid gelatin inside it. He let it set, pressed his hand into the impression, let it bind, and slowly lifted it out. He repeated the process, taking exquisite care to match the print patterns, so as to fool the ultrasonic and electric field sensor features that tested for the print pattern in the underlying dermis. Fortunately, his and Driscoll's hands were of similar size. The half-glove of gelatin was almost invisible.

He flexed his fingers, and pressed his hand to the Identipad.

Two seconds, and the monitor flashed.
Match Found.
Keith Driscoll, PhD, Laboratory Director, Calix Research Division. A photo of the chubby scientist appeared on the monitor screen, smiling broadly.

Marcus smiled back. Driscoll had the highest security clearance, surpassed only by Priscilla Worthington herself. This was well worth the trouble he'd gone to. He'd finally lured the older man up to his quarters, after months of flirting. Driscoll was a married father of three, but his preference for young men was well documented in certain circles. Marcus's innate practicality forbade him from hiring someone else for the job. Why risk having some muscle-headed male prostitute botch this when he, Marcus, was sexually attractive enough to handle the job?

As it happened, he didn't even have to go through with it. Not that it would have been a problem if he had. Driscoll's middle-aged pudge did not repel him. Marcus's sexuality was atypical. Power excited him. He was indifferent to the secondary details: youth, beauty, male, female.

Driscoll had drunk a martini spiked with Rophynol, and conveniently passed out. Marcus had taken multiple molds of the man's hand at his leisure, bundled him into his car, and left him naked and senseless on his own front lawn.

Word was Driscoll's wife had since taken the youngest two children back to Boston with her, and that the oldest one, studying at UCSF, would no longer speak to him. Driscoll had not looked Marcus in the eye since that night. He looked pale. Thinner. What had once been cheerful, rosy pudge was now sad, grayish sag.

Marcus studied Driscoll's smiling face on the screen, enjoying the warm glow of pleasure that exercising power gave him.

A loud rap sounded upon the door. Marcus barely had time to toss the plastic cover over his project before the door burst open.

Priscilla marched in. She was thicker about the waist and ankles than she'd been ten years ago when she'd met Marcus's father, Titus Worthington, owner and CEO of Calix Pharmaceuticals. Priscilla had been a researcher in one of Calix's experimental labs. She'd dazzled the old man with her beauty, brains and forceful personality, but her face had hardened over the years. With her dark hair dragged into a bun and her white lab coat, she looked like a Gestapo prison warden.

She was shadowed by her hulking bodyguard, Maurice. She'd hired Maurice shortly after Titus's death, and moved into her own residence as well. Priscilla was nobody's fool.

Her eyes brushed over his various projects with unconcealed scorn. “Playing in the sandbox, are we, Marcus?”

Marcus's hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into the delicate Driscoll glove. “Just fiddling with some new designs.”

She sniffed. “You've fiddled for years. You're relatively intelligent, after all. With three PhD's, don't you think it's time to stop fiddling and do something useful?”

Like plan your disgrace and ruin, perhaps?
“I'm working on patenting some of them,” he said vaguely. Let her think he was a vacuous idiot. He no longer cared. Her days were numbered anyway.

“Where on earth is the domestic staff, Marcus?” she demanded. “This place is becoming a sty. The terms of Titus's will gave you and Faris the right to reside at Worthington House for life, but remember that the place does not actually belong to you. And it never will.”

“I'm well aware of that,” Marcus said. He had, in fact, dismissed the staff months ago in preparation for the Blessed Event, which required utter privacy, to say nothing of the obtrusive presence of several armed professionals. He'd never dreamed it would drag out so long. He was tired of the dust and cobwebs himself. Another inconvenience to lay at Margaret Callahan's door. Bitch.

“If the place falls to ruin, I will take legal action. And now, if you can drag your attention away from your toys, I have a real job for you.”

Marcus's stomach tightened, but his smile simply widened. He'd always been good at masks. “Of course.”

“Dr. Driscoll will be leaving his post as lab director. He's going back to Boston, for health reasons. His place will be taken by Dr. Seymour Haight, who is flying in from Baltimore tomorrow. His plane stops in Seattle for one night. The next day he'll fly to San Francisco.”

Marcus nodded. Priscilla enjoyed humiliating him by giving him assignments more suited for a low-ranking social secretary. It was all she thought he was fit for. That, and holding Faris's leash, of course.

“I want you to organize his welcome,” Priscilla went on. “Arrange for lab security to have his enrollment data entered into the system. Highest security clearance. And have Driscoll's deleted immediately.”

“Of course.” He was glad he had avoided having sex with Driscoll after all. The event would have lost all its power, all its meaning.

“Arrange for housing, and a limo to pick him up at the airport.”

“I'll need his flight info and contact numbers,” Marcus said.

Priscilla waved her hand vaguely. “Ask my staff. Melissa or Frederico should have the contact data. Tell them to arrange a dinner date for him with me that evening, too. The rooftop restaurant at the Halsey Crowne, that should be nice. Oh, yes, another thing. Where on earth is Faris? I haven't seen him lurking about in weeks.”

“He's mountain climbing in the north Cascades,” he said. “He loves climbing. It's good for him. Keeps him emotionally balanced.”

“Climbing? Unsupervised?” Priscilla's brows snapped together. “Titus and I only permitted Faris's release from Creighton Hills on the strict condition that you would monitor him constantly!”

“Faris is under control,” Marcus soothed. “He's taking his meds regularly. I talk to him several times a day on my cell phone.”

“I don't care! Get him back here immediately! I cannot risk any embarrassing incidents, particularly not after Driscoll's little scandal! The one useful function that you serve around here is to keep an eye on Faris. If you can't even handle that much responsibility—”

“I'll have him come home immediately,” Marcus assured her.

“Do that,” she said crisply. “I am leaving myself this week to spend a month in our lab in Frankfurt. I won't have time to orient Dr. Haight myself, beyond our dinner date. Please do what you can.”

Such as that is,
being the all-too-clear subtext.

“Of course,” Marcus murmured.

She swept out the door. Maurice's hulking form shadowed her.

So much for Driscoll. Marcus peeled the glove off his hand and tossed the ragged, transparent scrap into the waste bin. He took the corpselike rubbery hand, grabbed a pair of scissors, and began cutting it into pieces, imagining that the hand was Priscilla's. Heard shrieks in his mind with each snip of the blades. Chunk after chunk after chunk.

He was back almost to zero. Access to the holy of holies required the tandem cooperation of Priscilla Worthington and the lab director. Priscilla's mold was still lost, and Seymour Haight was an unknown.

But Faris was in Seattle. Something had to be improvised, and quickly. There was no time left for the careful planning he'd done to obtain Driscoll's mold. And Priscilla was leaving. It was now or never.

The obvious solution was to obtain a new mold, but seducing Priscilla was not an option. She loathed him, for one thing, and for another, even Marcus's own practical attitude towards sexuality had its limits. Priscilla's rabid security staff would not let poor Faris anywhere near her. And though she did indulge occasionally, Priscilla was far too intelligent and self-protective to be taken in by a hired gigolo.

Craig Caruso had managed it, though how he'd found the courage to have sex with that cast iron bitch, Marcus would never know. Perhaps the ten million dollars Marcus had promised had kept his dick hard enough to perform the task. Marcus shuddered at the thought.

His buyer had lost patience, after eight long months of waiting. The plan was falling apart before his eyes. Years of his life, millions of his own private money, invested in this perfect mating of profit and revenge. All blocked, because of Margaret Callahan.

He had to light a fire under Faris. He wanted this to end.

 

Sean's truck was parked right in the middle of the driveway, leaving no room for Davy's own vehicle. It wasn't the first time. His youngest brother was careless and distracted. He also liked to make his presence felt. Usually Davy just blew it off with a philosophical sigh.

Tonight, his nerves on edge, it bugged the living shit out of him.

He parked up the street from his house and sat there for a while, staring through the trees at the lights from Mercer Island, rippling on the dark waters of Lake Washington. Struggling to pull himself together. It had been way too long since he'd gotten laid.

Humiliating, to reduce it to that, but he was a grim realist about the effects of protracted celibacy. Six months, not that he was counting, since Beth laid down the law. He'd liked Beth a lot, and appreciated the hell out of her fine qualities, but he hadn't been up to buying her a ring.

He'd tried to make that point clear from the outset, but Beth hadn't gotten it. Women never did. They insisted on taking it personally and getting their feelings hurt, every fucking time. He wished he could put the whole sex melodrama aside and focus on other things, but his body had other ideas. He hadn't been able to strike a truce with it yet.

Then again, this wasn't the prodding of generalized horniness. Steffi, the previous aerobics instructor at Women's Wellness had been a honey-blonde with a body worthy of a centerfold spread, but she'd never inspired him to babble or grope. He'd casually considered having sex with Steffi—it had been clear that she was more than willing—but she was so damned bouncy. And her nasal voice had grated his nerves.

Steffi had left a while back to do a season of dinner theater on the coast. It had been weeks before he'd noticed she was gone.

But he'd noticed Margot, her replacement, instantly. Margot's voice did not grate. It was low, rich and smoky, like fine Scotch. Margot glided, swayed, sauntered like a female panther. No bouncing.