Cat & Mouse - James Patterson [52]
“This could take the rest of the weekend,” I said and started to laugh.
“I hope it does.”
I heard the tiniest click.
Was that the door to our room?
Had I closed it?
Was someone out there?
Jesus, no.
CHAPTER 53
SUDDENLY NERVOUS and paranoid, I peered back at the door to the hotel room. It was closed and locked tight. Nobody there, nothing to worry about. Christine and I were safe here. Nothing bad was going to happen to either of us tonight.
Still, the moment of fear and doubt had raised the hairs on my neck. Soneji has a habit of doing that to me. Damn it, what did he want from me?
“What’s wrong, Alex? You just left me.” Christine touched me, brought me back. Her fingers were like feathers on the side of my cheek. “Just be here with me, Alex.”
“I’m here. I just thought I heard something.”
“I know you did. No one is there. You locked the door behind us. We’re fine. It’s okay, it’s okay.”
I pulled Christine close against my body again and she felt electric and incredibly warm. I drew her down onto the bed and rolled over her, holding my weight on the palms of my hands. I dipped and kissed her sweet face again, then each of her breasts; I pulled at the nipples with my lips, licked them with my tongue. I kissed between her legs, down her long legs, her slender ankles, her toes. Just be here with me, Alex.
She arched herself toward me and she gasped, but she was smiling radiantly. She was moving her body against me and we had already found a nice rhythm. We were both breathing faster and faster.
“Please, do it now,” she whispered, her teeth biting into my shoulder near the clavicle. “Please now, right now. I want you inside.” She rubbed my sides with the palms of her hands. She rubbed me like kindling sticks.
A fire ignited. I could feel it spreading through my body. I entered her for the first time. I slid inside slowly, but I went as deep as I could go. My heart was pounding, my legs felt weak. My stomach was taut and I was so hard it hurt.
I was all the way inside Christine. I knew I’d wanted to be here for a long time. I had the thought that I was made for this, for being in this bed with this woman.
Gracefully and athletically, she rolled on top of me and sat up proud and tall. We began to rock slowly like that. I felt our bodies surge and peak, surge and peak, surge.
I heard my own voice crying yes, yes, yes. Then I realized it was both our voices.
Then Christine said something so magical. She whispered, “You’re the one.”
PART THREE
THE CELLAR OF CELLARS
CHAPTER 54
Paris, France
DR. ABEL Sante was thirty-five years old, with longish black hair, boyish good looks, and a beautiful girlfriend named Regina Becker, who was a painter, and a very good one, he thought. He had just left Regina’s apartment, and was winding his way home on the back streets of the sixth arrondissement at around midnight.
The narrow streets were quiet and empty and he loved this time of day for collecting his thoughts, or sometimes for not thinking at all. Abel Sante was musing on the death of a young woman earlier today, a patient of his, twenty-six years old. She had a loving husband and two beautiful daughters. He had a perspective about death that he thought was a good one: Why should leaving the world, and rejoining the cosmos, be any scarier than entering the world, which wasn’t very scary at all.
Dr. Sante didn’t know where the man, a street person in a soiled gray jacket and torn, baggy jeans had come from. Suddenly the man was at his side, nearly attached to his left elbow.
“Beautiful,” the man said.
“I’m sorry, excuse me?” Abel Sante said, startled, coming out of his inner thoughts in a hurry.
“It’s a beautiful night and our city is so perfect for a late walk.”
“Yes, well it’s been nice meeting you,” Sante said to the street person. He’d noticed that the man’s French was slightly accented. Perhaps he was English, or even American.
“You shouldn’t have left her apartment. Should have stayed the night. A gentleman always stays the night—unless of course he’s asked to leave.