Black Ice - Anne Stuart [106]
She didn’t need to speak, he was kissing her again, fucking her again, and she simply gave into it, a holy wash of sin and redemption, and the snowy darkness closed around her, and time lost its meaning.
And there was nothing left between them but love, neither pure nor simple, but love it was.
24
Chloe lay sprawled across his body, drained, exhausted, in a deeper, more abandoned sleep than he’d given her with his cocktail of drugs. She was practically boneless, so relaxed that he doubted even gunshots would wake her.
He couldn’t afford to test that theory. He’d lived to the ripe old age of thirty-four always being aware that failure was an option, and looking out for it. If a stray bullet managed to hit him then she was doomed, and he wasn’t about to let that happen. She was sexually infatuated with him, he accepted that with a strange combination of fatalism and gratitude, and he’d given himself over to her with single-minded dedication and a total lack of restraint. The result was that she was half-dead with pleasure and his own body still trembled occasionally from the aftermath.
She’d get over it. She was a practical young woman, a born survivor, and once he disappeared, either into the murky netherworld of the Committee or the more solid answer of a grave, she’d be able to move on.
But she was never going to get better sex in her life.
It was the one selfish bastard thing he’d kept for himself. He hoped and prayed he’d spoiled her for anyone else. She’d sleep with other men, she’d marry and have children and orgasms with someone other than him. But no one would ever be able to make her body sing as he did, and no matter how ruthless that was, he rejoiced in it.
He let his hand trail down her arm. Her skin was smooth, flawless, with Gilles Hakim’s brutality nothing more than a distant nightmare. If he ever returned to the Committee, Thomason was going to scream bloody murder that he’d wasted that liquid platinum on a civilian. Fuck him. He’d give Chloe anything he could get away with giving her.
Including the safety and freedom that could only come from his complete absence in her life.
Monique was the last danger. He still didn’t know how she’d managed to survive, but she was the most unstable of anyone he’d dealt with while he was working for the Committee. The most unstable of those still alive, that was. People like her didn’t last long in the business—you don’t let personal feelings get in the way of the mission, you didn’t kill for anything other than a job, you didn’t hate, you didn’t love.
But Monique was so eaten up with hatred that she’d managed to survive when no one else had. And instead of rebuilding her power base, she was hunting for Chloe Underwood, simply because she knew it would hurt him. Lure him out of hiding, so that she could kill him as well.
Once Bastien had stopped Monique there would be no more problem, at least for Chloe. Even if he had to go and cut Harry Thomason’s throat to make sure of it.
He knew when her heartbeat shifted, the faint shiver across her skin, and he knew her eyes fluttered open, even though her face was turned away from him. He was strangely attuned to her—they’d slept together only a few times and yet he knew her body, her pulses, the rhythm of her heartbeat and her breathing so well that his own matched hers. He let his hand dance along her arm, just the faintest of caresses, and he could feel her instant response. She wanted more. And, God help him, so did he.
“They’re coming soon,” he said gently. “We need to get dressed.”
She turned her head to look at him, and he could see the dried trace of tears on her face, the mussed hair, the total lack of makeup. She looked younger than ever, innocent in a way that had nothing to do with the inventive hours they’d just shared. Innocent deep in her heart, where he was nothing but an empty core.
“Do we have to?” Her voice was low, husky, sexy. He couldn’t believe he could be wanting her again, so quickly.