Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [62]
Sighing, he closed the door and walked after her into the living room where early morning sunlight poured in through the south-facing windows. Far below, Washington and the Potomac glimmered in a flat, hazy light patterned in grays and faded browns.
“What are you doing here, Vera? How did you get out of Fearington?”
Alli’s roommate looked a good deal better than she had when Jack had visited her in the Fearington infirmary yesterday. Her long, dark hair had regained its extraordinary luster and her upswept chocolate eyes were again bright with a fierce intelligence.
“I’m on a week’s medical furlough.” Her nostrils flared. “I got a visit from a guy named Jack McClure. You know him?”
“By reputation only.” Gunn shrugged. “What of it?”
“I think he suspects something.”
Gunn laughed. “How could he suspect anything?”
“How the fuck should I know? You’re the brainiac of this little venture.” Vera Bard’s cherry mouth turned sullen. “I don’t like him. I don’t want him anywhere near me. It feels like he’s crawling around inside my head.”
“That must be painful.”
“Joke all you want,” she said hotly. “Just make sure he stays the hell away from me.”
Gunn sighed. “You could’ve told me this using the encrypted cell phone I gave you.”
“True enough.” Her hands were at the trench coat’s belt. “But then I wouldn’t be able to show you this.”
The belt fell away, the trench coat gaped wide open, and Vera Bard’s gleaming naked body stood revealed it all its peach-skinned glory.
“Well, now,” Gunn said as he came toward her, “there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”
* * *
“YOU’RE NOT getting cold feet, are you?” Gunn said to her some time later.
“I’m not capable of getting cold feet. You know that.”
She lay on top of him, tangled in the sheets, perfumed by the musky scents of sex and sweat. Her nipples were still hard; the feel of them against his skin sent quivers through the muscles of his thighs.
“McClure sure spooked you,” he said quietly.
“One man, one spook, under God.”
Vera laughed in that way of hers that sent his pulse racing. Actually, almost everything about her set his pulse racing, especially her smell, which drew him as if he was magnetized. The moment he had first set eyes on her, he knew he had to have her. He knew he’d move heaven and earth to make it happen.
As it turned out, nothing so drastic was required of him. They had met some years ago—three, four, in the heat haze after sex he couldn’t recall—at a fancy D.C. ball given by the ambassador of Kenya. He had been invited because he had done important work there; she had been someone’s date—a fairly ordinary-looking DoD functionary. What she had been doing with him, he never discovered. Frankly, he hadn’t cared. Nor had he cared when he’d cut the functionary out of his own territory. Suffice it to say, hours later, he had taken her back to his place. Long before that, the DoD dud had faded into the scenery, the swirl of people, the babble of multi-culti voices, the endless layers of stiff Washingtonian protocol that was the hallmark of such affairs. She had been twenty-two, then, and twelve years his junior, a rose on the cusp of opening. He saw the potential in her and, to her credit, she saw it, too. They needed each other, like flowers need the rain.
Gunn threaded her thick, lustrous hair through his fingers. The weight of it thrilled him, and the vulnerable heat at the nape of her neck set his groin to throbbing. “It’s absolutely essential to know I can trust you.”
Vera snaked her arm down, her fingers reaching between his thighs. “When have I ever let you down?” She smiled. “When have you ever let me down?”
He grabbed her wrist before her fingers brought him past the edge of coherent thought. “No joke now, Vera. Don’t fuck with me.”
“I would be insane to jeopardize what you’ve taught me, what we have.” Her chocolate eyes probed his like searchlights. “I’ll never find anyone like you.” It was she, now, who guided his hand between her legs. “No one else has ever done this to me, no one else ever will.”
Feeling her wetness set Gunn’s