Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [44]
She looked at him, her eyes dark and steady. ‘Are you going to rub it and make it better?’ she said.
‘Where does it hurt?’
‘There.’ She moved her hand on to his and guided it across the warm curve of her leg. Creed’s chest felt hollow, as if all his breath had somehow leaked out of him. He touched her leg, gently rubbing it in small, warm circles. Then he drew his hand away. It was as if his hand was magnetically drawn to her. Ceasing to touch her was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
He moved his hand away slowly and deliberately. It felt numb, drugged by the warmth of her body. His heart was speeding in his chest, a swift muscular rippling. Amy was saying something. Creed forced himself to listen, to connect up the meaning of her words.
‘I don’t usually bump into furniture,’ she said. Was her voice a little shaky? It was a low, warm voice. He heard it every day at work, talking on the phone at the desk next to his, gnawing away at the edge of his consciousness. The soft rise and swell of her words as she spoke to law-enforcement agencies all over the map, striking deals, doing business and playing politics, protecting Creed. Covering his back.
When he spoke his own voice sounded thin and tense.
‘Yeah. Where’s the superb coordination I read about in your files?’
‘Maybe it’s deserted me.’ She was looking into his eyes, their gazes locked together. ‘Or maybe the file was full of lies.
Maybe it was all a trick and you should never have hired me.’
‘Too late now,’ said Creed and he reached out for her.
She came to him willingly and suddenly they were clutching each other in the darkening office, tangled together so it was hard to tell which hand belonged to whom as they grabbed and stroked each other and kissed, mouths locked and yearning.
Creed felt his consciousness spiralling away in dizzying excitement. Her body felt so different to his wife’s. It was like discovering a new world.
‘Here?’ she whispered. ‘On the desk?’ He kissed her hot throat and he eased her up on to the desktop and she moaned, strong legs wrapping around his waist as if she would never let him go. He fumbled her shirt open. He slipped his hand under the elastic of her bra to feel the hard nub of her breast, nipple stingingly taut against the palm of his hand. He eased his hand out and slid it up her warm soft thigh.
He was removing her panties when the alarm went off.
It took a moment for the sound to break into his consciousness and be recognized. He looked down at Amy and saw that she was having similar problems shifting her mental gears. The awareness behind her eyes came swimming back slowly from some distant dreamy place. Her gaze sharpened and steadied as he eased his weight off her.
‘What is it?’ she said, hastily buttoning her shirt.
Creed was staring at the computer screen on the desk behind her. There was a brightly coloured bar flashing on it, with the words ‘Intruder alert’ in high intensity white.
‘Someone’s on the third floor,’ said Creed.
Creed eased along the corridor with a gun in one hand, his mouth dry. He’d checked two weapons out of the office arsenal, giving the other to Amy. She was coming up to the third floor via the staircase, having taken the elevator down to the second. Creed was also using the stairs, but he was descending from the fourth.
Their plan was to sandwich the third floor between them.
Move in from above and below and catch the intruder.
At least, that was the plan until Creed came into the third-floor office, gun held ready in the Agency’s regulation two-handed stance, only to find Buddy Stanmer sitting there with his feet up on the desk.
Buddy ran a hand casually through his greasy black crewcut and smiled up at Creed.
‘Are you going to rub it and make it better?’ he said in a high falsetto voice.
Creed lowered his gun. The initial wave of relief at finding Stanmer was already beginning to give way to irritation. ‘I got an intruder alert.’
‘I know,’ said Buddy Stanmer. ‘I sent it. Only kidding. A little joke. Strictly against Agency rules.’ He looked