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  “I gave them what they asked for—no, demanded.” Taylor inserted the two disks from the bank into the empty container, then reached back into the medicine cabinet and removed a large box of body powder. “I was asphyxiated, almost killed. It should not be this impossible to get rid of a man.”

  She sprinkled a goodly amount of loose powder from the second jar into the first, then tapped it on the counter to settle around her contraband. She tightened the lid, placed the jar back inside the cabinet, and snapped the door closed.

  “Now, damn it.” She jerked open the shower door and stepped into a stream of temperature-controlled water with a sigh. “Now I have squatters with guns in my sanctuary. This is just wrong in so many ways.”

  And then, because clearly the poison gas had addled what little was left of any intelligent brain cells, she wished Hunt would come into her room and join her in the shower.

  Twenty-eight

  LONDON

  “I have retrieved the disks,” Andreas Constantine told Morales over the phone. He was a good man, Andreas. A loyal follower and an excellent leader to his men. He would be richly rewarded.

  A sense of monumental relief swamped José at the news. God answered his prayers as He always did.

  Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

  Each small disk held hundreds of bits of complex information. They also stipulated in what order each set of highly detailed instructions should be used. Not even a mathematician could comprehend or calculate the variables necessary to gain access to the underground vault through the various booby traps without those disks.

  “You have done well, my friend—”

  But Constantine was still talking. “Not only from T-FLAC’s very hands,” he said smugly, “but from those of another group equally eager to have them.”

  The interruption in and of itself was annoying, but— “Another group? What other group?”

  “Black Rose?”

  Morales twisted his water glass between his fingers. Faster and faster. God clenched a tight fist in his belly. “Are you asking me,” he demanded, pulses of light burning behind his eyes, “or telling me?”

  There was a pregnant pause. “One was seriously injured. But we killed two. Each had the Black Rose tattoo.”

  Morales closed his eyes. Black Rose.

  They were too small a group to wrest world dominance away from him, no matter how much they wanted to try. Still, they were an irritating burr beneath his skin. Them, he would deal with at another time. He drew in a calming breath. At least he had the disks. “You have all five disks safely in your possession, sí?” he confirmed.

  The plan would proceed as planned. God was pleased.

  He listened to the silence on the other end of the phone. “Constantine?”

  “Gamw’to!” Andreas Constantine whispered. “There were five such disks?”

  Twenty-nine

  ZURICH

  With barely the energy to dry off, Taylor padded back into the cool, darkened bedroom. Home sweet—

  Beneath the rose and cream quilted velvet spread, now haphazardly tugged free, she saw a large lump right in the middle of her bed. Her pulse did a little hop, skip, and jump.

  Carefully, so as not to wake him, she pulled the covers back. Mmm. Sliding into her own bed after a month’s absence felt like sheer heaven. Discovering Hunt waiting for her was a bonus. She smiled, moving across the cool silky sheets until her bare, damp body came flush against his warm back.

  His wet hair smelled of Mandy’s never-used shampoo, but the fragrance of his freshly soaped skin was pure male and as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. Taylor’s breath caught as sleep and arousal commingled, drifting through her body like the gentle eddy of steam.

  He didn’t stir. He really was sleeping.

  Disappointed, Taylor let out the breath she held. It was probably for the best. As far as she knew, he hadn’t slept at all since leaving the States. And she doubted he’d wasted much time sleeping while searching for her all over God’s creation either. Even a powerful warrior like Huntington St. John required sleep once in a while.

  She was surprised to realize that meeting Hunt had profoundly changed her life in an elemental way. She was more than physically attracted to him, which intrigued her. This was more complex than anything she’d felt for either of her previous lovers, although she’d liked them both. Like wasn’t the way she’d describe her feelings for Huntington St. John, however.

  She wasn’t quite sure how to describe it. This felt . . . richer. More textured. More layered.

  She wished she had more time to think about and explore it. But their time together was finite. And there were still too many secrets between them, too many concealing layers between them, with no time to peel them away.

  She’d have liked him to stay, she thought sleepily, rubbing her cheek lightly over his shoulder. Just for a little while. Long enough to have the opportunity to get to know him. To find out if the face he presented to the world was the real Huntington St. John. She suspected that Hunt, like herself, had to be a chameleon to blend in with his surroundings.

  Was there anyone in his life that he could be his authentic self with? Was he ever lonely?

  Eyes closed, Taylor ran her hand lightly over the smooth skin and hard bone of his hip, then draped an arm over the dip in his waist. She hadn’t given her loneliness much thought over the years. It just . . . was. A by-product of what she did, and who she did it to. Each of her personas had acquaintances. But no one could ever know who she really was.

  And that wasn’t a bad thing. There were times she didn’t know who she was either. But she wasn’t unhappy. She had no complaints about her life or her lifestyle. After all, she had chosen the path, known the pitfalls. She loved the couturier clothes, the beautiful custom-made shoes, the exquisite bling her job afforded her. And most of all she adored the excitement, the danger, the never knowing what was around the next stairwell.

  She was an adrenaline junkie. Nothing wrong with that.

  Taylor ran her fingers lightly up his biceps. His skin felt satin smooth, and hot beneath her touch. She suddenly realized how seldom she was touched. Even her sister, whom she adored, didn’t like any type of physical contact. She understood babies could die from lack of physical contact, and wondered how she’d done without it, so blithely, for so long. She brushed her lips lightly over his shoulder, inhaling the fragrance of man, of Hunt, then sank into sleep.

  She woke several hours—or maybe it was minutes—later, to find herself on her back, a large hard body nestled between her legs. Pleasure unfolded inside her like a butterfly opening its wings. Palm-to-palm, fingers linked with hers, Hunt held her hands shackled above her head.

  She’d never felt anything as piercingly sweet as the warm, wet suction of his mouth, that clever, clever mouth, on her left nipple. Desire drifted through her like slowly rising steam. Soft and poignantly gentle. “Mmmm,” she murmured, not opening her eyes.

  He lifted his head, leaving a cool place on her skin. “Awake?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  Warm lips skimmed her breast, trailing to the curve between shoulder and neck, then swept a sensitive spot with his tongue. The feel of his damp mouth on her skin shot through her body like brilliant sunlight reflecting on water. She arched her throat, curling her fingers tightly between his as sensation shimmered and danced through her.

  He lifted his head, reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. “I want to look at you,” he said softly.

  Her body was poised, ready for him to resume where he’d left off, and the bright reading light made Taylor blink. His broad shoulders, limned by golden light, filled her view. His dark hair, still wet, hung loose, dripped droplets of cool water on her cheek.

  She wanted to touch his face. She tugged a hand free. “Come back to me.”

  He turned his head, and the intensity of his smoky gaze as he looked down at her made her breath catch in her lungs and her heartbeat accelerate. The hunger in that loo
k was as potent as a physical caress. At that instant Hunt was one hundred percent focused on her, as if she was the only person in the universe.

  “It’s a little unnerving having you look at me like that,” she told him honestly, curving her palm against the strength of his jaw because she wanted every part of her to be touching him. He’d shaved, and his skin was smooth and warm beneath her fingers.

  “Are you afraid of me?” he asked, voice thick. His breath caressed her mouth. He’d been drinking coffee, and she wanted to taste it on him.

  She shook her head and smiled. “Exhilarated.”

  A low sound of pleasure hummed in her throat as Hunt settled on top of her. The crisp hair on his chest pleasurably abraded her sensitive nipples as he slid his torso over hers.

  He brushed a strand of her hair out of her eyes, but all Taylor felt was the satin-hard length of him pressed intimately against her. She shifted beneath him, her blood hammering so turbulently she could barely breathe.

  “You are so unbelievably sexy,” he murmured against her throat. “So pretty right here.” His tongue stroked her nipple into a hard, tight bud. “I’ve never seen skin this pale, and when I touch you like this . . .” He swirled his slick tongue around the hard bud. “. . . you get rosy pink all over, and these sweet little nipples get raspberry pink and beg me to suck them.”

  Her nipples tightened at his words, but when he drew one deep into the hot, wet cavern of his mouth, she whimpered. He trailed kisses between her breasts, bringing a hand up to caress the one his mouth wasn’t paying attention to.

  She arched under the straining leash of sensation, her legs moving restlessly beneath sheets without feeling them. How had she ever imagined that four-hundred-thread-count sheets and cashmere blankets could compete with the sensation of Hunt’s hands and mouth on her body? He nibbled his way up her arched throat to her mouth. Then bracketed both wrists above her head, while the fingers of the other hand played with her nipple until she arched her back and moaned low in her throat. “So soft. So sweet.”

  He teased his thumb lightly over the hard bud of her nipple. She lifted her face. Their mouths met. She felt the urgency in his body, and expected him to take her mouth in a rush of hunger. Instead he brushed his firm mouth back and forth over hers languidly, his lips warm and smooth. She caught a hint of soap on his skin as his tongue flirted with the corner of her mouth.

  “I can taste your smile, you know,” he told her, his gravelly voice made huskier by his hunger.

  “Mmm.” She threaded her fingers through his drying hair. It felt thick and silky to the touch, and long enough when it was loose like this to frame his face. “How does a smile taste?”

  “Like sunshine. Like hope. Like truth.”

  His words flowed through her, a caress of their own. “All that? Let me taste.” Her tongue glided delicately across his lower lip, then traced the seam before moving to his upper lip. “Not sunshine,” she whispered against his parted lips. “Fire. Heat. Refuge.” She parted her lips against his, inviting him in.

  His tongue glided inside, tasting hot, familiar, dangerous. In a heartbeat the kiss went from languorous to nuclear. A claiming. Their needy groans blended as he went in deeper, tongues teasing and twisting together.

  He was an exceptional kisser. Not only kissing her mouth, but making love to it as though the kiss culminated the act. His tongue was nimble and inventive, his flavor heady, and dangerously seductive.

  It was the unrestrained wildness of the kiss that excited her, the hint of his shredding control that fired her own base needs. He made her own desire a clawing, untamable necessity.

  Her breath came swift and uneven when he let her up for air. Only to lavish kisses on her eyelids, her cheek, the curve of a brow. She shuddered as his body slid a little higher between her legs so she felt the hard ridge of his erection where she needed it most. She could count his heartbeats as he pulsed against her heat.

  A hard shudder of pleasure ripped through her, and she shifted her hips, feeling him strain against that invisible leash he kept on himself as he purposefully held that part of himself tantalizingly out of reach.

  Annoying, annoying man.

  Tearing his mouth from hers, he lifted his head. After a nanosecond of inactivity, Taylor opened her eyes. He was frowning down at her, so close she could see a rim of charcoal around the hot gray of his pupils. “I don’t want to want you this badly.”

  “I can tell,” Taylor said gravely, running an open hand down the hard plane of his belly to the jut of his very impressive erection. “It’s a good thing you’re not trying very hard to kick the habit.” Her fingers closed around the hot satin length of him. “Your willpower sucks.”

  “Even when you annoy the hell out of me— Jesus. Yes!” His voice went guttural as she caressed him with her thumb, a leisurely arc over the tip. “I want you.”

  Delighted, she smiled. “Then you must want me all the time.”

  “Why in the bloody hell can’t I get enough of you?” he demanded hoarsely, hips arching toward her. Her thumb did a slide, a light stroke that had his breath hissing through his teeth.

  “Because I have your joystick in my hand?” She wrapped her fingers around him firmly, drawing them up, then down again.

  “Now,” he shuddered. “Not always.”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not complaining.”

  Without answering, he brought his mouth down on hers again in a kiss so incendiary it made her toes curl and her heartbeat quadruple in a flash fire of response.

  She drew both hands up his sides, using her nails to lightly score his skin. His back arched and he clenched his teeth as she wiggled her fingers between the burning heat where their bodies were flush.

  His pelvis pressed down, trying to keep her away. Taylor tsked. “Now that is such a waste . . . of . . . energy. I can pretty much . . . get . . . my hands into any space. Ah.”

  When she closed her fingers around the satiny smooth length of him again, his penis jumped in response. She stroked up and down his pulsing heat, feeling her own damp heat on the back of her hand. In response, he shifted his hips. As impatient as Taylor was to have him inside her, the free access to his body parts was too good an opportunity to miss. She tightened her fist, using his own moisture to glide her hand up and down his length. Velvet over steel.

  “Bloody Christ, woman.” He spoke through clenched teeth, his voice guttural as he buried his face against her neck and took a love bite that made her entire body jerk, then shimmy with pleasure. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  His fingers wrapped around hers, showing her how he liked it. She was a quick study; she could tell by his groan of pleasure. Taking away his hand, he left her to it. Taylor felt the strain of his incredible control as she touched him to her heart’s content. His every muscle and tendon quivered as she fondled him, but otherwise he didn’t move.

  She cupped him gently. He was well proportioned, everything matching his height and breadth. Her own breath came in unsteady gasps as she took her sweet time memorizing his body.

  Finally his incredible control snapped and he wrapped his long fingers around her wrist and moved her hand away. “Enough.”

  Before she could protest, he brought his mouth to her breast, tasting her skin with warm strokes of his tongue. She shuddered as his teeth grazed her nipple. His other hand stroked a heated path down her rib cage, caressed her belly, then moved down to her mound.

  While he tasted her breasts, he rubbed his palm against her, until Taylor shuddered at the duel assault.

  “Hunt.” Her voice was barely recognizable, even to her own ears. “I can’t—breathe. If you don’t— Ahh.”

  His answer was to close his teeth gently on her nipple as he slid two fingers between her intimate folds. The ball of his thumb continued rubbing a maddening circle on the small bud nestled there. The sensation built until it was too sharp, too intense, and it was her turn to grip his wrist in fingers that shook.

  Taylor’s laugh
was choked as she shifted, drawing her legs up alongside his narrow flanks and tilting her pelvis to receive him.

  He yanked a pillow from the head of the bed and stuffed it beneath her hips. “I feel like a kid,” he said roughly, resting his forehead against hers and trying to grab a stray breath from a room where Taylor already knew there was no oxygen.

  “No.” She ran her hands over the solid breadth of his shoulders. “You feel like a man. Come to me.” She wrapped her legs high around his waist.

  He ran the flat of his hand up her calf as he sank slowly into her, his muscled thighs spreading her wide for his entry. Her body was more than ready, and the sensation of him inside her was so sharp, so pure and perfect, Taylor didn’t want to move.

  He retreated, a long, slow glide, then returned, deeper, harder, better. The sumptuous whip of need unfurled through her body like the petals of a flower.

  He eased in deeper, impossibly deeper. Taylor walked her heels up his back, feeling the flex and play of his muscles as he moved in a rhythm as old as time.

  “More,” she demanded, tightening her legs about him, wrapping her arms about his neck as she sought his mouth.

  “I’ll hurt you.”

  “No way.” She bit his lower lip. Hard. “Double . . . jointed.”

  “Double—” He huffed out a laugh. “My fantasy woman.”

  Taylor tightened her strong legs around his lean flanks, drew him inexorably deeper. She took all of him. Reveled in the full sensation, the slick heat of his powerful thrusts that made her head toss and her heart careen out of control. “Yes. Like. That. Just. Like—”

  He pushed and retreated, pushed and retreated, until their bodies were slick with sweat and their muscles quivered. Sound and light obliterated for pure sensation.

  “Tell me—”

  “Perfect. Again—yes.” Her pleasure pulsed and burned, climbing impossibly higher and higher until she was incapable of drawing a breath. She dragged her mouth from beneath his and gasped for air, her teeth against his sweaty throat. She took a bite of salty male flesh and felt the answering contraction deep inside her.