Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [58]
“Go to sleep,” he said.
She looked up at him. He was still unabashedly naked, and there was no way she could miss his constant, eternal reaction to her. But she closed her eyes without saying a word, and a moment later she was sound asleep.
She wasn’t good enough to fake it. She wasn’t good enough to fake anything. She was exhausted, drugged by sex and violent emotion, and he could lean over and kill her now, quickly, painlessly, in an instant.
With distant, bitter amusement he realized his erection had left. She’d be pleased to know he didn’t get off at the thought of killing her—quite the opposite.
But then, death had never been a turn-on for him. It was simply a job to be done, which made him far more valuable an operative than those who did it for the thrill. Those like Renaud.
He wasn’t going to kill her. He’d known that for a long time, almost since the beginning, whether he’d wanted to admit it or not. He was a cold, amoral bastard but there were some lines he wouldn’t cross. And that included killing innocents who got in the way.
And that’s all she was, right, he mocked himself. She could have been any anyone and his decision still would have been the same.
Sleeping with her, getting this weird attachment thing going had nothing to do with it. He could keep telling himself that, and maybe one day he’d believe it.
Still, he was one of the good guys, and his job was to kill bad guys, not people who stumbled in his way.
And he would do just that, without pleasure or remorse, in a few short hours. As soon as he made arrangements for Genevieve.
He couldn’t guarantee her safety—too much was at stake. But she was a smart woman, and he could leave her a trail of bread crumbs that would lead even a child to safety. And with any luck at all she’d never realize he’d let her go.
If she thought she’d escaped by way of her own talents it would give her back some of what he took from her. He shouldn’t care, but he did.
He worked with his customary efficiency, and when he left a note by her sleeping form, he only hesitated a moment. He was ignoring a basic tenet—don’t put anything on paper, don’t leave anything of yourself behind. He’d done both, but he couldn’t worry. The note would be gone in the coming conflagration—there’d be no way to trace him. His tracks were covered.
He squatted beside her as she slept. He wanted to push her wet hair away from her face, kiss her one last time and maybe convince himself that a kiss meant nothing.
But he knew better than to take the chance. The chance of waking her up, the chance of finding out that kissing her meant everything he was afraid of.
And he was supposed to be afraid of nothing. He let his hand hover over her face for a moment, tempted, so tempted.
And then he turned around and walked away. Forever.
It was broad daylight on the last day of her life, and Genevieve lay wrapped like a mummy on the livingroom sofa, trapped.
It only took her a moment to fight her way out of the enveloping shroud, and she almost didn’t see the note on the marble-top table beside her. It was brief and to the point. “Don’t go in my room.”
She didn’t even know which room was his in this rambling estate, so how could she avoid it? What had he done, booby-trapped it so he wouldn’t have to factor her into any more of his plans?
She wrapped the sheet back around her and stood up. The house was surrounded by shrubbery, but from the floor-to-ceiling windows she could see the ocean, and it was just as likely someone could see in. How many people were on the island—three? Peter, Hans and Renaud, the brute force. Whoever else was involved in this operation had taken off with Harry’s boat.
And of course, Harry was on the island, dead or alive, as much a victim as she was. Maybe Peter was off having sex with him as well—he’d done as much before when he was on assignment, or so he told her.
But then, he had no reason to sleep with Harry. He had him where he wanted him.
He had no reason to sleep with her either. None at