Smoke and Mirrors (5 page)

His mock apology was one round of carbolic acid too many, so I hurled my stethoscope at him and headed for London.

“Tell C to send someone with a heart next time,” he called softly after me.

Undone, I whirled, catching his midriff with a well-aimed kick. The muscles there were harder than anyone’s ought to be, but too much alcohol slowed his reflexes, and he crashed backward into the table behind him, swearing as he took down armloads of medical supplies.

My eyes were stinging with unexpected tears. “That’s rich coming from a freaking assassin,” I hissed, laying my hands on the nearest heavy object.

He lay sprawled on the floor – his shirt more off than on – the spill of iodine climbing his pricy sleeve. His knuckles were whitecaps of ire. “Fuck all,” he fumed, tensing.

“Don’t think I won’t use it, you bastard.” I had dumped flowers from the Murano vase and was planning on chucking it straight at his thick head.

That is, until I noticed the subtle change in his demeanor. His carriage shifted, subtly as smoke, and the man at whom I had been yelling was suddenly gone. Dark eyes, flat and dead moments before, were alive with dawning consciousness.

His fist, the one he had raised from the ochre liquid, twitched where it hung, trapped in the air between us, like an insect caught in amber.

And then, as if by magic, the rest of De Torres faded out with a deep exhalation, leaving Brad Milton wearing his expensive clothing. It was an unsettling transformation to say the least.

“You can put it down, Ms. Brothers,” he said, his hands gesturing a truce as he struggled upright.

I did so, only after unlocking the door and leaving it wide. Then I scrubbed my cheek with the back of my hand.

Brad parked himself on the wheeled stool, hunched, his eyes downcast. “What a bloody mess.”

I cleared my throat, not ready to forgive, but old enough to at least try and understand. “Nothing a broom won’t fix,” I said, ignoring his double meaning.

He looked up at me, eyes searching. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Well, I didn’t ask to come; so you can drop the babysitting reference. And if you think that makes me heartless, you’re probably right, but I prefer ‘professional’.” I moved toward him, the doctor in me winning out over my pride, and handed over an unopened bottle of SANPELLEGRINO.

Draining its contents in one long swallow, he replaced the lid and set it down next to him. He balanced his elbows on either side of his legs, hands loosely clasped between his spread knees. “They want you to work for Alberto, don’t they?”

Even two steps from falling-down-drunk, Brad had worked it all out. Only, he didn’t seem pleased in the least.

“Don’t worry,” I muttered, eying the mess that was my office. “I’ll be out of your way soon enough.”

A long sigh followed his brief silence. He stood, as if to leave, one hand on the counter to steady himself.

“Do you always drink so much?” I was surprised by my genuine concern.

De Torres nearly resurfaced, but Mr. Milton won out. “The last time I had this much to drink, I was with you at The Three Tuns.”

‘With you.’
You, the plural pronoun. You, meaning Sammy and Nigel as well. I was only beginning to understand what they had meant to him. That they were probably the family he had always needed.

“I see.” I managed not to leave a trace of pity or sorrow etched across my countenance.

He shrugged, dispirited. “I’m not having a good go of it right now, Ms. Brothers.”

A crack of hairline proportions crept across his Roman visage, reminding me of the veins in Carrara marble. One chip too many, and the statue of David might have shattered. Clearly the Michelangelos of the world needed to exercise extreme care in their delicate surgeries of stone.

As did I.

“Do you want help?” I stood there, awkward as a freshman with braces, realizing there was a reason no one had ever come to me for comfort.

He started to shake his head, his hands halfway up in an affable gesture of surrender, when the crack became a gorge. His fingers sheathed his face, hiding the grief and tears I guessed had been thirty years buried.

The sound of his quiet anguish was nearly unbearable. I stood there for a long moment wondering if I should find his driver. Wondering if I should leave him alone until he could compose himself.

Half-hoping he’d turn away, I finally touched his sleeve. “I’ll wait out–” But before I could finish, his hands relinquished their grasp on his face, and he shocked me by leaning in, shoulders heaving.

Sorrow is unfortunately a necessity, but it is also fearsome. I had hated every second of its intrusion into my life, feeling beaten and cheated by its draining presence, and I longed to take that burden from him despite what
he
had said. Despite what
I
had said.

I don’t know how long he clung to me, before he finally turned to face me. He was drained, a shadow of the man who had entered.

“It’s going to be all right.” I pulled back, shaken myself. Some of my hair was stuck to the damp side of his face, the color of it and his stubble nearly indistinguishable. “You loved them. It’s impossible not to have affected you.”

He shook with a deep, ragged breath. His eyes, dark and filled with emotion, studied me. Before he could say a word, I looked away to hide what little there was of my soul from his penetrating gaze. My lips were tinged with the salt of his tears. We’d kissed once before, and I knew I liked the shape and taste of him just as I had known from the first bite, that dark chocolate would be my downfall.

But he touched my chin, and I felt his mouth hover at the edge of my lips. There was a question there. And when I didn’t move, he did.

His tongue ran a long caress against my lower lip. His hands slid upward, over the skin of my bared shoulders – a lab coat being far too hot in the old-fashioned space.

“Not now,” I began, knowing his actions were probably motivated by alcohol and an overload of emotion. “Wait until –”

His fingers rounded my shoulders and played with the curve of my neck. “No, right now, Ms. Brothers. Right now, when I’m doing my damnedest to escape some bloody unpleasant memories.” His mouth had worked its way to my ear, and he began nuzzling my neck, his teeth and tongue sharp and unexpectedly intimate.

I didn’t like the basis of his argument, knowing whenever I’d tried them, things like this never worked. Only somehow my Angelic-conscience had succumbed to death the second Brad’s hands started playing doctor.

I ran my fingers through his hair. It was thick and wavy, sinuous through my fingers’ touch. I tilted his head back, running my thumbs down his strong cheekbones. His ears were perfectly shaped, the tops slightly obscured by the mess I’d made of his hair.

I was standing between his legs now, and he slid his palms along the indent of my spine, over the curve of my ass and down to my thighs. He pulled my right leg up and over his corded thigh. I’d found his ear by then, my teeth rough on the salty edge of it. He growled something about liking me in heels and a skirt and pressed himself against the juncture of my legs.

I bit him – harder than I intended – and gasped at the curl of warmth radiating out from our point of friction. “Sorry,” I whispered, my forehead cool against his temple.

“Nothing for it,” he said, sliding my body to better fit him. His thighs were incredibly strong, and my skirt stretched and slid upward as I straddled him. There was an atomic heat building between us. Building inside me. His hands were back in my hair, along my neck, running in persuasive lines over my every curve.

Then he stopped talking and fucked my mouth with his tongue. It wasn’t as much a kiss, as a siege. His fingers rippled and circled my skin, making me all too conscious of each line and nerve. There were paths of white-hot fire breaking out beneath my cotton blouse. Burning through the silk of my bra straight through to my aching nipples.

I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to leave my clothes on or off. There was a teasing torture to the layers of fabric separating us that left me breathlessly intoxicated. My hands roamed away from his hair and tugged the shirt from his shoulders. I ran the back of one hand over his chest, marveling at the silky steel beneath a light dusting of dark hair. When the nail of my thumb skated over his nipple, his groan of pleasure buzzed along my tongue. His fingers were instant and quick, working the lowest buttons of my blouse upward.

I arched against his Italian murmurings, flushed and undone by the feel of his mouth along my throat. I answered his few questions, and we came to the unspoken conclusion that my being on the pill and both of us being tested with SIS frequency meant we didn’t have to slow our torrent of lust. He burned a crooked path of soft bites and slow, incredibly sexy kisses across my throat and downward to the place where my heart threatened to break out. Soft strains of guitar music were drifting out of the waiting room’s speakers, and I found we were unconsciously mirroring the sultry beat.

I ran my hands down the concrete mass of his ribcage and abdomen, until I found the space between his untucked shirt and jeans; I disengaged the button and slid a hand over the soft trail of hair onto the iron of his cock. He cursed and thrust into my hand, even as he gripped my blouse, tearing the remaining buttons away as he removed it from me.

He liked the lace of my camisole. It was whispered alongside the calloused rub of his thumb against my nipples and the heat of his breath, as he rasped the curve of my breasts with his unshaven chin and cheek.

The sharpness of my own gasps was enough to make me lightheaded. But he held me tight in those firm, wide palms, and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

Somehow my skirt was pushed up, and I felt one of those hands move behind the fabric, teasing my thigh and inner leg as he moved with deliberate sluggishness upward.

He froze a moment later. “You’re all but naked under that frock.”

Suddenly, we were upright. His hand still holding one of my legs up and around the cord of his thigh. He crowded me into the examination table until I collapsed onto its paper-covered surface, his fingers and mouth predatory on my breasts. The sight of his dark, roving hands on my skin and the sound of his harshly spoken Italian swirled exotically through my senses.

“De Torres,” I begged, opening my legs to him.

He looked down at me, eyes ablaze, and thrust once, hard.

I felt him shudder, felt my heart do the same. My sweat made our skin slick, easing his movements in and out, sucking away my control with his first solid push. I heard myself moan, self-conscious until I reopened my eyes and saw his face. Raw hunger had replaced grief, and its lustful insatiability shook me to the core.

He drew me up, urging my hands around his neck and my legs around his waist. The music was faster, hot in its ancient rhythm, and the warmth of the Mediterranean evening further slicked my skin where it touched his searing flesh. The wall, minus the sight chart he dashed to the floor, was flat against my back, as firm and unyielding in its presence as him.

His eyes were wide, hypnotic in their demand for attention, and I found myself drowning in them as he gasped a hairsbreadth from my parted lips. Moving with the pounding drum cadence, I felt him drive again and again, until I thought my spine would crack. And still he pounded me, content to be filling the void of his loss, afraid that to finish would leave him where he had started.

I heard him groan and yanked his head back with two handfuls of his dark, wavy hair. “Harder, De Torres.”

He heard and obeyed, tossing our bodies back onto the table where he wrestled my wrists away, clamping them against the stirrups and thrusting with a force that defied retaliation. He looked frightening, violent, and I welcomed him as I fought him, ripping my hand out from under his and slapping his face.

We fell then, off the table and onto the floor with a clatter of more instruments and unrolling paper. Straddled atop him now, I sat up, leaning into him with my hips and rocking as I pressed my palms against his powerful chest.

He took it as a challenge, gripped my shoulders – rolling as he did so – and battered me against the floor. I felt him growl once before he took my mouth again and came hard, fast and silent. The first burst of heat from him threw me over the edge. I screamed into his mute mouth, knowing whatever my mind might have believed – that I’d only done it to keep Giovanni this side of sane – there was no fucking way it was the truth.

A
fter a fashion, I walked my still-drunk patient to his car and crawled in behind him, losing myself in a whiteout of thoughts on the road up to his Cagliari mansion. The Tyrrhenian Sea glittered under the thunderous brows of the seaside cliffs; their blackness a reminder of why I was really here and how little the past moments actually mattered.

Wrought iron gates parted at the road’s end, giving way to artfully laid pavers I had not noticed on my first journey. Brad was resting against the rear bolster, eyes closed under his dark glasses. Sleeping. Reviving. Either way, his entire persona was less agitated.

Whereas I felt like I’d stepped into a freaking blizzard.

We came to a halt with a crunch of gravel still imbedded in the tires, and I exited after the driver opened my door. Then we both watched as De Torres opened his eyes and casually unfolded his elegant frame from the vehicle.

“I’ll need you to bring me back later.”

The driver nodded, boredom etched on his ancient face, and reentered the car, driving away in a cloud of dust.

De Torres and I traversed the elegant terraces leading up to his sumptuous home. The maid, out on a shopping trip, was pleasant in her absence.

“You should rest.”

I watched as Giovanni shed his shirt, folding it over his powerful arm, and walked up the exquisitely wrought cherry staircase without a word. Grateful for a moment alone to collect my scattered thoughts, I moved to his kitchen for some tea. My own Aga had been a splurge, but
this
would have made Gordon Ramsay violent with envy.