“I wouldn’t tell you any such thing. I’m starving. What did you bring?”
She hadn’t noticed the paper sack he’d brought with him. He’d brought a couple of baguettes, some brie, two pears and two blood oranges. And a bottle of wine, of course. She wanted to laugh, but that would have been as bad as screaming. She’d never stop. Just breathe, she reminded herself.
He sat on the other end of the bed, their meager feast spread out before them. Their only utensil was his pocketknife, but he managed to open the wine with it, and they passed it back and forth to hack off pieces of bread and cheese.
The pear was divine—ripe and messy, and she wiped the juice from her mouth with the paper napkin he’d brought. And then she realized he was watching her, an odd expression on his face.
He passed her the bottle of wine. There was nothing else to drink, and no glasses, and she had no choice but to put her mouth where his had been. She took a long swallow, letting it begin to warm her, and when she passed it back to him their fingers touched. She drew back hastily, and again he smiled.
When they’d had enough he cleared the bed, putting the rest of the food on the small table next to the candle. Neither of them had touched the oranges, she noticed.
“What next?” she asked, leaning back against the wall.
“Next we sleep.” He was spreading the thin blanket on the floor. There was just enough space in the tiny room for him to lie down by the bed.
“I’ve been sleeping for hours,” she said. “Days, it seems. I don’t know if I can sleep anymore.”
He stared at her through the candlelit shadows. “Then what do you suggest we do?”
She had no answer to that, of course. In the two years she’d lived in Paris she’d learned a very creditable shrug, and she did just that, then stretched out on the narrow bed, staring fixedly at the candlelight while he watched her.
She had no earthly idea what he was thinking. Probably what an annoyance she was. That he should have let Hakim finish her off, or maybe that he should have killed her himself once she started fussing. But he hadn’t, he was stuck with her, an albatross around his neck.
He blew out all but one of the candles, then stretched out on the floor. The hard, cold floor—she’d felt it on her bare feet.
“You don’t have to sleep down there,” she said suddenly, before she could regret the impulse. “There’s room for both of us up here.”
“Go to sleep, Chloe.”
“Look, I know perfectly well you have no interest in me sexually, thank God. What happened yesterday was an aberration….”
“Two days ago,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact. “And it was part of my job.”
That shut her up, for at least a moment, even though she’d known it. She took a deep breath. “So, clearly there’s no problem with us sharing a bed. You’re not going to touch me. The room is cold, and we’d both be a lot warmer if you slept up here.”
She couldn’t see his face clearly in the shadows. He was probably exasperated. “For the love of God,” he murmured, “would you please stop prattling? You may have had too much sleep but I haven’t had more than an hour or so in the last three days. I’m only human.”
“I doubt that,” she muttered. “Suit yourself.” She turned away from him, with as close an approximation of an affronted flounce as she could manage while lying on a narrow bed, and stared at the cracked and stained wall.
“Merde,” he said. He rose, blew out the candle and climbed into bed with her. “It’s too small a bed not to touch you,” he said in a grumpy voice.
Unfortunately true. She could feel him up against her back, his body curved around hers. If someone broke in he’d be in the way of any danger. That was the only reason why she wanted him there, she told herself. The only reason why she suddenly felt warm and safe and able to relax. It was simply a question of survival.
“I can put up with it,” she replied. “But if you think that I—” His hand covered her mouth, stopping her midsentence. She could almost taste the pear juice on his fingers, an incredibly arousing sensation. She must still be hungry, she thought. But nothing under the sun was going to get her to eat a blood orange.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said sweetly in her ear, “or I’ll tie you up and gag you and put you on the floor. Understood?”
He’d probably do it, too. She nodded, as best she could with his hand covering her mouth, and he slowly moved it. She wanted to tell him that she was unwilling to share the bed after all, but he’d probably dump her on the hard cold floor if she said one more word.
His body was warm, deliciously so, pressed up against hers. Pissed off as she was, she could still feel a heated languor spread through her body. She might be able to sleep some more after all, she thought, what with the wine and the warmth and the undeniable feeling of utter safety with his body wrapped around hers. She didn’t want to—she wanted to keep awake just to spite him.
How was he going to get her out of Paris in one piece? The longer she stayed the more dangerous it became, the more likely it was that someone would find her. Would she be better off slipping into another country, leaving from Frankfurt or Zurich?
And how the hell was she going to do that with her passport back at the château? And someone must have found poor Sylvia by now. The police would have been called, they would have searched the place and found her belongings. Which meant the police would be looking for her as well.
Definitely a good thing. Even if they thought she’d somehow managed to kill Sylvia she’d rather take her chances in a French jail than running for her life, having to depend on one enigmatic man.
Everything had taken on a blessed haze of unreality. She’d seen him kill a man, and yet she could barely remember it. She’d been in such pain, and then the pain had stopped, and Hakim was lying on the floor.
He’d had sex with her. She would like to deny it, call it something else, but in truth it was sex, and he had come inside her. And to her everlasting shame, she had climaxed as well, powerfully.
But that didn’t feel real anymore. Even the stark horror of Sylvia’s body was beginning to fade. Maybe that would happen with everything, she thought, slowly relaxing her body against his. Maybe everything that had gone on in the last days she spent in France would wind up in a little bubble that never really touched her again. She wouldn’t have to remember it, wouldn’t have to deal with it. It would just be gone.
She didn’t know if that was how people usually managed to get through traumatic periods in their life. All this made nineteen hours in a pitch-black cave seem like a child’s prank in comparison. No one had died, no one had been hurt, no one had developed a kind of sick fascination for…
She didn’t like the way her mind was going. She tried to inch away from Bastien’s body, but his arm clamped around her waist, pulling her back. “Lie still,” he muttered sleepily in her ear.
She could feel him all along her back, the sensation of warmth and strength, bone and muscle and the unmistakable feel of him against her butt. It felt as if he had an erection, which surely couldn’t be true, since he had no real interest in her and she had all the interest in the world in him.
Stockholm Syndrome, didn’t they call it? When the hostage developed an unhealthy obsession with her captor. It was a normal reaction—they were in a life-or-death situation, and so far he’d managed to keep her alive. And to complicate matters, they’d had sex before she’d realized just how dangerous he was. And why couldn’t she stop thinking about the sex?
Because she was lying in the shelter of his strong body, she could feel his cock against her backside and she was scared. The only thing standing between her and a painful, hideous death was his body, and she wanted it.
But he didn’t want her, he’d simply been doing his job, and as he’d told her, he was very good at it. In the end his lack of interest was a very good thing. At least he wanted to keep her alive and safe and get her back home. Which was an even better thing.
&nb
sp; Developing an unhealthy fascination for him was not unexpected. And once she was safely home everything would be back in perspective.
He was right, the bed was too small. There was no way she could move away from his body. She could turn her head just enough to see his face. He slept, which amazed her, and even her thrashing around hadn’t woken him. She could barely make him out in the darkness, and she gave up trying, laying her head back down on the threadbare mattress, listening to the sound of his heartbeat against her back.
At least he had a heart—something she’d wondered about. He was human, he was warm and strong and ready to kill to keep her safe.
What more could a girl want in a man?
16
She really was the most damnable woman, Bastien thought, as her body finally stilled, her pulse slowed and she sank back into a reluctant sleep. She argued about everything, and then she looked at him with those huge brown eyes and for the first time in years he felt guilty.
He shouldn’t have given in and gotten in bed with her. Yes, it was warmer with their body heat combined. Yes, the thin mattress on the bed was better than the even thinner blanket on the bare wood floor. Yes, they managed to fit their bodies together too damned well for his peace of mind. And yes, he wanted to push her over on her back, rip off her jeans and finish what he’d only begun a few short days ago.
He wondered if she’d felt his erection before she fell asleep. Probably not—she seemed totally oblivious to the effect she had on him. Which was just as well. He wasn’t about to complicate this already tangled mess any more than he had to. And making love to her would definitely complicate things.
He’d already fucked her—an entirely different matter. That should be enough. It was a normal enough response, and he knew himself well enough to try to dismiss it. Life-or-death situations brought out all sorts of primal appetites. Ugly but true. Danger aroused him.
And being in the presence of death, whether he’d been the one to kill or not, made him want to experience life on the most basic level. It made him want to fuck, and whether it was some caveman instinct about replenishing the species or a twisted fascination with sex and death, it still existed. He either acted on it or he didn’t, depending on the circumstances. There were often women operatives around who shared the same reaction, and a fast, frenzied coupling usually only heightened their defenses in times of danger.
But Chloe wasn’t an operative, she was ten years and a lifetime younger than he was, and a life-or-death situation would wipe all thought of sex from her mind. It would be a while before she got over the sight of her butchered friend, before she got over her hours with Hakim. She would, though. She might be not much more than a girl, but she was strong and resilient. She was back in a dark hole with him and she was sleeping, her suffocating claustrophobia at bay.
He could smell his scent on her, probably from wearing the coat that was now draped over both of them. For some reason he found that erotic. Then again, he was finding everything about her erotic.
The goddamned snow couldn’t have come at a worse time. If not for that, she’d already be on her way across the Atlantic, out of his life for good, and he’d be concentrating on his assignment. His final assignment.
He had to finish what he started at the château. Find out how the territories were going to be redistributed, and who was going to take Remarque’s place. Hakim had never held that much power. In fact, he’d been nothing more than a glorified administrative assistant, running things smoothly while the principals discussed disbursements. Of cabbage heads and fresh veal. Of long-range missiles and heat-seeking bullets. Of oranges and C4 and blood all around.
Christos was the big question mark. Why hadn’t he bothered to show up, and when he did, what did he have planned? Because the Christos he knew never entered a situation without a very detailed plan. There would be at least one person at the château who was privy to those plans—that was the way Christos worked. It might be the baron, who wasn’t nearly as harmless as he seemed, or perhaps even Monique. She was very difficult to pin down. She had a taste for pain, as well as sex, and he had yet to discover anything that made her vulnerable. It could be Ricetti or Otomi, Madame Lambert or even Ricetti’s assistant. It didn’t matter that the elegant young man servicing the Sicilian dealer was a Committee operative as well as Bastien. He wasn’t the only one there, and anyone could change sides if the price was right.
One thing was certain. Christos couldn’t be allowed to take over the leadership of the cartel, and it was up to Bastien to see to it. Thomason had been unclear as to what would happen to the rest of the dealers. Once the leader was disposed of, would they be left to reform? Probably—the Committee tended to prefer the devil they knew to the unknown, but it wasn’t his responsibility. He only had to kill one more person. And then he was done. Finished. Gone.
He moved his head slightly, so that his face brushed her ridiculous tangle of hair. She looked very different as a shorn lamb. Younger, and more vulnerable. And even more desirable.
But looking like that helped remind him that she was off-limits. He had no right or reason to touch her again, and it would only complicate things.
And he needed to stop thinking about her and get what sleep he could. It didn’t matter that the feel and the scent of her was all around him. He was cool enough to ignore trivial distractions like that. He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent and sound of her, and let himself sleep.
It was midday. Chloe wasn’t quite sure how she knew that—the room was pitch-black, not a speck of light coming from the roof window. Her body had a natural clock—she woke up at eight-thirty every morning whether she needed to or not, and if something woke her in the middle of the night she always knew what hour it was, whether a clock was around or not.
Everything had been thrown off balance the past few days. She slept more than she’d ever slept in her life, probably a reaction to the horrors she’d seen. For all she knew she could have been asleep this time for fifteen minutes or three days.
Bastien was still with her. She’d turned in her sleep, and she lay in his arms, sprawled across him, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his chest, his arm around her. She should have yanked herself away, but she didn’t. She didn’t move a muscle, only her eyelids as she tried to decipher something, anything, through the darkness.
Bastien slept deeply and silently. Probably part of his self-discipline. He wouldn’t allow himself to snore like most men. He slept so soundly he probably wouldn’t even notice if she carefully pulled herself out of his loose embrace and turned her back on him. It was too exposed, lying like this. Too…confusing.
Stockholm Syndrome, she reminded herself unhappily. It had nothing to do with reality. She didn’t even like the man. For now she had to stay with him, but once she was home things would be put into perspective and her momentary attraction would vanish with a dollop of self-loathing.
Well, perhaps not self-loathing. There was no denying that the man who called himself Bastien Toussaint was physically beautiful. And no denying that he saved her life, perhaps more than once, which would be bound to make her grateful.
She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about anything, not the man beside her, not Sylvia, not the people who’d sat around that huge board table and pretended to talk about groceries. She would think about the snow. Thick and white and blanketing the city in stillness, drifting down in big flakes and clogging the roadways, closing the airports, trapping her in the arms of a killer…
“Stop thinking about it.”
He hadn’t moved, his steady breathing hadn’t changed, but his soft voice broke the stillness like a shard of glass.
She rolled away from him, moving as close to the wall as she could. There was still no way she could keep from touching his long, lean body in such a narrow bed. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was. Until you woke up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—I didn’t move. I opened my eyes and t
hat was all. Don’t tell me the draft from my eyelashes woke you.” Her voice was low and caustic, pushing him away as her body couldn’t.
“No,” he said, his voice low and sleepy, but she wasn’t fooled. “Once you started thinking your blood began to move. I could feel your heartbeat speed up, your pulse race. Even though you didn’t move a muscle.”
“Well, aren’t you special?” she said, sarcastic.
“I beg your pardon?”
Of course he wouldn’t know the American reference. He might read pulses and heartbeats but he’d probably never watched Saturday Night Live and the Church Lady. Maybe he’d never watched television at all. It wouldn’t surprise her. He’d said he never even went to movies.
What did surprise her was that even with her back safely to him she was still acutely aware of him. Still had a totally irrational longing for him. One that would lead nowhere and only embarrass and frustrate her.
“What time is it?”
“Late morning,” he said. He moved then, away from her, getting out of bed, and she breathed a sigh of what she told herself was relief.
“So what do we do now? Go outside and make snow angels? I don’t think I’m dressed for it.” Yes, she sounded nicely cool. He wouldn’t have the faintest idea how jumbled her emotions are.
He lit the candles. He had the very beginnings of a stubble, something she found oddly shocking. Throughout their long ordeal he’d never been less than perfectly groomed, whether he’d just killed someone or spent hours sitting on the floor drinking wine.
His long hair was loose and tousled around his face, and he looked rumpled and surprisingly human. Something Chloe found even more disturbing.
“I must be interfering with your personal life,” she said, out of the blue, and could have bit her tongue.
He’d been rummaging in the sack of food, coming up with the rest of the baguette and the oranges. He turned to look at her, an odd expression in his dark, unreadable eyes.
“What do you mean?”